Chapter 24: Article Six

On the first morning back at Rothgar Hall, I went to the pantry and shut the door.

It was the same pantry. Same shelves, same sacks, same palm tree in the corner, lowered by an inch.

I sat on the flour barrel with a pencil and my list.

There was one scene left on it.

Scene twelve: The Duchess Weeps Alone in a Cupboard.

I had never found a way to avoid it. I had simply never been unhappy enough to schedule it.

"You're in the pantry," said Ansel.

He stood in the door with the light behind him.

"It's Article 4. I may be found here."

"I know. I wrote the Article."

"You signed it. Bertram wrote it."

"I came to look for you."

"Then you've found me. That's a ten-gold finder's fee."

"I think," said Ansel, "that I will sit down."

He sat on the next barrel. It held.

We looked at each other in the dim, in the smell of apples and dust.

"I'm supposed to be crying," I said. "Alone. In the cupboard. It's the last one."

"Are you?"

"No."

"Then the scene has failed."

"It has," I said. "It's a clear breach of the book."

I drew the pencil through scene twelve.

Under it I wrote nothing. There was nothing left to write.

I folded the list in half, and in half again, and put it in the stove.

The door opened a hand's width, and Greta's head came round it.

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