The Golden Braid

by Melanie Dickerson

  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 from 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 a
sked 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.”

  “I am not afraid of men.” Mother chopped viciously at the dried fruit between her knife and the thick wooden tabletop. “There isn’t a man alive whose throat I wouldn’t slash in a moment if he came near you.” She raised the knife higher than was necessary and brought it down with a quick, hard slice.

  Rapunzel’s stomach turned at seeing her mother like this. Her face seemed to go dark when she was in one of these moods. But if she could get her mother to tell her what had so turned her against men, then perhaps she could convince her that at least some of her fears were unfounded.

  “Mother, did a man attack you when you were young?”

  “No.” Her mother’s voice was a hiss. “I was never attacked. You don’t have to be attacked to be destroyed.”

  Mother’s face was tight, her lips pursed, her eyes strange and dark.

  “What happened?” Rapunzel asked softly.

  Mother continued to chop. Finally, she stopped and looked at Rapunzel. “Men will tell you they love you, then they will leave you.” She pointed her knife at Rapunzel. “You must not trust them.”

  “Yes, Mother,” she whispered. She plucked, plucked, plucked the feathers while the bald spot of chicken skin grew larger. “Did someone tell you they loved you and then leave you?”

  Mother got out their tiny pouch of spices and used her fingers to take out several pinches of the pungent brown powder and throw them into the pile of walnuts and dried fruit on the table in front of her. “You don’t need to know that.”

  “Mother, you know I love you. I would love you no matter what you did in the past.”

  Neither spoke again while Rapunzel finished plucking the chicken and Mother finished preparing the pie, putting the top crust over it, and placing it in the edge of the hot ashes of the fire, while Rapunzel carefully dropped the plucked chicken into the boiling water.

  “I wish you wouldn’t keep secrets from me.” Rapunzel kept her voice quiet, hoping not to anger her. As soon as she spoke, she remembered the very big secret she herself was keeping. She was being hypocritical. But she had long suspected Mother was keeping other secrets from her since she had told Rapunzel more than one version of how Rapunzel had come to be left with her.

  Mother was slicing the bread she had brought home. She stopped and her shoulders stiffened. “Very well. Since you want to know so badly . . . When I was your age, I was just like you, Rapunzel. I wanted to get married.”

  Rapunzel had not said she wanted to get married. But she did not interrupt Mother.

  “I met a young man. I fell in love with him, and he told me he loved me. He said when he was able to make a little money and have a house, he would marry me.” Mother kept her back to Rapunzel, but she had stopped working and was standing still with her hands on the table, arms straight. “I was young. I believed he loved me. But it was all a lie. He got me with child, and then I never saw him again. He left me and went to England.” She spat the word like a bitter, unripe walnut. “He left me alone with my grandmother and never came back for me.”

  Was he the person she had come back to Hagenheim to see?

  Mother’s voice was breathy and hard-edged at the same time. “When I discovered I was with child, I sent him word, but he only said he could not come, that he was going to England to make his fortune
with Lord Claybrook. He abandoned me.” Mother’s face contorted and she bent forward.

  “Mother, I’m so sorry. He never should have done that to you.” Tears welled in her eyes, her insides twisting at the pain in Mother’s face. She held her breath as she waited for what Mother would say next.

  “The baby was born too early. A girl. She died after a few hours. And then God gave me you.” Her voice broke and Mother’s body shook in a back and forth motion, as if she were laughing, as she made a wheezing sound. “God felt sorry for me, that I lost my baby and the man I loved. You were always meant to be my daughter, don’t you know that? You were mine, and I knew it from the moment I saw you.” She drew in an audible breath and stared at Rapunzel.

  Rapunzel’s heart beat faster. Was Mother unwell? Perhaps she had let the moonlight fall on her face when she was sleeping last night. Hadn’t there been a full moon? Everyone knew that caused madness.

  “Of course, Mother. Of course I was meant to be your daughter. And I am so sorry for what that man did to you. He should not have dealt with you so falsely.” This was why her poor mother had warned her over and over about men. She was still in pain from her broken heart. But it seemed as if there must be more to the story.

  “Don’t you see?” Mother finally turned and looked at Rapunzel over her shoulder for a moment before turning her back on her again. “How foolish I was . . . foolish for falling in love with him, for believing that he cared for me.”

  “You mustn’t be so hard on yourself.” Should Rapunzel go to her mother and put her arm around her? In the past she had learned that when Mother was angry, it was best not to get too close. “You could not have known that he would not honor his promise to you.”

  Mother spun around, still holding the knife in her hand. “That is where you are wrong. I should have known. I never should have let him touch me. You must never let them touch you, Rapunzel.” Mother’s eyes were wide and strangely dark. Was she only imagining that Mother’s face was darker and somehow different?

  “Of course, Mother. Do not upset yourself. I will not let anyone touch me.” Rapunzel’s stomach churned.