Briar and Rose and Jack

by Katherine Coville

  “What do you want us to do?” Jack croaks.

  “Maybe we can’t do anything until we’re older, but we’ve got to keep looking for any chance and asking ourselves how it might be done, thinking brave thoughts, you know? Building ourselves up so we’ll be ready if the opportunity comes. Mostly, we must believe in it.”

  There is a terrible silence as the words touch their hearts and take root.

  Rose is the first to speak. “Maybe it would make Father proud of me for something besides looking pretty. That’s the only compliment he ever gives me. I think it’s the only thing he likes about me. All he expects me to do is marry well. Just imagine if I helped kill the giant! I’d save the kingdom! He’d have to be proud of me then! Maybe I wouldn’t even have to marry!”

  “Wouldn’t it just be glorious if we could do it?” Jack says. “Every year, the giant gets worse. All of us in the village are getting poorer and poorer. Just think if I could do something to save them! Do you think a peasant like me could ever do something glorious?” Jack sniffles and wipes his nose on his sleeve.

  “You have a brave heart, and a true one, squire,” Briar tells him. “You have shown it in time of need and proven yourself worthy. And as for us, now that we’ve seen how evil the giant is up close, we can’t ever forget it!”

  “We should swear an oath,” Rose whispers. “A solemn oath.”

  “On our lives,” says Jack.

  Briar puts a finger to her lips. “Wait a minute. First we ought to have a name. What do you think?”

  “We should call ourselves the Giant Killers!” cries Jack, shaking a feeble fist in the air.

  The girls look at each other and nod in approval. “The Giant Killers!” each of them echoes, fists in the air.

  “Yes,” Briar continues. “We will be a secret society, with our own code of honor, like knights have.” She looks off into space for a time, her lips moving noiselessly. “So listen, how about this for an oath?”

  She clears her throat and begins. “We do solemnly swear to kill the evil giant, to stay true to our cause through thick and through thin, and to defend one another to the death.”

  “You forgot ‘On our lives,’ ” Jack corrects.

  “All right. We’ll put that right in the beginning. We do solemnly swear on our lives to kill the evil giant. So. Are we ready?”

  “We should hold hands,” Rose says.

  “Yes,” the other two respond, and the three children stand and form a little circle in the quiet room strewn with hay. The rays of the sun come streaming through a window, shining on their earnest faces and turning the dusty air into gold as Lady Briar, Princess Rose, and Jack, the peasant, look one another in the eye and repeat the solemn oath, on their lives.

   Chapter Four

  SATISFIED THAT THEY HAVE BEGUN WELL, the three Giant Killers decide to adjourn to the kitchen for a little celebratory refreshment. Keeping to the shadows, they skirt the courtyard, making their way along the castle wall to the kitchen door. Here they stop, and Jack, hanging back, says, “They won’t want the likes of me in there. I’ll be in trouble for sure if they catch me pilferin’ from the castle kitchen.”

  “You go,” Briar says to Rose. “Allard likes you. He’ll give you anything you want.”

  Rose recognizes the truth of this and, pinching her cheeks to make them pink, goes in to turn her charms on the unwary cook. Before long, she returns, smiling victoriously and holding something wrapped in a handkerchief. The three find a shadowy corner to sit in, and Rose hands out fresh blueberry tarts, still warm from the oven. This is a once-in-a-lifetime treat for Jack, who bites into it carefully, as if it will prove to be unreal when he actually tries to taste it. The girls watch him openly, intrigued by the sheer joy written on his face. A broad, juicy smile spreads across it, and he is just going for another bite when a tall boy wearing an embroidered doublet and silk hose saunters up to them and sneers, “Well, what do we have here?”

  Startled by Lord Henry’s sudden appearance, the three Giant Killers get to their feet, with Briar and Rose closing ranks in front of Jack, who drops his tart in the shuffle.

  “The women have sent everyone out looking for you! And here you are, stuffing your faces, in company with this—” He pushes his way between Briar and Rose and stops at the sight of Jack with blueberry jam on his face. “This! You’re keeping company with a peasant! Isn’t that rich! Where did you pick him up? He’s so dirty he smells! Have a little pride, you two! Stick to your own class!”

  “He’s got a brave heart and a true one, which is more than you do!” Rose says. “Go mind your own business and leave us alone!”

  “I’m not going anywhere until I’ve taken you to the queen. If you don’t have any sense of what’s right and fitting, I do! Get rid of this knave and come with me now, or I’ll tell everyone what you’ve been up to.”

  The girls look at each other and then at Jack. Briar hands Jack her own half-eaten tart, and Rose follows suit. Jack, who had been on the verge of tears over the loss of his tart, accepts their offerings with a smile. Turning back to Lord Henry, Rose tilts her chin up and announces, “We were just leaving anyway, so you needn’t make such a fuss about it!” The girls bid Jack goodbye. Then, ignoring Lord Henry, they stalk off ahead of him, toward the castle keep, their backs erect and their noses in the air.

  When they reach the solar, Lord Henry, wanting to get full credit, announces loudly that he has found the two girls, but true to his word, he does not tell what they were doing.

  “You’re a good boy,” says Lady Beatrice, as Lady Arabella, Elizabeth, and Jane suppress their giggles.

  “I told on you,” smirks Elizabeth. “I said I would!”

  Briar and Rose are greeted with widespread reproach by all the ladies in waiting, who are increasingly swayed by Lady Beatrice’s assertion that Briar is leading Rose astray. Word has gotten around about Briar’s beating, and the popular opinion is that she must have deserved it. The queen looks up, stopping conversation, and merely tells the two girls to be seated.

  “Why don’t you sit there next to Lady Arabella, Princess?” suggests Lady Beatrice, hoping to separate Rose from Briar and put her in the sphere of influence of the older, more befitting companion. Lady Arabella gives Rose a tentative smile. She has never understood what Princess Rose sees in Briar, or why Rose shuns her own company. She is obviously so much more suitable than the ill-favored companion the princess clings to. Lady Arabella, who carefully imitates the manners and aristocratic bearing of the queen, would dearly love to be the princess’s bosom friend herself. She can imagine taking the unruly girl under her wing and making her ladylike and proper. How proud she would be to fill that role, if only the princess would turn to her. But Rose pretends not to have heard, finding a place for Briar and herself to sit together. She does not see Lady Arabella’s look of disappointment, and indeed it would not occur to her to give the older girl a second thought. Lady Arabella turns away, her feelings hurt once again, laying the blame on that other one, the ugly one, who alone stands in the way of her ambition.

  As Rose and Briar pick up their needlework and begin to sew, they find their own topics to discuss under their breath. They call to mind that it is only a week until Midsummer’s Eve, though Bishop Simon insists on calling it St. John’s Eve. He preaches that it should be an occasion only for fasting and keeping vigil. But the villagers have no respect for his opinion and resent his interference, and so, in spite of him, they secretly cling to their old ways of celebrating. While the bishop is holding his services at the chapel, the peasants will be dancing around a bonfire and making merry, and Briar and Rose want to be there to see it. As they hatch their plans, Briar, who can’t bear the monotony of shoving her tiny needle in and out of her sampler, twitches with impatience. Her only relief from the tedium of sewing is to see how fast she can do it. Paying more attention to their budding scheme than to her stitching, Briar stabs her own finger with her needle. A drop of blood oozes out onto her sampler
, staining it.

  “God’s thumb!” she mutters.

  “You cursed! I heard you! I’m telling,” Elizabeth says.

  “Oh, really?” Briar responds. “What did I say?”

  “God’s thumb!”

  “Did I? Well now you’ve said it too. Be sure and tell on yourself.”

  Elizabeth is temporarily flummoxed by this, missing her chance to be the center of attention, and her mouth shuts with a little pop. But Jane, who has been listening, chimes in, “You started it, Lady Briar, and I’m telling!”

  “I’ll put a stop to this,” announces Lady Beatrice and, taking Briar by one arm, separates her from Rose, sitting her down among the older women, where her every move will be watched. Now Rose has only Lady Arabella to talk to, which suits Lady Beatrice very well. Lady Arabella is conscious of her dignity. She sits quietly and makes neat, regular stitches on her sampler. From time to time she looks up to smile condescendingly at her younger companions, managing to communicate with half-closed eyes and an upward tilt of her chin that she is far above their juvenile concerns and has long since given up all childish things. Princess Rose and Lady Briar, meanwhile, have developed a method of biting down on their lower lips and expelling air out of one cheek that sounds perfectly like a fart, and with each of their heads bent over their work, they practice this with great subtlety from their respective sides of the room. The elegant ladies, both offended and embarrassed, suspect one another but are too polite to mention it. And so the girls go on amusing themselves.

  Only later that afternoon do they meet in their attic room and explode with pent-up laughter. It makes a welcome release from the seriousness of their thoughts earlier in the day. But though Briar and Rose laugh, they have not forgotten their earnest vows to destroy the giant. Their promises are alive within them now, wherever they may be or whatever else they may be doing.

  The queen, however, observing their behavior in the solar, is not so ignorant of their antics as she might have seemed. She recalls her own girlhood and the tricks she played on her nursemaid. Still, the girls are nine now, certainly old enough to have acquired some self-control and a sense of what is fitting. She shakes her head and stifles a laugh. There is still time. They can enjoy being children yet a while, she thinks. Little does she realize that the three young children have committed their lives to doing what none of the adults could even imagine.

  A week later, Briar and Rose have escaped again from the confines of the castle. Collecting Jack from his cottage on their way to the thicket, they hold the second meeting of the Giant Killers’ club under the huge old oak tree, which they have claimed as their own. This time, the girls have thoughtfully provided a small repast of bread and cheese. Seeing how Jack’s eyes light up at the sight, the first order of business is to eat. Only when their stomachs are full do they begin to discuss their new organization and its pressing issues.

  “Shouldn’t we have a code of honor,” Briar says, “like the knights do, to keep us pure in heart?”

  “The knights have valor, most of all,” says Jack. “They have to be brave to fight. Our code of honor should start with that!”

  Rose’s face falls. “What if I don’t have any valor?” she asks. “I think I used it all up watching the giant from the tower. My knees still feel kind of shaky when I think about it.”

  “Mine too,” Briar admits. “Maybe valor is something we can build up to. We can practice on little things and work our way up to giant-size valor. All right?”

  Rose and Jack nod solemnly, if a little uneasily.

  “All right, what else?” Briar continues. The three Giant Killers go on proposing different virtues for their code. They finally settle on a short list: Valor, Faith, Loyalty, Hope, Sagacity, and Truth.

  About this last one there is some hesitation.

  “Wouldn’t that mean we would always tell the truth, even about our secrets? Even to someone like Lord Henry?” Rose asks.

  “We can’t do that,” Briar objects. “We should only speak the truth to people who share our cause.”

  “Well, we’d better leave truth out, then,” says Rose.

  “It’s too bad,” Briar responds, shaking her head. “It’s in the knights’ code. We’ll just tell the truth whenever we can. I think we have enough now, don’t you? We’ll have to commit them to memory. And we’ll need a secret signal or maybe a handshake, or something. Something we can always recognize or do, no matter where we are.”

  “A hand signal, maybe?” Jack asks.

  “Something simple! Maybe like this,” Rose proposes. She spreads the first two fingers of her hand apart in a V, with the rest tucked under. “V for valor!”

  “And then we could use just those two fingers to shake hands! We would just shake fingers,” Briar offers, “when we want to meet back in the tack room.”

  “But how will I know?” asks Jack. “I’ll be at the other end of the village.”

  The girls look at each other. “We need a special signal for Jack,” Briar acknowledges.

  “Something he can see from far away. Can he see our attic window? It’s high at the top of the castle keep, and it faces the drawbridge . . . What do you think, squire? If we hang our red blanket out the window, could you see it from outside the castle?”

  “Don’t know,” Jack responds. “We’d have to try it.”

  “I’ll sneak up and hang out the blanket,” Rose says. “You can go with Jack and point out our window, and then we’ll meet in the stables. All right?”

  Without too much difficulty, the experiment is proved successful. Jack and Briar spot the window with the red blanket—and Rose’s small arm, waving—high on the castle keep. Afterward, in the stables, the three Giant Killers meet again, congratulating themselves on their sagacity.

  “Now to get down to real business,” Briar says. “What about the giant?”

  “We should figure out where he lives,” says Jack.

  “When Jerold spots him from the tower,” Rose puts in, “he comes from the direction of Cloud Mountain. He must live up there somewhere. But that’s such a big mountain and such a long way away! He could live anywhere.”

  “Somebody’d have to track him. But how?” asks Briar. “None of us could do it. It would take a knight on horseback, and there’s no telling how far it would be or how long he’d have to be gone for—if he ever came back.”

  “That’s something we’ll have to think about when we get older,” Rose says. “Or maybe we could convince one of the knights to go?”

  “How could we do that?” asks Jack.

  “They’d just laugh at us,” predicts Briar. “If they even listened to us at all. Besides, we’d be revealing our secret cause to the grownups. We should add that to our code of honor: no grownups. Agreed? They would ruin it.”

  “Agreed,” say the others. “No grownups.”

  * * *

  Midsummer’s Eve arrives, and all the women of the court search the fields and glens for the special herbs to place beneath their pillows in order to bring on important dreams, perhaps dreams of one’s future husband. Rue and vervain, trefoil and Saint John’s wort, and roses, which can substitute for any other ingredient in a pinch. Lady Beatrice has collected and traded for a handful of each, and she gives some to Rose, repeating the proper instructions. Rose, in turn, gives some to Briar.

  “I don’t need this,” Briar says, disgusted. “I’m never going to have a husband!”

  “You never can tell,” Rose responds.

  “Well, I don’t want to think about it.”

  “Me neither,” Rose says, tossing the herbs aside. “I already know I’m going to have to marry whomever Father chooses, maybe some rich old king from a neighboring realm. I just hope he’s not a scoundrel or a brute. Let’s talk about something else.”

  “Do you think there will be a Maypole?” Briar says.

  “There was last year. And mummers. Maybe they’ll do the play of Saint George and the dragon. That’s my favorite!”

&
nbsp; “Do you suppose we can stay up tonight and watch the wakefire? Lady Beatrice says there will be spirits abroad!”

  The girls’ eyes sparkle, and they smile wordlessly to each other in perfect understanding. If there is a way, they will find it.

  Slipping quietly through the gatehouse and across the drawbridge, they stroll through the village. There they find everything in a pleasant confusion. It is a day of rest from labor, and the scrawny, miserable villagers do their best to summon some holiday spirit as they go from house to house collecting wooden items and bones to burn in the bonfire. The air is filled with the aromas of baking, of savory stews and sizzling fowl. Though goods are scarce, those who have little share with those who have even less. Children are at play with hoops and sticks, riding barrels, and practicing on stilts. The elders sit together and look on, gossiping and nodding, chuckling at the children’s antics.

  Briar and Rose meander through the melee until they spot Jack with a cluster of other ragged children gathered around a spinning top. The girls flash the secret hand signal at him, and he trots over to them, flashing the signal back.

  “Are we having a meeting, then?” he asks, sotto voce.

  The girls realize that the holiday makes a perfect opportunity to slip away for a meeting. “Yes,” answers Briar. “We’ll meet you at the drawbridge just after supper, if we can. Will you come?”

  “I’ll try. If I’m not there by the time they ring vespers, don’t wait for me.”

  Four hours later the girls have changed into their old, ruined clothes, their heads covered with scarves, their faces smudged with dirt. They are tiptoeing down the circular stairs from their attic room, hoping to evade detection but also sneaking just for the fun of it. There are numerous dangers to be avoided. The main difficulty is to get past the chapel, where the adults are gathered for their St. John’s Eve vigil. As quiet as butterflies in flight, they take off their shoes and touch their toes to the cool stone floor, all the while trying to stay out of sight and keeping a sharp lookout.