by Finley Aaron
“What did you think of Hugo?” Rolf asked slowly, his eyebrows dancing.
Ella studied her friend and felt herself blushing red in spite of her efforts.
“Oh, you do know who he is, don’t you?” Rolf accused.
“I don’t have the foggiest idea who he is,” Ella protested, perhaps a bit too loudly.
Hugo had been approaching their group from behind her, and caught what she said. “You don’t know who who is?”
Rolf’s mouth fell open, and he worked his jaw silently for several seconds while he gasped for breath.
Ella ignored Rolf. They’d been friends for years and his behavior, though a bit odd, wasn’t entirely unusual given his personality. She instead quickly introduced her parents, Gustav, and Bertie. “This is Hugo of Adalaard,” she told them.
“Hugo of Adalaard?” Gustav repeated the name with a knowing grin. “I know who he is.” He began to bow.
“None of that now,” Hugo insisted, grabbing Gustav by the arm and hoisting him back upright.
“But you’re—” Gustav began to protest.
“Hugo of Adalaard,” Hugo insisted, with an air of strict finality. “That’s all.” He turned back to Ella. “I’m glad I caught you—”
But Rolf was nearly hyperventilating, and, as was his tendency even when he wasn’t overexcited, he cut into the conversation. “He’s Prince Henry.”
“Shh!” Henry tried to shush Rolf, who fortunately hadn’t spoken so loudly anyone outside their circle could hear.
But Ella had heard, and in an instant of stunned insight, believed what would otherwise seem like a wild claim, because it explained exactly why Raedwald would want to kill Hugo just for being born. She bent at the knees, dropping into a curtsy.
But Henry caught her arm and tugged her up, too. “No bowing. No. Bowing. I’m Hugo of Adalaard. That’s all.”
“But you’re really—” Ella began.
“He’s really Prince Henry,” Rolf confirmed, still excited.
Ella’s knees buckled again.
Henry hoisted her up a bit higher this time. “I’m no different than I was one minute ago, before you knew, so I don’t expect to be treated any differently.” He set her on her feet and shot a glare at Rolf to silence him (which was good timing, because Rolf looked as though he was going to reveal his identity again).
Henry turned back to Ella and spoke quickly, before he could be interrupted. “I appreciate what you did for me out there, even more so since it seems you didn’t even know who I was at the time.” He cocked his head to the side thoughtfully, then asked. “Would you do the same now, knowing who I am?”
“Of course,” Ella answered, without hesitation.
Henry grinned. “Good. I could use an ally in the melee.” His voice took on a serious tone, and he looked earnestly into her eyes. “I’ll be traveling west on the tournament circuit for the rest of the season. I’d like you to travel with me.”
For an instant, Ella wanted to scream with excitement.
But then she remembered she was supposed to become a handmaid to Madame Augusta De Bouchard that very week. She looked at her parents. They both shook their heads.
Ella closed her eyes and wished the situation could be other than it was. (This wasn’t a real wish, mind you—not that my magic was strong enough to change things if it had been.) She bowed her head, unable to look Henry full in the face.
“I’m sorry. I can’t. I have responsibilities. Duties. Back home.” When she finally dared to look up she saw Henry staring at her with a shocked expression.
“As a member of my party, you’d have all your expenses paid, of course.” He blinked at her, waiting a moment to see if his words would sink in.
“That’s a very generous offer. I wish I could accept it. Really I do.”
Henry looked from Ella to her parents and back again. Then he spoke slowly. “Oftentimes, such a position, if everything proceeds well, leads to knighthood.”
Rolf had been staring in shocked silence during their exchange, but now he whispered rather loudly. “Allard, my boy, this is the chance of a lifetime. Take it!”
Ella opened her mouth to speak and felt her chin quiver. “I would love to. But I simply can’t.” She covered her face with her hands out of fear that her quivering chin might make her look like a girl, and she’d be found out.
But no one expected a girl to be offered a spot fighting at tournaments with the prince, so she needn’t have worried about that at the moment.
Robert cleared his throat. “Would it be possible, if Allard’s not able to take up your offer right now, for him to join you at a later date?”
Henry looked instantly relieved. “Yes. Yes, of course. Especially if he can join me in about two-months’ time. The offer stands, regardless of the passage of time, though I’d prefer his help sooner rather than later.” He turned to Ella again. “You’ll consider it?”
Ella wasn’t sure what her father was hinting at, but she clung to the tiny bit of hope it offered. “I will. I’ll see what I can do to make it possible. I appreciate the offer so very much.”
“I appreciate what you did for me today.” Henry grinned. “Are you headed to the mounted melee?”
“We need to get home,” Robert said.
Henry’s grin faded somewhat. “You’re sure you can’t stay?”
“Allard’s back is injured,” Nora explained.
“That’s right!” Henry recalled, looking immediately concerned. “How bad is it? You should visit the medical tent and have them take a look.”
“It’s not that bad.” Ella tried to make her voice sound deep and authoritative, to end the discussion before she got hauled off to the medical tent and stripped of her armor for inspection.
“It’s really not that bad,” Nora agreed. “We simply need to get home. It was an honor to meet you.” She started to curtsy, but Henry shot her a look, and she straightened immediately.
“Thank you once again for your actions on the field,” Henry told Ella sincerely. “I do pray you’ll consider my offer. I understand you have places to be, and I need to be on my way as well. It was a pleasure meeting you all.”
Having dismissed himself, Henry trotted off.
It wasn’t until the prince was out of sight that Rolf regained his ability to speak. “That was—”
“Yes, we know.” Robert silenced him. “But we really must claim Allard’s prize for the sash, and then hurry to fetch our horses, if we’re going to reach Caprese before nightfall.”
“I’ll walk with you,” Rolf insisted, hopping and dancing about as he followed them to the table. “You should try the mounted melee,” he urged Ella as they stood in the short line for their prize. “You are good at it.”
Ella simply shook her head, and Rolf laughed. “I can’t believe we were just talking with—” He clapped his hands over his mouth before he could say Prince Henry’s name aloud. Then he laughed so hard, the sound burst from between his hands. “Allard, do you know, when you met him, you were so stunned you nearly curtsied!”
“Shh!” Ella and Bertie shushed him at once.
They’d reached the front of the table. Ella handed the red sash to the men at the table, and gave them her name (technically, Allard’s name).
“One sash, winning team, and final three.” The herald read off her results from his ledger and gave the amount to the treasurer, who counted out a handful of coins.
Ella thanked him, then promptly gave the coins to her father. Robert had always paid her entry fees, not to mention travel expenses, and the provision of horses, weapons, and armor. She figured she still owed him several more handfuls of prize money, though she wasn’t likely to have a chance to earn any more.
They headed for the stables, and Rolf accompanied them there as well. He was calming down slightly, but was still quite talkative, and quickly launched in to an explanation of the history of bad blood between Richard and Henry.
“You know, Richard the third was always jealous
that his older brother was going to be king,” Rolf explained. “Some say that’s why he married so young—in an effort to get an heir before Henry. That’s why Richard the fourth is older than his cousin. He was raised to resent both the king and the prince.”
“Why doesn’t the king do anything about it, if he’s king?” Bertie asked.
“What can he do? He doesn’t have grounds to imprison him, because Richard’s too smart to do anything outright.”
“You’ve got five witnesses who saw Raedwald try to kill Hugo in the melee,” Ella noted.
“But that’s in the melee,” Rolf argued. “Anything can happen in the melee, and everyone knows that. People die. It’s a risk you take by participating. It’s not the same as outright murder.”
“But he did it on purpose,” Ella insisted.
“Doesn’t matter,” Rolf pronounced with finality, and quickly moved on. “What else could the king do? Send his brother away as an ambassador to other countries, or to fight in distant wars? He’s tried that, and do you know what’s come of it?”
Gustav, who seemed the next most knowledgeable member of their party concerning royal intrigues, offered an answer. “There are rumors he’s conspired with enemies of the kingdom to overthrow Henry.”
“What?” Ella hadn’t heard these rumors before, but Gustav often gossiped with other travelers while she and Bertie were practicing sword work, so it didn’t surprise her that he might know more about political matters.
“That’s right!” Rolf agreed, speaking quietly as they approached the stables, since the crowds were thick with men claiming their horses to go to the mounted melee. “Of course there’s no proof, only rumor, so what can the king do? It’s dangerous to keep his brother here, but possibly more dangerous to send him away. They watch and they wait, and young Henry trains in the tournaments so he can defend himself if his cousin ever challenges him openly. Do you know, that trumpeter had the horn to his lips from the second Raedwald first approached Henry on the field.”
“What do you mean?” Ella asked.
“I mean, they were ready to end it if it looked like anything was going to happen. When your sword hit Raedwald, and he didn’t halt his blade, the trumpeter blew the horn. He was blowing when the sword struck you. They know things might happen, and they try to stop them from happening, but they can’t do anything against Raedwald because he’s royalty, so they have to wait for him to act.”
They’d reached the line at the stables, and it was far too crowded there to continue their discussion with any semblance of privacy. Rolf parted ways with them, wishing them blessings on their journey home.
The family stayed silent as they gathered their horses. But once they were on the trail home, which was mostly empty, since nearly everyone else had gone to the mounted melee, they were free to talk.
Questions had been burning inside Ella ever since Henry had asked her to fight with him. One burned brighter than the others, and she asked it first.
“Father, what did you mean when you asked if I might join Hugo at a later date? Do you really think I could?”
Chapter Eight
Robert sighed, but otherwise didn’t answer immediately.
“You weren’t just putting him off to ease the rejection, were you?” Nora asked.
“Not quite,” Robert said, and sighed again before continuing. “There’s a lot I haven’t told you children about our estate. We don’t own much land. It’s enough for the horses, but there’s no income in it. And I haven’t made a great deal of profit these last few years of trading. It’s been enough to live on, but we’re not well off.”
Ella didn’t see what this information had to do with her question, but she did find it sobering.
“All that is to say,” Robert continued, then sighed, then launched in again, “our estate is not secure. If the king decides to raise taxes again, we could be in a bind. But he said you might become a knight.” Robert’s voice caught.
Bertie guessed the rest. “Knights aren’t subject to the same taxes. Some of them don’t pay any taxes at all.”
“I could become a knight!” Ella nearly squealed with excitement.
Nora made a frustrated noise with her throat, and looked around to make sure no one was close enough to overhear them (no one was). “It’s not possible. You’re a girl. It’s tricky enough when you need to use the restroom at tournament, always having to use the single latrines. How would you keep yourself hidden at war? And if they found you out, what would happen?”
There was silence as each of them tried to think if they’d ever heard of a similar case.
“There are stiff penalties for passing oneself off as being from a higher class,” Gustav noted. “The bigger the gap between the true class and the pretended one, the worse the punishment.”
“When I was a girl,” Nora began, her voice carrying an undercurrent of trepidation, “I wanted to get a job working with horses. My father told me then, that a woman who pretended to be a man could be punished by death.”
“Death?” Ella questioned. “And yet, you let me compete?”
“I think he may have been exaggerating, or trying to scare me,” Nora admitted. “And at any rate, those were different times from these. King Henry is an open-minded man. There’s even been some rumor he’s asked to allow his daughters to be in line for the throne, ahead of his brother and nephew, but too many oppose the idea. They fear it would upset the entire social order.”
“Do you really think Ella could become a knight?” Bertie asked.
“That wasn’t quite what I was thinking,” Robert confessed. “You see, Bertie, you’re just a year younger than Ella. And the two of you have much the same eyes. Different chins, different mouths, but you look the same in the eyes. When you get old enough to grow a beard—”
“I could become Allard!” Bertie squealed with nearly as much excitement as his sister. “I could be a knight!”
“I don’t know if it would work,” Robert admitted, sighing. “It’s a long shot with many risks, many chances of failure, but if Ella could earn you a spot as Allard, and if you could later take her place—”
“The only spot Ella needs to worry about is her position with Madame De Bouchard,” Nora reminded them. “She could marry a knight. That makes far more sense than trying to become one.”
Ella started to protest, but got no further than making a strangled noise in her throat, when Gustav added his input to the discussion.
“I’ve trained swordsmen for over fifty years,” he reminded them all. “Ella’s as good as any of them, and better than most. But she can’t be a knight. Do any of you know what knights do all day—how they spend their hours, where they sleep, the activities they engage in when they’re not fighting with swords? Ella’s a great swordsman, but that’s the only qualification she has for being a knight. She’d be found out quickly. She wouldn’t last a week.”
Ella made another strangled noise with her throat, and Gustav turned to her. “Sorry, Ella. I just don’t want to see you get hurt. It’s a crazy plan. It’s not even a plan. It’s a dream.”
For the rest of the ride home, Ella was silent. When they reached Caprese, she offered to tend the horses while the others took care of catching up on the other chores.
As Ella brushed down the horses, the tears she’d been holding back began to freely flow.
I took this as my cue, and grew to the size of a field mouse, perching along the horse’s mane so I’d be at eye-level with Ella.
She saw me, but kept brushing in silence for a moment before she spoke. “It’s not fair.”
“It’s not,” I agreed wholeheartedly.
“I want to be a boy.”
“My magic only lasts till midnight,” I reminded her softly, “and you’ve only got three wishes. At most, I could make you a boy for three days. That’s not enough to become a knight.”
“I know.” She sniffled and stepped around the horse to brush down the other side. “That’s why I didn’t bother
wishing it. But what about the glass slippers?”
“Your mother’s glass slippers?”
“Yes—the ones she wasted one foolish wish on all those years ago. She showed them to me to warn me against wasting wishes. Her glass slippers are still in her closet. And they’re still magic, because they fit only her feet, and no one else’s. Even when my feet were the same size as hers. No one else can wear them. They won’t let anyone else wear them.”
“Oh, hedgeborn huggermugger,” I muttered as I considered the question. It stumped me, though of course I knew exactly which glass slippers she meant. “Perhaps, since it was such a simple wish, the slippers stayed. They didn’t disappear. Big elaborate wishes take more magic, and don’t last. I’m sure there’s a law of magic that explains it, but fairies aren’t much into laws and details. I don’t even know who to ask. But you don’t really want to be a boy, do you?”
“I want to be a knight!” She stopped brushing and leaned against the horse, half hugging him. “The prince gave me an opportunity that any of the men on that field would have killed to have. Some of them probably have killed in hopes of achieving it. And I turned him down. Did you see his face when I turned him down? He couldn’t imagine any reason why anyone in their right mind would turn down that opportunity, and I couldn’t even explain to him why I did.”
“Ella?” Nora’s voice echoed down the barn.
“Yes, Mother. I’m still brushing down the horses. I’ll be in shortly,” Ella called back.
“I heard what you said.” Nora’s voice sounded louder as she drew closer to us. “And I’m sorry, but I think part of your frustration comes from wanting something that cannot be.”
“That’s one way of putting it, I guess,” Ella agreed.
“I understand how you feel,” Nora continued, “Because I felt the same way when I was your age, and for years after.”
“You wanted to be a knight?”
“No, not properly. But I wanted to be a horseman. That’s all I cared about. Horses. But I couldn’t have a career working with them because I’m not a man. And I couldn’t inherit this estate because I’m not a man. And I felt as though I was about to lose everything I cared about, without ever grasping what I really wanted.”