A Pearl Among Princes (16 page)

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Authors: Coleen Paratore

BOOK: A Pearl Among Princes
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“Thank you,” I say, grateful for the kindness. I bring the cup to Mackree's lips and try to give him a sip, but the water dribbles down his chin.
There is a commotion on the field nearby. “You snarling yellow-bellied . . .” Sir Peter is shouting, yanking Sir Humbert by his lace-trimmed collar. “I saw you beat that horse, you dog. If you killed my friend, I'll kill you!” Sir Peter punches Sir Humpty so hard surely his shell will crack.
Where is Nurse Hartling? “Stay with me, Mackree,” I say, not a wish, a command.
After a while, Doctor Jeffers stands and moves out into a clearing. “Sir Richard will be fine,” he pronounces. The assembled crowd cheers. Professor Pillage nearly weeps with relief. I nearly vomit with disgust and worry.
Nuff runs to the doctor and pleads with him to come attend to Mackree now that the prince is okay.
“Princes before peasants,” Tattlebug says to me, shaking her head angrily, “always been so, always will be.” She sneers at some Muffets who have come to hover over us in search of new drama now that Sir Richard is off to the hospital.
“Get away, ya spiders,” she says, thrusting out her hands to swat them off.
“That's right. Go!” Nuff says to the Muffets. She and Lu spread their arms out around Mackree and me.
“Leave them be,” Lu says.
I close my eyes. A child is there in my mind. With sunken eyes and hollowed cheeks. “Please,” she says, “I am starving.”
CHAPTER 26
Nobility
The lion and the unicorn
Were fighting for the crown;
The lion beat the unicorn
All about the town.
Some gave them white bread,
And some gave them brown;
Some gave them plum cake,
And sent them out of town.
Mackree lives! Thank the heavens, gods and goddesses, goodness, everything.
The wound on his forehead was deep, but it will heal. He heard me crying out to him as he lay injured on the field, but he pretended not to hear. This he confessed to me when his family had left the hospital room and I lingered longer.
“I wanted to be sure ya loved me,” he explained.
“
What
?” I said. “I was scared near to death for you!”
“Aye,” he says with a weak smile. “'Twas a mean trick, Pearl. I am sorry.”
“You know how I feel about you,” I say.
“Aye,” he says, “and I wanted to feel it one last time before you go.”
“But I—”
“Tattlebug suspects you'll be getting two offers at the ball.”
“Mackree . . .” My head is throbbing. I look at his bloodied lip. I want to kiss those lips. “I wasn't ready before, but now my feelings for you are different. I will not leave you.”
“Pearl, I see how you are called from Miramore. Your path is clear. Choose a prince and go.”
“No, Mackree.” I touch his hair. He flinches.
I lean in toward him. He turns away.
“Go, Pearl, now.”
I shake my head, crying. “No.” Even as I know he is right.
“All I ever wanted was you, Pearl. You want me and something more. Something I can never give you. I may not be a prince, but I can't be a man either and know I've denied you your dreams.”
“Mackree.”
“Please, Pearl, go. Have courage.
Go
.”
I rush from the hospital, feeling cleaved in half, bewildered, beheaded, bleeding. How can life be so cruel? Destiny draws me, the call is so fierce, every fiber of my being, like a tide pull not denied. I am willing to accept. To set course for the unknown. But must I leave my heart to dry up dead as fish, as driftwood on the hot, parched Miramore sand?
How noble of Mackree to set me free. To insist I heed this call. He is as much a prince as Richard or Peter or any of them.
Cruel, cruel fate.
A week passes. Mackree and Sir Richard are both discharged from the hospital and are up and around again.
Today is August 10, the morning of my sixteenth birthday.
I walk to the beach before dawn, climb the steps to the top of the old bell tower. I watch the sky blush pink and then orange, then close my eyes from the blinding light as the sun births a brilliant new day.
Happy birthday, dearest daughter
, Mother's voice sings sweet inside me.
Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday, dear . . .
“Mother. I am frightened.”
I open my eyes and look down at the water. The tide crashes in upon the rocks. I step back scared from the opening, pull my cloak about me.
Fear is a pebble, Pearl, a grain of sand. Should you choose to accept this day's gift, you will have power as great as the sea within you. It is already there, daughter. It has always been. You alone can claim it.
“Gracepearl! Gracepearl!”
I look down at the beach.
Tattlebug.
“Come to the hospital,” she screams up to me. “Hurry!”
Oh no
. I nearly stumble racing down the stairs.
“It's Cook,” Tattlebug says, all out of breath when I reach her. “It's bad I fear, Grace, run. I'll go fetch Mackree fer ya.”
“I'm sorry, dear,” Nurse Hartling says, tears welling in her eyes when she sees me in the hallway. “He asks for you. Go to him.”
No
. I rush to the now familiar room. Father's eyes are closed, but I see his hefty belly rising up and down with air. I rest my head on his chest.
Be strong
, I shout a silent command to Father's heart.
Don't fail Father now
.
Do you hear me
!
Someone comes into the room. I turn.
Mackree. He comes to my side. “Pearl,” he says, awkwardly. “Happy birthday.”
I feel my heart slice in two.
Father opens his eyes. He smiles at me. He nods a warm welcome to Mackree. “Do me a favor, son?”
“Anything, sir,” Mackree says with great earnest.
Father reaches to his neck. With effort he raises his head and lifts the thin leather rope with the key up and over. He instructs Mackree to bring the trunk from beneath his bed in the cottage. “Posthaste, son. Run.”
“I shall return in an instant,” Mackree says, and dashes off.
I kneel beside my father, trying to force a cheerful, confident smile, but I was never good at masking true emotions.
“My dearest daughter,” Cook says in a labored voice, no longer veiling the pain weighing heavy on his chest. “I am not long for this world.”
“Father!” I wail. “Please, stay. You cannot leave me. You must not leave me. You are the only family I have.”
Father smiles, lifting a shaking hand to stroke my hair. “Soon I will join my beloved Miriam, but please do not despair. Just has your mother has never left you for a moment, I promise you, neither shall I.”
CHAPTER 27
A Revelation
Lucy Locket lost her pocket,
Kitty Fisher found it;
There was not a penny in it,
But a ribbon round it.
Mackree is back, the fastest runner on Miramore, carrying the purple trunk.
“Set it here, son,” Father says, patting the space beside him.
My heart clenches at his use of the name “son.” It might have been. Once in another life, another time, it might have been. I turn away to wipe the tears from my eyes. I must have courage for Father.
He unlocks the trunk. I stand back by Mackree.
“This year there will be three gifts,” Father says.
“No, Father, just the sixteenth . . .
please
. Keep the seventeenth for next year, and the eighteenth for the year after that.”
Mackree squeezes my arm as if to strengthen me.
“Please, daughter,” Father says in a halting voice, “there may not be much time.”
I stop trying to stop the inevitable. I lean my head on Mackree's shoulder.
Father fumbles in the trunk. He pulls out a book.
“Go ahead,” he says, “open it.”
I take the leather volume from his hands. It is the book of history Mother used to teach me from. I turn back the cover. Father has written something there. I'd recognize his handwriting anywhere.
“To our beloved daughter, Gracepearl, on the occasion of her sixteenth birthday.”
There is a sheaf of papers stuck inside the back cover. I turn to them, again recognizing Father's cursive scrawl.
This must have been what he was writing that day in the cottage.
“Read it,” Father says.
I pick up the papers and begin. “Once upon a time . . .” My voice shakes as I read. And then I hear Mother's voice reading the story aloud to me as my eyes follow the words.
Once upon a time there was a princess who, as she stood with her mother and father in the tower waving down to the subjects gathered to honor them each day, had begun to wonder why the people of the kingdom looked so sad. She asked her nurse, who bitterly explained that the people were hungry, sick, and homeless. Why then couldn't her parents help them? “Your parents have tried to help, dear girl, but the forces against them are too powerful. It will take a mightier strength to turn the tides of this mass misfortune.”
The princess could not erase those faces from her mind. She vowed that if one day she took the throne, she would melt all the crowns, all the gold in the palace, and help the people who haunted her dreams.
At the mention of the dreams, I gasp and shudder.
Father nods at me. Mother reads on . . .
Mass rebellion broke out and war ensued. To protect their daughter, the princess's parents sent her off in the charge of a trusted sea captain. The captain delivered the princess and her baggage to an island enshrouded by a circle of mist, a place where royal families sent princes to study the charming arts in summer. It was winter and only the servants who lived on the island year-round were there. The sea captain left the princess in the safekeeping of a kitchen baker who, as fate would have it, was already providing safe haven for a young Pine duke also sent to escape the war.
Years passed and the young royals fell in love. She gathered fruits and vegetables, gave names to all the fish. He became quite a good cook. She loved to dance. He learned to play the fiddle.
My pulse pounds so I fear I may faint. I look at Father. His eyes are closed and he's smiling. Mother reads on . . .
When the time was right, they professed marriage vows in the forest beneath a pine canopy, stars twinkling like diamonds above them. Years passed and the Royal Order, now but twelve branches, as the king and queen of Pine had been killed and there was no apparent heir, kept the summer school for princes in good operation. The Order feared the working-class ranks were growing disillusioned with the throne and more charm might provide a calming tonic. The people always liked a good show.
The island's royal couple, still keeping their lineage a secret, gave birth to a child, a daughter. And on that bright August day when she was born, they determined to raise her free of the burden of royal patronage and expectation. This girl would have a childhood full of the joys of nature, the sea, the forest, and the field. She would acquire humility forged from hard labor, compassion wrought from service to others, the friendship of those who would love her for the kindness of her character, not the cash in her coffers, and she would have peaceful stretches of solitude, so quiet she could hear the wisdom of her truth and one day choose her calling, whatever that would be.
My body is shaking. Mackree's hand supports my back.
I shut the book. Father's eyes search mine.
“Is it true?” I ask in a struggled whisper.

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