by Wendy Mass
“Do you think I could earn that much? I am certain I would win!”
I have missed the sound of Clarissa’s laughter, but she indulges me now. “Beauty! No squire would risk his knighthood by being outrun by a girl.”
She speaks the truth. We start walking again, and I continue to ponder how else to take advantage of my speed. “I have it! I can be a messenger! Papa’s friends are always muttering about how slow the messengers are, and how by the time they receive word on anything, months have passed. I would make an excellent messenger.” I can already imagine myself running like the wind to some distant land, an important document rolled up and tucked inside my belt loop. I would run so fast that I would leave all my fears behind in the dust. And no one would be able to fault me for wearing pants. A messenger could not be expected to run in a skirt across roads of dirt and rock.
“A messenger needs a horse,” Clarissa points out. “You, however, do not have a horse. Besides, the roads are much too dangerous for a young girl to travel on her own. You are the one always scolding Papa for riding after dark, or staying at an inn without a guard. You must keep thinking.”
I sigh. I may jest that Clarissa’s head is full of more air than a pig-bladder balloon, but she knows a lot about the ways of the world. Plus, I have a feeling my fears would follow me no matter how fast I ran.
We continue to follow the stream until we reach the mill. A line of farmers and peasants stands with arms full of bundled stalks of rye, wheat, or malt, waiting for their turn to have their crops ground at the millstone. I watch as the power from the stream turns the huge waterwheel, which then turns the millstones in a graceful partnership. An argument has broken out amongst the group, with angry voices and flailing arms. This is a common occurrence at the mill, since the miller is known throughout the village as a cheat.
A man in a gray traveling cloak has stepped between the miller and the farmer. From what I can tell, the farmer is accusing the miller of not handing over the full allotment of flour due to him, and the stranger is telling the miller something in a low voice. A few rotations of the waterwheel later, the miller ducks behind the giant millstone and returns, grumbling, with another sack of flour for the farmer.
“Who is that?” I ask Clarissa, pointing to the stranger in the cloak.
“I have heard Papa and his friends speak of him,” she replies. “He can tell if someone is lying, and then he convinces that person to own up. He must get a lot of business at the mill.”
As we watch, the farmer doles out three handfuls of his flour to the stranger before picking up the handles of his wheelbarrow and heading off. The stranger adds his small sack of flour to a growing pile at his feet, and leans back against the fence, no doubt waiting for another fight to break out. “I can do that job!” I exclaim.
“You?”
“Certainly! I always know when people are fibbing.” I do not tell her that since I have some practice with lying, I am an excellent candidate to catch someone else doing it.
Clarissa throws her head back and laughs. “Beauty, you never know when I am fibbing.”
“Yes, I do. Like the other day, when you told me I had a turnip in my hair, I knew you were only jesting.”
She laughs again. “No. A turnip really had taken up residence in those curly locks of yours.”
“What?” I reach back to feel the top of my hair. I do not feel any vegetables.
“It fell out the next day as you ran to greet Papa when he came home from his latest trip. Truly, sister. You need to comb your hair more often. If you like, I can comb it before bed as I do my own.”
I sniff. “No, thank you. I am quite capable of combing my own hair.”
“Then why not do it?”
I shrug. “I simply forget.”
She rolls her eyes. We pick up our pace as the sun sinks lower in the sky. The road soon veers away from the stream and toward the forest, thick with trees and the sounds of unfamiliar wildlife. I get a chill, although it is a warm day. By the time we reach the wooden cottage with the thatched roof and the tiny windows, we have walked an hour and not seen a single person.
“This is it,” Clarissa says, stopping on the overgrown brick path that leads to the front door. “Right where Papa said it would be.”
“Do you have the key?” I ask. A glance at the rusted old door handle tells me we will not be needing one. “Never mind.” I step forward to reach for it. But before I can grab the handle, the door swings open to reveal the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Long black hair straight as a sheet on the dry line, eyes the color of the green sea glass I once found along the riverbed, skin like the finest caramel. And I am not prone to sentiment.
Clarissa and I stumble back in surprise. Papa said nothing about a beautiful woman coming with the house. To my further surprise, Clarissa reaches out to touch the woman’s arm. “Mother?”
Upon the queen’s orders, the entrance to the tower room has been nailed shut until further notice. My bagpipes are locked inside, along with my astrolabe (which I use to chart the planets) and my collection of dried plums that look like various members of the royal court. I would be quite irked at this, were I not focused so keenly on a more pressing problem. Instead of transcribing the five rules of knightly behavior as instructed by Master Cedrick, I have used my last piece of vellum to come up with five compelling reasons why the royal caravan should leave me behind when they set out for the Harvest Ball tomorrow at a kingdom so distant we shall be forced to spend the night.
My feet remain quite swollen from the dance last night and will not fit in my dress shoes. I shall be forced to wear my slippers, and everyone will whisper about the queen who let her son wear slippers to a ball.
While admittedly unlikely, what if all the girls take one look at me and are so overcome by my dashing good looks that they no longer want to dance with Alexander? I should not want to damage his self-esteem in any way. He may give off an air of confidence (some may even say overconfidence), but inside he is quite fragile.
I have an exam next week on the proper way to storm a castle. If I am forced to go to the ball, I may turn on my family and storm THIS castle while you are all dancing without a care in the world.
I do not travel well in the back of the royal coach on bumpy roads. The journey to the Harvest Ball is nearly a full day. I shall complain bitterly the entire journey.
My experiments are at a very sensitive stage. If I leave, weeks of work shall be for naught. Plus, I ask for very little.
I wait until the stewards have whisked away our plates from supper before reciting my list. Mother listens, her hands folded in her lap in that queenly way of hers that is supposed to indicate a gentle, patient nature but fools no one. When I have finished, Alexander sprays the table with the mouthful of cider he had been about to swallow. “I am not fragile. Neither inside, nor out!”
“Not so, son,” Father says, leaning back in his seat. “You helped me care for that wounded falcon, and when it did not survive, you wept.”
“I was three years old!” Alexander cries.
“Nevertheless,” Father says, calmly picking gristle from his teeth with the tip of his knife. “Your brother has a point.”
Alexander lays his head upon the table in frustration.
“Thank you for your support, Father,” I tell him. “I can always count on you to be the voice of reason in this family.”
Alexander begins dramatically banging his head against the solid oak table. He would never say it aloud, but I know he does not approve of Father’s non-kingly gentle nature. Or his fondness for good-natured trickery. Or his inability to sit still during a meeting with his lords and barons for more than a moment without glancing longingly toward an open window.
Sure, Father sits on the largest throne in the castle and wields the largest scepter. And whenever he gives an order in his deep, measured voice, all his subjects scurry to obey. And, of course, it is his family’s crest that our knights display proudly on their shields. Bu
t everyone knows Mother is the true ruler of our kingdom. And that is the way they both prefer it.
“Alexander!” Mother raps him atop his head with the closest object within her reach (a wooden spoon). “Stop that banging before you break your forehead, or our table, or both.” To me, she says, “You are going to the Harvest Ball, and that is my final word.”
“But, Mother, what of my reasons? Are they not most worthy?”
She sighs deeply, a noise I am all too familiar with. She taps my list, now wet from Alexander’s cider. “First, instruct Godfrey to soak your feet in honey and primrose oil and they will heal overnight.” She glances down at my list again. “Second, while both my sons are equally deserving of attention, neither your brother’s reputation, nor his ego, will be at risk should you dance with girls. Third, your exam can wait. Knowing your tutor, he is likely off wandering the fields, deep in thought about why the sky is blue, and will not even notice your absence. In addition, you have never showed the slightest inclination toward the knighthood, so I do not think we need fear you storming our own castle. Fourth, you can chew ginger root if your stomach ails you on the journey. And last, if you do not ask for much, how is it that we had to build an extra room upstairs for your laboratory, filled, at last glance, with a dozen bottles and beakers and beeswax candles, pots and bowls and all manner of jars and tools and flasks, which, as far as I can tell, have been useless but for bleeding dry our kingdom’s funds?”
“And the smells,” Alexander adds, rubbing his forehead where a small bump has indeed formed. “Sometimes I am not sure which emits an odor more foul — the butcher shop in town, or Riley’s laboratory.”
Father begins to laugh, but ceases when I glare across the table at him.
Other than when I am looking up at the heavens, I am happiest in my laboratory, grinding minerals, mixing potions, and aiming to understand how air, fire, water, and earth can create all that we see around us. Even Master Cedrick does not understand as well as I the nature of plants and base metals, and it is he who introduced me to the misunderstood art of alchemy in the first place. I am aware Mother only allows my experiments to carry on because it keeps me busy. The second son of a king has very few responsibilities, and a bored prince is a troublesome prince. Or so the saying goes. When I am grown-up, my hobby will no longer be tolerated.
“Forgive me, son,” Father says, holding up his goblet of wine and turning it back and forth in his large hand. “If you turned this into gold for me, I should laugh no more.”
At that, everyone (except me) begins to laugh. Even the kitchen girls sweeping the remnants of our roast quail from the floor are tittering. No matter how many times I insist that my goal is not that of the ordinary alchemist, my family insists on taunting me. They do not understand that my aim is much grander, much nobler, than turning lead (or wine, or anything else) into gold. I intend to find the secret to everlasting life.
My chair scrapes against the stone floor as I push it back and get to my feet. “Laugh now, beloved family. For when I am celebrated throughout the seven kingdoms for my great discoveries, you shall laugh no more.”
Alexander raises his mug to me. “I shall look forward to that day, dear brother.”
I turn on my heel and stomp upstairs. Even though my shoes have little effect on the hard stone stairs, the act of stomping makes me feel better. My chamberlain Godfrey is waiting inside my chambers, pouring honey into a large bowl of smelly oils and ground-up tea leaves. A trunk is laid out upon the bed, my traveling clothes and boots beside it. Godfrey does not waste any time. He is completely blind in one eye and mostly blind in the other, but he makes up for his lack of sight with an unearthly sense of hearing. He can hear the seamstress drop a pin from down the hall, and the fluttering of the falcons’ wings all the way from the mews on the other side of the castle. Hearing my mother’s words through the thick stone floor taxes him not at all.
I slip off my shoes with a grimace (for my feet well and truly ache) and point to the bowl. “That looks like my old chamber pot.”
Godfrey nods. “I assure you, young prince, it has been well washed.”
“There is nothing else we could use for this task?”
Godfrey shakes his head.
I try not to focus on the bowl’s previous life as I slip my feet into the murky water. Godfrey adds more honey and I have to admit, the feel of it sliding between my toes is not entirely unpleasant.
“As you recall,” he says as he sprinkles a few more tea leaves on top, “the Harvest Ball is where your parents met for the first time.”
I groan. “How could I forget? I hear the story all the time. Father was hiding under the table with the gilded goose, and when he jumped out with it everyone shrieked except for Mother.”
“It was love at first sight,” Godfrey says with a sigh. He dabs at his eyes and I roll mine. Honestly, it is easy to see why Father is so sensitive. Godfrey was his chamberlain for nearly twenty-five years, more like a second father than a servant. His kind and gentle manner clearly rubbed off on Father.
I lift my feet from the sludge. “The last thing I am interested in is falling in love.” I shudder involuntarily. “I would rather drink the contents of this bowl.”
Godfrey pats my feet dry with the towel. “That will not be necessary. One day you shall change your mind about love.”
“Do not hold your breath, my faithful and trusted companion.”
Once I have been dried and dressed in my nightclothes, I send Godfrey to his chamber for the evening and retreat to my lab. Master Cedrick had taught me that to practice the ancient art of alchemy, one must be clear of mind and spirit. Dances and love fade from my mind as I take in the shelves of beakers and bottles, the small furnace that I am only allowed to use under supervision because of one tiny incident involving some scorched nose hairs (Father’s, not mine), and the notebooks where I carefully record the results of my experiments. In the corner of the room lies the pallet of hay where I sometimes rest if the night grows long. I am pleased to see that next to the pallet is a large box of mineral samples that I ordered from the apothecary shop. One of the new pages must have brought the crate up while my family and I were dining. I have not gotten to know the pages by name yet, and in truth, I probably will not. Although usually of noble descent, they are taught to bow their heads when addressing us. How am I supposed to tell them apart by the tops of their heads?
Most nights, my first task would be to stand before the room’s one small window to measure the movement of the planets. But since my trusty astrolabe remains locked in the tower, I turn to the new box instead. I am convinced the secret to everlasting life is to be found somewhere in the combination of ingredients that I already possess, along with something I have yet to obtain. This confidence is due to the fact that I have successfully kept a small river worm alive for a month longer than its natural life expectancy. I figure a little dash of this, a dropperful of that, and the next worm may live to see a hundred. The key is figuring out what the this and the that actually are.
I reach for one of my sturdiest long-necked spoons and use it to pry open the wooden slats on top of the crate. I expect to find ingredients ranging from copper and zinc to gobo root and crushed dung beetles. Instead, only three small glass bottles lay nestled in a bed of dried hay. Each dark green bottle is labeled in a fine handwriting, although in a language with which I am not familiar. I could ask Alexander, but I am still annoyed at him.
I sift through the box to make sure nothing is hidden below, then sit back and tuck my slippered feet beneath me to ponder. My first inclination is to pack the crate back up and return it right away. For whoever got my order must be feeling the same disappointment.
But then I glance over at the tray full of worms that sits atop my workbench (some alive, some not so much) and a thought occurs to me. My longest-living worm was the result of an unexpected happenstance. I had thought I was mixing crushed milkweed into the elixir. It turned out I had labeled the bottles incorre
ctly and had added milk thistle instead. Had I actually used milkweed, the worm would not have lived to see another sunrise. Perhaps some power greater than myself has guided the hand of fate and allowed this package to come my way. Might these ingredients be exactly what I have been looking for?
I lift out the bottles, careful to hold them upright so nothing seeps from the wooden stoppers, and set them gently upon the workbench. I pull my best iron pot from the cabinet, determined not to squander what fate has delivered by using inferior equipment.
With the help of a pair of wooden tongs, I pull out the stopper of the first bottle to reveal a gray powder ground more finely than any I have seen before. The other two are the same, only one is white as snow, one a coal black. I am accustomed to spending hours chopping and grinding my ingredients before they are fine enough to blend into an elixir or a paste. But now my job has been done for me!
I grab my measuring cup from its hook on the wall, only to find that I had forgotten to clean it after my last experiment. Master Cedrick has told me time and again that if the equipment is tainted with other ingredients, you can never be certain of your formula. I would wash it now, but I am banned from cleaning my tools within the castle walls merely because one time Mother got a rash after I rinsed out a bowl of crushed ivy in her bathtub. How was I to know she would be so sensitive to the three-leafed plant?
It is too dark to clean it in the moat, so I resign myself to making a smaller mixture using a spoon instead. I carefully top off each spoonful and mix the three ingredients into the pot. I then add a few drops of water and some grape-seed oil to thicken, then pluck a worm from the tray. After five minutes of squirming around in the watery paste, it stops moving. Hmm. That is not good. Perhaps the mixture is too strong. Heating it would lessen its strength, but I am not supposed to use the furnace without Godfrey overseeing it. It is much too late to bother him, though, and after all, he cannot truly oversee much in his condition.