Chapter 13: +Chapter 13+
Mari was hard-pressed to come up with an escape plan that would actually work, first, she would have to get outside the palace without breaking every bone in her body, and then she would somehow have to bypass all of the palace’s security. It was beginning to look like she would have a better chance asking King Lucien to let her go.
By the time a maid brought her a tray of food, she still hadn’t figured out an escape plan. She ate absently, deep in her thoughts; thankfully, the food brought to her this time was of sufficiently less quantity, she still couldn’t finish it though, too strung out to have an appetite.
After her dinner tray was taken away, Mari decided to explore the room given to her, hoping to find something useful. After carefully searching, she did find something, it was a maid’s uniform.
Maybe it had been forgotten in a corner of the huge wardrobe while the room was being cleaned, it didn’t matter, it could prove useful to Mari, that was what was most important. It wouldn’t help her escape her room but it could be useful when she got outside the palace.
She considered putting it on and trying to blend into the maids in the palace but that was too risky, she didn’t know her way around the palace and there was a very high chance that the maids would immediately single her out as an outsider, or even worse, she would bump right into either King.
However, if she was able to get out of her room through her window, she might have a better chance of deceiving the guards with the uniform. Surely, maids were allowed to leave, right? Not all of them stayed in the palace, right? She would find out soon.
Although, Mari had a rough idea of what she would do when she left the palace, she still didn’t know a way to escape. It wasn’t like coils of sturdy rope were provided with her dinner… her thoughts trailed off as she glanced at the bed… coils of rope?
It was very cliche, to tie together the bed sheets and use them to scale the walls but Mari didn’t exactly have a wide range of options. She worried though if the bed sheets would be enough… She shouldn’t have worried to begin with because not only were the sheets unnecessarily long, there were like three of them on the bed alone, as well as fresh sheets in the bathroom drawers.
*’Why would anyone need so many sheets?’* She mused to herself as she got to work tying them end to end, making sure the knots were secure. She actually didn’t care why, she was just happy it worked in her favor.
When she was all done, she scanned the bedroom for something sturdy that could hold her weight. She didn’t have to look very far because there were pillars in the room; the pink-painted pillars had seemed extravagant for a room when she first came in but now her opinion on them had changed.
She made sure the sheets were sturdily tied around the pillar, not too eager to lose her life to her escape plan - good thing she was good with knots. She tested the strength of her makeshift rope by leaning all of her weight against it and pulling it harshly.
When she decided that it was all set, she experimentally threw it out her window it make sure it got all the way to the ground, which it did, with enough length to spare. Mari beamed at this, breathing heavily at all the hard work she had been doing.
Adrenaline heated up her blood, her hope reaching new heights, she could actually pull this off. The bumps on the sheets where she made the knots acted as a kind of ladder so it wouldn’t be sliding straight down and potentially blistering all the skin off her palms.
Mari made sure to put on the maid outfit as well, tying her hair into a secure bun to try to hide as much of it as possible underneath the frilly cap that came with it. The uniform stopped above her knees and was a pencil dress which wasn’t exactly the best for rope climbing.
She hiked the skirt of the dress up to her thighs, tying the apron snugly so it didn’t come off while she was sliding down. For shoes, she was stuck with the low heels that she had been previously wearing but it was comfortable so she could manage.
With all these in place, she pronounced herself ready and carefully climbed out the window. She slowly went down the makeshift rope, although her pulse thudded loudly in her ears with every second that went by. She couldn’t risk making any noise that would attract attention.
Mari dropped to the ground with a soft thud, her heels digging into the dirt. It was completely dark out now that the sun had set but the palace was brightly lit. Mari quickly tugged down her dress and walked away from the incriminating sheets hanging out her window, hoping that no guard had been paying attention at that moment.
There were walkways aesthetically running through the lawns so that one could get anywhere without stepping on the grass. She walked past a fountain, trying not to look suspicious. Her heart thumped so loudly that she was certain that anyone within five feet of her could clearly hear it.
Mari walked around the palace as her room had been behind it which was a blessing honestly because she didn’t think she could have made her getaway if it were anywhere else. As she came out to the front, she could hear voices, a duo of maids were right in front of her, laughing and talking to each other as they headed for the gate.
Mari didn’t hesitate to follow right after them, making sure to walk close enough that they were associated with each other but not too close that the maids tried to strike up a conversation with her.