by Finley Aaron
“That’s good. The room is small, though still rather comfortable. It’s shaded, at least, and sits low enough in the water, the river keeps it cool.”
“Heavenly.” Ella agreed.
Henry found Sigi, who was excited to see Allard again after so long, and pleased to have a second horse to take care of. Ella explained that Mirage would need special care after her long ride, and Sigi assured her he’d attend to it. He’d grown since Ella had seen him last, and seemed even more capable then before, though she’d never found him lacking.
Ella and Henry boarded the lead boat. It had a large bay inside the hull, which could be used for storage but now held only their supplies, which were mostly food, weapons, and gear. At the rear was the lone cabin, which Henry led her to.
The ceiling was low, so that they nearly had to stoop. The space was small and dark, fitted only with basic bunks along the side walls, two high, for a total of four, which folded out of the way when not in use.
“Here you are,” Henry whispered so they wouldn’t wake Gustav, who was snoring softly in the darkness. “Pick whichever bunk you’d like. I should get back to overseeing the loading. We’ll get under way as soon as we’re loaded. The men know not to bother the cabin. You look exhausted. Get some rest.” He hurried away.
Ella felt a pang of loss. She had hoped that in the privacy of the small cabin, he might kiss her again. But of course, he’d already been away from his work for an unexpectedly lengthy amount of time.
And she was completely spent from her journey, having slept only a few hours for the last several nights, and none of that very deeply out of her concern that she might oversleep and arrive too late to board the boats.
“Fairy Godmother,” she whispered as I grew just large enough to provide a cool blue glow to the dark cabin, “what am I going to tell him? How can I explain why I left the ball?”
“Why don’t you tell him the truth? Is that so difficult?”
“If I tell him the truth, he’ll have to know about you.”
We’d discussed something on the long ride to Ratisbonne, and I knew Ella had contemplated it at length, so I mentioned it now. “The old Roman fortress at Devin has a massive and complex system of dungeons, didn’t you say? And we both agreed I’d be the best one to scout it out and find your brother, so that if you have to spring him loose, you’ll know where to look, correct?”
“Yes.”
“So, Prince Henry will need to know about me if he’s going to approve the plan and receive any information I gather. You might as well tell him. If the two of you are going to be married, I’ll be his daughter’s Fairy Godmother someday.”
“Is it really all right if I tell him about you?”
“All right?” I laughed. “I don’t see any way around it.”
Chapter Twenty Nine
Ella slept long and hard, and awoke to darkness in the pre-dawn hours of the night.
Gustav had awakened earlier and left the cabin.
Henry had entered the cabin and was pulling off his boots, preparing to go to sleep. He saw Ella roll over and blink at him, so he whispered, “There’s no need for you to get up just now. Go back to sleep if you like.”
But Ella had slept well, and was now more curious than she was tired. “How did the day go? Is the river full enough to carry us?”
“Only just. We’ve set the men to oars and kept them at it into the cool of the night. They’re sleeping now, but the current is weak, so we’re not going very fast without their rowing. We’ll put them to it again tomorrow. Still, we haven’t run aground, though I’ve seen gravel and sandbars aplenty. More than I wish to see.”
“Any sign of pirates?”
“None. Either they’re good at hiding, or they’ve given up on pirating this stretch of river. With trade cut off at Devin, I don’t doubt they’ve had little to pirate. Not enough to bother with, I imagine.”
Ella listened, but the entire time Henry was talking, she wondered in the back of her mind how he would take the news that she had a fairy godmother. She wasn’t even sure how to broach the subject, but she had thought of one thing that might prepare him for her great revelation.
“Did you want to see my glass slipper?” She asked, sitting up and grabbing her map case, from which she pulled the glass shoe.
The room was almost completely dark, but I perched on a beam above their heads, and turned up my glow enough to provide a little light.
Henry didn’t notice me. His attention was focused entirely on the glass slipper. “It looks just like the one you left behind at the ball. But tell me, how did you dance all night in such a small shoe? Your feet aren’t that small. And yet, I saw the shoe leave your foot. No one could fit their foot in that slipper—not even a child. I know because people at the palace attempted to try on the other shoe, especially when I announced I’d only wed the girl whose foot fit the slipper.” He seemed utterly puzzled by the mystery.
“Watch.” Ella told him, though she needn’t have said anything. Henry’s eyes were riveted on the shoe as she slid it easily onto her foot.
“How—how did you do that? It grew.” Henry shook his head, as though questioning whether his eyes were seeing things.
“It’s a magic slipper,” Ella explained softly.
“I can see that.” Henry looked at her quizzically, smiling. Then he tipped his head to one side thoughtfully. “Why is this room so light? Is there light coming from somewhere above that beam?”
“Yes,” Ella answered. Her heart trembled fiercely inside her as she braced herself for sharing her secret. How would he take it? Would he call her crazy?
“Is that magic, too?” Henry asked.
“Yes. And it’s the same magic that made me run from the ball at midnight.”
“Midnight?” Henry questioned, and sat next to her on the bunk. “You know, my mother used to tell me of a magic that ended at midnight. I thought of that, when you fled at the stroke of twelve.” He peered closely into her face. “You are real, aren’t you? And you’re really a girl?”
“Yes, I’m both real and a girl,” Ella promised solemnly.
Henry tipped his head again. “Fairy magic ends at midnight. Fairy magic from fairy wishes.”
“How do you know about those?”
“My mother had a fairy godmother. She used to say that only royal women had fairy godmothers.”
Ella had never heard that claim, and looked up at my glow coming from the beam above. “Only royal women? Fairy Godmother, do you know anything about that?”
I’d been hiding out of sight the entire time, but since she’d addressed me, and Henry had gasped with surprise or yelped in fear, I grew to the size of a hummingbird and flew down to greet him.
He jumped back, yelping.
“Hello to you, too, Prince Henry,” I said with a chuckle.
His eyes were round, but he slowly moved back closer to where he’d been sitting before he jumped away. “F-fairy Godmother?” he asked.
“Yes. That’s what I go by. Although it sounds as though I’m not the only one with that title.”
Ella was not nearly as disturbed by our conversation as Henry seemed to be. She asked me straightaway, “Do you know anything about only royal women having fairy godmothers?”
“Stuff and nonsense!” I declared. “Any girl can have a fairy godmother. I don’t believe there are rules about that. It’s just that we go away once you’ve used up your three wishes. The only explanation for that rumor that I can think of, is that many a girl with a fairy godmother might wish to be a princess. And I suppose, that way, most do end up royal. But your mother and grandmother and all the rest never cared about such things as crowns and castles, so none of them ever wished for it. Simple as that!”
Henry listened solemnly, then asked Ella, “How many wishes do you have left?”
“Just one. I used my second to get to the ball. It wouldn’t have been possible to see you otherwise, and we’d have missed our chance to get to Bertie. So I don’t
regret it, not at all. But that’s why I had to flee at midnight—my gown turned back into a servant’s dress, and my coach into a pumpkin.”
“A pumpkin?” Henry asked with a chuckle.
“Yes.” Ella laughed as well.
“But you’ve only one wish left?”
Ella nodded. “And once I’ve wished my last wish, Fairy Godmother will be gone from my life. She’s quite useful even without the wishes. She can glow, which is a handy trick. She’s saved me by her glow alone more times than I can count. And she can fly up high and scout ahead. We were thinking she could even fly into the old Roman fortress for us, and find my brother so we know where to go to spring him out.”
“She’d solve a great deal of our problems if she could do that for us,” Henry concluded, then addressed me. “You don’t mind doing it?”
“I’m not good for much,” I admitted. “My magic is weak and always ends at midnight. If there’s any way I can make myself useful, I never hesitate to do it. Otherwise, what good is it to have a fairy godmother?”
Henry appeared visibly relieved. “That would be a great help to us, though I do fear for your safety.”
“What could possibly happen to me?”
“Someone might squash you like a bug.” Henry offered with some hesitancy.
“Squash me like—why, I’ve never heard of such a thing as a fairy being squashed like a bug,” I insisted, though of course, the possibility had occurred to me before. Still there was no evidence for it. “I believe we’re quite unsquashable. Mercy me! And don’t you think I’m a bit nimbler than to allow myself to be flattened if I could see it coming? Weathervanes and windowpanes and wish-wash all the same!” I was, as you may have gathered, flustered by his suggestion.
But I did manage to establish that I would be, if not entirely safe, at least sufficiently so on my planned reconnaissance mission.
Still, there was the rest of the trip downriver to accomplish before any of that would even matter, and getting down the river turned out to be no easy task.
The river was, as we’d all feared, flowing away right out from beneath us. Henry had the men set to the oars near round the clock, but there were still times when the men had to jump out onto the gravel spits to lighten the boats so they’d float high enough not to run aground. At those times, the men would run alongside the boat, gripping the edge of the hull, and literally pull it downstream.
Even at that, we were moving faster than we might have any other way. Ella fretted over what Bertie must be enduring in prison, and whether he was getting anything to eat, or if perhaps he’d been chained and left to rot. Because of her fears, she took her own turn at the oars, and ran alongside the other men as they hauled the boats across the shallowest stretches.
The worst of it was the night between the fifth and sixth day, when we ran aground no fewer than eight times under the cover of darkness, and clouds hid the moon, and the men had to jump overboard unable to see what they were jumping into, and run headlong into blackness, tripping over driftwood and stumbling as the riverbed dropped off underneath their feet. It was a messy trial, and more than once men fell behind, so that someone else had to help them along, and they sprinted back to join us as we tried to stall the boats for them (both times they were men from the lead or middle boat, who were at least able to catch up to the rear barge. Had they been men from the rear barge, we may well have had to leave them behind).
But by the afternoon of the sixth day, we’d passed enough flush tributaries that the river flowed slightly more full, and though we had to pull a few times more after that, it was never so bad again.
Ella monitored their position on the maps using landmarks and the names of the towns and villages they passed. She also consulted with Henry and his chief advisors regularly, pouring over her maps as they made their plans.
The Danube flowed nearly straight east as it approached Devin. Another slightly smaller river, the Morava, flowed down from the north, emptying into the Danube practically in front of Devin castle, before the joined rivers flowed on along a southward path.
There were no bridges for many furlongs, not until the town of Pressburg, which was half an hour’s march downriver from Devin, and the site of the military garrison. The maps Ella had brought showed the road and the bridge, but they didn’t really offer much help toward reaching the old Roman fortress.
With no bridge near at hand (and the nearest one leading straight to the local soldiers), we’d have to cross the river in the barges to reach the castle (which sat high above the sharp cliffs on the eastern bank). The only other option besides the barges themselves were our three scuttle boats which were strapped, one on each barge, at the rear of the cabins. But the scuttle boats only held three or possibly four small men.
They were stealthier, much stealthier, but they wouldn’t transport many men.
Ella (dressed as Allard, of course, as she was the entire trip) advocated that everyone stay out of sight. Rather than sailing straight up to the castle with its old Roman fortress, she suggested the men send a scouting party (which would include her and, obviously, me) to size up the situation.
“The river bends sharply northward less than an hours’ hike from the confluence of the Danube and Morava,” she explained, pointing to the spot on the map. “We should pull our barges aground, here, on the low flood plain, and send a scouting party over to assess the situation.”
Some of the men were skeptical. “In theory that’s a fine plan,” argued a stout lord named Bruce, “but everything worth scouting is on the other side of the river. How do you propose to get across if you leave all the boats here?” He pointed to the same low flood plain she’d suggested.
Since she couldn’t very well tell him I was going to fly across, Ella was at a loss to explain.
Dominic (yes, Allard’s old friend from tournament days), was quick to point out to Bruce, “They’re sure to have watchmen all over the banks. They’ll see us approaching if we come by barge. Even if we take the scuttle boats across, they’ll spot them clear as they’d see a log floating downstream.”
“Then we shouldn’t try to sneak up on them,” Bruce maintained. “Why don’t we just sail the barges right up and say, ‘hey there, you thieving rats, you’ve got our merchants and their goods, now give them back.’?”
Henry answered his question before he’d quite finished asking it, “Because they’ve thrown every man who’s tried to do so into their dungeon. We’re not going to do them any good if we get thrown into shackles, too.”
“Perhaps if we went in with the keys,” a small man named Philip suggested. “If they chained us in the dungeon, we’d be right where we needed to be.”
“Don’t you think they check the pockets of their prisoners before they lock them up?” asked another noble named Lothar.
“We could swallow the keys,” Philip offered, “and then—”
But Henry cut Philip off as the smaller man made a straining face. “We’re not going to purposely get ourselves captured. We may well do it by accident, but don’t go swallowing any of our keys. We intend to use them.”
Ella was still back on Dominic’s comment about a floating log. “If we float on a log at night, under the cover of darkness—”
“Float on a log?” asked Philip, making a face that suggested her idea was crazy (though he was the man who’d proposed swallowing the keys). “You might as well swim.” He laughed.
Bruce and Lothar laughed, too.
“I’m just saying, a log doesn’t look like a boat. And I can swim,” Ella maintained.
“So can I,” Dominic added.
“In a river?” Lothar asked. “The Danube? The current would pull you under.”
“I can swim as well,” Henry offered. “But I’d rather float across with a log.”
“Oh, no.” Bruce shook his head. “You’re not swimming anywhere. I promised your father we’d bring you back alive. You’re not going to be a part of the scouting party.”
Their c
onversations went much like that, with little resolved (though Henry did eventually promise he would not attempt to swim across the river, and the general consensus was that the scuttle boats would be almost as stealthy as logs, but far drier). When Ella suggested that the lack of bridge would be to their benefit, since any pursuers would have to go out of their way to cross and come after them, Lothar was quick to point out that any arrows their archers shot would not be hindered by the lack of a bridge.
It was pointed out that there was the bridge at Pressburg, which wasn’t that far away. Gustav, who’d been with Bertie and Robert when the carts and horses were first confiscated, informed everyone of where both had been kept—near the garrison at Pressburg. There was no guarantee they were still there, or even that they still existed, but his information at least gave them a place to look (though how they’d go about looking remained a topic of debate).
The discussion was just as hot when they tried to decide how best to approach the old Roman castle. Ella had seen it before in her travels, as had some of the others. They did their best to provide the rest with accurate sketches that portrayed both the primary cliff, and the steep hills on either side around.
“Why would you even want to scale the cliffs?” Bruce demanded to know. He’d seen them before and considered them insurmountable. “There’s grassy hillside all around, and it’s not that far out of the way.”
“Steep grassy hillside,” Dominic corrected, “with archers at the top. How many arrows do you think they would rain down on us while we attempted to climb up?”
“We brought shields,” Bruce countered. “That’s what the shields are for.”
And on and on and on, until I began to fear we’d sail right up to the castle before anything was resolved. Instead, to my surprise, on the tenth night as Ella was sleeping, there came a noisy ruckus on the deck, and the ship began to jostle fiercely. It was even worse than the fifth night when we’d run across the gravel spits, because then, at least, the ship was headed in a consistently-forward direction.
But this night the entire boat swung heavily side-to-side in a jerky fashion, so that Ella nearly tumbled off her bunk.