A True Princess

by Diane Zahler

  “Oh, look at this,” Karina exclaimed when we entered the ballroom, admiring its smooth parquet floor and cushioned window seats.

  “I can just imagine an orchestra playing and ladies resting beneath the windows, tired and hot from the dance,” I replied dreamily. Then I roused myself to lift the seat cushions and search beneath.

  Next was the state dining room. We dusted the enormous mahogany table and each of the two dozen carved wooden chairs that lined it. When we were sure no one was looking, we rummaged through the drawers of the serving tables that lined the walls. We dusted and searched every room we entered but found no jeweled clasp.

  At the end of that hall we came to a round reception room lined with curved benches. In the center of the room was a fountain that splashed water musically onto colored pebbles below. I was astonished that a fountain could bubble up endlessly indoors. Hot and tired, I dipped my hand in the cool water of the fountain, and Karina did the same.

  When I turned, drying my hand on my apron, I noticed there was someone standing at the doorway. Fearful that we had been discovered doing something we ought not, I dropped automatically into a curtsy, lowering my eyes. Karina, also curtsying, gripped my arm tightly. I thought she’d lost her balance, but her hold did not loosen as we rose. I looked up then and saw, to my great surprise, the gentleman we had met at the inn, the man I thought of as the blue lord. He was dressed in blue again, a dark doublet of rich material. I was right—he was a courtier at the palace!

  He came toward us, bowed, and said, “So we meet again.” At the inn his courteous manners had seemed admirable; but here, in a palace, it felt wrong to me that he should bow so graciously to two serving maids.

  “My friends told me they had seen you in town,” he went on. “I am very glad that you made your journey safely—and that my sword proved serviceable.”

  Karina was speechless with embarrassment and shyness, so I replied, rather more saucily than I intended, “Indeed, sir, not as glad as we were!”

  He laughed, and at once I felt more at ease. “But I am very sorry to hear of the plight of your companion. Will you tell me what happened?” He motioned us to one of the curved benches that lined the room.

  “My lord, we cannot,” I protested, thinking of the rooms we had yet to search. “We have work we must finish.”

  “I see,” he said, noting our aprons and dusters. “But at least you could tell me your names, could you not?”

  “I’m Lilia,” I told him, “and this is Karina.” Again we curtsied. As if we were ladies, he raised us gently, each of his hands holding one of ours.

  “I am very pleased to make your acquaintance,” he said formally, and then he said something that shocked me to my core: “I am Tycho.”

  I heard Karina gasp as he bowed over her hand, brushing it with his lips in a courtier’s kiss. But this was no mere courtier—I had been gravely mistaken. This was Prince Tycho, son of the king, the heir apparent of Dalir.

  The prince turned and left the room, and Karina and I stared after him wordlessly. Our faces were mirror images of dismay and astonishment as the sound of his boot heels clicked away from us, down the hall and out of earshot.

  Chapter 7

  A True Princess Faints When Frightened

  Karina was silent and humiliated as we finished our dusting and left the round room. “We had no way of knowing that he was the prince,” I tried to reassure her as we descended the stairs to the kitchen for supper. “He wore no crown.”

  “But his bearing was regal, and his manners were as well,” she said. “I am such a fool! How could I think—how could I possibly imagine . . .”

  She shook her head, and her eyes filled with tears. I had known she liked the blue lord, known that she thought he was handsome, known that she dreamed of seeing him again; but until that moment, I had not fully realized that she cared so much for him. Something in me rose up, and I said fiercely, “What I said before was right. If he feels he is too good for you, he is not worthy of you.”

  Again Karina shook her head. “He is a prince, Lilia,” she reminded me softly.

  “Ah, so you’ve seen our prince!” Birgit had overheard us and was eager to join in our conversation. “He is the most handsome prince in all the North Kingdoms—or indeed in any other kingdom that I know!”

  Karina stiffened, and I spoke to cover her silence. “And yet he will not marry,” I said.

  “That he will not,” Janna said, joining us. “He has created a test that no one who is not a princess can pass—but he has already refused to marry any princess in the North! Those who come now hope the test will reveal some unknown royal blood in their lineage, but it does not seem likely to happen.”

  “So does he not want to marry at all, then?” I asked.

  “Our prince is a great mystery,” Janna said fondly. “But he keeps things interesting with his test. In fact, we are to expect another hopeful bride tomorrow.”

  “Poor thing!” said Birgit, laughing, and the others laughed with her.

  That night, I could hear Karina’s muffled sobs in the bed next to mine. I reached out and took her hand in the dark, and held it until she relaxed into sleep. Then when everyone’s breathing was deep and regular, I slipped on my dress and crept out of the room to continue my search for the jewel. Kai was never far from my thoughts.

  The palace was lighted with candles placed here and there, and many tall windows welcomed the moonlight that was bright enough to cast shadows on the marble floors. I tiptoed through the kitchen, looking everywhere I could think of for the jeweled cloak clasp. The pantries were groaning with food: meats hung from hooks to age, and jars of lingonberry and cloudberry preserves lined the shelves. I saw barrels of flour and wine and baskets of nuts and grains. But there was no clasp.

  There was a guard on the floor with the staterooms, but I slipped by him and entered the reception room with its gently plashing fountain. I saw that the blue tiles that lined the fountain were decorated with the same pattern of moon and stars that was displayed on the palace flags and Prince Tycho’s cloak. The curved benches too were upholstered in dark blue velvet and embroidered with silver stars. I sat on one, tempted to stretch out on its soft cushions, but I feared being caught where I was not supposed to be.

  The other staterooms were large and empty, a little ghostly in the moonlight. I searched through them quickly, for Karina and I had looked in most of them once already. I entered the throne room, which we had not dusted, and marveled at the great carved throne where the king would sit and the smaller one at its side that I surmised must be the queen’s. There was no jeweled pin beneath their embroidered seats or anywhere else I looked. Then I came to the last room on that hall, and to my surprise it was locked. I recalled that it had been locked in the daytime too—Karina and I had not been able to dust there. I resolved to ask the serving maids what it held.

  At last I went back up the servants’ stair, very tired but familiar now with the layout of the palace. I had crossed many rooms off my mental list of places to search. I slipped back into my narrow, lumpy bed without rousing anyone, and tossed and turned and dozed until daybreak.

  In the morning, our second day since leaving the forest, the hopeful bride arrived. She came with an entourage of servants and her father, a plump, self-important merchant from the neighboring North Kingdom of Enga, to the west. They brought several wagons filled with trunks that we assumed held the daughter’s dresses.

  “Does she plan to stay for a month?” asked Hulda.

  “Perhaps she has brought her trousseau,” giggled Griet. “Does she not know that she will be gone in a day?”

  I felt sorry for the girl, Ludovica, whose upturned nose and round, pink cheeks reminded me just a little of a pig. Though I knew that Karina wished her gone, neither of us joined in the mockery or the speculation that raged for the entire time Ludovica was at the palace. It was obvious that she was not of royal blood. Her manners were appalling. The kitchen buzzed with the news that she ha
d curtsied very awkwardly when meeting the prince, scolded her maid publicly, and blown her nose in company. Griet and Janna were quite unkind about the way her bodice strained at its lacings, for she took after her father in figure. She ate like her father, too, Birgit noted after serving at table when Ludovica, her father, and the prince dined together.

  “Three helpings of roast, and two of pudding!” she exclaimed, scandalized.

  Karina replied, “It is a fine thing to have a good appetite. It means she is healthy.” Birgit looked a little abashed at her gentle words, but Griet snorted and said, “Healthy indeed! Healthy as a cow at her cud!”

  After dinner and an evening of awkward talk—reported by Janna, who brought in tea—I watched discreetly as Agna led Ludovica to the room at the end of the hall. The housekeeper unlocked the door and went in with Ludovica, and a few moments later she came out again, locking the door firmly behind her. There was no chance for me to see anything. I was oddly frustrated. The room seemed to call to me; I felt I must see what was inside.

  The next morning, Ludovica emerged bright-eyed and rested. During breakfast—at which she reportedly ate plate after plate piled with lacy pancakes filled with preserves, pulla rolls spread with sweet cheese, and sausages—the prince took her aside, and they exchanged words that no one was able to overhear. The discussion was enough to send Ludovica weeping to her room. Not long afterward, with her face veiled to disguise the signs of tears from onlookers, she left the palace with her father and their vast retinue.

  “But how did she fail?” I asked the maids. “Did she eat too much, or speak too little?” They shrugged; no one knew, and no one had been able to find out.

  I realized that I would have to wait to see inside the room until the next eager bride came, for it was locked again and the key well guarded by Agna. At the first opportunity, I waylaid Birgit, the friendliest of the maids, and asked her what the room contained.

  “I have never been inside,” she admitted. “I believe it was once a music room, but now it must be a bedchamber of some sort, for the girls who come to win the prince sleep there. I tried to peer in once, and Agna nearly had my head!” She laughed, and I smiled distractedly. Her words made me hopeful that the room might hold what I was seeking, and I was determined to look within. Each hour that passed made me more apprehensive, more fearful for Kai’s safety in the forest. The two weeks the Elf-King had granted us were slipping away.

  Though I could not get into the locked room, I continued my search. I did not stop with the palace interior, but extended my hunt out-of-doors. At our first free hour, Karina and I headed for the gardens, which were enormous and well tended, with flowers, bushes, and herbs of all sorts planted in intricate designs. At one end there was a wilder patch of garden, with a beautiful weeping cherry tree. The tree was ancient, its branches bending gracefully to the ground so thickly that it created a little cave. Surely a jewel could be hidden in there!

  We crawled inside the branch cave and breathed deeply of the cherry-scented air. I searched every inch of the tree and the ground around it but found nothing more than fallen cherries.

  “Kai would love this tree,” Karina murmured. “Remember how fond he is of cherries?”

  I nodded, plucked a ripe fruit, and popped it in my mouth. She followed suit.

  “Do you also remember what he and I would do with the pits?” I asked mischievously, and I spat my cherry pit at her.

  It smacked her on the shoulder, and she returned the assault, leaving a mark on my apron. Back and forth the cherry pits flew. One of mine had far too much breath behind it and sailed past Karina, landing with a splat on a face that had just ducked inside the branches.

  It was Prince Tycho’s face.

  I stared, horrified, at the red smear the cherry pit had left on the prince’s cheek. Karina turned and let out a moan of embarrassment. But the prince started to laugh, and he laughed so hard that he had to lie down on the grass under the tree and hold his stomach.

  “I am so sorry, Your Highness,” I said when I could bring myself to speak. “I never meant—”

  “You are a powerful spitter,” Prince Tycho gasped. “Are you as deadly with an olive pit?”

  I started laughing then too, and even Karina had to join in. The prince ate a cherry himself and aimed the pit at a branch, and we made a game of it. Before long, my mouth was tired from spitting, my stomach hurt from laughter and an excess of cherries, and I was sure that I was smeared with cherry juice, as Karina was. On her it looked very fetching, though, staining her lips a bright crimson.

  “I must go back,” I said at last. “Agna wanted me to polish the silver.”

  “I’ll go as well,” Karina said, but the prince protested.

  “No, stay and keep me company. Now that you have discovered my favorite hideaway, you should enjoy it with me.”

  “Oh—oh, Your Highness—,” Karina stammered, flustered.

  “Tycho,” the prince said. “That is my name. Under the weeping cherry, we must not be formal.”

  Karina, her eyes downcast, did not reply.

  “Please stay,” the prince pleaded. “Just for a bit.”

  I took a deep breath and said, “You’re not needed until supper, Karina.” I wasn’t sure if leaving her was the right thing to do, but something about the prince struck me as trustworthy. The look Karina gave me was both terrified and grateful, and I crept out of the cherry cave, anxiously hoping that my impulse was not a mistake.

  That night Karina told me about their conversation under the tree. “He offered to go to the forest to find Kai,” she said.

  “But Sir Erlend said it would be useless to try,” I pointed out.

  “I know,” she said sadly. “And the prince agrees that this is true. But he offered nonetheless.”

  “That is very noble.”

  “Lilia, perhaps we should tell him—you know. About the clasp. And why we are here.”

  I shook my head. “Don’t you think it would sound strange, that we are looking for a jewel? Surely he would think we have come to rob him.”

  “Oh no, he would never think that!” Karina protested, but she sounded uncertain.

  “If I don’t find it in the locked room, then you can tell him,” I said. “Just give me another day or two. A new hopeful bride is coming the day after tomorrow. I plan to get in right after she leaves.”

  “I will go with you,” Karina said decisively.

  We were quiet for a moment. Then I asked, “Was that all that happened under the tree?”

  “He read me a poem that he had been working on,” she told me.

  “Was it good?” I asked.

  “I liked it very much,” she said shyly. “You might not have. It was a ballad about a brigand, like the ones we met. He said we were its inspiration.”

  “Ah,” I said knowingly. “And was there a lovely golden-haired lady in it?”

  Karina laughed, very quietly. “Well, yes,” she admitted. “She was threatened by the brigand and rescued by the hero. It rhymed quite beautifully.”

  “And did the hero marry the lady at the end?”

  There was a silence. “The poem was unfinished,” Karina said softly. Then she turned over in her bed and went to sleep.

  Later that night, I returned to the cherry tree hoping to sleep, for my restless nights in the maids’ chamber and my relentless search had left me exhausted. I dozed on and off, waking at dawn to see a group of courtiers ranging over the hillside. I crawled out from my hiding place, recognizing Sir Erlend and Sir Ivar among them. In the center of the group was Prince Tycho, and on his gloved arm rested a falcon, smaller than the one I had seen in Bitra Forest but huge nonetheless. The prince carried the bird with great authority. It was hooded, and when the men reached the hill’s highest point, the prince pulled off the hood and called out loudly, jerking his arm upward. The bird started and rose from the prince’s arm, its great wings beating steadily, the bells that hung from its leather jesses tinkling. It flew so high that
I could barely see it.

  Then came another shout, and the bird began to descend. It came like an arrow, and none could see where it aimed at first. It seemed that it was headed not at a rabbit in the field or a game bird on the wing, but straight at me. I stood up, bewildered, as the bird plunged toward me. I saw its curved beak and sharp talons, but I did not duck or try to hide or even flinch. I am sure the hunters watched with horror, and I could hear them calling faintly, but I had eyes only for the falcon. Truly, I was not afraid. And at the last possible moment the bird pulled up, beating its wings hard to slow and stop itself, and settled on my shoulder as gently as a leaf falling from a tree.

  I looked at the bird, and it—or she, for I knew somehow it was a female—tilted her head and looked back at me. She had the same knowing gaze as the falcon in Bitra Forest. I bowed my head as I had to that bird and said, “If you helped me when I was a baby, I thank you.” And she bowed her head back at me, the bells on her jesses jingling, exactly as if she understood every word.

  Then the hunters ran up, and all was confusion for some moments. The falcon found her way back onto the prince’s arm, and Sir Erlend’s hands were on my shoulders as he asked insistently, “Are you hurt anywhere? Did the bird do you harm?”

  I shook my head. “No, milord,” I said firmly. “I am fine.”

  Prince Tycho whistled gently, and the falcon’s head tilted in a listening pose. “I have never seen the like,” he said. “This bird has never flown for another. I trained her myself. She has never perched on anyone else’s arm.”

  I smiled at him. “I think falcons like me, Your Highness,” I said. “She is not the first one I have known.”

  “You are surpassing brave, lady,” said Sir Ivar admiringly. “The way you stood your ground as the bird came at you—most ladies would have fled screaming, or fainted dead away.”

  “Most men as well,” the prince said, and the hunters laughed.

  “I am not much for fainting,” I said. “But I don’t know if it was bravery that caused me to stand still. Some would call it stupidity.” I smiled again, thinking of the nisse. To be sure, he would call me stupid!