The Golden Braid

by Melanie Dickerson

  “Mother, please.” Rapunzel tugged on her arm, but Mother shook her off. “Mother, stop. Please stop.” But she didn’t stop; she only hurried to fetch more things. “I promise I will go with you every day to Hagenheim. I promise. I will not see Sir Gerek anymore. He’ll be gone to Hagenheim Castle to resume his duties there tomorrow. I don’t want to go to another place. Cannot we stay here a few more days at least?”

  “Why? So you can run away with Sir Gerek?”

  “No, Mother, of course not. I know you are hurt because I was not truthful with you, but I was just so desperate to learn to read, and I knew you would not like it if you knew I was being taught by a man. But I do know how to read now. I can read German. It is so wonderful, and I can teach you if you wish. Only, please do not leave here so hastily. I have not fallen in love with anyone, and no one is in love with me. Please, cannot we stay?” She wasn’t even sure why she wanted to stay so badly. But she felt her future was here. She did not want to go to some tiny, obscure village again.

  “Men will hurt you, Rapunzel. You must not trust them. How could you have trusted him?” Her face scrunched up, her openmouthed stare imploring. Would she start wailing again?

  “Yes, Mother, I know. But he is gone now, and he did not hurt me.” Rapunzel reached out and rubbed her mother’s shoulder, trying to soothe her.

  Mother spun away from her. “I do not know what to think. You deceived me.” She shook her head, her back to her.

  “I know. I am sorry. Please forgive me.”

  Mother simply shook her head. “It is very hard when a mother cannot trust her own child.”

  Rapunzel resisted the urge to huff out a sigh. Yes, she felt guilty for deceiving Mother, but wasn’t she overreacting? “I did not intend to hurt you. I only wanted to get reading lessons. I am truly sorry. Let us have some pottage and I will sing to you and braid your hair. I will make the soup. You sit and rest your eyes.”

  But Mother ignored her and continued to pack up their things.

  Rapunzel put the pea and oat pottage they had had for breakfast that morning back over the fire pit. She stirred the ashes underneath, but there wasn’t an ember left. She moved the pot back out of the way and set about relighting the fire while Mother kept gathering things and packing them into blankets.

  Her heart beat anxiously as she struck her flints together, creating a spark that ignited the dry beech tree bark. She added some more fuel to the fire—bark, straw, and sticks—until it was burning strong enough to burn the larger pieces of wood. The smoke stung her eyes, but she ignored it and put the pottage back over the fire.

  Mother planned to leave in the morning. Rapunzel had to make a decision. Would she go with her?

  She touched the pocket inside the lining of her skirt where she had tucked Sir Gerek’s letter recommending her for a maidservant position at Hagenheim Castle. For once, Rapunzel had a choice. She did not have to go with Mother.

  Rapunzel’s heart continued to pound and skip. What would Mother do if Rapunzel refused to go with her? What if she sneaked away early in the morning and went to Hagenheim Castle? No, that would be cruel. Mother wouldn’t know where she was. She would have to tell her mother what she planned to do.

  Her breath seemed to leave her at the thought of defying Mother.

  She finished reheating the cold pottage. Mother was still throwing things together into cloths, bags, and baskets and muttering to herself. Truly, it was times like this that she wondered if Mother was sane. Other mothers pushed their daughters to marry as soon as possible. Rapunzel had always been grateful her mother was not like that, but at the moment, she didn’t feel grateful, she only felt . . . smothered. Trapped. Desperate.

  She simply could not face leaving again, going to a new town, a new village, being the outsider, the strange midwife’s daughter. She was tired, weary to the bone of moving over and over again and never feeling like she belonged. She knew how to read, and now she wanted to read and learn and see and do and be a part of something.

  “Mother, I don’t wish to leave with you tomorrow.” Dishing up a bowl of pottage, she sat cross-legged on the floor with her wooden spoon and glanced across the room at Mother. “I want to stay in Hagenheim.”

  Mother went still, then turned her head in Rapunzel’s direction. “What did you say?”

  “I don’t want to move, Mother. I want to stay here. And I want to go with you tomorrow to Hagenheim.”

  Mother didn’t say anything. She also did not eat the bowl of pottage that Rapunzel tried to give her. Instead, she sat quietly crying, not bothering to wipe the tears.

  When they were getting their bed ready that night, Mother still had not spoken. Then she turned and looked at Rapunzel. Mother’s eyes were red rimmed and wild. “If you see that man, Sir Gerek, again, I will give you a sleeping potion and take you far away from here, where no one can find you.”

  Rapunzel’s insides felt hollow and a cold sweat chilled her temples.

  Rapunzel did not answer her. They lay down on the bed and Mother turned her back to her.

  Her mind went back to the man who had attacked her and how he had seemed eager to hurt her and take revenge on her for throwing the knife into his arm. She shivered and lay facing Mother’s back, reliving the terror as she had tried to outrun him, as she screamed Sir Gerek’s name, as the man threw her on the ground and sat on her. She wrapped her arms around herself, curling into a ball, and squeezed her eyes shut. Then she remembered the bone-deep relief of Sir Gerek appearing with his drawn sword.

  She had expected that her mother, when she heard what had happened, would put her arms around Rapunzel and comfort her. But instead, her mother had screamed at her and ranted and cried for hours.

  She had to face the truth that it was no longer safe to stay with her mother.

  Sir Gerek. She had always thought him arrogant and irritable, but he had been more compassionate than her mother. He’d even put his arms around her and patted her shoulder. She had thought she disliked him. But whatever it was she felt about him now, it was not dislike. Would she never see him again?

  Rapunzel awoke from a dream about a squirrel hitting her on the head with a bunch of nuts. With barely a hint of light coming through the cracks in the shutters, she still heard the tapping sound. Someone was knocking on their door.

  Mother got up and yelled, “Who is there?”

  “Is this the home of Gothel the midwife?”

  Mother opened the door. “I am Gothel the midwife.”

  “Please come. My mistress has been having pains since last evening.”

  Mother turned and reached for her birthing bag. “Rapunzel, get up. You’re coming with me.”

  “Yes, Mother.” She was dressed in her underdress, but hurried to pull her brown kirtle over her head, the one she had worn the day before with Sir Gerek’s letter still in the pocket.

  Rapunzel followed her mother out the door and into the dark gray of predawn.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Rapunzel always felt like she was in hell at a birth, with all the moans and groans and occasional rantings and screams, and this was no exception. She huddled in a corner while the laboring woman’s husband and servants obeyed Mother’s instructions.

  One of the older servants, the cook, came into the room and pointed at Rapunzel. “Can you go to the market for me?”

  The woman started moaning and crying as Mother called out, “I can see the head. Keep pushing.” Mother didn’t even glance up.

  Rapunzel hurried out of the room with the cook, who asked her to get some calamus to help the new mother sleep once the baby came, as well as pears, because pears would help her produce more milk.

  Rapunzel stepped out onto the street, thankful they were not far from the market, but her heart was pounding; this was her chance to escape.

  She glanced around at all the people. It was strange and exciting and frightening all at the same time. She kept her head down as she went in the direction of the Marktplatz. No one seemed t
o be paying any attention to her.

  When she reached the market, she found a woman selling pears and bought six. “Can you direct me to someone selling calamus?”

  “The herb sellers should have some. Check in the center, near the fountain.”

  “Thank you.” Rapunzel threaded her way through the people and the lines of sellers and their booths. Finally, she found the sellers with their bunches of green and dried herbs laid out in small piles. Having picked herbs with her mother many times, she recognized the calamus, stepped up, and asked for a small bunch.

  She walked quickly through the streets back to the house. She went in the kitchen door and gave the cook the items and turned and left without a word.

  She hurried back to the town square, her blood pulsing in her ears. The five towers of Hagenheim Castle rose behind the buildings of the square, and Rapunzel made her way toward them.

  Approaching the castle gatehouse, her knees went weak as she stared at the guard. He barely glanced at her as she was passing through, but Rapunzel shifted directions and walked toward him instead. “I want to work in the castle. Would you tell me where I should go?”

  The guard studied her with a hard expression. “You want to be a maidservant?”

  “Yes.”

  “Go in the back there”—he pointed to the right side of the castle—“through the kitchen door, and ask for the mistress of the maidservants, Frau Adelheit.”

  “Thank you.”

  He nodded and she kept walking.

  A path had been worn toward the back of the castle, so she followed it to a stone building that was connected to the castle by a covered walkway. The door was open.

  No one looked her way, so she stepped in and tried to find someone to ask. A large pig was roasting over a fire in a giant oven recessed into the wall, where the smoke all seemed to be disappearing instead of going into the room. Even though it was huge, this place for the fire, with its escape hole for the smoke, seemed to work even better than Sir Gerek’s in his monastery room.

  A woman stood stirring a pot at the edge of the fire, then swung an iron arm that held the pot’s handle with a hook so that the pot was back over the fire. Younger women sat chopping and peeling vegetables and fruits at a long wooden table. They were all wearing the same blue cotehardie and the same white head covering, which was more like a kerchief. It pulled their hair away from their faces and tied underneath in the back, but left uncovered the hair that flowed down their backs.

  Rapunzel stepped toward them. “Can you tell me how to find Frau Adelheit?”

  One young woman stood up. “I can help you find her.”

  “I thank you.” She followed the young woman out of the hot little building and across to a huge wooden door. Within the large one was a small door just tall enough and wide enough for them to pass through. They opened it and entered a dark corridor.

  “Are you inquiring about the servant position?” the young woman asked.

  “Ja.”

  “You will need to know someone who works here. Do you know anyone?” They came to a door.

  “I know Cristobel.”

  The young woman knocked on the door.

  “You may enter,” a voice said on the other side.

  The woman opened the door and said, “Someone is here about the servant position, Frau Adelheit.” She held the door open and Rapunzel walked through. The young woman closed the door and Rapunzel was alone with a woman who appeared to be about forty years old.

  Frau Adelheit sat at a small table holding a pen in her hand. She put down the pen and stared at her, but not unkindly. “What is your name?”

  “Rapunzel.”

  “And I am Frau Adelheit, the mistress of servants at Hagenheim Castle. What makes you think you should work at this castle for the duke and his lady?”

  “I-I am willing to work hard and do whatever is required of me, Frau Adelheit.”

  “And why do you want to work hard and do whatever is required of you?”

  “Because I-I have no family except for a mother, and I wish to work and live independently.”

  “That is a lofty goal for a peasant girl.” But she tempered the words with a small smile.

  “Lofty? I’d say it’s more desperate.” Rapunzel expelled a breath that was half laugh, half sigh.

  Frau Adelheit raised an eyebrow.

  “But I am a good worker, and I am very discreet and loyal.”

  The woman continued to study her. “Who would recommend you for this position? Do you know anyone who works here?”

  “I know Cristobel.” She suddenly realized she didn’t know Cristobel’s last name or exactly what her duties were at the castle.

  “Cristobel?”

  “Ja, Frau Adelheit.” She held her breath, but when Frau Adelheit said nothing more, she stuck her hand inside her pocket. “And I have this letter from one of Duke Wilhelm’s knights, Sir Gerek.”

  Now both her brows went up in an expression Rapunzel hoped meant she was impressed. She reached out and took the letter from Rapunzel’s hand.

  While Frau Adelheit read the letter, Rapunzel glanced about the room and saw large trunks and folded linens lining the shelves and two large baskets of linens—obviously a linen storage room.

  Frau Adelheit looked up from the letter. “Will you want to sleep in the maids’ quarters with the other live-in maids?”

  Rapunzel only hesitated a moment. “Yes.”

  “When would you like to start?”

  “As soon as possible.” Rapunzel’s breath caught in her throat. Was she giving her the job?

  “You may begin folding these linens in the baskets and placing them in that trunk there. I shall see if Lady Rose wishes to meet you now or later. She is very particular about wanting to meet all the new servants.”

  “Yes, Frau Adelheit.”

  Rapunzel moved toward the first basket as the older woman left the room.

  She picked up a wide linen sheet from the top of the pile. Her hands trembled, but she forced her fingers to glide along the edge of the fabric and find the corners, then bring them together in a fold.

  What will Mother do? No doubt she will be furious. She had said she would give Rapunzel a sleeping potion and take her away from here and lock her up where she’d never defy her again. Tears pricked her eyelids. But she couldn’t cry now. She might be face-to-face with the lady of the castle at any moment.

  How terrifying to think of sleeping with strangers tonight. But more terrifying was what her mother might do when she discovered Rapunzel had gone to the castle. She didn’t want to hurt her mother. She loved her. She was the only person in the world she belonged to or who cared for her. And sneaking away to the monastery to be taught reading by a young handsome knight . . . of course Mother had been upset when she found out. But Mother knew she wanted to learn to read and might never have found a way for her to learn. Rapunzel had to make her own way.

  She could not think about Mother’s anger or pain or her own guilt just now. She would think of Frau Adelheit and how best to please her, of what Cristobel would say when she saw her here, working in the castle, and of Sir Gerek. Had he already returned to the castle? It was still early in the morning.

  Rapunzel finished folding all the linens in the first basket and was starting the second basket when Frau Adelheit returned.

  “Lady Rose will speak with you as soon as you change your clothes. Come with me.”

  Rapunzel followed the woman to a small room where Frau Adelheit handed her the same white chemise and blue cotehardie that the other maidservants were wearing. When she had changed and taken her braided hair out of the wimple, Frau Adelheit pinned the small, white head covering over the top of Rapunzel’s hair. It did not even begin to cover all her hair.

  What would Mother say? Her hair was exposed for anyone to see. She couldn’t help asking, past the lump in her throat, “Are you sure my hair is covered enough?”

  “Covered enough?”

  “Yes. I don’
t want to appear indecent.”

  “Because your hair is so thick and long? It looks very well. Do not worry.”

  Frau Adelheit led her through a series of corridors and up some stairs before pausing in an open doorway.

  “Come in, Frau Adelheit.”

  Frau Adelheit motioned for her to follow her inside. But Rapunzel hesitated when she saw Sir Gerek.

  He knelt in the middle of the floor wearing a new splint that allowed him to bend his knee and only covered the lower half of his leg. He was bowing before a lady sitting in a cushioned chair that was the most luxurious piece of furniture Rapunzel had ever seen. She was also beautiful, though around the same age as Frau Adelheit.

  “Please rise, Sir Gerek.” Lady Rose—for that great lady could be no one else but the duke’s wife—smiled at Sir Gerek. “Thank you for bringing those letters to me from my children, Gabe and Sophie. I am overjoyed to receive them. And I am so sorry about your leg and arm. Frau Lena says they are healing well?”

  “Yes, my lady. Thank you.”

  Frau Adelheit and Rapunzel hung back against the wall, but now Lady Rose raised her gaze to them and motioned them forward.

  “Good morning. Who is this beautiful maiden?”

  Rapunzel walked forward. Was she allowed to speak? She wished it were permissible to fall to her knees like Sir Gerek, but she was afraid the proper response was to curtsy. She did her best to put one foot behind the other and dip her body. She hoped it was not too wobbly.

  “My lady, this maiden is Rapunzel,” Sir Gerek interjected. “She and her mother are the two women I told you about, that I found being attacked on the south road to Hagenheim. And this is the maiden who saved me from that attacker the next day by throwing a knife into his arm.”

  Rapunzel lifted her head. Lady Rose was smiling at her.

  “That is very impressive, Rapunzel. I like your name. Where are you from?”