“Madame,” he said to my mother. He pushed back from the table, tossing his linen napkin onto his plate.”The dinner you provide is excellent, as always. But I fear I may have suddenly become unwell, for I find I have no appetite for it. You will excuse me, I hope?”
My mother cleared her throat before she spoke. “But of course,”she replied.
Oswald rose from the table, his back as hard and straight as iron. He bowed in turn to each of my parents, then gave me the lowest, most elaborate bow of all. He departed without another word, the heels of his boots striking so hard that sparks flew up from the flagstones.
“Well, that’s that,” my father said, when he had gone. “I suppose there was no way to avoid hurting him, but even so…” He broke off, shaking his head, then picked up the knife and began to carve the chicken once more.
“I hope you know what you’re doing, Philippe,” my mother said.
“Bien sûr,” my father answered simply. “I am doing what must be done. It will be all right, Mathilde. You must trust me.”
“I do. You know I do. But I hope to God you’re right in this, Philippe,” Maman replied. Her eyes stared at the door through which Oswald had departed.”He has the nobles’ love. He has made it his life’s work.”
“He is like his father in that,” Papa replied.”It may be enough for the son of a younger son. But not for one who will govern. The one who will do that must see beyond the palace walls.”
“He would make a dangerous enemy,” my mother cautioned.
“Then we must take care that he does not become one,” answered Papa. “He is angry now, but his anger will pass. He is too smart to hold on to it for long. Now, if it’s all the same to everyone else, I’d like to finish the rest of my dinner in peace and quiet.”
“As you wish, Philippe,” Maman said. And she held out her plate for some chicken.
But I said. “Merci, Papa.”
At this, he smiled. “You are welcome, Aurore. But, I think it is I who should thank you.”
“For what?” I asked in surprise.
But it was Maman who answered, and in a way which brought tears to my eyes.
“For growing up the way we hoped you might,” she said.
After which none of us felt the need to say anything more.
FIVE
And so the next six years of my life began, with a proclamation read aloud the next morning from high atop the palace walls. In it, all my father’s people learned that I would be his successor, no matter how long it took, rather than my cousin, no matter how great his charms, though naturally the proclamation itself was more diplomatic on these points.
The reactions to the announcement was predictable. Dead silence from the nobles inside the palace; wild cheering from the people outside the walls. For apparently the fact that my father loved me dearly and had cherished high hopes for my future was well known outside the palace. As well known there as it was little known inside. (Not because he had said this to anyone directly, I think, but because, to the people, this was the natural order of things. What should be so.)
When it was further announced that the king and his daughter would shortly be riding forth, the cheering from outside grew so loud as to be almost deafening, while the nobles simply faded back inside the palace like so many bugs crawling back into their holes.
If I had been wiser in the ways of the world, I might have been more concerned about this. But I wasn’t. I was only ten years old. Besides, I already knew the nobles did not love me. They had already given all the love they had to Oswald.
He stood just behind my father as the proclamation was being read, the counterbalance to the fact that I stood just in front of him. What my cousin was thinking, I could not tell. The curtain was still drawn across his face and now even across his eyes. If he was angry or hurt, dissatisfied in any way, he did not show it.
I hardly need tell you this day marked another change between us. I no longer went to him with things that interested me, questions to be answered, puzzles I needed help deciphering. For what else could they do but remind him of what he had lost? All the things he had not chosen? I caught him studying me from time to time, as, indeed, I sometimes studied him though I tried not to show it. Save for the times when functions of state required us to be together, we stayed apart. It was simpler all around if we avoided one another.
But I was not thinking of such things. Not on that first bright morning. For it was after the proclamation was read that my father gave the signal for the palace gates to be thrown open. Then, seated before him on his great gray horse, he and I rode through them together and out into the world beyond the palace walls.
I can still remember the quiet. The way more people than I had ever seen before abruptly fell silent at the sight of me. Voices beyond my ability to measure suddenly hushing all at once. And twice as many eyes as that, fixed on the place where I sat before my father. I remember gripping the horse’s mane so tightly the coarse hairs cut into my hands.
And then Papa said: “My friends, I give to you my daughter and heir, the Princess Aurore.”
At that, a great shout went up. The women fluttered their aprons; men tossed their caps into the air; children jumped up and down. And I did a thing that surprised everyone, myself most of all. I tossed my leg over the horse’s head, slid to the ground, and dashed straight into the crowd.
Years later, in a particularly cross and cynical moment, Oswald asked me how I had known to do this. For he claimed it was the best, most perfect thing I could have done. To run to them, my people, my subjects. To fly to them with outstretched arms. I want to know you, my action said. There is no difference between us. We are the same, you and I.
My only answer was that I hadn’t truly known anything, not in a way that lets you plan things ahead of time. I simply did what my heart demanded. And, in this way, I answered the demands of my people’s hearts as well.
The years that followed are one bright blur, in which I spent as little time inside the palace as possible. Instead, I learned to do anything in the world outside I could. No task was too menial, too dirty, too hard.
I learned to plow and plant the fields, not letting the fact that I sunburned my face and blistered my hands stop me. I held on until I developed calluses and my skin settled down to the color of toasted almonds. I learned to cut peat for fires and the proper way to thatch a roof. I fell off. Twice. The second time I broke my arm.
While recuperating, I spent time with the herbalist, learning which plants could bring down a fever, which could purge a stomach, which were best for the dying of cloth. I even learned which plants could be used to bring about a death, though I swore to keep this information to myself.
When my arm had mended, I learned to shear a sheep, to card and spin its wool. Lest I become too domestic, I also learned shoot an arrow from my very own bow and to throw a knife. Accurately in both instances. Though I never revealed these particular talents to Maman. Just as I never revealed the fact that, if I was doing particularly dirty or heavy work, I tied my hair back, stuffed it underneath a cap, and wore a tunic, boots and breeches, just like a boy.
In short, I pretty much stopped behaving like a regular princess altogether and had the time of my life. But there were two things I never forgot: la Forêt and Oswald.
My thoughts on my cousin, I kept to myself. For, though not precisely secret, they were certainly confused, a thing which kept me from asking him about la Forêt as I might once have done. After thinking it over for quite some time, I finally decided that the person who could give me the answers I wanted was none other than Papa. For had he not been the one to remind me the Forest was off-limits in the first place?
I waited until he was alone. Maman had still not quite forgiven me for the broken arm, and, if she learned I was interested in la Forêt, I half feared she’d shut me in my room and bolt the door. Papa often spent time in his study at the end of the day. It was there I sought him out one night when I was supposed to be in bed,
being careful to first knock on the door. No one entered my father’s study without his permission, not even Maman. It was his only private place.
“Come,” my father’s voice called.
I turned the heavy doorknob and pushed open the door. My father was sitting in a far corner of the room in a great chair made of dark brown leather. He had a book in his lap and spectacles perched upon his nose. He pulled these off and tucked them in a pocket as I came in.
“Why, Aurore. I thought that you had gone to bed.”
“I can’t sleep, Papa,” I blurted out.”There is something I would like to know and not knowing is keeping me awake.”
“This sounds serious,” my father said, but I could see the way his eyes smiled. He took his feet from a low footstool covered in the same leather as the chair and gestured for me to sit down.”Have you come to tell me what it is?”
I nodded, and he gestured for me to continue. “Why is it forbidden to enter la Forêt, Papa?”
“Oh, Aurore.” He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, as if marshalling his strength, then opened them again.”I don’t suppose it would do any good to mention how sincerely I have hoped you would never ask that question?”
“But you’ve made me your heir, Papa. I will be responsible for la Forêt myself one day. Don’t you think its history is a thing that I should know?”
“You want to watch saying things like that,” my father remarked.”It will make people think you’re too clever for your own good. Not that you aren’t right, of course. Very well. But don’t tell your mother. She’ll have my head.”
“It shall be our secret,” I vowed.
“La Forêt has been as it is for as long as I can remember,” my father said.”Some would say for time out of mind. In my grandfather’s time, there was a woman in the village so ancient none could remember her right name and so she was called la Vieille, the Old Woman. It was la Vieille who told my father what I am about to tell you.
“La Forêt is cursed, Aurore.”
I felt something cold skitter down the back of my legs.”Cursed?” I said.”By whom?”
“According to la Vieille, by two great sorcerers,” said Papa. “Where they came from originally, I cannot say. But they ended up here, in our land that is steeped in magic, for no other reason than to use it for their own purposes. To try to turn our magic to their will in a great contest.”
“But why? What for?”
At this, my father shrugged his shoulders. “To prove who was strongest, perhaps. No one really knows.”
“That’s an awfully stupid reason,” I said. “And if they were sorcerers they ought to have known better than to go messing around with magic that way.”
My father’s lips twitched, but he nodded gravely. “That is surely so. Is it said that the one who triumphed realized his folly in the end and, with the last of his strength, he cast a spell. One that contained the destruction, the unraveling, that had been wrought inside the boundaries of la Forêt. He could not heal it, but at least he could stop it from spreading any more.”
“But what’s wrong with the Forest?” I asked.
My father cocked his head.”I’m not sure wrong is quite the way to describe it,” he said.”Different might be a better choice. The magic of la Forêt isn’t like magic anywhere else. And remember it is contained. Folded in upon itself with nowhere to go. Even time moves differently there. For the magic of la Forêt doesn’t need human minds to work its will. Instead it has a mind and will of its own.
“I’ve seen it snow beneath the trees on a warm spring day. Placed a marker opposite a sapling one week, then returned the next to find nothing but a gnarled and rotting stump. La Forêt makes its own rules, Aurore. But what they are, it alone knows.”
“Does no one ever go in?” I asked, for it seemed to me that, though he had warned me away from it, Papa himself had come very close.
“From time to time,” answered my father. “According to la Vieille, if you enter the Forest with goodness in your heart, it will pretty much leave you alone. If you’re lucky, it will even let you come back out again. But those entering it bent on mischief or destruction are never seen again. I hope you can see now why it is forbidden to go there.”
“Of course I do,” I said.”Thank you for telling me, Papa.”
“Do you think you can sleep now?” my father asked.
I slid off the footstool.”Yes, Papa. I think so. And don’t worry. I’ll remember my promise.” With that, I gave him a kiss good night.
“See that you do, Aurore.”
And so my curiosity about la Forêt was satisfied, for the time being. And the tale my father had told me was enough to make even me leave the Forest alone. But I would be lying if I said that I forgot about it. Indeed, it sometimes seemed to me that the more I tried not to think about la Forêt, the more it took shape within my mind. It called to me, just as the world outside the palace had. Someday, it whispered, when the time was right, my moment to enter it would come.
And that is the way that matters stood when my childhood ended on the day that my sixteenth birthday arrived.
SIX
Naturally, my parents insisted on throwing me a party. Equally naturally, I wished that they would not. The fact that I was turning sixteen might not be much cause for celebration, particularly when one considered what was supposed to be the year’s inevitable outcome. But my parents were adamant, even Papa. It was important to honor this birthday, he said. Not only for itself, but to show that we were not afraid of whatever was to come.
Finally we compromised. They threw me two parties. One in the village, one in the palace. The first I enjoyed. The second, I did not. For it was at that party that it finally came home to me how completely unlike anyone else at court I truly was.
Not surprisingly, this revelation had to do with Oswald.
He was twenty-four now, well past time to be married. For obvious reasons, his choice of wife was considered of some importance and now, perhaps, time was running out. It was probably Maman who decided that, as long as we were throwing a party anyway, it might as well be used to parade as many eligible young ladies in front of Oswald as possible. But this decision produced an outcome Maman did not expect. Actually, two outcomes.
It showed Oswald to advantage, making clear how at ease he was among the nobles. What a catch he would be for any of their daughters. And it showed me to be his opposite. Out of place and frankly miserable. An odd duck in a sea of well-dressed swans.
I had attended court functions over the years, of course. I wasn’t entirely ignorant of how to behave, though I was better at cutting peat than dancing a pavane. But the banquets or balls I had attended prior to this one hadn’t been about me. For me. I’d been able to put in a brief appearance, perform what duty required, then escape to my room to plan my next day’s adventure outside the palace walls. But this was an approach I could hardly take tonight, as the whole evening was in my honor.
It wasn’t that anyone was rude. They wouldn’t have dared, for one thing. If anything, they were incredibly polite. But it was this very politeness that finally first began to grate upon my nerves, and then to cause despair to rise up within my throat and threaten to choke me. For, no matter how smooth and correct the words issuing from the courtiers’ mouths were, they couldn’t quite hide the scorn or laughter in their eyes. And so, on the night of my sixteenth birthday, I saw myself as they saw me for the very first time.
My fingernails were clean, but my fingertips were stained a faint blue. I had been helping the village weavers dye wool for winter cloaks. There were calluses upon my palms.
My hair didn’t gleam like polished wood or stay perfectly in place as the courtiers’ daughters’ did, though it was true that it was still an almost impossible shade of gold. But all those years of being stuffed inside a cap had given it a horror of being confined and, over time, it had developed a will of its own. No matter how many pins Maman and Nurse jabbed in to hold it in place, my hair insisted
on going wherever it wanted. Usually, at unexpected and inopportune times.
On the dance floor, I forgot the steps and trod upon my partners’ feet, though, naturally, they were too polite to comment. My new shoes, which Maman had proclaimed were the height of fashion, were just a shade too tight and pinched my toes. The whole evening was like suffering through the clumsiest moments of my childhood all over again—this time with the whole court looking on.
Finally, after a number of dances that seemed interminable, it was deemed time to take a break for refreshments and I sought a respite behind the column in the ballroom’s farthest corner. What I really wanted was to make a mad dash for my room, but I knew there wasn’t any point. Even if I would allow myself to give in to such behavior, Nurse never would. She would simply complete the evening’s humiliations by sending me right back down.
So I settled for tucking myself away, leaning my hot face against the cool stone of the column and praying for time to speed up so that the party might be done. And that was when I heard a woman’s voice I did not recognize say:
“But where is the guest of honor, the princess Aurore?”
I straightened up. It would never do to let anyone catch me moping. But, in spite of the defects the evening was making so clear, it was apparently easier to overlook me than I had thought. For a moment later I heard a voice say: “I do not see her.” And this voice I knew, for it belonged to Oswald.
“How odd,” the first voice said. “Surely she must wish to be the center of attention. I know I would, if the party were in my honor.” Here, she gave a laugh like the tinkling of silver chimes in the wind.”But my father says there is no point in such a comparison, for I am not the least bit like her.”
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