Father's face grew bleaker and bleaker as I listed Eleanor's transgressions. When I finished, he shook his head, his words weary. "I knew she hadn't died."
We sisters, especially, gawked at him, and he passed a hand over his mouth, pulling at the short beard. "Not at first, for what little that may be worth. I mourned as if I'd lost a wife in childbirth, but as you grew, Amber, and played more beneath the rosebushes…" He shook his head. "Visions came to me. More than visions; memories. I knew I had seen you there with her, and that it was more than wishful dreaming. That little piece of knowledge shook other pieces loose, memories that couldn't have happened if she had died when you were born, until one day I saw a woman who so closely resembled Eleanor's description of the queen that I remembered she had claimed to have seen her. I remembered she'd said as much on the day she left us, and I think remembering it may have shattered the rest of the enchantment. I've known since then that she didn't die, and that she bore some manner of magical power."
"Why didn't you tell us?" Opal asked in astonishment. Pearl shook her head as if she anticipated Father's answer, and when it came, nodded agreement.
"What was the purpose? A mother who had died was at least not one who had abandoned you deliberately. And if she carried witchery in her blood, I thought it better to let you forget her as much as you could. I grew insular," Father admitted. "I drew you close to me and turned the world and friendships away. I wanted to protect you, but the end that was our ruin. Had I been more open, we might have had friends to turn to when our home burned, and our lives might have gone on safely in the city."
"You got out enough to meet Maman," Flint said with a quick smile. "Good thing for us, too."
Father very nearly blushed, a thing I hadn't known he could do. "Your mother sought me out. She'd known Eleanor a long time ago, in the queen's court, and heard she'd died, with children left behind. She wanted to make sure the children were well. We became friends, and fell in love. I was grateful, at the time, that anyone else cared. Now I think I may be grateful that someone, at least, counted Eleanor among their friends. It makes me feel a little less the fool."
"We became friends and fell in love," Maman agreed softly, from the stairs. "The rest…may not be precisely true."
The family turned as one to see Maman standing tall and straight on the stairway, one hand wrapped tightly around the bannister as if it lent her the strength to remain upright. She looked, to my eyes, desperately fragile: the warmth had fled from her skin, leaving it yellow beneath its mahogany hue, and she had lost weight, leaving her magnificent bone structure sharper than I'd ever seen it. She looked older, and familiar, but not in the way that a mother did to a child who hadn't seen her in a long time.
Father and I both shot to our feet, Father to offer Maman assistance on the stairs, and myself to simply stand and sway and stare. Maman gave me a rueful smile as she accepted Father's help, and the family made way for her to sit in one of the couches beside Father. I stayed on my feet, gaping at her, and it was Father who had to ask, "What part isn't true, Felicity?" in a cautious voice.
Maman looked at me, waiting to see what I knew, and after a moment I managed a whisper: "Maman is Queen Irindala."
A commotion rose, my two sisters and two of my brothers suddenly full of demands and questions. Jet, who had no questions, felt he should add to the noise, and began to wail. Glover leapt to his feet and bowed so deeply his hair swept the floor. Then he picked Jet up, trying to comfort him. Amidst all the clamor, Father ducked his head, amused guilt pulling at the corner of his lip.
"You knew," I said to him, astonished. "You knew."
Maman's eyebrows went up at that accusation. "Jacob?" Her voice silenced everyone else's, and we watched them, rapt as children at the theatre.
Father lifted his gaze to hers, and my heart shattered with agony for him: his love for Maman was so clear, so obvious, and his regrets for what he had put her through written as largely on his face. "I suspected," he said. "From the beginning, I suspected."
A shadow of loss crossed Maman's features. "Is that why you married me? To wed a queen?"
"Maman!" Pearl burst, not, I thought, because she questioned Father's devotion, but because she had verified, with that query, that what I had said was true.
Maman arched her fingers in her lap, showing Pearl the pads, and with that minute gesture, silenced my older sister more thoroughly than she'd ever been in her life. Father, as though Pearl's outburst hadn't happened, whispered, "Of course not. I married you because I loved you. If you wanted to keep your old self secret, what right had I to unearth it? But you did look very much as Eleanor had described you, and when you said you'd once known her…" He smiled, softer and more gently than I'd ever seen. "I am sorry, Iri. Sorry for having dragged you into this life, when you had only asked for that one."
A smile twitched Maman's lips. "'Iri'?"
"Shh," Father said, primly. "It's my secret nickname for you."
Pearl threw her hands in the air as Maman, eyes sparkling with laughter, leaned in to kiss Father. Jasper, whose thoughts had flown far ahead of mine, said, "That's why you write letters all the time. You never stopped ruling the kingdom, did you? Maman, which of us is to be king after you?"
Flint, horrified, said, "Not me!" while Jet asked, "King? King?" brightly. We laughed, and Maman steepled her hands in front of her mouth before saying, "That's a concern for another time, Jasper. For now I think I must fill in the empty spaces of Amber's tale, so she can decide what to do next."
"Why didn't I recognize you?" I asked in bewilderment. "I saw you over and over in the enchantment's visions, but I saw Irindala, not Maman."
"You said it only knew the story it had experienced up until then," Maman said. "I think it only knew me as Irindala. That it had no reason to see me as someone else."
"But I did." I closed my eyes, recalling Eleanor's impression of the queen's face to mind. "You were younger, maybe…rounder? Softer? Your hair and your clothes were different, but…well, it's obvious now…"
"But you had no reason to think it, then. I was a younger woman, a long way away, in an enchanted story. It's often easier to see the lost youth in someone older, than the old woman in someone young."
I laughed as an incongruous thought struck me. "Well. I suppose Annalise will be satisfied with her references, if she asks for them. It's not often a lady's maid gets a recommendation from the queen!"