Chapter Fifty-eight

Ava

Even though other person kept to the Queen Mother's words by avoiding me like a plague, Maria and her husband never did. For a week, I had begun to sneak to their home which was a quarter in the palace.

And I loved every bit of it. It was like finding a new place you finally belong in; it was as if a missing piece fell into your soul just when all the pieces had begun to slip out of you.

Her husband Philip had begun to teach me how to make shoes. When Maria and I were not making food for him, he was teaching me his techniques for creating beautiful shoes. I loved it. I liked watching him work; especially when he was trying to be modest and not show that he made everything himself.

They didn't have children, and I sometimes wondered if it would have been different if they did.

“These are his majesty's favorite patterns,” he said when he told me about his shoes “It is very rare”

I don't know why I stiffened when I thought about the King and Philip must have noticed it.