The Thirteenth Princess

by Diane Zahler

  “To save her father,” Alanna replied, showing me the illustration. In it, Beauty hugged her father as the Beast loomed over them both. “They love each other.”

  A father who loved his daughter…a daughter who loved her father. I could not understand this. Alanna, seeing my distress, put that story away, and we never read it again.

  One Sunday night, Alima, the most musical of my sisters, decided I should learn to sing. All my sisters could play and sing to some extent, but Alima was brilliant on the lute and the pianoforte, and her voice was as clear and lovely as I imagined an angel’s would be. The lesson was a disaster. I couldn’t sing at all—I sounded like a frog in distress when I tried. My sisters collapsed in laughter, and though I was a little hurt, I could not help joining in.

  “We shall teach you to dance instead!” Asenka pledged. Dancing was Asenka’s specialty. The princesses paired off and showed me the popular dances—the allemande, and the gavotte, and the lavolta and ländler. They took turns squiring me up and down the room, and winced only a little when I trod on their feet or stumbled so that they barked their shins on the bed frames. Then Asenka danced the zambra for us, and we sat hypnotized by the swaying and twisting of her graceful body with its fall of silver hair.

  A few weeks later Aurelia decided that I, like my sisters, must have pierced ears.

  “She is a princess, really,” she said, “and all princesses have pierced ears. That way, she can wear our earrings.”

  “You mean…you want to put holes in my ears?” I asked fearfully.

  “I’ll do it with a needle. It doesn’t hurt,” Aurelia said. “Look, I’ve had them since I was a baby. We all have.” She pulled back her hair and showed me the sapphire drops that hung from her delicate ears.

  “Well, if you got them when you were a baby, you don’t remember whether it hurt, do you? It probably hurt horribly!” I was torn. I wanted to be like my sisters…but I didn’t want them to stick needles through my ears.

  Althea, looking worried, said, “We have to be sure her ears don’t get infected. Hold the needle over the candle flame.” Aurelia produced a long, evil-looking needle and held it over the flame until it grew so hot that she dropped it.

  “There,” she said, picking it up and blowing on it. “Come here, Zita.”

  Nervously, I came to her.

  “Are you ready?” she asked. I nodded and closed my eyes. A moment later I felt a searing pain and screamed aloud, unable to help myself.

  “Hush!” Aurelia cried. “Do you want Nurse to come in and find you?” Tears filled my eyes, but I shook my head fiercely.

  “Do the other ear,” I whispered. I was rewarded by a look of respect from Aurelia, and she quickly pierced the other ear and threaded small gold hoops through both.

  “Clean them every day,” Althea told me as the others crowded around me, admiring the earrings and wiping the tears from my face. “And be sure no one sees them!”

  Aurelia pulled my hair back from my face so she could see the earrings. “They look so elegant,” she said proudly. “Now you’re a real princess, just like us.”

  I was a real princess only until Monday dawned, of course. Mondays were terrible for me that spring and summer. Sunday night was over, and for another whole week I was consigned to be a servant, watching my sisters from afar and longing to be with them. We waved to each other as we passed in hallways or on the land bridge, and sometimes they would pass me notes in clever ways. Once I found a piece of paper folded in the remains of a meat pie as I cleared the table. It was from Althea, the most kindhearted of my sisters, and read,

  Dearest Zita,

  We have missed you this week. You looked especially forlorn during dinner last night, and we wanted you to know that we too are forlorn and longing to see you again on Sunday.

  Your loving sister,

  Althea

  A message like that could make me happy for days, and my sisters saw the results and tried to lift my spirits with little notes and gifts as often as they dared. I lived from Sunday to Sunday.

  In July we were discovered. It was late in the evening, and Nurse had made her rounds. We had settled in to sleep—it was my night with Adena, one of my favorite bedmates. She was very slender, for one thing, so the two of us could fit easily into a bed made only for one, and her bedding was always scented with sandalwood, which gave me wonderful dreams. I had fallen into a lovely dream of a snow-white horse that I rode through a meadow, when the sudden jerk of Adena’s body beside me woke me. Standing over the bed stood Nurse, and my sleep-glazed eyes saw her in a way I never had before. Her familiar face looked just the same, wrinkled as an old apple and just as sweet, and her hair was in her nighttime braids, which hung down to her waist in gray ropes. But her eyes were dark and sharp, the eyes of a much younger woman, and the way they looked at me frightened me. I whimpered and turned my head from her piercing stare, but when I looked back, she was the old Nurse with her kindly, brown-eyed gaze, and she smiled at me indulgently.

  “I came back to find the comb I left behind, and look what I find instead. So little Zita is with her sisters!” she said, holding the candle so it wouldn’t drip on me. She laughed at the sight of me, and my sisters laughed nervously with her.

  “You won’t tell, will you, Nurse?” wheedled Allegra. “It’s just on Sundays, and we do love her so! It isn’t fair that Father won’t let her be with us.”

  Nurse pursed her lips. “No, dearies, it isn’t fair at all. I think it’s just lovely that you’re all together like this. I won’t tell, my pets—but you must be discreet. Don’t let anyone know!”

  We all shook our heads seriously. This would make our Sundays so much easier—no more hiding from Nurse at the nightly checks, and no need to worry if she intercepted a smile or wave that passed between us, or even a note. I breathed a sigh of relief that Nurse hadn’t been angry, ignoring the look she had given me at first. I’d been half asleep—perhaps it had even been part of my dream.

  Nurse gave us each a nighttime drink of chocolate, and we gulped it down and laid our heads on the feather pillows. Then she tucked us in—even me, and I thrilled to the feel of her hands smoothing the quilt above me, just as if I were a real princess.

  “Good night, dearies,” Nurse said, and we echoed, “Good night!” back in unison. As the door closed, Adena hugged me.

  “I was afraid she’d be mad,” she whispered. “I thought she might make you go—or tell Father!”

  I shivered at the thought. We all feared our father for his unpredictability and sudden rages, but my fear was different from my sisters’. They knew that he loved them, in his way. I had seen him gaze proudly at them as they rode with unusual grace or spoke a French phrase with perfect inflection. I had heard him gruffly compliment them when they looked especially lovely, with their hair in a becoming style or wearing a newly made dress.

  I knew that other fathers loved their daughters as well. The maids Salina, Bethea, and Dagman often told tales of their fathers, men strong enough to swing young children onto their shoulders, protective enough to threaten a drunken suitor, loving enough to scratch out a dowry to ensure a good marriage. But my father turned away when he saw me, a scowl twisting his face. Despite what Cook had said to the contrary, I thought that he hated me and blamed me for my mother’s death. It made me ache inside.

  In my desire to please Father, I learned to bake. He loved sweets, and when he bit into a honey cake I had made one evening, his mouth pulled into the closest thing to a smile that he could manage.

  “Cook!” he roared, sending the serving girls scurrying to the kitchen. I watched from behind the door as Cook rushed into the dining room, dipping low in an awkward curtsy and wiping her hands surreptitiously on her floury apron.

  “Your Majesty,” she managed. I laughed to myself to see her unnerved.

  “This cake…,” Father said, gesturing with his fork. “It is unusually good.”

  Cook reddened with pleasure, but then she remembered who h
ad actually made it. I could see the battle taking place within her as she tried to decide whether to tell. But her heart was big and true, and she sighed and said, “It was Zita’s recipe, and her making.”

  The silence was immediate as my sisters, their tutor, and several of Father’s councilors who sat at the long table stared down at their plates, pretending sudden fascination with the leftovers from their meal. Father deliberately took another bite, chewed slowly, and swallowed.

  “Tell Zita it is very fine,” he said finally, wiping his mouth with his linen napkin.

  I clasped my hands together in glee as Cook curtsied again and backed from the room, almost falling over in her desire to be gone.

  After that I experimented with tarts and pies, cakes and cookies, always trying to create a sweet that would bring that half smile again to Father’s face. I watched from the doorway as he tasted each of my confections, and I imagined that his enjoyment was a compliment to me that he could not find the words to express.

  On my twelfth birthday, which happily fell on a September Sunday, my sisters gave me an exquisite gift. It was a deep-green velvet coverlet for my bed. The silk embroidery, which they had done themselves, showed our own palace over the lake. The details were astonishing—a fish poked its head up from the silky blue water; a horseman clopped across the bridge; willows bent low from the shore; and in a window high above the lake, a face showed. It was my face, surrounded by unmistakable red silk curls, smiling. The window was that of my sisters’ bedroom.

  “Oh, how beautiful!” I gasped, looking at the embroidered picture. “It’s me in the window! I’ve never seen anything so wonderful!”

  My sisters smiled proudly, and I peered more closely at my own face, tiny on the coverlet.

  “What is that behind me?” I asked. There was a darkness there, behind the embroidered figure.

  “Amina spilled some chocolate while we were working,” Alanna said.

  “I did not! That is just not so!” Amina protested. “The threads just…seem darker there. Nothing was spilled.”

  I looked again. It seemed there was a figure, nebulous and indistinct, behind me in the window.

  “Maybe one of you pricked your finger, and it’s blood,” I suggested. “But it hardly shows. The embroidery is perfect. I shall use it every night.” I hugged the coverlet to me, knowing that I would have to hide it beneath the rough blanket that covered my bed so that none of the servants would see it.

  “Happy birthday, little Zita.” Aurelia hugged me. “I remember when I turned twelve. It seems so long ago!” Aurelia was as beautiful as ever, her hair as golden and lustrous, but a small line of discontent had begun to show sometimes between her eyes.

  “When I was twelve…,” she began, and trailed off.

  “What?” I urged, perching beside her on her bed and picking up her comb. I began to draw it gently through her long tresses, hoping for a story.

  “When I was twelve, I thought everything would be different.”

  There was a sudden silence in the room, and I remembered that when Aurelia was twelve, our mother was still alive.

  “Oh dear,” Allegra whispered.

  “I thought…,” Aurelia said. “I thought surely that by this age I would be married. I thought that I would have a husband, and perhaps a child. I thought that I would have a life so different from this one.”

  I stopped combing her hair and looked at her. Her lovely blue eyes were washed with tears, but she did not cry. I had never seen Aurelia cry.

  “You will marry,” Allegra said stoutly.

  “Whom shall I marry? Since I have been of age, I have been unable to speak in the presence of any prince I have met. None of them would ever set foot in this place again. Who would marry a girl who does not speak? Or one with Father for a father? And who would marry a woman who will be queen, when he could not be king? Father has made it clear to me that he wants his blood to rule, and no one else’s.” Her voice was low and measured, and full of pain.

  “Do you want to be queen?” I asked her.

  “I am raised to be a queen,” she told me fiercely. “It is all I know how to be. But I do not want to be queen all alone.”

  I couldn’t bear to see her so unhappy, so I hugged her as hard as I could, feeling her stiff in my arms.

  “I will find you a prince,” I promised rashly. “I will find one who will rule with you as your consort.”

  Aurelia’s eyes, which had been gazing far off into her unhappy future, came back to the present and focused on me. She smiled.

  “All right,” she said, and hugged me back. “You find me a consort, and I shall marry him. He and I will rule together, and I will raise you to your real stature. You will be a princess of the realm.”

  “And you my queen!” I laughed, and my sisters laughed with me, glad to see Aurelia herself again. We all prostrated ourselves before her, calling her “Your Highness” and “Your Majesty” and giggling wildly.

  But this knowledge changed something in the way I saw my sisters. It wasn’t just Aurelia who felt this way. Alanna, Ariadne, Althea, Adena, Asenka, Amina, and Alima were all old enough to marry, and in any other kingdom would have wed long ago. They would have met princes from far and near, danced at balls at home and abroad, worn dresses that showed off their white shoulders and blue eyes. Instead, they were trapped in a pink palace whose walls sweated, with no husbands in sight. My other sisters would be marriageable soon, if they were not already, and I too would come of age before long. Whom would I marry? A footman, a stableman? The dreadful Burle? But I was a princess, not a servant!

  For the next few days I was in a funk, confused and irritable. I’d spent my life envying my sisters, but now I was beginning to see that they were just as trapped in their lives as I was in mine. They were more comfortable, it is true, but they were prisoners nonetheless. What would become of us? Would we live out our lives in this palace, alone and unloved? Would we grow old here, our joints aching until our knees would no longer bend, childless and bereft? I had never thought much about a husband or family, but now that I suddenly realized I might not have them, they were becoming very important to me.

  My mood was so bad that when Cook chastised me for inattention to the soup, I threw the ladle at her, spattering pea puree up the walls. Cook was furious, but she couldn’t punish me as she would another maid, so she banished me from the kitchen’s warmth and dryness and sent me over the land bridge to search for fallen nuts for a tart. It was an early fall morning, and on the lake surface leaves floated, their reds and oranges reflected in the leaves still hanging on the tree branches above. The air was crisp and clean, and I breathed deeply as I crossed the bridge, glad to be away from the palace.

  At the edge of the woods I stopped and looked back—and saw something most unusual. My sisters were coming out of the palace for their afternoon stroll, and I watched them walk across the bridge, their bright cloaks billowing around them. They ambled slowly along the lakeshore, stopping now and then to pick up a bright leaf or blow the fluff from a dandelion as Nurse herded them like a flock of sheep. Then I saw their heads tilt up as one, and I looked into the distance to see what had caught their interest. I made out riders on horseback—three, four, no, five of them, riding slowly out of the forest on the far side of the bridge. They wore soldiers’ uniforms, the sky blue and black of the men who patrolled the Western Reaches that ran through my father’s kingdom and the neighboring kingdom of Blaire. I watched them approach, their leader a bearded soldier with auburn hair under his military cap who sat tall and straight in the saddle. I could see from the stripes on his sleeve that he was a captain. At first the soldiers did not seem to see the princesses, and then the captain pulled up sharply at the same time that Nurse noticed the riders.

  “Princesses!” I heard Nurse’s voice clearly through the cool air. “Come along—we must get back!” Scurrying like a sheepdog, she gathered my sisters together, protecting them and moving them back the way they had come. But Aurelia
stayed where she was, her face raised in the brilliant fall sunlight. I saw her look straight at the auburn-haired captain, and he looked back at her. From my vantage point, I could not see their expressions, but I felt the stillness between them, and I raised my hand to my mouth to stifle a gasp. The captain bowed his head to Aurelia, and she dipped ever so slightly in a curtsy before Nurse descended on her.

  “Princess Aurelia!” she scolded. “Do not curtsy to a soldier!”

  Aurelia turned, and I could see the flush of embarrassment rising on her cheeks as she allowed Nurse to lead her back to join the others. I stood at the woods’ edge, confused and transfixed by what I had witnessed, and the captain too held his mount still, watching as my sisters scurried back to the bridge. I could hear the other soldiers laughing and joking, but he just sat unmoving as the girls disappeared inside the palace. Then he turned his horse smartly and galloped back into the trees, the other four following behind.

  I carried my basket far into the woods, thinking about the soldier and Aurelia, and picking up the occasional walnut and hazelnut along the way. At noontime, I sat beside a brook to eat my bread and cheese, and then I lay relishing the warmth of the autumn sun and looking up at the brilliant blue of the sky, a blue as clear as Akila’s eyes. And I must have fallen asleep, for I dreamed a terrible dream.

  A storm had come unexpected upon the palace, and my sisters were out in their boats, three pretty rowboats painted pastel yellow, green, and blue. The sky above the lake was black with clouds, and the lake was black too, its waters whipped into waves that lashed the sides of the boats as the girls clutched one another and shrieked in fear. As I watched in my dream, powerless to move, a great waterspout formed behind the boats, whirling and whirling the lake water upward, and one by one the boats were swept into it, splintering apart from the force of the spinning winds. I could do nothing but point wordlessly in horror as my sisters were drawn upward to their certain deaths. A moment after the boats had disappeared, the winds died, the waterspout disappeared, and the clouds parted, showing the sky as blue as blue could be. There was no sign of the storm, and no sign of my sisters. I began to scream and scream, and woke still screaming.