“Am I?” she asked with a sly smile. “How do you know I’m feeding you a load of bollocks?”
“Well, I know how to google,” I said, “so I if something sounds too outrageous, I can check it out.”
“Royal women always carry their purses in their left hands, true or false?”
“True,” I said. “So, they can leave their right hand free to wave or shake hands.”
“Royals can’t play Monopoly.”
“Is that an actual rule? I just thought it was something one of the families stopped doing because things got too competitive.”
Lady Kay raised her eyebrow. “Royals may not eat shellfish.”
“Oh, I know.” One of my favorite dishes was shrimp scampi. I used to order it when I was out with Artie, but he’d look so longingly at my plate I felt bad and stopped eating it in solidarity.
“Royals are not allowed to visit zoos.”
That one stumped me. “I’d have to research that one.”
“False,” she said. “Let’s carry on.”
Although my lessons with Lady Kay were often marathon affairs, she liked to take breaks and chat. Lady Kay was fond of Earl Grey tea, which she sweetened with honey from the castle’s own hives. She was in charge the royal apiary and was quite proud of the innovations that had kept the bees thriving in the face of catastrophic die-offs.
“Sounds like magic was involved,” I commented neutrally, trying to sound her out on the subject.
‘Of course, there was magic involved,” she said, only just avoiding adding “you stupid cow.”
“In America,” I said, “no one ever wants to admit that magic is involved in anything. It’s not politically correct.”
Lady Kay snorted.
“We’ve messed up the environment so much that our only hope we have of restoring the balance is to bring magic into it.”
“Are you a magic worker yourself?” I asked.
She looked at me. “You mean like you?”
I was a bit startled, so I hesitated a bit too long before saying, “I only have a little bit of magic.”
“I hope that’s not true,” she said. “Because Morgaine is out to get you and a little magic is not going to be much of a shield.”
“It’s common knowledge then?” I asked, “that I’m a witch?”
“No one actually knows you’re a witch—except me now—but it’s common knowledge that Morgaine wants you gone. Common and royal knowledge alike. She has not been particularly reticent in her comments about you.”
I almost asked Kay exactly what kind of thing Morgaine was saying but I didn’t want to compromise her. I’d learned enough about court life to know that every single syllable of every single word anyone said was calculated and I wanted to be certain that she would continue to drop little nuggets of information my way and not clam up because she was nervous.
I needn’t have worried, as it turned out. Lady Kay was old enough and independent enough that she did not give a damn what other people thought.
She told me she had two dresses I’d designed in her closet, a green gown from my Byzantine collection that had little copper ornaments all over it, and a black dress covered in clear palette sequins. “I like your clothes,” she said. “All those lovely squashy fabrics and rich colors.”
“What’s your favorite color?”
“Aubergine,” she said. “One doesn’t find clothes in that shade often enough.”
“Pantone’s color of the year in 2015 was a wine red called ‘Marsala,’” I commented. “It came close.”
She wrinkled her nose in distaste. “I remember that year. People were suddenly digging the garnets out of their jewel boxes. I thought the shade was a little too brown. The kind of color you’d use to upholster a couch, not wear.”
I suddenly had a vision of Kay in a duster of crushed velvet over a panne velvet gown in a rich aubergine. Embellished with gold embroidery at the shoulders and cuffs. She would look fabulous in it. Her birthday was coming up. It would be a present.
Lady Kay had never married, and she wasn’t apologetic about it. “I know everyone thinks I’m the poor royal spinster, but the fact is I had my chance—especially after my father got his title.
Lots of men wanted to marry me after that,” she said, “but by then I was used to doing things my way and not really interested in being relegated to one of those boring positions reserved for the wives. I don’t think I could have survived doing nothing but standing by and waving to crowds while my husband was the one doing meaningful work.”
She saw my stricken expression and added. “It’ll be different for you, deer. A Queen has some real power, even if she’s only a consort.”
I didn’t tell her that I’d not seen any signs of a larger role for me that was significant and not just ceremonial. Emrys had told me that it would be up to me to carve out my own destiny, but I hadn’t chosen a path yet.
And then one day during a break from a lesson about the rules to follow when meeting a foreign dignitary, I asked Lady Kay what she would do if fate had somehow made her queen. She’d paused in the middle of choosing the perfect petit four from the plate between us and looked at me speculatively.
“Is that a serious question or just small talk?”
“Serious,” I said.
“The first thing I’d do is clean up the ocean. Have you seen the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?”
I nodded. It’s located between California and Hawaii. I’d seen it from the air a couple of times and Chez Cherie had sponsored several fundraisers to benefit Ocean Cleanup.
Warming to her topic she added, “England is an island. All the island nations are at greater risk than the other countries.” I agreed, although really, all the continents were just big islands, so essentially, everyone was at risk.
“What would you do?” I asked.
“I’d invite that boy to the palace to meet me, then I’d fund research to start tackling the new patch they’ve just discovered.” By “that boy,” I assumed she meant the young inventor who was the driving force behind Ocean Cleanup. “Wind energy,” she said. “We’re the world leader in offshore wind energy and it already generates ten percent of our country’s total electricity. But we can do better.” She reaches for another little cake. “Do you know the story of Dunstan of Canterbury?”
“No.”
“Tenth century Archbishop of Canterbury. Became a saint. He used to mess about with wind harps but the idea of winds plucking the harp strings terrified some of his flock, who thought demons were making the music. So, he quit, which is a shame. I always loved the idea of the winds making music.”
“there are politicians in the U.S. who oppose wind energy because they think the turbines cause cancer.”
“Yes, we have scientific illiterates here, too, so I’m not certain how easy it would be to increase our reliance on Green Power. “
“What would you need to make something like this happen?” I asked. “Because in the U.S. there are committees and task forces and organizations and nothing ever really gets done, especially if one party proposes it and the other isn’t on board.”
“I’d just do it,” she said. “I wouldn’t ask permission because then everyone starts getting involved. Plus, in this fantasy, I’m the Queen, and nobody wants to say no to the Queen. It looks bad.”
“How much would it cost?”
“Billions, I suppose. I haven’t really researched it. But I’d just start doing it one community at a time.”
“I’ll get you the money,” I said.
She smiled, somewhat patronizingly. “So many people have said that to me before.”
“I haven’t said it to you before.”
She looked at me then, really looked at me. “That’s true,” she said, and reached for another petit four.
We never did get back to our lesson.
Chapter 7
One of the tricks Emrys taught me was how to wrap myself in shadow. It wasn’t exactly a cloak of invisibility, but with the s
hadow, I could disappear into corners, I could stand still and be unobserved, and that ability gave me entrée into the secret world of Arthur’s court. My eavesdropping sessions smacked of voyeurism, but I tried not to invade anyone’s privacy. I just needed to know how to navigate my way through uncharted waters. Beneath the surface of court life was a whole different world, and as I haunted the kitchen and the backrooms and the various public spaces in the castle, I learned much more than what I could have learned from Sir Pellinore or Kay.
Not that I had much time to skulk around. As my wedding day approached, my calendar was filled with more and more official duties. No one quite trusted me to go out on my own—likely afraid I’d break some rule of protocol like driving myself—but increasingly I was a third wheel while other minor royals opened a factory or congratulated a teacher or honored a veteran. These events were important to the people at their center, but after a while, with all due respect, it was hard for me to tell them apart, especially if my only role was to stand there and look decorative and appreciative. I’ve never been good with wearing high heels—my ankles are wobbly—and heels were de rigueur for these events. I had a chat with a fae shoemaker whose store was in the little village below the castle, and he fashioned several pairs of comfy flats wrapped in a fairy glamor that made them look like three-inch heels to anyone else looking at them. Money very well spent.
The meet and greets were endless. And so were the speeches. I had never been bored in my life. ‘How do you manage it?” I’d asked Kay and she’d surprised me by saying she liked to construct little mysteries about the people in the room and plot them out in her head. “Have you ever thought about writing them down? President Clinton wrote mysteries, and so did President Truman’s daughter.” She looked horrified by the idea. “Good heavens no. Can you imagine the scandal?”
“You could write them under a pseudonym.”
‘You’re a troublemaker Gwennie,” she’d said, but I think she was pleased. If she’d been annoyed, she would have called me by my full name.
I tried to learn from Artie. He had mastered the knack of looking completely engaged and totally absorbed by whatever was going on. He’d lean forward in all the right places, nod his head, steeple his fingers, lift an eyebrow. He had any number of gestures and expressions that said, “Yes, I am listening. Yes, what you’re saying is the most interesting thing I’ve ever heard.” When I was attending events with him, I could take my cues from him—we were so attuned that I always knew when he was about to stand or sit or kneel and I could follow suit. It was harder with the other royals.
Also, at first, I was afraid to let my mind drift too much, afraid I’d miss some sort of cue and end up standing alone while the rest of the gathering looked at me—like I was the one yelling at a date to be heard over rowdy club music just as the band takes a break. I’ve been there. It’s so embarrassing.
The parades were the easiest. No one really had to do anything but sit there and look impressed as men and women marched by in their dress uniforms. Or you had to look up in amazement as jets whizzed by overhead.
Easy peasy lemon squeezy. I could gawk at planes with the best of them.
I tried to squash these cynical thoughts. I’d bought the ticket; I’d gotten on the ride. But still, being a princess wasn’t nearly as much fun as the fairy tales made it out to be.
For one thing, princesses in fairy tales never had to deal with in-laws and family.
It wasn’t just Morgaine and Igraine, Arthur was related to an entire crew of princes from the island of Orkney—Gareth, Gawain and their brothers Gaheris, and Agravain. All the brothers whose names started with G (I privately called them the Gee Bros) were good guys but Agravain was…not. The servants called him Lord Aggravation and with good reason. He was a man born to take anger management classes. He was heir to the throne of Orkney, but the island nation wasn’t big enough for him and I’d heard him describe it as a godforsaken ball of rock inhabited by sheep. And by “sheep,” he meant his human subjects.
Artie tolerated him with much more indulgence than I would have. But that was one of Artie’s weaknesses—maybe even his fatal flaw. He expected everyone to be as good-hearted as he was. And nobody really was. Except for Galahad. He was the best of us all.
As the wedding got closer, the family tensions ratcheted up. And that was nothing compared to the media furor over what my partners at Chez Cherie called “the dress.”
I could not believe the drama around my wedding dress. By mutual consent, Artie and I were keeping the wedding small, simple, and as low-key as a royal wedding can possibly be. Which turned out to be not very low-key at all. Lady Kay and I spent whole days going over the rules regarding royal wedding etiquette. “Most of these rules seem to apply just to the bride,” I said.
“Of course, they do,” she said. “The groom just stands there looking like a human Nutcracker in his silly red uniform coat. It’s all about the bride.”
I knew that I was expected to choose a British designer because that was how it was, but as I explained to Artie—I was a designer and it seemed silly to hand over the chores of designing such a beautiful and symbolic garment to someone else.
It was a little act of rebellion; a last gasp of independence and I had not honestly expected it to spark one of those “is this a hill you’re willing to die on” arguments. But it did. In the end I won the battle but not without putting a little magic into it.
Emrys didn’t really approve of me using the little “mind control” spells he was teaching me, but I rationalized using them by telling myself if he didn’t want me to use them, he shouldn’t have taught them to me.
If it had been up to Morgaine, I would have been married in black bin liner. I intended to thwart all of her expectations. For one thing, I didn’t want to look like I was drowning in fabric like so many royal brides before me. I wanted something with a slim silhouette and no train, something that would accent my curves, not make me look like the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man’s wife.
I would have preferred not to wear a veil, but Lady Kay talked me into it. “It’ll look so nice with your tiara,” she said. “You can’t not have a veil.”
In my former life—what I was beginning to think of as my real life--I had never worn much jewelry. But for royals, an outfit without a hefty dose of bling was like a cake without frosting—it just wasn’t finished.
The first time I was taken to the little treasure cave that was the royal vault, I was stunned. I’d seen the royal regalia, of course, the crown with the massive ruby, the wands and scepters and other symbols of office and power.
And I’d seen Excalibur.
Even in the modern age, the fabled sword felt…magical. You could feel it buzzing with power from a yard away. Around it the fine hairs on your arm and the back of your neck would lift the way they would
It was technically a longsword, and it was made of very fine steel. The blade was etched with runes from an unknown language, although Emrys believed it was High Fae. the way they would if you got too near a power station or were out in the open just before a thunderstorm.
The most striking thing about Excalibur was the gem mounted on the hilt. It was a large, milky green stone shot through with lines of crystal amber and black. I’d never seen anything like it. Nigel told me the legend was it was a dragon’s eye that had been petrified in the years before there even was an England. When I looked at it, I half expected the stone to open its eye like the gem on the Witchblade, but it never did. At least not in my presence.
I knew the royals had an impressive collection of jewelry. I was not prepared for the sheer amount of…shiny stuff they actually owned. It was overwhelming seeing tray after tray of necklaces, bracelets, earrings, brooches, and watches. And that was just the diamonds.
Choosing a wedding tiara turned out to be a lot of fun. I sent Suze pictures of the ones I was considering and discovered that Suze had an inner princess I’d never suspected existed. “Ooh, I like that one,” she said
when I showed her the piece known as the “Queen Mary’s Fringe Tiara.” It was pretty, one of three tiaras of roughly the same design, but though the fringe tiaras were spectacular, I wanted something a little more modern.
I narrowed it down to three and finally chose a delicate 1950s headband set with diamonds and thumbnail-sized cabochons of milky aquamarine.
It went beautifully with my dress, which was made of a pale blue peau de soie so light you couldn’t tell it was blue unless you were standing right next to it.
“Like an iceberg,” Lady Kay said approvingly. “Subtle-like.”
“Subtle is what I was going for,” I said. I’d designed a lovely wrap dress for my mother to wear as matron of honor, a column of cream lace embellished with copper embroidery and tiny crystal beads. The royal milliner was kind enough to whip up a matching chapeau, a sort of oversized beret with gold feathers and a coppery mesh veil. She looked spectacular in it.
The wedding ceremony was mostly a blur to me. Nigel walked me down the aisle and looked so handsome and proud in his formal attire. He’d gifted me with a string of pearls that had belonged to his mother, telling me that she would be pleased he’d passed them along to his daughter. I’d cried and thanked him and wore the pearls as my only jewelry besides the tiara.
Of course, the tabloid press couldn’t just say they didn’t like my dress, they had to deconstruct it with the savage relish of a fourteen-year-old bully picking on a fat kid with braces, acne, and glasses. Still, knockoffs of the dress were on sale five hours after the wedding and selling like crazy online. There were lots of cheap shots at my weight as well. “No, that’s not a bustle, that’s just the royal bum,” snarked one royal watcher on her blog.
For once, I didn’t let the criticism bother me. I knew it was a beautiful dress and I felt beautiful in it.
The reception was mellow. We’d kept the guest list small, and for the most part, they were all actual friends or relatives, and not heads of state or other people invited for diplomatic reasons. Suze had come a week early to help me with all the pre-bridal stuff. She hooked up with at least one of Arthur’s security team and danced with every man at the reception before finally flitting off into the night with Sir Caradoc on one arm and Sir Baudwin on the other. “I see Suzanna is still a blithe spirit,” my mother commented dryly. She was actually very fond of Suze, who’s been my best friend since elementary school, but had always worried that she was going to lead me astray one day.
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