The Princess Curse (3 page)

“A question—why? What did you put in?”

“Wild cabbage.”

She obviously didn’t see the significance. “That’s a terrible bath herb,” she told me, and went back to powdering betony for Brother Cosmin.

I sighed. Betony is a fine plant. Some people call betony heal-all, but to me, it represents the lazy kind of healing, like the barbers who think that opening up a vein is good for every disorder, even for wounded soldiers gushing blood.

The whole of betony, from root to flower, is medicinal, and it
is
good for fevers, spasms, peeing more, peeing less, high blood, bad stomachs, worms, flatulence, excessive bleeding, and even wounds. But betony works much better paired with a second, complementary herb, and it’s not suitable for
everything
, nor is it always the
best
cure.

But I was determined to behave, so I resolved not to take up the betony conversation with either Didina or Brother Cosmin again for at least a week. I owed the monk for showing up in the solar at all, even though he hadn’t actually spoken in my defense—and frankly, I had worried that perhaps my diatribes against the excessive use of the plant were what had gotten me summoned by the Princess in the first place.

I worked hard the rest of the day. I took dried rose petals to the laundresses to layer in with the clean clothing. I made up hair rinse of rosemary and nettles for half the castle. I helped Didina powder wormwood to deter mice, pennyroyal to repel fleas. I made a batch of sore-leg ointment for Brother Cosmin’s donkey, who was getting on in years.

When Brother Cosmin finally showed up, he directed me to make up sachets of southernwood and tansy to keep moths at bay. I gathered day’s-eyes, lemon balm, and santolina for the footmen to mix with sweet rushes for the floor of the great hall, and savory, rosemary, rue, and roses for the aromatic posies the princesses carried every evening.

After this, the monk spent some time teaching us to work with clover root and cherry bark to make a remedy for coughs.

When he stepped out for the privy, Didina said, “Brother Cosmin told me why you put the wild cabbage in the bathwater, Reveka. You’d best stay away from the princesses.”

I set my jaw mutinously and continued pounding apart the threads of a clover root with my pestle.

“You don’t know how many people have been lost,” she continued. “It’s not worth it.”

“The dowry’s not worth it?” I asked. “Because it
seems
worth it—not to have to marry some clod who’ll make you bear too many babies, or not to live alone and have no one to care for you in your old age. . . .”

“Some clod—? What do you want a dowry for, if not to get married?”

“I want to join a convent, of course.”

“Oh.” Didina measured out the cherry bark she’d just powdered. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you had a spiritual calling.”

I was ashamed to admit that I didn’t, so I skipped answering that. “I want to be the herbalist for an entire abbey,” I told Didina. “I want to have my own herbary. My own apprentices.”
To write a great herbal,
I thought, but I didn’t tell her that. It seemed more like a dream than a real plan.

She squinted at the powder she had made. “That takes a lot of money, you know. Only rich women join that kind of abbey.”

“I know,” I said, and pounded harder at my clover root. I’d known since I was a small child that the nuns weren’t going to take me without a dowry, and I’d barely dared dream of my own herbary—a whitewashed room filled with northern sunlight and tall drying cabinets, where I reigned as mistress and none gainsaid my method for preparing pomanders. Or made too much of betony.

Before there was this dowry to try for, I’d always figured I’d have to find a husband. I didn’t think it would be too hard—I wasn’t entirely homely, by all accounts, and even if I were, plenty of homely women get homely husbands and make homely babies.

But then what? What about my husband? What would he be—a cabinetmaker, a blacksmith, a cobbler? The problem with marrying a craftsman is that the commerce becomes the wife’s problem. And where did that fit in with my herbs? Nor could I see marrying a farming man, beholden to some estate, any more than I could see marrying a soldier—my own ma’s sad life bounced that notion right out of my head.

No. The convent was the best choice for me. A place where I would have all the time I was supposed to be devoutly praying to think about herbs. I didn’t really care for all the silence and singing and obedience—but my own herbary!

Brother Cosmin came back then and asked us questions about the properties of cherry bark, and we stopped talking.

In short order, I assembled the evening’s posies and went to deliver them to the princesses’ door.

I arrived at the same time as Florin, the youngest of the cobbler boys. The castle employed seven cobblers, total: six to make two new pairs of slippers every day for the princesses, and one to make shoes for the rest of us. Florin was the newest apprentice to his master, like me, and like me, he was the one who had to venture off to the princesses’ tower. No one who could possibly avoid it went to the princesses’ tower. Ever.

I looked at Florin over my fragrant tray of flowers and herbs; he looked at me over his box of slippers.

“Do you ever think that maybe if we didn’t replace their posies and slippers every night, they wouldn’t do whatever it is that they do?” I asked.

Florin, who was just a bit older than me but had lived at the castle since he was born, shook his head. “They tried that,” he said. “They tried everything. For a week, Prince Vasile refused them any slippers. The princesses made holes in their feet instead of their shoes. It was a week of blood and blisters and hobbling about.”

“Why not move them out of the castle altogether?”

“Because! Earthquakes! Wind! Terrible storms! Every time they try something, we spend a month clearing the debris and patching up the castle foundations.”

“Well,” I said, “maybe they shouldn’t let them go to bed at night?”

Florin shook his head. “The curse is
strong
. The curse wants the princesses in the castle, in this tower, every night, no exceptions.”

“Maybe separate them—”

“No.” Florin rolled his eyes. “The castle’s been cursed for six years. They tried everything you’ve thought up—twice—and eighty more things besides.”

“What about—”

Florin wheeled about impatiently. “Listen. You’re what, thirteen?
You
aren’t going to break the curse.
Nobody
is going to break the curse, and nothing good comes to them that try. A piece of advice, apprentice to apprentice: The curse don’t hurt them that don’t mess with it. So you? Don’t mess with it, and grow up to be a journeyman herbalist. Now. Knock.” He jerked his chin toward the tower door.

I was annoyed, but I knocked. Beti, the princesses’ maid, opened up to take Florin’s box of shoes. Florin escaped swiftly, clearly having no intention of waiting for me.

Usually a second maid would have taken my flowers, but tonight she was not in attendance. I tried to place the tray of flowers on top of Florin’s box, but Beti grimaced. “Bring in the tray—I haven’t got six hands, you know!” So I followed her into the eastern tower.

The princesses stood about in varying states of undress, preparing for the evening’s meal and entertainment in their father’s hall. In any other boudoir of twelve princesses, there would have been chatter and laughter. But all here was silence and strain, even though the princesses wore the most beautiful gowns of velvets, damasks, and silks—nothing at all like my sturdy woolen skirts and apron.

I set down the tray of flowers and turned to leave, but Beti asked, “Can’t you stay?”

“What for?” I whispered.

“Help them with their flowers? You know all about flowers, right?”

I started to say that I didn’t think they’d want me, because I wanted to go down and get my supper, but then I realized that there was no better time to investigate the curse further. What luck! And I’d almost thrown that luck away for sour soup and roasted carp!

Chapter 4

“S
ure, I’ll help the princesses with their flowers,” I said. Beti flashed me her teeth in gratitude and dashed off to assist Princess Viorica with her lacings.

Several of the princesses glared at me, doubtless because of the cabbage issue. I shied from them and approached Princess Otilia with a posy, since she was the only princess who had ever bothered to learn my name. She stopped plucking fine hairs from her forehead and reached for the flowers.

“Reveka, the posies look lovely,” Otilia said, burying her nose in a spray. “And they smell even better. What wonderful roses!”

“Mm, indeed, Highness.” I plopped a curtsy at her, not certain if I should point out that I didn’t have anything to do with growing roses, just the picking of them. “And, um, how can I help you?”

Otilia showed me how to smooth her hair back tightly and bind it with pins. We covered the knot of hair with a tall, cone-shaped cap. A veil attached to the hat with wire antennae and fluttered about her head. She told me this was called a butterfly hennin, and I could see why, with the veil spread above her head like wings.

When I stepped back to admire my work, I felt about as fine as a hill cottager, though I wore my second-best apron and my nut-dyed cowl was new. The linen of Otilia’s veil practically glowed in contrast to her dark hair, and she was almost beautiful.

Otilia smiled at me. It didn’t seem a happy smile, and it made her seem older than I had thought she was.

“How long have you been at the castle, Princess?” I asked, speaking softly since Lacrimora and Maricara were glaring at me periodically.

“It will be seven years this autumn. We came when I was twelve. I’m the youngest.” She spoke wistfully, and her eyes were dark and moist. In a voice pitched so her sisters couldn’t hear, she said, “I miss my other life. You have no idea how lucky you are, Reveka.”

I frowned. I wasn’t cursed, of course, but what did she know about my life? My mother had refused to follow my father once she was pregnant, because Pa was soldiering for Vlad Ţepeş then, who was not known for treating women very well, even his soldiers’ women, even pregnant ones. She had died shortly after giving birth to me, leaving me in a convent. My first eight years there were utterly miserable. The Abbess had marked me as a liar and a troublemaker from birth. All the nuns scorned me, except Sister Anica, the herbalist, who chose me to be her student. She appreciated that I was clever and a fast learner.

I never even met Pa until after he left Vlad Ţepeş’s army to join the Hungarian Black Legion, when I was nine or so; he stayed in the abbey’s guest hostel for a night, saw me for half an hour, and let the Abbess convince him that I was a liar on the path of sin. He didn’t come to collect me until he gave up soldiering a couple of years later, at which point he dragged me away from Sister Anica to follow him around while he gardened for various nobles all over the region.

That first year I hated him. He treated me like the liar the Abbess had told him I was, and he watched me hawkishly for the slightest untruth. He made me find my own willow twigs when he switched me for lying, and I would cry as I cut the twigs, thinking of Sister Anica. It went that way until we came to our uneasy truce: I promised I would never lie to him, and he promised to trust my vow and assume I told the truth. I think we were both hard-pressed to keep our pact, but so far we’d never caught each other breaking it.

So, no I wasn’t cursed. I wasn’t trapped in a tower every night with my half sisters—even better, I wasn’t half sister to Maricara and Lacrimora—but I felt like saying,
No, Princess Otilia, I have no idea how lucky I am. And you? Have you been switched before an entire convent for telling a harmless lie? Have you gone days with little or no food because your own soldiers set fire to the millet fields when they retreated? Have you lost nights of sleep while the infidels shelled your walls?

But for once I restrained my impertinent tongue and whispered, “Oh, indeed, very lucky. What do you miss most about your other life, Princess?”

And here she flushed bright red, from the tips of her ears down her throat. “Oh!” she said, as though I’d stuck her with a pin. “Oh, my family, of course.”

“Surely you’re allowed to see your family.”

“My mother, and my brother and sisters, they have come for visits before; but my father . . .” She trailed off, and I could see that this was very painful for her. The father who had raised her, who perhaps had not known he wasn’t her father, given what Brother Cosmin had explained to me about the princesses’ births?

“My
mother’s husband
,” Otilia said carefully, “owns the mill in Moara, not far from here. It’s the most beautiful little village, situated right on the forks of the Bradet River. The north fork feeds our millrace; the south fork cools the blacksmith’s work. We could climb into the attic and see sparks from the forge across the apple orchard. Millers always have apple orchards, because the wood is fast growing and strong enough to be made into mill gears,” she said, and a large tear dropped onto her lap. “I miss the scent of applewood fires. . . .”

“Are you done hoarding the herb girl’s help, Otilia?” Princess Tereza’s voice cut like a knife.

“I’m done, Sister,” Otilia said, voice calm as though she hadn’t been in tears just a moment before. She nodded to me, and I scurried to help Tereza with her pointed slippers.

Everything after this passed in a flurry of shoes and veils, until at last the princesses were ready for dinner. They exited the eastern tower in a long line, hems held high, veils flying. It was a wonder to me that all the fine woman in the country had not died long ago, tripping over the padded, extra-long toes of their slippers, but the princesses managed well enough.

Beti sighed in relief when the last princess left, then moved listlessly about the chamber to clear up the flotsam that came from dressing twelve women.

I had a clever idea.

“You look so tired,” I said to the servant. “And I never have to do much cleaning in the herbary, so I wouldn’t terribly mind the sweeping up. Why don’t you find your own bed and let me take care of the princesses’ room tonight?”