Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister

by Gregory Maguire

  Heer Pruyn and his wife quietly organize a display of femininity for Philippe de Marsillac. Dame Pruyn selects a girl, much as she might select a ruddy apple or a pungent fish at the market, and ushers the chosen morsel forward, where Heer Pruyn then takes over and makes the introductions. The Prince stands like a true chevalier, with one hand turned nicely at the small of his back and his palm out. With his other hand he reaches to take the hand of the maiden being brought forward, to raise her hand to his lips for kissing, and to return her hand to her. The crowd around the Prince is silent, listening to the polite and stilted exchanges, until the Dowager Queen belches without apology and begins to chatter with those near her, by which the partygoers learn again how to talk and buzz and gossip, and leave the Prince and his string of possible brides alone.

  “I’m worried about Margarethe,” says Iris after a while. “Shall we go to find her?”

  “You go,” says the Master. “I don’t want to find her.”

  “Come, Ruth,” says Iris, “let’s take a stroll and see what we can.” She puts her arm through Ruth’s, which comforts the older girl immensely. They begin to make their way behind the small orchestra, peering over shoulders and beyond headdresses, looking for their mother.

  But before they’ve found her, Dame Pruyn is suddenly at their side. “I need the two of you,” she says gracelessly. “You’ll be perfect next—”

  “We don’t really want to meet him,” says Iris. “There’s no need. We’re just here to observe—”

  “Oh, it’s the price of admission, didn’t you know?” says Dame Pruyn. “I’m doing my job as a hostess, so let me at it—don’t look so alarmed! I know who you are, the young thing who neatens up the studio of Master Schoonmaker there! Some pretense at talent, they say? Well, I see color and form myself, and I arrange it as in a ballet, and the contrast of you and your sister is just what I need right now. You may come as a pair if you like, if your sister is that awkward, but come you must, for I won’t be denied.”

  “Please,” says Iris, “we’re looking for our mother—”

  “The new Dame van den Meer, yes,” says Mistress Pruyn dryly. “She was muttering something about her eyes, and seeing imps and scalawags from hell wherever she looks. I sent a serving girl upstairs with her to put a cold cloth on her forehead. She is resting her bad eyes, and for all I know she’s snoring the party away. I’m not going to make it my business to wake her. There’s plenty of time for all that.”

  Mistress Pruyn won’t allow Iris to dawdle, or Ruth to shrink away. There’s nothing to be done but follow their hostess across the floor to where Philippe de Marsillac is looking fatigued, and the Dowager Queen behind him is picking nuts from a tray.

  “Straighten your spine, look him in the eye, speak when spoken too, and curtsey when he says good evening,” mutters Master Pruyn. “The rest is up to you. I’ll bet a single sentence is all you get. He’s not the chatty type.”

  The gush of pink silks and flutey laughter ahead of them is dismissed, and the floor opens. Philippe de Marsillac has the good breeding not to drop his jaw or wince at the sight of Iris or Ruth, though there’s just the faintest twitch at one side of his face—a stifled yawn is the kindest notion, but perhaps it’s a grin kept in check.

  “And, Your Highness, allow me to present the sisters van den Meer,” says Heer Pruyn. “Newly residing in Holland after their childhoods in the lowlands of England.”

  “Sisters,” says the Prince, as if he’s never encountered the concept before.

  Iris nods briefly, not knowing if Ruth and she are being addressed or assessed.

  “I didn’t catch your names, Misses van den Meer?” he says.

  “This is my sister Ruth, if you please, and I am Iris.”

  In English he says, “And you two English girls are here at a ball in Holland to meet the Dowager Queen of France?”

  In English Iris replies, “We are part Dutch, if you please, and we are here to meet the Queen Mother’s eligible godson, whether we want to or not.”

  He throws back his head and laughs—a short, stifled laugh, but a laugh nonetheless—and conversation for twelve feet in every direction comes to a halt.

  “You must be as grateful to speak a little English with me as I am to speak it with you,” he says. “I can wag my tongue in French, Spanish, Latin, and English, but all those flapping syllables you find in Dutch give my tongue a headache.”

  “I do not mean to be impolite,” says Iris, flushing. “You find a rude English country girl before you, sir; please forgive me. I don’t know the ways of this land.”

  “You are new enough here still to find Dutch ways peculiar?”

  “I am young enough to find life peculiar,” she replies.

  “And your sister? You speak for her?”

  “She doesn’t speak.”

  “She’s very smart, then, for the woman who doesn’t open her mouth to speak can’t be discovered to be a shrew, a harridan, a gossip, or a grump.”

  “Are those the only careers open to us?” says Iris. “If so, I should end the conversation myself right now and consider myself ahead. A vow of silence does no one harm.”

  “Until your hem catches on fire and you need to call out to someone to bring a bucket,” he says, finding himself amusing.

  “My hem isn’t often enough near the kitchen fires these days,” says Iris truthfully. “My sisters tend the fire.”

  “Your sisters? You have more than the one?”

  “There’s another, a stepsister—”

  “Where is she? Let her come forward—”

  “She couldn’t come. Someone needed to stay home and tend the master of the house, who is ill.”

  “Ah,” says the Prince. “And how do you busy yourself while your sisters work their fingers to the bone?”

  “Oh, sir, I’ve been trying to learn to draw, with the hope of apprenticing to a studio—”

  The Prince raises an eyebrow. Seen this close, his remarkable eyes are hazel and gray, with a corona of green at the outer edge of the iris. With interest he comments, “So what they say of the Dutch is true! Every fishmonger and farmer must have paintings on his walls, and even the gentle sex must try her hand with the paintbrush! You are no doubt talented—”

  “Not talented yet, but maybe a little brave.” She feels brave to say this.

  “I like to study paintings myself,” says the Prince. “The worlds they show, the inner and outer worlds. It is what binds me to my illustrious godmother. I had not hoped to meet a young woman of merit—”

  “You have probably not met such a young woman yet,” says Iris, and corrects herself, “that is, I am a fledgling, a novice. But I love to look and see what is shown.”

  “What is shown, and what is hidden.”

  Iris doesn’t know how to see what is hidden. She makes a gesture of uncertainty. The Prince begins eagerly, “It is my belief, and wouldn’t you agree, that every painting of interest features a dark reservoir, a shadow, a pool, a recess, and that ground of shadow stands in for—”

  The growling voice of Marie de Medici rises behind him in a cough. He sighs and catches himself. “I believe I’m being encouraged to continue my examination of the most beautiful women of the land. I hope you won’t be fleeing the party anytime soon? There is dancing, once I’ve endured the introductions. You are very charming, and I should like the chance to keep practicing my English.”

  “You should practice your lying, for I am not very charming, and your English is more elegant than mine. But as you wish,” says Iris, lying herself, for the last thing she will ever do in this life is dance with a Prince in a public gathering. “There are far more beautiful women than I awaiting your inspection, I believe, so I will say good evening now.”

  “More beautiful perhaps,” says the Prince, “but so very Dutch.”

  “Some of them speak French,” says Iris. “You must have learned that.”

  “French reminds me of home,” he says. “I want to be neither h
ome nor here, but someplace else. At least English is a language that has the catch of otherness in it. And I like England.”

  “You know England, my England?” says Iris. She has been about to turn away and lead the fiercely blushing Ruth with her, but suddenly the notion of the Prince knowing anything about that space behind her blank memory is riveting, painful, necessary to pursue. The dark shadow he sees in paintings . . .

  “Green fields, hills you can climb; the forests, the fens; I know England almost as well as I know France, I think—”

  “Hills!” says Iris. “Oh, to climb a hill again—!”

  Master Pruyn is prodding Iris in the back. She makes her curtsey.

  “The chalk downs, do you know them? I shall count on continuing the conversation—” says the Prince.

  “My own daughter, Gabriela Pruyn,” begins Heer Pruyn. And Iris sees that she and Ruth in their ugliness have been displayed first to provide the greatest possible contrast to the Pruyns’ own daughter, coming next. Heer Pruyn pushes forward a dumpy youngster made up to look something like a stuffed swan.

  The Prince’s cheek muscle twitches again, but he hasn’t managed a word of greeting when there is a small but palpable gasp from the crowd, and his head swivels along with the others to see.

  “Oh,” says Iris, safe and anonymous once more in the crowded sidelines, clutching Ruth’s hand, “she’s here!”

  Clarissa of

  Aragon

  The hush gives way to a small excitement of whispering as Clarissa Santiago of Aragon—Cinderella—their own Clara van den Meer—takes two steps into the hall.

  She has told Iris that she hopes to arrive without notice, but there’s nothing Clara can ever do without notice, even being as disguised by a veil as she is. The candlelight on all sides of the room makes a glowing golden background as she pauses. She tries to drift behind the ranks of townspeople, but they keep shifting aside, as if they have a duty to reveal this stranger to their honored foreign guests.

  In the end her steps falter, and though she stands with her head down, as far back in the alcove as she can keep, she is no less than radiant.

  Even before Iris can whisper to Ruth, “Remember, we don’t say a word to her!” the murmuring begins. Clara is easily the most beautiful creature in the room. Heer Pruyn straightens his back and throws his shoulders into alignment, and as he makes his way across the floor, his wife follows behind him with her hands clasped respectfully. His words of introduction are quiet and lost in the buzz of gossip, no doubt because he’s trying to conceal the fact that he doesn’t recognize this most bewitching of guests. But he’s a man of the world and, it seems, of honor. If he has determined that Clara is an uninvited guest, he doesn’t reveal it. He takes her small white hand in his, and he leads her across the floor to where the Dowager Queen of France and the Prince of Marsillac are waiting.

  “Clarissa of Aragon,” he says.

  “I know of no Clarissa of Aragon!” says the Queen Mother, her sagging face suddenly looking beaky with the pleasure of being suspicious.

  Iris watches Clara struggle to gain control of her voice. At last she says, “I know of you, Your Highness.” She curtseys with a deliberate, slow gesture. “Mine is a small family and a dying one, and I have been raised in the Lowlands following the struggles.”

  “You appear to be blond as a Dane behind that veil, or am I giddy on port?” says the Queen Mother.

  “My mother was northern,” says Clara. “I’m more comfortable here in Holland, where I can speak in her tongue.”

  Iris maneuvers to see Philippe de Marsillac. The Prince seems thunderstruck. All the ease and comfort he has just demonstrated in his conversation with Iris—which is the longest exchange he has had since entering the room—has fled him. He isn’t so much flushed or pale as he is golden; his face seems to reflect the arcs of regal material in Clara’s gown.

  “You’ve bewitched my nephew,” says the Queen Mother. “Remove your veil, my good miss, and let us have a proper invitation.”

  “I may not,” says Clara.

  “Pray tell,” says the Queen Mother. She leans her chin toward Clara, which seems to be a sign that she wants her spine to follow, but since her spine is weak, valets rush forward and gently take hold of her elbows and tilt her forward. “I am nothing but interested.”

  Iris can’t hear the answer that Clara gives, but she knows what it must be: “I am paying a penance,” or words to that effect. A suitable excuse for wearing a veil in a warm room, and a message that Clarissa of Aragon is Catholic. Clara van den Meer, of course, is Calvinist by birth, so this is to throw curious townspeople off her train in the event someone should suspect her of being a local woman . . .

  “A face so young and pretty, even hidden as it is, can’t be the masque of iniquity,” says the Queen Mother. “One needs to be old and gnarled as a boiled leg of mutton like me to deserve such a penance. I can see your hair is ripe as Croesus’ gold even behind your lace. You are a Diana before us. Pray, let the veil drop!”

  “I should not discuss it further,” says Clara.

  “Then shall we have a dance? Let us see you dance! Since the boy is tongue-tied for the first time tonight!” cries the Queen Mother, and she elevates a plump hand. Heer Pruyn makes a motion to the lead violinist of the small orchestra, and a vivid gigue is struck up.

  “Please,” says the Prince, “do me the honor.”

  “Nothing would please me more,” says Clara, “but I may not.”

  “More penance?” murmurs the Queen Mother. “How fascinating. I myself am quite addicted to sin. It does keep my confessor busy, negotiating with heaven on my behalf.”

  “A . . . a turned ankle,” says Clara. “I fell on the path alighting from my carriage. It is still recovering. I should sit down—I will remove myself now—” Her voice is beginning to race; she isn’t up for this charade.

  Iris can follow no more of the conversation then, for a tap on the shoulder causes her to turn. Caspar is standing there, in rumpled but decent clothes just barely distinguishable from servants’ garb.

  “How did you get in here!” says Iris, as alarmed as she is pleased.

  “I passed myself off as La Principessa’s boy-in-waiting. Wait’ll I tell you!”

  “Tell, do tell—”

  “The odious Nicholaes van Stolk arrived at the house just as Clara was mounting into the carriage. He caught sight of the hem of her golden skirt as she pulled the door closed. He called out to her familiarly—Clara! he called, Clara! In his guttural voice, all like a husband, possessive and tender. I bade the driver move on, and I climbed on the back board to attend to Clara. But I could hear her heaving softly through the carriage, one sentence, over and over—” He leans toward Iris. “She said, ‘It is the crow! It is the crow!’”

  Iris doesn’t understand at first, and Caspar can’t explain. But suddenly—as she sees van Stolk at the door of the room, arriving without invitation, the cad!—she knows what Clara thinks—that he is the spirit bird, the one who caught her and made her a changeling.

  That’s what Clara thinks. She may be wrong. It was ten years ago or more—how can she remember a voice for ten years? And though overbearing and smug, van Stolk is a solid burgher in sober Haarlem. How could it be he?

  Accusing van den Meer of profiteering, then collecting the spoils himself . . .

  Clara may be wrong, thinks Iris, but she must be frightened nonetheless. Iris turns and casts her glance across the hall. Clara is trying to withdraw from the Prince; she is curtseying a second time, a third, and drawing her veil the closer about her face. The Prince sees it as a game, and is teasing her with courtliness and respect. Iris approaches as near as she dares, and passes her without facing her, but manages to whisper near Clara’s ear, “Dear brave one—Van Stolk has arrived—you mustn’t be frightened—”

  Clara whips around, and she does the unthinkable: She reaches for the Prince’s hand and murmurs something to him. Without a word the Prince of Marsilla
c escorts Clara to the side of the room. He opens one of the salon doors and ushers her inside. The door shuts firmly behind them both.

  Iris looks about for Caspar again. Van Stolk has been surveying the room; with the crowds, he may not have seen Clara and the Prince. But he catches sight of Caspar and begins to make his way through the throng to him. Iris gets there first.

  “He’s beating down on you,” she says. “He will pester you to find out if that was Clara! He mustn’t know. You better leave.”

  “I can’t leave her here alone,” he says. “Quick, let’s dance; they’re about to begin.”

  “I can’t dance!” she says.

  “Of course you can, easiest thing in the world. I have legs like ninepins and I can dance, so just follow and do as I say.”

  “Caspar!—” she cries. But he has tugged her into the center of the hall, and they fall into their places in the parallel lines, men and women standing opposite each other. Van Stolk falls back, partnerless, waiting.

  Twisting about, Iris sees that the Dowager Queen has been removed to a far corner of the room, and Master and Mistress Pruyn stand on either side of her, holding elegant beeswax tapers in matching silver bowls. The Pruyns resemble a pair of human candelabra. The Dowager Queen caws, “A set of playing cards, a table, and a partner!” and all are found for her within minutes. The musical introduction draws to a close, and the instrumentalists watch for a downbeat. Then the dance is begun, and it takes all of Iris’s concentration to follow the lead of the woman next to her.

  Iris sees the Master at the shadowy end of the hall, spinning poor gallumping Ruth around in the shadows under the stairs. Ruth has no sense of rhythm or grace, but her face is broad with glee and she seems the most natural dancer in the room.

  The figures are difficult to pick up, but they repeat themselves, and while Iris doesn’t have anything in the way of athletic prowess, at least she’s able to keep up. When she gets used to the steps, she finds she can observe the other dancers. With chagrin she realizes that the dancers are largely guests from the Hague or elsewhere; most of the stolid Haarlem folk stand on the sidelines, scowling with dignity.