by Nina Clare
“And have you read Orosmo’s writings on infinite series?” I overheard her ask.
“Using geometric additions?” the fair-haired prince replied enthusiastically.
“Yes—indeed!”
“I certainly have—I have found it most enlightening!”
“Oh—as do I!” Diamond said happily. “And what did you say your name was, my lord?”
“Call me Andra.”
They strolled away, chatting. I smiled to myself. A handsome prince who was interested in mathematics—now he would be perfect for Diamond.
I removed the invisible cloak once away from the public. I decided to get a book from the library before I ascended to the peace and quiet of my bedchamber.
The library was only dimly lit by one candelabrum, but I knew exactly where to find what I was looking for. I went directly to my favourite shelf and found the leather-bound books filled with thick pages where the writer had carefully drawn, in black carbon ink, wonderfully detailed maps of countries in far-off lands. In brown iron-gall ink and coloured pigments, there were pictures of flora and fauna and exotic animals and strange-looking peoples. There were even maps that unfolded to show oceans and islands and creatures I had never seen the likeness of in our land.
How I loved those books! They made me dream of sailing away; traversing vast uncharted waters; and standing at the summits of great, snow-capped mountains, gazing out over deep valleys and expanses of land.
I tucked the heavy book under my arm and turned to leave. But then I heard soft voices somewhere in the room. I looked around, but I could not see anyone in the shadows. A gleam of light showed from the far corner window. I approached the heavily draped alcove. A chink in the curtains let the light through. As I neared, I heard a boy’s voice. He was sounding out words softly.
“Huh-ah-vuh. Have.”
“But what about the letter on the end?” a girl’s voice asked.
“’Tis a silent e,” replied the boy.
“They confuse me, the silent letters—and the ones that don’t sound like they ought.”
“Try the next word, Rose.”
I pulled aside one curtain to see two figures sitting side by side on the window seat with a book held between them. The girl gave a gasp and shrank back when she saw me. I recognised them—they were the two servants I had seen in the counsel chamber on the morning Uncle agreed to our betrothal banquets.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded.
“Oh—milady—please don’t punish us!” cried the girl. She jumped up guiltily and made a wobbly curtsey. “We didn’t mean harm. I said we shouldn’t have come in here,” she reproached the boy, looking tearful.
The boy stared at me, waiting to hear what I would say.
“What are you doing here?” I asked again.
“Jem was teaching me letters,” said the girl in a trembling voice.
“It was my idea,” said the boy. “Please don’t punish my sister. Only me.”
Tears welled up and spilled from the girl’s doe-like eyes. She looked so thoroughly miserable I would have had to have a heart of stone not to pity her.
“I will not have you punished,” I told her, “but you must not come in here again. If someone other than me to discovered you, you would have been reprimanded and dismissed.”
“Thank you,” she whimpered.
“Thank you, milady,” said the boy.
I stepped back, still holding the curtain to let them pass. The girl curtsied again and put the book they were reading on the window seat. She seized the boy’s hand, took up their small flickering candle, and pulled him away.
I thought about them as I climbed the stairs to my bedchamber.
And then I forgot about them.
I was glad my little antechamber was separated from my sisters’ chamber by a heavy tapestried curtain, because until the early hours of the morning I could still hear their voices chattering excitedly with Diamond about the evening.
I sat in my little bed that had no cloth-of-silver canopy and no great carved bedstead, but was still most comfortable with its feather mattress and pillows, and by the light of my candle I lost myself in Captain Heliotrope’s Projected and Actual Atlases of the Earth and Seas, Volume I until my eyes grew heavy.
Then I blew out my candle and drifted off to sleep on dream waves that carried me to a foreign shore where two children sat under an exotic tree learning letters, and pretty birds with flowers in their hair and golden crowns on their heads flitted all around us singing and squawking. When I could not bear their noise any more, I shooed them all away with giant palm leaves.
Chapter Six
“Sixty-three suitors came to the feast, and every one of them has formally requested Princess Diamond’s hand in marriage,” the Lord High Chancellor had just told Uncle.
I was invisible and sitting on a window seat in the Chamber of Wise Counsel. Uncle made a kind of growling noise at the chancellor’s happy news.
“Which one shall be permitted to have her hand?” asked the chancellor. His secretary sat at the table with quill poised expectantly. The chancellor blinked behind his little spectacles, hopping from one foot to the other in his delight.
“Whoever offers the best-quality jewels,” snarled Uncle, looking down at his own heavily bejewelled fingers.
“Well, that narrows it down to a good round number of twelve, I believe.” The chancellor looked to his secretary, who nodded and passed him a list. “Perhaps Princess Diamond has a preference of her own?” suggested the chancellor as he scanned the list.
Uncle shrugged and snapped his fingers at the secretary, pointing to a decanter of wine on the table. The secretary dropped his quill and hurried to serve his—hopefully now most temporal—king by crown proxy.
“I will send for her,” said the chancellor tentatively. When Uncle did not object he hurried to the doors and gave orders to a footman outside. As the chancellor waited he bobbed up and down on his heels, hands behind his back, softly humming snatches of ballroom music until he glimpsed Uncle’s ominous face. He continued blinking repeatedly, but kept quiet.
Diamond soon arrived. She was a little breathless and her cheeks were pink—she must have hurried as fast as she could. She dropped a low curtsey to Uncle, who did not look at her.
The chancellor bobbed a bow and pushed his spectacles back up his nose. “Princess Diamond,” he said happily, “you dazzled every suitor last night and there have been sixty-three requests for your hand, twelve of which His Grace, your most benevolent uncle and gracious guardian considers most suitable for you.”
Diamond’s dark brown eyes looked larger than ever as they widened in her heightened state of expectancy.
“Princess Diamond, do you have a preference concerning your future husband that His Grace could take into account, in his great kindness and generosity?”
Diamond’s pink cheeks deepened in colour and she looked right through me to the gardens beyond the window. She clasped her hands before her.
“Oh,” she said breathlessly, “there was one prince I particularly favoured. His name was Andra.” She spoke the name almost reverently.
The chancellor looked down at his list, “Hmm . . . Albite, Aragon, Azur . . . yes . . . Andra, Prince of Danea. Well! That is settled then! That is . . . if His Grace approves . . . ?”
Four pairs of eyes looked to Uncle, each of us holding our breath.
Uncle made his peculiar animal growl again and waved a hand to signify a sulky assent. Diamond smiled radiantly at the chancellor, the chancellor beamed back, and Uncle glowered.
“Was there anything else?” asked Diamond.
“No thank you, Princess Diamond,” said the chancellor. “And congratulations! This is a wonderful day—a most momentous day!”
Uncle gave a snort, so Diamond gave a respectful curtsey and backed out of the chamber as quickly as she could without tripping over her gown.
The secretary was scratching away feverishly in ink, recording every w
ord that had passed. The chancellor gathered up his papers and bobbed at Uncle. “I shall undertake all the necessary arrangements, Your Grace,” he assured him.
“Just don’t forget . . .” warned Uncle, standing at the top of his throne, his thumbs thrust into his jewel-encrusted belt. “All thirteen have to be betrothed before any weddings take place.”
The chancellor nodded and blinked and bobbed backwards out of the room. His secretary scurried out in like fashion. I felt some relief. Uncle may not like what was happening, but at least he did not seem to be trying any new tricks to stop Diamond’s betrothal. But my sense of relief quickly departed as I remembered I too would have to be betrothed in twelve days’ time.
Uncle paused from descending his throne to look around the room with a wary eye, and I realised I must have sighed aloud. Uncle inclined his head as if to listen better, making the peacock feathers in his cap quiver. Not hearing anything, he shook out his fur-lined cloak behind him and stalked out of the chamber.
I went in search of Beryl. I knew she was likely to be found in the jewel house.
I had always enjoyed watching in the work chambers. I had never been subject to the same degree of supervision a royal child perhaps ought to have been, not having had parents to look after my welfare. Uncle had always been an indifferent guardian to his nieces and never inquired as to the quality of care our nursery maids and schooling mistresses gave us. It was only Beryl who had really ensured our wellbeing.
The nursery maids often had difficulties in keeping watch over so many royal wards at once, so it had not been hard for me to begin slipping away from a young age and making my own entertainment within the palace walls. Beryl said I had kept her by far the busiest of all my sisters due to my independent wanderings and adventuring around the palace grounds. She was the only one who could find me whenever the frantic nursery maids realised they had only twelve young princesses in their charge—yet again.
Throughout my youth, I spent much time watching the skills of the leather workers, the armourers, the tanners, blacksmiths, potters, glassmakers, silversmiths, and goldsmiths. But when my high spirits had been spent climbing trees, riding bareback on the stable pony, chasing the escaped chickens back into their enclosure, or playing hide-and-seek in the topiary maze and I was ready to sit quietly, my favourite place to visit had always been the jewel house.
None of my sisters would even enter the jewel house, for it was presided over by the Great Lapido himself, the Master Jeweller, famed throughout the kingdoms for his great artistry and unmatched skill. But I had learned to be so still, so quiet, so interested, that Lapido would permit me to watch him at work so long as I did not move a limb or speak a whisper to distract him in his prodigious labours.
And so that day—the day Diamond’s betrothal was announced and my sisters were busily preparing for Almandine’s banquet—that hot summer day, I slipped within the cool stone walls of the jewel house.
“Go away! We are busy!” called Lapido without looking up to see who had entered. I did not answer but glided soundlessly onto a stool opposite Beryl. My elbows rested on the worktable, I held my face in my hands and watched as she took stones from a wooden chest and held them up to the light, examining each one long and hard through her eyeglass. Her lips were pursed together and her eyes were scrunched up in concentration. Eventually, she laid the stones in order before her.
“I think this is the one, Lapido,” she said when she had emptied the chest. She crossed the chamber to his worktable, holding a stone out to him. He took it and examined it.
“Hmm,” he murmured. “Yes. Yes. This is good. This is the one—it is without flaw.” He held the stone up to the bright sunlight streaming through the oriel window above his table.
“Behold! The diamond! There is no stone like the diamond—such fire! The facets must be cut with exact geometric precision—there can be no room for error. The cut cannot be too deep, or the light escapes through the opposite side; the cut cannot be too shallow, or the light will escape out of the base before it can be reflected. The angles must be meticulous. There must be absolute symmetry! The diamond demands perfection! Only then will the pure light reflect from every edge—only then will there be the perfect return of light out of the top of the stone. Then the result will be brilliancy!”
His eyes blazed, almost diamond-like themselves, from under his bushy white eyebrows. I had quietly moved near to him to admire the stone, though to me it only looked like a roughly cubic piece of glassy rock. But I knew Lapido did not see a rough cube of stone—he saw a vision of what it would be when had finished cutting, polishing, and setting it.
“We will give you a ‘brilliant’ cut,” he said quietly. “We will mount you in pure gold, the only metal worthy of the diamond.”
“It is going to be for Diamond’s wedding ring,” Beryl whispered to me as we moved back to her worktable. “Now I must find a suitable stone for her husband-to-be. Pass me the tray from the chest in the far corner, dear. The one labeled ‘A.G.’” She gave me a long, slender key with a label tied to it that featured the same initials.
I went to the tall chests that lined the full length of one wall of the jewel house. Each chest was far taller than myself—and I was considered tall for a girl. The chests were full of drawers with golden handles. I had to use a wooden stepstool to reach up, unlock, and pull out the long drawer Beryl wanted. I carried it to her, taking great care, for I knew how valuable each drawer’s contents were.
Beryl lifted a cover of black velvet, and underneath, laid on more black velvet, were many more stones. They were mostly in various shades of yellow, though some were black, some dark red, and a few were green.
“Andradite garnet,” Beryl told me. “This is the best one we have.” She selected a deep green stone that had already been cut and held it out for me to examine. A star shape was cut into the crown.
“This type has even more fire than a diamond. It is softer, but just as brilliant. A worthy partner for a diamond.”
“Where did it come from?” I whispered, still mindful of Lapido at work across the chamber.
“From the Urai Mountains, which stretch across the western edge of a land very far from here. A land of vast open plains and bitter winds that blow from across the coldest seas.”
I looked again at the stone, admiring the way the light flashed and darted out of its heart like tiny flashes of lightning. Its colour was something like the freshest spring green leaves, yet far greener still, as though there were mysterious depths of greenness within. I felt a stirring inside of me. To think of such a jewel coming out of the darkness of the earth, out of the secret places of the ground from far across the world, out of mountains that stretched across a land of immense plains with wild, bitter winds rolling in from wintry seas!
“Silence!” ordered Lapido from across the chamber. “Now we begin!”
Chapter Seven
Almandine’s banquet night began.
The seamstresses had dressed her in a gown of deep red damask. Her glossy dark hair rippled down in perfect waves about her fair-skinned shoulders, rosebuds were pinned to her hair, and her delicate crown of gold was set upon her graceful head. We all admired her as she stood apprehensively waiting for the Master of the Banquet to come and collect her.
“Try not to be anxious,” Diamond reassured her. “You will have a wonderful evening—it will pass so quickly once the dancing begins.”
“Yes, the planets will keep moving—Venus ascends even as I speak,” said Almandine a little breathlessly, from nerves. She glanced longingly at her beloved spyglass and almanacs near the window, as if she had a sudden compulsion to see the planetary movement for herself.
“The time shall pass with perfect consistency—my apprehension is irrelevant to the motions of life and therefore unnecessary and not to be observed,” she told herself firmly. Diamond and Spinel agreed heartily in order to encourage their astronomically talented triplet.
The impending rap at the cham
ber door came, and Beryl gave Almandine a last kiss on her fair cheek. We all called out final good wishes as she glided out, leaving a trail of rose scent in her wake.
I counted only forty-seven princes in the ballroom that night. Almost a quarter of the would-be kings had departed after it was announced Diamond had found a successful suitor. Clearly not all of them wanted to marry into a family of thirteen now that the crown itself was spoken for.
I watched three pavanes and four quadrilles from behind the lattice before I slipped away. As I passed invisibly through the public halls and chambers, I saw Almandine taking refreshment with a handsome-looking young man.
“I have heard from the great Orosmo himself that the stars are not actually where we see them,” I heard the man say.
“Really?” said Almandine in surprise. One slender hand flew to her pretty throat, drawing the prince’s eyes down to the delicate curve of her neck. “You have actually met Orosmo? Oh, but Diamond and Nel and I are in such awe of him! But what can he mean that the stars are not where we see them?”
“Oh,” he replied dreamily, looking into her widened, dark brown eyes. “Apparently it is all to do with the way light curves through the air.”
“Startling—but most fascinating. Please tell me more!”
I climbed the grand staircase leading away from the public hall. The staircase divides in two, the right-hand stairs led to our wing. The left-hand staircase led to Uncle’s wing. No one but the royal family or their most senior attendants were permitted to use those stairs, so when I reached the top step and was about to turn right towards our chambers, I was startled to see the dark figure of someone far too slight in size to be a senior attendant moving swiftly up the left staircase to Uncle’s wing.
Who would dare to ascend Uncle’s private stairs? I paused, wondering if my eyes had imagined it—there were many flickering shadows on the candlelit walls. But I was quite certain I had seen someone. And so, still invisible, I turned left and followed.