“The. Groups. Of. Numbers. Are.” I insulted his intelligence, his manhood, his station as a teacher. As if speaking to child, I dragged out each word, each syllable. Not a child. A fool! I spoke to him as if he were an idiot. Poor Mr. Andors just stood there and took it. And I would have gotten away with my childish rant if my mother hadn’t been standing just outside the door listening. She came in at that exact moment when I was going to make an imperious fool of myself, and she dismissed Mr. Andors. Then she sat me down, and let me have it, slowly at first, then picking up speed. It was what I deserved. A good talking to.
Besides the vocabulary of the talking to, there was the time, while I listened to her, for me to cool down and rethink what had made me so mad. The mother-talk flowed and ebbed, as those things did. Valuable not only for what was said but for the whole opportunity for me to review my actions.
But what I thought about later was more interesting to me. Okay, I was wrong and imperious. Okay, I could have made my request without insulting the man, the teacher, the subject of the kingdom. And, okay, I could have taken the time to patiently pursue my goal of more education. All those okays. But what had made me so crazy in the first place? That was worth thinking about.
Those groupings of numbers and their operations, the possibilities of substituting names for the groups and then collecting them in a kind of sentence that would describe something changing—a surface or something slowing down or speeding up—that idea grabbed me as fiercely as my spoiled-brat rant. I don’t really know why the number business grabbed me so. It was all sort of a gooey mess in my head, all these things I didn’t understand coming together in the example of number groups. It wasn’t actually the math; it was all the things I wanted to know but wasn’t being given a chance to know. Equally fierce were my outrages. I sat alone in my room licking my wounds from the talking-to, and I held up my two hands like a scale weighing the outrages. Bad behavior on the right. Getting my curiosity shut off on the left. Up and down I shifted the scale. Which one weighed the most? Humm. Tip the scale. Fiddle the results. And I found my curiosity heavier, more valuable, than my good behavior. I knew I shouldn’t. I certainly owed Mr. Andors an apology, and he would get one, I promised myself. But there it was! What I wanted to know easily outweighed my rudeness.
When a horse became anxious or impatient, it chomped on the bit and twirled it around in its mouth, that horse tongue going round and round. So I recognized my own chomping. I was ready to go. But where? To where the math went—the math I wasn’t getting? To where the diplomats went after they left the public rooms and went away to talk about things too secret for the rest of us? I wanted it all, but I was heading back to the farm instead. These two things pulled at me. I’d let Eugenie handle Arbuckle’s wedding. Then I’d fake the farm things—easy. Pretty soon I’d be back at the castle looking for more than was allotted a mere princess—chomping. I could see trouble coming, but there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.
Eugenie and I thought we had plenty of time to think and make lists and talk and plan. We didn’t. Arbuckle Pemberton The Third had announced his wedding a year away, but then some traveling important people combined with some other schedule problem changed everything. It seemed that, more important than the wedding itself, was who attended. If the right people were there, the wedding would be a successful event. Not enough of the right people, for whatever reason, and the wedding would be nothing, and historians would leave that page blank. Arbuckle, of course, knew how that worked. He had recently added his own name to the history books by becoming the savior of the kingdom helped (well, he was really the one who “helped”) by two girls. And those two girls (that was Eugenie and me) decided that continuing their game of changing places was more important than getting the proper credit for their discovery of the bad water.
So, the wedding was suddenly just six weeks away, the new date perfect for many of the most important people who would attend. And the people at court who read the favor of the moon and stars, they also found the new date to be much better than the old date. The flowers, which were to be grown especially for the event, now had to be found somewhere in the countryside. Every farm and ditch would have to be scoured and then picked clean. The food for the feast was to have been gathered on the hoof and claw and paw—however it moved—and then fattened for the guests’ meals. Now it would have to be hunted and bargained for. Scouting parties were readied. The castle suddenly became a tornado of cleaning and patching. Castles, I had learned, are fragile things. They came apart easily and had to be fixed constantly. Those great blocks of stone sat on top of each other reluctantly, it turned out. They had to be persuaded to stay there by many workers carrying hods of cement and brick and yards of iron wire. The roof, the many roofs, were the most fragile. The way it was talked about in the castle, it seemed to me as if things came in the night and made off with the slate tiles from the roof. I could never quite figure out how it happened, but slabs of gray slate somehow flew up into the air and disappeared at night so that in the morning the only thing left on the ground below was a pile of grayish dust. Then workers had to rope themselves together and scramble across the slippery slopes putting new slate in place.
It was all a never-ending process that became like a circus as the wedding date drew near. Acrobats everywhere! Daring young men on the roof swinging from peak to peak. And inside, more daredevils scaling the walls to clean the corners and patch the stones. The wall hangings came down and were hauled to the creeks to be bathed and scrubbed. Every musician in the country was tempted into the castle with promises of money and food and then captured there and set to practice for the festivities. Tents went up around the outside walls for the carriers and cleaners and bringers and takers. Out went the garbage. In came the fresh supplies of cloth and sharp knives and gold paint. The castle was becoming a huge circus and growing bigger every day.
So Eugenie and I found ourselves hurrying up our plans. Her fingernails had to be groomed, her freckles faded. My fair skin needed tanning and at least a few callouses cultivated for my hands. Think that was easy? Just the callouses alone cost me hours a day of doing something that was like work. Princesses don’t work. At least not that way. So I had to find some way toughen my hands. I found it in my favorite place—the kitchen.
Our grand scheme for setting everything right for the switch back had now become a scramble to get just the obvious stuff right. Never mind the list of what to know, who was new, which friends thought what. We’d have to fake that after all. Eugenie even asked if we shouldn’t maybe perhaps, forget about the switch back and just let me pretend my way through the reception line. But to me, the whole business of going back for a while was growing more and more attractive. I felt that my math-class outrage would only be the beginning of things going wrong, and maybe going back to the farm for a while would help me be a nicer princess, be a better daughter to the Queen. So we decided to plunge right in and see what happened.
Here’s what happened. The old man’s garden was stolen—I’m sure that’s the right word even though the wedding master used the word “appropriated.” His people came and put up signs that the flowers now belonged to the castle, and he thanked the old couple for their contribution to the glorious wedding of you-know-who. Yes, Arbuckle Pemberton—old number three. The sign continued that, from now on, “care of the flowers would be in the hands of official representatives of the nation. All others would be considered trespassers on the King’s property.” Apparently this “appropriation” went on everywhere in the kingdom, but for Eugenie and me, it was our garden too. And for Eugenie especially, gardens all over the kingdom were under her personal care.
What started out small, close to the castle, grew terrible and large. The small flower gardens like the old man’s got “stolen” and then the wedding organizers from the castle, under someone’s order, reached out like some mean octopus all around the kingdom and declared every flower garden they could find to be the “King’s property.” The
sign posted at each garden actually said that “the flowers and some food stuffs of this garden” were now subject to the King’s declaration number 4038, section II: “What is deemed necessary for the proper functioning of the kingdom may, in an emergency, be declared the sole property of the King’s will.”
Here’s what Eugenie wrote me in a letter.
You wouldn’t believe it, Alyssa. At first one lone rider came to the house and without asking, inspected our (my) garden and then suddenly there were twelve other riders—with arms—who declared my garden the property of the King’s whim. I, of course, knew exactly what was going on. Their horses stomped and steamed in the barnyard, the men dismounted and stood around rigidly. I wanted to tell them who I was and kick their behinds down the road as far as the creek and then kick them into the creek. But, of course, I didn’t. I just stood there fuming while that sergeant oaf who I’ve known as a goofball for many years, read out the decree claiming my garden, my hard work, the property of my own father! I think steam came out of my ears. I think knives flew out of my eyes. I knew exactly where the flowers would go and what food would be raided from my garden (I have been to royal weddings before, and I knew the waste, too), and worst of all, I knew for whom all this would be done; well, I nearly turned inside out with rage. And, yes, did nothing. Arbuckle Pemberton the Third, indeed! Until very recently a clownish fop in a silly-suit.
I took a deep breath reading this. I could just see Eugenie standing there undone and wanting all her princess-power back, even if just for ten minutes while she set the world right. Then she would want to fade back into being a gardener, of course. I read on.
In a minute I realized that these men were not the ones responsible for this looting business. Maybe not even my father and mother. Maybe, almost certainly, not Arbuckle himself. The whole sad looting scheme probably started with some bright fellow or lady who had to come up with a wedding fit for the important guests, but didn’t have the normal amount of time to do it. And so, the robbery. The plain insolent thievery of it! They would make the wedding work by stealing the labor of every plant-loving gardener for many miles around. What a wrong! A crime!
And here followed a list of words like crime, sin, wrong, etc., that Eugenie used to let out her anger on the poor page. She couldn’t attack the King’s men; she couldn’t turn the air blue with her anger. But she could scorch the page with words. And she did. Here’s how she ended.
Well, Alyssa, that at least feels better, telling you. You know I talked to you about princess-head when we were going to change places. Told you not to get one. Told you what happens. But I found myself growing fiercer and fiercer in that direction as if all the world were wrong and I were right. And I’d stomp my foot and bellow in the world’s ear and tell them all to go to their rooms and not come out until they got right in the head. Of course, I recognized princess-head happening to me, but, you know, I think if you are right, sometimes maybe princess-headedness is just the right thing. Move over world, I’m going to fix you now! Oh, Alyssa, I watched those men circle my garden and tie a giant ribbon around it and declare it the King’s property, and I cried inside. I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of crying on the outside. The oaf pounded in a stake with the sign attached, and it was done. Thirteen horses pooped, it seemed, at the same time filling our barnyard. And the men rode off having left manure everywhere, only some of it from their horses. We have to hurry up our plans to switch back. Make lists of what I should know. Think of everything! Come prepared to do this quickly. I suddenly have the itch to walk the halls of the castle with my nose in the air, ordering people around and being a thorn in the side of, well, everybody!
Uh oh, I thought as I finished reading. This may be the end of everything: our new lives we loved, our delicious new lives. I imagined Eugenie wild through the castle like a fire, her flames shooting here and there, chasing the court before her and burning the place down with her rage. I also realized that Eugenie would cool off some as we switched back, that she knew that whatever was to be done, it had to be done with some kind of grace or we’d have the whole swapped-lives thing blow up in our faces.
I thought I could hear her seething even at this distance from the farm. She’d walk out in the morning and see the King’s pen around her garden, the garden she was expected to tend each day with water and weeding, just so they could come and pick the flowers for the wedding. And in case they needed beet greens and young peas, they’d pick those too and move on like so many locusts. I had to admit, though, there was a part of me that liked the confusion of what I thought was coming. The explosion of people, the chasing around, the blaming. It would all be very exciting even if it was dangerous. I asked myself, would the pure excitement of it make all the damage worthwhile? Alas, I knew myself. It would. It would! That same curious part of me didn’t give a fig what kind of mess got made as long as it was interesting.
Sometimes, I confess, I used to make a mess of life if I got a little bored. I’d see how long Jake could take kidding before he erupted and swung off into a tree somewhere. Or I’d chase the heifers and try to ride them, though I knew not to. To see if I would get caught? I really don’t know why. But something in my life on the farm made me do what I never did in my castle life. That was probably why I didn’t want to risk losing the change. The princess business kept getting more complicated. I liked that.
Chapter Three
The wedding was less than a month away, and if we were going to change places, we knew it would have to be soon. I had done my part: cultivated freckles with my face in the sun as often as possible (for a princess), then covered the freckles with waxy makeup so I could reveal them later. I would have to crack my nails and split hair ends right before the switch. Eugenie’s hair had lightened from so much sun. She had to protect her hands any way she could. The plan was to deal with her freckles when the time came. And it came; I got an urgent note from her.
It said, NOW.
We met in the old couple’s garden, ducked under the confining ribbon, and sat on their fine bench.
Eugenie was a little out of breath as if she’d run all the way, so we sat a while not talking. She started out twice as if looking for the right direction. “I wanted to… Just wait a minute. We have to get going pretty soon. If we don’t, they’ll take everything. I have to stop them.”
She was talking about flowers, but it could have been children or babies or the eyes from our heads. Eugenie was glowing like the great yellow dahlias just behind her.
“Everywhere they’re going to take the flowers from people’s gardens just because they messed up the wedding planning.” She was outraged. Her blue eyes—our blue eyes—big as saucers. Her outrage was my outrage. Her letter had come to life.
“What can we do?” I asked.
“Arbuckle could stop it. And certainly the King and Queen! You could stop it.”
The garden ticked and sighed around us, like voices too far away to hear. The old couple were nowhere in sight. But the flowers were their ears and eyes it seemed to me, somehow including them in our plans. We plotted with petals and stems, with roots and leaves. The thought made me almost giggle.
Trying to be serious, I said, “If I can stop it, you can stop it. Okay, what’s your plan?”
And here we hurried up all of the steps of our scheme to switch back. I had a bad feeling that hurrying this up was going to cause problems. But there we were, surrounded by flowers, about to risk everything to save the flowers, and the flowers did nothing but wave at us when a breeze came up. I didn’t know what I expected, maybe a thank you. Maybe a delegation from the daisies or a representative from the zinnias to stand up for themselves. I always got silly when I couldn’t guess what was going to happen, when I got nervous. I think that silly was my way to take the uncertainty out of things. Silly was a great calmer for me. I told Eugenie about my hope that the flowers would somehow let us know their gratitude. Even just one squeaky thanks from those little purple flowers—what were they?—that
grew like bunches of grapes. But she was too deep in her plotting thought to do much more than nod. Yeah, yeah, she seemed to say. Let’s get some work done here.
And so we did. Everything we had planned got turned into the quick version so we could begin action: freckles, fingernails, hair, callouses, updates of family and castle activities and Jake and Arbuckle information. Those two would certainly be onto the re-switch immediately and would want to know why. Those two again, just like before when we first switched. We’d have to navigate around them. They both knew, of course, but they both might balk at the strangeness of our plans and mess us up plenty.
We decided that evening would be the best time to switch back: people were tired, not paying attention; we’d only have to pretend for a few hours then go to bed, and the next morning, things-as-usual would give us a running start at the new day. We talked long about this—morning versus evening for the switch. What finally sold us both on evening was the light. Firelight was the most forgiving, we decided. Things by firelight always seemed fine. The harsh morning light would show flaws and errors. We returned—me to the castle, she to the farm—with our hurry-up plans jangling in our heads.
Two days later, we set out from two directions to meet again in the garden. By the evening light we could see the old couple’s house was dark too; they had gone to bed early, as they always did. Eugenie and I exchanged clothes, whispered goodbye and good luck and headed back to where we had started in life, both of us leaving our new life reluctantly.
At the farmhouse, I crept up to my bed while the rest slept. At the castle, I thought Eugenie would have more problems—guards, people who always seemed to be wandering the halls at night, and the maids, who were always checking to see that she was safe or if she wanted something. I smiled to myself as I slipped between my old, familiar bedcovers, turned to the window as I used to, and smelled the woods and then the barn as the breeze shifted. I could hear the crickets and now and then night-bird music that decorated the dark. It seemed I had just put my head down when it was light.
The Alyssa Chronicle Page 3