No such luck. Ada turned, her purple skirts swirling about her legs like grape vapor. “You will do what I ask. You will not embarrass me in front of our subjects.”
Clara knew it was useless to defend herself with the Queen but tried nonetheless, “My Queen,” Clara took a breath to continue, a rib squawking, “…I like showing gratitude to our subjects, as I think they remain loyal and joyous when they are treated well.”
“Yes… you would,” Ada said with derision, her chest rising and falling, the liquor a wave of rotten fruit immersing the room in a cloying smell of things which sicken.
Ada came toward her with purpose now, swinging the decanter in such a way that Clara’s eyes became mesmerized by it.
“Dear Guardian,” Olive whispered.
Clara’s thoughts echoed.
Ada came closer, her hips swaying in time with the decanter, her dark eyes glittering with resolve. This might be something that Clara would not recover from. She was resigned to the Queen’s drunken rages, kept them secret.
But she had not wielded an object before.
The chamber door burst open, causing all to jump, except Ada, who was as calm as the dead when deep in drink.
“Who enters?” Her tone said, who dares to enter?
“It is I, Queen Ada; King Otto and Prince Frederic.”
Clara looked away from the Queen (not always advisable) to see the two monarchs and should not have. She felt the Queen’s hand sink into her hair piled with pearls and was wrenched backward, the strand of pearls tearing. They broke free like birds scattered in the fields Outside. A hundred shimmering gems bounced and rolled across the glossy floor, pooling around everyone’s feet.
Clara’s neck was bent at a tortuous angle, as the Queen held her lips above Clara’s ear. “Do not forget who is sovereign here, my daughter. Now get ye gone from my sight.”
And with a mighty push, the Queen released Clara. She stumbled over the pearls, which ran like an iridescent stream upon the burnished wood and tumbled into Olive’s arms.
The king rushed over to dispatch assistance. “Do not touch her, King Otto. She needs help from no one. Do you, Princess?”
Leaning into Olive she whispered, “No.”
Ada’s gaze narrowed. “Olive, sweet Olive, how you hate me. I see my abuse upon your face.” Olive lowered her eyes, never able to hide her expression from the Queen. “Best you not show your feelings, servant. Take her away.”
King Otto said, “Is this not her chamber?”
Prince Frederic stood beside his father looking at Clara with a contemplative expression.
“It is,” she remarked, saying it to the king but giving the full weight of her stare to Frederic. “Your son understands discipline, do you not?”
Frederic suffered another look at Clara, dismissing her. “Yes, I think Clara and I have an understanding of how things will be once we are joined.”
Clara started fantasizing a way for harm to befall him from that moment onward. A seed germinated inside the dark recesses of her heart.
She could not be under this man’s authority.
Her mother’s drunken ire was something she bore because there was no choice. But his? She needed to formulate a plan and did not yet know what. She would confer with Charles.
The king gave her a look that may have been sympathy. However, he was weak. Her mother’s pearls meant more than Clara’s harm at the hands of the Queen, and later, his own son.
“Let us take our leave of her chamber, Queen Ada. There is much for us to discuss. I have brought some of my most prized grapes that I wish for you to sample,” he wheedled.
Clara watched Ada’s expression take on the greed so prevalent with her, looking down at her decanter, its weight not as heavy now that she had stripped it of its contents. “Yes, I need not be here.” She swayed and King Otto steadied her by grasping her elbow.
Clara backed away, Olive’s arm around her waist, Olive her touchstone. King Otto led Ada away, several times steadying her. With each step she took, Clara’s breathing quieted. Then her attention was caught by Prince Frederic.
He stalked to where she and Olive stood and she felt Olive stiffen behind her. “Your hair…it is everywhere, you had better clean it up.” He reached out to stroke a piece that had been released when the Queen tore it free of its pearl bindings. Clara jerked away from his touch.
Frederic’s hand fell away, his gaze darkening and then his hands were suddenly around her ribcage, jerking her forward. He wrenched her out of Olive’s embrace, against his body and a small pain sound escaped her mouth which made him smile. His hands moved down lower, encircling her waist. “You will like my touch… very much,” he said as he bent down to force his hated mouth against hers, just as Charles entered her chamber.
“Release her, Prince Frederic.” Charles’ expression was thunder contained. He and Olive looked at each other and she gave him helpless eyes.
Frederic set her away from him and she shuddered. Charles would pay for that comment. Charles did not care as of yet. He suspected Frederic’s character but Clara had more than suspicion:
She had foreknowledge.
He turned to Charles. “Have a care, Mr. Pierce. Our interaction is none of your concern,” speaking with quiet menace. He was showing restraint, Clara did not believe it. It was so unlike him.
Charles’ hands were fisted. “If you were not Prince, I would beat you senseless.”
“Ah…but I am, am I not?” Prince Frederic said, a cruel smile sliding into place.
Charles’ frustration was evident, his impotence clear. “Have you no honor? She is a woman for Guardian’s sake.”
“Yes, I am very aware; soon to be mine.”
“She is not a possession… a thing to own!” Charles threw his hands up in the air.
The silence fell upon them. The only sound was of the steam sconces, their flickering flames along the chamber walls hissing their presence, the time piece on the wall, clicking the seconds as they passed into before.
Prince Frederic suddenly laughed, “I will let this interchange disappear, I can afford to be gracious with those beneath me. After all,” his gaze slid possessively over Clara, “soon, I will see to it that her eyes never behold you again.”
Stinging heat bit into Clara’s eyes and she knew they were the tears yet unshed, burning for release.
“You cannot take away her companions.”
“You will not ‘go away’, you will simply be unwelcome in our kingdom.”
Clara gasped, “We have not yet chosen where we may settle.” She could feel her eyes brim and held them wide so those tears which threatened would not fall. Olive moved up beside her, clasping her hand.
Charles gave her an anguished look. He alone could intuit what near servitude it would be in this loveless match; the abuse she would suffer with Frederic. Something unimagined but balancing on the chasm of her consciousness. Far worse than the Queen’s drunken efforts.
Frederic gave a brilliant smile, tipping his hat at Clara and Olive, who stood stunned at his bizarre behavior, then he gave a small bow to Charles, who fumed.
Charles and Frederic stood staring at each other in aggressive regard, one pale and one dark, evil encased in lightness.
He walked out without a word, leaving the massive door ajar.
Clara glided over to her fainting couch and slowly lowered her body onto it. Silent tears gliding down her face, partially covered by a curtain of hair. She watched dully as Olive, broom and receptacle in hand, gathered the fallen pearls which still littered the floor like glittering tears.
A satin waistcoat, quite lovely, appeared in her watery field of vision. Then vanished as Charles sat beside her, “Dearest Clara,” Charles began, placing a light hand at the base of her neck, wrapping it with long fingers which circled almost to the front of her throat. Such strength in that large hand, but what tenderness as he held her neck in the palm of his grip.
He pushed her head under his chin, his hand still
holding her neck and the sobs came. Great, silent, hiccuping wails held quiet by habit, she could not get Frederic’s wretched face out of her mind’s eye. His smug patience, knowing it was a matter of time… a matter of when, not if.
She would not be powerless. Her father’s teachings had not fallen on deaf ears. She had not built his empire to let it fall into governance by a Prince drunk not with wine, but with power. Charles whispered sweet endearments into ears stung by the night. A night that had been less celebration, and more survival.
“I cannot protect you… but somehow I must. He is dangerous. I fear he will hurt you.” Charles said, running his thumb up and down her throat.
“Charles is correct. He is not a real Prince of his people, my lady. He wishes to marry for power, for the pearls. He wishes to be drunk like the Queen,” Olive lowered her voice to a whisper, tucking her voluminous skirts under her knees as she knelt before Clara, “but not by wine… by greed.”
She was so right, dear Olive was absolutely right. They knew what was happening but what to do with that knowledge?
“Refuse the crown,” Charles said suddenly.
Clara wiped her eyes and sat up straighter looking at Charles, “Whatever do you mean?”
Charles had a stroke of insight and waved her lack of understanding away, “Queen Ada commanded you would not be Queen if you refused this arranged marriage, yes?”
Clara nodded, that had been so.
“Then refuse the crown. You do not care for all this.” He gestured around the room with its extravagant appointments, every surface velvet, satin or silk. Precious metals gleaming like small anchors randomly in a room holding every manner of implements and comforts.
That was true. Her richest treasures were with her now, breathing the air that she did. She looked at Olive and Charles, knowing what she would say next would upset them, “I do have that choice. However,” Clara swallowed, this was most difficult, “I am royal. It is more than a hollow allowance, I am the caretaker of my people, my subjects. If I am not Princess Clara for them, they will be left to the devices of the Queen. That, I cannot abide.”
“Clara,” Charles moaned in defeat, “think on it, do not martyr yourself for us. What good can you do as Princess to his Prince… if he means your death?”
Olive sucked in her breath, for Charles had said their fear out loud. It would be easy for something to befall Clara, with Prince Frederic the ruler of both spheres. The failing Kingdom of Kentucky and her own. Her head ached with the potential for it all.
Her gaze suddenly wandered to the sphere wall and she thought of the savage she had seen Outside. How she longed for help for a new way, a way to save her people from the hardship of this forced union.
Charles stood, and clasped their hands, Olive rested her head upon Clara’s shoulder, “Let me think on it. There must be another way.”
Charles leaned forward, releasing her hands and putting one on each side of Clara’s face, palming the entirety of it, and placed a gentle kiss upon her forehead.
“Are you hurt?”
“Nothing I cannot bear and bring to wellness in a fore-night or two.”
“The Queen,” he hissed.
She nodded. He closed his eyes and finally… Charles pulled away, his forehead breaking contact with Clara’s.
He began to walk to the door then stopped, turning, he pulled something out of his pocket. A small, velvet bag in deepest blue, cinched with an icy blue ribbon, he walked back over and placed it inside Clara’s palm, “This is what I meant to do when I came upon… when I came upon… the circumstance.”
Clara nodded, it was difficult to describe.
She slipped the ribbon open, its gauzy weight as light as a feather atop a pen, and scooped out a chain of precious silver. At its end hung a large, single pearl, held in a spider web gallery; complicated filigree surrounded it like an embrace.
Clara’s head jerked up and she looked into Charles dark eyes, “A Samuel Pearl,” she breathed out in reverence. The rarity was beyond compare. In her water sphere fields, there was a tiny field for raising the rare, Samuel’s Pearls. They were named for her grandfather’s grand-sire, a man who had never set foot in the sphere, but perished in the Outside, in the time when the earth was covered in ash.
Charles’ beautiful smile broke across his face like the sun of the Outside breaking free of clouds, “I knew you would love it.”
“I love it because of who gave it,” returning his smile with one of her own.
Charles ducked his head, pleased, “Let me place it about your neck.” She turned and he laid her heavy hair aside, securing the clasp behind her neck, rearranging the tousled hair over it.
“Oh, Princess, it is so beautiful against the creaminess of your skin, you must address the looking glass.”
None of them said anything about the bruises; the Queen’s careless abuse in evidence.
Clara gazed into the looking glance, staring at the large pearl, the size of her pinky nail, a deep ebony, shining with metallic green iridescence. The luster encompassed the sea gem where it glowed softly at the hollow of her throat. Olive and Charles stood behind her. Clara noticed her disheveled hair, tendrils of deepest bronze escaping and suddenly felt older than her ten and seven years.
Clara watched Charles stroke a thumb over the grape-sized bruise at the side of her throat, his expression sad. It said, how much longer could she bear the mistreatment… could he?
Charles gave her a gentle squeeze on her shoulders, his big, warm hands a momentary comfort, then he released her.
“I must go,” he glanced at the hanging time piece, one half hour until midnight struck.
Charles leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her forehead, “Happy Day of Birth, dearest Clara.”
He straightened, a strange expression coming over his face, then he seemed to shake cobwebs away and saying a final good night, he left her chamber.
Olive had followed him and shut the massive door, engaging the huge brass bolt. She turned around, leaning against the door, her relief a palpable thing.
Clara watched Olive walk toward her, “He loves you, Princess.”
She loved him too… but she was not in love with him, he was her dear friend. Clara sighed, “I do not know for a certainty that he loves me any differently than I do him. We have been friends since grammar school,” she shrugged the idea away.
“No, it is different. He watches you as the sun orbits the earth, it is total.”
Olive’s words were disturbing. Clara did not wish to mean that much to anyone.
“You have not encouraged his affections, but they exist, my lady.”
Clara said nothing, instead, moving toward the bedpost she twined nimble fingers around the part which narrowed. Her eyes following Olive as she moved to close the heavy drapes that stood open to the blackness of the Outside. They lay slightly damp against the veil of the sphere wall, the steam from the day clinging tenaciously to the fabric, adding weight. Olive used both hands to pull the two sides of the curtain together, the wooden rings sliding over the rod seamlessly but slowly, hindered by the heaviness. Finally, they were closed and Olive moved up behind Clara. Olive began at the top stay, releasing it carefully. With the first stay undone, it was usually a matter of synchronicity with the rest… however, release the first in haste, and each stay needed hand release, a bother at the very least. Clara gave a grateful exhale as the stays loosened and her ribs and breasts escaped the prison of the corset.
Olive breathed a sigh of relief, “The usual damage has been avoided, Princess,” Olive said, a discerning eye roving her torso.
“Oh?” Clara inquired. It felt about the same as all the damage she always suffered when Ada raged against her.
“Yes… it was the corset, my lady, the corset bore some of it.”
Of course! The dreadful encumbrance was worth something after all. The irony was not lost on Clara.
The rest of the garment slid off easily without the resistance of the corset. Oli
ve folded it over the back of Clara’s vanity chair, the dress obscuring the ornate bones of the polished wood, like glass in repose.
She returned with Clara’s dressing gown which Clara took to dress herself. How she detested being dressed, this singular step she could do. As she took the gown, she bestowed a grateful smile on Olive. She was someone that had been steadfast and loyal throughout, in the terrible years after her father’s passing, and before.
The dressing gown on, Clara walked to the vanity chair, sitting sideways so as to not interfere with the dress, while Olive gave her hair the hundred strokes.
Olive sighed, frustrated, “I am sorry, Princess, I will have to remove these ruined bindings.”
Olive carefully unwound the mess of the bindings, a few pearls still clinging to their careful housing, now beyond repair. Clara’s hair shone as burnished copper in the faded golden light cast by the overhead chandelier, its cut glass globes piercing jeweled rainbows on the interior walls, some prisms absorbed by the wall of the sphere.
Clara, not one to talk idly, sat trancelike, as Olive brushed her hair, a ritual Olive’s mother had established before Olive became her lady-in-waiting. It had never failed to calm her, especially after a horrible night at the hands of Ada. But this night, Clara could not calm herself, the normalcy of this routine stolen from her.
Olive paused in her brush strokes, “What disturbs you, my lady?”
What did not disturb Clara? Her Day of Birth celebration beginning with a face-to-face engagement with a savage, the spectacle of her mother’s drunken behavior, the menace of her later in Clara’s chamber, with the finish of Prince Frederic and Charles almost coming to blows? Oh… nothing of consequence! She must give just due to Olive, for this was all that she knew; the Queen drank, she beat Clara, Clara resolved to say nothing. Clara wished upon every star that lay Outside in its captured velvet…that she could do something to establish protective measures against Queen Ada. But the threats lay dormant, ready to be activated if Clara chose not to cooperate. Cooperate or the people of her Sphere would be ruled by tyranny, not mutual respect and collaboration. The ways of her father would not be forgotten because she was incapable of preserving them. That streak of resolve always held her in its fist when the days grew dark in Clara’s soul.
The Pearl Savage Page 4
