by F. D. Lee
She put down her brush and wandered downstairs to see who was at the door. Simple as she was, no one could blame her for being surprised to find her liege, lord and master, his Royal Highness, King John of Llanotterly on her doorstep, flanked by a broad shouldered, hooded man, a dozen palace guards, a butler, a master of the hound and about ten beagles.
There are a number of rules that should be observed when one meets royalty, ranging from what one can say and when, to where one should stand, when one can sit, even where one should look. Sindy bobbed a nervous curtsy and, before being introduced, blurted out an invitation to come inside whilst looking John directly in the eye.
The King followed Sindy into the cottage, the hooded man behind him. Thankfully the remaining entourage waited outside.
“It’s, um, it’s an honour to meet you, Sire,” Sindy said as she showed them into the front room.
“Yes, yes, quite so, miss, uh…” The King faltered. The man in the hood leaned forward and whispered something in his ear. “Ah, yes, of course. You’re the sister.”
“Excuse me?” Sindy said, confused.
“The stepsister, what? If my Adviser here has it right,” he turned to the hooded man for confirmation, but the moment the King’s eyes landed on him he seemed to lose his temper. “Blast it, S.! Remove that damnable puggaree! It’s bad enough hiding away like that in the castle, but you’re a guest in this young lady’s hovel. Bad show, bad show.”
Sindy cast a sympathetic look at the hooded man, but he didn’t seem concerned to be shouted at by the King. He pulled his hood back, revealing himself to be quite possibility the finest-looking man Sindy had ever met, with dark blue-black hair and a golden snake coiled tightly around his neck. He smiled at her when he caught her staring at him.
“Oh, oh,” Sindy flustered, turning quickly to the King and then realising she had no idea what to say to him either. Somehow her house had been invaded by two men with whom she had no idea how to communicate.
“Um… My father’s not here,” she settled on.
“Do not fret,” said the handsome man. “It is not for your father that his Highness visits. Nothing is amiss.” His voice reminded Sindy of melted butter. She felt herself relax.
“Oh. But then why…?”
“His Highness requires-”
And then something awful happened.
“I say, is that a picture of me on the mantel?” John interrupted.
Sindy went pink. “No… Um… It’s… Um….”
It was too late. John had walked the short distance to the fireplace and was studying one of the woodcuts Ana used for her political pamphlets.
“I see,” he said.
“It’s not meant to be-”
“I think the teeth are a little unfair. My aunt paid quite the sum to get them fixed.”
Sindy gulped.
“And I’m not fat, I know that. Still, the eyes aren’t bad. And he’s caught the shape of my head.”
John turned back around to face Sindy.
“I assume this belongs to your sister? It’s Miss Ana-”
“Ms, your Royal Highness,” Sindy corrected without thinking. Her hand flew to her mouth, but it was too late.
“What’s that?”
Sindy didn’t know what to say. She looked to the other man for help, but he was making a show of looking around the room with polite curiosity.
“Er. Ms. Your Royal Majesty,” she answered, curtsying to be safe. “You see, Ana says that there’s no reason why you should get to know if she’s married if she doesn’t want you to know.”
“Why shouldn’t she want a fella to know if she’s hitched?” John asked, confused.
“Well… I think it’s just that she’d rather men were also called ‘Mrs’ too.”
“But then how would you know who you’re writing to?”
“I’m sorry?”
“When you write a letter and you haven’t met the person you’re writing to,” John tried to explain.
“But you don’t need to know if they’re married?”
“Well, maybe not. But you do need to know if it’s a lady or a fella.”
“Oh. Well, maybe instead of Mr and Mrs we could say, um, Sher and Shim?”
“Sher and Shim?” John asked, an edge of panic in his voice. “Isn’t that just the same as he and she?”
“Oh. But you could be, um, Shim John, for example. Instead of Mr.” Sindy said.
“Think I’ll stick with ‘King’.”
“Shouldn’t you be a Prince if you’re not married?”
“Prince? My father’s dead, gel. I’m King. You think I should get all my letters addressed to ‘That Fella With The Dad What’s Popped His Clogs’?”
“But that’s Ana’s point, you see.”
John blinked. He looked at Seven for help, but his Adviser had his back to them. His shoulders were shaking.
“Righto. So, is sher, she, married or not?”
“No, my Lord,” Sindy replied, “she, I mean sher, just doesn’t want you to know that.”
The only sound in the room was the wheezing sound of stifled laughter, coming from the handsome man in the corner.
“Right-ho,” John said. “She about then? Just a ‘yes’ or ‘no’, if you’d be so good.”
Sindy shook her head, hoping that the King would leave now that he knew Ana wasn’t home. But misfortune favours the hopeful, and both men failed to exit.
“D’you know when she’ll be back?” John asked, taking deliberate care over the pronoun.
Sindy looked again at the other man, who had recovered enough to nod encouragingly at her.
“No, I’m sorry. But honestly, you’re welcome to wait for her,” she said bravely. “I’m sure if she knew you were looking for her she’d be here. I’ve made some Battenberg. Would you like a slice?”
John glanced over at the Woodcut. The belly was very prominent. “No, ta.”
“Oh. Perhaps a cup of tea?”
“I’ve not travelled all this way for tea and cakes, surrounding myself with fizgigs!” John glared meaningfully at Sindy, who, happily, wasn’t all that offended as she had no idea what a fizgig was.
“My lord,” said the handsome man gently, “you decided after yesterday’s misadventure it would be wiser to try a new approach.”
Sindy stared at him. She had never heard such a wonderful voice in all her life. Somehow, it reminded her of the times she and Will had spent together. She found herself wishing they saw more of each other. But since his family died he was so busy, and, since her dad remarried, so was she.
“Right-ho, I’m off. Waste of a perfectly good morning,” the King announced, making for the door.
Sindy caught the look that swept across the other man’s face and suddenly she was offering to take a message, her voice ringing with uncertainty, her eyes fixed on the curly-haired man. He shot her a grateful smile, and for the first time in her life someone other than Will managed to make her feel she’d done something right. She smiled back at him.
John paused in the doorway. “Ah? Mmm. Yes, alright. Capital. Tell her… what was it?”
The man moved to his King’s side and muttered a few words in his ear.
“Ah yes: I’m hosting a Ball this Saturday. You’ve probably seen the posters. Fundraising, meeting and greeting various dignitaries and whatnot. Dreadful bore, but needs must. Tell her she can come in exchange for giving up this nonsense in the wood. Pretty dresses, dancing and all that rot. That ought to do the trick.”
“I’m not sure Ana really likes Balls….” Sindy said, every note in her voice saying that she was actually pretty sure, and the answer in fact was no, Ana did not like Balls one little bit.
“Course she does. All gels love a Ball. All in?”
“Pardon?”
“You get all that?”
“I think so…”
“Marvellous.”
The King flounced regally out of the house, leaving behind him a strange ringing in Sindy’s ears.r />
“Might I introduce myself? I fear his Highness has forgot his manners, so heavy is his burden. My name is Seven, and sadly it would not be wise for me to linger,” Seven said with a low bow. “However, I would like to thank you for your assistance.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Sindy said. All of a sudden, she couldn’t think what to do with her hands.
“Not at all,” he replied seriously. “Thanks to your quick thinking your sister has the opportunity to discuss terms.”
“Oh… well, I don’t know…” Sindy said, caught in a tempest of unusual pride and familiar confusion.
Seven smiled at her again. “The Ball will begin at…”
Sindy tried to concentrate as he told her the details of the Ball, but she just couldn’t pay attention to what he was saying.
There was a game she and Will used to play when they were children, before death had touched their lives. They would lie on their backs in the fields and stare up at the sky, looking at the clouds as they drifted past. The game was won or lost based on how many different things they could see in the same one.
Sometimes Will would win, but more often than not Sindy would. She just had a knack for seeing all the different possibilities in the soft compliance of the clouds. She turned the same skill onto the Adviser. He was tall and muscular, with dark, corkscrew hair. He wore a lot of jewellery, and impractical, loose-fitting clothes, but other than that he was... yes… he was normal. Yet looking at him stung her eyes, like trying to keep them open when something had burned in the oven. She tried to make him out, her eyes fogging with tears. But she knew somehow that if she wiped them she would lose sight of it, whatever it was.
As she stared at Seven she realised what she was seeing was just one of the possibilities: there was something else, a different man, hidden in the same shape.
She bit her lip against the urge to blink.
“You’re… you seem… there’s something I need to ask you – could you…?” she said, trying to make sense of the need she was suddenly, urgently feeling.
Seven pulled his hood up, and the spell was broken.
“Excuse me. I must attend to the King. Perhaps you would inform your sister of what has transpired here?”
“Oh, yes. Of course.”
“Once again, Sindy, you have my thanks.”
The Adviser bowed and exited the room, leaving it somehow emptier than before he arrived.
Sindy stood in the little room, breathed out, and wondered if he wasn’t right. She could cook, after all, and sew and clean and do first aid. Maybe she wasn’t as simple as she thought. Maybe she could speak to Will. Maybe she could…
And then she thought about the trouble Ana was about to get into, and her burgeoning confidence faltered.
She wasn’t at all sure she had done the right thing now that she was the one suddenly responsible for telling Ana that the King was somehow cross with her and at the same time, it seemed to Sindy, inviting her to a Ball in order to get a chance to spend time with her.
She walked into the hallway and pulled her cloak from its hook and, fastening the ribbons below her chin, went off to find her stepsister.
Chapter Fifteen
Ten years ago…
Ana was twelve and about to learn her father was a pirate and a slaver.
She was never supposed to find out, of course. With hindsight she realised she’d picked up on the signs, but at the time she just assumed people liked her father. After all, she loved him, more than anything else in the world, so why shouldn’t other people like him just as much? Why shouldn’t he be popular and respected, and the kind of guy everyone bought a drink for and loudly said what a stand-up bloke he was?
She remembered that day. It was always a grand adventure, going to the docks with her dad. Normally they would watch the steam-powered ships coming into harbour, and she would listen quietly as he told her how the pistons were kept moving, and how much coal and wood was needed, and how fast they could travel despite their immense size.
But not today. Today Ana was kicking around the port in Sinne waiting for him to finish a business deal in one of the many bars that disfigured the harbour like plague sores. Usually she liked hanging around when her father did business. Harbours were interesting places if you didn’t mind the dirt and the smell and the ear-piercing whistle of the steam engines. There was always something to do or someone to speak to, and people were nice to her, because they liked her dad.
Today, for some reason, the docks were quiet, and she was bored. A twelve-year-old girl with a quick mind and nothing to occupy it is always going to find trouble. It’s almost a natural law, the only thing holding it back is that it hasn’t been boiled down to a couple of letters and a number.
Ana idled her way along the jetty, wishing she had brought a book with her. She didn’t like dolls. Dolls were only good toys if all a girl wanted was to be was a housewife, and she had no intention of settling down to a life of dishes and babies and laundry. She was also, in the spiteful quiet of her mind, beginning to notice that boys weren’t that interested in her anyway.
She pulled at her nose, annoyed by the fact that she had once again dredged up the memory of Simon’s cruel jibes, and that she hadn’t been able to think of a reply quickly enough. She knew her nose was too big and her arms and legs too long and skinny. Her mother, in her laziness, had tried to convince Ana his maltreatment was because he secretly liked her, but she knew that was a lie.
And anyway, what good did telling her he was only mean to her because he secretly liked her actually do? Was she expected to chase after any man who treated her like dirt?
There had been a girl in one of the other villages who’d had a baby out of wedlock. The story went that she had been ‘done wrong’ by a rich man. Ana didn’t know what that meant, but if the man was rich she didn’t see why he couldn’t just give the girl some money for the baby and let that be an end to it.
Still, from what she’d heard it didn’t matter anyway. The girl’s baby had died, and she’d run away. Only something had happened while she was away. Ana stamped her feet hard on the wooden beams as she walked, trying to remember what she’d overheard. The girl had fallen in love and married. That was it. But her new husband had found out about the baby and had thrown her out.
The girl murdered the rich man in the end, and then she’d been hanged. Ana thought she could understand why the girl had done it and, to Ana’s mind, there was no reason to hang her. But everyone else seemed to think she deserved it.
At least her dad didn’t think like that. He didn’t seem to care what she did, and Ana was too young to realise this was not the evidence of his love that she thought it was.
The jetty ended abruptly, as they are wont to do. Ana looked up from her shoes to see the boat her dad worked on in front of her, its beautiful, rich brown body curving invitingly. The gang plank was down.
So she snuck aboard. Not because she particularly expected to find anything exceptional, but because it was something she was expressly forbidden from doing unaccompanied, and so was the most exciting thing she could possibly be doing while unaccompanied.
She darted onto the deck and threw herself down quickly to avoid being seen. She grinned. She was somewhere she shouldn’t be!
Ana scurried below deck and into her father’s cabin. She was always surprised how small it was, especially for such a large man. She liked being in here. He kept souvenirs of all the places he’d visited, and she knew that one day he would make room in his cabin for her and she would travel with him. She poked around, but there wasn’t anything new. She picked up his compass and spun herself round a few times, trying to trick it into confusion, but it bested her each time and after a while she started to feel sick.
She left her dad’s little cabin and walked further through the lower decks. She remembered suddenly that in the big steamers there was an engine room right at the bottom. This was a sail boat, but maybe they had an engine as well, and she’d like to see a ste
am engine. Ana wasn’t exactly optimistic, but she was here, alone, and she thought it was worth a try.
She climbed down the narrow ladder to the next level, hoping to find something wonderful.
What she found was the ship’s hold. And with it she found out that her daddy was storing massive amounts of grain and salt, provisions that were in short supply and very hard to get hold of. Ana had never heard the word ‘profiteering’, but it didn’t take her long to work out the significance of the crates.
She moved through the hold, running her fingertips against the hard hessian sacks and smooth barrels that held, like disgustingly gorged gluttons, the food and supplies so desperately needed by the people of Caer Marllyn.
Ana could feel something growing in her stomach, a kind of queasy sickness, like when she ate too many sweets. The air under the ship had a strange smell; it was hot and fuggy, but underneath that was a sharpness that reminded Ana, she wasn’t sure why, of a farmyard. Ignoring her nerves, she followed the path down the centre of the hold, past the bags and barrels, until she got to the cages.
The thing that Ana remembered most, the thing she would always try to forget and would never be allowed to, was that smell.
Not the stench of the people, though forty slaves, kept in close conditions, far away from any ventilation and with what was probably the beginnings of a dysentery outbreak is certainly a smell that lingers in the mind as well as the nose. No, what Ana would always remember is that someone, perhaps her father, or one of the numerous ‘uncles’ who sat her on their knee and joked with her and gave her little nips from their mugs of sticky, dark rum, someone she most certainly knew, had tried to cover the smell with a pomander.
A few years later her father had died or vanished. No one knew and she didn’t care. The man she had loved had disappeared for her the moment she had seen that dried-up orange, stabbed through with cloves and hanging from the beam on a piece of pretty silk.
That little touch of humanity in a space of cruelty and greed.
Chapter Sixteen