Once Upon A Time (5) Before Midnight

by Cameron Dokey

  “Oh, Cendrillon,” Anastasia said as I entered her room in obedience to the bright come in that had answered my knock. “There you are. I was beginning to think this dreadful March wind had blown you out to sea, you were taking so long.”

  She was standing at the window, staring out toward the water, wearing a white dress with pale pink flowers embroidered all over it. It was the perfect foil for her dark beauty. All of a sudden, I felt a strange lump in my throat. Would I be beautiful, too, if I had a dress like this? If I had dozens of them? What might I look like, if I could dress like the nobleman’s daughter that I was?

  In the next second, I grew ashamed of myself. Perhaps you shouldn’t be so quick to think you know yourself or anyone else, Cendrillon, I thought. Jealousy had never been a part of my nature, not until Anastasia had arrived.

  She turned from the window. “I am waiting,” she said, in a tone like cold, clear glass. I could almost feel the way it pressed against me, trying to find a way to cut.

  I hesitated, sensing the trap, but unable to see how I could avoid stepping into it anyhow. I gave up the struggle and spoke.

  “For what?”

  “Not even you can possibly be so stupid,” Anastasia snapped. “For my apology, of course.”

  “Your apology!” I exclaimed before I could help myself. Abruptly, I could feel my own temper start to rise. I was spending hours agonizing over how to tell Anastasia, her mother, and her sister the truth about who I was in a way that wouldn’t hurt their feelings, and this vain and silly girl stood there in her finery demanding an apology for only she knew what.

  “Why on earth should I apologize to you? I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “That is a matter of opinion,” Anastasia huffed. “As servants do not have opinions, none that count anyway, the only opinion in this room is mine. And I say you owe me an apology for keeping me waiting. You are here to serve me, not to chat in the yard with foul-smelling stable boys.”

  “Raoul is not foul-smelling,” I said hotly.

  “Don’t be absurd,” Anastasia replied. She gave a sniff, as if to emphasize her words. “I can practically smell the stables from here. Girls like you can be dismissed for your kind of behavior, you know.”

  Abruptly, I felt my temper reach its boiling point.

  “I am sorry,” I said sweetly, and caught the satisfaction that flashed across Anastasia’s face. “But then I’m just a plain country girl, unaccustomed to the ways of fine ladies. Explain to me how hanging out sheets that didn’t need washing in the first place is cause to have me dismissed.”

  Two bright spots of color flared in my stepsister’s cheeks. “How dare you?” she cried. “How dare you speak to me in such a way? I can have you dismissed for anything, any time I want to. And don’t think I didn’t see the way you touched each other, because I did. I saw it all.”

  “Then you are blind as well as ill-tempered and spoiled. Raoul and I have known each other since we were two weeks old. He put spiders in my hair, and I put garter snakes in both his boots. We are hardly likely to be flirting over a clothesline.”

  “If you think for one moment that I care what the two of you do together—,” Anastasia began.

  “I don’t,” I said, ruthlessly cutting her off. “The simple truth is, Raoul and I both try not to think about you at all.”

  A terrible silence filled the room. Anastasia’s cheeks were pale as milk now. And I saw, to my absolute horror, that her eyes were filled with tears.

  “Oh, Cendrillon,” Amelie’s voice slipped quietly into the room. “How fortunate. I was hoping you might help me with something, and here you are.”

  Anastasia turned away, moved to the window seat, and sat down upon it with such force that the cushions beneath her sighed. Oh, Cendrillon, I thought to myself. What have you just done?

  “Of course I will help you,” I said, as I turned to Amelie. “If you will just give me a moment to collect your sister’s mending.”

  “Actually,” Anastasia said in a brittle voice. “I find that I have changed my mind. Instead of mending just these few dresses, I think it will be necessary to attend to my entire wardrobe.”

  She turned away from the window to face me again, and, though her eyes were still too bright, I could see that they were dry. I felt my stomach give a funny little twist.

  “I’m not going to be stuck out here in the country forever, you know,” Anastasia went on. “And neither is Amelie. Etienne de Brabant is an important man at court, and daughters of marriageable age are an asset, whether he wants them or not. I intend to be ready when he sends for us.” She tilted her head, and her eyes as they met mine were cold as snow. In them, I read dislike and a challenge.

  “You understand what I require?”

  “I do,” I acknowledged. And it was nothing less than looking over every single item in her entire wardrobe. Every seam of every dress. Every stitch which fastened on a ribbon or a seed pearl. Every hem and button. Everything must be in perfect order. I had no doubt it was a task she could make stretch on for weeks.

  “I am pleased to hear it,” Anastasia replied in a sweet voice. “Naturally, I will need to supervise you closely, to make certain the job is done right.” She tilted her head in the other direction. “A pity you will have no more time to flirt with stable boys.”

  She turned her back on me then, her gesture a clear sign of dismissal.

  “Please help my sister with whatever she needs, then do me the pleasure of staying out of my sight for the rest of the day,” she went on. “I’m sure you and I will both appreciate having one less thing to think about.”

  “As you wish.” I said. And, to my surprise, Anastasia’s head whipped back around.

  “It shall be as I wish,” she said fiercely, and now her eyes were hot and bright. “Do you hear me? I say it shall. Now get out of my room. I’m tired of looking at you. I’m tired of every single thing about this dreadful place.”

  She turned back to the window. For a moment, I thought that Amelie would go to her. Instead, she gave a little sigh.

  “Come with me, Cendrillon, if you please,” she said. She preceded me into the hall. I closed the door quietly behind us, then hurried to keep up as Amelie had already set off at a brisk pace down the corridor.

  “I think this place is beautiful.” she said after a moment. “Especially the house. I didn’t think I would. I didn’t think I’d like anything about this place when we first arrived.”

  “What made you change your mind?” I asked, then cursed myself for an idiot when Amelie stopped abruptly and turned around. I had spoken to her like an equal, as if I had the right to ask her what she felt and thought. As far as she was concerned, of course, I did not. I was no more than a servant in Amelie’s eyes. The fact that she treated me better than her sister did didn’t change things a bit.

  “You have lived here a long time, I think.” Amelie observed. “And you love this place.”

  “I have lived here all my life,” I answered, deciding to focus on the first statement and let the second go. “I was born here, in fact. Old Mathilde delivered me.”

  Amelie’s expression brightened. There was something about her that always reminded me of a sparrow, though she was neither drab nor plump. But she had a sparrow’s bright, dark eyes. A bird’s darting interest and intelligence.

  “I did not know that,” she said. She turned back around. If we had truly been equals, she might have inquired about the rest of my family, my mother and father, but she did not. Instead, she set off once more along the hall, her pace so brisk I had to almost trot along behind her to keep up.

  “But it makes you the perfect person to answer my question,” she went on.

  “What question is that?” I asked, as Amelie finally came to a halt.

  “I am hoping you can tell me,” she said, “why this door is kept locked. None of the others are. I know. I’ve checked them myself.”

  I swallowed past a suddenly dry throat. I had been so busy worr
ying about giving myself away, I had failed to notice that Amelie was heading straight toward my mother’s door. Tell her. Tell her all of it, the truth about who you are, I thought. There might never be a better time.

  I opened my mouth, but the words I wished to say seemed to stick inside my throat. If I claimed Constanze d’Este as my mother, then I must also claim Etienne de Brabant as my father. Etienne de Brabant, who had sent his new wife and stepdaughters to the great stone house without bothering to inform them of my existence, so great was his desire to deny I was even alive.

  How would Amelie take the news if I told her? Would she be kind? Would she even believe me at all? But it was thinking of what Anastasia’s reaction might be that finally made up my mind. Her scorn I could bear, but not her pity, and, in that moment, pity seemed the only possible outcome of the telling of a tale such as mine.

  “This room belonged to Etienne de Brabant’s first wife,” I finally answered, deciding there was no point in telling a lie. All Amelie would have to do would be to ask someone else. “He locked the door and threw away the key when she died.”

  Amelie put her hands on her hips, pursing her lips and putting her head to one side. She studied the locked door as if it were a puzzle, just waiting to be solved.

  “And has it never been opened since? Has no one even tried?”

  “Never,” I said. And it occurred to me suddenly that not even I had ever been through that door, not since I had gone out it on the day that I was born. I had no idea what my mother’s room contained.

  “What was her name, do you know?”

  “Her name was Constanze d’Este,” I said.

  “Ah,” Amelie answered, and her voice was like a sigh. She took her hands from her hips and, to my surprise, laid one palm very gently on the surface of my mother’s door.

  “I have heard of Constanze d’Este,” Amelie went on softly. “Whispers of her name were everywhere when we were at court, particularly on the day my mother and Etienne de Brabant spoke their wedding vows. Constanze d’Este’s beauty had no equal, I heard them say, and the loss of her tore a great hole in Etienne de Brabant’s heart. One that has never been filled, and never will be.”

  She turned her head to look at me. “Does that mean his heart is empty, do you suppose?”

  “I honestly don’t know,” I said.

  Amelie let her hand drop. “Nor do I. And neither, I think, does Maman, not that it will make much difference, in either the long or the short run. There is no chance of love between them. Maman’s heart is not whole, either. The king has seen to that by breaking his promise.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  Amelie stood for a moment, gazing at the locked door. She seemed to have completely forgotten the fact that I was a servant, so great was her need to confide in someone.

  “My mother and the king grew up together,” she said. “Both made marriages of state, though I think my parents’ marriage was happier than the king’s ever was. When my father was killed in a border war, the king made my mother a promise that, if she married again, it could be for love.”

  “Then why did he marry her to Etienne de Brabant?” I asked.

  Amelie sighed. “That is a very good question,” she said. “I think it is because he is the leader of the queen’s faction at court. With the queen’s brother on a throne of his own now, who can say what brother and sister might plot? But if Etienne de Brabant were married to someone loyal to the king, someone he trusts . . .”

  She broke off and shook her head. “But my new stepfather is clever. As soon as the marriage festivities were over, he packed us up and sent us off. My mother can hardly keep an eye on him from this great distance.”

  “So the king has accomplished nothing,” I said softly. “Save betraying your mother’s trust.”

  “That’s it exactly,” Amelie replied. “She’s stuck in a loveless marriage, and we’re all stuck here, so very far from home.”

  “Spring is coming almost any day now,” I said. It seemed paltry consolation, but surely it was better than none. “Things will get better then. I promise.”

  My stepsister gave me a trembling smile. “Thank you, Cendrillon,” she said. “You are really very kind. But for obvious reasons, I think I would prefer it if we avoided making promises, at least for the time being.”

  Before I could answer, she drew in a deep breath, and stepped back from the door. “But what am I saying?” she said, as she turned away. “Of course things will be better when the spring truly comes. Spring works wonders everywhere, don’t you think? And naturally you will not mention the conversation we have had today to anyone.”

  I opened my mouth to give an assurance, but Amelie had already set off down the hall. I am back to being a servant, I thought. At the landing at the head of the stairs, Amelie halted abruptly.

  “Where is Constanze d’Este buried? Do you know?”

  “In her garden,” I answered. “On the far side of the house. I can take you there, if you like.”

  “I believe I would like that,” Amelie said slowly.

  “But not today. Today I have discovered quite enough.”

  “In April, when the daffodils bloom,” I suddenly blurted out.

  Amelie’s eyebrows rose. “That sounds lovely, thank you, Cendrillon. I am fond of daffodils. There are great fields of them where I grew up.”

  “Where is your home?”

  A strange expression flashed into Amelie’s eyes. There and gone so quickly I didn’t quite have time to figure out what it was.

  “This is my home, now, Cendrillon,” she said.

  Then she turned and was gone.

  EIGHT

  Spring came in a great and colorful rush. In April the daffodils bloomed. In May, the peonies. In June, the roses. The fruit trees in the orchard gave every sign that this would be a year when they would behave themselves and provide the kind of fruit they were supposed to.

  As the weather grew warmer, both Amelie and Anastasia began to spend more time out of doors, often in my mother’s garden. Amelie in particular seemed drawn to it, even beginning to go so far as to work in the garden herself. Since the day I had taken her to see Constanze d’Este’s grave, the same day I finally finished the seemingly endless task of going through Anastasia’s dresses, as it happened, it seemed to me that Amelie was working hard to make her peace with the circumstances that had brought her to the great stone house.

  Even Anastasia seemed calmer now that the weather had improved. She would sit on a stone bench in the shade, her own sun hat firmly in place upon her head, chiding Amelie for the fact that hers had fallen off and that her hands and nails were filthy from working the soil. To which Amelie always replied that some young men found freckles attractive, and dirt could be washed off. But it was a gentle sort of teasing, as if the warmth of the weather had mellowed them both. Now that she was finished torturing me with the endless examination of her wardrobe, Anastasia seemed content to leave me alone. Neither of us mentioned Raoul again.

  The only one who did not seem warmed by the change in the weather was my stepmother. She roamed the house and grounds like a phantom as if unable to settle, to find peace anywhere, her skin still as fine and pale as the winter’s day upon which she had first crossed our threshold. More and more often, I was reminded of my first impression of her: that she was like a spring in full flood with its surface still encased in ice.

  At first, I had believed that this was a sign of the strength of her own will, her refusal to give way to the turmoil and despair which filled her mind and heart. But, as the days and weeks went by, I began to wonder whether or not Chantal de Saint-Andre had made herself a prisoner of what she felt. If my father’s heart was empty, then my stepmother’s was too full. And I wondered what would happen when the ice finally broke.

  “Poor lady,” Susanne sighed while preparing dinner one night. She was chopping vigorously, the knife thunking against the cutting board. Susanne had made getting my s
tepmother to eat her own personal crusade. To that end, she tried a different dish each night. Tonight’s attempt involved chicken and vegetables cooked on top of the stove. The smell of it filled the whole house.

  “Forced into a loveless marriage, then packed off like a piece of furniture that’s gone out of style. She’ll waste away to nothing, you mark my words, and then Etienne de Brabant will have what he wants.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked from the far end of the table, where I was preparing a great pile of green beans. I had kept the conversation I had shared with Amelie outside my mother’s door strictly to myself. But there wasn’t one person in all the great stone house who believed my father had married Chantal de Saint-Andre for love.

  “What does he want?” I asked now.

  “Why, to be rid of her, of course,” Susanne snorted. “Why else would he send her to the ends of the earth and then leave her alone, without any kind of word, for five whole months? It would eat me alive with frustration and fury, I promise you that. If you ask me, unless something happens to change the way things are going, that man will be a widower before the year is out.”

  “Then it’s fortunate nobody did ask,” Old Mathilde’s voice suddenly sliced through the room, sharper than any kitchen knife. Susanne dropped hers with a clatter and pressed a hand to her heart.

  “Gracious, Mathilde,” she exclaimed. “Don’t you know better than to startle a body like that?”

  “I know better than to indulge in idle gossip,” Old Mathilde replied, and I saw the way she glanced at me out of the corner of my eye. “You may hold whatever opinions you like, Susanne, but in the future, I would appreciate it if you kept them to yourself. This house is troubled enough without your wild surmises.

  “Our mistress would like a cup of tea,” she went on in a more quiet voice. “Cendrillon, perhaps you would be so good as to make one and to take it to her.”

  “Of course I will,” I said, as I finished the last of the beans, gathered them up, and dumped them into their cooking pot. I set it on the back of the stove and put the tea kettle on to boil. Susanne was chopping once again, the sound of the knife informing all who heard it and knew how to listen that her nose was out of joint.