“You didn’t name her, did you?”
“What? No! They warned me not to!”
She breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. That’s the last thing we need.” Then, she turned on her heel and marched further into the chapter house to retrieve her horse.
Duncan watched her in confusion, but realized when she returned with the creature that she meant to leave. “Wait,” he began.
“I don’t care what you do, Goldilocks. It’s none of my concern. I would prefer that you keep away from me and my family, though.”
She might have made quite a grand exit then, but before she could get through the door, Wildfire moved to block her path. Alberta stopped short, then changed directions to exit through the second arch. Wildfire quickly blocked this attempt as well.
“Would you please get your talking horse out of my way?” she asked caustically.
Duncan realized the cause of Wildfire’s intervention. “Some of those servants were on foot. It’s not safe for you to head back to the castle yet, not for another half an hour, maybe more if they linger with one another to talk. You want them all safely returned to their assigned work before you make your return, don’t you?”
She glared venomously at him.
“He’s quite stubborn when he wants to be,” said Duncan, though. “You might as well settle in to wait.”
“I don’t want anything to do with you,” she replied bluntly. “I don’t want anything to do with anything magic. Besides that, I have vengeance to plot against a group of insubordinate servants, and I can’t very well do that effectively here!”
Duncan scoffed. “You wouldn’t have so many insubordinate servants if you’d treat them better. It’s almost as though you’re trying to make enemies.”
“I am trying!” she retorted fiercely.
Her fervor on that point left him quite speechless. “Wh-why?” he asked when he had finally regained his wits.
Alberta looked away then, to the ceiling, to the corner, anywhere but at the person in front of her. She seemed very small and very lost in that moment. “For Julian,” she said at last.
Wildfire started, as though the sound of her voice had caught him by surprise.
“Who?” asked Duncan in confusion. In his time at the castle, he had never heard of anyone called Julian.
“Prince Julian of Delamore. It’s a principality just to the east of here. He broke my sister’s heart five years ago. I don’t expect you to understand,” she added, and she made another attempt to slip past the white horse. Wildfire planted himself stubbornly in her way.
“You could at least try to explain,” Duncan said, reproachful of her continued standoffishness. “I mean, if he broke your sister’s heart, why would you do anything for him?”
She laughed then, a bitter sound. “Why indeed? I suppose I thought if I could fix something like that, I could fix the curse that plagues us all. You do know that the crown of Meridiana is cursed, don’t you, Goldilocks?”
He shook his head. He’d never heard such a thing.
“Oh, I assure you we are. It all started with a fairy, too. My grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather was foolish enough to name her, and she’s done nothing but exact her revenge upon our family ever since.”
“What did he name her?” Duncan asked with growing curiosity. It must have been a terrible name for the fairy to exercise her revenge across so many generations.
Alberta’s answer sent a chill of horror down his spine: “He called her Groach. And then he abandoned her to marry a fish-turned-human.”
Chapter 18
Duncan surged forward in desperation. “You have to tell me the story! Dame Groach was once a fairy? She wants revenge against your family?”
Princess Alberta recoiled. “What do you know of Dame Groach?”
He pulled at his hair. “Where do you think I got this? She wants my head on a platter—she’s been sending treasure-hunters into Meridiana for the last two years trying to catch me!”
“Well she certainly can’t come herself,” said Alberta. “Not until the end of the summer, at least.”
Duncan’s heart seized up in his chest and his face went ashen. “What do you mean?”
“She was banned from Meridiana for a hundred years, so the stories say, but the time is up in another two months, maybe less.”
He was almost beside himself. “Tell me, please!”
Her sharp eyes bore into him like knives. “I suppose,” she said reluctantly, “that there’s no harm in telling the tale. Since your horse refuses to get out of the way, I might as well amuse myself by relaying a bit of family history. My grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather was a fool,” she began caustically, “a very handsome fool, but a fool nonetheless.”
Duncan thought this was a harsh way to describe a relative she couldn’t possibly have known in person, but he held his peace to hear her tale.
“In his youth, he had a fascination with all things magical: fairies, witches, shape-shifters, and whatever other creatures he heard of. Somehow, he encountered a fairy—probably was out looking for one—and he decided to give it a name. You know why you can’t name a fairy, right, Goldilocks?”
He scowled at her, annoyed by that nickname. “It creates some sort of charm, they told me,” he said.
“It gives the fairy a human form and human feelings. It makes them go crazy, especially if things don’t go the way they want. Most of them become the wicked witches of fairy tales you’ve no doubt heard. Dame Groach was no different—she let my grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather name her, expecting that he would marry her and let her live like a human. Instead, he toyed with her like a plaything, and then married a girl he found washed up on the seashore. She had been a mermaid who fell in love with him at first sight and bargained with a witch to become human. He decided he preferred her looks to Dame Groach’s and married her without hesitation.
“Thus scorned, Dame Groach swore she would have her revenge upon him and his posterity until they dwindled into nothing. She turned his only son into a hideous beast cursed to live alone unless someone could love him. Amazingly, my grandfather’s grandfather’s mother came along and broke the spell. Their son, my grandfather’s grandfather, fell right into Dame Groach’s hands, though. Somehow she acquired a little girl that she kept locked in a tower. She charmed the girl’s hair to grow long—”
“I’ve heard that story,” Duncan interrupted in wonder. He thought he’d probably seen the tower as well, tucked away in the very back of Dame Groach’s gardens. “It ends well, doesn’t it?”
“Ends well?” Alberta asked archly. “Would you fancy spending the rest of your life with an idiot for a wife? My great-great-grandmother was pretty enough to look at, but Dame Groach had raised her to be stupid, kept her in that tower with nothing to do but stare out the window. From what I’ve heard, she couldn’t carry on an intelligent conversation to save her soul. My grandfather’s grandfather was a laughingstock. He spent the rest of his life trying to keep her from making an idiot out of both of them at every state function, and of course he grew to despise her because of it. Ends well, indeed.”
“I knew ‘happily ever after’ was a load of rubbish,” Duncan muttered with a scowl. “So what happened next?”
“They had a daughter, an only child. Dame Groach cursed her to prick her finger on a spinning wheel and sleep for a hundred years.”
“Did she?” he asked with bated breath. He’d heard that story as well, but his mother had told several variations of it.
A grim smile twisted across the princess’s face. “No. She slept for probably a week at most, until the man she was in love with arrived and kissed her to break the curse. It rebounded against Dame Groach, then, and exiled her from the kingdom for the same period as my great-grandmother’s slumber should have lasted. That was a hundred years ago at the end of this summer. In that time, Dame Groach has moved away from using any sort of curse that can be broken with love, as you might imagine.”<
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The pieces of the puzzle were starting to fit together. “But if she’s been exiled all this time,” Duncan said, “surely your family has been safe, haven’t they?”
Alberta scoffed. “Hardly. She’s been exiled from Meridiana according to its borders a hundred years ago. We’ve made plenty of alliances since then that have added to those borders, though. My grandfather married a princess from a neighboring principality that lay beyond the boundary of exile. Of course the wedding had to take place there, and Dame Groach ruined it. She turned him into a fox on the wedding day and banished his bride into the forest. Happenstance reunited them and saved them both, but you can be sure they both made certain never to leave Meridiana proper again.”
“The fox turned human again?” Duncan asked, thinking of Wildfire’s predicament. “How?”
Alberta waved one hand dismissively. “A good fairy—an unnamed one who was wise enough to know she didn’t need a name and benevolent enough to correct the delinquent behavior of one of her own kind—had given a ring of protection to my grandfather’s parents. It had power enough to reverse Dame Groach’s spell.”
“What about your father?” asked Duncan curiously. “Was he cursed as well?”
“He was tricked into marrying a magicked commoner. My mother came from a principality beyond Meridiana and should’ve had nothing to do with my father when it came time for him to choose a bride. Her stepmother was a Meridian noble, though, and received invitations to the parties here in Midd. Dame Groach pretended to be a benevolent fairy and always equipped my mother out nicely so she could come as well, but with odd restrictions: clothes that vanished at midnight but shoes that remained and that sort of thing. I supposed it amused her to promote such an unbalanced marriage, and to taint the noble bloodline a little further.
“You needn’t look at me like that,” she added upon seeing the furrow between Duncan’s brows. “I don’t hate my mother for being a commoner. She told me herself that she more often than not regretted marrying into a royal family. Her life after she married my father was difficult—nobles always looking down on her, sneering at her behind her back and sometimes right to her face. My grandparents were snobs when it came to such things. Mother spent most of her time trying to catch up on all of the education and etiquette she lacked coming into the marriage, and she was quite miserable for it, which made my father miserable alongside her. She pled with all three of her daughters—Mae, Bella, and me—to marry our equals, not to consign ourselves to a lifetime of struggles for a fleeting infatuation. Which is why, you illiterate commoner with the cursed golden hair,” she concluded, “if you make any overtures whatsoever toward either of my sisters, I’ll have you disemboweled.”
She spoke this threat with such deadly calm that Duncan had no question she would follow through on it.
“You don’t have to worry about me,” he told her plainly. “Since I’ve been discovered, I’ll move on somewhere else. You’ll never see me again.”
Wildfire loudly snorted at this. Both Duncan and Alberta looked his way, startled, and he glared.
“That horse of yours seems almost intelligent,” Alberta remarked with a curious frown.
“He’s a regular pain,” Duncan retorted. He glowered back at the animal. “What, are you really trying to tell me we’re staying here, even after she’s found out who I am? You’re the one who said Goldmayne had to be a secret!” He knew that Princess Alberta was looking at him like he was crazy. He spared her a glance to confirm this, but then fixed his attention back upon Wildfire.
The white horse said nothing—of course, Duncan thought bitterly—but simply continued to stare, angrily, so it seemed.
“Fine,” Duncan cried, and he threw his hands up in the air in resignation. “You always decide what we do anyway!”
Princess Alberta edged away from him, as though hearing voices in the head was a contagious disease or something. “Is he going to let me go yet?” she asked. “You’ve kept me here plenty long enough, you know.”
Duncan looked to Wildfire, who looked back. Reluctantly the horse stepped out of the way.
“I’ll keep your secret, Goldilocks,” she said as she passed into the cloister. His heart sank when she added, “For a price.”
He trotted after her. “What price?” he asked.
“I haven’t decided yet. I’ll let you know.” She led her horse into the nave, her quick footsteps trained upon the exit.
Duncan followed her helplessly. “You’ll keep it secret even from your sisters and father?” he asked.
“Especially from them,” said Alberta scornfully. “Mae wouldn’t care, but as for Bella, she’s so besotted with fairy tales that she’d probably be taken with you in an instant if she found out who you were. And I’d never tell Father. He’s trying to lure Sir Goldmayne out of hiding to offer him Mae’s hand in marriage—I’ll kill you if you come to claim it, do you understand? Really, my father and all these reckless schemes to marry Mae off! You’d think he’d have learned from his own family history not to tempt fate like that!”
Duncan remembered one such scheme. “Is that why you shot Tommy Taper’s goose?” he asked curiously.
Alberta turned a delicate shade of red. “Yes,” she said in a clipped voice. They were outside the abbey ruins now, and she took this opportunity to mount the chestnut mare.
“Were you really the one who shot it?” Duncan asked, suddenly suspicious. Her reaction was one of embarrassment, not righteous justification.
“Of course I shot it,” she snapped irately. “I was aiming five feet in front of it, but who knew that stupid crossbow pulled so hard to the right?” She huffed then, and Duncan inwardly questioned just how wicked she really was.
“What about Lizzie, the maid?” he asked. “Why did you blame her for what I did, even after she had helped you?”
“What business is that of yours?” she inquired, aloof.
Duncan scowled. Of course it was his business! Someone else had been dismissed because of him!
Alberta squirmed uncomfortably and admitted the truth. “Lizzie had a childhood sweetheart in her home village. They wanted to get married, but he had a mother and younger sisters to take care of in their village, and Lizzie’s parents wouldn’t allow her to quit the good job she had here to go home. She used to commiserate about it with Mae, who pretty much enjoyed having someone near her as broken-hearted as she is. It was detrimental for both of them, so I contrived a way to get rid of Lizzie. Her parents can’t very well get angry with her for incurring the wrath of someone as erratic as me. Besides that, our housekeeper gave her a glowing letter of reference, and she’s already gotten a new job with her village’s local nobility. She’s to be married soon. Everyone wins.”
“Except for you,” said Duncan with a frown.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Alberta replied in a dismissive voice.
“What about the under-gardener before me, Gilly? Was it the same thing with him?”
Her expression turned cold. “That really is none of your business,” she said. “Now I suspect that a certain scurvy-headed servant is going to be missed from his post fairly soon, if he’s not already. You’d best get back sooner rather than later. And don’t forget your wig.”
With that flippant farewell, she dug her heels into the mare’s flanks and started back toward the castle.
Duncan watched her go in a sort of stupor. “What an awful person!” he declared.
Wildfire had sidled up next to him. “You really think so?”
“Oh, now you can talk,” said Duncan sarcastically.
“Don’t be childish,” Wildfire retorted. “Just do as she says—put your wig on and let’s be on our way back to the castle as well.”
“I thought for sure you’d want to leave, now that she knows who we are!”
The horse snorted. “She doesn’t know who we are. She knows who you are, and obviously she doesn’t care as long as you don’t make eyes at her sisters. So don’t
make eyes at her sisters, Duncan.”
“I wouldn’t!” he cried, outraged.
Princess Alberta made it back to the castle safe and sound. She even reinforced Duncan’s lie that he had been gone on her errand. Gardener was most disgruntled and added more chores to his workload, but Duncan didn’t mind this.
The next day, Coachman John and Alfie the cook came down with horrific cases of dysentery. Duncan wondered how Alberta had managed to slip them such a malady. He knew there were concoctions that could have that effect, but such things would need to be administered somehow. He never doubted that she was behind it. Three more servants took violently ill the following day, and two ran off a day after that, terrified that they would fall victim as well for plotting against the royal witch. By the time Lord Briarly’s visit came at the end of the week, his little band of minions had been significantly diminished, and Princess Alberta was as present and healthy as ever.
Duncan watched with interest the advent of this man. Lord Briarly had a proud demeanor as he rode past the rows of attentive castle servants. Alberta stood boldly on the castle steps to greet him and his company, right between Bellinda and Margaret. Lord Briarly pretended to smile, but the sneer never entirely left his expression until he turned his eyes upon the youngest princess. He kissed Bella’s hands, and she happily let him. Then, he turned to introduce his noble companion to King Edwin.
“Your Majesty, it is my great honor to present to you the most worthy Prince of Austrina, Crown Prince Perceval Humphrey Charles.”
The prince moved into a formal bow before the king.
“Does that mean there are other, less-worthy princes of Austrina?” Alberta asked impertinently.
Lord Briarly bared his teeth at her. Prince Percival laughed nervously. “No,” he said. “I’m the only one.”
Alberta arched one brow, and he laughed again beneath that austere gaze. Mae shoved her elbow into her sister’s ribs.
“We welcome you to Midd, Prince Perceval,” said King Edwin with a warning glance toward his middle daughter. “We welcome your return as well, of course, Lord Briarly. Please, do come in.”
Goldmayne: A Fairy Tale Page 22
