Instead, he tilted his head, looking right at me as if he was sharing my secret, and then he flew away in a flurry of black feathers.
I didn’t know then that the Wittenbrand are said to watch through the eyes of ravens and hear with their ears. Had I known, perhaps I would have been more guarded with my words. Perhaps, I would have thrown a rock.
I was prompt to rise the next day and carefully brush my second-finest wool gown before dressing, braiding my long dark hair, and joining my brothers and father in the hall. The dress was dark charcoal and perfectly serviceable, and I’d embroidered a pine branch over a tear in the skirt.
“We must attend to men’s business, Izolda,” my father said gravely. “Can you find the place of women on your own?”
“Yes, Father,” I said dutifully, and I was rewarded by his smile.
My feet were eager to explore and the castle was bustling with preparations for the princess’s Presentation Ball. It was an affair meant to be so lavish that it would be talked of for the next generation. My mouth was already watering at the thought. Delicacies – and sweets especially – were rare in Northpeak, and if the princess gave me the chance to eat something sugary tonight, I’d be more than happy to play the plain wren next to her bluejay.
I dodged out of the way of rushing servants as I made my way through the castle, peering curiously into the empty rooms. The servants were harried and exhausted even though it was early morning, their arms full of tablecloths or chairs, ducks and geese, cheeses and candles and everything else.
I was far too fascinated and delighted by their preparations to ask after breakfast. Instead, I slipped through the halls letting my curiosity guide me, peeking in at the servants hanging garland in the wide man hall, watching in fascination as a group of musicians practiced in the ballroom, even slipping through the stables and peeking at the grooms tending the snorting horses.
If I was never going to have a ball thrown in my honor then I was certainly going to enjoy Princess Chasida’s ball in every way I could, from studying the clever way the servant hid tied-up bundles of fragrant pine bows to sneaking a glimpse at the palace library that was being dusted and cleaned with the fervor of a religious practice.
This might be my only time to see court and I meant to see all of it.
I paused in the stables long enough to slip a carrot to my bay mare and check her hooves. She was in good health and as frisky as I was, and I longed to take her out into the yard for exercise, but I had promised my father I would find the ladies, so I made my way up through the castle, dutifully looking for where the women would be doing the weaving and sewing that would make them all pretty for the coming ball.
I found the women in the ladies’ work room. They held little bits of handiwork, and most of them were gathered around piecing a large quilt, but no one was sewing.
“I’ll be wearing my hair in the Rouanmoore style,” one of them announced to impressed gasps. “My father bought me the pearl combs needed.”
They hardly even noticed me slipping into their midst.
“But won’t it cover the laced back of your dress?” another girl asked the first one. That set off a flurry of chatter.
I watched one of them practicing her posture, carefully checking to be sure that her figure was displayed perfectly. Another girl had her chin resting on her woven fingers and she was stealing little looks at herself in the large mirror that filled one of the walls. She made little adjustments every time so that she slowly appeared more coy and mysterious as the minutes passed.
I narrowed my eyes and looked around me, shocked to see she wasn’t the only one. Well now. Who did the sewing around here if everyone was more worried about how they looked than getting anything done?
Shaking my head, I set into the quilt the group was meant to be sewing. I’d have to do the work of five women to make up for those girls and their careful posing. I glanced around and met the eyes of an older woman who smirked at me. I didn’t know if she was laughing with me at these preening girls or laughing at me for working so hard.
After a moment she pointed at the flower sewn over a rip in the cuff of my dress and my face went hot. My embroidery had not fooled her experienced eye.
The girl closes to me dropped her needle and eyed me up and down before turning away again.
Was it possible that they weren’t here to quilt at all?
Or was this just how they let someone new know her place was at the bottom of the heap?
“Tell us about the last time a princess was presented!” one of the girls said to an old woman in the corner. She was looking dreamily at the piece she was embroidering – a fanciful scene of castles and flowers. But those flowers were blue. I felt a chill wash over me. I wasn’t usually superstitious, but one thing everyone knew was that blue flowers – blue anything – called down trouble. The Wittenbrand considered blue their color and legends said that anyone found wearing it would be claimed by them in soul and body. Nobody with sense wore blue or bought blue or even so much as looked at anything blue in a peddler’s cart.
But those kinds of thoughts were just superstition. I knew that. It was just a reflex to be worried about it. There were no Wittenbrand and there would be no stolen souls. I knew better than to believe things that had perfectly reasonable alternate explanations I shook my head at myself and stitched the quilt.
The old woman began to speak. Her voice was surprisingly melodic for a woman of her age.
“The last princess to be presented was Princess Margaretta. And she was your great aunt, Princess Chasida,” she said to the girl beside her who sat with a placid smile on her pretty face. Her hair was spun gold and her figure perfect in a blue silken dress. A red gem dangled over her forehead hanging from a golden chain and her eyes were faraway and dreamy like a princess from a storybook. I felt smaller than ever at the sight of her. The old woman was still speaking. “And I was her lady in waiting, as you all know. But that was long before your time.
“The snows were heavy that winter, and the wind bit us, and howled in the trees and it was through the trees that the Wittenbrand came.”
I startled at her words. I’d just been thinking of the Wittenbrand and now she told a story about them – it was too strange of a coincidence.
“They took what they willed from us – cattle, horses, gold, and finery. People too. And the tricks they played! Cruel tricks. Things that trapped the mind even when the body was healthy and whole, and tricks that made the body waste away even when the mind was sharp and eloquent. A deal with the Wittenbrand was a deal with death.
“All of the Kingdom of Pen were worried, the wheat was gone, and still there was no spring, and now what was left was being stolen from us. But despite all of that, the King decided to make merry and celebrate the coming of age of his daughter – sixteen-year-old Margaretta. She was in the flower of her youth, young and beautiful with hair like spun sunlight and eyes like slices of a summer lake. He presented her to them all in a gown of gold – a gown much like yours, Chasida, except in color.”
Princess Chasida’s round cheeks blushed prettily and she glanced across the assembly and sighed. Around me, the other girls sighed with her and again my eyebrows wrinkled. Did none of these girls have any common sense? That thing that let you see through the surface to what was beneath. They all saw a pretty girl sighing beautifully, didn’t they? And it warmed their hearts. All I saw was a very spoiled and pretty girl who would be traded by her father for power and influence and a bunch of fools who wished the same for themselves.
My cheeks burned hot at the thought, because I would be traded, too and for considerably less and knowing about it wasn’t doing me any favors.
“But that night,” the old woman said, “disaster struck, for the Wittenbrand came.”
Tales of the Wittenbrand were always full of disaster. No one ever mentioned all the work it probably took to clean up after them. Oh, it might make a fine story to come striding in and tear out the city gate with your bare
hands with nothing more said about it but a wink and a smile, but no one mentioned the stone masons and woodcarvers, locksmiths and pursers who had to get involved after that. No one spoke of Jamus, the gate guard who was let go because he couldn’t guard a thousand-stone gate without it getting stolen out from under him. No one told those stories.
I chuckled in the privacy of my own mind. If I were a storyteller, those were the stories I would tell, and in those stories I would marry the princess off to someone or something truly hilarious. I would have her marry a toad so that her father could stave off a plague of the creatures, or a fire-breathing steed so her father could equip his military with powerful mounts, or better yet, I would have her marry the Lord of the Wittenbrand and then we would see how much good her sighs and pretty poses were.
In retrospect, it was probably those generous thoughts that led to the curse that fell on me that night.
“What were they like?” the girl beside me asked, clutching her hands to her chest in anticipation.
“The Wittenbrand were far too beautiful – beautiful in the way that the coldest days of winter are – perfect, brittle, and deadly. They swept into our court in silence and in silence we received them. But Princess Margaretta’s bells on the end of her golden slippers made a jingling sound, and at the sound of her bell, they froze us to ice and stole away the Princess Margaretta in her golden dress and never have we seen her since.”
“But why did they take Margaretta?” the girl beside me asked.
It was a silly question. She’d been there in a golden dress, hadn’t she? In the middle of a famine. If the stories of the Wittenbrand were true – that they loved sparkling things and beauty, that they were made of arrogance and haughty desires – then who else would they take? But I did not believe in Wittenbrand or in golden princesses stolen away or in any of that nonsense. Much more likely that this Princess Margaretta had simply run away with a lover or been disgraced and hustled out of sight by her worried family.
Likely, Princess Chasida would wear her fine dress tonight and find herself well-matched to a promising warrior or a prince of a nearby nation, and her life would be well and prosperous. And we would not be frozen unless the servants had forgotten to light the fires in all their excitement.
“Princess Margaretta was bold and bright, unafraid of anything,” the old woman said fondly. “It was her bright, bold spirit that drew them in and mesmerized them. They could not help themselves. They were enchanted and so they made enchantment and took her for their own. And when she was gone only one of her golden bells remained in the center of the dance floor.”
“Will Princess Chasida be taken, too?” the girl asked.
I almost rolled my eyes. Really? The only threat to Princess Chasida was likely jealous ladies like the one beside me. At least I could be grateful that my meager hopes came with common sense. I had no need to be envious of the princess, since I never had a chance at what she would have. You couldn’t be disappointed if you didn’t hope for anything.
“She will not be taken,” the old woman said, “for one of you will wear the bell that was once Princess Margaretta’s and that will prevent bad luck from befalling her.”
There was a gasp of horror from around me and really, I would have liked to pretend I thought it was real, but it was obviously staged. They’d all been expecting this.
“But who will wear the bell?” the girl next to me asked, batting her eyelashes and looking right at me.
And that was when my heart sank, because it was immediately obvious to me that the chair I was sitting in hadn’t been empty for no reason.
“Luck shall decide,” the old woman said. “Look under your chairs, ladies. The woman with the golden bell under her chair shall wear it tonight for the sake of the princess.”
Yes. I was clearly the goat who had been staked out for the false mountain lion.
Wryly, I reached under my chair and drew out the golden bell I knew would be there. The room broke into happy smiles.
“Such an honor!” the girl beside me said in a whisper.
“And don’t forget to return it when the ball is over,” the old woman said placidly. “It’s worth quite a lot.”
Chapter Three
We broke to eat in late afternoon. The servants had pulled together a hurried lunch for everyone in the dining hall and most were standing to eat or hurrying in and out. The King and Queen had taken lunch in their rooms so no one need stand on ceremony. I looked for my father and brothers through the masses of moving people and as I did, I heard a girl beside me talking with another lady of fine breeding. The girl was the one who had been practicing her poses before the mirror in the ladies’ work room. Her voice had the same bell-like quality I expected. Which reminded me, I’d left the bell in the workroom. I was afraid of losing something so valuable. I’d have to remember to go back and get it before the ball.
“I have heard rumors that a special suitor for the princess will be arriving tonight, Lady Allise. Who do you think that could be?” the girl asked, her words clearly concealing the fact that she was quite sure she knew who it would be.
“A foreign prince perhaps?” Lady Allise suggested from behind a carefully placed hand. Her bright eyes sparkled and the emerald hanging over her forehead swayed as she whispered. “They say the king has fine hopes for her. Perhaps the foreign prince will bring some of his lords with him and you and I could have our pick for the dancing. Wouldn’t a fine exotic lord be exciting? Perhaps they kiss in a different way in foreign lands.”
“I’ve heard that it’s not so much a matter of how they kiss but that they do it with a passion that would put a Pensman to shame!”
They were giggling together when I caught sight of my family and hurried to join them at the dinner table. My father was glowing with pleasure.
“Two reasons to celebrate, sweet Izolda,” he said, ruffling my hair affectionately. “We went to the practice yards with the aim of finding a place for Svetgin in the military and to our delight the commander was there and has offered him a place as squire for one of the King’s own knights.”
Svetgin grinned at me broadly, barely able to sit still he was so excited. “I will train with Rodham the Brave, Izolda. Is that not wonderful news?”
“It is.” I smiled broadly to share his pleasure with him, but I noted the faint tinge of sadness in my father’s eyes at the news. He must make this move now before Svetgin grew older if he wanted to secure a strong place for him, but we would all miss my brother. His enthusiasm and boldness were a welcome reprieve from the sternness of our hold.
Rolgrin smiled, too, though I was certain there was envy mixed in his warm congratulations. He must stay and learn the running of the keep and hold for he was to inherit, but there would be no riding out in glorious armor or swinging a sword with fellow combatants. My father already had him working his tallies and studying the rotation of crops for summer.
“But you said there were two reasons, Father,” I reminded him, hoping to cheer Rolgrin up. Perhaps the other news was for him. A blacksmith who could make finer swords.
This time the sadness in my father’s eyes deepened further. “It so happened that while we were in the practice ring, the Landholder of the Fallowplains arrived with a delivery of horseflesh and we spoke together. He is in need of a bride before the spring and his offer was a reasonable one. You’ll find Fallowplains a well-suited place for you, daughter. The hold is close enough that you may visit your family every year and you have always done well with horses – the breeding of which is their main occupation.”
I schooled my expression to calm, hiding the sudden flare of panic in me. I felt so suddenly cold that it made my head light. Spring? That was only two months from now. And a return to Pensmoore before spring would be impractical. Which meant he would have me married here and now without even a goodbye to my mother first.
I swallowed down a sudden stab of sorrow. After all, this was very sensible. Even knowing nothing of the man in questi
on, I knew that his status as landholder and the fine nature of his holding was the upper limit of what my father could hope to secure for me. He had done very cleverly indeed.
One sad little passion-tinged hope sunk deep within the waves of my heart. There would be no torrid romances or soaring love affairs for me.
I forced a small smile. “Thank you, Father. It is a fine match.”
My father’s face softened slightly, and he spoke quietly so he would not be overheard. “I think you will find the man acceptable, also, daughter. He is young at only one and thirty, and his first wife died leaving him no heir. He seems as though he is lonely, but he spoke long and well of horses and the keeping of them, and I think you will find that in his single-minded passion for his work, he is unlikely to have acquired many vices. You can see him there now at the line beside the food tables. He is the man with the long black coat and the short beard.”
I followed his nod and saw a large, wide man with a round weathered face and a short blond beard. He was not good looking, but he did not look wicked, and his gaze was turned inward, not lingering on the ladies of the court. I could not ask for better.
“You’ve done very well for me, Father,” I assured him, taking in a long breath. I must ready myself. There was work ahead and a marriage and family to face. Fortunately, the things my mother sent me could serve as a trousseau. and while my future husband looked a little worn, his clothing was of good quality. We would not live in poverty. I could work with that.
Right? I didn’t need someone good looking or passionate or brave like a warrior from a story. That was all just window dressing for men who usually thought women were temporary entertainments or bargaining chips. But a tiny rebel part of me had been holding out hope for just that kind of man and it was wailing deep within me, refusing to die quietly. Just die, you fool hope! And would you be quiet while you do it for pity’s sake?
“I have promised to introduce you tonight at the princess’s presentation ball,” my father said earnestly. “Adorn yourself well and prettily, daughter.”
Fly with the Arrow: A Bluebeard Inspired Fantasy (Bluebeard's Secret Book 1) Page 2