The Thirteenth Princess (12 page)

I liked the sweet sound of it, the rhymes and rhythm of the lines. I tried to picture my father writing these words, passing them off as his own, and my mother reading them, laughing, knowing he'd lied. Could Father really have once been that besotted young man? It seemed incredible to me.

I let the book fall open again and read:

I felt a heat rise to my face as I read the poem, and closed my eyes quickly. I wasn't sure what it meant, but the words spoke so strongly that I was embarrassed without quite knowing why. Quickly I thumbed through the pages again, and they opened to a third poem:

I closed the book again, tears flooding my eyes.
My dearest dust; I come, I come.
Oh, poor Father! If that was how my mother's death made him feel, how could he bear it?

I tucked the small volume away in the box of treasures beneath my bed and turned to the task of writing to the princes. I was too tired to work well, though, and spoiled the first two letters with blots. Determined, I tried again. This time my hand was steadier, and the letters came out tolerably well—not quite the work of a royal scribe, to be sure, but passable. When the ink had dried, I folded them and hid them. It was nearly dawn, and I knew the palace would soon be stirring. I would have to wait until evening to stamp the letters with the royal seal. I fell into bed, but even weary as I was, sleep did not come at once; when I closed my eyes, I saw again my sisters' whirling dance and heard the strains of the violins. Such beautiful music! Such beautiful, beautiful music.

The sun had long been up when I woke, and I cursed myself for wasting time that I could have spent in helping my sisters. Quickly I dressed and washed and hurried down to the kitchen, where I found Cook alone stirring a pot of broth.

“Another princess ailing,” she reported to me. “Ariadne it is, this time. I'm to make a restorative broth for them all, says the doctor. Fool!”

“Why a fool?” I asked sharply, taking the spoon from her hand and stirring. After the hours I had spent wondering who had woven my sisters' enchantment,
everyone seemed a possible witch or wizard—even Cook. For how could Cook know that broth would fail, unless she…

“Has anything that man tried done the least bit of good?” Cook demanded. “Have those girls not gone downhill since the day Dr. Idiot set foot in this palace? How
not
a fool, I ask you? Restorative broth, indeed!”

“What would you do for them?” I asked her, pushing down my mistrust with an effort. Cook was no witch. She was a dear, sensible soul who would always do what she could for my sisters. Dr. Valentin, on the other hand…Was it true that my sisters had worsened ever since he first came? But Adena was ill before that. Oh, the endless suspicion made my head spin!

“They need rest,” Cook said definitively. “Do you know that they are walking through their shoes each night? Our cobblers aren't able to keep up with repairing them! I don't know what's gotten into the princesses, or why they walk, but walk they do, and they must stop. The guard your father has put on their door has done no good at all! You know, gossip says—” She stopped herself, looking abashed.

“Gossip says what?” I demanded.

“No offense meant,” Cook said, a little shamefaced, “but you should probably know that people think they are out looking for husbands.”

I gave a hoot of laughter. “Walking through their shoes every night looking for husbands? I've never heard anything so ridiculous!”

Cook nodded emphatically. “It is ridiculous, and I gave those gossips the right side of my rolling pin for it! But still…”

“Still…,” I echoed, and then the kitchen was silent, except for the crackling of the ever-present hearth fire and the sound of the spoon moving through the broth, round and round.

In the quiet time between luncheon and preparing for dinner, I escaped to my room and stuffed the letters into my apron pocket. Later, when Father was at dinner again, I snuck into his study and lit a candle from the embers in the fireplace. Then I used the candle to melt wax from the wax stick onto each of the letters. With my heart pounding, I picked up the Great Seal and pressed it into each wax dripping. There!

As the wax dried, I admired my work, too engrossed in my success to notice the odd flickering of the candle that I had placed on the desk. Then, suddenly, there was a puff of breath from behind me, and the candle was out. I squawked like a surprised chicken and turned, trying to adjust my eyes to the sudden dimness of the room.

Standing there was my father, his anger making him
seem even taller and more formidable than usual. The man from the night before, who had spoken tenderly of poetry and of my mother, was nowhere in his visage. I shrank backward, but there was no escaping.

“Are you looking for more poems to read?” he asked sarcastically. I was too frightened to reply.

“Give those to me,” he demanded, pointing to the letters. His voice was deceptively soft. I was powerless to disobey. Shaking, I picked up the letters and handed them to him. He pulled one letter open and read it, squinting in the dim light, then strode to the fireplace with the bunch of them and tossed them in. The flames leaped up, happy to have something as tasty as paper to eat, and in a moment my work was consumed.

Father turned back to me. His brows were lowered and his eyes flashed. “You would make us a laughingstock,” he said to me, his voice still low. “You would write this—this
ridiculous
, this
absurd
letter to princes across the land, in my name. In
my name
!” Now his voice was getting louder, and I shrank back still more.

“But your Majesty—,” I tried.

“You would tell them there is an enchantment here, when all know that magic has been banned from this kingdom?”

I scrambled away from him, trying to explain, but he overrode my feeble voice with his roar.

“You would make me look powerless to help my own daughters? You would invite the sons of the king of Tem, the son of the king of Nara here?
You would do that?
” And now his fury was full force, and I sank to the floor weeping, apologizing, telling him that I was wrong, I shouldn't have done it, I would never do anything like that again.

It was shameful, I know, the cowardly way I behaved, but it wasn't just that I was afraid. It was that I didn't want to hurt him. I didn't want him to think that I had meant to make him a laughingstock. I didn't want to lose his love. And wasn't that the ridiculous thing, the absurd thing? Because I knew full well that I had never had his love to lose.

I
snuck out that night, dodging past the guard as he dozed and crossing the bridge that was now slick with snow. I found Breckin asleep in the stables and woke him to tell him of the failure of our plan.

“You must go to Babette and explain what happened,” I instructed. “I cannot do it myself. I have the strangest feeling—like someone is watching me. I do not want to lead them to Babette.” I felt a little silly saying this to Breckin, but he took me seriously.

“Your father is angry and suspicious,” he reminded me. “If he thinks you are set on sending these letters,
he's probably set someone to watch and make sure you don't write them again and send them. Have you actually seen anyone?”

“No,” I admitted. “I look behind myself a hundred times a day, and there's no one there, but I could swear I feel eyes on me.”

“Just go about your business,” Breckin said, “and I'll talk to Babette. I'm sure she has come up with other ideas.”

I was not so sure, but I had no choice but to return to my rounds of cleaning and cooking, dusting and baking.

As the next few days passed and I waited anxiously for Breckin to contact me, I knew that my sisters continued their nightly pilgrimage beneath the lake. Their shoes appeared each morning, worn and tattered, and one by one they fell ill, keeping to their beds, until Father dined alone at the long table each night while his daughters languished upstairs. At midnight I listened for the sound of the dumbwaiter descending and wept as it passed by the pantry, carrying the girls to their nightly dance. It was a torment to me, this doing nothing. I could not sleep; I had trouble eating. The circles under my eyes rivaled Aurelia's.

I spent still more time trying to figure out who was behind the enchantment. I looked at everyone with
suspicion, from the maids who were my friends to the footmen, Burle, and Chiara. I knew I had no real reason to suspect Burle except that I did not like him, but Chiara in particular caught my attention, with her perpetually sour expression and brusque manner. I remembered that she had called my sisters “spoiled” after one of the disastrous dinners with the princes. And I recalled seeing her the night that I had noticed the princesses' shoes in the hallway. I told myself that it was not unusual for her to be at her work at that hour, but still I wondered. Determined to find out what I could, I followed her around, trying to keep from being seen. Her eyes were sharp, though, accustomed as she was to noticing the smallest object undusted or out of place, and when I shadowed her to the dining room and she turned and tripped over me, at last she grew annoyed.

“Zita, get out from underfoot!” she scolded me. “Attend to your work, child, and let me do mine.” Her voice was rough, and I scurried back belowstairs, more uncertain than ever.

My sisters' door was barred to me now, and still I felt eyes upon me as I passed through the long hallways and up the marble staircases of the palace. I had begun to realize that there was magic in the watching, and I remembered that Cook had once told me that Father watched me. I suddenly wondered if they were Father's
eyes on me. The implications of that were terrible: if Father was watching me, and the watcher was the one who had enchanted my sisters, then…I tried to shrug off the thought, but it would not leave me.

On a Tuesday morning a week after Father had burned my letters, I pulled down my apron from the hook on which it hung in the kitchen cloakroom. When I tied it on, I heard something crackle in the pocket, and I pulled out a piece of brown packaging paper, scrawled with writing. I scanned the signature and saw it was from Breckin. The writing was rough, but I was pleased at the content.
Come to the stables tonight if you can,
it said.
I have something I must show you. B.

For the first time in days, I felt a little pinch of hope. Perhaps Breckin and Babette had a new plan or had discovered something important. Perhaps there would be something for me to
do
. But to get safely to the stables I had to escape the eyes that I knew were constantly on me, tracking my every move. I experimented with Babette's trick and found that if I became something else, I lost the feeling of being watched. That worked when I was still—if I became like a hat stand, for instance, or a pillar. The moment I moved, though, I again felt that scrutiny. I tried another experiment before dinner. When all the serving girls traipsed down the stairs to the kitchen, I mingled with them and used my trick to become one of
them. And the watched feeling disappeared.

After dinner and the clearing up, I pulled on my cloak and became a lamppost on the land bridge. I had to concentrate very hard to keep from shivering in the cold, damp air and to stay a lamppost at the same time, but I knew I was succeeding because I felt no eyes upon me. I waited there for what seemed like hours, until a group of servants—the underbutler Burle and several footmen—came out, headed to the nearest tavern a full two miles away. I became one of them, joking and pushing with the others, until we were safely across the bridge and on the path that led through the woods. Then I peeled off from the group, hearing one of them cry, “Wait! Who is that?” as I fled through the trees toward the stables. Nobody followed me, though, and I arrived at the stables panting from my run.

Breckin waited for me outside the stable door, and he pulled me inside without speaking. The air was warm with horse smells and hay smells, punctuated by the breathy snorts and whinnies of the inhabitants. It was a cozy place, a friendly place, and I envied Breckin for being able to spend his days there.

I looked at him, and even in the darkness of the stable I could see that his face was flushed.

“What is it? What do you need to show me?” I asked him.

He pointed behind me. “This!” he said with a flourish.

I turned and gave a yelp. There was someone standing behind me. Moonlight slanted through the stable window, and in its glow I saw that it was Milek.

“I am so glad to see you!” I cried. “Oh Milek, you must help us!”

“Breckin has been telling me what has happened,” Milek said, his face somber. “You cannot get a prince, so I am afraid you will have to be content with me. I've never fought against magic before, but my sword is at your service, and at your sisters'.”

“Will you get in trouble for leaving your post?” Breckin asked his brother.

“A soldier fights his battles as he finds them,” Milek said. “Mine is here, and now.”

“If we do not do something soon, my sisters will die,” I said flatly. Milek looked at me with concern. I knew he was thinking of Aurelia.

“It is that bad, then?”

“They are all bedridden now,” I told him, “too weak to get up, too weak to eat more than a few sips of broth. And yet every night they dress in satin and velvet and dance until dawn. It will kill them soon.” I could not voice my suspicion of my father, though I knew I should. I was wracked with guilt over thinking such a thing of
him, and filled with fear that I was putting Milek and Breckin in danger by saying nothing.

“Then we must act immediately,” Milek said. He reached across the hay and squeezed my hand, and tears rushed to my eyes. It seemed so unlikely that he, a single poor soldier, could help, but I felt my burden lighten just a little.

“What should we do?” I asked him, sniffling.

“I think I should meet your witch first,” he said. “Find out if she has any magic that can help us or if she's learned anything new. Then we will make our plan.”

We set off for Babette's, and when we arrived, the chimney was smoking merrily and the cottage was warm and filled with the smell of cinnamon buns baking. Babette had just pulled a trayful from the oven, and we all three were quiet as we chewed and swallowed in a rare moment of contentment.

“Oh, wonderful, wonderful, ma'am,” Milek said at last, licking buttercream frosting off his fingers. “Only my mother can make a cinnamon bun to rival this.”

A blush spread across Babette's wrinkled cheeks, and I suddenly saw how she might have looked when she was a great deal younger. She lowered her eyes. “Well, there's a little magic in them,” she admitted. “But most of it is just baking.”

“You have frosting on your nose,” Breckin said to me,
and I stuck my tongue out at him and went on eating.

When we were replete, we sat back, and Babette looked hard at Milek. He was calm under her scrutiny. I could see she liked that. They held each other's gaze for a long minute, and then Babette said, “So this is our prince. I think you will do very nicely, sir.”

Milek inclined his head and replied, “Thank you, ma'am. I will surely try my best.”

Babette turned to me. “You say there is a guard outside the princesses' door?”

I nodded.

“And he has failed in his office, of course. The princesses are still ruining their shoes each night. So there will be a new guard needed. Who better for the job than this brave soldier, lately returned from the Reaches and eager for a new position?”

I clapped my hands. “Oh, very good! Breckin can introduce him to Burle, the underbutler. I am sure he will give Milek the post. He will have access to my sisters then. But…what next?”

“You will have to go back below the lake, and Milek will go with you. I think the way will be made clear to you then.” She turned to Milek. “You must follow your heart, young man. Even if it seems that your heart is telling you to do the most foolish thing, do it.”

Milek smiled. “My heart has not been foolish for
these twenty-seven years,” he said. “I do not think it will start now.”

Babette's eyes twinkled, but she did not reply. Then she turned to me again. “My dear,” she said, “you have said you think you are being watched by someone. I think it is the magician who has enchanted your sisters.” I nodded but said nothing, hoping she could not read my thoughts. “You must be very careful. Do not be seen with Milek, or with Breckin if you can help it. Remember that if you go with your sisters to the dance, the eyes will be on you.”

“But I can trick them!” I said excitedly. “I have come and gone freely by fooling the watcher into thinking I am something else.”

“That may not always work,” Babette warned. “If the witch or wizard figures out what you are doing, you will be exposed. Be careful. All three of you, please be careful!”

Before we parted, Babette brought out a dark cloak made from a cloth I could not identify. In fact, though I stared hard at it, I could not tell what color it was. Perhaps the brown of autumn leaves, but in a slant of sunlight it looked greenish, and the flickering firelight showed glints of gold.

“For you,” she said to Milek, and draped the cloak around his shoulders. “It was once a cloak of invisibility,
though most of that magic has worn off. Get your brother to teach you to become other than you are, and this cloak will help you create the illusion. You will not have days to practice as these two have had, so the cloak will give you an extra edge. You will need it.”

Milek bowed, and the cloak billowed around him. “I thank you, ma'am,” he said. “I hope your faith in me will not prove to be misplaced.”

“Oh, I think it will not,” Babette said, smiling. “I am a rather mediocre magician, but I am a very good judge of people.”

We took our leave and walked together through the forest, dodging low-hanging branches heavy with snow. Milek looked back at the cottage and whistled through his teeth to see it in its ruined state. Before we came out of the trees, we taught Milek the art of becoming other, and with the help of his cloak, he soon was able to disappear as well as either of us. We parted company, agreeing to meet again the first night after Milek had secured his new post as the princesses' guard, and to follow my sisters that night beneath the lake.

For three nights I crept up to the long hallway at the top of the palace to see who stood before the bedroom door. For the first two nights, the guard was the hapless soul who had been sitting there for weeks as my sisters danced themselves nearly to death. On the third night,
the guard was Milek. Unlike the other guard, he saw me, but he gave no sign that he knew me. I was relieved, for I knew the eyes were always on me in those days.

Burle stayed by the kitchen fire for hours that evening, drinking hard cider and annoying Salina and Bethea with his attentions. I feared he'd never leave. By eleven, though, the girls had escaped to bed and, much to my relief, Burle had left as well. At nearly midnight, I was busy being a broom in the kitchen to escape the watcher when Breckin came in, walking right past me into the pantry. For an instant I became myself again so he could see me, and then—fast enough, I hoped, to fool the ever-watchful eyes—I was a sack of flour in the pantry beside him. Milek arrived not long after, swathed in his cloak. As the clock struck, we heard the dumbwaiter begin its nightly journeys up and down. Six times in all, and then we pulled the dumbwaiter back up and jumped in quickly, squeezing in as tightly as possible. The little cupboard was a tight fit for three, and I winced at the squeaks and moans the cables let out under our weight. Milek was strong enough to control its movement downward, but I could see the strain of it in his face and in the muscles in his arms as he brought us safely to the bottom.

“Getting up will be a trick!” he whispered as we piled out and began running up the tree-lined path. The
light was as odd as it had been the first night, and the trees of silver, then gold as strange and beautiful. This time I did not look back, but Milek did, and when he gasped I knew he had seen the wall of water that followed us as the path rolled up behind.

“Keep moving!” I told him, and he did, casting awed glances at the diamond forest that we now raced past.

We reached the castle in time to cross the drawbridge and heaved a collective sigh of relief as the heavy doors slammed behind us. In his rough uniform and beard, Milek looked as out of place in this realm of elegance as Breckin and I, but he showed no discomfort as we walked quickly along the empty corridors, our heels ringing on the marble floors. He paused to stare at the tapestries with their odd scenes and mythic beasts, but Breckin urged him on until we reached the ballroom. From the doorway we peered in. The same sight as before met our eyes: beautiful princesses dancing with handsome men, the orchestra playing and playing its ethereal music, the long tables laden with food that set our mouths watering.