“Is this …”
“Yes, Grace,” the princess says. “This is where they hung the bodies.”
Behind me, doors open and a maid delivers an elegant tray covered with the things for tea. But even the splendor of this room and all the trappings of the palace can’t keep me from the windows and the scene that is playing out down below.
“They’re setting up for tonight,” the princess says. I hadn’t realized she’d come so close.
“What’s tonight?” I ask.
Princess Ann looks at me, surprise all over her face. “You don’t know?”
I shake my head, stare back at the window. “Mom didn’t like the festival. She always kept us away from it. She said it was dangerous.”
Gently, Ann reaches out and touches the glass. “It is.”
Down below, workers are stringing lights throughout the square and over the sidewalks. Vendors are setting up carts draped with fabrics in white and red. And in the center of it all, the fire still burns.
For the first time, I see it all through the eyes of the woman beside me. When a group of tourists look up at the palace and start taking pictures, I expect her to step away, but she just shakes her head, reading my mind.
“The glass is one-way,” she says. “And bulletproof.”
Every girl thinks about growing up in a palace. Few ever ponder living in a cage.
“What’s tonight?” I ask.
“It’s the fourth night,” Princess Ann tells me. “The Night of a Thousand Amelias.”
“What does that mean?” I ask.
She looks at me. “Your mother really never told you?”
“No.” I shake my head. “She didn’t want us anywhere near here during the festival. We weren’t even allowed out after dark.”
“I’m not surprised,” Princess Ann says. “Caroline knew what this really is.”
“What is it?” I ask, even though I’m half afraid of the answer.
“It is a fourteen-day celebration of a time when people like them killed people like me.”
I’ve never thought of it like that — how it must feel to look out every night onto that scene, knowing.
“The royal family is very popular now,” I say, but Princess Ann just laughs.
“You are sweet to say so, Grace. Just like your mother.”
It is the perfect time to change the topic, to ask her what she knows about my mother’s death and my mother’s work and all the ways the two things are intertwined. But for some reason I can’t. Not yet.
“Why does the royal family allow it?” I ask instead.
“Because perhaps allowing people to remember history will help us all be less anxious to repeat it.”
“I see,” I say, even though I don’t. Not really.
“Come, Grace,” the princess says. “Your tea is getting cold.”
I follow Princess Ann around to sit on one of the straight-backed chairs that face the window. She pours me a cup and adds a generous dose of honey without asking how I take it.
“You knew,” I say as she hands me the cup.
The princess smiles. “You are very like your mother. I couldn’t imagine you would take it in any other way.”
“Thank you,” I say, but I’m not talking about the tea. I am grateful for the compliment, until I remember all of my mother’s secrets. Maybe being just like her is not such a great way to be after all.
“This is the worst night,” Princess Ann volunteers after a moment. She sips her own tea, places the cup gently on her saucer. “I always sit in this room — in this chair — on the fourth night.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Ms. Chancellor should tell you,” she says, as if I’ve just asked where babies come from and she wants nothing more than to avoid an awkward conversation.
“Please. What happened on the fourth night?” Suddenly, the room is cold even here, on the Mediterranean in the middle of summer.
I watch the princess weigh her options, contemplate what she should and should not say.
“You say your mother never allowed you to attend the festival, but you know the reason for it, don’t you?”
“I know the royal family was murdered, and that it started a war.” I study Princess Ann. “And I know about the treasure.”
For a while, the moment stretches out, the silence hangs heavy between us. “What do you know about it?”
“Ms. Chancellor told me everything,” I try.
“I doubt that, Grace, because no one knows everything. Three elders came to the palace the night of the coup. They salvaged what they could, but died before they could tell anyone the details.”