A Melanie Dickerson Collection

by Melanie Dickerson

  Being cautious of men, avoiding them, seemed like a good thing mothers should teach their daughters. But . . . were all men bad? Or had Mother instilled an unhealthy fear in Rapunzel?

  She tried to think of a man she had known in the villages where they had lived who had seemed good. She remembered a few kindhearted priests and friars. Brother Andrew at the monastery had seemed gentle and good. And even though Sir Gerek was arrogant, she had never seen any licentiousness in his eyes, nor any malice.

  Thinking critical thoughts of Mother made her stomach clench. But she had always known she was not like other mothers. She loved Rapunzel, and Rapunzel loved her in return, but more and more, she felt a restlessness inside her to be free of her mother’s control. After all, Rapunzel was nineteen years old or possibly even older. Most women her age were married and had one or two children.

  She pressed her hand to her cheek as she gazed into the water. Would Mother be able to see the disloyal thoughts in Rapunzel’s face?

  But if Rapunzel were married, wouldn’t she only be exchanging her mother’s control for her husband’s? If she were free from her mother, she would have to support herself and take care of herself—protect herself.

  If she had some sort of job, she could do it. If she were to become a maidservant at Hagenheim Castle, she would have food, the protection of the castle, and perhaps a little money to buy clothing for herself. She was learning to read, which might make her more valuable as a servant.

  She must make Sir Gerek teach her Latin, too, and to write in both languages. She hated feeling ignorant and poor and awkward even more now that she had seen the beautiful city of Hagenheim and its people, with their confident expressions and their colorful clothing.

  She looked at herself in the still pool one more time before standing up and running her fingers through her ankle-length hair. She played with it, tossed it, wound it around her hand, and finally tied it in a loose knot at the base of her neck.

  Picking up her water bucket, she fetched water from the stream and carried it toward home.

  There was more cheer and good spirits on the streets of Hagenheim than in any village she had ever lived. She wanted that same confidence and joy. And as long as she lived with Mother, she didn’t think she would ever have it.

  After two weeks of Rapunzel coming for her reading lesson almost every day, Gerek could almost anticipate her knock. Today he kept glancing at the door. She had not come the day before, so he was sure she would today.

  He closed his eyes and shook his head. In a few more weeks he could again fill his mind—and his time—with jousting practice and strategizing over which wealthy heiress he might marry.

  The knock came.

  “Come in,” he called to her familiar tapping.

  “How are you feeling today, Sir Gerek?”

  He frowned instead of answering her question.

  “I’m sorry to hear that. But I’m sure you will be much more cheerful when your leg is healed and you do not have to lay in bed all day.”

  Her smile inexplicably reminded him of Lady Rose. With so much time to think, his thoughts had drifted back to how Lady Rose had taken care of him when he had broken his arm as a young squire. In spite of the fact that her own little girl had drowned around that same time, she had taken an interest in him. She insisted he stay, not with the other squires, but in a tiny room off her son’s chamber so she and the castle healer, Frau Geruscha, could keep a closer eye on him. That was when he and Valten had become close friends.

  They had grown up together, trained together, and Gerek had appreciated Lady Rose’s gentleness, along with Duke Wilhelm’s uprightness and sense of justice and fairness. Valten would never know how fortunate he was to have such good and honorable parents.

  “You look very thoughtful today,” she said after taking off her patched and mended cloak and sitting down on the stool beside him. “What are you thinking about?”

  “Nothing.”

  She lifted her brows and twisted her mouth.

  “I was thinking of the last time I broke my arm. I was probably about eight or nine years old.”

  She nodded. “Did you have someone then who could splint it for you?”

  “Yes.” He vividly remembered how terrified he was of the old healer. “I was a squire at Hagenheim Castle. Lady Rose took care of me as if she were my own mother.”

  “She must be very kind.”

  “Ja, she is. Her oldest son, Valten, is only one year older than I. She made sure no one mistreated me while I was recuperating. Before I came to Hagenheim, I had been a page at a castle to the west of here, for the Earl of Keiterhafen. The pages and squires were not treated nearly so well there.”

  “I am very glad you came to Hagenheim, then.” There was a soft, sweet look about her eyes and around her mouth that sent his mind back to the night he had listened to her singing and had felt a sweet ache in his chest. He had the same ache now as he looked at her.

  “Why do you keep your hair covered?” He asked the question before he had time to think better of it.

  Her cheeks turned pink and she stared down at her lap. “It is strange, isn’t it? My mother, she insists I not show my hair.”

  “But why? Is it green or purple or some other strange color?” That seemed to amuse her and she smiled at him. “Are you a fairy changeling with pointed ears?”

  She rewarded him with a laugh. “No, nothing like that.” After she stopped shaking her head, she said, “My mother has strange ideas, I suppose.”

  “Like what?”

  “She doesn’t . . . she doesn’t want anyone to see my hair. And she doesn’t like or trust men. She gets upset when I even talk to a man or when a man talks to me. I think it has to do with something that happened to her a long time ago.”

  “I take it she would be very upset if she found out about you coming to me for reading and Latin lessons, then.”

  She nodded and sighed.

  “And how old are you?”

  “Nineteen.” She tilted her head to one side. “Or thereabout.”

  “If you are nineteen, then why . . .?” He thought better of finishing that question.

  “Why do I let my mother tell me what to do with my hair? Why am I not married, with two or three children by now?” She shook her head, a slight movement. “My mother has never encouraged anyone’s attention. I think she never will.”

  “So, how long will you let her force you to cover your hair?”

  “I never said she forced me to cover my hair.”

  “Then take off your wimple. It’s warm enough in here. You don’t need it.” He wasn’t sure why he was pushing this.

  “I don’t want to have to put it back on when I leave.” She sat up straight, half closing her eyes, and she almost looked like a noble lady delivering an insult to a lesser noble.

  “Very well.”

  “Let us hurry and begin. I cannot stay forever, you know.” She laid aside the woolen fabric she had wrapped around her hands on this colder than usual late-winter day.

  “Why do you want to learn to read so badly?” He wasn’t sure what made him ask again, but he wanted to know what she was thinking. “Most young maidens of . . . the villages never think of learning to read.” He had almost said, Most young maidens of your peasant class. She would have accused him of being arrogant again.

  She raised her eyebrows again. “I have always wanted to learn to read. Once, when I was eight years old, I found out that the daughter of the lord of our village knew how to read. She was only a little older than I was, and so I asked her if she would please teach me. She looked down her nose at me, as if I were a toad, and said, ‘You? You are probably too stupid to learn. You’re only a peasant.’ ”

  Rapunzel’s voice sounded haughty and airy as she mimicked the other child.

  “It made me so angry, and she made me feel so lowly that I vowed someday I would learn to read. And in the meantime, I learned everything anyone would teach me. I learned to make paint f
rom berries and clay and hulls from nuts. I taught myself to paint flowers and vines and birds. I learned all kinds of stitching and sewing and weaving, even though I don’t like to sew. And I learned how to snare a hare and skin it.”

  “And how to throw a knife.”

  “I learned everything except midwifery. Mother is a midwife. But I don’t like blood and pain and . . . midwifery.” She shuddered.

  “I am sorry that girl said that to you. No one should ever try to make another person feel unworthy.” Memories flooded Gerek’s mind, of his brother standing over him, and his father standing over his mother.

  “Surely no one ever made you feel unworthy. You are noble born, are you not?”

  “My father was the Earl of Rimmel. But that does not mean I was never made to feel unworthy. After all, I was a younger son.” He didn’t exactly want to tell her of his dark family history, the terrible thing his father had done, and how he wondered if his temperament was irreparably tainted by being the blood son of someone so . . . heartless.

  “How did we start talking of this?” Gerek grabbed the book from the floor beside him and opened it, quickly turning to the page where they had left off.

  Chapter Twelve

  Sir Gerek was in his usual bad mood after talking about his past and his family, but Rapunzel was curious now. He cringed when he spoke of his father being an earl, and his tone was bitter when he mentioned his brother.

  “Just because you are a younger son? Of an earl?” Rapunzel half smiled and shook her head. “That is nothing compared to being a peasant, and not only a peasant, but someone who was abandoned by their natural parents and left with a stranger.”

  “I can see how that would make you feel bad. But I’m glad you don’t know what it is like to be hated. You were not blamed by your own brother for something unspeakable that your father did.” He rubbed his hand over his mouth, as if his words left a bad taste.

  Her heart squeezed in her chest at the pain etched on his face. What unspeakable thing had his father done?

  “You don’t want to talk about these things. You want to learn to read, and we were working on Latin.” He rearranged the book on his lap. The message he was sending was clear, but her thoughts were spinning with wanting to know more. If Sir Gerek had bad things in his past, things that were painful to him, then perhaps he was just as human as all the fellow peasants she had known.

  “How could your brother blame you for something your father did?”

  He rubbed his big, sunbrowned hand over the short beard that covered his chin, then cleared his throat. He didn’t speak.

  “It’s not as if I have anyone to tell.” She spoke quietly, hoping he might trust her enough to confide in her.

  “I may have to teach you to read, but I don’t have to tell you my family’s darkest secrets.”

  “Arrogant as ever,” Rapunzel mumbled to herself.

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing, nothing.”

  She allowed him to direct her thoughts to his copy of King Solomon’s Proverbs, written in Latin. But learning Latin was much more difficult than learning to read in German. Still, she was interested in finding out what was contained in the Bible. Reading the letter to Timotheus had whetted her appetite to read the entire Holy Writ. She would not be satisfied until she had done so. But that would require learning Latin, so she applied herself to the lesson.

  Sir Gerek frowned at her as much as usual when she made mistakes and said she asked too many questions, but he was not quite as gruff as usual. As she bundled herself up against the cold spell they were having, she said, “Your beard is coming in nicely. It doesn’t look as terrible as most men’s beards.”

  “Doesn’t look as terrible? What kind of flattery is that?”

  She shrugged. “It makes you look old and . . . lazy.”

  “That’s the gratitude I get for teaching a maiden to read.”

  “Gratitude is not the same as giving false compliments. And flattery is spoken of as evil in the Bible, or so said a friar I once knew.”

  He glared at her. “Don’t you need to get home before your mother—?”

  “Fare well, Sir Gerek.” She sauntered out the door and laughed softly on the other side.

  Was she a bad person because she so enjoyed teasing this knight? Bad or not, she did enjoy it.

  “Rapunzel, you have barely painted anything on the house. By now you should have covered this entire wall at least with flowers and vines and leaves and butterflies and whatever else you fancy. What have you been doing?”

  Mother came home from her usual trip to Hagenheim carrying bread, sugar, and a basket cage with a live chicken in it, which she strapped to her back.

  “Chicken? Mother, did you get a job?”

  “Believe it or not, I assisted in a birth today.”

  “Mother, truly?” Rapunzel clapped her hands. “That is wonderful. The first one is always the most difficult to get, but they will spread word about you and—”

  “Before you get too excited, listen to the story.”

  Rapunzel hoped Mother would forget to press further about what she had been doing and why she had not painted much.

  “I was walking toward the Marktplatz when I heard yelling and groaning coming from a house. Someone appeared in the doorway and said, ‘Aren’t you that midwife? The new one?’ And so they asked me to come in, and in the middle of the floor, there was a dog in great distress, trying to birth some puppies.”

  “A dog?”

  “But it was the owner who was groaning. He said she was the best hunting dog he had ever had and he would pay me well if I could save her, and even more if I could save the puppies. So I did. The dog delivered seven healthy puppies, and I have money enough for this chicken and many more.”

  “He must have been very wealthy.”

  “Oh yes, and now two women on his street are already asking me to be their midwife when their time comes. Word of my skill spreads fast.”

  “Even though it was puppies you delivered?”

  “Puppies are babies. It’s all very similar.” Mother waved her hand as she unloaded her things and placed them on the table, except for the chicken. “Can you go kill the chicken, my love, while I make a pie? Looks like we already have some water boiling for the scalding.”

  “Of course, Mother.” Rapunzel took the basket and carried it outside. Taking a deep breath, she opened the top of the basket and pulled the chicken out by its neck. Careful not to look at the chicken’s head, she held it as far away from her body as possible, then squeezed as hard as she could and slung the chicken’s body around and around by its neck while counting to ten, breaking the neck and strangling it at the same time.

  Taking another deep breath, she ignored the way the chicken was still twitching and flopping around. She lifted the small hatchet off its iron nail on the back door. With one hand, she laid the chicken’s neck across a sawed-off stump, then chopped off its head with one hard whack. Grabbing it by its feet, she held it upside down and let the blood drip out.

  She kept her head turned, humming a song to drown out the sound of the blood dripping onto the ground. After one entire song of seven full verses, she carried the chicken in the house and dropped it in the boiling pot of water on the fire. After a good scalding, she used a wooden paddle to fish it out again and started plucking off the feathers.

  Mother took the pot outside to dump the water. She brought it back, refilled with water, and set it on the andirons over the fire.

  “I noticed you are not covering your hair when you’re at home.” Mother glanced at her from the corner of her eye.

  Rapunzel kept plucking and piling the feathers on the floor. When they dried, she would add them to the pillow she had been stuffing for the last year. Just a few more chickens or geese and it would be done.

  “I like the way it feels when it’s not covered.”

  Mother, whose own hair was untouched by the rays of the sun—she kept it wrapped tightly, then covered
with a wimple—said nothing.

  “Besides, I washed it and was letting it dry.”

  “I hope you aren’t getting any ideas about going into town with it uncovered, just because you saw that Rainhilda with her hair hardly covered at all with that flimsy veil.”

  “Rainhilda wasn’t the only young woman I saw with uncovered hair, Mother. I don’t understand why—”

  “It’s indecent. I’ve told you this before. If you go around letting men see your head uncovered, your hair on display, you will see what it will get you. A broken heart and an illegitimate child.”

  “Mother! I hardly see how uncovered hair will cause me to have an illegitimate child.”

  “Men think they can get whatever they want from you. They pretend they love you, but they don’t. If the men of Hagenheim were to see your beautiful blond hair, they would pursue you. They would tell you how beautiful you are, and then . . . and then they would tell you they loved you, and you would believe it.”

  Mother stared at the wall, that familiar, far away look in her eyes.

  “Very well, Mother. Do not upset yourself. I am not planning to go through the streets of Hagenheim with my head uncovered and my hair streaming out around me. Look at me. I’m in our little house in the woods. No one can see me here except you.”

  Mother’s chest rose and fell as she stared down at the pie she had been making and seemed to have forgotten. “You don’t know what men are capable of, Rapunzel. You have never experienced their treachery. They know exactly what you want them to say and they will say it . . . to get what they want. You are so innocent. You don’t know.”

  “Mother, please stop worrying about something that is never going to happen.”

  “How do you know it won’t happen?” Mother slammed her fist on the table. “You don’t know it won’t happen. Just promise me you will stay away from men, Rapunzel. If you don’t . . .”

  Tears welled up at the crazed desperation in Mother’s wide eyes.

  “Mother, what happened to you? Tell me why you are so afraid of men.”