by Tia Nevitt
“Yes.”He closed his eyes, waiting for it to be over.
“What shall we do with him, Your Majesty?” the guard asked.
“Nothing,” she said.
“Your highness?”
“Feed him. Clothe him. Sharpen his sword. Give him a horse. And a bag of coins. And turn him loose.”
The queen smiled as she turned and then drifted out of the room. The guard looked bewildered.
Richard understood all too well.
Chapter Ten
By now, Gretchen felt at home in the ancient farmhouse. She took care of the milking, the churning, the cheese curing and the care of the smaller animals. She gathered the eggs every morning and took the ones they didn’t need to the market at the crossroads to trade for things like coffee, sugar and tobacco.
Of the men, Rudolph was the most attentive. He was also the most bold, inviting her for evening walks—invitations that she turned down—and bringing her posies in the mornings. He spoke a great deal, bragging about his ability to lift hay bales or how he had bested this man or that man in a fistfight, which was an activity that he seemed to enjoy a great deal, and by which he obviously expected her to be impressed.
Klaus still was difficult for her to read. He was excessively shy. The evening after she had spoken to him, he had made a valiant effort to speak more at supper and to engage with her. However, she still had been so mortified over her own audacity in spying on Lars that she had been unable to respond to anyone outside of monosyllables. She feared that Klaus had taken it as a rebuff, for he had resumed his quiet mannerisms and hardly spoke to her at all ever since.
She could hardly look at Lars without blushing. The nights were the worst, when every time she closed her eyes to sleep, she saw him again, discarding his clothing with such unconcern. He had bathed with a scrap of cloth and then vigorously washed out his clothing. Once he finished, he laid the clothing out over some branches, and then he leaned against a stone for a while, apparently lost in thought until he was dry enough to dress again. At that point, Gretchen had fled back up the trail, and she had hardly known how to act around him since then.
Still, he was friendly and engaging, and she suspected he had a sense of humor. But he also seemed to be waiting for something. He did not ask her to take walks with him, but somehow they had ended up on evening walks together once or twice, just the same. He did not extravagantly present her with flowers before breakfast, but when he was not in the field, he was often on hand to help her with a milk pail, to open a door, to help her chase down a chicken. When she forgot to be embarrassed around him—or when she managed to overcome it—she found him enjoyable to be around.
She still felt oftentimes overwhelmed. For the first time in her life, she was the center of attention without being a curiosity. For the first time in her life, men were openly flirting with her. For the first time in her life, the world did not seem too large.
She wondered how she appeared to them. Had they seen many dwarf women? Was she ugly to them, or fair? Did Rudolph, who had the look of a normal man, find her attractive? Did Lars? Did Klaus?
Then one afternoon, Ange once again arrived at the farm.
* * *
“So this magic mirror is bound to tell her the truth,” Ange explained.”And she almost always asks it who is the fairest in the land, and it always answers that she is.”
Once again, Gretchen and Marta were at the kitchen table with Ange.
Ange frowned. “All this time, I never wondered much about that face in the mirror. I could never see much of it. It was always in shadow and surrounded by swirls of fog. I didn’t even think it was a living being. But yesterday, I found out who he was.” She looked up. “He is Prince Richard, the Lost Prince of Schwarzberg. I’ve seen him around the castle ever since I got back, but I didn’t recognize him. Last night while we were talking, he had a sort of...a sort of a fit, and started talking to someone who was not there. It was then that I recognized his voice from the mirror. When he spoke of the Tattered Princess, I feared he would tell her about what I do.”
“What you do?” asked Marta.
“Yes. You see...” she looked around the table. “I trust I can tell you this.” She met both of their gazes, a quick, fleeting glance. “There’s a secret treasury that only I know of, now that my father is dead. When she’s out of the castle, I go and get coin from the treasury—not a lot, mostly pfennigs and schillings—and I pass it out among the poor.”
“That’s a very dangerous thing for you to do, my dear,” Marta said.
“Yes, but—well, it’s my throne! She had my father name her regent, and I don’t know if I’ll ever live to inherit.” She sighed. “I pass out the money so the people don’t forget me, and so they know I haven’t forgotten them.”
Gretchen stared at her. It was dangerous, just as Marta said. And foolish—but also noble and brave. Gretchen could not imagine ever doing anything so brave. “And—” Gretchen cleared her throat, “—you say that this man from the mirror knows about what you do as the Tattered Princess?”
“Yes. He mentioned me in response to one of the questions. He couldn’t seem to stop himself, and my stepmother wanted to know more.” She paused. “When I returned from my last visit here, I noticed him coming to the castle every night. We struck up a friendship in the last few weeks. I thought he was poor, but when I walked through town, he wouldn’t take my coins.” She blinked and shook her head. “Anyway, I feared what he would tell her. But instead—” her eyes grew wide, “—instead, he told her that I was the fairest of all.”
There was a silence. She continued.
“After the enchantment of the mirror let go of him, he escorted me out of the castle and got me past the guard at the crossroads. He told me to flee and to not tell him where I was going. So I came here, because you have always been good friends to me.”
There was silence. Marta snorted. “This boy put you in all this danger and then just told you to run away?”
“He said it was dangerous for me to stay with him. He said he was going to destroy the mirror.” She shook her head. “He cannot. I have seen a man hurtle a stone at it. It bounced right back to him.”
“What do you think will happen to him?” Gretchen asked her.
Angelika looked at her, her eyes bleak. “My stepmother will capture him. After that, I know not.”
* * *
That night, Ange apparently shook off her worries to chat with Gretchen.
“So,” Ange said, “about your husband candidates...”
“Husband candidates?” Gretchen said with a laugh.
“Have you spent much time talking to each one?”
“Yes,” she said, “but I promised Frau Marta that I would stay out of compromising situations.”
“I’m certain that even Frau Marta would expect you to bend that rule from time to time.”
Gretchen giggled.
“Is there one in particular that might interest you?” There was a teasing tone to her voice.
Gretchen blushed. “Well...”
Ange got a wicked grin on her face. “Aah, yes. The Nibelung, right?”
“Ange, stop!”
“He would be unforgettable as long as there was nothing repulsive about him, which, from all evidence, there wasn’t.”
“Please!”
“Still, you have been thinking of him all this time—and who would not?—so maybe it’s time you sought him out and learned a bit more about him
, other than his...private parts.”
“You don’t think Frau Marta would disapprove?”
Ange gave her a wry look. “Certainly less than she would have disapproved of your behavior at the river.”
“All right, all right! I’ll do it.”
“And then,” Ange said, “we can talk about it tomorrow night!”
* * *
After supper, as they were cleaning up, and after Ange had hissed at her to shoo several times, she went to look for Lars. She looked in all the stalls and in the parlor before she went outside. He was not in the pig’s shed, and the door to the privy hung ajar. When she turned to go back to the farmhouse, she noticed a light in a high window. She stopped for a moment, considering, watching the light. Then she went back inside and paused at the ladder leading to the lofts.
What she was about to do went beyond what Ange had suggested. And besides, it was impertinent and might come across as desperate rather than merely determined.
But Lars had said she was pretty, so...
She climbed up into the loft. Then she pulled up the ladder and started to climb the ladder to the third level.
Lars’s face appeared at the top.”Fräulein, I’m up here. Wait a moment and I’ll come down.”
“That’s all right,” she said. “I’ll join you. I wanted to talk to you about something.”
He hesitated and then nodded and backed away. When she reached the top, she started pulling up the ladder.
“What are you doing?”
“I don’t want to be overheard.”
He came over and she backed away as he took the ladder and pulled it up.
She sat on a hay bale. He sat on one near her.
She took a deep breath. “So. A few weeks ago, you said that I was too pretty to pass for a man.”
His brows flew up. “Yes, I did.”
Gretchen flushed. “And you did defend me to Herr Rudolph, for which I never thanked you.”
“Uh, well, he deserved it.”
She could tell he was bewildered, but she pressed on before she lost her courage. “And you are kind to the animals in your care.”
He looked at her. “Kind?”
“Yes, even to the oxen.”
“They get foul-tempered if they are not properly cared for.”
She giggled. “So does a child.”
“A child?”
She cleared her throat. “These three facts tell me all that I need to know about you.”
He cocked his head. “What do you mean?”
She folded her hands in her lap. “You’re going to have to figure that out for yourself, Herr Lars.”
He looked at her for a moment. It was up to him now. If he was attracted to her, surely he would now act on it. She had opened all the doors. She returned his gaze for a moment, but heat bloomed in her cheeks as her traitorous mind suddenly presented her with a vision of him by the river. She broke eye contact and stared at her clasped hands as her heart thudded.
He stood, stepped over and sat on the hay bale beside her. She shifted around so she was facing him.
He took her hand.
She stared at him, seeing his features anew from this close proximity. His eyes were a warm brown. He had wavy blond hair, worn cropped at the neck. His nose was bent, as if it had once been broken.
“Tell me,” she said, “have you ever known anyone else like us?”
“Well—my father, for one.”
She blinked. “Your father was like us?”
“Yes. My father was a jester for a king. One of the castle wenches had his child, and when it became clear that the child would be like the father, he wanted a hand in raising me. So they got married.” He looked at her with a rueful smile. “It’s where I got the nickname Stump. I made the mistake of telling Rudolph about it, along with the others.”
She paused. “It should not have been a mistake to tell that story here. This place is meant to be a refuge.”
“Not for Rudolph, I think.”
She shook her head. “You had a very different upbringing than I did. I never saw anyone like me before I came here. I thought I was deformed.”
He studied her. “And you no longer think this?”
“How can we both have so many of the exact same deformities?” She held up her hand. The two middle fingers had a space between them. She could only move them together with an effort. She watched Lars look at his own hand, where his fingers had a similar space. “And how can it be a deformity if your father was like you? It must be a trait, like having blond hair or being bowlegged.”
He hesitated, then held his own hand against hers. Her breath caught. “A very rare trait, then,” he said.
“Yes, it must be rare,” she whispered.
“That makes us special,” he said.
She smiled. “I suppose it does.”
He moved closer and brushed the side of her face with a finger. She lifted her chin. He leaned in close, until they were breathing the same air.
She closed the distance, and their lips met.
It was her first true kiss. She was twenty-seven years old and had never been kissed except as a dare. His lips were softer than she thought they would be, and she certainly didn’t expect him to lightly squeeze her lower lip with both of his lips.
Something surged within her and she had a sudden urge to deepen the kiss, to experience what Gisela must have felt that night on the road with Karl. But she hardly knew what to do. He seemed to know. His lips moved on hers in tiny, silent kisses, and he pulled her into a tighter embrace. She felt his warm hand on her neck and her breath hissed in, no longer under her control.
Lars broke away. He looked down and bit his lip, as if a bit uncertain. She could see the stubble of his beard and each individual eyelash. With a jolt, she realized that she wanted to try the kiss again. Were all kisses like this? Gisela, especially, seemed happy to kiss any attractive man. Did it not matter who it was? Did Gretchen only feel that way because she had seen him in the nude and was now curious? Or was it because she had decided he was the practical choice? He looked up and their eyes met, and she could see the flecks of his irises.
Then he drew her close and held her. She turned her head toward him and leaned in. His hair curled up at the back of his head. She could feel the skin of his neck upon her lips, and it was softer than she expected. It did feel nice to be in his arms. He held her loosely, and his body felt warm and strong, yet yielding. She knew he would release her if she betrayed the slightest intention of backing away.
“You’re so beautiful.”His voice was husky. “You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.”
“How can you think I’m beautiful?”
He leaned back and looked at her. “Because you are what I’ve dreamed of.”
“You want someone like us?”
“Of course.” He looked flustered. “Don’t you?”
She smiled and lowered her eyes. “That’s why I came here.”
“And have you found someone?”
“Well, I had narrowed it down to two.”
“And now?”
“One is looking particularly promising...but I’ll need another kiss to be certain.”
He smiled and then complied.
* * *
Angelika was waiting for her.
“Fräulein Gretchen,” she said, “where have you been?”
“Oh,” Gretchen said as she pulled out her braid, “here and there.”
“You wouldn’t happen to have been here and there with Herr Lars, would you?”
Gretchen whirled to face her. “Why, Fräulein Ange! What a shocking thing to suggest.”
The both giggled.
“So?” Ange said. “What did you think?”
Gretchen shrugged. “I don’t know yet. It was...strange.”
“Strange?”
“Yes. He kissed me. And—” she scratched her head, “—it wasn’t much like the songs described. The kisses were very nice, but I think he was being careful. Trying not to push things too far, even though I encouraged him.”
“Just how far did you want to go?”
She sighed and climbed onto her cot. “Far enough to be certain I’m making the right choice.”
“You have doubts?”
“No, not exactly. Of the three here, he is definitely the one most suitable for me. But...” She sighed. “That’s just it. He has all the right qualities. I certainly find him attractive. He’s decent, and he’s—he’s small, like me. But...”
“Do you feel cold toward him?”
“No, not at all. It’s as if...as if I’ve made this choice, you see. He makes the most sense. He’s gentle to animals, so he probably will be toward children as well. He’s protective and brave, and is even willing to take on a bigger and stronger man. And he thinks I’m pretty.”
“You already admire his qualities, then. Maybe love will come.”
“It seems likely. But...it seems silly at my age, but I was hoping to fall in love.”
“It’s not silly. It’s natural.” She looked at Gretchen, her face unusually serious. “I recommend more kisses.”
Gretchen’s brows shot up, and again, they collapsed into giggles.
* * *
The plowing was finished and the planting had begun. The seeds for the grain had been stored in the loft above the central aisle of the farmhouse all winter, and Lars now was lowering a sack by means of a pulley. Klaus was at the bottom, waiting to remove the sack from the hook and heft it in the wagon. He struggled with the weight, but he had insisted on his turn at the more difficult part of the job.