The Princess Gardener

by Michael Strelow

  I knew I would have to make the first move because Alyssa could never get into the palace without an invitation. She and her family would be welcome in the great courtyard on special days of celebration, of course. She could come as near to me as a cheer for the royal family, the “long live the King” part. Alyssa’s mother and father were farmers, the best farmers around since they worked hard to take care of the land and raised fine crops. My mother and father always told me how important the farmers were, how everything we ate came from them, and everything we did at the castle should keep their health and valuable work in mind. But I couldn’t just point out Alyssa and have her come visit me. That would certainly call attention to our double-ness. I would have to plan this carefully. And that was how I got to meet Alyssa.

  At the castle after the long visits to schools, I began my plan. My visits were grand successes, it turned out. Lots of great publicity. The village was abuzz. I mentioned to mother that I had seen some beautiful farms while traveling between schools. Could I maybe (there’s my key word, maybe; it always works nicely in starting out an argument) visit the best farms in order to give out some awards for the most successful farming techniques?

  “You always said the farmers were the most important part of the kingdom, didn’t you?” I pleaded. “And it would make them feel like we really appreciated the work they did.” And I listed off the cows, pigs, turnips, beans, wheat, cheese, chickens, geese—and took a deep breath and ticked off the rest on my fingers.

  My mother quickly said, “Yes, yes, that sounds like a fine idea. I’m sure the King…” And I knew it would work. My best advice about arguing is to have some kind of list and to use it as soon as possible. That and the maybes.

  The visits would be such good practice for when I had to do that kind of thing later, more serious kinds of awards. And with words and lists I painted a picture for her how I would spread good will among the farmers and remind them that they were the life-blood of the whole realm. Without them no one would eat. They were doing the most important work, and everyone appreciated them. And so on and so on until mother began nodding that good ideas came in all kinds of packages and these farm visits might be good policy and the schools had worked out.

  Finally, she seemed to come around so far that she talked about the whole business as her own idea. She said we’d see what the King said. But I knew she was the one really making the decision. The whole, “I’ll have to ask the King” thing was just smoke and mirrors, just pretending so the whole kingdom seemed to be in order from the King on down to the least citizen. High to low, order made order, my father pronounced often.

  I thought I might even push mother just a little farther, so I suggested that I might dress in farm clothes to, you know, help make the farmers feel comfortable. Mother grew silent and pictured her daughter out in public dressed for working the soil, and she began shaking her head and said, “No, that would be a bad idea.” It would give a wrong impression (the whole kingdom ran on giving the right impressions!) and would not be suitable. “No, not suitable at all, I think.” And she looked me up and down as if trying to imagine me dressed to work the fields, not just work in the garden. She always thought of my gardening as left over play from when I was little, and she thought that like other kinds of play, it would have to slowly cease as I got older. Duty would call; I would answer. The proper order of things. My silk dresses on one end, Alyssa’s homespun dresses on the other end.

  When the Queen presented the idea of farm visits to the King, he was against it. Unsafe. Untidy. Unseemly. Unhealthy. Unpolitic, and un—something else and then something else too. I overheard through a very thick door and the “uns” went on for a long time. But the Queen knew that if she made the case to the King, and slowly presented all the advantages I had outlined that he would allow it. And, after the proper amount of snorting and huffing, he did.

  The Queen felt right. Of course, I felt delighted. I don’t know how the King felt, but my mother reported that “your father was certainly pleased” that he had done the right thing for me and for the kingdom.

  One thing to be clear: there was to be no compromise of the clothes I would wear—princess clothes only. OK, so maybe not the big state-occasion clothes with the pearls and tiara, but the nice stuff, anyway. I was to look assertively royal. I could live with that. I’d have to live with that. I knew to pick my battles. Win the winables that was my motto. The clothes would be princess clothes. But I also knew how to compress and pack a set of gardening clothes into a small bag that I would hide in the carriage well before the visit just in case I could think of a way to wear them. Spoil my dress by falling in a puddle? Lean over and have a cow take a bite out of my skirt? Well, I’d think about it. There might be a way to get the farming clothes on. But if not, it felt good to have a second plan there hidden in the carriage.

  The day before my visit, it rained all across the kingdom. The farmers were joyful; the crops were getting dry. The palace was busy closing windows and rearranging the gravel that had been disheveled by the rain. As a secret gardener I always immediately felt joy when it rained. I guess I was thinking like a plant and how plants would stretch and turn their faces to the rain, stretch their roots down into damp soil. Rain made everything seem freshly scrubbed and new. I loved it because plants loved it.

  I really liked to walk in the gardens just to smell the rain, the dirt, and listen to how delighted the birds seemed after a rain. Everything woke up, it seemed. The things that couldn’t have been sleeping also woke: rocks and sticks and the sun. Not only was the world awake while it rained, but it sang. The singing wasn’t coming into my ears. It came in smells and sounds: warm wet dirt, clicks and splats of trees shaking the rain drops around with their leaves. And there was the girl at the school who, like two plants growing side by side, had grown my exact princess-face while living on a farm not far from the castle. Tomorrow couldn’t come soon enough.

  Chapter Two

  The rain had stopped during the night and the morning sported polished pearls everywhere the sun touched. I smiled to myself when I thought of the package of clothes hidden away in the carriage. Something about hidden things in general made me smile: the roots of plants, the clothes in the carriage, the gardener secreted away inside the princess.

  We arrived at Alyssa’s parents’ farm just as the roads were drying, but here and there a puddle glistened and, frankly, puddles still called to me to splash and romp.

  I got out of the carriage holding my dress high and peering around for Alyssa.

  “Your Majesty, welcome to our farm,” spoke Alyssa’s father with just a little bit of quiver in his voice. I could tell he had been practicing it, and now saying it out loud seemed to relieve his nervousness.

  “I’m a mere princess,” I answered. “So just princess is enough.” I laughed. “Mother is ‘Your Majesty’ around our house.” I turned to his wife. “I think all mothers should be addressed as Your Majesty, don’t you?”

  She blushed and then quickly laughed and said, “I’ll have to work on that with my husband and children. I should have them trained in no time.” I liked her immediately.

  Alyssa’s father took a deep breath and continued with what he had memorized. “Princess, if you’ll follow me this way, I can show you whatever parts of our humble farm that would please you.” He proudly led us across the tidy yard toward a field just popping with bright green shoots. I think he wanted us to see what his hard work had created. I nodded in agreement at the fence. We stood together admiring the field in silence.

  “I would especially like to see the garden part of your farm, too. And your barn, of course.” I could see the inside of the barn was neat as a pin, and it would be inconsiderate of me not to recognize all his housekeeping there.

  There was no dust, and the floors were swept, the animals washed, the rows of harnesses and reins oiled and gleaming. There was order everywhere in this disorderly business of animals and crops and things that broke and had to be mended.
I knew that all this was specially arranged for my visit, and I looked around for something real, something that was more like muddy hands and knees when I worked in the garden. And I quickly found it.

  There peering through a crack in the stall boards was a small muddy face with big eyes like a large cat with stringy hair. Then it disappeared. There it is again. I glanced around to try to catch where it would appear again. It was like trying to guess where a fairy would show up or an elf or a… There, there it is again.

  “That’s my little brother, Princess.” Alyssa appeared at my side. She had seen me trying to follow the flitting face around the barn. “He’s a gentle and wonderful soul, actually. But he likes to have fun. You met at the school, I think. He not shy, really.” And then Alyssa leaned over to whisper, “My parents think he’s up playing in his room where he was told to stay during your visit. I think his curiosity got the best of him.”

  I paused the tour by holding up my hand. Everyone waited quietly while I turned to Alyssa. Frankly, I was wondering when everyone would notice that she and I had the same face and hair color, but everyone apparently was so occupied by royal paraphernalia that no one was doing comparisons.

  The pause went on. So I spoke. “I would like to speak to this young woman alone, please. We would like to sit down somewhere in the shade and have tea. Would that be too much trouble?” It was exactly what I had been planning for, Alyssa and me, tea, laughing by ourselves. I held my breath to see if it would happen just as I wanted. I was willing to have the crowd of my people and her family off mingling somewhere. This would be close enough to perfect.

  There was scurrying about. My people worked with Alyssa’s father and mother to find a table and two chairs all arranged under an enormous apple tree that seemed to fill the sky near the house. There were apples so high up that I wondered out loud how anyone would pick those.

  Alyssa, laughed and pointed to the highest spot in the huge tree. “We have our own special tool for getting those down when they are ripe.” She looked around and spotted Jake again, this time up on a shed that leaned against the barn. “There’s the tool.” She laughed. “Jake is more at home climbing trees than he is on the ground. In the fall, he seems to fly up the tree and then he tosses down apples into a blanket we hold as a target below. My mother used to be afraid that he’d fall. But he never even slips, and now Mother never even worries about it. We think he might be part bird, part squirrel. My father jokes that my mother was scared by woodland critters when she was pregnant with him. And he has their powers now.”

  Alyssa was joyous telling about her scamp of a brother, and quickly it seemed we had been talking all our lives.

  The tea came out hot. We sat in the shade while my retinue made the silly lines they always seemed to be making, and Alyssa’s father and mother continually offered them places to sit: the bench on the porch, the shady windbreak near the house, the arbor of hops they kept for making household remedies.

  Nearly every house in the country had some kind of herb garden kept for making healing teas and specifics for colds and coughs. Everyone grew a hops plant or two stretching over a porch or pinned up to a stout wooden arbor.

  The whole world then disappeared as Alyssa and I talked and talked surrounded by healing plants, the occasional moo from the barn, and our lookout, Jake, from his perch near the peak of the barn roof making sure we were safe. He reminded me of the gargoyles carved into the corners of the stone castle walls, woodland imps with popping eyes that warded off evil spirits or something. I was never sure what the castle creatures were for, so Jake, crouching on the roof, was not a problem for me either. Our gargoyle disappeared and then appeared again, this time in a beech tree that shaded the house. Alyssa told me that you just had to ignore him after a while. He went his own way and really was a good small person. We laughed like sisters. We exchanged how marvelous it seemed that we could sit here together drinking tea.

  I said, “They don’t seem to notice, do they? I mean, are we the only ones who see it?”

  She lowered her voice like a conspirator. “I know!” and then like the punch line to a joke she added, “I think my freckles and your not-freckles must keep them from seeing what we see. If I stay out of the sun, my freckles grow very light, like in the winter. Then the sun brings them back again in summer. I’m guessing that freckles are the best disguise.”

  I began thinking immediately that we could manage the freckles. I didn’t know how Alyssa would feel about it, but we had so little time that I had to get it out. I proposed that we start working toward the day that we might be able to switch places—or at least give a try. Just for a little while? I thought she would be perfectly sane to say no. A farm girl caught trying to be the princess? Who knew what kind of trouble that would bring?

  “If somebody finds us out, well, we can just say it was a girl-joke and no harm done. Can’t we? And that it was my idea all the way.” I looked at her quizzically. “But it would be very exciting if we could do it.” I thought this would be the hard part. Would the whole idea of “exciting” be enough for her to take the risks?

  Alyssa rubbed her chin. “Nobody would punish you, of course. And my parents would get over it pretty quick. But what about all those people?” She pointed at my guards and the assorted palace folk I had dragged along. “Wouldn’t they have some laws against it or something? Would they throw me into a dungeon,” and here’s where I knew we were going to be able to do this swap. She continued, “…and leave my poor mother weeping at the gate with a bowl of fresh fruit for me?” Alyssa thought the image very funny, and it was then that I was sure she would be a great and secret friend for this whole business. Alyssa added looking around, “How can they not see what we see? Freckles and clothes. If that’s enough, I’m sure we’ll have no problems.” And we both laughed at the perfect disguises in her homespun dress and my silk and brocade with tiny gold threads. Freckles were like frosting on the cake. We could do this.

  “Or maybe they can’t imagine that a princess and a farm girl would look exactly alike.” I raised my eyebrows like I’d been practicing to show amazement. Alyssa curled up her hair on her neck to about the length of mine, just for a second, and then let it drop again.

  And then she made a joke. “Do you think they saw it then?” And we both laughed as if the whole world—their world, anyway—was outside our private joke. And it was. Alyssa’s voice was the same as mine. She had the same silly laugh. She threw her head back the same way. We began plotting seriously.

  We talked until the gaggle of adults seemed to get a little restless. I’d need some sun tan, some freckles, of course. She’d need to work on her nails. Haircuts, eyebrows, some work on walks. Could we do it? For how long? And this was the other side of our scheme. Would everyone think as we did that it was a capital joke if we got caught. The voices of my mother and father rang in my head: things in order, things as they should be and always were. Order is safety and harmony and certainty.

  We would see if we could change places for some length of time—a week? A month? Half a year? More? But we would have to know much more about the other’s life first to pull off the exchange.

  We would write back and forth, and the letters would be carried by special couriers that I would arrange. No one else would read the letters. We could write anything, but details would be important: servants’ names, brother’s name, parents’ habits, royal duties, ways to be around servants, ways to be around friends, how to go to school, how to treat tutors that came to the castle. And many more things too.

  We agreed that we would write and write and write until we thought we could be each other, act out another life, pretend without a hitch. And then we would do the swap. At first one week. And then we’d meet and talk about what was easy, what was hard. It was settled. I would send the special courier soon with the first letter.

  School! I thought. That would be wonderful. Not by myself in a big echoing room with one scowling tutor’s face with words coming out of it. Scho
ol with real children and silliness and everyone with different shoes. I imagined the shoes for some reason, the flicker of different shoes like butterflies across the wooden schoolroom floor. And the happy chatter afterward of children running noisily free after sitting too long. I imagined a kind of life I had only seen at a distance before and now found myself thirsty for it.

  “Alyssa. Do you think this will work? I’ve wanted to get out of that castle for as long as I can remember. I remember looking out the window, and as far as I could see there was something better, I thought. Whenever we passed through a village in our carriage, I wanted to jump out and run in a glorious pack with the children. Even if we could just do it for a little while, what a great adventure it would be for me.”

  “We can. I’m sure we can,” Alyssa replied. “There are so many things I haven’t seen and done, too. I would look toward the castle and wonder and wonder. I have no idea what goes on in there.”

  “Oh, I’ll tell you everything you need to know. It’s not that hard, really. When to do this, when that. Mostly the kind of stuff to make you wish you were back here.”

  We laughed so hard at the idea of switching lives that I’m sure the echoes off the barn wall sounded like the same laugh twice, and then the echo on top. For a second, our laughs were one thing, and the two of us were one thing.

  Finally, when we could talk again, Alyssa said, “This princess business is as interesting to me as you say the farm business is to you. Maybe just because it’s new and exciting. I have never worn anything made of silk, though I’ve seen it. It made me want to touch it just to find out if it’s as smooth as it looks.”