by Alex Flinn
“Your Highness?” Lady Brooke continues to knock.
The gowns—I need one for tonight and several for the ball tomorrow and a dozen or so more for the coming week—must be perfect. And then, perhaps Father will speak with the tailor who designed the loveliest one and have him create fifty or so more for my wedding trip around the globe.
Truth be told, it is the trip, rather than the wedding, which appeals to me. I care not for marriage at someone else’s whim. But it is my lot in life, and a cross I must bear to gain the wedding trip. I am more than ready to leave Euphrasia, having been trapped here for almost sixteen years. And, of course, my husband shall be handsome, and a prince.
I fling the door open. “Well? Where are they?”
Lady Brooke produces a map of the castle.
I take it from her. One has to admire her organization. I see now that Lady Brooke has marked out the rooms which will be used to house our numerous royal guests. Other rooms are marked with a star. “What is this?”
“On the occasion of your last birthday, you told your father that, upon the occasion of this birthday, you required ‘the most perfect gown in all the world.’ Your father took this request quite literally and sent out the call to tailors and seamstresses the world over. China’s entire haul of silk-worms has been put to this task. Children have been pulled from their cottages and huts to spin and sew and slave, all for the pleasure of Princess Talia of Euphrasia.”
“Very good, Lady Brooke.” I know she thinks I am silly and spoiled. Was I not gifted with intelligence? I also know this not to be the case. How can I be spoiled when I never get to do a single thing I want? I did not ask that children be pulled from their cribs to slave for me, but since they were, is it not only courteous to gaze upon their efforts and, hopefully, find a dress or two that will be acceptable? I can already picture the gown in which I shall make my grand entrance at the ball. It will be green. “The map?”
“Yes, the map. Each tailor was asked to bring his twenty best creations, all in your exact measurements. Your father believed that you might be overwhelmed, gazing upon so many gowns at once. Therefore, he decreed that they be placed in twenty-five separate rooms of the castle. In this way, you may wander about, choosing as you will.”
Twenty gowns times twenty-five tailors! Five hundred gowns! I grow giddy.
“We had best get started,” I tell Lady Brooke.
We begin to walk down the stone hallway. The first rooms are on the floor above us, and as we climb the stairs, Lady Brooke says, “May I ask what you will do with the gowns which do not meet with your approval?”
This is a trick question, I know, like all of Lady Brooke’s questions, designed to prove that I am a horrid brat. Why care I what Lady Brooke thinks? But I do, for much as I loathe her, she is my only companion, the closest thing I have to a friend. So I rack my brain for an acceptable answer. Give them to her? Surely not. The gowns were made to my exact measurements, and Lady Brooke, who has not been blessed with the gift of beauty, is an ungainly half a head taller than I, and stout.
“Give them to the poor?” I say. When she frowns, I think again. “Or, better yet, hold an auction and give the money collected to the poor. For food.”
There! That should satisfy the old bat!
And perhaps it does. At least, she is quiet as we enter the first room. Quiet disapproval is the best I can expect from Lady Brooke.
Dresses line the walls, covering even the windows. Twenty of them, in different fabrics, different shapes, but every single one of them blue!
“Was it not communicated to the tailors that my eyes are green?” I ask Lady Brooke in a whisper loud enough for the tailor to hear. I want him to. Of all the stupidity!
He hears. “You want-a green dresses?” He has an accent of some sort, and when he moves closer, I see beads of sweat forming upon his forehead. Ew. I certainly hope that he has refrained from sweating over his work, which would make the fabric smell.
“Not all green,” I say. “But I would not have expected all blue.”
“Blue, it is the fashion this year,” the sweaty tailor says.
“I am a princess. I do not follow fashions—I make them.”
“I am certain one blue dress would be acceptable.” Lady Brooke tries to smooth things over with this peasant whilst glaring at me. “Talia, this man has come all the way from Italy. His designs are the finest in the world.”
“What?” I say, meaning, what does this have to do with me?
“I said…oh, never mind. Will you not look at the dresses now? Please?”
I look. The dresses are all ugly. Or maybe not ugly but boring, with boring ruffles. Boring, like everything else in my life. Still, I manage to smile so as not to call out another lecture from Lady Brooke. “Lovely, thank you.”
“You like?” He steps in my way.
Would not I have said if I liked? But I tell him, “I will think upon it. This is the first room I have visited.”
This seems to satisfy him. At least, he gets his sweatiness out of my way, and I am allowed to pass to the next room.
This room and indeed the two after it are little better. I find one dress, a pink one, which might be acceptable for a lesser event like Friday’s picnic, some event at which I would not mind looking like the dessert, but nothing at all to wear on the Most Important Night of My Life.
“Talia?” Lady Brooke says after the third room. “Perhaps if you gave more than a cursory glance—”
“Perhaps if they were not all so hideous!” I am devastated and hurt, and Lady Brooke does not understand. How could she? When she was young, she could go to shops and choose her own clothing, even make it if she liked. I will never be normal, but barring that, I would like to be abnormal in a lovely green dress without too many frills.
“Here is a green one,” Lady Brooke says in the next room.
I glower at it. The ruffles would reach my nose. “This would suit…my grandmother.”
“Could the ruffles be removed?” Lady Brooke asks the tailor.
“Could you create a gown that is not entirely hideous?” I add.
“Talia…”
“It is naught but the truth.”
“Pardonez moi,” the tailor says. “The frock, I can fix it.”
“Non, merci,” I say, and flounce from the room.
In the next, I spy a lavender velvet with a heart-shaped neckline. I reach to touch the soft fabric.
“Beautiful, is it not?” Lady Brooke asks.
I pull my hand back. I am thoroughly sick of Lady Brooke and dresses and my life. I am certain she despises me as well and, suddenly, the company of even Malvolia herself seems preferable to that of the detestable Lady Brooke.
“Do you have anything better?”
“Talia, you are being terrible.”
“I am being truthful, and I would thank you to remember that you are in my father’s service.”
“I know it. Would that it were not the case, for I am ashamed to be in your presence when you are behaving like a horrible brat.”
She says it with a smile. The tailor, too, smiles stupidly. I stare at him. “Are there any gowns which are less likely to make me want to vomit than this one?”
The man continues to smile and nod.
“He speaks no English,” I say. “So what care you what I say to him?”
“I care because I am forced to listen to you. You have grown more and more insolent in recent weeks. I am ashamed of you.” She nods and smiles.
I feel something like tears springing to my eyes. Lady Brooke hates me, even though she is required to like me. Probably everyone else hates me, too, and merely pretends because of Father. But I hold the tears back. Princesses do not cry.
“Then why not leave me alone?” I ask, smiling as I was trained. “Why does no one ever leave me be for one single, solitary instant?”
“My orders—”
“Were your orders to yell at me and call me a brat?” I begin to pace back and forth li
ke a caged animal. I am a caged animal. “Tomorrow I shall be sixteen. Peasant girls my age are married with two and three babes, and yet I am not permitted to walk down a hallway within my own castle without supervision.”
“The curse—”
“You do not even believe in the curse! And yet it has come true, not the spindle part, but the death…. I am living my death, little by little, each day. And when I am sixteen and the curse ends, I shall be given over to a husband of someone else’s choosing, who will tell me what to do and say and eat and wear for the rest of my life. I can only pray that it will be short, pray for the blessed independence of the grave. I will always be under someone’s orders.” I begin to cry, anyway, to sob. What difference does it make? “Can I not simply walk down a hallway on my own?”
Through it all, the tailor smiles and nods.
Lady Brooke’s expression softens. “I suppose it would be all right. After all, the tailors have been thoroughly searched and the spindle regulations explained to them.”
“Of course they have.” I sigh.
Lady Brooke turns to the man and speaks to him in French.
“Thank you!” I sob. I point to the lavender gown and say, in French, “It is beautiful! I shall take that one, and that one as well.” I point to a charming scarlet satin with a neckline off the shoulders in the style of Queen Mary of England, a gown I had purposely ignored before, which now looks quite fetching.
“Very well.” Lady Brooke hands me the map. “Just point to what you want, and they will put it aside.”
I nod and take the paper from her. I am free—at least for an hour!
Chapter 3
Free of the encumbrance that is Lady Brooke, I fairly skip down the stone hallways. I would swing from the chandeliers, could I reach them, but I content myself with jumping up toward them. My life is no less horrible than before, but at least there is no dour Lady Brooke to remark upon its horribleness.
In short time, I have chosen five dresses, none blue, but none special enough for my grand entrance at my birthday ball. Although one is green, it does not match the exact shade of my eyes.
“It will look lovely on you,” says the tailor, who is from England.
Of course he thinks so. I know what he is about. Having his dress worn by a princess on an occasion of such import will increase his renown. For the rest of his life, he might call himself “Tailor to Talia, Princess of Euphrasia.”
But his apprentice says, “Indeed. It may not be the same shade as your remarkable eyes, but it will bring them out.”
The tailor quickly shushes him, lest the boy disgrace them both by speaking so to a princess. But I turn toward him and smile. He is my age, no more, perhaps the tailor’s son. And—I find it difficult not to notice—he is handsome. For a commoner. His eyes are the color of cornflowers.
“Do you think so?”
He looks down, blushing. “I meant no disrespect, Your Highness. But yes. It will look lovely on you, as any dress would.”
I wonder what it would be like to be a common girl, who could flirt with such a handsome tailor’s apprentice with impunity. Or, better yet, to be the apprentice himself, to be a boy, so young, yet traveling far from home. And to learn a trade such as making a dress. In all my life, I have never created anything, never done anything at all other than silly paintings of flowers for my art master, Signor Maratti. Father hung them in his bedchamber, where they would be seen by no one. Is it enough to be a princess, when being a princess means nothing?
I nod and turn reluctantly to the old tailor. “I shall wear it tonight for dinner. Many noblewomen will be in attendance, and if they compliment my gown, I will tell them your name.”
I start for the door. The tailor bows, but the boy does not move. He is staring at me, entranced by my beauty. I get the shiveriest sensation across my arms. Of course he thinks I am beautiful, but I like that he sees me. I wonder if this is what it will be like when I meet my prince. Maybe it will not be so bad.
Five more rooms, then ten, and still the dress I desire has not been found. It seems a small task, certainly one the best tailors in the world should be able to accomplish. And yet they have not. I sigh. Perhaps I will wear the English tailor’s dress to the ball after all.
I reach the end of the hallway. I have never been in this part of the castle before. Amazing. These rooms have barely been used, but surely a child—a normal child—would explore every room at some time. But I had not been a normal child.
I spy a staircase in the shadows. This is not one of the stairways I am accustomed to using to reach the fourth floor, and when I check Lady Brooke’s map, I see that it was not included. How odd. I am seized with a sudden urge to run up its steps, even slide down the banister. But that is silly, and if I do that, I will be delayed. And then Lady Brooke will come looking for me. I turn back down the hall.
Suddenly, I hear a voice.
It was a lover and his lass,
With a hey, and a ho,
And a hey nonny no…
A lover.
In the spring time, the only pretty ring time…
A woman’s voice, singing. Entranced, almost, I start up the stair.
When birds do sing,
Hey ding a ding, ding!
Sweet lovers love the spring!
At the top of the stairs, there is an open door. I stop. There is no tailor. I knew there would not be. But instead, there is an old woman sitting upon a bench. I see not what she is doing, for she is surrounded by dresses, so many dresses, much more than twenty. But that is not the remarkable thing.
Each and every dress is exactly the same shade of green as my eyes.
“Lovely!” The cry comes from me unbidden. I run into the room.
“Good afternoon, Your Highness.” The old woman attempts to rise from her chair with great effort. She begins to curtsy.
“Oh, please don’t!” I say. She is, after all, very old.
“Ah, but I must. You are a princess, and respect must be accorded certain positions. Those who do not take heed will pay the price.”
She is almost to the floor, and I wonder how long it will take her to right herself. Still, I say, “Very well.” I wish for a second—but only a second—that Lady Brooke were here so that she might see how I follow her directions about not arguing with my elders.
I step back and study the dresses. It seems there is every style and every fabric: satins, velvets, brocades of all designs, and a lighter fabric I have never seen before, which will float behind me like a cloud of butterflies.
Finally, the woman rises. “Do you like anything?”
I had nearly forgotten she was there, so enchanted was I with the gowns.
I sigh. “Yes, I like everything! It is all perfect.”
She laughs. “I am honored that you believe so. For you see, I am from Euphrasia. I have seen you all your life, Your Highness, and have flattered myself that I knew better than any foreigner the designs that would suit my own princess.”
“Indeed.” I try to recall if I have seen her before, perhaps in the crowds at a parade. But why would I have noticed an old woman who looks much like any other? Only her eyes are unusual. They are not glazed over with a film of white, like so many very old people’s are. Instead, they are lively, black and glittering like a crow’s.
“Have you a special favorite?” she asks.
“This one.” I start toward the lightweight dress. “I shall rival the fairies in this!”
“’Tis my favorite, too. Do you mind, Your Highness, if I sit back down? I know it is not the correct way, but I am quite old, and my knees are not what they once were when I was a young woman like yourself, dancing at festivals.”
“Of course.” I am flooded with gratitude toward this stranger who knows what I want, who understands me as Mother and Father and wretched Lady Brooke do not. I approach the dress. The old woman has settled back onto her stool and has begun some sort of needlework. There is a contraption in her hand, something that looks
like a top with which children play. It is nearly covered in wool that has been dyed a deep rose.
“What is that?” I ask her.
“Oh, ’tis my sewing. I make my own thread. Do you wish to try?”
Sewing? I step closer. The contraption is a wooden spike weighted at one end with a whorl of darker wood. A hook holds the thread in place, and when the thread is finished, it winds around the stick below the whorl, to be used for sewing. There is a quantity of unfinished wool at the top. “Oh, I should not.”
“Of course not. I misspoke. ’Twould be unfitting for a young lady such as yourself to make dresses. You were born merely to wear them. Humble souls like myself were meant to create.”
I nod, approaching the dresses again.
“Only…”
“What is it?” I am touching the fabric, but I glance back at her.
“They say ’tis lucky. ’Twas handed down to me by my mother and her mother before her, and all who make thread with it are entitled to one wish.”
“A wish?” I know what Lady Brooke would say on the subject. Her thoughts on wishes are much like her thoughts on magic. Superstition is the opposite of God. Still, I say, “Have you ever wished upon it?”
“Aye.” She nods. “I have indeed, when I was young. I wished for a long life.”
I stare at her. Her face is like crumpled silk, and her hair the color of paper.
“How long ago was that?”
“When I was your age, fifteen. So nigh upon two hundred years.”
I gasp, but the old woman holds my gaze.
“What would you wish for, Your Highness? I know you must have wishes, trapped as you are in this castle, longing to marry if only to get out, not daring to hope for freedom.” Her voice is very nearly hypnotic. “Be not afraid. What do you wish for?”
My freedom. Or love. Or…travel. I wish to travel the world, to be not a princess trapped in a protected existence, but a human girl. Silly thought. I cannot do that.
