Briar and Rose and Jack

by Katherine Coville

  Briar had gotten away quickly, before he could change his mind, and though she felt physically unharmed, she smarted from his poisonous verbal attack for a long time afterward. Remembering it now, she thinks it might have hurt less to be struck than to be called a misshapen thing, a mistake.

  She brushes away unwanted tears.

  She remembers waiting a long time outside the room for Rose. She had been eager to leave the confines of the castle, as she so often did to get away from her troubles, but she hoped that Rose would come with her that afternoon. She imagined that they could retreat to their thicket or do some berry picking and forget the morning’s disaster. But when lessons were over and Rose finally emerged, she was talking and laughing with the other girls, Lady Arabella, Elizabeth, and Jane. Briar paused, knowing she could not invite Rose without also inviting the other three. She fully expected that the other girls’ attitudes toward her would be insufferably condescending, especially after Bishop Simon had so utterly vilified her in front of everyone. But if that was the only way to spend time with Rose, she thought maybe she should just do it anyway, in the hope that this time it would be different. And so she had finally decided to be generous and had invited them all.

  “Oh yes, that sounds like fun,” Rose had answered, giving her a sympathetic look, as if trying to make it up to her for Bishop Simon’s abuse.

  Lady Arabella stalled for time. “Oh, you mean right now?” she asked innocently. “We’re sort of busy right now. We were going to have a game of backgammon.”

  “Oh, come on,” Rose responded. “We can do that later. It’s such a nice day. Let’s go out!”

  “All right then,” Lady Arabella had agreed with a sigh. In truth, she was irritated beyond measure that Briar might still have more influence over Rose than she did.

  Briar understood Lady Arabella’s meaningful sigh immediately, but Rose, already imagining what fun they would have, seemed not to notice. In truth, Rose read the sigh as a sign of Arabella’s continued intolerance of Briar, but she hoped that the proposed outing might provide an opportunity for them to get to know and like each other better. Briar ignored Lady Arabella and forced a smile.

  Lady Beatrice, who had come looking for Rose, overheard their plans. She immediately interjected that they must have the usual accompaniment of a dozen guards and a chaperone to go outside the castle. It was no secret that the beautiful Princess Rose, having blossomed into young womanhood, was considered by the king to be the treasured jewel of his court. It was common knowledge that her eventual marriage was the last, best hope for the survival of his failing kingdom. Therefore he had decreed that she should never be outside the castle walls without a guard. He had delivered this royal edict, curtailing Rose’s autonomy “for her own good” when she turned fourteen. She had accepted it with poor grace, fiercely resenting the loss of liberty, especially since Briar had complete license to come and go as she pleased. No one feared that she might be carried off or suffer from unwanted romantic attention.

  With Lady Beatrice insisting on the proprieties, the simple outing had gone forward, including the guards and the chaperone. The five girls had spent the afternoon—under guard—picking blueberries. But Lady Arabella, Elizabeth, and Jane firmly planted themselves beside Rose at all times, thus keeping Briar away from her. Briar found that whenever she tried to get next to Rose, one of the other girls would maneuver into her way, and whenever she tried to speak to Rose, one of them interrupted with silly comments or loud laughter, so that Briar was the odd one out. She had borne this with all the patience she could, until the outing was over and they returned to the great hall of the castle. Then she managed to get Rose aside and upbraid her.

  “So I invite you for an outing and you don’t even talk to me!”

  “What do you mean?” asked Rose. “We were all talking!”

  “No. Every time I tried to talk, your friends interrupted me. It was more than rude.”

  “They wouldn’t do anything like that on purpose,” said Rose, disappointed that her hopes for the afternoon had not worked out. “I’m sure all you had to do was speak up. You’re being too sensitive.”

  “You’d be sensitive too if they ever treated you like that. A dog wouldn’t treat me that way!”

  “I can’t believe you’re going on about your precious dogs again! You really do prefer them to people, don’t you?”

  That had been the final straw, the reason for Briar’s open declaration that she actually did prefer dogs to humans, and she had meant it, wholeheartedly. But now, staring down into the water, she knows that her musings must come to an end. She must leave her secret haven and go back and face everyone, and she can just imagine the teasing that is to come. She plans out how she will respond. She imagines herself dignified and above it all, ignoring everyone with an unconcerned air. She has practiced this technique often and finds it a better solution than trading insults. In any war of insults she inevitably wins, as she is able to think up far better and more imaginative slurs than anyone else, but she has found it to be a hollow victory. It merely serves to reinforce a wall of bad feelings in her opponents, which makes her feel more alone in the castle than she already does.

  She sighs heavily and stands up to go, giving one last, fond look around, her eyes resting on the spreading ripples in the lagoon. She breathes in slowly, as if to inhale the beauty of the place and make it part of her. A smile plays at the corners of her lips, softening the irregularities of her face. Her tormentors are not the only people in her life. She still has friends, and she resolves to meet with them.

  As she walks by Jack’s house on her way back, she sees Jack, bent over, working in his mother’s croft garden, and she calls to him. He looks up and smiles, trying to brush off his dirty, calloused hands, comparing them with Briar’s smooth white ones. Jack, having grown up perpetually hungry, has matured into a gangly young man, though he is still a bit shorter than Briar.

  Looking around the small yard, Briar notices that there are no more chickens. She knows that one of their cows died last winter and that the garden crops won’t ripen for another month. She worries, as always, that there is not enough to eat in Jack’s house. Mother Mudge is quick to tell Briar if there is another family in need, but Briar is concerned that she might be too proud to tell her if she and Jack were actually hungry.

  Briar smiles at Jack and flashes the sign of the Giant Killers’ club. “At the thicket,” she says in a loud whisper, as that has become the meeting place for the village contingent of the club.

  “As soon as I’ve finished weeding this row,” he says.

  Briar moves on and finds Arley and Bridget next door. Arley too has grown, and Bridget, at thirteen, is a rosy-cheeked young tomboy. Arley and Bridget are also working, but they promise to meet at the thicket when they are done. All through the village Briar goes, flashing the secret signal and receiving the signal back from the interested Giant Killers. As she walks along, she can hardly help but notice how much poorer the villagers are growing. With every passing year they become shabbier, their homes more broken-down, their streets more squalid, the children paler and thinner. Once again she renews her vow to rid them of the rapacious giant.

  She goes on into the castle proper to find Lan, who joined the Giant Killers three years earlier at Rose’s invitation and has been a loyal member ever since.

  Half an hour later, Briar and Jack and Lan and most of the village members have gathered in the thicket. Briar and Jack have taken a position on a low tree branch in order to be seen by everyone.

  “Is everybody here?” Briar asks, scanning the group of familiar faces. “Yes? Good.” She pauses, then says, “Well, here’s the thing. We all know how the giant has gotten worse every year. When he came for last year’s harvest, he killed four people and injured a whole lot more. Not to mention how much food he’s taken out of your mouths and how the Giant Tax is bleeding your families dry. Things are getting really desperate, and we’ve got to do something soon—or die trying! No
w, we’ve been practicing using our slings, and I think you’ve all gotten pretty good at it. I’d say we’re almost ready to try an attack on the giant! Today we’ll have the usual target practice just to see that everybody’s keeping it up.”

  “Arley,” Jack says, “will you set the targets along that branch up there? We’ll have to aim high.”

  Arley, with a bag hung over his shoulder, climbs carefully to a large horizontal branch about twenty feet from the ground. Shinnying out on it, he sets up a row of small, shapeless pillows made of rags, with rough charcoal bull’s-eyes drawn on them. Each is weighted at the bottom edge with a few small stones inside, so it will stand up. These make perfect practice targets, for an accurate shot, thrown with enough force, knocks them right off the branch. Boys and girls, younger children and adolescents, take turns with their slings—who knows who might find themselves in a position to use their skill against the man-killing giant?

  Dudley, Jarrett, Bertha, and the others all line up and take their turns. Jarrett, Quentin, and Marian each succeed in knocking off a target. The rest come close, their stones hitting the branch with thuds and bouncing off it, and everyone gets a second try. Several others take their shots, and then Lan steps up to the mark, turning his left side to face the branch. Lan is a fine, strapping young man now. Master Olyver has him working on his own paintings these days. Yet, as serious as he is about his painting, he’s young enough to harbor a secret longing for adventure. He daydreams about ways to show Rose that he can be a hero as well as an artist. Most of the ways involve killing the evil giant. He dreams of getting just one well-aimed shot between the giant’s eyes.

  Thoughtfully, he places his stone in the cradle of his sling, then stands very still for a moment, staring hard at the target. Suddenly he twirls the sling, rotating it once, then twice, and on the third circle, in a quick, coordinated motion, he thrusts every part of his body—legs, waist, shoulders, arms, elbows, and wrist—in the direction of the target with all his strength, releasing the stone at the top of its rotation, hurling it into the charcoal bull’s-eye and knocking it clean off the branch. Jack nods and signals for him to take his next shot. Moving farther back, Lan repeats the performance and knocks off the next target as well, envisioning Rose’s grateful smile as the giant topples over in a heap.

  * * *

  Another day dawns at the castle. Master Olyver and Lan are hard at work in their studio. Rose sits, posing for her sixth portrait in three years. Master Olyver is so smitten with her beauty that he paints her again every six months. Rose suffers this because the bargain includes her continued studying under him. In the past few years she has shown herself to be a talented beginner, and her fondest wish is to continue under his tutelage and one day become a master artist herself. It seems a nearly hopeless ambition for a princess, whose all-consuming destiny it is to run a castle, or a whole kingdom, as well as raise a family. But she refuses to think about that. She muses instead on what particular hues Master Olyver is using now for the highlights and shadows of her emerald green dress—cobalt green? viridian?—and what she might choose to use if she were painting it.

  Master Olyver feels a rapture that is almost holy as he puts the finishing touches on Rose’s latest portrait. Never has he seen the likes of her flashing blue eyes, her luminous skin, the silky sheen of her hair, her mysterious little half-smile. Rose at not quite sixteen has come into the full flower of her beauty, fulfilling the blue fairy’s most magical wish for her. In anticipation of her sixteenth birthday, Lady Beatrice and the rest of the ladies at court are constantly speculating on which prestigious suitors will be arriving from what kingdoms and what rich gifts they may bear with them to vie for her approval, but Rose is not interested. She is too busy seeing the world through Master Olyver’s eyes—a world of form and color, of light and tone and shadow—and learning his techniques for making figures and landscapes spring to life on a plain wooden panel.

  And then there is Lan, who alone shares her artistic aspirations, her need to create. She does not guess that he also pictures himself as a knight, roaming the countryside performing good deeds in her honor or riding off to do battle with whole armies and coming home covered in glory. She has never told him that she already loves him exactly as he is. It is only the knowledge that nothing can come of it that prevents her from giving him the slightest encouragement. Her father, the king, and her mother, the queen, have warned her against forming any attachments. And so her love has coiled in on itself in mute sorrow, which only makes her all the more beautiful.

  Rose has put off thinking about the subject of her marriage for as long as she can, but her time is running out. Her sixteenth birthday is fast approaching, and she is afraid that what is supposed to be a birthday celebration will probably be more like a cattle fair, with herself as the prize. King Warrick will look the suitors over and choose from among them the richest and most powerful, and on the day following her birthday, the last day of her freedom, he will decree who her husband is to be, a husband who he thinks will stand against the giant, refill the royal coffers, and change the dismal fortunes of their miserable kingdom. Princess Rose knows it is her duty to accede to her father’s wishes, no matter whom he chooses.

  Inwardly she rails against her fate. Why couldn’t Lan have been born rich and powerful? But then, she wonders, would he still be the same sensitive, caring Lan? During the past three years she and the artist’s apprentice have become more than friends, though they know they can never be together. By unspoken agreement they seldom meet outside of her sessions with Master Olyver, afraid as they are of becoming even closer.

  However, when she invited him to join the Giant Killers in their secret meetings, he had immediately embraced their cause and become one of them. Lord Henry was not pleased to have another member of a lower class in the club, but at least Lan was an artisan rather than a common laborer, like Jack. Even so, the castle meetings had become few and far between as the former playmates grew older and more cynical. Their goal had seemed more and more like make-believe as they grew up and faced the grim realities of the situation.

  All this goes through Rose’s mind as she sits and waits for Master Olyver to finish painting. Lan works on another painting nearby, his eyes narrowly focused on some detail. She watches the concentration on his face as he carefully wields his brushes, and she feels her heart contract painfully.

  “Rose! Rose!” cries Master Olyver. “Where is that piquant little smile of yours? I can’t paint you with this look of tragedy on your lovely face—although that is lovely too, in its own way. Actually, yes. Hold that pose!” he says. He has long seen the hopeless love growing between the two young people, and he is not unsympathetic. “I’ll start a new portrait and capture that look of beauteous sorrow.”

  Rose does not need to pose. She merely looks at Lan and her face reflects her grief, for soon she must say goodbye to him forever.

  * * *

  Briar, having been sent to summon Rose for a fitting of her royal trousseau, knows that the girl will not be pleased to miss her art lesson. Looking at the scene, she contemplates the fact that her life and Rose’s have become so different. The exquisite Rose is surrounded by admirers. Even those who don’t know her, love her for her beauty. If she receives more attention than she really wants, it seems to Briar that that’s not such a terrible problem to have. Princess Rose is accorded the best of everything, yet Briar knows that Rose faces the eventual certainty of an arranged and possibly loveless marriage with whomever her father chooses for her. Briar wonders whether this is better or worse than her own likely prospect of remaining unloved for the rest of her life.

  She calls out to Rose, relaying the message that she is wanted in the solar, and Rose responds with a frown, as Briar knew she would. The two young women are on their way up the stairs when they suddenly hear the giant’s bell ringing, and they stop in their tracks.

  “Oh! I’ve got to go!” Briar exclaims, taking her sling out of her pocket.

 
; “Go where?” Rose asks.

  “Up on the wall walk! I have to see how close I can get to the giant.”

  “The guards won’t let you up there. Besides, it’s too dangerous!”

  “Who cares?” comes Briar’s reply. She turns back toward the stairs just as they hear distant voices shouting. “Princess Rose! Princess Rose!”

  “Quick,” Rose whispers, “I’ve got to get out of here. If anyone finds me, they’ll force me to stay down in the cellars.”

  “Where will you go?” asks Briar, impatient to be gone herself.

  “Up in the bell tower,” she responds. “I’ll be safe enough there.”

  “Hurry, then!” responds Briar, lifting her skirts to go quickly back down the stairs, Rose right behind her. At the door to the courtyard they part, each making her way in a different direction through crowds of frightened people. Rose pushes through the crush of humanity in the courtyard, trying to reach the door to the tower rising up on the opposite side of the keep. Meanwhile, Briar follows the castle guard and attempts to mount the stairs to the wall walk.

  “Get, back, girl!” shouts a burly soldier, blocking her way. “Are ye daft?”

  Briar is forced to retreat, and she decides instead to go outside the castle and look for another vantage point from which to use her sling. She is determined to get out, despite the mass of villagers and their livestock now streaming in through the gatehouse. She squeezes through the horde, pushing against moving bodies, darting under people’s arms and around sheep and cattle. She calculates that she still has time before the giant arrives, but she has no real plan for what to do once she’s free of the crowd, only to get as close as she can to the giant and take her best shot. She knows that outside in the village the company of Giant Killers will do the same. This time, she thinks, the giant will not have everything his own way.