The Princess Curse

by Merrie Haskell

  So, no I wasn’t cursed. I wasn’t trapped in a tower every night with my half sisters—even better, I wasn’t half sister to Maricara and Lacrimora—but I felt like saying, No, Princess Otilia, I have no idea how lucky I am. And you? Have you been switched before an entire convent for telling a harmless lie? Have you gone days with little or no food because your own soldiers set fire to the millet fields when they retreated? Have you lost nights of sleep while the infidels shelled your walls?

  But for once I restrained my impertinent tongue and whispered, “Oh, indeed, very lucky. What do you miss most about your other life, Princess?”

  And here she flushed bright red, from the tips of her ears down her throat. “Oh!” she said, as though I’d stuck her with a pin. “Oh, my family, of course.”

  “Surely you’re allowed to see your family.”

  “My mother, and my brother and sisters, they have come for visits before; but my father . . .” She trailed off, and I could see that this was very painful for her. The father who had raised her, who perhaps had not known he wasn’t her father, given what Brother Cosmin had explained to me about the princesses’ births?

  “My mother’s husband,” Otilia said carefully, “owns the mill in Moara, not far from here. It’s the most beautiful little village, situated right on the forks of the Bradet River. The north fork feeds our millrace; the south fork cools the blacksmith’s work. We could climb into the attic and see sparks from the forge across the apple orchard. Millers always have apple orchards, because the wood is fast growing and strong enough to be made into mill gears,” she said, and a large tear dropped onto her lap. “I miss the scent of applewood fires. . . .”

  “Are you done hoarding the herb girl’s help, Otilia?” Princess Tereza’s voice cut like a knife.

  “I’m done, Sister,” Otilia said, voice calm as though she hadn’t been in tears just a moment before. She nodded to me, and I scurried to help Tereza with her pointed slippers.

  Everything after this passed in a flurry of shoes and veils, until at last the princesses were ready for dinner. They exited the eastern tower in a long line, hems held high, veils flying. It was a wonder to me that all the fine woman in the country had not died long ago, tripping over the padded, extra-long toes of their slippers, but the princesses managed well enough.

  Beti sighed in relief when the last princess left, then moved listlessly about the chamber to clear up the flotsam that came from dressing twelve women.

  I had a clever idea.

  “You look so tired,” I said to the servant. “And I never have to do much cleaning in the herbary, so I wouldn’t terribly mind the sweeping up. Why don’t you find your own bed and let me take care of the princesses’ room tonight?”

  It was that simple. Beti reminded me to put the bar on the door when the princesses returned and I left; then she fled, before I could come to my senses.

  Of course, once she was gone, I regretted the impulse. I should have let her clean three-quarters of the room and then offered to finish up.

  I set about the tasks I had promised to do, and when the room was as tidy as I knew how to make it, I curled up on a small rug beside the fire and pretended to sleep. But really, I lay in wait. Tonight I would find out the secrets of the princesses’ curse.

  In pretending to fall asleep, I fell asleep in truth. The next thing I knew, Otilia was shaking my shoulder and calling my name in a whisper. “Reveka! Get up! My sisters are coming, and you must go!”

  “Huhm?”

  She yanked me up so hard, we both staggered. “Go. Go! If you stay here tonight . . .” She trailed off, staring at the door as though she’d heard a sound. “Go! Now!” And when I did not go, she got behind me and pushed.

  I stumbled into the next room, passing the train of princesses on their way in. Princess Lacrimora came last. “Oh, Cabbage Girl? Are you coming in to spend the night?” she asked, her tone mocking.

  “N-no—”

  “Good,” Lacrimora said, and slammed the door in my face. From inside the tower came the clear thunk of a bolt being thrown home.

  I dropped the bar into the slots outside the princesses’ door with a clatter.

  Cabbage Girl? That wasn’t so bad. Nuns will not blaspheme, but they are deft with name-calling. I’d been called worse.

  Chapter 5

  When I went down to the baths the next day, I apologized to Marjit the Bathwoman for the distress I’d caused her the morning before.

  Marjit rolled her pansy-brown eyes. “I’m a hill woman,” she said. “I vent my spleen freely when I’m irked. It might look like distress to a more refined eye.”

  “Would you like any help with . . . anything?” I asked.

  She snorted, and I could see that she was angry with me, even though she wasn’t distressed by my behavior. “No. Sort your herbs and stay out of my way.”

  I did so, making sure Marjit could see every herb I added. She barely glanced over, being busy heating stones to throw into the bathwater and assembling her soaps and towels and oils.

  The castle’s luxurious underground baths were leftovers from Roman times. Chipped mosaics of pagan gods watched over Sylvian’s bath-mad residents as they soaked once or even twice a day. Everyone here was cleaner than a nun, even, and nuns are very clean. Marjit was a busy woman.

  “Thing is, I just don’t understand the curse,” I said, sorting out orange bergamot, rose geranium, and rue and adding them to my pile. They all smelled sharp and fresh but were also theoretically good for curse breaking, though they hadn’t worked yet in the weeks I’d used them.

  “What’s to understand about the curse, anyway?” Marjit asked.

  “Well, who placed it, for one,” I said. “What witch or Gypsy would want to do them harm?”

  “There are no Gypsies in Sylvania, by law, and no witch in Sylvania would cast that hex,” Marjit said. “No witch would want to. The witches in this country are only interested in wholesome magic.”

  I didn’t think that could be true, but I wouldn’t argue with Marjit about it. If I said, “You can’t know all the witches in Sylvania,” she’d argue that she did; if I argued that she couldn’t know the secret intentions of all the witches in Sylvania, she’d argue that she knew those, too. Marjit knew everything.

  “A witch would leave some evidence behind. You can’t do magic like that”—she gestured vaguely toward the princesses’ tower—“without complications. Think about just the little magics a witch does—”

  “I don’t know any witches,” I said.

  “Well, even to cure a man of loving plum brandy too much takes all sorts of implements. Water from three or more holy wells. A jar of honey. Clothing from the man, clothing from the wife. A hair from his mother . . . So many of your herbs I can’t keep them all straight, but at least frankincense and basil. Oh, and a Nine-Brides Knife, too.”

  “What’s a Nine-Brides Knife?”

  “It’s a knife carried by nine brides to the altar and secretly hidden in their grooms’ pocket during the wedding. Do you know how hard it is to find nine women all deft enough to hide a knife on their new-minted husbands? Not easy.”

  “I guess not.”

  “No, little Reva. The curse on Castle Sylvian is not the work of a witch. A căpcăun, maybe,” she said, naming the dogheaded ogre that liked to kidnap young women. “A zmeu, likely. Perhaps even a balaur. But not a witch.”

  I shivered, thinking of the creatures she’d just mentioned. Both zmeu and balaur were kinds of dragons, both always trying to marry young women. The balaur was frightening because it had multiple heads. But the zmeu was even more frightening, because it looked more human and could change shape in order to trick girls into loving and marrying it.

  I worked quietly, crushing the rose geranium, before I asked, “Florin says don’t bother thinking about it, since the Prince has done everything he can to break the curse, but . . . what’s been tried?”

  Marjit straightened from stoking her fire and wiped the sweat fr
om her nose. “They split the princesses up,” she said, sounding happily authoritative, and I realized she liked being consulted—it had a mollifying effect on her temper. “They sent them away. They even tried marrying them off, or almost. Princess Maricara got all the way to Styria to marry their Duke, but the night before their wedding, the Duke succumbed to a deep sleep that he has never woken from.”

  “Like the sleepers in the western tower,” I said.

  Marjit gave me a keen look. “Yes. He’s the only sleeper who didn’t end up in that tower, as a matter of fact. His mother nurses him to this day.”

  I frowned, wrapping crushed herbs in twists of cheesecloth and tying them with a string. “And nothing anyone does makes a bit of difference?”

  “Oh, it makes a difference, by my mother’s bones!—the wind that kicks up, and the way the bowels of the castle shake, that’s all different enough. The towers all got struck by lightning once!”

  I tossed my herbs into the bathwater, watching the floating packets cast shadows over the mosaic faces of Neptune and his dolphins. The three tiles of Neptune’s right eye were missing, making him look roguish and ungodlike.

  “You’re not up to more of your mischief, are you?” Marjit’s heavy brows lowered, and she looked pointedly at my herbs.

  “No mischief today, Marjit.”

  She added her hot stones to the bathwater, and herb-scented steam filled the chamber. She inhaled deeply. “Good. Smells pleasant. Nothing like soup. And well-timed. They’re here.”

  Princess Maricara swept in first. She always led the line to remind everyone that she was the Prince’s oldest legitimately born daughter. Or so Marjit said. Otilia arrived second, arm in arm with Nadia. Otilia smiled, and Nadia hesitantly did the same. The others ignored me, and I sneaked out in the chaos of the princesses struggling into their bathing shifts.

  Lacrimora, the one who had called me Cabbage Girl the night before, came in as I left. I stepped aside, but she moved close to me, bending her long neck like an angry goose to whisper, “You’d do well to stay out of our tower, Apprentice.” She ended the word with her teeth bared and let the last sound trail in a long hiss: apprentisssssss.

  I turned away as though I hadn’t heard her, even though I should have curtsied.

  In the herbary, Didina’s worktable was abandoned, though a pile of asphodel flowers awaited her attention. And Brother Cosmin hadn’t arrived yet. He preferred to greet the noonday sun while farting and scratching in his bed. Monks are very attached to their farts and their fleas, or so the nuns always said.

  I loved having the herbary to myself. I would straighten the stacked bowls, line up the jars and flasks and terracotta pots on the shelves, arrange the drying herbs on the racks just so, and then sit on my stool and pretend the herbary was mine. I would mentally reorder the shelves and imagine that I stored the herbs by the best preparation methods instead of the hodgepodge ways Brother Cosmin invented. The shelf to the right of the door would be for hot infusions, the shelf to the left for cold ones. On the far wall, decoctions, tinctures, oils, ointments; on the near wall, balms, essences, extracts, syrups, lozenges, and electuaries.

  But today, instead of dreaming, I went to pull down Brother Cosmin’s very best book, Saint Hildegard’s Physica, planning to compile a list of herbs good for curse breaking.

  I loved reading through Physica; I regarded Hildegard of Bingen as my personal saint. Hildegard founded and ran two convents, and not only had she run them exceedingly well, she had time to write songs and books, including works on medicinal simples that are read by herbalists everywhere.

  But Physica wasn’t on the shelf with the other books. I looked around the herbary and spied it on Didina’s table. I fetched the book and started flipping through. There were interesting sections on reviving people that I copied to my own personal herbal, which was a fan-folded sheet of rescraped parchment filled mostly with drawings of plants that I found hard to distinguish.

  Didina came in and settled down at her spot. She picked up her pestle, then noticed me. “What are you doing?”

  “Copying. This is in Latin, but I think I mostly understand it.” I frowned then, remembering that Didina didn’t read Latin, or speak it; she could read Church Slavonic haltingly, and some Saxon. So why was Physica on her table? “What were you—”

  “You should go collect flowers for the princesses’ posies,” she said.

  “I have plenty of time to do that,” I said. “But why were you—” I glanced down at the page I’d been copying from: scrofula of the neck that has not ruptured—

  Didina slammed the book closed, glaring at me. But I didn’t pay her any mind—my attention was grabbed by a scrap of vellum that fluttered from between the pages and slipped to the floor.

  We both dived under the table after the vellum, but I got there first.

  “Plantes Which Confer Vpon the Wearer Invisibilitie” was the title, written in a strange kind of Saxon.

  Invisibility? I frowned and read on:

  ~ Gather, w. golden knife—

  Didina dragged me out by my heels. I tried to stuff the vellum up my sleeve, but she saw and dug it out.

  “Careful, don’t rip it!” I cried.

  “You be careful. It’s mine!”

  “Invisibility?”

  “Shut up! Someone will hear you.”

  “Let me see it! Please?”

  She paused for a moment, then made a disgusted face and threw it at me. “Fine. Look at it. Looking at it won’t help you in the least.”

  I eagerly snatched the paper before it hit the ground and read:

  Plantes Which Confer Vpon the Wearer Invisibilitie

  ~ Gather, w. golden knife & in vtter silence, at mid-day or mid-night, on midsvmmer or midwinter day, the sukkory plant. Carefvl to collect w. left hand onlie.

  ~ Carry w. thee a tiny horn filled with tvrnsole.

  ~ Wear mistletoe arovnd thy neck.

  ~ Collect pig’s weed, to be worn as a wreath.

  ~ Walk with fern seed in thy pocket.

  ~ For six days, soak nepenthe-seed in wine; drink the wine three days rvnning whilst fasting. Afterward, thou shalt become invisible at will.

  ~ Wrap wolf’s bane seed in a red lizard skin & carry in thy pockets.

  Ideas skipped around my mind like flat stones across a pond. If I were invisible, I could watch the princesses all night. If I were invisible, I could find out what they did. If I were invisible, and provided I didn’t burst out in a sneeze or something, I could discover the secrets of the curse, report back to Princess Daciana and Prince Vasile, and claim the dowry.

  I stared at Didina. “Where did you get this?”

  “I found it in that book when I was looking for drawings of betony to copy. It’s old, you can tell, older than the book. But it’s nonsense! Nothing on the list works.”

  “Why would someone write it all down if it were nonsense?”

  “I don’t know, but it is! Try something on the list—anything! There’s pig’s weed in the kitchen garden—Cook uses it to thicken stew.”

  “All right, I will,” I said, marching out into the garden to gather an apronful of pig’s weed.

  I twisted together a wreath in short order, perched it atop my head, and tiptoed back to the herbary.

  Didina glanced up from her asphodel. Brother Cosmin also looked up. I wondered when he had arrived. They both stared right at me.

  “There you are, Reveka!” Brother Cosmin said. “Have you prepared the princesses’ posies yet? Princess Nadia wants day’s-eyes tonight.”

  “I’ll head out in a moment,” I said, flinging the wreath into the compost bucket by the door.

  “Well, don’t take too long. You picked all the day’s-eyes within the castle walls, and now you’ll have to go into the forest.”

  I grunted, sitting down with my personal herbal. I flipped to a blank square and titled it “Investigation of Plantes Which Confer Invisibilitie.” I wrote, “Test One: Wore a pig’s weed wreath. No
effect.”

  I shoved my herbal underneath my mortar, glaring at Didina. She said with ruthless cheeriness, “Make sure you take the left fork on the riverward path. You wouldn’t want to get lost in the forest.”

  Chapter 6

  In the three weeks since I’d been at Castle Sylvian, I’d not managed to learn my way around the Prince’s hunting park at all.

  This was partially because I was simply unaccustomed to wild-herb gathering. I’d grown up inside the stone walls of a convent-fortress in Transylvania, which was fortified for a reason: We were close to the Turks and always under threat of their raids.

  That’s just what it’s like to live in the last outpost of Christianity—you don’t count on having food to last all winter, and you don’t take many forest walks.

  We were safe here in Sylvania at the moment, or maybe I just felt safer with Transylvania and Wallachia between us and the Turks, and with Hungary at our backs. The Hungarians were a threat to Prince Vasile’s sovereignty, but they were also a threat to the Turks’ expansion.

  But safety was a matter of perception. Prince Vasile obviously felt enough danger to have hired my father for his ditching skills.

  Safety was also a matter of degree. I might not have to worry about running into a Turkish raiding party here—but there might be bears or boars or ogres among the trees. Didina had been my guide through the forest the last three times, and I wished she were coming with me now.

  Nonetheless, with wicker collecting basket in hand, I marched past the Little Well, through the dragon-carved gates, down the rows of trees filled with ripening plums, and into the hunting park.

  Here, the trees grew so closely together that daylight never touched the forest floor, even on the main paths. That would never do: Day’s-eyes were a cheerful flower dressed in plain white petals and with a sunlike center. All sunny plants like sunshine, not forest shadows. There were wide meadows deep inside the park, but I wasn’t sure where. Didina had said “left fork” and “riverward path,” hadn’t she? I knew right from left as well as anyone, but how could I know if I was on the riverward path?