by Jill Myles
I was beginning to wonder the same thing myself. This was like a bad dream. I leaned over toward my new ‘husband’ and whispered, “We need to go now.”
Aleksandr stood up on the bench and began to fuss with the ropes atop the cart, still whistling. People, upon recognizing me, began to gather and whisper nearby, stopping in their errands. My face flamed hot and I yanked on Aleksandr's leggings. “Why are we stopping?”
“I am fixing something in the cart, my pet,” he said in a too-loud, cheerful voice.
Titters arose from the audience.
“It’s fine and I’m not your pet,” I hissed at him, mortified. I averted my face, staring at my pearl-crusted slippers so as not to make eye contact with the people blatantly staring at us. “I fixed the cart. Nothing is going to break. Please, can’t we just go?”
Instead, he handed a mess of fabric down to me. “Is this your favorite dress?”
I stared at the green brocade in my hands. It was handsomely jeweled, with a large emerald set into the front of the bodice, but the pale yellow underdress that matched it was nowhere to be seen. “It is one of my favorites, yes,” I admitted. “But why–”
“Attention everyone,” Aleksandr boomed. “The kind and gracious Princess Miranda–”
“Rinda!” Insufferable man!
“–Princess Rinda,” he corrected, with a wink down at me. “Has decided to ease herself of the burden of her riches. Show us a yellow cloak and she will generously give you one of her lovely gowns!”
“Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?” My screech was drowned out by the cheer that swept through the marketplace.
As I watched, helplessly, one beggar came up to him and showed his yellow cloak. Aleksandr tossed down my purple watered silk. “Thank you, milord,” the man cried.
“Wait,” called Aleksandr, and the beggar flinched, as if expecting a reprimand. But Aleksandr only held up my amethyst-encrusted shoes. “You forgot these. Now, who’s next?”
People surged forward, cheering, and Aleksandr tossed down garments as they reached their hands up.
I stared up at him, aghast. He couldn’t do this! Could he? I stood up to stop him and retrieve my belongings, but as soon as I stood, a deafening cheer went through the crowd.
“They love your generosity,” Aleksandr shouted in my ear, then returned to tossing away more of my precious gowns. Numb, I sat back down on the bench and watched as yellow cloak after yellow cloak left with my costly belongings. All around, people were cheering and smiling at me – me! The brown, useless princess! – with happiness. Hands touched my skirts and murmured blessings, and one woman tried to pass me her baby, as if that was a sign of approval of some sort. All of my protests were drowned out and unnoticed as Aleksandr tore through the trunks, giving away everything they contained, save the one dress I clutched in my hands.
Part of me wanted to stand back up and snatch my dresses and shoes and hair baubles and veils and belts back from the greedy hands clasping them home. What was stopping me was the happy cheers of the people around me. For once…someone liked me.
For once, the cheers were for Princess Rinda. It dazed me.
“Can you get up, dear lady?”
Lost in thought, I clutched the green dress harder to me and stared up at Aleksandr. His face was flushed with exertion, and the unruly spikes of hair clung to his forehead instead. His brown eyes were bright in his face. “Up off the cart, if you please,” he repeated.
I stood and took his hand to climb to the ground. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing at all,” Aleksandr replied, and moved to unhitch the cart. As I watched, he pulled it free from the tack and then lowered the two rails to the ground, then clapped a waiting farmer on the back. “All yours, my good man. The lady assures me that it’s been magicked to hold together.”
The man touched his forehead in a gesture of respect for me. “Thank you, princess. Thank you.”
A small sound of protest erupted from my throat as Aleksandr took the horse by a pair of newly-acquired reins (traded for my favorite blue silk sleeping gown) and led him toward me. “Ready to go, then?”
“But…the cart…”
“Unnecessary now that we’ve gotten rid of all the extra garbage,” he said cheerfully, wiping his brow with his free hand.
“Garbage? Those were my dresses! My clothes! They were worth a fortune!” I gestured at the green dress in my hands, showing him the enormous emerald sewn into the bodice. “Each dress was a work of art, hand-crafted with the appropriate gems sewn into the fabric.”
Aleksandr leaned in and peered at my green dress with obvious interest. “Is that an emerald?”
“It is!” Maybe now he would see the foolishness of his ways. There was still time to hunt down the recipients of my dresses. If we were lucky, maybe we could get a few of them back.
He pulled out a belt knife and began to cut the emerald free of the embroidery.
“What are you doing?” I jerked the dress back from him, and the emerald broke free and clattered to the ground.
Aleksandr scooped it up and walked over, and handed it to the farmer. “Here you go, sirrah. Luck to you and your family.”
The farmer’s eyes grew wet and he touched his forehead repeatedly in our direction. “Thank you, thank you, Princess Rinda.”
Real panic began to set into me, and I stood mutely as Aleksandr grabbed me by the waist and lifted me onto the horse’s back. There was no saddle, and I wobbled and nearly fell to the ground again, barely managing to stay on as he mounted behind me. I clutched my spare dress in my hands as he wrapped an arm around my waist and gigged the horse into a gallop.
Unused to being atop a horse – I never traveled unless we had a court visit – I wobbled and clutched at the horse’s mane, my gown threatening to fall off my lap. Aleksandr took pity on me and looped an arm around my waist, steadying me against him. This did not ease my mind. Instead, I only grew more furious.
“You have given away all of our worldly possessions,” I protested, stunned beyond functioning. All my life, I had been wealthy. Ridiculously so. In the span of a few short hours, the man behind me on the horse had divested me of everything – my name, my family, my homeland, my possessions. All I had left was a rapidly-wrinkling green dress with the emeralds stripped out of it. “You said you were poor. I was not poor. I had money – we could have sold the gems on my dresses and bought a house, but you have given it all away.”
“We don’t need money, dear lady,” Aleksandr said cheerfully, giving me a squeeze. “We shall live a life of nomadery and sing for our supper when we need the coin.”
My hands fisted in the dress and I counted to ten.
“Do you like to sing?” Aleksandr prompted. “Ladies are refined, are they not? I do hope you can carry a tune, or one of us is going to go to bed hungry quite often.”
I counted to ten again.
“Silent, my pet?” I could hear the amusement in his voice. He was enjoying this far too much.
“I am envisioning the ways I should like to remove your head from your shoulders,” I said viciously, the words erupting from me in a stew of anger. My voice rose with anger until I was practically shouting at him. “You are the most insufferable, ignorant, rude, foolish, irritating halfwit that I have ever had the misfortune to lay eyes upon! I wish that I had never seen you! The most I can pray for out of this horrible marriage is that you take ill very rapidly and die and leave me a widow! At least then I will be free of your endless chatter!”
To my surprise, Aleksandr did not respond.
“Well?” I said, turning and craning my neck to see his response. “Don’t you have anything to say?”
“Do you know,” he began slowly, his words thoughtful. “I think you’re so very unpleasant because you’re afraid of letting people get to know the real you. I think you’re afraid of letting people see what a gentle, sweet girl you are. It’s a wonder that your father had to marry you off to a stranger at all. Bridegrooms should have been knocki
ng on your door for miles around.”
“I hate you!”
Chapter Seven
“We’ll stop here for the evening.”
Lost in a depressed reverie, I stared into the thickening twilight. We’d left behind Threshold some time ago and now traveled along a narrow path through the woods. I’d never once gone further than the city itself, so all this green and lack of people was a bit disturbing. The fact that it was dark and no one seemed to be around but myself and my new husband? Even more so.
But…stopping seemed like a good idea. My thighs and posterior ached from sitting on the horse for so long, and Aleksandr's arms had slid around my waist at some point, no matter how many times I slapped them away.
Still. I peered at the dark trees as Aleksandr slid off the side of the horse and began to lead it into the woods. “And why are we stopping here?”
“Well, not exactly here,” he replied, seemingly full of energy despite spending hours on horseback. “We’re going to go off the path a little and set up our tent. With luck, we’ll have a nice fire and maybe a stream to bathe in.”
‘Our’ tent? Bathing? I stiffened, remaining atop the horse. “Why don’t we keep riding until the next town?”
Aleksandr tilted his face up to me, but it was too dark to see his expression. “The next city is on the other side of the mountains.”
“Are those very far?” The peaks could be seen from my bedroom window, but I scarcely paid attention to them. “Maybe we should just wait to cross those.”
Aleksandr remained very quiet. After a long pause, he asked in an odd voice, “Tell me, Rinda, have you ever actually left the castle prior to coming with me?”
“Of course,” I scoffed. “I go into Threshold all the time.”
“Anywhere besides Threshold?”
I grew silent, still sitting stiffly atop the horse. “What does that have to do with anything?”
A soft sigh echoed in the gloom. “I see. Perhaps this was a poor idea.” His hand reached up and touched mine before I could slap it away. “Here, I’ll help you down off the horse and we’ll set up camp.”
I allowed him to help me down off the horse, and gave a thoroughly unladylike groan of distress when pain shot up my legs.
“You all right?”
“I’m not all right. I can barely walk,” I gritted, pushing his hands away as soon as my feet touched the ground. “Quit touching me.”
I expected him to make some lascivious comment about my stiffness – any flirtatious courtier would jump on it, offer to massage me. Men propositioned my sister all the time, who laughingly flirted back. But to my surprise, he did not say a thing about it.
“Follow me and we’ll pick out a nice spot.” He said, taking the horse by the bridle and leading it into the forest.
I trailed behind him, watching his shoulders as he moved into the tall trees. The sun would be down shortly, so I made sure to keep pace behind him. Ferns and small shrubs and thick grasses littered the forest floor, some of them covered in flowers. It was all very…woodsy. And horrid.
“This looks like a good spot,” Aleksandr said, and tethered the horse to a low hanging tree branch. “Just stay here and I’ll set up camp.”
This was the spot? For what?
I stood next to the horse, idly petting its neck as Aleksandr moved around the spot he’d chosen as ‘camp.’ First he gathered some wood, and returned with a small pile that he arranged after clearing a rocky section near the roots of a large tree. He unhooked the pack from his back and began to pull out a variety of items. I watched with curious interest as he clanged flint against his knife, sparking against tinder to make a flame. Once the fire was going, he began to set up a tent, whistling as he did so.
When he was finished, I eyed the tent. It was so…small. Barely more than a square of ugly fabric held off the ground by two sticks. Aleksandr took the blanket off of the horse’s back and shook it out, then laid it on the ground in the tent, then smiled at me. “Your bed, milady.”
I wanted to cry at the sight of it. “That’s where we’re sleeping?”
I could have sworn Aleksandr blushed. “Well, not both of us,” he said. “I’ll stay awake and manage the fire. You can sleep.” He shrugged off his cloak and handed it to me.
Sleep? On the ground? That did it. Frustration and anger welled up inside me, to the point that I wanted to scream. “No! This–this is ridiculous!” I threw down the cloak he’d offered. “Are you insane?”
“I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”
I gestured at the meager campsite. “This! This ridiculousness! I had a fortune’s worth of clothing! You gave it away! Why did you give it away?”
“Did you see all the poor people in Threshold?”
I really didn’t see what difference it made. “Of course I saw them. It’s impossible not to see them everywhere.”
Aleksandr picked up the cloak I had tossed away and brushed it off with his fingers. “They needed your wealth far more than we do. You could see the desperation in their eyes – some of them didn’t know where their next meal was coming from. I wanted to help them.”
I didn’t know where our next meal was coming from. “That’s ridiculous. Why not help us instead? You would rather live as thieves in the wilderness?”
He gave me a sunny smile and leaned in, as if sharing a secret. “We’re not thieves…we’re minstrels. I have a flute for you in my pack.”
“I’m going to ram that flute down your throat,” I yelled, fists clenched.
Aleksandr did not lose his calm. He simply put another log onto the fire and ignored me.
“How can you sit there in the middle of the woods like this and expect me to sleep here? There’s no roof! There’s no bed!” I gestured at the tent. “I wouldn’t let the lowest servant sleep on that poor excuse for a camp, and you expect me to? I am a–”
“Princess. Yes, I know,” he said, a hint of weariness in his voice. He poked the fire once more and stood. “And I regret that you are so very unhappy, dear lady, but it is beyond my control. If we were near an inn, I would take you to one. If we were near my home, we’d ride straight through. But as we are near neither, we have no choice but to sleep here, unless you’d like to get back on the horse and ride through the night.”
I stared at him, then glanced over at the horse. Then back at him again. His words, eminently sensible, had deflated the argument out of my body. I flopped to the ground in a mess of wrinkled skirts and crushed petticoats. “So, then what? I’m tired, cold, and hungry.”
“If you’re tired, go to sleep in the tent. If you’re cold, I’ll stoke up the fire a little. If you’re hungry, I’m sure I can catch something around here.” He squinted into the darkness. “Well, maybe not. But I do have some dried meat and cheese leftover from before.” He reached into his pack and offered me a little of both, then held out his waterskin.
I took the offered meal and ate a few bites. I was starving, but the entire thing was dry and coarse. As I ate, Aleksandr busied himself around the camp, rubbing down the horse and collecting more wood. Now I was only tired, instead of cold, hungry and tired. Still miserable, though. I cast a furtive look at Aleksandr, who was whistling under his breath as he gathered firewood and dumped it nearby. Why was he so happy all the time? We were stuck in the middle of the woods. We were poor as beggars – no, poorer than the beggars who now had my clothes – and we were married. I wanted to scream at the unfairness of it all. Instead, I bit my tongue and glared at the fire.
A flower appeared in the corner of my vision, and I stared up at Aleksandr in surprise, dread trudging in my stomach. Was this a preliminary to…a wedding night? Here? With him?
My expression must have been telling. Aleksandr blushed and sat down next to me, shaking his head when I scooted away. “I should explain,” he stammered, sticking the flower so close to my face that it nearly tickled my nose. “This…it’s a tradition where I come from.”
“Shoving a flower into a wom
an’s nose?” I retorted, pushing the flower aside.
He raked his free hand through his hair, causing it to stick up. “No, I…not exactly.” Aleksandr pulled back and gave the flower a frustrated look. “You see, where I come from, marriages have strict traditions for the first month. Courting happens after the marriage.”
“After?” I sneered at him, hugging my knees close to my body and staring at the fire. “Doesn’t that seem rather pointless to you? The woman can’t escape once the vows are made.”
“That’s not true,” he protested, and offered the flower to me again. “We have tradition. The vows are said, and every night for thirty nights, the husband gives his wife a flower. If she accepts the gift, she can take him into her bed that night. If she declines, he sleeps alone.”
Well, that was easy enough. I reached over and crushed the flower in my hand, then tossed it aside. “There’s your answer.”
Aleksandr grinned, showing white, even teeth in his tanned face. “I thought you might say something like that. But don’t worry! Twenty nine more nights before I can convince you otherwise.”
That would never happen. “And what happens after thirty days and I still refuse you?”
His face grew sober. “Then we dissolve the marriage. It’s over.”
A laugh bubbled from my throat. “No, truly, what happens?”
Aleksandr didn’t smile back. “If we cannot get along within a month, why should we stay married?”
Why indeed? Hope spiraled through me, and I could hardly breathe with the relief of it all. So I wouldn’t have to be married to him forever? If I held out for a month – a mere month! – I could return home. Had my father not realized Aleksandr's strange wedding customs when he’d married us? Or had he simply not cared?
The world was suddenly full of promise again, and I smiled.
Aleksandr was studying the crushed flower with a bemused expression on his face. “You certainly don’t mince words, do you?”
“Not often,” I agreed, almost cheerful despite my exhaustion. I yawned and stood up, gathering my skirts with me. “And now that the little courting ritual is over for the night, I am going to sleep in the tent.” I paused and gave him a suspicious look. “Alone.”