But Meg was never one for quiet. In addition to being cold and cramped, the tower was oppressively, crushingly silent. And honestly, being able to go on without being told to sit down and shut up was a marvel. She was going to take advantage of it until she got sick of the sound of her own voice. So as she set about working on the already-clean little room, she began to mutter to herself—stupid little things, grumbling about the lack of dust and wondering how there could be no flies, with no cobwebs full of spiders to catch them.
"No bugs at all, for that matter," she said, peering into corners as she went. "Not that I want to be set upon by little leggy critters, but you'd think there'd be at least a few, wouldn't you?"
At some point, Meg’s talking to herself turned back into talking to the princess—or at least pretending to, because otherwise it was too easy to be bitter. Besides, she was the best audience Meg had ever had. The princess learned not only about her thoughts on bugs, but all about what she'd had for breakfast yesterday, and how much better it had been than the cold sludge from this morning. How if she were still in the kitchens, she'd just now be taking her lunch with Jenny, the two of them giggling as they made faces at Abbie behind her back.
All right, it was still easy to be bitter.
On top of that, it was impossible to find anything to actually clean. In desperation, she began upturning all the furniture in search of a single speck of dirt that she could sweep away. "I never thought I would see the day I went looking for a mess," she remarked to the princess, as she struggled to move one of the heavy trunks. "I don't know whether I hope to find one or not. At least it's something to do."
Her fingers lingered on the edge of the lid as she dragged it across the floor. Maybe all this movement would just so happen to jostle the latch free, and if she wasn't careful with her hands, why, the lid might just fly open all on its own… No one could fault her if she accidentally caught a glimpse of whatever had been packed away up here with the princess.
The latch proved remarkably sturdy. Meg gave it a few hopeful, completely-by-accident-of-course bumps, but it remained stubbornly closed. "That's good craftsmanship for you," she remarked, disappointed.
The last girl had apparently also thought about looking under the furniture; the floor was just as shining there as everywhere else. The only exception was the floor underneath the trunks, which looked like it'd gone a few months without any attention—maybe they'd been too heavy for her to move easily, or she'd believed the warnings about not touching them a little too much. Either way, Meg had never been glad to see so much dust, or so sorry at how little time it took to clear away.
Her things arrived with her dinner, just as she'd finished scrubbing up. She barely had any more than the previous girl, only her own clothes, her darning kit, and a few odds and ends. Not much in the way of entertainment there. For lack of anything better to do, she decided to have a go at mending the other maid's dress, sewing up the tear that had been left in the bodice. It was much too small for her, even if she let out all the seams and held her breath, so it was nothing more than busywork—but even busywork was better than nothing.
"Would you look at me," she said, holding the dress up to inspect her basting. "Actually choosing to do mending. What would Jenny say to that, I wonder!"
She continued rambling, half to the princess and half to herself, through part of the night and all through the next morning. It was only idle chatter, and mostly still complaining, but it made her feel a little less alone, so she kept at it.
She told the princess of the other palace staff, of the nobles in the palace, so removed from the common folk of the kitchens that they seemed like another species entirely. "I saw Prince Nathaniel once," she remembered, as she carefully pulled her thread taut. "Your self-proclaimed betrothed. It was from a distance, of course, when he was out riding and came a bit too close to the kitchen yard, and I was tossing out last night's water. He's handsome, I suppose—not repulsive, at any rate—so you won't be concerned about looking at him, or having ugly children." She shrugged, nearly sticking herself with the needle. "I suppose that's about as much as anyone can hope for. You won't have to worry your pretty head about inheriting the kingdom, that's going to go to Prince Derek, his eldest brother—likely as not, our youngest prince is hoping that with you on his arm, he can trot back to your old kingdom and make good on your dear papa's promise, of your hand and the throne to go with it. Ha! I wonder if they'd let him?"
Meg put down her mending and stared thoughtfully at the princess. "It's been more than half a century since you were cursed, you know," she said, her tone no longer as light. "Your papa's dead and gone by now, along with your queenly mother. Gossip says the throne went to a cousin, or someone like that, and the kingdom's been doing better than ever under their rule. I wonder what you'd think of that?"
The princess said nothing, of course. Meg sighed and went back to her sewing.
It's only been a day, and I'm already reduced to this, she thought darkly, between stitches. Getting poked with needles, talking to a body that's all but a corpse, and thinking myself lucky for it because at least it's something.
Well, it could be worse. It had only been a day. Maybe tomorrow would be better.
*~*~*
Meg was beginning to rethink her definition of 'better'.
It was the same boy delivering her breakfast, and he was just as reluctant to talk as he'd been yesterday. "It's not like anyone else is going to hear if you say anything," Meg tried to tell him, but he didn't look like he believed her—he'd had the Fear of Abbie put into him well and good. He just shook his head and gave her the tray, refusing to look her in the eye.
"You know," she said, before he could run off again, "if you give the other girls in the kitchen a message from me, I bet they'd let you have some of the extra biscuits. There's always some left over at the end of the day. We're not supposed to keep them, but if someone does us a favor… "
She hadn't been sure that would work, but it had the desired effect. The boy paused as he was turning around and glanced back up at her, the look on his face wary, but intrigued by the possibility of biscuits.
More hopeful now, Meg continued, "In fact, if one of them came up here with you tomorrow, maybe—"
"Oh, no!" The boy's face turned immediately from interest to horror. "Miss Abbie would kill me!"
"But—"
It was too late. Meg watched his retreating back, annoyed at herself for ruining this chance. At least the idea of passing a message hadn't been what scared him off—maybe the temptation of biscuits would be enough for that.
The rest of the second day was much the same as how the first had ended. She poked around the room, dusted a few things that didn't need dusting, then sat by the bed and fussed with her sewing some more, all the while telling the princess whatever came into her head. The princess learned all about her friends and her family; how Meg had been sent to the palace because all servants, even maids, were given a cursory education. Reading, writing, a few other basic things that had sounded more interesting than staying at home. She'd managed to convince her parents that she might be able to better herself enough to marry a palace man—perhaps a footman, or a page, or someone else who wasn't a pig farmer—and settle into a good life.
"I don't really want to get married, though," she mused, removing pins from the dress. With the tear mended, she'd decided to do the hem up a few inches, just to keep her hands busy. "I mean, certainly not to the pig farmer's boy—I suppose it's rude of me to keep talking about him like that, because he's not really that bad, but he's so… oh, he's boring. And it's not just him; I've met most of the footmen and pages too, and I haven't found one I'd fancy spending the rest of my life with. At least being away from home means I'm not hearing about it every hour of the day."
"I'm sure it'll be better for you, though," she added as reassuringly as she could, although even she wasn't convinced. "A prince is probably more interesting than a pig boy. …Probably. Although on the
bright side, if you ever do wake up, it might shock his magnificence enough that he'll drop dead on the spot from shock, and you won't have to marry him after all." She giggled. "Or I suppose you could just say toss to the whole thing and run away with the silver stuffed up your dress. It's not like your papa even asked you if you wanted to be the grand prize for the first prince to chop his way through a bunch of thorns."
*~*~*
By the end of her third day, Meg was fed up. She'd hemmed the dress so far as to be scandalous, polished even things that ought not to have been, and cleaned up the resulting mess three times over. The tower room had been rearranged, re-rearranged, and then re-re-rearranged before her arms had gotten tired from dragging furniture around. She'd held a competition with her herself to see how far she could throw her duster, although that had ended abruptly when it had bounced off the wall and nearly hit the poor princess in the face.
Morning felt like it had been more than a century ago. But the sky out the window was only just turning purple, and Meg was already at the end of her rope.
The boy who brought up the trays had at least agreed to try sending word to the other girls, although the last couple of times she'd seen him, he'd just shaken his head and shrugged at her. Meg was very seriously considering marching downstairs herself and hang the consequences—the door wasn't locked, after all, and even Abbie couldn't be on watch all the time. Maybe if she was very, very sneaky…
And if she did get caught, at least it'd mean something was happening. But thinking of the smug look that would be on Abbie's face gave her pause, as did the reminder that she'd be out on her ear and likely without any job prospects. Surely it wouldn't be too much longer before Abbie decided to let her leave? If she just waited a little longer…
"This is stupid," she said suddenly, setting down the pieces of fabric she'd been stitching together. Having lost interest in the dress, she'd started messing around with the scraps, and was halfway through a complete set of haphazardly-constructed finger puppets. Wiggling a couple of her new friends in the princess' direction, she continued, "Begging your slumbering highness' pardon, but as you are presently indisposed, and I am bored out of my skull, I am going to be a snoop. Please alert me at once if you have any objections."
Without even pretending to wait for an answer that she knew wasn't coming, she stood up and went straight for the larger of the two trunks. They were now the centerpiece of the room, after she'd gotten tired of hauling them around from corner to corner and decided to simply leave them. She wasn't sure if they actually belonged to the princess, but they certainly weren't empty. She should know; they'd been hard enough to drag around.
There was a little guilt, deep inside of her. She couldn't shake the feeling that somehow she'd be caught, that the moment she touched the latch, Abbie would leap out from behind the princess' curtain and shout "Aha!"
That was absurd. Abbie was back down in the kitchens, and even the boy who brought her food never came inside the tower room. The only other person here was the princess, and if she hadn't woken up by now, it wasn't as though this would do the trick.
Besides, it was either this or getting back to sewing, and she was more than done with anything involving that thrice-damned dress. Ugh.
That decided it for her. Meg's fingers flipped the latch and, with a sense of delicious anticipation, she gently lifted the lid to see...
"Oh, damn it all!" she groaned, letting the lid fall. "More dresses!"
The thunk of the lid closing released a cloud of dust, and Meg sneezed. Curious despite herself, she opened the trunk again, and took a better look at its contents. These dresses definitely belonged—or had once belonged—to the princess. They were much too fine, the fabrics far too rich, to belong to anyone else. The top one had tiny jewels sewn into the neckline, which winked and sparkled at Meg in the light.
They were also all covered in a thick layer of dust. "Don't tell me," Meg said in surprise, "that all the time the other girl was here—she never even looked? It wasn't even locked!"
Maybe she just wasn't as nosy as you are, a little voice inside of her said. Meg ignored it, and instead lifted a dress out of the trunk to examine it further.
The style was old-fashioned, the colors faded—of course, they would have been in there for fifty years at least. It was still a pretty thing, but in the same way that a pressed flower was pretty; it was only a wilted shadow of its former self, a reminder of what it had once been.
She dug out the rest of the dresses, inspecting them each in turn. They were all as old and outdated as the first. At the bottom of the trunk were some gloves, and a few pairs of slippers. They'd held up better than the dresses, but they still had that sad, faded look to them. Meg handled them carefully, half-afraid that they would fall apart if she was too rough.
It wasn't long before she grew bored again, and folded everything back into the trunk. The princess was a tiny little thing, while Meg was tall and solidly-built. Even at a glance she could tell she'd never fit into any of the fine clothing. Well, that was all right with her. Her own clothes suited her well enough, and all that velvet and lace probably itched something fierce, even if it was worth a small fortune.
Maybe enough to support a girl who couldn't get a job anywhere else, but didn't want to go back to her parents.
That thought made Meg slam the lid down before it could go any further. She was not a thief! A nosy, mouthy brat, maybe, but she'd never stolen anything in her life—or at least anything worse than an extra biscuit that was going to be thrown out anyway. Well, she wasn't going to steal from a princess, even one that would never know. She might never wear them again, but the dresses were still hers.
She almost didn't want to look in the next trunk, but curiosity won out in the end. Meg sat in front of it and lifted the lid, not expecting much more than a lot of dust, and probably another multitude of dresses. Or perhaps there would be nothing but shoes in this one, or some kind of fancy underthings, now rotted and moth-eaten with age.
Except there wasn't. Meg sat back in surprise, and sneezed again—the dust was certainly there, but instead of dresses or shoes or underwear, it was books. Piles and piles of books!
Now here was something interesting. That silly other girl, if she'd bothered to be a bit sneaky then she could've had something to read this whole time! Meg lifted one of the top volumes, a slim leather-bound book with the design of a flower embossed onto the cover. She traced the petals absent-mindedly with a finger, glancing back over at the princess on the bed.
"Is this your little library, then?" she asked. "Or did these belong to someone else? No, I think they were yours; don't ask me why. Perhaps I just want to think you had something interesting to you after all."
She blew the dust off the cover, and opened the book. Written on the first page was the title, in such graceful calligraphy that Meg couldn't quite make out the individual letters under all the loops and swirls. Underneath, in penmanship that was less lovely but at least legible, was the name Elizabeth.
"Elizabeth," Meg said, surprised. "Is that your name, your grace? I never knew that." How curious, that she had always just been the princess. No name, only a title. A legendary figure locked away in a tower. Oh, it must be in records somewhere, and surely the prince and everyone else who had sought her out had discovered it long ago—but tales and stories didn't need names, and neither did gossip. Even in the official speeches and decrees from the prince, she was only ever the sleeping princess.
Still, it did seem a bit odd to Meg that no one, not even herself, had ever thought to wonder about it. Of course she had a name! There simply seemed no need to use it, or bother to find it out, when everyone in the palace knew exactly what was meant when someone said 'princess.'
At this moment, at least, it seemed like a wonderful secret—something just between her and the princess, her and Elizabeth. Something that none of the other servants knew, or would care to find out.
She touched the words on the page, and smiled.
"It's a fine name for a princess," she said. "We commoners, though, we like short names. Like me—I'm Margaret, really, but when you're running around the kitchens shouting and trying to get things done, it's easier and faster to yell for Meg. If you worked in the kitchens, you'd be Beth, or Liz." She peered over at the princess, lips pursed. "Or Betty, even. I think you could be a Betty."
It seemed ridiculous for a maid to give a kitchen nickname to a grand lady, one who wore fine silk and velvet gowns, and had soft delicate hands that had probably never touched a stewpot or scrubbing brush in their life. But somehow, it suited her. It was surprisingly easy for Meg to imagine the princess in a maid's dress, with her dark curls pinned up and her arms up to the elbows in a washbasin, her pretty face screwed up in concentration. She liked that mental image a lot more than the sight of the regal corpse in the beautiful white dress.
"I hope you don't mind," she told the princess—Princess Betty. The thought made her smile. "If we're going to be stuck here together for who knows how long, we ought to be on friendly terms, don't you think? I can't keep calling you 'highness' when I'm old and grey and you're covered in dust."
In a better mood now, she flipped through the book still in her hands. The flower on the cover was not merely decoration—it was a book all about plants, with diagrams of flower anatomy, and large blocks of small, boring-looking text with very few pictures. Meg's eyes began to glaze over just looking at it.
Well, there was a whole trunkful of books here. She didn't have to start with this one. Tossing it back in, she picked up the next one that her hand touched, which was a good deal larger and heavier. Perhaps it would be a book of stories, or the princess' secret diary.
It was, according to the title, Political Strategy in Time of War. The inside was even less exciting than the cover. Meg read no more than a page before discarding it and moving on.
Fairytales Slashed: Volume 8 Page 30