Briar and Rose and Jack

by Katherine Coville

  Their attention next turns to Bishop Simon. Pompous and aloof, he holds himself exempt from the most basic tenet of his religion. That is, he fails to love others as he loves himself. Indeed, his hatred of others’ imperfections makes him look down on every imperfect being around him. Even the king and queen are not exempt from his judgments, though he takes care that they don’t know it. The girls make fine sport of him in their private language. They look haughtily down their noses at each other while sticking their stomachs out and stifling their giggles.

  They are halfway through the doxology when, standing directly behind them, Lord Henry, the king’s twelve-year-old nephew, yanks Briar’s hair to get her attention. She turns to find him making a gruesome face, pulling down one eyelid in imitation of her sagging eye. Briar instantly responds with an even more grotesque face, pulling both her eyes down and sticking out her tongue. The nearest adult cuffs her for her trouble, and her only satisfaction is in seeing Henry receive the same treatment. She is comforted by Rose, who links an arm with hers and turns to give Henry a look poisonous enough to wither him into oblivion. The liturgy goes on, Briar measuring the passing time by the candles on the altar burning slowly down. Yet despite the bishop’s boring monotone as he reads the long scripture lesson, a few moments of curiosity, confusion, and even wonder flicker over Briar’s thoughtful face as she listens to the ancient words of wisdom. She goes leaping after meanings like a young otter, pondering the imponderables. This lasts until her stomach starts growling for breakfast, and then her thoughts become more earthbound. In due time, the service is over, and only then does the family sit down for a breakfast of white bread sopped in wine.

  After the morning meal, the girls report to the anteroom, which serves as the schoolroom for the small gathering of nobles’ children who are being educated at great expense. At Hilde’s inducement, Queen Merewyn has insisted that Princess Rose and Lady Briar be educated as well, though this is unusual for girls. Along with the handful of nobles’ and knights’ sons and altar boys, the queen has decreed that three other girls should be included in the class, so that Princess Rose and Lady Briar will not be the only females in the group.

  Lady Arabella, the oldest of the three girls, is a distant relative of the princess’s, and the assumed leader of the three. Quite conscious of her dignity, she strives for correctness and insists on being addressed as Lady Arabella at all times. Elizabeth, the steward’s daughter, is less confident, but generally advances herself by tattling on the infractions of others. Jane, the head knight’s daughter, goes along. Whatever the other girls do, whatever the situation, Jane follows like a lost puppy. Though all the girls in the class sit on one side of the room, Briar and Rose seldom pay the others much mind, being happily preoccupied with each other.

  Meanwhile, Hilde and the queen watch over Rose’s and Briar’s progress closely. Reports of Rose are full of praise, but Briar’s quick wit makes her a constant challenge for the uninspired bishop, who doubles as their tutor. Bishop Simon’s reports of Briar are full of condemnation, for he has abhorred her since her birth. He sees in Briar’s face a profound evil in the royal line and therefore a curse on the entire kingdom. It only makes matters worse that she associates herself with the otherwise perfect princess Rose. In his fanatic pursuit of perfection, the bishop has lost sight of his religion’s teachings about love and compassion. He even preaches from the pulpit his mistaken belief that any deformity is a judgment passed on the wicked. Some gentlefolk realize how wrong he is, but he is a powerful man and they are afraid to contradict him.

  Many suffer his condemnation, but it is actually Briar’s innocent tendency to correct the cleric’s Latin that has spawned the foulest hatred in his hypocritical soul. Such presumption from one so far below him is simply not to be borne! He looks for opportunities for petty cruelty to her, and where there are none, he creates them.

  “Lady Briar,” he suddenly thunders, hoping to startle her into a mistake, “what is the sum of thirty-two, forty-six, and fifty-three?” He speaks loudly and slowly to her, as if she were dimwitted.

  Briar pauses for a moment and, without using her abacus, totals the figures in her head and answers. “One hundred thirty-one?”

  The old bully closes in and barks, “Stand up when you speak to me! Look at me! Are you sure? Think again. Are you asking me or telling me?” He thrusts his face almost nose to nose with Briar’s, and his eyes bore into hers. “Hurry now!”

  As so often happens, Briar begins to suffer agonies of self-doubt and decides she must be in the wrong. She is only nine, after all, and the bishop seems all-knowing. She tries again. “One hundred forty-one?” she squeaks.

  Bishop Simon turns his back on her while he subtly works with his abacus, then whirls to face her. “Aha!” the cleric cries, all but pouncing on the frightened child. “You are wrong! You will stand in the corner with the donkey ears on.” The appearance of this leather headdress in the likeness of a donkey on Briar’s head excites a general laugh and an especial sneer from Lord Henry. The other boys in the class follow his lead in calling her names, and the bishop allows them to exercise their full creativity in this before bringing them to order and continuing with the lesson. Rose sits silently helpless, but signs her comradeship to Briar in their private language. She signals with two fingers up to indicate donkey ears and rolls her eyes toward Henry. Briar signs with her thumb up in the affirmative, somewhat comforted, though she dares not alter her outward expression of woe. She stands in her corner wearing the ignominious ears as the bishop calls upon Jane. Though she is plodding, she is always an obedient girl, and because of this the bishop favors her. “Jane, the total of thirty-two, forty-six, and fifty-three?”

  Jane slowly counts the beads of her abacus, starting over again several times as the bishop beams benignly at her. At last she comes up with the answer, “One hundred thirty-one!”

  “That is correct!” cries the bishop, giving Jane a sweetmeat from his private supply and patting her on the head.

  Briar stares at the ceiling, burning with the injustice. That was her own first answer. She pretends indifference, but she feels her eyes well up. Despite the bishop’s beastly treatment of her, her sharp wit and love of learning are immutable. So as she listens to the problems the bishop poses to his other students, she does the sums in her head, and she has the satisfaction of hearing that she is correct every time.

  When the students are finally released for the midday meal, Briar and Rose meet by habit on the circular stairway and wait until they are sure no one is near to hear their plans. These by no means include attendance at the afternoon-long session of instruction in manners and needlepoint that the women of the court regularly attempt to impose on them. The girls go on to the great hall, where they confer over their shared trencher, but they soon realize that Lady Arabella, Elizabeth, and Jane are listening in from across the table. Caught in the act, Lady Arabella tosses her head and says, “I declare, if you two keep skipping out on your afternoon lessons, you’ll never learn courtly manners, and my mother says that in a few years, Princess, it won’t matter how pretty you are if you don’t know how to behave!”

  This fails to have the desired effect, and in fact results in Rose and Briar meeting each other’s gaze, laughing, then continuing their conversation by means of whispering into each other’s ears.

  “How rude!” Jane says.

  “I’m telling!” Elizabeth says.

  “Go ahead and tell! We’re not doing anything without permission,” Rose says slyly.

  She and Briar excuse themselves before the nuts and cheese are served, and as a diversion to mislead the other girls, they head in the opposite direction from where they want to go. Once out of sight, they double back by another route and so avoid being forced to join the adults in the solar, the embroidery and weaving room. They have decided to go see Hilde, whose wry observations and herbs and potions are ever so much more interesting than manners and needlepoint. Hilde does not do needlepoint, so they
make their way to the topmost room of the north tower, where she resides apart from the other women.

  “You knock,” urges Rose.

  “Why don’t you knock?” Briar asks.

  “I’m never quite sure what to expect.”

  “Well, she’s my godmother. I’ll knock.” Briar raises her hand and gives a sharp rap on the door.

  From behind the door they hear, “Rats! Spoiled again!” and footsteps stomping toward them. It opens to reveal Hilde wielding a large, drippy spoon and looking none too happy. “Oh, it’s you two. Well, come in at your own peril. I’m busy right now with a new spell. It could save the kingdom—if it works!”

  The girls eagerly approach her worktable to see what she’s doing. Everywhere is the debris of countless experiments gone wrong. The table is covered with glass jars and containers of every shape and kind, some spouting foul-colored steam, some bubbling and fizzing ominously. Some are lined up on racks and are filled with various hues of liquids and powders and dried herbs. They spill over onto the tabletop amid little piles of ashes and assorted animal droppings. And in the center of the table, in a large stone bowl, lies a handful of straw in a puddle of melted butter.

  “It’s missing something, but I’m not sure what. Maybe something sweet,” Hilde ponders, grabbing a sweetmeat from a small container and plunking it into the center of the bowl. “Now more yellow—ah! Marigolds! Perfect!” From a potted plant at her window she picks a fistful of marigolds, whereupon she crushes them with a mortar and pestle and scrapes the result into her mix of yellow goo. “Now! Maybe one more thing. Something liquid. Liquid gold. Ah! I have it.”

  Behind her is a complicated cupboard with many small compartments and drawers. Among other things in it are a number of eggs of all different sizes, some white, some brown, some speckled.

  “Now which is which?” she wonders aloud. She picks up a smallish brown egg and puts it up to her ear. “Hello? Hello in there. Anybody home?” She listens carefully for a minute, then says, “Oh, this will do nicely.” Tapping the egg sharply on the edge of the bowl, she opens the shell and lets the thick yellow yolk drop into the brew.

  “Now, for the proper conjuration. Let’s see . . . We must mix it and change it and make lots of it.

  “Abracadabra and behold:

  Turn this mishmash into gold

  And multiply it sevenfold!”

  Hilde watches carefully for any signs of a transformation, but other than the egg yolk spreading thick and yellow in the disgusting mess, nothing happens. Hilde’s face falls.

  “It needs something else!” she cries. “Something to give it a little oomph! A handful of pepper ought to do it.” She pours a healthy helping of the spice out of a jar into her palm, while the girls back away. Then, throwing it into the middle of the mixture, Hilde opens her mouth to repeat the incantation just as the mess rises up in a small mountain of goo and erupts in an enormous exploding bubble. Yellow slime flies everywhere, but mostly onto Hilde, who is now spotted from the waist up with bits of straw and marigold stuck to her here and there. Briar and Rose are only lightly speckled.

  Hilde shakes herself like a wet dog, then says, “Drat. I guess the pepper was a bad idea. You two had best get along. I have quite a cleaning job here.”

  “Can’t we help? We want something to do.”

  “No. You mustn’t touch anything. I might be able to scrape up enough of the brew to try again. Here,” says Hilde, picking a few spilled sweetmeats up from the floor and rubbing the dirt off them with her sleeve, “have a little treat, and be off with you.”

  The girls thank her for the sweetmeats and store them carefully away in their leather pouches. “But it’s too hot to sit in a stuffy solar and stitch all afternoon,” Rose complains, pouting slightly in disappointment.

  Hilde, who is sweaty and tired and really intends to take a nap, says, “Get along with you now, dearies. I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me, and I must stay focused. If you’re wanting some new activity, you’ll have to think of it yourselves, and if you can’t think for yourselves, then you had better go and do your stitching.”

  Briar and Rose take this as permission to do as they like, which was exactly what they came for. They hastily retreat down the stairs, conferring as they go. Is it to be the bell tower or the kitchen first? They decide on the bell tower, and despite the midday heat, they bolt back down the stairs two at a time. At the bottom they slow to a walk and move with studied casualness through the scattering of people in the great hall, hoping to make it to the courtyard without being noticed.

  “What ho, my saucy wenchlets!” a voice calls out behind them. They turn and see Zane, the court jester, with his parti-colored hat and garb, sticking his thumbs in his ears while he wiggles his fingers and grins wickedly. “Where are you going this fine day? Can I interest you in a song, a story, a bit of juggling, a magic trick perhaps?”

  Rose puts her finger to her lips and says, “Shhh, Zane! We are on a secret mission.”

  “Ahh. A secret mission. Educational, no doubt.”

  “Yes, it’s going to be very educational,” Briar assures him.

  “Ah, yes. The kind of education you obtain without the impediment of schooling.”

  “Exactly,” Briar assents.

  “Well, far be it from me to stand in the way of enlightenment. Go ye forth, my dainty little elves, and string wreaths of flowers for your heads, the better to stimulate great thoughts. Go! Be off with you!” Zane raps each of them on the head with his baton, saying, “Poof! Poof! Disappear!”

  And so they make their way through the great hall and out the door. If they dimly hear Rose’s nurse calling their names somewhere behind them, she is easily ignored. They break into a run and escape into the courtyard. Then they circle around to the opposite side of the keep and dash in through the doorway at the foot of the bell tower, the highest tower in the castle.

  “Beat you to the top!” they cry together, though the contest is always the same. They begin to climb the two hundred steps of the circular staircase, two steps at a time. This lasts for only twenty-six steps, by which time Rose is falling behind. At one hundred steps, Briar is well ahead, her strong legs climbing easily, while Rose is breathing heavily and holding her aching side. At one hundred fifty steps, Rose calls a time-out, to which Briar considerately agrees, and they both sit down on the stairs, resting, until Briar suddenly calls, “Time in!” and clambers up the remaining stairs, well ahead of Rose, whose legs are trembling and threatening to give out. Both girls are laughing raggedly as they near the top, and Briar thrusts herself up one last step to win the race, then goes back down and takes Rose by the hand to pull her up the remaining stairs.

  The roof of the tower is an open area surrounded by crenelations, with four solid pillars supporting the housing for a great bell. A solitary soldier stands watch on the rooftop, sweltering in his chain mail, and his face lights up at the sight of the two girls, who have collapsed, panting, at the top of the stairs. “Well, as I live an’ breathe!” he exclaims. “A fine pair of birds have lit on my treetop!”

  “We’ve brought you a present, Jerold!” says Rose, drawing a sticky lump of sweetmeats from her pouch. Briar holds hers out as well.

  Jerold, who is not particular, thanks them with real delight. He makes a little ceremony out of removing his metal helmet and leather gloves, then makes short work of the sweet morsels, licking his fingers when he is done.

  “I suppose that was a bribe?” he demands now, though he would have taken it anyway. “I’m not supposed to tell anyone you’re skippin’ lessons?”

  The girls just giggle, then totter over to peek out from the crenelations at the magnificent view of the countryside and the great mountain, its lofty peak disappearing in a permanent ring of clouds. “Have you seen any sign of the giant?” Rose asks, for that is Jerold’s sole occupation.

  “If I had, you’d a heard this here bell ringing for all the castle and the village to hear, as well you know. Never fear. I ha
ve the keenest eyes in the King’s Guard, my fine ladies, an’ if I see that old blackguard comin’ down from the mountain, ye’ll know about it.”

  For some time the girls stand gazing out on the beautiful landscape and down at the ant-people in the courtyard below, while a brisk breeze cools their damp brows and Jerold regales them with stories of the giant’s past forays. They are deliciously frightened, and they beg for more, but Jerold finally tells them they had better be gone before the changing of the guard. Swearing him to secrecy, they head slowly back down the tower stairs, making plans for the future. Feeling increasingly adventuresome, they dare each other to climb the tower again and see the giant for themselves the next time he comes. They have recently discovered how easy it is to lose themselves in a crowd and go off on their own. It would be a simple matter to evade the adults while everyone else was stampeding into the basements for shelter. Their plan is decided and sealed with a spit promise, touching spitty palm to spitty palm. Then they go on to plan their next move of the day.

  Back in the courtyard, they try to remain unobtrusive. Slipping quietly into the busy kitchen, they seek out Allard, the head cook.

  “So there you are, my pretty little princess,” he says to Rose. He ignores Briar as he slides loaves of fragrant bread out of the oven with a baker’s peel, a flat shovel on a long pole. “And what have ye come to pilfer today?”