by Casey Lane
I fear I must go now. Dark is falling, and you and my betrayer are turning to go back inside the castle walls.
Your Betrothed,
Evony
I awoke the next morning to a sky without clouds. Let my day be like the sky, I prayed to the Maker. Clear and beautiful.
“Three days left,” I told the nearest goose as I climbed into the pen and began to sprinkle corn on the ground. “I wish I could simply send a messenger bird to my brother. He could straighten this mess out. But it seems that whatever darkness has placed this silence upon me will not allow me to ask others in even written form.” I sighed. “Believe me, I’ve tried.”
Joseph arrived soon after that, so I stopped talking to the geese. The less he knew about my life, the happier I would be. In silence, we herded the geese out of their little coop and out to the fields of emerald green. For all of his faults, one thing I did appreciate about Joseph was his lack of words. When the man needed to say something, he got to the point. There was no endless stream of prattle.
Once the geese were well out to pasture, we settled down beneath a sycamore tree. As soon as I heard his snores, however, I stood up and slipped out into the fields toward the castle. I went without a plan, but no sooner had I crested the rise than I stepped on a loose stone and tumbled all the way down the hill, right into a pond.
The pond wasn’t deep, thank the Maker, but as I tried to right myself, I realized I’d caught my left foot in some underwater bramble. If I’d been only a few inches taller, I might have been able to pull myself out using one of the branches of the tree that stretched out overhead. But I was not a few inches taller, and I was not going to call Joseph for aid. Frustrated, I couldn’t help the little curses that slipped out as I tried unsuccessfully to reach for the tree. My mother would have cringed had she heard the words I spoke, but I was of the opinion that they didn’t count if no one could understand them.
“Etta?”
To my relief and horror, I looked up to see the prince standing beside the pond. I hadn’t even heard his approach.
“I . . . my boot is stuck.” I gestured down to the water, thankful I’d been cursing in the ancient language of my people. If I was trying to convince him that I was truly his lost betrothed, such language would most likely do little to further my cause. As my mother was oft to remind me, princesses don’t curse.
“Let me help you.” He immediately circled the pond and moved to my side, then he stretched his arm out for me to grasp. When I did take hold of him, a jittery thrill ran through me. It was the first time I had ever touched my betrothed. I tried not to grin stupidly as he pulled me out of the water and onto the grass. “It’s fortunate that I was out walking with Princess Evony. No one might have heard your shriek otherwise.”
My heart fell as I realized my betrayer must be nearby. But really, what else could I have expected?
“Forgive me for asking,” he said, “but was that Aldirn you were speaking?”
My face flushed and I looked at him in horror. He had not only heard my curses but, it seemed, understood them as well.
He laughed at my expression. “Worry not. I just find it intriguing because only the nobility and royalty of Frei learn that language. My betrothed told me that once in one of her letters.” He chuckled. “She even shared a few of the words.” Then the smile vanished from his face. “How does a goose girl come to know the dead language of a people not her own?”
I stared into his blue eyes. If only he would continue to ask, perhaps he would stumble upon a question I was able to answer! And yet for now, my mouth was sealed shut.
“Who are you? And what is your family name? And don’t tell me you don’t have one. You wouldn’t have known that language if you didn’t.”
I could only give him a mournful stare.
“I see,” he said, pulling his hand away from mine. Only then did I look down at my hands to realize I’d been clutching his fingers since he’d pulled me from the pond. How I hated to lose them. “Then you do not wish to be known.”
“There is a vast difference, Sire,” I whispered, “between not wanting to answer and being unable.”
“How old are you, Etta?” His voice was suddenly dead serious.
“Eighteen.” At least that I could say that. “Why do you ask?” Did I dare to hope?
He opened his mouth and closed it again, as though there were something he wished to say but couldn’t. At that moment, a woman’s chatter became audible from the other side of the hill behind him.
“Something is wrong here,” he muttered before she crested the hill. As soon as she did, he smiled widely at her. Even if it suddenly seemed false, his lopsided grin made my heart quicken. “Did you get lost, Evony?” he asked my betrayer. “I thought you were right behind me.”
My betrayer, who still hadn’t looked up from dusting her skirts off, began tittering on about getting turned around, but when she finally looked up from her clothes, her eyes settled dangerously on me. “What are you doing with her?”
“Etta was the one we heard shriek. She’d fallen in the pond. After pulling her out, I was just asking her whether she was settling in here at last.” He turned and gave me a strange look. “Are you?”
I swallowed hard, willing my words to be a warning of some kind. “I am afraid not, Sire.” There, that hadn’t violated my mysterious curse!
His smile immediately disappeared. “What is it?”
If only he knew.
Maxence turned back to my betrayer, the look on his face suddenly calculating. What was he about? “Evony, you always wrote to me about how much you loved making new friends with the servants when your mother wasn’t looking. Perhaps your womanly senses can be of assistance in helping Etta find her place here.”
“Please, do tell. I would love to help.” My betrayer didn’t even blink at his proposition. Her smile became sweeter than sugar, but her eyes dared me to try my escape. How it sickened me to see his hand on the small of her back! Very well. I would take her dare.
“I-”
“There ya are!”
I closed my eyes at the sound of Joseph Peck’s voice. Was the entire castle conspiring against me?
“Who is this?” my betrayer cooed. “Such a striking young man.”
“Y’Majesties.” Joseph bowed twice. “Pardon t’interruption. I was just lookin’ for my intended.” He put his arm around me.
“I am not your intended!” I shoved his arm off of my shoulders. “Stop calling me that!” I turned and begged the prince with my eyes.
The prince held my gaze, but my betrayer wasn’t listening. Instead, she was searching vigorously all around her feet and under her skirts. Then she turned to the prince. “Darling, I must have dropped my reticule at the rose bush we visited on the last hill. Get it for me?”
The prince nodded, but the frown didn’t leave his face as he walked away. I miserably watched him go as she turned back to us. “Now, Etta,” she said, smiling as though she’d never seen me before in her life, “marriage to this young man would solve all of your miseries and loneliness, I think. In fact, I’m so sure that I shall set your wedding date for tomorrow. We can even hold it in the second dining hall.” She clapped like a little girl. “Oh, it shall be grand!”
I stared at her in horror as Joseph mashed his hat and his face burned red with a grin that stretched from ear to ear. What kind of evil had spawned such a creature? She couldn’t simply marry my betrothed. No, she also wished to force me into wedlock with another who had done naught but shirk his duties and mumble of bearing sons for the last five days. My knees threatened to buckle.
“I can’t seem to find it,” Maxence called out as he came over the hill. He stopped when he saw my face. “Etta, are you ill?”
“Oh no, darling,” exclaimed my betrayer with a bright smile. “We have just decided that Etta and Joseph here are to be married tomorrow!”
He took a step toward me. “Is this what you want?” he asked softly.
A sob of relief burst forth from me as I shook my head.
“Why ever not?” my betrayer asked, impatience tinging her voice for the first time as her eyes bored into mine. “Your income shall keep you both comfortably, and you will never be without a warm bed.” She paused and raised an eyebrow. “Do you have any better prospect that we should know about?”
With all my might, I tried to shout that my rightful prospect was standing before me. I tried to whisper, to sing. I tried to nod. But all I succeeded in doing was looking like an addled fool as they watched my silence. Finally, I resigned myself to begging him once again with my eyes. After exchanging letters for twelve years, surely he should know something about me, enough to know that she wasn’t me.
For just a moment, something flickered across his face. A spark of recognition, a hint of doubt, I could not be sure. Just as he opened his mouth, however, a guardsman rode up and addressed the prince.
“Your Highnesses,” he bowed to the prince and my betrayer, ignoring Joseph and me completely, “the ambassador of Templin has arrived. Your father desires your presence.”
“Please tell my father that I will come straightaway,” the prince said. As soon as the guardsman was gone, Maxence turned back to us. I held my breath. “Etta,” he said, “if you do not wish to marry this young man, then by no means will you be forced into wedlock against your will.” He spoke to me, but was looking hard at my betrayer. A shiver of delight ran down my spine as his blue eyes locked onto hers and turned to ice. “Come my dear.” He held out his arm, but his words were a command. “Let us join my father.”
She took his arm, but her smile was now forced, and her shoulders slumped.
As they began to walk back toward the castle, I knew suddenly that I had to hear what he would say to her about the incident. If I wasn’t capable of exposing her, she had nearly just done so herself. I needed to know whether he suspected her or not. As soon as they’d been gone a full minute, I darted off after them.
“Go off alone and you’ll hit bandits,” Joseph called out, picking at his fingernails with a stick.
“Better bandits than you,” I hissed over my shoulder before skirting up and over the hill.
It really was quite fortunate that the hills were so tall for I could follow behind close enough to hear without being seen. When I caught up, it was the prince’s voice I heard first.
“ . . .cannot force our subjects into marriage, particularly against their own will! I thought you had more sense than that . . . and more heart.”
My heart fluttered. He did know me.
“From the way you stared at the wench, one would have thought you were saving her for yourself,” was her petulant reply.
“That is not at all what I’m talking about, and you know it.”
“Really? Then why couldn’t you take your eyes from her the whole time we spoke? And what is her right, talking with you as though she knows you?”
He paused before answering. I struggled to keep myself from catching them just to ask him the same question myself. Why hadn’t he taken his eyes from me as we had stood together?
His answer was nearly inaudible. “To be honest, I cannot tell. She seems familiar to me. I feel as though we’ve met before.”
I couldn’t hear the rest of their conversation for we were approaching the castle and I could hear the noise of the crowded street that led through the gates. With a sigh, I turned back to the fields, slowly gathering the geese that had scattered behind me.
“Why do you think,” I asked a gander, “that they were all the way out in the fields anyway? Surely he has more important duties than walking out with the animals and their keepers. Do you think . . . just perhaps . . . that he could have been looking for me?” As I spoke the words aloud, such a thought sounded absurd, particularly as we’d only had one chance encounter before that. “Still,” I told a goose as I herded her back into my little group, “it matters little, for here I am, and she’s in there with him.” I looked longingly back at the castle and its many elegant towers once more.
Suddenly, not really caring whether the geese were well walked that day, and not at all wishing to see Joseph, I collapsed in the shade of a nearby pine and pulled my precious letters and my necklace out of my reticule. Since no one was nearby, I put on the necklace and spent a moment studying its little ruby. I couldn’t wear it much during the day, for I feared that my betrayer might decide to take it after all, or ruffians might try to steal it. But in those moments when no one was close, I would take it out and put it on. For a moment, I could pretend that my mother was close by. Even now I fingered it, wishing with all my heart that she could have sat with me and told me what to do. But no, I thought. It would have broken her heart.
After a moment of reminiscing, I began thumbing through the stack of parchments, and I was surprised to come across a letter I hadn’t seen before. Perplexed, I pulled it out. It must have been delivered just before I’d begun my ill-fated journey. My mother was the only one who had known where I kept Maxence’s letters. My throat tightened as I realized placing this letter in my reticule with the others must have been one of the last acts of love she’d committed before she’d died. This revelation made it rather hard to read through my suddenly blurry vision, but I did my best. This letter suddenly had double meaning for me.
Dear Evony,
We are having a ball tonight, though what for this time I cannot remember. Mother and Father have not needed to cajole me into such events for several years now, for I now know that attendance is necessary for one of my station, but that doesn’t mean I enjoy it any more than I did when I was young. I have never liked balls. You might be surprised, however, to find out that it is not the boorish guests or constant ceremony which I detest. I actually enjoy being in the company of others, and the food is always decent enough to suppress the boredom. Rather, it is the dancing itself that I cannot abide. I am telling this to you now so that when you arrive, my utter incompetence doesn’t come as a shock. I hope you know the Pilovare, for that is the only dance I can complete successfully without stomping on my poor partners’ feet.
I like to think my inability to dance is made up for in my ability to romance. Whether or not this is true, however, shall not be determined until your arrival when I will finally be able to test myself.
I must admit that I was unfaithful to you once at a ball. I was eight, and one of my cousins dared me to kiss a visiting duchess who was nine and very pretty. You will be happy to learn, however, that instead of kissing me back, she screamed and ran away. My father, who usually thought my tricks amusing, nearly boxed my ears that night, reminding me with vehemence that I was yours and yours alone. I can promise you that since that day, I have not kissed another.
If you recall, there was a period of several years where my letters must have been dreadful. I sincerely apologize for those. No adolescent boy wishes to be engaged to a woman, no matter how good and sweet she may be, but that doesn’t excuse their atrocity. By my eyes, I was much too busy to write to an unknown future spouse, and preferred to dream of fighting the Dullahan or leading my future army into battle. So I am mortified to admit that I made my letters as dull as possible, trying to convince you to find a husband elsewhere (as though you had any more choice in our partnering than I did).
As we grew, however, and as your letters continued in their honesty and steadfastness, I began to find you, much to my horror, interesting. That you were chosen for me began not to matter so much. You see, you had become a distant companion, someone who wouldn’t repeat my ridiculous notions to my parents, as some of my acquaintances here have been wont to do. I could share with you my reflections and ideas and annoyances, and you would respond in the like.
I say all this because I wonder if there is another reason that I hate balls. When I began to come to my senses around the time I turned seventeen, I began to picture you there at the balls with me. I had no idea as to what you looked like, but my mind would often paint you with a pretty littl
e smile on a pair of pink lips. In my mind, your eyes would sparkle up at me as we danced, the way the daughters of our guests would look at me. And it hit me one day that you might be smiling at the men in your court the same way when you danced. And the men you smiled at must be dying to earn such a smile from the princess. A giggle, a laugh. A stolen kiss.
It was you who taught me the meaning of jealousy as I watched the young ladies parade about the court. I might not know you through any means but the letters, but even those few words that we were allowed to exchange made me want nothing more than to have you for myself and not to share you with the rest of the world’s lonely men. I longed to hold you in my arms, and to twirl you about (to the best of my limited ability). I wanted to see you sparkle. I wanted a chance to romance you the way all your admirers surely must have been doing. Your words made you beautiful. They were kind and funny, and if I couldn’t see the lively spark in your eyes, I could hear it in the stories you shared. Would, I worried, some young man run away with your heart the way the little duchess had run away with mine?
So make haste, Evony. I don’t know if I can survive another ball without you.
Your Betrothed,
Max
One last note: Please address me as Max for all future reference, at least in private. I cannot abide Maxence. My parents insist upon calling me by my horrid, stuffy name, but when we are alone, do you think you could grant this one request instead?
As I returned the letter and my necklace to my reticule, I bit back tears. For years I had thought I loved him, even when there was no imposter and the future was a dream. But now my chest ached with a pain I hadn’t known before. I had lost my parents. I had left my country. I couldn’t lose this man, too.
Without knowing exactly how I was going to do it, I decided to talk to the king.