The Thirteenth Princess

by Diane Zahler

  “What of Breckin’s brother, Milek?” I suggested at last. “He is honorable, courageous—just right for the job. And I believe he has…feelings for Aurelia.”

  “But you told me he is gone to help his mother,” Babette pointed out. “We cannot say when he will be back—and I do not think we have much time.”

  “Then we must find a prince ourselves,” I said. “But how?”

  Babette pursed her lips. “We shall write to their fathers, asking for the sons’ help. A courteous king will not refuse us.”

  “But…” I hesitated. “Why would they respond to a letter from us? A kitchen maid and a—” I didn’t know quite what to call Babette.

  “An old witch?” she suggested, smiling broadly. “No, they would not take us very seriously. We shall have to write as your father.”

  “Oh dear,” I said, gulping.

  “And that puts a lot of responsibility on you, my dear,” Babette went on. “You will have to get the stationery and write the letters—how is your hand?”

  “Tolerable,” I said. I had practiced writing for my sisters until they approved my calligraphy.

  “And you shall have to intercept the return letters so your father does not see them.”

  “Oh dear,” I said again, faintly.

  Together, we came up with a list of princes. There were King Damon’s four sons who had once danced with my sisters, the brothers Bazyli and Ade of Tem, Prince Regan from Blaire, Prince Kiros from Nara, and Prince Riane from Tybal, far to the east. They were the only names I knew, so they would have to do. We worked out a formula for my letter:

  Dear [Name of Prince],

  We are writing to request your help in breaking an enchantment that holds our daughters captive. The usual reward of a princess’s hand in marriage is offered, though because the princesses are twelve in number, we shall allow the prince who succeeds to make his own choice of bride. We shall not describe the nature of the enchantment until you apply to us in person, but suffice it to say that there are no dragons involved. Please reply at your earliest convenience.

  HRH (etc., etc., etc.)

  Babette and I decided that I would bring the completed letters to her, and she would figure out how to get them to their intended audiences. I did not enquire whether she would use magic to do this or would rely on the regular horse post, but I did express my worry as to the timing.

  “We must hurry,” I told her. “My sisters are worsening. Their exhaustion may kill them. Will the letters arrive in time? Will the princes come in time?”

  To her credit, Babette did not lie to me. “I do not know, my dear,” she said softly. “We can only do our best.” I nodded and stood to leave, my letter draft clutched tightly in my hand.

  “You were very brave,” Babette said as she hugged me. “It must have been frightening, down below the lake.”

  “It was…strange,” I replied. “What was frightening was to see my sisters enchanted. The rest was—well, it was exciting. Wondrous. Beautiful and terrible both.” Then I remembered something. I put my hand into my skirt pocket and pulled out the silver leaf I had cut free. I laid it on the table. It was a remarkable thing: as pliable as a real, living leaf, with veins of darker silver.

  Babette picked it up and looked at it closely. Then she sighed deeply. “That is magic. Beautiful and terrible. Some is more beautiful; some is more terrible. Your sisters are trapped in the terrible, and we will get them out. Do not despair!”

  “I won’t,” I promised, placing the leaf back in my pocket. “I won’t!”

  On my way back to the palace, I found a small grove with morel mushrooms still growing, poking out from the dusting of snow that covered the ground. I picked them hurriedly, and as I moved toward the lakeshore, I met Breckin, who was exercising Amina’s horse. He tumbled from the saddle and ran to me.

  “Have you been to see Babette?” he asked. “What did she say?”

  I told him our idea, and he nodded. “We do need help,” he said. “I don’t have the first idea what to do to break an enchantment.”

  “But will the princes know?” I asked. “Are princes born knowing how to do that? Or do their fathers tell them when they reach eighteen? And will they even come? Surely they all know of my father. They’ll be unlikely to want to brave his wrath.”

  “But they will think it is he who wrote to them,” Breckin pointed out. “They will think the king would be grateful to them. I believe they will come.”

  “I hope you are right,” I said fervently. We made a plan then: I would write out the letters and leave them in a packet in the stable, and Breckin would make sure they got to Babette. We clasped hands to say good-bye, and I ran across the bridge, swinging my basket full of mushrooms for Cook to make into a dish tempting enough to convince my sisters to eat.

  That evening, when I was certain my father was dining well on venison and morels, I snuck into his private rooms. I tiptoed past the outer chamber and into his study. His long mahogany desk stood in shadows, covered with papers and quills. I crept up to it, my eyes searching frantically for paper with the royal crest. There! I scooped up a sheaf of thick, cream-colored paper with Father’s blue and gold crest on the top. Then I noticed the wax stick and the Great Seal, and my heart sank. I had forgotten that for a missive from Father to be official, it had to be sealed with wax with the impression of the Great Seal pressed into it.

  Suddenly I heard a noise at the outer door. I turned frantically and saw the deep-blue velvet drapes at the long windows. They pooled on the floor, and I could tell that with their weight and length, I could hide behind them and not be seen. I pushed the sheaf of paper into my deep apron pocket and darted between drape and window, shivering when I felt the chill of the night beyond the window. For good measure, I used Babette’s trick and tried to become the curtains. I heard footsteps enter the study, then proceed onward to the closet. Fearfully I peeked out and saw my father, shaking out a velvet jacket. I drew in a long, trembling breath: Father must have gotten chilly in the dining room and come in for a warm jacket. I tried not to move, but Father’s ears were keen, and he stopped in his tracks.

  “Who is there?” he called sharply.

  I knew I was found out. “It is I, your Majesty,” I said, coming out from behind the drapes. “I am sorry. I didn’t mean to trespass. I was”—my mind raced frantically—“looking for a book.”

  “A book?” Father’s eyebrows drew together. “Do you read, then?”

  “Well, yes,” I improvised. “I started on cookbooks, of course. But I have become very interested in”—I cast my eye quickly over the nearest bookcase—“in poetry.”

  To my surprise, Father did not grow angry or dismiss me. Instead he walked over to the bookcase. He put his hand on a volume, bound in rich plum-colored leather, and gently pulled it free.

  “Your mother loved poetry,” he said softly. “That is how I wooed her. I wrote her love poems cribbed from this book.”

  “You mean you said the poems were yours?” I couldn’t help myself; it was too strange and shocking.

  He nodded, and I saw the ghost of a smile tremble at his lips. He seemed almost to be in a dream.

  “She knew they were not mine, of course,” he said. “But she did not tell me until after we were wed. How she laughed at me!” His voice was filled with a terrible yearning, and I felt my heart contract with pity. I stepped forward.

  “Oh, Father,” I said, and touched his arm.

  My touch woke him from his reverie, and he turned to look at me, the familiar scowl back in place.

  “You should be at your tasks, child, not dallying in here,” he reprimanded me, though his voice was not as harsh as usual. I scurried to the door, turning to curtsy.

  “Wait,” he said. He came forward, and held out the book in his hand to me.

  “It was her favorite,” he said roughly. For a moment I wasn’t sure what to do. Then I realized he was giving me the book, and I reached out and took it, my hand shaking.

 
“Now go!” Father commanded, and I fled.

  That night, before I began to write my pleading letters to the princes on the paper I had stolen, I looked through the book of poems. I had not really ever read poetry before. Poetry was not encouraged in my sisters’ education, so they had not passed it on to me. At first I could hardly bear to open the volume, knowing my mother’s hands had once held it. I stroked the smooth leather and looked at the title, embossed in gold. Poems of Longing, Love, and Loss. When I looked inside it at last, it fell open to one page, and I read:

  I ne’er was struck before that hour

  With love so sudden and so sweet,

  Her face it bloomed like a sweet flower

  And stole my heart away complete.

  I liked the sweet sound of it, the rhymes and rhythm of the lines. I tried to picture my father writing these words, passing them off as his own, and my mother reading them, laughing, knowing he’d lied. Could Father really have once been that besotted young man? It seemed incredible to me.

  I let the book fall open again and read:

  Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,

  And slips into the bosom of the lake:

  So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip

  Into my bosom and be lost in me.

  I felt a heat rise to my face as I read the poem, and closed my eyes quickly. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but the words spoke so strongly that I was embarrassed without quite knowing why. Quickly I thumbed through the pages again, and they opened to a third poem:

  The dew falls thick, my blood grows cold.

  Draw, draw the closèd curtains: and make room:

  My dear, my dearest dust; I come, I come.

  I closed the book again, tears flooding my eyes. My dearest dust; I come, I come. Oh, poor Father! If that was how my mother’s death made him feel, how could he bear it?

  I tucked the small volume away in the box of treasures beneath my bed and turned to the task of writing to the princes. I was too tired to work well, though, and spoiled the first two letters with blots. Determined, I tried again. This time my hand was steadier, and the letters came out tolerably well—not quite the work of a royal scribe, to be sure, but passable. When the ink had dried, I folded them and hid them. It was nearly dawn, and I knew the palace would soon be stirring. I would have to wait until evening to stamp the letters with the royal seal. I fell into bed, but even weary as I was, sleep did not come at once; when I closed my eyes, I saw again my sisters’ whirling dance and heard the strains of the violins. Such beautiful music! Such beautiful, beautiful music.

  The sun had long been up when I woke, and I cursed myself for wasting time that I could have spent in helping my sisters. Quickly I dressed and washed and hurried down to the kitchen, where I found Cook alone stirring a pot of broth.

  “Another princess ailing,” she reported to me. “Ariadne it is, this time. I’m to make a restorative broth for them all, says the doctor. Fool!”

  “Why a fool?” I asked sharply, taking the spoon from her hand and stirring. After the hours I had spent wondering who had woven my sisters’ enchantment, everyone seemed a possible witch or wizard—even Cook. For how could Cook know that broth would fail, unless she…

  “Has anything that man tried done the least bit of good?” Cook demanded. “Have those girls not gone downhill since the day Dr. Idiot set foot in this palace? How not a fool, I ask you? Restorative broth, indeed!”

  “What would you do for them?” I asked her, pushing down my mistrust with an effort. Cook was no witch. She was a dear, sensible soul who would always do what she could for my sisters. Dr. Valentin, on the other hand…Was it true that my sisters had worsened ever since he first came? But Adena was ill before that. Oh, the endless suspicion made my head spin!

  “They need rest,” Cook said definitively. “Do you know that they are walking through their shoes each night? Our cobblers aren’t able to keep up with repairing them! I don’t know what’s gotten into the princesses, or why they walk, but walk they do, and they must stop. The guard your father has put on their door has done no good at all! You know, gossip says—” She stopped herself, looking abashed.

  “Gossip says what?” I demanded.

  “No offense meant,” Cook said, a little shamefaced, “but you should probably know that people think they are out looking for husbands.”

  I gave a hoot of laughter. “Walking through their shoes every night looking for husbands? I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous!”

  Cook nodded emphatically. “It is ridiculous, and I gave those gossips the right side of my rolling pin for it! But still…”

  “Still…,” I echoed, and then the kitchen was silent, except for the crackling of the ever-present hearth fire and the sound of the spoon moving through the broth, round and round.

  In the quiet time between luncheon and preparing for dinner, I escaped to my room and stuffed the letters into my apron pocket. Later, when Father was at dinner again, I snuck into his study and lit a candle from the embers in the fireplace. Then I used the candle to melt wax from the wax stick onto each of the letters. With my heart pounding, I picked up the Great Seal and pressed it into each wax dripping. There!

  As the wax dried, I admired my work, too engrossed in my success to notice the odd flickering of the candle that I had placed on the desk. Then, suddenly, there was a puff of breath from behind me, and the candle was out. I squawked like a surprised chicken and turned, trying to adjust my eyes to the sudden dimness of the room.

  Standing there was my father, his anger making him seem even taller and more formidable than usual. The man from the night before, who had spoken tenderly of poetry and of my mother, was nowhere in his visage. I shrank backward, but there was no escaping.

  “Are you looking for more poems to read?” he asked sarcastically. I was too frightened to reply.

  “Give those to me,” he demanded, pointing to the letters. His voice was deceptively soft. I was powerless to disobey. Shaking, I picked up the letters and handed them to him. He pulled one letter open and read it, squinting in the dim light, then strode to the fireplace with the bunch of them and tossed them in. The flames leaped up, happy to have something as tasty as paper to eat, and in a moment my work was consumed.

  Father turned back to me. His brows were lowered and his eyes flashed. “You would make us a laughingstock,” he said to me, his voice still low. “You would write this—this ridiculous, this absurd letter to princes across the land, in my name. In my name!” Now his voice was getting louder, and I shrank back still more.

  “But your Majesty—,” I tried.

  “You would tell them there is an enchantment here, when all know that magic has been banned from this kingdom?”

  I scrambled away from him, trying to explain, but he overrode my feeble voice with his roar.

  “You would make me look powerless to help my own daughters? You would invite the sons of the king of Tem, the son of the king of Nara here? You would do that?” And now his fury was full force, and I sank to the floor weeping, apologizing, telling him that I was wrong, I shouldn’t have done it, I would never do anything like that again.

  It was shameful, I know, the cowardly way I behaved, but it wasn’t just that I was afraid. It was that I didn’t want to hurt him. I didn’t want him to think that I had meant to make him a laughingstock. I didn’t want to lose his love. And wasn’t that the ridiculous thing, the absurd thing? Because I knew full well that I had never had his love to lose.

  Chapter 10

  IN WHICH HELP ARRIVES

  I snuck out that night, dodging past the guard as he dozed and crossing the bridge that was now slick with snow. I found Breckin asleep in the stables and woke him to tell him of the failure of our plan.

  “You must go to Babette and explain what happened,” I instructed. “I cannot do it myself. I have the strangest feeling—like someone is watching me. I do not want to lead them to Babette.” I felt a little silly saying this to Breckin, but
he took me seriously.

  “Your father is angry and suspicious,” he reminded me. “If he thinks you are set on sending these letters, he’s probably set someone to watch and make sure you don’t write them again and send them. Have you actually seen anyone?”

  “No,” I admitted. “I look behind myself a hundred times a day, and there’s no one there, but I could swear I feel eyes on me.”

  “Just go about your business,” Breckin said, “and I’ll talk to Babette. I’m sure she has come up with other ideas.”

  I was not so sure, but I had no choice but to return to my rounds of cleaning and cooking, dusting and baking.

  As the next few days passed and I waited anxiously for Breckin to contact me, I knew that my sisters continued their nightly pilgrimage beneath the lake. Their shoes appeared each morning, worn and tattered, and one by one they fell ill, keeping to their beds, until Father dined alone at the long table each night while his daughters languished upstairs. At midnight I listened for the sound of the dumbwaiter descending and wept as it passed by the pantry, carrying the girls to their nightly dance. It was a torment to me, this doing nothing. I could not sleep; I had trouble eating. The circles under my eyes rivaled Aurelia’s.

  I spent still more time trying to figure out who was behind the enchantment. I looked at everyone with suspicion, from the maids who were my friends to the footmen, Burle, and Chiara. I knew I had no real reason to suspect Burle except that I did not like him, but Chiara in particular caught my attention, with her perpetually sour expression and brusque manner. I remembered that she had called my sisters “spoiled” after one of the disastrous dinners with the princes. And I recalled seeing her the night that I had noticed the princesses’ shoes in the hallway. I told myself that it was not unusual for her to be at her work at that hour, but still I wondered. Determined to find out what I could, I followed her around, trying to keep from being seen. Her eyes were sharp, though, accustomed as she was to noticing the smallest object undusted or out of place, and when I shadowed her to the dining room and she turned and tripped over me, at last she grew annoyed.