The Princess Curse

by Merrie Haskell

  “And I bet your ferns will work without the seeds,” she added.

  “How?”

  “Go out and cut some of them. Not all! You’ll want to nurse them along and try to harvest the seeds if this fails. What you cut, fashion into a wreath—or no, a cap. That’ll stay on your head better. You know how to net? You’ve spent all that time with Adina—she’s got to have taught you.”

  “I’m bad at netting, but . . .”

  “You’ll be good enough. You’ll make up your cap, I think with a prayer to the Big Lady—”

  “The Big Lady?”

  “Hush, don’t you worry about that.” She stared off into the middle distance, muttering slightly under her breath, before saying, “You’ll need a special needle.”

  “A Nine-Brides Needle?” I asked. It was a stupid joke, but she took me seriously.

  “No, though that’s a good thought, because of the stealth. No. I don’t have one on hand, and—well, I don’t know of nine weddings happening anytime soon. Sommat else. I’ll have to think on it.” She counted something on her fingers. “Come back in twelve days. The dark of the moon is the perfect time to do a ritual of invisibility.”

  “No. It can’t wait that long! By then . . .” By then, Didina’s mother, and maybe the Duke of Styria, too, would be dead, or past the point of no return. “Look, the moon is waning. Isn’t that good enough?”

  Marjit started to shake her head, then sighed. “I can’t guarantee anything, mind you,” she said. “Come tomorrow night at midnight. Have your ferns ready. And be prepared for a long night.”

  I nodded. “Can you keep this a secret, Marjit?”

  Marjit appeared to think about this. “Well, I suppose. . . .”

  “Marjit!” I begged. I thought she was teasing, but I couldn’t risk anything.

  “Of course I can keep a secret,” she said, and leaned down to kiss my cheek.

  It wasn’t until later that I realized that wasn’t the promise I’d wanted.

  Pa came with me to help Adina with the sleepers the next day, I think because he felt bad about being so harsh to me. Adina smiled at him and asked him for news of the castle.

  “I’ve no good tidings, I’m afraid,” Pa said. “I was at the morning summoning—do you know of this ritual, Reveka? Every morning after they bathe, the princesses are brought before the Prince, to answer for the holes in their shoes. Princess Maricara always steps forward and says that they do not know, because they are asleep when the holes are made.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Can’t Prince Vasile tell they’re lying?”

  Pa said, “It takes a liar to spot a lie.” He pinched open Sfetnic’s mouth, dropped in a spoonful of broth, then massaged the boy’s throat. I waited for Pa to give me a significant glance, to make this a lesson about truth for me, but he didn’t. He just added, “Prince Vasile is terribly honest.”

  “Honest for a prince,” Adina amended. “He’s not honest for a normal man.”

  Pa continued with his news. “Usually, the Prince invites the princesses to sit down for a cup of spiced wine and some bread, but this morning, he let another man speak—an emissary from the King of Hungary, who has been sent to investigate the disappearance of a Transylvanian Saxon named Iosif—but really, he seems to be here to wring concessions out of our Prince about his heir—or lack thereof.” Pa frowned, staring down at Sfetnic’s peaceful face. “The Hungarians want Vasile to agree to become a count, beholden to King Corvinus, like the rulers in Marmatia.”

  I frowned. “I thought that the Hungarians wanted to invade us.”

  “The invasion would be solely to make Sylvania into this sort of vassal state. But they wouldn’t mind just bullying Prince Vasile into handing over his principality instead.”

  “Would Prince Vasile do that, instead of letting the country get invaded?”

  Pa grunted. “Doesn’t matter if Vasile would or wouldn’t. King Stefan in Moldavia won’t let that happen. Sylvania has been a good buffer for his country against Hungary, just as Moldavia has been a good buffer for us against Poland and the Turks. There’d be a war either way.”

  I shivered, thinking of holes blown into the side of the castle, of cannonballs shooting through Brother Cosmin’s herbary or into this room among the helpless sleepers.

  “Anyway,” Pa continued, “all week, this emissary has been pressing Vasile for the release of the Saxon, Iosif, who Princess Tereza was set to marry. Iosif disappeared a week or so ago; the rest of his delegation hurried away from here, and I’m sure they didn’t go home to Transylvania but ran straight into King Corvinus’s arms.”

  “But Prince Vasile can’t release Iosif. He disappeared!”

  “The emissary doesn’t believe in the curse—because Corvinus doesn’t believe in the curse. They think everyone missing or sleeping in here is a political enemy of Vasile.”

  “Even Didina?” I asked, my voice rising with anger.

  Pa shrugged. “How do we know what they really believe? Perhaps it is more convenient to deny the curse and think that Vasile is the villain. To believe that all of this is a political ploy to avoid allying with Hungary.”

  Pa crossed Sfetnic’s hands over his chest and moved on to the next sleeper. “The emissary has been pressing for an old idea, I think because he’s been told to call Vasile’s bluff and get the Prince to confess that the curse isn’t real. He’s been wanting the princesses to be fitted with iron shoes. And today Prince Vasile agreed,” Pa said.

  “What?” Adina and I chorused.

  “He had to. The emissary has Prince Vasile trapped. If Prince Vasile doesn’t agree to it, he’s all but admitting the curse isn’t real. If the root of the problem is that the slippers have holes in them every morning, make slippers that won’t wear through—I think that’s his logic.”

  I stared at Pa, appalled. “Surely it’s just a threat.”

  “It’s not. Armas and a dozen of his men came into the room at that moment, and after them came the blacksmiths. Armas’s men seized the princesses, and the blacksmiths riveted the shoes on right there in the hall, like so many prisoners being shackled.”

  I thought of the conversation Cook and Marjit had had in the kitchen and couldn’t believe it. Armas loved Otilia, I thought!

  “And then Prince Vasile said to the emissary, ‘Go back to your King and tell him iron shoes can’t break a curse.’ And then”—Pa’s fingers tightened so hard around the cup of broth he was holding that I wondered if he would crack the wood—“the emissary said, ‘Maybe iron shoes could break the curse if you’d heated them as hot as the rivets before you put them on.’ And one of the princesses fainted.”

  “Which one?” I asked, fascinated and horrified all at once.

  “I don’t know her. Not Lacrimora, not the two legitimate ones. Not Otilia, either.”

  Adina burst out, “How could he do that to his own girls?”

  Pa shook his head. “It was that or war,” he said, though he didn’t sound convinced. “Armas and his men, once they were out of sight of the emissary, picked up the princesses and carried them to their tower.”

  “Not good enough,” I muttered. “Not nearly good enough.”

  I didn’t quite know if I meant that in terms of Armas’s behavior or in terms of the princesses being punished.

  Perhaps both.

  On the way out of the western tower, Pa stopped me with a hand on my arm.

  “I know,” he said.

  “You know what?”

  “That the Princess Consort has you investigating ways to turn people invisible, for spying on the princesses.”

  I blinked, examining him closely. He didn’t seem angry.

  Then I really heard what he had said. Ways to turn people invisible.

  Not me. People.

  “She told you about the list, and how I’ve been testing the things on it?” I asked, cautious not to reveal that my plan all along had been to be the invisible spy.

  He nodded. “She told me to assist you if I coul
d.”

  “Well,” I said, thinking. “I have a strange nepenthe-seed concoction that comes ready tonight, which I’m not sure how to test.”

  “Test it on me,” he said. I frowned at him. Didina had been right to be dubious about the effectiveness of the potion. I didn’t want to test it on him any more than I wanted to test it on me. But Pa’s size did mean it was less likely that I’d overdose him.

  “What’s the risk, exactly?” he asked when I seemed reluctant.

  “Hallucinations, catalepsy, death . . .”

  “Brother Cosmin lets you use herbs that can kill people? You haven’t been his apprentice for even two months!”

  I stared at Pa. “You can kill someone with most anything if you try hard enough. Or, more likely, when you don’t try hard enough.”

  “You are not reassuring me, Reveka.”

  “Pa, I studied herbs at the convent. I’ve been learning for ages. And herbs that don’t have a drastic effect on the body aren’t much use. Controlling the dosage is the true art of herbalism.”

  “Can you manage not to kill me?”

  “Certainly,” I lied. It was a tiny lie. I was pretty certain, and Pa had never admired hesitancy. “When?”

  “Why not tonight? You said the potion was ready.”

  True! But so were my plans with Marjit.

  “You'll need to fast for the potion to be effective,” I hedged.

  “I haven't eaten since before noon.”

  “Well . . .” I tried to think how long that would leave me with Marjit.

  Pa was starting to get that frowny face that meant he thought I was lying. So I smiled, and said, “Sure. Tonight.”

  Chapter 16

  Pa looked reluctant when I peeled back the layered cheesecloth from the bowl to expose the sodden mess of nepenthe seeds, but he drank a cup of the wine down to the dregs anyway.

  The nepenthe wine had no immediate effect, and we sat together in silence while I leafed through Physica and Pa pared his fingernails. The noise of the paring stopped after a bit. I didn’t look up, thinking that he’d simply gotten his nails to their preferred length, but when I finally glanced at Pa, I was surprised to find him staring into the distance with his knife paused halfway across one nail.

  “Pa?” I asked, and he looked toward me as though startled. His pupils were tiny.

  “Reveka,” he said very loudly. He clapped his hand over his mouth, dropped it, and said my name at a more normal volume. “Reveka.” He smiled broadly at me then, a smile so relaxed and friendly and un-Pa-like that I would not have recognized him as my father if I’d met him on the street.

  “Are you all right?”

  He giggled. My Pa, dour soldier, giggled.

  “Fiiiiiiiiiiine,” he told me. “Can you see me? Am I invisible yet?”

  “No, not yet,” I said.

  Pa stood up and strode across the room and back, then settled down beside me on Brother Cosmin’s stool. He stared at me for a long moment. “You know,” he said, “I don’t think I’d know you for your mother’s daughter, if we were strangers. Fortunately, I know you for my daughter: that chin”—and he jabbed my chin—“that cowlick of hair just there . . .” He poked at my forehead. “Just like my mother’s and my brothers’. But not a touch of your mother in you. I can barely remember what she looked like, except she didn’t look like you.”

  She was prettier than me; that I knew. Enough nuns had told me so. And taller. I thought you were supposed to get to be prettier and taller than your mother, but this must be a fable they tell to girls so that we keep trying to grow up.

  Pa giggled again, so hard that he lowered his head to the herbary table. His shoulders shook. “I said ‘fortunately,’” he said.

  “What?”

  “I said, when I talked about you looking like me . . . I said, ‘fortunately.’ It can’t be fortunate for you, though.”

  “Pa,” I said firmly, “let’s leave the discussion of my looks alone.”

  “Yes.” He stood and paced the room a few times again, then climbed onto the table and lay across the open copy of Physica. There was no rescuing the book, but as long as he didn’t squirm, it probably wasn’t in danger.

  “Pa, maybe you should—”

  “Am I invisible yet?”

  “No.”

  He turned his head to look at me, his cheek resting against the page I’d been reading. “You’re a good child, Reveka,” he said. “I don’t tell you this, because the Abbess said that praise inflates your pride, but you are good. You don’t even lie as much as she said you did.”

  I bit my lip, scowling. He didn’t notice this. He was rolling his head back and forth across Hildegard’s words and looking dreamy. “And she’s just so beautiful.”

  “Who? The Abbess?”

  “Not the Abbess,” he said. “The Princess—”

  A scraping noise came from outside. Pa bolted upright, swiveling his head like an owl’s to stare at the casement. “I heard that!” he cried, and ran over to open the shutters. Before I quite knew how it had happened—or even noticed who was standing on the other side of the casement—Pa hauled Mihas the Cowherd in through the window by his collar.

  The boy didn’t even struggle. He’d gone limp in Pa’s grip, like a cat grabbed by the scruff. His mouth hung open like he wanted to mew.

  “Why were you listening? What were you trying to hear? Do you work for the Hungarians?” Pa was shouting into the cowherd’s face.

  “Pa, no! Pa! Shush!” Pa’s roars subsided into shouted whispers. I wondered if anyone would come to investigate the commotion, but then, every man drank too much plum brandy now and again and started a row with his family. Or with the herbalist. Right?

  “Cowherd!” I shook my head at Mihas. “Tell him you aren’t a spy, Cowherd.” Of course he said nothing. “Pa, you know he’s not a spy!”

  “I’ll sit on him until he tells us who he’s spying for. Or wait—is he here to steal? Does he want the golden cup?”

  “Oh, Pa,” I cried. “Stop it! Let the boy go!” Pa’d been a bit mad before, but this was utter nonsense.

  As suddenly as he had grabbed Mihas, Pa released him. “I don’t feel so good,” he told me, plopping onto my stool so heavily that the wood creaked.

  “I can see that.” I sighed. I turned to the cowherd. “Go away, Mihas. No one wants you here!”

  He stared at me with giant eyes turned violet in the candlelight.

  “She said go,” Pa said, lurching to his feet. Mihas scrambled backward, I think trying to reach the door, but instead bashing into a low shelf of flasks. A rain of rose-scented oil fell over his head. I groaned. Rose oil was so expensive.

  “Pa, sit down.” I stomped on his foot, and he sat on his bum like a two-year-old.

  Mihas scrubbed at his face and spat, trying to get the oil out of his eyes and mouth. I stepped forward to help him, but he staggered away from me, toward the door again—and this time stepped into the compost bucket. “Augh!” he shrieked, trying to shake the bucket off his foot, but it was firmly wedged. He stumped away, faster than I would have thought possible with one foot disabled and his eyes full of rose oil.

  “Mihas!” I called, but there was no getting him to wait. I was about to run after him and offer my aid when I heard Pa retching violently behind me.

  “Oh, Easter,” I muttered, and went to help Pa.

  When he had evacuated the contents of his stomach all over the herbary floor, I said, “I think we can call this effort a failure.”

  “Agreed,” Pa said, and calmly leaned over to erp again.

  Ew.

  I cleaned the herbary quickly and left Pa snoring on my table. Outside, I looked around but found no signs of Mihas. I went to the ferns growing among the rue and cut three-quarters of the fronds. The night previous, they had been short and tightly curled; tonight they were in full leaf.

  I met Marjit beneath the never-blinking eyes of the Little Well’s carved dragons. She hauled a fresh bucket of well water
and set it down.

  “Brother Cosmin said we mustn’t drink that,” I said.

  “Heavens, no! It used to be a holy well, they say, though at some point it gained a reputation for turning people into werewolves.”

  Uh-oh.

  “But,” Marjit continued, “it’s merely that the well is blessed by a capricious fairy, and it was just safer for everyone to avoid drinking from it.”

  She spoke like this was a well-known fact. My lips itched a little.

  “Are you sure? Brother Cosmin said that it was cursed by Turkish prisoners.” I pointed at the inscription.

  Marjit snorted, sprinkling dirt into the bucket of water. “Brother Cosmin thinks he knows more than the rest of us. It’s a holy well, trust me.”

  “Could drinking from it give dreams?”

  “Dreams, art, dancing, beauty, luck, kindness—it could grant any of those things. Or it could cause toads to drop from your mouth when you speak lies. It’s risky. Don’t drink from it. Now. Put your ferns in there.” She gestured at the bucket.

  When I was slow to move, she grabbed my hands and plunked the ferns into the water, then waved her hands over the bucket and muttered in the church language. I could make out only a few words, mostly numbers. My eyes glazed.

  “I’m calling on the Big Lady now,” Marjit told me. “And to Athena, the goddess, who stole the Lord of Hell’s own cap of invisibility and gave it to Perseus. I figure her for your best patron. Not so much Hades, given what you’ve said.”

  “All right,” I said. Pagan nonsense, I supposed, calling on dead gods instead of ever-living saints, but I still suppressed a shiver. At least it wasn’t the Devil. I closed my eyes and muttered a prayer for intercession to Saint Hildegard.

  Marjit’s droning continued. At length, her waving and words grew to a climax, and she drew out the last word in a moan and pulled her hands slowly apart. In the palm of her left hand was a netting needle—a big one, white like bone, with a large eye.