by Tia Nevitt
“I, um, followed Lars when he went to the river, and I—” Gretchen gulped,”—I spied on him while he bathed.”
Ange stared at her with her mouth wide open. “Why would you do such a thing?” she whispered.
“I don’t know!” Gretchen whispered back. “I was in the middle of it before I knew what I was doing. Dieter almost caught me!”
“You’d have been thrown out!”
“I know!” She grabbed her temples. “I don’t know what came over me. It was like an...an overwhelming curiosity.”
Ange just started at her for a moment. “Well?”
“Well what?”
“What did you see?”
Gretchen blinked at her. “What did I see?”
“Yes! What did you see?”
“Everything! That’s what I saw!” She waved her hand toward the window. “The sun wasn’t finished setting, and moonlight out there is quite bright.”
Ange continued to gape at her. “You little hussy!”
Gretchen threw herself down on the pillow and moaned into it. “I know. I’m such a tart.”
Ange began to laugh. “So what did he look like?”
She paused for a moment. Then she lifted her head and said, “He was like one of the immortal Nibelung, arising out of the depths of the earth through a passage in the river after adding to his hoard of gold.”
Ange laughed again. “Nibelung! But weren’t they monsters?”
Gretchen looked at her askance. “Not to a dwarf maiden. They were the heroes of the story, challenging the gods. They even won, after a fashion.”
“But surely they were evil?”
“No. Misunderstood, only. Besides, was it not their gold? Weren’t the supposed heroes of the legends actually the thieves?”
Ange laughed. “I suppose they were.”
Gretchen sighed. “I used to love the stories of the Nibelung.”
Ange grinned. “And now, you might have one of your very own.”
Gretchen dove under her pillow.
* * *
After Lars finished eating, he went into the bunkhouse to find Gunther pacing down the narrow aisle between the bunks, Klaus whittling without looking at what he was doing, and Rudolph lying in his bunk with his hands under his head, as unmoving as a rock.
Gunther and Klaus looked up when Lars walked in; Rudolph did not move.
“I have news,” Gunther said. “I am now the head farmhand.”
“Good,” Lars said. “We could use a supervisor.”
Gunther looked pleased. “I’m glad you approve.”
Rudolph suddenly flipped off his bed. “Already working to get in the big man’s favor, Lars?”
“He doesn’t have to work at it,” Gunther said. “He already has it.”
“While I’m on probation. Where have you been?” he asked, catching Lars off guard with the unexpected question.
“I’ve been, er, out for a walk.”
“With Gretchen?”
Lars frowned. “It’s not proper to be so familiar with her name.”
He grinned lecherously. “But I bet you’re familiar with her name. Did you nail her?”
“Rudolph!” Gunther barked.
Rudolph just grinned. Lars went to his bunk without a word and pulled off his shirt.
Rudolph laughed. “I bet it’s so comical when you dwarfs do it. I can just see your tiny little arms and legs—”
Gunther threw open the door. “Out! Now!”
“You can’t throw me out, old man.”
Lars threw his shirt down and charged Rudolph, putting his shoulder into the bigger man’s ribs. Since Rudolph had been looking at Gunther, down he went. The three of them pulled Rudolph out of the bunkroom.
“Sleep in a stall tonight!” Gunther yelled before slamming and barring the door.
* * *
Ange left the next morning as the sun began to pink the sky.
Gretchen frowned in worry. “If you think your stepmother is poisoning you, then maybe you ought to just stay here.”
“No. I’ve been gone long enough. I need to go back. I’ll stay in the kitchens, she’ll never look for me there.” She looked down at her dress, which had been humble to begin with but was now considerably worse for the wear.
“What about your foot?”
“It’s much better.” She embraced Gretchen. “If you stay here, I know we’ll see each other again.”
Gretchen nodded.
Ange pulled away slightly, narrowed her eyes at Gretchen and whispered, “And make sure you behave.”
“Stop it!” Gretchen whispered. “You’ll make me blush again!”
“You’d deserve it!”
“I’m so glad to see you two have become friends,” Marta said. “I think it’s just what you both needed.”
Ange turned to Marta and embraced her as well. “Thank you, Frau Marta. For everything.”
Dieter led a dappled white mare out of a stall. “Edelweiss will take you into town,” he said. “Just slap her on the rump when you’re ready to send her back and she’ll find her way home.”
She nodded, accepted Dieter’s assistance onto the mare, and Gretchen watched as she rode into the woods.
Chapter Eight
Two weeks later.
Richard found a nook between the mews and the henhouse and watched the morning activity, as had been his routine. A girl came to retrieve eggs from the henhouse. A boy flung slop to the pigs. An old woman began to churn butter. Grooms trooped over to the stable. And soon the pretty scullery maid—her name was Ange—would come to fetch water.
For the past two weeks, when Richard had not been scribing and forging, he had wandered the city and the castle, learning things. He discovered another way to thwart the queen. If he learned of enough things that would interest her, he was able to pick and choose among them, and present as the answer that which was the least damaging. Fortunately, the queen had not yet caught on.
During his stay, a new tax was announced. He had already been paying a lodging tax and he had been buying his meals from the tanner in order to avoid the tax on prepared meals. Now that it was spring, there was a new tax on the sale of flowers. Ordinarily, people might have brightened their lives with the purchase of a few posies from the flower children that crowded all the streets every spring. Now the flower children were nowhere to be seen, and windows were bare unless the owners grew their flowers themselves.
The kitchen door opened and Richard shrank farther back between the two buildings. He was beginning to find Ange a little too pretty, and she would be better off if he no longer had any contact with her. The previous evening, they had an unexpected conversation.
He had been enjoying a drink of cool water from the well when, as usual, she came out with two buckets. She seemed pleased to see him.
“I’m beginning to think you wait for me here each evening, Herr Richard.”
He smiled as he pulled up a bucket of water. “Maybe I do.”
She started to return his smile, but she caught sight of something beyond him that turned it into a frown. He turned. In an adjacent courtyard, a young girl was being placed into a set of foot stocks.
“It must be another flower girl,” he said.
“She looks about fourteen.”
“If that.” He filled up the other bucket.
She looked angry. More than angry, she looked outraged. “I will put a stop to this. Somehow.”
He looked at her in surprise. “You?” he asked.
She met his gaze. “Me,” she said. And she took the buckets and returned to the kitchen.
He had remained near the flower girl, glowering at any would-be heckler, until the guards released her when the church bells chimed ten o’clock.
Now he waited until he heard the sound of water being poured twice as she filled her water pails, and then the clop-clop of her wooden shoes as she walked away. He peeked out just in time to see her ragged skirt and a trim ankle disappear behind the kitchen door. And then he breathed a sigh of relief and continued to watch the morning’s doings.
He was about to leave when a troop of grooms brought out a line of saddled horses. He frowned. Something new was going to happen. He settled back down to watch. When a mobile pavilion was brought out, he realized that they were preparing for a procession.
He waited as the procession became more and more lavish. A line of guards, all gorgeously outfitted in red-and-gold uniforms, spears perched precisely on their shoulders, lined a thoroughfare. Ladies in waiting, each in a pastel morning gown, clustered at the end of the line. Children with baskets of red flowers stood at the other end. He wondered if the new flower tax had to be paid upon the sale of flowers to royalty.
Then a litter appeared, and he saw her. The queen from the magic mirror. The woman he once knew as Sybelle. The woman he had trod the length and breadth of Europe both to find and to avoid.
He backed farther into the crevice. For a moment he stared. Although he faced her twice a day, seeing her in person filled him with terror. She had ensnared him so easily the last time, and he was ensnared still. One kiss had doomed him, it seemed, forever. He had only compounded the sin when he had let her seduce him.
Her platinum hair seemed brighter than the golden crown that encircled it. She wore a tight-bodiced gown that made her seem so delicate that the winds could bear her litter. Instead, the litter was carried by four men, matched in height and skin tone and dressed only in billowing red trousers. They carried her under the pavilion and as she passed under it, four more shirtless men lifted it and carried it along with her. The children began to strew her path with flowers, and the ladies-in-waiting trailed along after her.
Richard joined the end of the throng from the castle as they followed the queen through town. A surprising number of people crowded the streets. As Richard peered into alleys, he noticed even more people, a ragged populace that came out only after she had passed by and who stared after her sullenly. Some of them darted out to pick up flowers.
They seemed to be waiting for something. Something other than the queen.
He edged up next to an old man—a beggar from the looks of him—and pressed two pfennigs into his outstretched hand. “Please, good sir—what are you waiting for?”
“The Tattered Princess,” he said. “She’ll come this way soon, with largesse.”
“It’s not much, God bless her,” another man said. “And the queen would have her whipped if she caught her. But she does it to— Look! Here she is!”
Richard looked back the way he had come. A young woman with a tattered hooded cloak darted among the people, pressing something into each of their outstretched hands. Richard was amazed that no one accosted her, even though she must have carried a fortune. He backed away when she came near; he had no need for her pfennigs. But he caught a glimpse of her face and for a brief moment, their eyes met.
The girl from the kitchens. Ange.
As he stared at her, he remembered. The nation-states of Germania were small, numerous and quarrelsome, but they tended to intermarry. Shortly before the curse of the mirror passed to him, at one such marriage, he had met Angelika of Weissland. That ugly, skinny girl bore little resemblance to the lovely creature who glided past him now.
No wonder she had been so outraged.
Astonished, he followed her. He watched as she zigzagged across the street, her feet bare, a basket on her arm, her head down, utterly blending in whenever a guard happened to look back. And the people around her were silent, fully taking part in her conspiracy. All eyes were on her, but her eyes were on the ground, or upon the person to whom she gave largess.
And the people loved her. Whatever her royal upbringing, she obviously suffered alongside them.
When he had been a prince, he had never done anything like this, and he would not have been in any danger of any punishment if he had chosen to do so. His princely days had been spent in indulgence, idleness and arrogance of his lessers. He grunted. That he still thought of these people as his lessers proved that he had learned nothing. Like the queen, whenever he had trod beyond the castle walls he had kept to the wide avenues, and he had seen nothing of poverty until the curse had forced him to flee that life.
The queen made a circuit of the city, with the Tattered Princess coming along behind, giving the people an idea of what true royalty should be.
* * *
That evening, at sundown, Richard was back at the castle. As he strode through the gates, the guards, who had ignored him before, now gave him a smart salute. He was wearing the princely garments he had saved all this time, having today spent his savings from his scrivening to purchase boots, a cloak, a cap and a bath.
His eventual goal was to find the mirror. If he could destroy it, he would put an end to the curse. But first, he had to find the girl from the well—who he knew as Ange, but who was now revealed as the Tattered Princess—to warn her that he would soon be compelled to betray her. He returned to the kitchen garden and waited while the sun disappeared beyond the rooftops of the town.
Soon enough, she emerged, again with the two buckets. She moved with a rare grace. He hurried to meet her.
“Pardon me! Fräulein!”
The girl turned and her brows lifted at his change in appearance. “Sir?”
As her eyes met his, the color struck him. They were the palest blue he had ever seen, like the snow in shadow.
“May I help you with those?” he asked.
“It’s really not necessary, sir.”
“Please let me. I want to...ask you something as we walk to the well.”
She watched him for a moment. “Very well.” She put down the buckets. He picked them up and moved out the garden gates. She followed him through and then walked beside him. He pursed his lips and wondered how to bring up something as preposterous as a magic mirror.
“Tell me,” he said. “Does the queen—I heard she has a certain mirror...?”
“Of course. The magic mirror. It’s her greatest possession.”
He was relieved. At least he didn’t have to sound like a madman. “And have you...have you seen it talk?”
“Yes. Many times. It only speaks the truth, according to lore.”
It was strange, hearing himself spoke of as an it, and as lore.
“Where does she keep it?”
“In the throne room.”
He’d assumed it was in her boudoir. He stopped at the well, thinking as he first filled one bucket and then the other.
“Why do you ask about the mirror, sir?”
“I...I’m afraid I’ve put you in great danger.”
A frown puckered her brow. “What danger?”
He turned and looked at her. “Because I am the—”
And the world disappeared. A face swam before him.
“Good evening, slave of the mirror.”
Richard felt no compulsion to respond.
�
��Tell me, what were the mutterings in the alley about as I passed through the city?”
“The...the princess...” He tried to stop himself from speaking.
The face before him frowned. “The princess? What about the princess?”
Aah! A nonspecific question. He was relieved, but beyond the queen’s face, he could see the princess’s eyes grow wide with alarm.
He tried to phrase it in the least damaging way possible. “The Tattered Princess. She has the love of the people.”
The queen frowned. “You must mean Angelika. Why are the people talking about her?”
In front of him, he could barely see the face of the girl who was still with him by the well. Her eyes were wide as he struggled to control his words. He met her snow-shadow eyes as he realized that there were several truths available to him. One gave him such a jolt of surprise that he was betrayed into speaking.
“Because she is now the fairest one of all.”
The queen’s eyes narrowed. Through the ghostly image of her face, he could see the girl. Her hands flew to her cheeks. Richard’s eyes fixed upon hers.
“Angelika!” the queen whispered. And she vanished.
Richard collapsed, almost toppling into the well. The girl—Angelika—pulled him back. He looked up at her. Her blue eyes were round. “Angelika?” he asked.
She looked up at him with a slight frown. “You...you are the voice in the magic mirror?”
“Yes, to my sorrow.”
She frowned as she looked up at him. “I remember you,” she said. “You are Prince Richard, from Schwarzberg.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “I promised myself that if I ever saw you again, I’d slap you.”
“Slap me?” His cheeks burned as he recalled the reason he deserved a slap. The young men at the wedding had wagered on who could kiss the most girls before the end of the trip. As he recalled, he had enticed kisses out of Angelika and a half dozen other girls before giving up the wager to spend the rest of the trip chasing after a Bohemian princess.
But then, her brows shot up. “They call you the Lost Prince now.”
