A Desperate Idea

Jean looked grim. Angelique had never seen him look quite like this before. She loved him, she loved him with the largest part of her heart, but there was always a part of her that saw him as her Jean, a little foolish, prone to sentimentalism, to believing in high flown nonsense; there had always been something absurd about her back-alley knight with his chivalric pretensions. He was as brave as a lion and as strong as a bull, but he was also about as wise as a lamb and that was something that Angelique had always slightly laughed at, even while she loved him for it.

She wasn't laughing now. Nobody was laughing now, least of all Jean Taurillion.

They had taken the body of Corporal Lamond Adragain down from the tower, and laid him out in the chapel in which she and Jean both stood. His throat was still red from the blood that had dried there after those witches had slit his throat; his eyes were closed but that couldn't hide the expression of surprise upon the rest of his face. They had caught him from behind somehow; probably using magic to get into the boy's room, killed the guard then took the boy.

Had they even needed to kill Corporal Adragain, or had they done it simply because they could?

Angelique didn't know the answer to that. There probably wasn't anyone who knew the answer to that save for those who actually did the murder.

It probably didn't matter much now anyway.

It didn't seem to matter much to Jean, as he stood in front of the body glowering down at it almost as though the dead man himself was the object of his fury. The light from all the candles burning in the chapel flickered on his face, illuminating it but seeming to bring no light to the darkness that had consumed him.

"Jean?" Angelique said softly.

Jean didn't reply.

"Jean," Angelique repeated, reaching out for him with one hand.

He pulled away. "Don't touch me," he hissed, making Angelique draw back from him in turn. He cringed. "I'm sorry, Angelique," he said. "I didn't mean to…I'm sorry."

"It's alright," Angelique said. "I understand."

"Do you?" Jean murmured. "I'm not sure that I do." He drew in a sharp breath through his nose. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm here for you."

"You should be with the princess."

"Princess Cinderella wants to be alone right now," Angelique said.

"And you think that's a good idea?"

"No," Angelique admitted. "But she's not alone. Prince Eugene's with her, and Marinette is just downstairs."

"Mademoiselle du Bois? Lady Roux?"

"Researching in the library," Angelique said. "I'm here for you…if you want me to be."

Jean scowled, and hunched his shoulders, and said nothing.

"This isn't your fault," Angelique said.

"I know who's fault it is," Jean snapped. "Just as I know that…I know that there's nothing I can do to avenge him, or to rescue the young Duke."

Now she saw. She probably ought to have seen it sooner: his anger at himself, such as it was, was entirely at his powerlessness to punish the real objects of his ire, those witches.

"He was one of my men," Jean said. "My men, my responsibility as much as the princess is; as much as her children are. But I can neither rescue the boy nor…nor make my corporal's death mean something."

"Did…did he have any family?" Angelique asked.

"A grandmother, she lives in the city," Jean said. "When she hears this…I fear…they've killed two people, not just one."

"Maybe," Angelique murmured.

"I want to kill them, Angelique," Jean said. "I want to kill them all for what they've done. Is that…is that wrong of me?"

"No," Angelique said. "No, it isn't wrong at all. It's…they deserve to die. And you'll do it, too."

"Nobody else has," Jean said. "Not in hundreds of years."

"Nobody else was Jean Taurillion," Angelique said.

"I'm in no mood to be flattered," Jean said.

"I'm not flattering you," Angelique replied. "Well…I suppose I am, but what I'm trying to say is…" she reached out, and this time he did not pull away as she took his hand. "Is that I believe in you."

Jean looked down at her, and at her hand in his. For a moment the grimness that had consumed his face seemed to lift, like the moment when the dark and gloomy clouds part to let a ray of sunshine through to strike the earth and make the flower bloom. But the clouds rolled in again, and the light was banished from the world once more. "I don't know what to do," he said. "What are we going to do, Angelique?"

You're asking me? What do I know about witches and magic or any of this? But she couldn't say that, not to him, not to anyone. Because she was Angelique, and whether she was Angelique Bonnet or Angelique Taurillion what wouldn't change was that she was the one who knew what to do, the one that Jean looked to for instruction, the one that Cinderella looked to for good advice even if she ignored it as often as not. The one who knew what road to take. So how could she say, in this moment when the night was darkest it had ever been, that she was completely out of her depth and she had no clue what to do?

How could she admit that she was as helpless as Jean?

"Perhaps…" she began, and the fact that she had to begin with a word as mealy-mouthed as perhaps made her feel awful. "Perhaps there is another power we can appeal to. These witches, they're not the only ones around, we've faced magic in the past-"

"Grace," Jean growled.

"Exactly," Angelique said. "So perhaps…perhaps we can find someone else, appeal to them, use magic against magic."

"Who would want to solve all of our problems, or the princess' problems, for us?" Jean asked.

"We wouldn't have to go that far," Angelique said. "Only find out where the three witches are hiding, where they're keeping Philippe; once we know that then we can ride to the rescue."

Jean looked troubled. "The old king bound his line to give up his daughters in exchange for the help of the three sisters. What might any power we could call upon demand from us for this?"

"I don't know," Angelique admitted. "And if it is too high or terrible a price then we can just refuse the bargain, pay no price and get no benefit. But…but I'll be honest with you, Jean, I don't know what else we can do. We don't know where to find the three sisters, we don't know where Philippe is, we don't…we don't know anything and the princess is…this will break her, like nothing else could. I'm afraid they've done what Serena and Grace and all the rest of them could never do." She stopped, as a thought struck her; a wonderful thought that hadn't occurred to her before. Well, no, it wasn't really a very wonderful thought at all. In fact it was a thought that made her skin crawl a little bit, but at least it was something. It was an idea at a time when they were desperately short upon the same.

"Angelique?" Jean said. "What are you thinking?"

"Grace's family," Angelique said. "The du Villerois. Her brothers, her parents, after she fled with Anatole du Montcalm she abandoned her family to face justice."

"They were stripped of their lands and titles for their part in the coup," Jean said. He and Angelique had both benefited from that, as Princess Cinderella had, out of her generous heart and awareness of those who had loyally supported, bestowed both lands and titles upon the two of them. Angelique fancied that said lands, which she had found to be quite badly managed, were now prospering under more enlightened ownership.

"They lost everything except their lives," Angelique said. "The princess didn't have the heart to order them put to death."

Jean nodded. "I still don't see what you're getting at."

"Grace was a witch!" Angelique said. "What if…I can't believe that there isn't some magic in the rest of her family, too."

"I can believe that," Jean admitted. "But all the same, they're not likely to want to help us."

"We'll have to make them," Angelique said. "Or else find something they want or…we'll have to make them," she repeated. "We can't just do nothing, we can't just leave Philippe in the hands of these monsters, we can't…we can't let Cinderella suffer like this."

Jean looked back at the body of Corporal Adragain, his man, who had an aged grandmother who would be broken by the news of his death.

His jaw tightened. "So what do we do?"

"We go to their highnesses," Angelique said. "And once they agree…then we go down into the darkest cells and get the answers we need."

Jean looked at the body again. He closed his eyes, and bowed his head. "I swear," he said. "I swear that those who did this will pay. You have my word, Corporal." He turned away. "Let's go," he said. "We haven't a moment to lose."


Eugene had never seen Cinderella so distraught before. She had been frightened, she had been sad, she had been lonely and upset but she had always seemed to recover from it, to put on a smile once more and find fresh hope in the new dawn. Nothing had ever seemed to keep her down for long.

Until now.

Now the dawn was coming and yet there was no sign of any fresh hope in Cinderella. She lay on the bed, her face in her arms, face down, sobbing. She had been like this ever since Philippe had been taken.

He felt so helpless. Infuriatingly, frustratingly so. He couldn't save his son, he couldn't console his wife, he couldn't do anything.

He had let them down, both Cinderella and Katharine. Katharine had trusted him to look after her boy when she was gone and it was not unfair to say that he had singularly failed in that endeavour, trusting him in turn to the care of Etienne Gerard until Cinderella had discovered the truth and insisted that Philippe should come to live with his father.

Cinderella had always loved Philippe better than he had. Where she had seen a motherless boy, a child who needed love and care, Eugene had seen only the reason why his mother was dead. He had resented him, and then when he had stopped resenting him he had nevertheless been distant. And then he had had the gall to be surprised when Philippe had latched onto Cinderella as a mother, when she had been the only parent he had ever known, the only person aside from his grandmother to really show him parental affection.

And now he was gone, and his mother's heart was broken and…and if Katharine was looking down on him then doubtless she was incredibly disappointed.

Katharine, do you have any power at all? Can you not intercede with any angel to rescue your son from this terrible fate?

Cinderella's sobbing ceased. She looked up, and he could see that her face was still wet with tears, the same tears that were welling up in her eyes. "What are we going to do, Eugene? What are we going to do to get our son back?"

Eugene was silent for a moment. "I…I don't know."

"We must do something," Cinderella said. "We can't just…we can't just leave him to…he needs me. He must be so frightened and alone and…there must be something we can do."

"I want to," Eugene said. "I just…I can't think of anything that we can do. We can't give up the girls."

"No, of course not, we could never do that," Cinderella said.

"Then what can we do?"

Cinderella was quiet, silent in fact. "I don't know," she admitted in her turn. "I just…oh, Eugene, this is so terrible. Why does it feel as though we're being punished for something that isn't our fault?"

"Because we are," Eugene said bluntly. "We're being punished for something that my ancestor did. I'd like to ring his neck."

"That wouldn't help us get Philippe back."

"Will anything?" Eugene asked. He scowled. "I'm sorry, I just-"

"I know," Cinderella said. "I feel so…oh, Philippe. Is there nothing that we can do? Nothing at all?"

There was a knock on the door.

"Who is it?" Eugene demanded.

"It's Angelique," came the voice from the other side of the door. "I might have an idea."

Cinderella gasped, and before Eugene could say anything she had leapt from the bed and flung open the door, heedless of the fact that she was wearing her nightgown and nothing else. Eugene supposed that this was hardly the moment for propriety, not to mention that they had already seen her so dressed when she had heard Philippe scream and rushed downstairs. "Come in," Cinderella said. "What is it? What should we do?"

Angelique walked inside – Cinderella gave way before her – followed by Lieutenant Taurillion, who shut the door behind them.

"I want to talk to the du Villerois in prison," Angelique said. "I think they might be witches, or warlocks…is that the word? Warlock is a word, isn't it?"

"Yes, it's the right word," Eugene said impatiently. "What makes you think that they are witches or warlocks?"

"Grace was, your highness," Angelique said. "And I don't think that we've got anything to lose by asking them about it."

"But what do you hope to accomplish by it?" Eugene asked.

"Eugene," Cinderella said. "At least it's doing something."

"There isn't any point in doing something that gets us nowhere."

"Doing nothing will get us nowhere for certain," Angelique replied. "I admit that it isn't a brilliant plan, and I admit that they've no reason to help us at all but…if we can bribe them or bully them or persuade them to talk then maybe…we don't understand magic but they do. Maybe they can help us work out what we can actually do to get your son back and put this threat behind us once and for all."

"We have to try, Eugene," Cinderella insisted.

"After what they did to you?" Eugene asked. "After what Grace did, they must hate us! They're more likely to rejoice in our misery than tell us anything that will help."

"Everyone wants something," Angelique said. "We just have to find out what it is and dangle it in front of them."

"Angelique's right, we can't do nothing," Cinderella said. "Aside from giving up the girls is there any price too high to get Philippe back? He's all alone surrounded by monsters, he must be terrified with no one to hold him or watch him while he goes to sleep or make it all better for him. We need to get him back, we need to bring him home. We can't just…if this will help we have to try."

Eugene was a good deal less sure that this would help, and he was worried that it might in fact lead to more harm than good. That family, Grace's family…Grace had nearly been the death of all of them, and her quest for vengeance had ended in her own death, which meant that her parents and brothers must surely bear a desire for revenge all of their own. And if they were magical then why hadn't they escaped from prison already?

But…but at the same time Cinderella was right, and her lady Angelique was right: doing nothing would get them nowhere and that…that was intolerable. "Very well," he said. "Speak to them, find out what they say."

"I'll come with you," Cinderella said.

"What?" Angelique asked. "Princess, I don't-"

"I'm not going to just leave this to you," Cinderella said firmly. "I have to do this."

"No you don't."

"Yes, I do," Cinderella repeated. "Since there is nothing else that I can do then I have to do this."

Angelique bit her lip. "Princess-"

"He's my son, Angelique," Cinderella said. "He's my son and I can't just sit here while you and Jean try and rescue him. He's my son, and I'm going to get him back."