The Stepsister's Tale

by Tracy Barrett

  “Please,” she whispered. “Please.”

  Chapter 22

  The music started again and people moved across the floor. Maude tugged at Mamma’s sleeve. “I’m really hungry.” Her voice rose in a whine. “Can’t I get something to eat?”

  “You don’t look like you go hungry very often,” said a slender girl standing next to them. She was wearing a dress of such pale rose that it reminded Jane of a cloud at sunrise—almost white, but if you looked hard you could see the color. Maude’s cheeks flamed in a blush. It was true; it hadn’t taken her long to gain back the weight she had lost over the long winter, and in her too-tight salmon-pink dress she looked like an overstuffed sausage. Jane tried to imagine the girl with her impossibly thin waist cutting wood or digging honey out of a tree buzzing with bees and burned to say something to her, but she had turned away and was talking with a gentleman.

  “May we eat something, Mamma?” Jane asked.

  Mamma was clearly about to say no, but then her face softened. “Just taste, girls. A lady doesn’t make a glutton of herself, especially in public. Most especially a Halsey lady.”

  Before Mamma had even finished, Maude took off almost at a run, pushing her way through the crowd. Jane followed more slowly, wishing her sister would show a bit of dignity. She caught up with Maude in front of a table crowded with heaping platters of food. Tiny silver fish lay in rows on rounds of toast, savory-smelling cheeses alternated with pickled vegetables in colorful spirals on a golden dish, fruits—where had they found them this time of year?—were arranged in geometric shapes. A black-clad man sliced honeyed boar and piled the dripping pieces onto a board where the juice ran off on to the white tablecloth.

  Jane stared at the table, wishing she could eat now that there was finally a bounty in front of her, but her stomach was so tight with apprehension that the thought made her sick. A servant scurried past, carrying plates of uneaten food back to the kitchen. Last winter, she and Maude and Isabella could have eaten all day on what was left on them. Jane stepped aside to let the servant past, and the hurrying woman glanced at her without pausing, looking surprised at the courtesy. Jane recognized her; she was a friend of the Foresters’, who, Jane knew, had lost three of her four children in the famine. What must the woman think, seeing all this food wasted? What would Mistress Forester think? What would Will think?

  Maude, of course, had gone straight for the sweets and was staring open-mouthed at a giant tower of pastries. They were in fanciful shapes: rabbits, swans, frogs, all colored bright pink and blue and yellow, nothing like the plain honey cake topped with crushed nuts that Will— Stop thinking about him, she told herself fiercely. She reached a tentative hand toward one as Maude stuffed a yellow frog, speckled with green, into her mouth. Before Jane could take a nibble of her blue swan, Maude’s face registered distress.

  “What is it, Maudie?” Jane asked. Maude shook her head. Her cheeks bulged, and she could communicate only with her eyes—and Jane could not understand their message. Maude made no attempt to swallow but looked around in increasing agitation.

  Jane finally guessed the trouble. “Do you need to spit it out?” Maude nodded mutely. Jane sighed. First, there had been that embarrassment because of Maude’s greed, and now, she wouldn’t even eat the sweet she had been begging for. Jane looked around without success for a bowl, a cloth, anything. Housekeeping items were likely kept hidden away, so the guests wouldn’t be bothered by the thought that human hands, not fairies, had created this spectacle.

  “Come with me behind that curtain.” Jane pulled Maude with her. She parted the purple velvet hanging behind the banquet table, and hoping that nobody—especially Mamma—was observing them, she ducked behind it.

  Worse and worse. The curtain, instead of discreetly blocking off a serving area, as she had assumed, appeared instead to be a temporary partition between the ballroom and an annex. Most dreadful of all, the area was filled with men, some sitting at a table, others leaning over the seated men’s shoulders, talking, laughing, pointing.

  The men took no notice of the two girls shrinking back into the curtain. Their voices were raised, and Jane saw cards flashing. Unexpectedly, a memory flew to her—of her father and other men, crowded around a game like this one, with cards and coins and bottles covering the table. Then, as now, the men seemed excited as the cards flew.

  “Janie!” It was Maude, in a stage whisper. “I spit it out in the corner. Let’s go before they see us.”

  But Jane was mesmerized. Almost, almost she could see Papa as he had been then, handsomer than any of the men now seated at the table, more elegant, more lightning-quick in his movements. She blinked back tears.

  “Jane!” Maude’s voice had become more urgent, and Jane shook off the memory. She pawed at the velvet, looking for the opening. They were entangled in the heavy cloth when Jane realized that the noise in the small room had been replaced by silence. She gave her sister’s hand a warning squeeze, remembering how furious Papa had become when she had interrupted his card games. These men seemed hot-tempered, from the snippets of conversation she had heard, and most of them wore sharp-looking swords at their sides.

  A voice rose from the table. Jane thought she recognized the speaker. It sounded like Prince Bertrand. “What are you saying? What do you mean, there’s nothing left? Of course there is something left! My father—”

  “It is by your father’s orders that I speak,” came the thin and raspy tone of an old man. “His Imperial Majesty has retired to his chambers. Before he left, he made it clear to me that you are to be advanced no more credit at the gaming table. He said—”

  “Nonsense. The treasury is full. My father is an old, sick man and will die soon.” The prince didn’t pause as the others gasped and murmured protests. “And then it will all be mine. So you’re risking nothing by allowing me to borrow against my inheritance.”

  The other voice hardened. “Your father, Your Majesty, is indeed an old man. His health, as you say, is poor. But the treasury is far from full. So many died in the fever and famine of the winter that more than half the taxes remain unpaid.”

  “So we will collect them now that the fever has passed.”

  “We cannot,” the old man answered. “Many people who owed money did not survive the winter. You cannot collect taxes from a corpse.”

  “There must be something you can do, Lord Chamberlain. I share my father’s faith in you. Sooner or later, the treasury will be full again. In the meantime, surely one of these men will extend me credit.”

  Silence.

  “Come, which of you wishes to become the favorite of your future king?”

  More silence.

  Finally, “You already owe a great deal of money to each of them,” the old man’s voice said. “Your father—”

  “My father!” The prince’s voice rose. “Stop talking about my father! I am your prince!” The girls heard chairs overturning, and shouts rang out. Jane pawed frantically at the curtain and finally found an opening, but they had twisted so much that they found themselves looking once again into the little room. She froze at the sight of the prince holding his sword high in the air. Three men held him back as he lunged for an old man who knelt before him with his head bowed.

  “Now!” Jane whispered, and the girls fumbled at the curtain and slipped back into the ballroom. They scuttled to a row of chairs against the side wall. Between the matrons fanning themselves in the ever-increasing heat and the girls too plain to be asked to dance, they managed to find two chairs next to each other. They slid gratefully into them, Maude panting with exertion, Jane relieved that they had made their escape.

  Maude stared at Jane, wide-eyed. “Is the prince going to kill that old man?”

  Jane shook her head, although she was far from sure. “I don’t think so. Lots of people were holding him back.” The thought of that peevish fac
e and shrill voice sickened her. She remembered how quiet Will was, and how, when he did speak, his voice was calm and thoughtful. She thought of the confident way he handled his wood ax. Not like that spoiled boy with his vicious-looking sword.

  Suddenly she was relieved that Isabella wasn’t there. If she had somehow found the trap that Jane had set for her, if she had managed to drive the little orange carriage here, perhaps the prince would have believed her lies about her father’s fortune. What a nightmare it would be if Isabella did marry the prince; anyone who married him was in for heartbreak, and Isabella had suffered enough.

  Maude’s voice broke into her thoughts. “That pastry was awful.” She pulled such a disgusted face that Jane poked her before anyone else could see it. “The cream was curdled, and there was mold on it. I thought it was decoration, but then I could taste that it was mold.”

  Jane squirmed as her hastily stitched collar scratched her neck, but subsided as her chair’s legs squeaked in protest. Was this what everything was like here in the palace, then? A spoiled, murderous prince, rotten food, furniture that was falling apart? Everything looked so beautiful, but none of it was any good. Was this the world Mamma missed so much? Had it been like this even when she was young, or had things changed since those days?

  The music swelled. That, at least, was beautiful. Jane had never heard such melodies before. The songs that Mamma hummed, the fiddle music that she occasionally heard in the market square in the village—none of it was like this. Jane closed her eyes and let her body sway lightly to the sound.

  She was so weary. She no longer feared that someone would ask her to dance—the men were pointedly avoiding the corner where she and her sister sat in their gaudy finery. When could they go? Mamma had said that they wouldn’t stay late, since it would take them so long to drive home. Not much past midnight, she had said. A clock had struck during a pause in the dancing, but Jane hadn’t counted its strokes.

  She sat up straighter and looked for Mamma. Maybe if Jane said she had a headache, Mamma would take pity on her and they could leave. She thought of her bed, her old comfortable clothes, a supper of broth and mushrooms and eggs—fresh eggs, not the addled ones they probably served here—and the longing for home was as sharp as the stab of a pin. Where was Mamma? Jane stood and turned slowly, surveying the room. Her back was to the grand stairway when silence fell yet again. She turned to look, but the suddenly motionless dancers blocked her view.

  She knew that the royal family held no more princes, and the only princess had married and moved far away. The queen had been dead for many years. Then why was everyone so motionless and so hushed? The musicians had stopped in mid-note, except for one cellist, who sawed away for another measure before falling quiet. No one bowed or curtseyed, and a slight buzz of conversation hovered in the air. Jane stood on tiptoe, but still could not see. She did spy Mamma, though, and pushed through the crowd to get to her, dragging Maude with her. Mamma, like everyone else, stared in the direction of the grand staircase. “I don’t believe it,” Mamma said.

  “What is it?” Maude asked. Mamma just shook her head.

  Sound erupted behind them as a door flew open near the banquet table. Heads turned; this time Jane was positioned to see the object of their attention.

  The prince, swordless now, stamped into the room from the annex where he had been gaming. “What’s going on? Where is the music? I didn’t tell you to—”

  And then he, too, fell silent, gazing upward with his mouth open.

  “What is it?” Jane was in agony. The crowd parted, leaving a clear passageway between the prince and the staircase. Jane, at the edge of the opening, peered up it to the landing.

  And then she knew that her ill-conceived wish had been granted, and that her desire to take it back had come too late. For there, at the top of the stairs, gleaming in white satin, stood a fairy princess with sparkling slippers, jewels glinting in her hair, on her hands, around her slender neck.

  It was Isabella.

  Chapter 23

  It appeared that nobody but Jane recognized that Isabella’s gown was a generation out of fashion and that her gems were merely glass and paste. Everyone else was too dazzled by the exquisite girl to examine either the style of her clothing or the quality of her jewelry. No wonder the man at the door had allowed her in even without an official invitation.

  “I don’t believe it,” Mamma said again, still looking up the staircase. “Who brought her here? And where did she get that gown?” Jane tried to sidle away, but Mamma grabbed her shoulder. “Do you know anything about this?” Jane hung her head. Mamma said sharply, “Answer me!”

  “I wanted Isabella to come to the ball.” Jane was unable to meet Mamma’s gaze. “I wanted the prince to fall in love with her and take her away. That’s what she wanted, too. But—”

  “Hush!” someone said.

  Mamma stared at Jane, her mouth hanging open like the prince’s at his first sight of Isabella. “How did you—” she began, and then as people turned to look at her, she seemed to recall herself and shut her mouth with a snap.

  The prince approached the foot of the stairs, never taking his gaze off Isabella. His face was still rosy, and his hair, damp from the exertion of a few minutes ago, lay shining on his head. He was almost as beautiful as the girl who gazed at him from the top of the stairs, with eyes that glittered like emeralds.

  As lightly as a snowflake, Isabella glided down to him. She dropped into such a deep curtsey that she seemed to melt into the floor, and she stayed there until the prince lifted her up by one hand. Then the musicians struck up again, and the pair began the complicated motions of the dance. Isabella danced so smoothly that it was impossible to believe that real legs moved under her long dress. Other couples joined them, but no matter how many people crowded the floor, Isabella and Prince Bertrand were easy to spot. It was as though a golden light shone out of them. The prince said something in Isabella’s ear, and she blushed prettily as she answered him.

  Maybe I was wrong, Jane thought. Look at them—they’re perfect. Perfectly beautiful and perfectly suited to each other. They’ll have perfect children and a perfect palace and... Angry tears came to her eyes, and she dashed them away, not caring if anyone saw. Let them think the stepsister was envious. It was the truth. Isabella would live in the palace and have servants to fulfill her smallest wish and a handsome husband who ruled a whole kingdom, even if he was a spoiled brat. Meanwhile, Maude would marry Hugh and work hard every day of her life without reward. As for herself—she would spend the rest of her days alone in the dairy, making butter and cheese. Nobody loved her the way Mamma had loved Papa, and nobody ever would.

  “Why don’t they get dizzy?” Maude was once again at her elbow, interrupting her thoughts.

  “Oh, I don’t know, Maudie.”

  “They just keep going back and forth and twirling, and back and forth and—”

  “For heaven’s sake, Maude,” Jane snapped, “use your own brain and stop chattering at me.” Maude drew back, her expression a mix of bewilderment and hurt.

  The music drew to a flourish and stopped. The men bowed, and the ladies curtsied deeply. People gathered around the prince and Isabella, chattering excitedly, blocking the pair from Jane’s view. Mamma frowned as she glared in their direction; evidently she couldn’t see them either, even from her superior height. Jane tried to take advantage of her mother’s distraction to sidle away, but Mamma stopped her with a sharp “How did you do this?”

  “Oh, Mamma, what does it matter?” She didn’t care that she was being insolent. Nobody could hear her but Mamma—and Maude, who was staring at Jane in amazement—and Mamma would never scold her in front of all these people. Emboldened at this realization, she went on. “The prince wanted to meet her, and she wants to leave us. If she marries him, they’ll both get what they want, and we’ll be rid of her, and it will
just be you and me and Maude again. There will be one less mouth for me to feed—”

  “For you to—”

  “—and one less person for me to worry about. I’m tired, Mamma. I’m always tired.”

  Mamma’s gasp was audible even above the hubbub of voices, and Jane shrank at the sight of her eyes, which were red with rage. Mamma raised a hand to her own throat as though she was having trouble catching her breath.

  “Lady Margaret.”

  Mamma turned her eyes from Jane to the man who had come to her side. He was tall and stood as straight as she and wore the same uniform as the man who had announced their arrival. “Lady Margaret?” This time there was a question in his tone.

  “Yes,” Mamma said, clearly with an effort.

  The man stepped aside to show the prince, with Isabella at his side. “His Majesty.”

  Mamma gasped and dropped into the deepest curtsey Jane had ever seen her perform, her head bowed. Jane did the same, tugging Maude down with her. They straightened only when the prince said, “You may rise.”

  They did so, Maude stumbling a little as the toe of one of her shoes caught in her hem. Jane grabbed her arm to keep her from falling.

  The young man seemed not to notice them and addressed Mamma again. “I have the honor of asking you to present your daughters to me.”

  “Certainly.” Mamma sounded astonishingly calm. “My elder daughter, Jane Evangeline.” Jane curtseyed again. “My younger, Maude Arianna.” Maude bobbed hastily. No matter; the young man was clearly uninterested in them. “And my stepdaughter, Isabella.”

  Once again, Isabella’s performance was flawless. The prince held out his hand and helped her to stand, although she obviously didn’t need any assistance.

  “Am I to understand that she has no living relatives?” the prince asked.