Javotte, obedient but confused, pointed to a little hamlet about two hours ride from the capital.
“And you return for a visit once a month?” I queried.
“Yes, Your Highness,” she replied, her expression showing she had no idea what I was driving at.
“And how do you get there?” I pressed further.
Javotte oriented herself on the map, then dragged her finger along her preferred route.
“How much more time would this or this way add to your journey?” I wanted to know, tracing out two more routes with each hand.
Javotte shrugged. “More than an hour, most likely.”
“And if there was a request for you to alternate your routes,” I said, “and perhaps ‘lose’ some clothes, or food, or coins in poorer homes along the way, how much more time would that add?”
Javotte considered me carefully. I don’t know how much she knew about my foray into the capital with the captain, but by then, we had surely spent enough together for her to guess at what I was really asking.
“And who shall I say sent me?” she asked.
I shrugged. “No one. Anyone. It doesn’t matter.”
“Well,” she said slowly.
“I can arrange a horse,” I quickly interjected.
“Then I’m sure that wouldn’t add very much time at all.”
I smiled at her. “Then I shall request it of you.”
Javotte dipped her head. “Thank you, Your Highness.”
She went to turn down the blankets to ready my bed for sleep, but I stayed focused on the maps. Maybe Sir Percival and I would concoct a real solution, maybe not, but in the meantime, I had the captain, I had Javotte, I had the handful of coins I would be skimming from my monthly allowance. It was certainly something.
The map shows how all this land looks from Heaven, Mother’s voice echoed through my thoughts.
I was only a princess stuck in a palace, but as I was married to the crown prince. I had to try and make a difference for someone. My fingers traced routes all along the maps.
Down here, everything is much farther apart.
There were less fortunate souls all over the kingdom. Perhaps there were others like my Mother who took their daughters and cared for them, or perhaps these families had never seen any of the many faces of kindness. The prince was right about one thing, I couldn’t just keep giving and giving or their lives would be stuck in a cycle of taking without ever improving.
I was sure it would take more than one answer to help all these people, but at least we were getting started. A new feeling gently began to surge through me.
Standing over those maps, thinking of my mother and her eternal legacy to me, well, in that moment I didn’t feel so very small at all.
Fragments of Glass
In light of the little things I had started doing, I was beginning to feel more at home, to find my footing in the palace as our third anniversary approached. I remember most the feeling of security, the feeling of warmth, the feeling of bliss, a constant hope as if every day was the first day of summer and only long hours of sunshine lay ahead.
Though there were some things, some things I look back on and recognize as warnings, signals that I ignored because I had wanted so much to believe in my faery tale. They were small things, little incidents that sprang up without pattern, little hints to remind me that no man is as black-and-white as he’s painted to be.
One such occurrence happened that fall. I was traveling with the prince to visit a duke whom he considered a close friend from his time at the Academy. The visit was to be over the weekend, so the prince and the duke could hunt, gamble, and do all other manner of leisurely activities befitting those of noble blood. As such, we were traveling with a small chest of gold coins, though intended for gambling, the sum was exact, and every coin accounted for.
By then, I had been all over Laurendale and could finally match almost every major point on the map with images from memory, but a trip like this one still excited me. My life had only ever been as large as my father’s estate and the world in my mind, but around the kingdom I saw lives and places far more interesting, far more complex than anything I had ever conjured.
We were traveling along a quieter section of the kingdom’s main highway. My hand was propping up my chin so I could gaze out the window, luxuriating in the deep reds, oranges, and yellows of the changing leaves, the still giddily blooming wildflowers, the buzz and hum of insects reveling in their surroundings. The carriage suddenly slowed. It stopped. Then came the slow rocking of the carriage turning around.
The prince and I glanced at each other quizzically but said nothing as the horses soon picked up their regular pace. Not twenty minutes later, the carriage halted again. Alexander and I exchanged another questioning look. We heard voices, the whinny of a horse, grunts, shouting, then nothing. The captain and a select cadre of guards were traveling on horseback ahead of us, so we trusted we were safe. Still, this was curious.
The prince hopped out of the carriage to investigate. “I need to stretch my legs anyway,” he explained.
I waited patiently for him to return, and soon he did, popping up beside my window to tell me that a farmer and his family were ahead of us. Their cart was in a muddy rut and though it wasn’t blocking the road, it wasn’t out of the way either.
“We’ve only come this way because a bridge washed away on the path we were supposed to be on,” the prince added, slightly irritated. He muttered something about it being gone over a year and roads made unfit after rain.
“Can we not navigate around the cart?” I asked.
The prince furrowed his brow. “Be back soon,” he promised.
A few minutes later, I smelled smoke. The prince hadn’t yet returned, but some clomping brought the feet of an enviable white stallion into view. Seconds later, the captain slid down and faced me from the other side of the window.
“All right, Princess?” he asked amiably.
“All right, Captain,” I confirmed. “But it smells like something’s burning.”
The captain nodded. “The farmer’s cart,” he explained simply.
I scrunched my brow. “What? How?” I wanted to know.
The captain kept his face neutral. “His Highness said the wind shifted and blew sparks from their cooking fire onto the wheat they were carrying. Unfortunately, the closest river is back the way we came.”
I looked at the captain. He looked at me.
“What cooking fire?” I demanded.
The captain didn’t blink. “The prince said,” he replied adamantly.
I stared. The prince hadn’t said anything to me about a cooking fire. I would have smelled if there was one. Surely, that wasn’t what had happened. But if not, then what? The captain wasn’t likely to tell me, I was sure of it. Almost. Then again, he’d only told me what the prince had said to him. Unbidden, the image of the prince stepping on the hand of his opponent as he left the arena the day I met Lyla came to mind. I shook the image loose. I don’t know what he’d been thinking then, or now, but things were different since the festival. I was here now.
Without considering further, I raised my hands and removed the earrings I was wearing. A simple pair that I really adored, they were shaped like soft golden teardrops, three on each one, each tear attached to a thin gold chain that lowered it just below the teardrop above it. I handed them to the captain.
“Your Highness?” he questioned.
“Please give them to the farmer and his wife,” I said without feeling the need to explain myself further. He’d helped me distribute the bread in the capitol. Now and again, he lost coins for me all over the kingdom. Surely, he of all people understood.
“May I ask, Your Highness, what a simple farmer and his wife are supposed to do with these?” the captain asked, but not unkindly. “Were he to try and sell them he’d certainly be imprisoned for theft.”
Color rose to my cheeks, but I refused to let it spread. I’d make a mistake. I would fix it
. I bent toward the prince’s side of the carriage and removed two gold coins from the small chest under his seat.
“Please give these to the farmer and his wife,” I instructed as I placed the gold coins beside the earrings.
The captain raised his eyebrows at me. He knew, as well as I, that the prince would notice if any coins went missing.
“As you travel ahead, bring the earrings to a nearby village and sell them to a jeweler with explicit instructions that they be melted down.”
“These may be worth more than any one man can offer out here.”
“Take whatever you’re offered for them, even less than their worth,” I ordered. “Bring me back two gold coins, if there is more, buy food and clothing for those who don’t have enough.”
I didn’t need to add that this had to stay between us. The captain was a smart man. He knew the prince well. He knew what had happened with the cart.
The captain closed his hand around the coins and earrings, his grip tight. He studied me a moment, his look suggesting he wanted to say something but wasn’t sure how or what. He finally settled for, “It’s unwise to undervalue personal property.”
“Even more so the property of others,” I retorted evenly.
The captain bowed his head, but not fast enough for me to miss the approving grin he struggled to keep from his lips.
“One more thing,” I stayed him, suddenly remembering the prince’s mutterings from moments ago.
“Yes, Princess?”
“If the bridge was swept away over a year ago,” I asked, “why hasn’t it been rebuilt? Why aren’t the roads draining properly?”
The captain regarded me seriously. “It takes a long time to recover from four straight years of war,” he replied. “There may be a lack of men or resources or both.”
That made sense. “Thank you,” I told him.
He rode away as the prince came back, sliding into the carriage and jerking the door shut with a loud thump so the coachman would know it was time to move on.
“Hope you didn’t fret too much without me, love,” he said with a rakish smile.
“Barely,” I grinned back.
The carriage jolted, then began to sway beneath us as the horses resumed their trot down the road. After a few quiet minutes, I looked up to notice the prince studying me with an odd expression on his face.
“What is it, Alexander?” I asked.
He started to speak, shook his head, stopped, then decided to go for it anyway. “It’s a silly thing really, but I was almost certain you were wearing earrings today. Those lovely gold teardrops I gave you for our anniversary.”
My hands flew instinctively to my ears, and I rubbed the empty holes, even though I knew nothing was there.
“It seems I forgot with all that was going on,” I said sweetly. “Perhaps, I had only spoken of wearing them. I must ask Javotte if she remembered to pack them.”
The prince nodded slowly, as if to accept my answer only because there wasn’t any other that fit.
I felt bad about lying to him, stretching the truth was more like it, but I didn’t think he’d like to hear what I’d done with the earrings. I’d have new ones made before he could ask again. Besides, it was for something good, I excused myself.
And why not? I was already excusing the prince to myself. Why couldn’t I do so for me?
That particular trip wound down with a surprisingly pleasant detour on our way back home. The prince and I were sharing a companionable quiet in the carriage, when suddenly the prince’s head shot up in response to something he noticed outside. Immediately, he began pounding on the roof of the carriage, signaling the driver to stop. I peered out the window, anxiously searching for the cause of the prince’s odd behavior.
Seconds later, the captain’s horse was pulling into view beside the carriage window. The captain leaned over and addressed the prince.
“Something the matter, Your Highness?”
“Captain,” the prince replied with a wide smile, “I must say there’s something enchantingly familiar about this forest.”
The captain didn’t respond right away, perhaps taking the time to examine the forest for himself.
“It is rather familiar, Your Highness,” he conceded carefully.
“And would it not be unforgivably discourteous if we were to pass through your brother’s lands and not bother to inquire after his health?” the prince demanded, his smile growing ever larger.
“It would indeed, Your Highness,” the captain agreed reluctantly.
“Indeed. Now, ride on ahead and notify them of our imminent arrival,” the prince commanded, “with our apologies that it is so…imminent.”
“As you wish, Your Highness.”
The captain kicked his horse into a gallop, shooting away so quickly its hooves hardly touched ground long enough to spray up dust behind it. The prince leaned back in his seat with a self-satisfied smirk.
“I hope you don’t mind the diversion, my heart,” he said to me.
“Not in the least,” I replied honestly. I was rather intrigued to see the home where the captain had grown up.
“You’ll like them,” the prince reassured me. “They are quite a lovely family.”
“Wherein the captain is part of the rule and not the exception?” I inquired.
The prince grinned. “Indeed,” he agreed.
The carriage resumed its travels, turning off the main highway to follow a clear but shaded path, which probably marked the beginnings of the captain’s familial estate. The prince, in an obviously nostalgic mood, began talking about the boys he had grown up with.
Although all the brothers had spent years at the Academy, only the captain was still part of the king’s active service. His eldest brother, Alaryx, had taken over the family’s estate after their father’s passing, and it seemed he was quite happy to stay there and raise his growing family.
The second brother, Daedryk, had been an exemplary military strategist during his years in the Academy, which had led to some very important roles in many of the defining battles that secured our borders. The prince said it was well known that any battle Daedryk had a hand in planning had a much higher chance of victory, as well as a much lower casualty rate. The result was a chest full of ribbons the prince claimed could “accessorize a small bridal party.”
Our carriage rolled up to the front steps of a wide, sprawling brick structure, very similar to a fortress, except it was only a façade for the prettier and more welcoming home behind it. There was no drawbridge, but there were two heavy wooden doors that could easily barricade the household inside. The captain was already off his horse and waiting for us when we came. At the top of the steps stood two large men, both with thick brown hair and chocolatey brown eyes. All three brothers wore versions of the same features.
The carriage door was scarcely opened before the prince was already out and bounding up the steps to the captain’s brothers. Without permission, Alaryx scooped him into a large hug and squeezed him hard enough to lift him off the ground.
“Release me, you big ogre,” the prince commanded good-naturedly, pounding his back for good measure.
“Our home is always ready to welcome you, Prince Alex,” Daedryk greeted him with more restraint.
“He looks well,” Alaryx commented to Daedryk. “Doesn’t our prince look well?”
“He looks very well, indeed,” Daedryk confirmed.
About then, I came upon the group, having been helped out of the carriage by a footman and offered an arm up the steps by the captain.
“Gentleman,” the prince announced, “my wife, the Princess Ella.”
The brothers dropped into chivalric bows.
“Surely the reason His Highness looks so well,” Daedryk loudly whispered to Alaryx.
“Enough of that,” the prince waved at them dismissively.
“To the terrace then? For some refreshments,” Daedryk gamely offered.
“Absolutely,” the prince replied, and they sa
untered off together toward the back of the house.
I watched them go, pleased at the mutual warmth between the prince and this family. I had never known of such happy relationships and being allowed a glimpse into one now was just one more example of how much my life had changed for the better, and how much I wanted a family like this of my own.
The duke turned to his youngest brother and tugged at his short beard.
“Disguising yourself as a bear for your next assignment, Captain?” he teased.
The captain tried to bat his brother’s arm away. “It’s not a disguise if you insist on announcing it,” he retorted.
Alaryx laughed, then turned to me with a wink. “Quite a troublemaker this one,” he told me, “had us all doubting the honesty of his future.”
He ruffled his brother’s hair affectionately, and the captain pulled away quickly, though not without some unwanted traces of a blush coloring his cheeks. He turned on his heel and went in search of his prince.
Alaryx grinned after him and offered me his arm. “Kaitryn’s present condition prevents her from getting about as much as she would like, but she’s eager to meet you, Princess,” he said.
“I’d like to meet her, too,” I replied sincerely.
As it turned out, the duke’s wife was seven months pregnant, her face shining contentedly despite the assumed discomfort of her swollen belly. Three more children were about the terrace, the oldest looking to be about six whereas the youngest must have just learned how to use his feet because he tottered about drunkenly and lost his balance often.
The duke and his wife weren’t shy about the abounding pride they had for their children, and I watched them curiously, wondering if this was the way parents really were supposed to be, would have been, had my perfect life not ended with my mother’s death. I knew my mother had loved me, knew my father had once been proud of me, but it had been so long since a parent had shown me approval, the feeling was quite foreign to me by then.
The terrace was a paved outdoor area directly behind the house that was wide enough and long enough to hold a fairly large outdoor party. It ended with an open flight of steps that descended onto crisp green lawns stretching out as far as the eye could see. The glint of the sun shimmering on something in the distance suggested there was some sort of pond or lake at the edge of the property, and to the right of that was dense forest, which was certainly the host of many a hunt.
A Cinderella Retelling Page 17
