by Nina Clare
When I stepped out of my bedchamber, my sisters were waiting with anxious faces.
“Has Uncle sent for me yet?” I asked.
“Not yet,” said Almandine, wringing her hands.
Peridot and Amethyst were pacing up and down before the windows.
“Are you quite sure there was no prince you particularly got on well with?” asked Sapphire.
“I told you last night,” I answered with another big sigh. “I could barely understand any of them.”
They looked nervously at one another.
There was a rap at the door.
Opal flew to open it.
“Would Her Highness the youngest princess please attend upon His Grace, the King by Crown Proxy in his Chamber of Wise Counsel?” said the footman loudly.
There was a flurry of activity and high voices as my sisters flew about me, propelling me across the chamber to the door.
“Come back directly!” Diamond urged.
“We are dying to know!” said Emerald plaintively.
“Do hurry back!” begged Cornelia.
The footman politely tried to hurry me along, but my slippers felt as heavy as if they were made of lead instead of kid leather. I felt every step I took was taking me towards disaster. I would know what had happened as soon as I saw their faces. If there were no marriage proposals, the Lord High Chancellor would look crushed and Uncle would look triumphant. As I reached the door to the chamber, I heard the raised voice of Uncle inside.
“I said thirteen weddings or no weddings at all!”
“No, no, Your Grace. You did not,” replied the shaky but insistent voice of the chancellor as the footman opened the door. “You said ‘thirteen betrothals.’ I have it here in writing—just as you requested.”
“Bah!”
I walked forward. The chancellor saw me, bobbed a bow, and pushed his little glasses back up his nose.
“Ah, Princess.”
I dropped a perfunctory curtsey in Uncle’s direction. I dared not look at him.
“Congratulations, Princess,” said the chancellor. “You were very . . . um . . . you were admired last night.”
“I was?”
“And there has been a proposal made for you hand.”
“There has . . . ? Just the one . . . ?”
“Ah, yes, just the one. But he was most smitten with you. Most taken with you—said you got on so well, that you talked together and got along amiably!”
Oh dear. My dread was realised. There was only one prince I had been able to hold any semblance of a conversation with last night. Prince Oglio of Ovanosh.
“Um, ah, however . . .” said the chancellor, blinking very rapidly, “however . . . there is one unsatisfactory detail . . . your suitor has requested an extension to your period of engagement. It is very irregular, most disorderly, but it seems there is some confusion with regards to your bride price. That is to say, due to your not having had a naming ceremony, the details of your bride price are not regular either—in short—the Honourable Lord Treasurer has not been able to determine your, um, value.”
My value. I felt like a prize cow at market.
“Your suitor has proposed to journey and seek out a suitable bride price—a jewel as yet unclaimed by your sisters. And the Honourable Lord Treasurer and his minsters have agreed this would be most satisfactory, although it is most irregular. But he has left a substantial deposit. Most sizeable. Most significant. Too generous for the Honourable Lord Treasurer to refuse. And so he will return. He intends to return, in time.”
“How long?” I asked.
“Um, he thinks early next summer. Perhaps late spring, if the roads are dry enough for the journey.”
“Almost a whole year!” I cried.
“My most sincere and heartfelt commiserations, Princess. I know this must come as a most terrible blow.”
A blow? Terrible? This was wonderful news! A miraculous reprieve of nearly a whole year!
“Oh, no,” I reassured the chancellor. I could not refrain from smiling with relief. He looked at me in surprise. “A delay is perfectly acceptable. I am young, after all. There is no rush. Not for me. My sisters’ weddings may go ahead, mayn’t they?”
“Yes, yes,” he replied happily. “I am so glad you are not distressed!” He bobbed up and down in a happy jig. “So glad. Is this not a wonderful day? All thirteen daughters betrothed—who would have thought it!”
I smiled back at him. Uncle growled something unintelligible.
“May I go and inform my sisters?”
“Oh yes, yes—tell them the good news! Tell them their betrothed are awaiting them here in Cataluna. They are understandably anxious to return home with their brides, so the weddings will take place soon—on the next full moon—in fourteen days’ time!”
Chapter Fourteen
The fever that had gripped the palace during the weeks of feast preparations reached even more unprecedented and exhausting new heights. Now there were twelve weddings and a coronation to arrange.
Uncle had decreed all twelve marriages would take place in one grand ceremony to be held in the Great Hall, followed the next day by the crowning of our new king and queen—King Andra and Queen Diamond. There would be feasting and lavish entertainments as had not been seen in Cataluna for more than twenty years. There would be a banquet at the palace for the nobility, and the great public fountain in the town square would flow freely with wine for the common people. That had not happened in eighteen years, since the last public celebration for the birth of Peridot, Cornelia, and Celestine—the youngest triplets.
But as summer sunshine is in time eclipsed by winter’s chill, when all celebrations had passed then would come the sorrowful part. For all my sisters, excepting Diamond, would leave and journey to the kingdoms of their new husbands. And when we would see one another again, we could not know. Indeed, most likely we would never all be together again.
And I would remain behind alone.
At least until Prince Oglio returned.
Which felt a far worse fate.
To me, my future seemed shadowy and bleak. Outside the palace walls it was glorious late summer and the scent of honeysuckle perfumed the air, but inside my soul was the diminishing light of approaching winter and the scent of dying leaves. But for my sisters, all was springtime—new lives and hopes and dreams burgeoned inside and out. They were love-struck and pining for their bridegrooms.
As was traditional, they were not permitted to meet with their affianced before the wedding. I understood that such a tradition came into being due to the pattern of arranged marriages amongst the nobility. It was considered best that couples did not discover any incompatibility before the wedding—apparently some terribly tragic and desperately drastic things had happened to unwilling brides and reluctant husbands-to-be before the tradition was enforced.
But the dart of love had struck my sisters, and my otherwise very sensible siblings began to manifest strange and unusual behaviours. They could not eat properly. They were unable to sleep sufficiently. Sapphire could not sing anything except yearning love ballads; Peridot could not draw anything except the face of her Prince Rube; Celestine could write nothing except her future new married title; Almandine’s astrolabe sat untouched; Heliodor was found staring into space in the middle of the dahlia border, and the only thing Diamond could calculate were the hours left until her wedding.
“There is something very illogical about this love business, do you not think?” said Emerald one evening when we were all together, preparing for bed. “It is hard to pin down, hard to explain,” she continued, brushing out her hair abstractedly.
“I agree,” said Cornelia, pausing from rubbing oil of rose into her hands, “I did not know it would be like this. I thought love would be rather matter-of-fact, just something else one does. Something pleasant, like eating a nice cake perhaps, but not like this—I feel so disordered!”
“Why did no one ever tell us we would be undone in this way?” queried A
methyst, fluffing her feather pillows. “I feel somewhat deceived.”
“I understand what you mean,” said Almandine, turning away from the window where she had been looking for the evening star. “Things are not as straightforward as we have been taught they are. My Laz says even the stars are not where we thought they were, so what else is not as it seems?”
“Apparently,” said Chalcedony as she carried a candle to her bedside, “in the north kingdoms they are writing music we have never heard before. They use the interval of the third as a consonance. How irregular—how strange!”
“And my Spessartine told me something almost unthinkable,” said Nel in a hushed voice. “I hardly know what to believe. He said there is a whisper amongst some of the great minds that it is the earth that moves, and not the heavens. Perhaps the sun is the centre of the cosmos and not the earth! How could it be? But what if it were true? What if everything is different from all they taught us it was? Oh, I can hardly bear to think about it—everything would change!”
I did not feel disturbed by the idea of everything not being what we thought it was, not what we had been taught it was. I have always felt things are not always as they seem. But I did not say so to my sisters as I left them to go to bed.
I decided to ask Beryl what she thought of all these new ideas as I pulled my bed covering up to my chin and blew out my candle.
***
“Well,” said Beryl the next morning in the jewel house. “Every age sees new things. But every age has its blind spots. The world is so young, and the young always think they know more than they do. Come and see the rings, dear, they are all ready. May we view the rings, Lapido? I should like to show our Princess your beautiful work.”
Lapido peered at me from beneath his bushy, white eyebrows. He always looked at me as though I were a stone he was examining for its worth. As if he could see the inherent flaws or the potential within. He got up slowly from his table and crossed the room to where an ironbound chest was chained to rings in the stone wall. I drew near as he took hold of a key attached by a chain to his belt. He bent down creakily, unlocked the chest, and lifted out a satin-lined tray. He placed it on a neighbouring window seat so the light fell upon it.
I gasped in admiration. Twenty-four rings of every colour of gemstone sparkled and flashed.
“Oh, Lapido—they are wonderful!”
“Show her the amethyst,” said Beryl. “Show her the new cut you designed for it, Lapido.”
He picked out the amethyst ring and held it up to the light; it had been cut and faceted in the shape of a pear.
“We have called it—a briolette,” he announced.
“It is so lovely!” I said. As Lapido turned the ring, the amethyst flashed blue and red from its deep purple heart.
He replaced it and took out an emerald ring set in gold. “See how the light strikes through the cut? See how the light dances from facet to facet inside the stone? Such a glow! Only the best-quality emerald has such luminosity.”
I nodded reverently and gazed at the vivid green gem.
“A rare specimen,” added Beryl. “This particular one is even more valuable than the diamond.”
“Where did it come from?” This was the question I always had to ask.
“From the Muzu Mine of Bogotoa, in the foothills of the great mountains of Endea. A land of jungles—hot and humid and rich in plants as rare and green as the emeralds that embellish the walls of the mountain caves.”
It was heavenly music to my ears.
Lapido returned the emerald and picked up a deep red ruby. It was for Peridot’s beloved Prince Rube.
“The beautiful form comes from the structure within,” he said gravely. “Such orderly structure. Inside, it is as though it were made of the minutest bricks, each one identical in shape and size and composition. Such symmetry—the beauty is all down to the symmetry, the order, the consistency in internal shape, the same shape over and over, every part just as the next. Ah, the beauty of order!”
He returned it to its place next to the mossy green peridot.
“May I hold one?” I asked. Lapido chose an opal set in silver and gave it to me. I gazed into its rainbow depths, turning it in the light.
“I wonder what stone I will have for my wedding ring?” I mused.
“Whatever stone your husband-to-be brings for you,” answered Beryl. “You do realise, dear . . . whatever he brings . . . it will name you? You shall no longer be known simply as Princess.”
I did not reply for some moments. I considered what Beryl had said. I remained looking into the opal. I was not sure I wanted a new name. And I was quite sure I did not want one chosen for me by Prince Oglio.
“Well, I hope he does not bring back moonstones or serpentines, then,” I said, feeling cross with him and his ridiculous curly-toed shoes. He was sure to bring an awful jewel. “I do not want to be a Princess Moonie or a Princess Serpent.”
Beryl chuckled. She had a nice laugh. Something like the music of a gurgling brook combined with the contented purr of a friendly cat, all played by the low notes of a viol.
“I promise I will refuse to sort stones for your wedding ring if they are moonstones or serpentines, dear.”
Chapter Fifteen
I was surprised to find that my new ladies’ maid was actually quite pleasant to have about me. My little bedchamber had never been so neat and comfortable. There were fresh-cut flowers in a bowl on my table. My fireplace burned with fragrant pinecones, as the evenings grew cooler in the approach of autumn. My mattress was turned more frequently and thus was less lumpy. The garments in my clothes chest were sprinkled with dried lavender and herbs. And I found she was nice to talk to. She was not at all as I had expected a ladies’ maid to be.
While she brushed out my hair one morning, I recalled the time I had come upon her and her younger brother surreptitiously reading in the library.
“How is it your brother can read?” I asked, glancing at her in the looking glass. “Who taught him?”
“We weren’t always servants.” She straightened up and looked a tiny bit proud as she said this. Proud, yet saddened. “We weren’t always so poor. Before we lost everything, life was different. Jem worked as an apprentice to a scribe. Though Father was only a small landowner, Jem was taken on because he’s so clever.” She said this with more pride. “That’s how he learned his letters. He wants to teach me, but we never have the time. Nor the books. So I don’t think I shall ever learn.”
“Should you like to?”
“Jem says if I know letters he could work as a copy scribe and I could help him. It’s not such hard work as servant work, and we could have a little room of our own somewhere and be together.”
“You are not happy here?”
“Oh, I am so grateful to be a ladies’ maid! I truly am,” she said. “It is so much better now.”
“What work were you doing before?”
“I was maid-of-all-work. But now I get real food, not just leftovers. And I get to sleep in the ladies’ maid chamber instead of in the scullery.”
“Do some of the servants not have proper meals?” I asked in surprise.
Rose shook her head. “It depends what position you hold. I was at the bottom, until Mistress Beryl came and said I could be your maid.” Her face lit up at the mention of Beryl. “It was like the faery godmother coming to tell the poor servant girl she didn’t have to work in the kitchens any more.”
I had never once thought about what the servants did or did not eat. I had grown up surrounded by them. They were just there—like part of the furniture and ornamentation. I only noticed them if I needed something since it was part of their duty to make themselves as invisible as possible.
“How did your family lose everything?” I asked.
“The same way as everyone else.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t you know?” she looked surprised.
I shook my head.
“The king. He raised the
taxes on the food we grew, and then on our animals, and then our wares. And when the harvests failed for the third year and our animals began to starve and we couldn’t pay the taxes, the collectors took our land and then our home. So we were left with nothing.”
“But that is terrible!” I was appalled. “That is monstrous!”
She shrugged sadly. “It happened to lots of families we knew.”
“And what became of your parents?”
“Mother died of the pox when it last came. Lots of our neighbours died too.”
“And your father?”
“He couldn’t afford to keep us. That’s why we came into service. Poor Father. I don’t know what he’s doing now. I don’t even know where he is. He went away to try and make a new fortune, just enough so we could all be together again. Jem wanted to go with him but he said we had to stay together, Jem and me.”
A quaver crept into her voice as she told me her sad tale. I could see in the mirror she was struggling to blink back tears. I took one of the clean handkerchiefs she had neatly arranged on my table and held it up to her.
I suddenly felt a wave of shame pass over me. I suddenly saw myself in a new light. I saw myself as Rose and others like her must see me—a pampered, privileged princess. And worse, I knew I was a pampered, privileged princess who spent half her life dreaming about journeying far away to other lands for exotic adventures when I had rarely even journeyed outside the walls of the palace grounds or seen how ordinary people lived. I had no idea what it must be like to be hungry and homeless. I was suddenly ashamed of what I did not previously see.
“I shall teach you letters, Rose,” I said decidedly.
“You will?”
“I will. And your brother—is he properly fed?”
She sniffed and dabbed at her tears. “Yes. He is now. He wasn’t, but now he’s been made a special assistant.”