Disenchanted: The Trials of Cinderella

by Megan Morrison

  “But who would throw out a servant with a family of dependents?”

  Tanner gave a shocked laugh, then checked himself. “Ah, sir.” He was very quiet. “If I tell you honestly, it’ll seem like cheek.”

  “Tell me.”

  Tanner swallowed visibly. “Everyone would, sir,” he finally said. “Everyone throws us out. Servants are only useful if they’re serving — same as any worker anywhere. My cousin Grommet and I worked in the same house a few years back. He was a groom there, but he lost that job when a horse crushed his foot, and then he had to take the next job he found — shearing sheep up north in Coldwater. He could barely hobble, but he did the work anyway, till he died of roop. A lot of them up there died.”

  “Why did he keep that job if people were dying?”

  “He had two babies to support. If he left that position, he might not get another, and then his family would starve. He was dead either way.”

  Silence fell in the chamber as Dash worked these ugly ideas through his brain. He supposed he had known these things to be true. Servants were servants; they had no money or protection. That itself was no surprise. But he had never fully examined what that must mean.

  “Whose house were you in when Grommet was thrown out?” he asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.

  “Lady Jacquard’s, sir.”

  Dash thought of what Lady Jacquard had said to his father the other day. Those laborers are so irresponsible. But was it irresponsible to want to provide for one’s own children? Was it irresponsible to continue to work, even when one was sick enough to die?

  “I’m sorry about your cousin,” he said when he remembered himself. “Truly I am.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “I’m sorry to have disturbed you — you may go.”

  Wider awake now than ever, Dash sat up against his pillows, thinking.

  Ella Coach thought that people should be paid when they were sick, and she thought that other countries were providing such pay. Insulting as her comments had been, had there been some truth in them? Did other countries have sick leave? How were such things even done?

  Dash could sit still no longer. He got out of bed, pulled on his dressing gown, and made his way down to the palace library, hoping that the Royal Librarian would be awake. She was not, but her assistant was there, busy atop a stepladder. Dash asked for his help finding information on current labor regulations across Tyme.

  “A fascinating request, sir,” said the librarian, who looked both intrigued and apprehensive. He brought out a few scrolls and a small pamphlet for Dash’s perusal. “These aren’t precisely what you’re searching for, I’m afraid,” he said. “But I’m certain that the University of Orange would keep such records. Shall I request a loan, sir?”

  “Please do.” Dash drummed his fingers on the pamphlet. “We keep copies of old Criers, don’t we?”

  “Of course.”

  “How hard would it be to find articles on a specific topic?”

  “Quite easy, sir.” The librarian looked proud. “We keep a thorough index of every possible subject. What may I find for you?”

  “Everything that’s been written about Practical Elegance — or the Coach family.”

  True to his word, the librarian quickly retrieved a substantial stack of Town Criers, and Dash sat paging through them in the reading room until the sky grew light.

  When he dressed for school that morning, he was exhausted and his head ached, but his research had been worthwhile. He couldn’t fully trust the Criers, but there was one article, by a scribe called Nettie Belting, that was particularly powerful in sketching a picture of the Coach family’s history. If Nettie’s facts were accurate, then many things were clear.

  Ella Coach might have understood things better than he’d given her credit for.

  THE next day in Fundamentals of Business, she slipped into the chair in the back corner, where she began to embroider. One stitch. Two. She concentrated on the evenness of her stitching, and she tried to block out the hissed insults of her classmates as they passed.

  “Peasant.”

  “She’s probably got cankermoth eggs nesting in that bramble on her head.”

  “Don’t touch her — you’ll catch roop just like her mother.” Garb’s words struck Ella like a hit to the gut. She dropped her needle, and it swung from its thread as she fumbled to grip it again.

  “That’s cruel,” said Lavaliere, but she was laughing.

  Ella heard the scrape of the chair beside hers being pulled out. Felt the thud of a person dropping down next to her. A radiantly warm person, who smelled like soap and cedar.

  “Hello,” he said quietly.

  She glanced sideways at him. “Hello.” She knew exactly how to explain herself to him — it was so simple she should have thought of it yesterday — but he was probably still furious.

  He didn’t seem furious, though. He regarded her with sober concern.

  “Don’t worry.” Lavaliere came to his side and laid her hand upon his shoulder. She flicked her big, contemptuous gray eyes over Ella. “It’s all taken care of.”

  She had no sooner finished saying this than Professor Linsey-Woolsey approached their desk. Lavaliere swept away, dark hair swinging, and settled herself at the front desk beside Paisley. Tiffany was no longer her partner but had been displaced to the back, where she now sat partnered with Kente.

  Ella had a feeling that she herself was also about to be displaced.

  “Your Royal Highness,” said the professor, looking troubled. “May I have a word?”

  Dash stood and went out with the teacher, and Ella tucked her embroidery away in preparation. In a moment, she knew, the world would be restored to order. The prince would be partnered with one of his friends, and she would be reassigned to whoever was left over. Maybe, if she got lucky, it would be Chemise. She looked hopefully around the room, but Chemise still wasn’t back. Ella hoped that her feet were healing up all right.

  She was surprised when, a minute later, Dash dropped down beside her again. He did not relocate to another table but sat still with a flush in his cheeks and his eyes pinned on Professor Linsey-Woolsey, who was making her way back to the front of the room.

  Lavaliere had turned in her chair and was frowning. What’s wrong? she mouthed, but the prince only shook his head. Lavaliere gave Ella a deadly look and spun away again to the front, whipping her tail of hair behind her like a horse smacking a fly.

  “By the end of next week,” said the professor, “each partnership must turn in a thorough draft of a business plan. Begin to flesh out these plans in class today, and I will be around to check your homework. Raise your hands if you have questions.”

  Throughout the classroom, chatter struck up. As soon as no one was looking at them, Prince Dash picked up his chalk with one hand and reached for the washrag with the other. Ella looked on in surprise as he wrote on the table in very small, neat strokes.

  I heard what Garb said to you. I’m sorry.

  He scrubbed out the words with the washrag, and she stared at the wet patch of slate where they had just been.

  I researched you last night, Dash wrote in tiny letters. I know about your mother.

  He wiped these words away just as Professor Linsey-Woolsey appeared before their desk.

  “Miss Coach, did you speak with an adult about the project?”

  In fact, Ella had forgotten the homework completely — but she had done it all the same. “Yeah,” she said, thinking of her conversation with Serge and Jasper. “I talked to my — uncles.” She gave Dash a quick look. “They said I should prepare my facts and not be so emotional. So I’ve got my facts ready.”

  The prince met her eyes.

  “And you, sir?” said the professor. “To whom did you speak?”

  “One of the palace librarians,” Dash answered, holding Ella’s gaze. “I asked him to find information on current labor laws across Tyme.”

  “Excellent. Continue in your efforts.” The profe
ssor left them to themselves.

  IT was a cool day, but Dash felt warm. Ella’s clear brown eyes had lit at the mention of labor laws; she looked at him now as though he had done something heroic.

  “You — er. You said you — had some facts?” he managed, confused.

  Ella gazed at him for another moment. “Look, I’m sorry I got upset with you yesterday,” she said. “I was out of line.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “No, it’s not,” she insisted. “Sir,” she added. “I’m sorry about that too; I know I’m supposed to be calling you sir, I’m just not used to any of this, so it’s —”

  “Don’t call me sir,” Dash interjected. “None of my friends do.”

  Ella’s eyes lit again, brighter.

  “Just, er.” Dash swallowed hard. “Tell me your facts. I’m — I’m listening.”

  She picked up her chalk. “Right,” she said. “You mentioned yesterday that laborers make each other sick — and it’s true. They do. But they don’t want to. No one wants to work when they’re dying. They want to stay home and get good medicine — they just can’t.”

  He thought of Tanner’s cousin Grommet, and he kept listening.

  “We both like math, so I’ll explain it in math, hey?” She put the chalk to the slate. “If you have a family of three people,” she said, “two parents and one child, then your expenses might look something like this.”

  He paid close attention as Ella wrote out the cost of renting a small house in an average village. It wasn’t very much — he was surprised. Then she wrote out the cost of food, candles and lamp oil, fabric, shoes, and tools. She tallied the cost of keeping one horse and giving one gift on Shattering Day, and she calculated taxes — she left out nothing. He marveled at the details she knew and understood.

  “And this is how much a person gets paid for spinning ten hours a day at Jacquard,” Ella said. She wrote out the number and multiplied the daily rate by days, weeks, and months, until she had a total yearly income.

  “So let’s multiply it by two, assuming there are two living parents who both work,” she said, and she did so. “And this is why it isn’t fair,” she finished as she wrote the total yearly income beside the total cost of supporting a family.

  The sum of both parents working ten-hour days was barely equal to their daily expenses. And their daily expenses were meager.

  “Now imagine,” said Ella, “that one of the parents gets sick and can’t work.”

  Dash watched as Ella drew a line through the sum of the two salaries and reduced it to half again.

  “And when someone is sick,” she said, “you have to add on new expenses for medicine and travel and specialists.”

  She wrote them out. She knew them well. The details were intimate.

  “So this is what you’re left with.”

  She scribbled a new number on the slate.

  “And that,” she said, “is why people go to work when they’re sick.”

  HE was listening. He looked heart-struck too, as if he understood.

  She grabbed the damp rag from the corner of the desk and started to wipe the slate tabletop, scrubbing out the math she’d scrawled all over it, but the prince’s hand stopped hers.

  “Reading,” he said.

  Ella drew back and let him study the numbers. When he was done, he leaned back in his chair and blew out a long, slow breath.

  Professor Linsey-Woolsey paused beside Ella’s chair.

  “That looks interesting,” she said. “What were you calculating?”

  “Nothing,” said Ella.

  “An idea,” said Dash at the same time.

  They looked at each other.

  “A business,” he continued. “One that …” he paused. “Pays fair wages. And gives sick leave. Is that right?” he said, searching Ella’s face.

  “Yeah,” she said, heat sweeping through her. “That’s right.”

  “I see,” said the professor, glancing from one to the other of them. “And what will the business do?”

  “We’re working that out,” said Dash. “Should we create a garment company?” he asked in a low voice when the professor had walked away again. “Use Practical Elegance as a model?”

  “We could, but I’d want to change everything,” said Ella. “I’d want to implement sick leave and shorten working hours and make sure the workshops are decent.” As she spoke, her enthusiasm for the idea mounted. If she could create a better plan for Practical Elegance, then maybe she could share it with her dad. Maybe he’d even pay attention. “We’d have to change the whole budget,” she said. “Raise prices, raise wages — and I’d want to change most of our suppliers. I only want to contract with people who treat their laborers properly.”

  “Then let’s do it.”

  “Seriously? You’d want to work on a plan like that?”

  Dash nodded.

  A moment later, the professor brought class to an end. Ella regarded the prince with new admiration as he packed up his books. To think, an hour ago, she had expected him to reject her for another partner. She had underestimated him.

  “I’ll ask my dad about Practical Elegance tonight, hey?” she said. “Get some information to start us off.”

  A gleam of Prism silk danced suddenly at the corner of her vision. Lavaliere paused beside their desk. She did not acknowledge Ella; she only smiled a little at Dash. “Walk me to history class?” she asked softly, and rested her polished fingertips on the slate tabletop before him.

  The prince rose. He doffed his smock. He cast a look at Ella that she could not read, and then he followed Lavaliere out of the classroom. Dimity lingered after them, just long enough to laugh in Ella’s face, and then she was gone too.

  Slowly, Ella gathered up her things. It was strange that the prince could be such a decent person when his friends were the biggest quints in Quintessential. Even if he didn’t completely act like it, he was still one of them. She had to be careful.

  HE was by the fire, reading, when his father walked in.

  “Son,” said King Clement with a breezy air that was incongruous with the sleepless trenches under his eyes. “How is Ella?”

  Dash let go of the scroll in his hands, and it rolled up in his lap. “What?”

  “Ella,” his father repeated, slowly and clearly. “Elegant Herringbone Coach.”

  Dash didn’t know what his father was getting at. “I imagine she’s well,” he said. “Why?”

  “I understand you chose her as your partner at school,” said King Clement.

  Dash shook his head. “The professor assigned us.”

  “And then today, you had an opportunity to reassign yourself. Isn’t that so?”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Lariat Jacquard.” His father watched him carefully. “You refused to change partners, and you stayed with the Coach girl. True or false?”

  “True, but —”

  “You made quite a point of asking that girl to dance at the ball.”

  “I didn’t —”

  “Everyone noticed, son. Ella Coach commanded your full attention, and the two of you had a very intimate conversation. What were you talking about?”

  Dash shook his head again. He wasn’t about to tell his father that Ella had spoken with his mother. The king would haul Ella in for questioning — and she, unlike Dash, would have no choice but to give him answers.

  “I think you have a little infatuation.”

  “No!” Dash blurted the word. He felt his face go hot. “Ridiculous.”

  “Is it?” said his father. “A country girl can be irresistibly appealing, and I should know; I married one. Of course, mine was tame. Yours has teeth. That was quite a scene at the ball — she must fancy herself a revolutionary. Is that what you find so bewitching?”

  Dash reopened his scroll and tried to focus on it. Defending himself was pointless. His father had made up his mind about something that wasn’t true; protesting would only make it worse.

  �
�Lavaliere is unhappy,” said his father. The words hung in the room until Dash looked up, irritated.

  “Why should I care?”

  “Because she’s your girlfriend.”

  “Barely.” He didn’t want to be together with her. He didn’t even want to talk to her anymore. The way she had laughed when Garb made that crack about Ella’s mother — he couldn’t tolerate it. He expected such viciousness from Garb. From Lavaliere, it was something new.

  Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe she’d always been nasty, and he’d simply been too consumed in his own cursed misery to notice.

  “When Lavaliere is unhappy, son, so is her mother.” The king moved closer until he stood before Dash’s chair. “So I told Lariat a story to explain your behavior. I told her that you very much wanted to partner with Lavaliere today, but I made you stay with Elegant Coach, because I have suspicions about the girl after her outburst at the ball.”

  Dash looked up, outraged. “You told Lady Jacquard I’m spying on Ella?”

  “You’re ‘keeping an eye on her activities,’ ” said King Clement. “To see if she’s a threat.”

  “A threat?”

  “It’s only a story,” said his father, waving a hand. “It will keep Lariat from pouncing. Partner with the Coach girl for this project, then give her up as soon as you have a chance, and we’ll say it’s because I’ve determined she’s harmless. In the meantime, give Lavaliere your attention whenever you can. Persuade her that you care.”

  “I’m sick of Lavaliere,” said Dash. “Acting like I’m —” He couldn’t find the word for it.

  “Claimed?” his father supplied.

  That was it.

  “Her mother was the same,” said the king. “It rankles, doesn’t it? It’s enough to drive a man straight into the arms of a nobody from Salting.”

  “My mother is not a nobody.”

  “No.” King Clement’s voice was quiet. He searched Dash’s eyes. “Where is she?” he asked in a tone so plaintive that Dash’s heart ached, in spite of what it knew. “Please. I can’t sleep.”