by Tia Nevitt
Gretchen realized she was limping. “Are you hurt?”
“Yes. I turned my ankle.” She looked around at the trees. “It seems like such a lovely and friendly woods until you try to sleep in them, and a noise startled me into running. I feel silly for getting so frightened, especially considering what I ran away from, but...” She looked back at Gretchen. “Could I trouble you to help me to the farm?” A worried frown suddenly crossed her face. “That is, if you don’t have your own aches to contend with. I know Frau Marta suffers from terrible back aches.”
Gretchen’s heart thawed somewhat at her concern—and Gretchen could see that she was under more duress than a mere strained ankle. Gretchen tended to distrust beautiful women, but it would be uncivil of her to refuse help. “No, I’m fine. I can help you. Here, let me put this somewhere...” She looked around and found a thick shrub, where she hid the basket so it would be safe from a raven’s eye. “Just put your hand on my shoulder.”
She did so and they took a few steps back the way Gretchen had come. The maiden was still limping, apparently unwilling to do much more than touch Gretchen’s shoulder.
“Don’t worry—I’m strong enough,” Gretchen said. “I grew up on a farm myself.” The girl leaned on her a bit more heavily. “I’m even at a convenient height,” Gretchen added, surprising herself. “Sort of like a walking cane.”
Finally, the girl laughed. Gretchen smiled. They slowly proceeded down the road.
Gretchen said, “Why were you waking in the woods at night?”
“I...I had to run away.”
“Oh dear. Had to run?”
“Yes. You see, my stepmother and I don’t get along, so I decided to stay with my uncle, who is my father’s younger brother. But that was...Well, it was a mistake, and so I’m headed back home.”
“Stepmother! You’re that princess, aren’t you?” Gretchen stopped. “Frau Marta told me about you.”
“No, please don’t be alarmed! I am no princess—not since my father died.”
“Died? Then you must be queen?”
She snorted a short laugh. “I have no power. My stepmother has taken the throne under the excuse that I’m underage. She has some kind of hold over the council members—blackmail or the threat of taxation. Right now she’s only a regent with a title she married into, but if she gets her way, they’ll make her queen in truth and I’ll have to run away.”
Gretchen began to walk again, the girl limping along beside her. “Why go home at all? It doesn’t sound much of a home to go to.”
The princess pressed her lips together. “It’s my duty. I am still my father’s daughter and our people are suffering under her rule. And they haven’t forgotten me yet. I’ll work in the kitchens where she won’t notice me.”
Gretchen glanced sidelong at her. Not a princess indeed—after that speech! Gretchen could feel the old ugliness arise within her, the old scowl etching itself into her face again. She tried to stop it, tried to tell herself that this princess had troubles she would never wish on herself, but it didn’t help. Beautiful women, in her experience, tended to put a great deal of stock in beauty and almost always despised plain women as if their looks were a character flaw. Or, they overlooked them, thought them beneath their notice. Perhaps the princess was kind now, but she also needed Gretchen’s help—didn’t she? Gretchen asked no more questions. They made good time and soon were walking up to the farmhouse. Frau Marta came running out.
“Ange!” she exclaimed. “What on earth happened?”
Chapter Five
Marta made a great fuss over the princess. Gretchen prepared the barrel bath in silence as Marta bound her newest guest’s ankle. When Gretchen went outside for one last bucket of water from the well, the minstrel Johann stopped her, geared for travel.
“You are leaving, Herr Spielmann?”
“I thought it best to just slip out, now that Frau Marta has another guest to look after.”
“I can understand,” Gretchen said as she thought of Marta’s excessive welcome for Ange.
“Oh, no—is that jealousy I hear?”
Gretchen cut a glance at him but was surprised to find only compassion in his eyes. “Give the girl a chance,” he said. “I think you’ll find her worthy of your friendship, despite her youth.”
Gretchen’s gaze dropped to the depths of the well. “She’s not likely to want to be my friend.”
“Oh no? See seems very friendly with Frau Marta.”
Gretchen looked back up at him. He was right.
“I’ll be by in a few weeks to see how you’re coming along.”
“I’ll look forward to it,” Gretchen said.
“Auf Wiedersehen,” said the minstrel. And he turned toward the road.
Gretchen brought the bucket back into the house and emptied it into the barrel bath. Marta brought Ange in, and Gretchen slipped out to the stove to heat more water. After a few moments, Marta joined her.
“Poor thing. I’m afraid something truly bad must have happened this time.”
“She mentioned—” Gretchen gulped, “—that it was a mistake to stay with her uncle.”
“Did she?” She was silent for a moment. “Let’s hope that doesn’t mean what I think it means.”
Gretchen knew enough about the world not to have to ask what she meant.
Marta put her hand on Gretchen’s shoulder. “I think it would do her good if you could be her friend.”
Gretchen blinked at her. “Her friend? Would she want that?”
“It’s what she comes here for. I am her friend, of course, but she could use someone who is younger.”
“But she’s so beautiful. She would have no use for someone like me.”
Marta looked at her askance. “Beauty is not exactly something you can talk to, you know.”
“I know...”
“I mean, you can’t have a cup of tea with your beauty and talk about your troubles.”
“Of course not.”
“Then give the girl a chance.”
Gretchen’s mouth twitched in a wry smile. “Johann just told me the same thing.”
“He’s a wise man. Now go help her with her bath.”
And so Gretchen went behind the screen and washed Ange’s hair, pouring bucket after bucket of water over it. Ange didn’t speak other than to express her thanks, and Gretchen didn’t quite know how to begin a friendship, so they were mostly silent.
But it was a surprisingly comfortable silence.
* * *
That evening, Gretchen watched Angelika as she laughed and chatted with the men, and at one point, when she sang. The princess had a rare grace that had nothing to do with the way she moved her body. She spoke to everyone—even to Klaus, who so far had been the most silent of the farmhands. Erick was in a perpetual blush whenever she looked his way and at one point, even Gunther blushed from her attentions. Rudolph was bold enough to ask her to dance, and when she accepted she insisted on a line dance that also included both Marta and Gretchen, who danced opposite Gunther and Lars while Dieter played a flute. Ange was the one who disrupted the symmetry of the line with her height, but she didn’t seem to care.
She was not at all surprised to discover that she was to bunk with Angelika.
“We only have one room for female guests,” Marta explained.
“I’m sure it will be fine,” Gretchen said, although she wondered where they would both sleep. When Marta pulled a pallet out from under the
cot, Gretchen expected to sleep on it. To her surprise, Ange claimed it.
“No, no.” she said. “You’re boarding here, are you not? Since I’m the one begging charity, it’s only natural that I sleep on the floor.”
“You’re a guest, not begging charity.”
“Please, Fräulein. I’m used to sleeping on the floor.” She began to hustle Marta out the door. “We’ll let you have some privacy while you change. But if I come back and find you on the pallet, I warn you—” she wagged her finger, “—I’ll just pick you up and put you in your bed as if you were a child again.”
With that, she closed the door.
Gretchen was much bemused as she took off her clothes and pulled on a nightshift. When she was finished, she opened the door and peeked out. Angelika smiled and came in. When she began to undress without much modesty, Gretchen turned her back.
Ange laughed. “I can see you aren’t used to being around many women. I’ve undressed around other women all my life, from when I was a little girl. There is no privacy.” Gretchen kept her back turned anyway.
Ange sighed. “All I have to sleep in is my undershift, so it will have to do. I’ll put out the light.”
The light snuffed, replaced by moonlight from one of the high windows. Gretchen clambered into her cot.
“So tell me,” came Ange’s voice from the dark, “what brings you to this place?”
“Well,” Gretchen said, “I heard that there were others of...of my kind here, and...”
“And you’re looking for a husband?”
Gretchen was surprised into silence. “Is it that plain?”
Again came the twinkling laughter. “Yes, but I assure you that all the men here are now looking for a wife, even if they weren’t before.”
“You mean, because I’m here?”
“Yes, of course. I know these people—except for you and Lars. None of them have ever met anyone like them before they came here. You represent hope for their future. And it certainly helps that you are so attractive.”
“Attractive?” The word burst out before she could stop it.
“Don’t you realize that?”
She didn’t know what to say.
“Of course,” Ange said, “the reason you’re so lovely is probably because you have no idea.”
Gretchen gulped past a lump in her throat.
* * *
The next day, over the midday meal, Ange felt relaxed enough to tell Marta and Gretchen how she came to be limping along the forest road, on the run from her uncle.
“My uncle—he...no, I must go back further. You should also know why I went to my uncle.” She took a deep breath, held it for a moment and then let it out. “My stepmother. I should begin there.
“My mother died when I was just a child. My father remarried when I was about fourteen. My stepmother and I got along well enough, but she was, well, odd about some things. I was late in becoming a woman and was just developing my bosom when they married. But she seemed to want me to stay a little girl. She had me bind my breasts flat and continue to wear childish clothing. I hated it. We had some terrible arguments about it and even my father was mystified. When I started my menses, I didn’t dare tell her. I kept to the kitchens just to keep away from her. But when my father died last year, someone—I think it was the bishop—spoke some criticism of my appearance to her because all of a sudden she took me from the kitchens, gave me a proper room in the castle and outfitted me with more adult clothing.
“But even then, she ordered the servants to bind my breasts flat, dress me in ill-fitting clothing and to keep my hair short. I tried to fight her, to rebel against her, but I had no authority over my servants, and they were all very large women and very obedient to her.” She frowned at the memory. “Then I broke out in spots.”
Marta blinked. “Spots? But I don’t see any scars.”
“They’re more noticeable in the sunlight. I didn’t suspect anything.” She shrugged. “Young girls often break out in spots. But I developed other maladies—stomach cramps, strange rashes—and I began to wonder if the queen was poisoning me. So I decided to go visit my aunt and uncle to see if my health improved. My stepmother seemed relieved to be rid of me, and so I went about three months ago.”
She was silent for a moment as she thought how to tell the next part of her story.
“Something must have happened to make you leave,” Marta said.
She took a deep breath. “Everything was fine at first. My spots went away just as I thought they would, and the cramps eased. My uncle and aunt seemed kind. I was allowed to unbind my breasts and to take in my clothing so it fit properly. I started to feel almost normal. But...but then...”
She began to shake.
“Oh, dear.” Marta said. Her warm hands enclosed Ange’s own.
Ange took a shaky breath and continued. “My uncle. He began to behave strangely, to watch me and to touch me more than he...than he ought. Everywhere I went, it seemed, he was there—to the garden, to the library—he even lurked outside the privy. At the same time, my aunt grew cold and snappish. The servants began to shun me.
“Then one night, my uncle...he visited me in my bedchamber. He...he...” Her voice trailed away as the fresh memory came back with terrifying clarity. She recalled the door opening, her uncle using kind words at first and then more forceful as he attempted to silence her, to pin her on the bed. She was aware of Marta and Gretchen staring at her openmouthed before her, but she could not trust herself to look at their faces, to see the judgment she might find there.
To stop the memory, she forced out the words, making herself move beyond that point in the story. “I almost stopped being a maiden that night. I got away from him and I ran to my aunt for help, but that was the last thing I should have done. She called me a harlot and put me out of her house.” She swiped at a tear that smarted her eye. “I didn’t intend to encourage him—really I didn’t! I was dressed like any other young girl, and I always dressed modestly. I know he was looking at me, but I didn’t think he...I didn’t mean to—”
“Now of course you didn’t,” Marta said. Ange risked looking up at her face, where she saw only kindness and understanding.”You mustn’t blame yourself that you have a lecherous uncle.”
“But my aunt! She said the most horrible things. She—”
“Was clearly jealous,” Gretchen put in.
Ange looked at her in surprise.
“I know a little something about jealousy,” Gretchen said. “God only knows that I experience it myself. Even toward you, when I first saw you yesterday.” Ange met her eyes for a moment. She could see Gretchen swallow before continuing. “And that woman—I don’t have to know her to know this—was jealous of the attention her husband paid to you.”
It seemed impossible. “But my uncle...he tried to force me to...”
“Think about it,” Gretchen said. “I know little about the marriage bed, but I am almost thirty and I have learned a few things. And if he’s been looking at you, then you can bet that she’s been watching him as he watched you. And when he went to your bed—why, she’s probably convinced herself that you are a seductress.”
“A seductress! How could she think such a thing of me?”
“In her mind, you’re the villain, and she’s the virtuous wife.”
“But what about what her husband did?”
Gretchen waved her hand. “You don’t understand. Jealousy is an ugly feeling. When you’re experiencing it, you try to find some
way to make it feel less ugly so you are not the villain.”
“Even if you invent lies to yourself?”
“Really, that’s the only way.”
“But that’s horrible.”
Their eyes met and they had a moment of perfect understanding.
“Yes,” Gretchen said. “It is.”
Suddenly, Ange understood what the dwarf maiden would not say. She knew so much about feeling envy because she had felt it so often herself.
Then Gretchen was crying. Ange put her arms around her, tears once again stinging her own eyes. She wondered what awful pain her story had wrought in Gretchen to make her cry in such a manner. Whatever the reason, Ange could not hold back her own tears, and both of them found themselves comforted in turn by Marta.
And in those tears, a friendship sprouted.
Chapter Six
“So,” Ange said as she shifted around in her blanket, “which one do you prefer? I don’t know Lars well, and Rudolph seems a bit of a braggart.”
“Um...” Gretchen wasn’t sure how to reply.
It had been a quiet evening. When Lars and Klaus retired early, Marta shooed everyone else off to bed. However, Rudolph had lingered a half hour before Marta started dousing lights.
“Come on, talk to me,” Ange said. “Rudolph was very persistent this evening. What did you think?”
“He has been persistent, but he’s not much...like me.”
“No. Does he seem interested in you?”
Her cheeks burned. “I guess he is. But...”
“Yes?”
“I’m not sure if he means it. Do you know what I mean?”
“No.”
“Well, there were a few times, when I was younger, when a young man would peruse me, and I would later find out it was all a joke. I hate to misjudge Rudolph because he’s not like me, but...”
