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"Please be careful, my love. You must not do that."

"But I can see the road. That's a chestnut mare."

AUTHOR INTERVIEW • Q&A With Arthur Phillips

"Come to me, please, for a moment. You must promise me that if you need me, you will not hesitate to call or even come and rouse me. I will never be angry if you need me. It shall be just like it was, truly. Sit upon my lap. Yes, the princess too. Now tell, are you pleased with these arrangements your father has dictated for us or no?"

"Oh, yes. He is kind. Is this a tower, because of the window?"

"Not a tower, no. If it is a tower you desire, you slept in a higher point with us, upstairs. It is I, up in the tower."

"But you have no tower window looking at the horses far below, so this is the tower." So the child was happy.

"Will you not be frightened to be alone when you sleep?"

"Oh, Mamma, yes! I will! It's very frightening," and her face reflected the thought of her dark night ahead, but then brightened at once. "But I will be brave as the shepherdess. 'When the woods crow dark / and by faint stars impale / God's light leave its mark / then does her heart wail / God's light leave its mark. . . . When the woods crow dark . . .' "

Constance smoothed the girl's hair, touched the small soft cheeks, brought the round face close. " 'When the woods grow dark / and by faint stars and pale / does God's light leave its mark / then does her heart quail. But . . .' "

"'But her faith's like a lamp,'" Angelica interrupted proudly, but then stumbled again at once. " 'And God . . . God slow, God sl . . .' I can't recall."

"'And God's love is brighter . . . still . . . than . . . ,'" her mother prompted.

"Shall I see a moon through the tower window?"

II

Angelica's excitement was unmistakable as night approached.

Twice she looked closely at Constance and said with great seriousness, "I am frightened to be alone tonight, Mamma." But Constance did not believe her. Angelica claimed to be afraid only because she could sense--for reasons beyond her understanding--that her mother wished she were frightened. Her claim of fear was an unwanted gift--a child's scribbled drawing--offered in perceptive love.

Still, those transparent lies were the exception to her candid anticipation. Constance washed her, and Angelica spoke of the princess's adventures alone in her tower. Constance brushed her hair while Angelica brushed the princess's, and Angelica asked if she could please go to bed yet. Constance read to her from the blue chair, and in mid-sentence Angelica uncharacteristically claimed fatigue, then sweetly refused her mother's offer to sit with her until she fell asleep.

"Should I leave the door open, my love?"

"No, thank you, Mamma. The princess desires her solitudary."

Constance likely waited in the narrow hall, tidied the linens in the armoire, straightened paintings, lowered lamps, but heard no protest, only muttering court intrigue until that, too, faded.

Downstairs Joseph had still not returned. "Is all well in the child's bedroom, madam?" the maid asked.

"In the nursery, Nora. Yes, thank you."

When Joseph did arrive, he did not inquire but assumed his dictates had been smoothly instituted. He spoke of his day and did not mention Angelica at all, did not even--as they extinguished the downstairs gas and rose to the third story--stop on the second to look upon his child in her new situation. His cold triumph was understood. "Angelica resisted the new arrangements," Constance allowed herself in mild rebellion.

He showed no concern, seemed even to take a certain pleasure in this report or, at least, in Constance carrying out his will despite resistance. She was curious if any description would inspire him even to mere sympathy, let alone a retraction of the deadly orders. Besides, the child's actual satisfaction tonight was surely temporary, and Constance wondered what sort of response he would offer when the child's courage finally broke, and so she said, "Angelica wept herself to sleep, so isolated she feels."

Excerpted from Angelica by Arthur Phillips Copyright © 2007 by Arthur Phillips. Excerpted by permission of Random House, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.