Once Upon a Marigold

by Jean Ferris

  "And how do you know those are the little prince's clothes?"

  "Because of the pendant I found in the pocket of his suit. It's a golden phoenix. Everybody knows only the royalty of the kingdom of Zandelphia are allowed to wear that emblem."

  "I didn't kill anybody!" Ed bellowed.

  Olympia leaned over him, with Swithbert behind her. "Then what about that blue velvet suit?" she asked. "And the phoenix charm?"

  "Phoenix, schmoenix—what do I know about phoenixes? Is that what it is? I thought it was just a weird-looking bird. And the suit's his, too; he said he never wanted to wear either one of them things again."

  "Who? Who said that?" Olympia demanded.

  "Well, Christian. Who else?" Ed said. "I found him in the forest when he was just a little boy. I wanted to send him home, but he said he didn't want to go. He said he'd tell everybody I kidnapped him if I tried to make him leave. So, well, he just stayed."

  "Why, you're right," Queen Mab, who was still flitting around, put in. "I knew he seemed familiar when I first met him with you in the forest, but I never expected to see Prince Christian with a pushy old troll, so I didn't make the connection."

  "Why am I not surprised," Ed muttered.

  There was a stunned silence while Swithbert and Olympia absorbed this information. If what Ed and Mab said was true, Christian was the rightful heir to the crown of Zandelphia. Which meant that Olympia had had a future king and his guardian thrown in her dungeon and scheduled for execution. It also meant, she realized, that Calista and Eve would not be queens of Zandelphia, something Olympia had been counting on to enhance her reputation: She intended to be known as the mother of three queens.

  Of course, they could still become queens if Christian didn't survive.

  21

  Swithbert was thinking, Well, how do you like that? Marigold could get to be queen of Zandelphia. Then she and two of her sisters could all be in the same kingdom.

  Olympia turned back to look at the doctor. He had one foot on Christian's shoulder for leverage while he got ready to yank the arrow from his chest.

  "Wait!" she called, and hurried over, neglecting to notice how Marigold was watching her through narrowed, suspicious eyes. "Do you think it's a good idea to take that arrow out?"

  The doctor looked at her, astonished. "It's the customary procedure," he said. "Most patients prefer to have their arrows removed rather than left in. Since he's unconscious, we can't ask him. So I'm using my best judgment."

  "But won't removing it cause a lot of blood loss?" Olympia asked. "Why don't we leave it in for a while and see if he feels better?"

  "The archers' arrows are often poisoned, Your Highness," the doctor reminded her.

  "Yes, yes," she said impatiently, waving her hand. "But we don't know that this one is."

  Swithbert, no dummy no matter what Olympia thought, knew exactly what was in her mind. "Hey!" he said, running to the wreck. "Get that arrow out now!"

  The doctor, still gripping the arrow, involuntarily jerked on it at Swithbert's shout.

  "Ooh," Christian moaned, coming closer to consciousness.

  "Chris!" Ed called from the other end of the terrace. "Are you all right?"

  Bub and Cate, torn between protecting Ed, escaping from the soldiers, going after Fenleigh, and checking up on Christian, ran around indecisively, as though they were demented.

  "Those dogs are mad!" Rollo yelled. "They must be exterminated! Catch them!"

  A few wedding guests began to creep back onto the terrace to see what was going on, and found a five-ring circus: Calista, Eve, and Tatiana trying to explain to their baffled husbands what was happening; Ed held down on the ground by soldiers; the dogs going nuts; the crashed vehicle with Christian, Marigold, and the doctor amidst the wreckage; and Olympia and Swithbert arguing at the top of their lungs, hearts, and cerebellums about removing Christian's arrow. Magnus stood apart from everyone, looking bewildered and anxious.

  While all this was going on, Marigold said quietly to the doctor, "Take that arrow out or I'll have you banished to Isobaria, where you'll do nothing but put poultices on sunburns and wipe runny noses. Do it now."

  And the doctor did.

  Christian cried out, a sound of such agony that for a moment, all the commotion stopped.

  Marigold, holding him and as unhappy as she had ever been in her life, was able to feel through all her senses the pain that filled Christian, and she cried out, too.

  Everyone who heard that double cry, without knowing they were going to do so, began to weep from the pure human empathy it made them feel. Everyone but Olympia.

  "I must go change clothes," she said. "And so must the groom. This wedding will go on." She grabbed Magnus, and they swept down the stairs. No one paid any attention.

  In her anguish Marigold pressed her hands against Christian's ruined chest to still the pain, to stanch the blood flow, to bring him comfort. Her hands seemed very warm and to have a slight vibration in them, which spread up her arms and into the whole of her body. The harder she pressed on the wound, the warmer she became and the more her own pain diminished. So she continued to press.

  The wedding guests around them began to wipe their tears with their trains, the hems of their ermine-trimmed robes, or their sleeves. Royals never carried their own handkerchiefs—someone else always handed them one when they needed it. Even the most powerful person can be dumb about simple things.

  The doctor blew his nose on the wad of gauze he'd had ready to slap onto the great hole in Christian's chest.

  "Let go of him, honey," he said gently to Marigold, for whom he felt a newly born affection. "I need to dress that wound." Marigold lifted her hands, which no longer felt so warm or so tingly, and wiped the blood onto the underskirt of her awful wedding gown.

  The doctor mopped at the blood on Christian's chest with a fresh piece of gauze and then exclaimed, "I don't believe it!"

  "What?" Marigold asked as she gazed at Christian's face. His eyes were still closed, but his features were no longer drawn with pain.

  "Look."

  Swithbert and several of the crowd around them leaned in to look, too.

  Except for some streaks of blood left over from the doctor's untidy mopping, Christian's chest was unblemished. There was no sign of the hole the arrow had made, no scar, no nothing. His skin was as smooth and as tanned as it had always been.

  "I'm going to have to write this up for the next Medical Association Journal," the doctor said. "There's a faction that says laughter is the best medicine, and a smaller one that says love is. I think I have some empirical evidence that..."

  But by now no one was listening.

  "Get that boy out of there," Swithbert ordered. "Take him down to the Green Suite. Get him some clean clothes. And some broth and bread and pudding. Put a guard on him. Nobody goes near him except me."

  "And me!" Marigold said, climbing out of the wreckage.

  "And me!" Ed called from under the pile of soldiers still pinning him down.

  Bub and Cate barked a lot, meaning "And me!" too.

  "Bring that troll to my quarters," Swithbert told the soldiers. "I want to talk to him." He looked around. "Where's the queen?" he asked.

  "I think she went to change clothes," someone said.

  "That could take forever," the king muttered. "Especially if she decides to bathe that weasel of hers. Or whatever it is."

  Marigold went with Christian to the Green Suite. Swithbert and Ed—and the dogs, who wouldn't be separated from Ed—went to Swithbert's chambers. The wedding guests went to the Great Hall, where the reception was being moved, now that the terrace was such a mess. Even if there hadn't been a wedding, there was still feasting—what else to do with all that food so many people had labored over for so long? The guests didn't mind. The reception part was always more fun than the wedding part anyway. And as the guests mingled and talked about the extraordinary events of the morning, the gossip traveled throughout the castle, from royalty to servants
to serfs and back again. Buzz, buzz, buzz.

  "I always knew Queen Olympia was a bad one. She treated those girls of hers like dirt. Even the triplets, and everyone knew they were her favorites."

  "That Sir Magnus is a pretty thing, isn't he? But dumb as a box of rocks, don't you think?"

  "I knew Christian was a prince when first I laid me eyes on him. And when he built that new butter churn for me—well, that just proved it, didn't it? Just shows you what splendid taste I have in men, it does."

  "We always knew Princess Marigold had powers, the way she can read minds when she touches you, but this—do you think she's a witch?"

  "I hear she even looks different now. Not so plain and dowdy. Must be hard having those Valkyries for sisters."

  "Have you seen the king? He's got a spring in his step I haven't seen in a very long time. There was a while there I thought he was a goner."

  "Do you think there'll still be a wedding today?"

  "Olympia said there would be. And she's changing clothes for it, so I'd count on it."

  MARIGOLD SAT at Christian's bedside, his right hand in both of hers, waiting for him to wake up. She'd taken a few minutes to strip off her hideous destroyed wedding gown and throw on a simple frock of pale pink linen before she'd run to the Green Suite to be with him, but her hair still tumbled down her back and she was barefoot.

  Bub and Cate, quite at home in the castle now, scampered between the king's turret and the Green Suite, guarding their scattered family. Marigold's three little floor mops had been released from their confinement and joined in all the racing up and down stairs, skidding around corners and whizzing through the legs of anyone in the way. Five dogs torpedoing around the corridors created quite a navigational hazard.

  All the dogs were on Christian's bed when he opened his eyes. They hunched around him, their heads and ears cocked, their eyes warm and wet with concern.

  "How odd," he said. "I never imagined angels would look like this."

  "They're not angels," Marigold said, scared to death that the crash had damaged his brain.

  He turned toward her. "Of course," he said. "I see that now. They're dogs. You're the angel."

  "Oh, Christian," she said, leaning over him. "What makes you think I'm an angel?"

  "Well, I'm dead, aren't I? And you're so beautiful. Do you have wings? Can I see them? I tried to make some for a flying machine, but they didn't work quite as well as I wanted them to."

  "But you're not dead. Not at all. You're fine."

  "Fine? How can I be fine? I remember the flying machine crashing, and the arrows—" He put his hand on his chest. Puzzled, he rubbed the place where the arrow had been, then pushed himself up in bed. The dogs closed in around him, watching as he unbuttoned the nightshirt the doctor had dressed him in. He looked down at himself. "I could have sworn—" he murmured.

  "Oh, you had an arrow in you, all right," Marigold told him. "The doctor pulled it out."

  "But ... there's no mark. No scar. No nothing. I must be dead."

  "No," she said. And she told him what had happened, how she had somehow healed his wound.

  "I don't understand it," Christian said, taking her hands in both of his over the backs of Flopsy, Mopsy, Topsy, Bub, and Cate. "Do you?"

  "Not entirely," she said, though she, too, was now a believer in the doctor's second theory of what constituted the best medicine. "There's something else. Ever since I did ... whatever I did ... I've lost my curse. I can't tell what anybody's thinking anymore. And I know I was unhappy enough to sense their thoughts because I wasn't sure you were going to be all right. I've touched you and Papa and one of the maids and the doctor, and it's gone. Whatever it was—some kind of power or energy or magic—it's used up. On you. There's a part of me in you now. That must have been the way to break the curse of my birth-gift, the way I had to find for myself. And I never would have without you."

  The tear that Christian had felt in the corner of his heart seemed to knit itself up a little. "So you are an angel," he said. "My angel." And they looked at each other over the dogs as if there were no one else in all the world.

  22

  While all this was going on, Ed and the king were having a long talk over a very fine bottle of wine, one just a trifle insolent, with admirable flinty notes and a balanced fine-grained finish containing a wee hint of tumbleweed.

  "So, Bert," Ed said, holding out his empty tankard again, "do you think there's anything you can do about this monopoly Mab's got going? Any help you can give me?"

  "Sounds to me like you're doing just fine by yourself," Swithbert said, refilling both their tankards. "But I'd be glad to write a letter for you to add to the ones you've already got. And I'll get Teddy and Harry and Willie to write letters, too. Can't hurt to have all us crowned heads in your corner."

  Ed snapped his fingers. "I'll get Christian to write me a letter! He's got a pretty good crowned head of his own all of a sudden."

  "How about that?" Swithbert said. "You know, I've been thinking—we've got wedding guests, a wedding reception, a wedding cake, bridesmaids, wedding gifts, and a bride. What's missing?"

  Ed took a wild guess. "A groom?"

  "A groom we've got. And I don't mean Magnus."

  "Oh!" Ed said as he understood. "Well, I guess all we have to do is prop that arbor thing up again and get the bishop away from the roast pig and the ladies-in-waiting. All we're missing now is a wedding."

  "So what are we waiting for?" Swithbert asked, swigging down the last of his wine. "Let's get going."

  MARIGOLD AND CHRISTIAN were still gazing at each other across the dogs, who had finally collapsed from all the excitement and were piled up, snoring away, when Calista, Eve, and Tatiana came bursting into the room.

  Tatiana took queenly control. "Come on, you two. You've got to get dressed."

  "I'm not leaving Chris," Marigold said.

  "Just for a few minutes," Tatiana said. "Then you can have him back."

  "But why?" Marigold asked. "I'm dressed enough."

  "You at least need shoes and a veil," Eve said.

  "And Christian needs to brush his hair," Calista said, and stuck her hand out to him. "Hi. I'm Calista. Your brother Teddy's wife. And this is Eve, your brother Harry's wife. And Tatiana, Queen of Middle Sanibar, married to King Willie. We'll be your new sisters-in-law."

  "Sisters-in-law?" Christian said, looking from Calista, Eve, and Tatiana to Marigold and back again in complete bewilderment. "My brothers?"

  "Hasn't anybody told you?" Calista asked. "Now that you're the crown prince, heir to the throne of Zandelphia, you're husband material for Marigold, and the wedding's going to go on with you instead of Magnus as the groom."

  "I'm the what?" Christian asked. Some of his hazy old memories surfaced a bit. Could those babies in the blue baskets have been Teddy and Harry? Could the long flight of stone steps and the little girl chasing the puppy have been in the castle at Zandelphia?

  Marigold stood abruptly, furious tears pooling in her eyes. "Whose idea is this?" she demanded. "In the first place, I don't care if Christian is royalty; I'd marry him if he were a goatherd. And in the second place, he hasn't asked me. And in the third place, I'll not have him railroaded into something he doesn't want to do. Where's Mother? I'll tell her myself that there's going to be no wedding today."

  "But I want one," Christian said, trying to get out from under the pile of dogs. "The only thing I want in all the world is for you to be my wife. We can sort out the rest of the stuff later."

  "Oh," Marigold said.

  Her sisters grabbed her and dragged her off to get dressed.

  Ed and Swithbert, bringing clean clothes, shaving gear, and explanations for Christian, rushed in as the sisters rushed out.

  IN WHAT SEEMED like no time, the wedding guests were reassembled on the terrace, which had been hastily put to rights by a platoon of servants. The audience couldn't be blamed for casting anxious glances over the parapet, considering what had appeared from that dir
ection only a couple of hours earlier. But all they saw was the oncoming twilight, with its swathes of primrose and cinnabar, amethyst and ultramarine. None but Christian knew that this was Marigold's favorite time of day, with all her favorite colors.

  Teddy, Harry, Willie, Ed, and the five dogs stood waiting beside the bishop on one side of the altar, and the triplets stood on the other side, as Swithbert and Marigold started down the aisle between the little gilt chairs. The princess was radiant in her pale pink linen (starting a fad in wedding gowns that lasted for decades}, which was just the right match for Christian's crystal on a chain around her neck, the rubies in her best everyday tiara, and the cloud of plain, unadorned veiling that followed her down the aisle.

  While everyone was watching the bride and her father approach, Christian stepped up to the altar, waiting with a look on his face that, if you didn't know how happy he was, might have been mistaken for mental impairment. So much had happened so fast, his mind was still trying to catch up and hadn't yet made it. The fact that he was standing next to his newly found brothers, who would also be his brothers-in-law, wasn't even the half of it.

  Neither was the fact that he'd discovered his birthday was April 19, the same day as Marigold's. They were both fire signs, the most confident and dynamic combination.

  The real half of it was that, in the deepest part of himself, he knew this was what he'd been headed toward for as long as he could remember. He'd been preparing for a life with Marigold—and for a life as a good king.

  The wedding guests, when they turned in his direction, caught their breaths. They didn't think he looked mentally impaired. Not at all. Especially considering that the last time they'd seen him he'd been wearing dirty livery, hanging on to a rickety flying machine, and yelling at a couple of dogs to run faster. Now he was cleaned up, shaved, and splendid in fine leather breeches, an embroidered waistcoat, and a single diamond earring in his newly pierced ear. He wore a crown sparkling with gems—a borrowed crown, to be sure, but who except Christian and Swithbert had to know that?