PROLOGUE
From the time Crown Princess Sorcha was three, she prayed
for a baby brother. A baby brother would be a prince and
the heir to the throne of Beaumontagne, leaving Sorcha
free to be like other children.
Well, not like other children, but at least like her two
sisters who were mere princesses.
Unfortunately for Sorcha’s hopes and to the little
family’s deep distress, when Sorcha was six, her queen-
mother died bearing a third daughter.
So Grandmamma came to live with them.
Sorcha never forgot that day.
The opulent traveling coach drew up to the great door of
the castle, and Grandmamma stepped out — ancient, tall,
skinny, with regal bearing, a thick, carved cane, white
hair and cold blue eyes that froze Sorcha down to her
bones. From that moment, Sorcha grew up under the direct
glare of Grandmamma's critical gaze. Of course, Grandmamma
also made sure that Princess Clarice and Princess Amy were
supervised to within an inch of their lives — no one could
accuse Grandmamma of shirking her duties — but it was
Sorcha who occupied most of her time and attention.
Grandmamma approved Sorcha's tutors and made sure that
Sorcha was taught everything a crown princess should know —
language, mathematics, logic, history, music, sketching,
philosophy, and dance.
She made sure that the elderly archbishop of the Church of
Beaumontagne visited every Sunday, rain, snow or shine to
teach the princesses their religion and when he left,
Grandmamma personally drilled Sorcha on her catechism.
She instructed her in geography, showing her maps and
demanding she know rivers, mountains and seas. Somehow,
Grandmamma managed to make tiny Beaumontagne perched on
the spine of the Pyrenees between Spain and France sound
like a center of culture and learning — in fact, the most
important country in Europe.
In a private weekly session, Grandmamma taught Sorcha the
art of governing, posing intricate crises that would face
a queen and demanding Sorcha unravel the problem.
Grandmamma made Sorcha argue law, taking either side as
Grandmamma required and with Grandmamma as her opponent.
And Grandmamma never let an occasion pass without
reminding Sorcha that the crown princess and the crown
princess alone was responsible for the continuation of the
Beaumontagnian royal line.
From Sorcha, Grandmamma demanded perfection.
Which was why, at the age of twenty-five, Sorcha found
living in a convent on a tiny, rocky, barren island off
the northern coast of Scotland a freedom she cherished.
Her duties there were simple. She prayed. She read. She
gardened. She wore a simple brown habit. To differentiate
her from a novice, she wear no headdress, and because she
was a princess of Beaumontagne, she wore the silver cross
of her church on a chain around her neck.
She kept the plants alive in the greenhouse in the winter
and in the garden in the summer. She ate with the nuns and
slept in her bare little room. And after so many years of
listening to Grandmamma's voice nagging on and on, she
cherished the silence.
Yet one night almost three years ago, she had had a dream.
A dream? No, it had been more than a dream. It had been a
vision of unremitting darkness … and empty years.
The air was foul. The indifferent stones closed in around
her. No voice disturbed the silence. No hand reached out
to bind her wounds or cure her pain. The bones of rats
were her bed and the long drape of cobwebs her blanket.
She was buried alive.
And she didn’t care. Somewhere close, water seeped into a
pool, and the slow drip which had once driven her mad now
contributed to her indifference. Her world was sorrow and
loneliness. She was dying, and she welcomed the end of
desolation, of grief, of anguish.
Her fingertips touched the skeletal hand of Death …
Sorcha woke with a start and a horrified gasp.
The cross she wore around her neck seared her chest. She
wrenched it from beneath her nightgown and in the darkness
of her cell the silver gleamed like a blue coal. It
blistered the palm of her hand, but she grasped it as
tightly as she could, desperately needing its comfort.
Sitting up in her bed, she trembled, gasping for air,
wanting nothing so much as to breathe, escape, to live!
And the first light of dawn shined in her cell, and the
first seabird called its high, sweet call outside her
window.
She ran to the window, wrapped her hands around the cold
bars, and looked out at the ocean, trying to clear the
remnants of that awful dream from her mind.
Yet she couldn’t, and in all the time since, never had she
regained her serenity. Day after day she found herself
donning her brown wool cloak and wandering over the island
as if seeking something.
Or as if something were seeking her.