The Thirteenth Princess

by Nina Clare

  “Why did she not tell me?” I wondered aloud.

  “Perhaps she considered you too occupied with other thoughts,” suggested Beryl. “But you will play an important role in the child’s life. You will be a godmother to her as well as an aunt, and teach her things her parents cannot. Now, time to go and wash your face and dress for this evening’s dinner. You need your supper, and I need my sleep.”

  I got up reluctantly and moved towards the door.

  “Iola,” she called after me. I turned in the doorway. “Passing on does not mean I will not be with you anymore.”

  I rushed back to her bedside and kissed her cheek, which was as soft as a summer peach despite its age lines.

  I knew as I kissed her that we were saying good-bye. We did not have to say it out loud. That was the way it had always been with Beryl and me; we just knew things without saying them. I left her chamber with a breaking heart.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  I awoke to someone shaking me by the shoulder.

  “What is it?” I mumbled. “What is wrong?”

  “It’s Diamond!” said Rose. “She had a baby in the night.”

  “She did?” I sat up, wide-awake. “Where are my slippers?” I jumped out of bed and began looking for them on the floor.

  “Wait!” laughed Rose. “Don’t you think you should dress first? You can’t go running through the palace in your nightgown!”

  I slipped into Diamond’s chamber. The drapes at the window were still drawn, and the room was lit by candlelight. As my eyes adjusted, I could see Diamond lying against the bed pillows, a maid tidying around her. She lifted her hand to beckon me.

  By the side of her bed stood an exquisitely carved cradle with a little cloth-of-silver canopy. I bent down and peeped inside. Lying there fast asleep was the most perfect little being I had ever seen.

  “Meet your niece, Aunt Iola.”

  “Oh, Diamond!” I breathed in awe. “She is beautiful.”

  Diamond smiled, still looking lovely despite the exhaustion of the past hours that showed in her face.

  “Has Beryl seen her?” I asked, almost whispering, for I did not want to wake the tiny sleeper.

  “Beryl was with me in the night. She gave her blessing at the break of dawn.”

  A sharp pang pierced me at those words. One hand went involuntarily to my stomach, and my other hand pressed against my heart.

  “Then . . .” I whispered. “Then . . . she . . . has . . .” I could not say the words.

  “She has gone, Iola.”

  I could not stop a tear from falling into the cradle, as I remained bent over it. I had a sudden desire to run as fast as I could to Beryl’s chamber and see for myself if she was really gone.

  And then a strange thing happened.

  As I stood looking down at the tiny baby, the pain of grief welling up inside me, I could suddenly feel Beryl right there, with us in the chamber.

  It was as if a ray of golden light had flashed out in an instant—like the blinking of a star or a shimmer in the air. There was no emotion, no sentiment. It was simply Beryl in all her matter-of-factness, in all her solidity. As if she had spoken through the curtain of space and time that she was there with us. And so she was.

  That one moment—that instance of being was so real—more real than space and time, more real than the gleam of the new morning peeking through the chink in the window drapes.

  “She has not really gone,” I whispered. “It is just that we cannot see her now.”

  “That is what I feel,” said Diamond softly.

  I placed one finger inside the babe’s tiny hand and she curled her fist around it. Her little fingers had the minutest, shell pink nails.

  “Oh, Diamond, she is so perfect. A perfect little princess.”

  ***

  I wrote to Sunny about the birth of our new princess and the loss of Beryl. But even if I could have sent the letter, he would not have replied. Unbeknownst to me at the time I sat bent over my desk, a stray tear causing the ink to run to a splotch on the paper, he was already riding across the hills and valleys that remained between us.

  ***

  “But why can you not marry me anymore?” said Sunny in dismay after I had thrown myself into his arms on his arrival, hot and weary at the palace gates.

  His bewildered face looked searchingly into my tear-filled eyes.

  “Because you live so far away! Beryl said I would be as godmother to little Ruby, she would need me—but how can I help her if I am so very far?”

  “What makes you think I live so very far away?”

  “When I first met you,” I said between sobs, “you said you had journeyed six weeks to get here!”

  Sunny laughed. I stopped crying in surprise.

  “That was because I had made almost a month-long detour. I was putting off my arrival.”

  “Putting it off?” I sniffed in a most un-princess-like way.

  “Look at me.”

  I looked up, knowing full well my face was all red and blotchy from crying.

  “It was my father’s idea for me to come and find myself a bride. I was not sure I agreed with him, I was not sure I was ready to marry. I only came to please him, so I made a very long detour while I thought about it.”

  “So you do not live a twelve-week round journey away?”

  “No. Twelve days on a good horse.”

  I flung myself at him in a very inelegant way for the second time that day.

  ***

  My wedding day was not the symmetrical, orderly, traditional affair like my sisters’ had been.

  I had informed the seamstresses very firmly that I refused to wear anything frilly, fussy, or too tightly fitted. And that included a ridiculously long train I would be sure to get tangled up in or trip over. And so my gown was very simple and very comfortable. It was in a light shade of blue. No veil, just a simple bouquet of forget-me-nots.

  Sunny said I looked beautiful. But he always says that.

  I informed the cooks that I wanted no rich, elaborate food that would take weeks to prepare—the only thing that mattered to me was that the cake was good.

  The cooks surprised me by making the most magnificent cake I had ever seen, shaped in the form of a great sailing ship. I was so amazed by it I could not speak. But I could eat! And it was extraordinarily good.

  Diamond and Andra ordered the fountain in the public square to be filled with good wine, and for every family in the kingdom to receive a gift of fine-ground flour and a cluster of raisins in honour of my naming ceremony and wedding, which were held upon the same day.

  But the most wonderful thing about my wedding and naming day—apart from Sunny standing opposite me with his sunshiny smile as our hands were bound together and we exchanged our rings and promises—was the surprise guests who attended the ceremony.

  I had always thought I was good at noticing things that escaped other people’s attention, just part of being very curious, so how I failed to notice the secret arrival of all eleven of my sisters by carriage and horse on the morning of my wedding I still cannot reason out.

  Just before the ceremony was about to begin, I was walking slowly down the staircase to the entrance of the Great Hall, waiting for Andra to take my arm and lead me in. I had felt a sudden pang of nerves grip me even though there were only a small number of guests present. Rose was fiddling with my bouquet and preparing to walk before me, scattering dried lavender and rose petals. And suddenly—there they all were!

  “Surprise!” they shouted, spilling out of one of the antechambers and surrounding me with hugs and kisses and noisy greetings.

  “You did not think we would miss your wedding day, did you?” cried Nel.

  “Diamond has been planning this for weeks,” said Peridot with a wide grin.

  “Oh, Princess, look at you!” said Emerald admiringly.

  “It is not Princess now, it is Iola!” Diamond reminded her.

  “That colour looks heavenly on you,” said Chalce
dony, fingering my gown.

  “Frills never were your thing,” commented Almandine. “This simple style is perfect on you.”

  “You are just glowing!” exclaimed Sapphire, touching my cheek. “You must be in love.”

  “And your hair looks lovely pinned up,” noticed Opal.

  “Our littlest sister—married at last!” said Amethyst with a happy laugh.

  “All of us together again!” cried Cornelia.

  “Just like old times,” agreed Heliodor.

  “Oh, Iola, you are all lit up like a bright lantern!” said Celestine.

  “More like starlight,” said Diamond.

  ***

  “And so that is my story thus far. Now the truth is recorded.”

  “And a new story begins,” says Sunny. He has come looking for me. He leads me out of the chronicler’s chamber into the gentle spring sunshine, and we walk towards the apple orchard. The trees are heavily cloaked with white buds of promise.

  “I shall miss walking here,” I tell him.

  “We will return again soon,” he says.

  “Yes. We will come and go and live out our lives, and yet history has failed even to record me! The chroniclers of our kingdom do so like to make everything as orderly and even as possible. They just cut out or rewrite the parts they do not like. Unless my account survives, it will be told to future generations that there were only twelve princesses in our kingdom. They will probably come up with some nice, neat, little title for our tale, something bland like ‘The Twelve Pretty Princesses.’”

  “Or perhaps ‘The Twelve Talented Princesses,’” says Sunny with a grin.

  “Or ‘The Twelve Feasting Princesses,’” I suggest.

  “Or ‘The Twelve Dancing Princesses’” he replies.

  “Or ‘The Twelve Princesses and their Disappearing Princes.’”

  “Or ‘The Twelve Princesses with Holes in their Slippers.’”

  And Sunny carries on making up titles, which get more and more ridiculous until my sides ache with laughter and I make him stop.

  “Enough!” I cry out, the tears rolling down my cheeks.

  “That is enough now!

  “The end!”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  When I’m not writing stories or thinking up stories or reading other people’s stories, I like to paint and collage, get taken for long walks by my adorable dogs, and cook all things plant-based. I live in rural Cornwall, England, with my non-literary and non-vegan canine-and-human family.

  I hope you enjoyed The Thirteenth Princess and would be so kind as to leave me a review

  Sign up for my mailing list at www.ninaclarebooks.comand I’ll send you a bonus epilogue scene called Diamond’s Daughter