Just Ella (3 page)

Just then the court physician swept into the room. He was a spry little man I'd glimpsed only from a distance at formal court functions. He had an entourage of several men, all respectfully standing several steps back.

He bowed deeply before even glancing at Lord Reston's body on the floor.

“Princess, Madame, charmed as ever,” he said. “Now, I must beg you to excuse us.”

It took me a minute to realize he meant for us to leave. Madame Bisset, suddenly energized, rose quickly and gave me a stern look that made me feel like a dog being commanded to heel. I followed her out the door.

“We will use my chambers for your lesson today,” she said calmly, as if Lord Reston's collapse were not worth mentioning when I still had so much to learn about the proper ways to address various visiting dignitaries.

“They'll tell us how he is, won't they?” I asked. I had to
walk quickly to keep up with her. But she was gliding as smoothly as if she had wheels instead of legs, and I was bouncing up and down and half tripping on the layers of my dress. I longed to hike up the skirt again, as I had while running for help. But I knew that would make Madame Bisset faint for real.

“I hadn't realized you were so fond of His Excellency,” she said drily. “I'm sure you'll be told whatever's appropriate.”

That word,
appropriate,
took a minute to sink in.
No,
I wanted to shout,
I want to be told whatever's true
. But I didn't.

“Yes, Madame Bisset,” I said meekly.

I sat through the rest of the morning's lessons in a daze, paying even less attention than usual to Madame Siles, the needlepoint instructor, and Lord Axley, who was trying to teach me proper ways of dealing with servants. (His lessons had been added only after the fire-place fiasco.) At the noon meal with my ladies-in-waiting, I barely noticed the conversation, which was a silly stream of chatter about who had what color ribbons in their hair and why. I was pondering an experiment.

If I didn't ask, how long would it be before anyone told me how Lord Reston was?

And would anybody ever say to me, “Gosh, that must have been awful for you, seeing him collapse like that; if that ever happens again, here's how you can help . . .”?

I didn't think so.

I dunked an edge of bread into my soup. The bread was made of the finest-ground white flour in the kingdom, and it was served only in the castle. The luxury was lost on me—it seemed tasteless
compared with the coarse brown bread Mrs. Branson made back in my village and had sometimes shared with me if there was any left over after her husband and ten children ate. My mouth watered at the memory. Maybe once my place in the castle was a little more established—once I wasn't being chastised for trying to save a man's life—maybe I could convince whoever controlled such things to make Mrs. Branson an extra royal baker. The Bransons could certainly use the money, though Lucille, my stepmother, would be outraged that I was helping the Bransons and not her or my stepsisters. I imagined saying to any of the Step-Evils, “Hey, if you want to bake bread, that's great. But I thought none of you were into that, seeing as how you always made me do all the work.”

As usual, thinking about the Step-Evils made me feel uncomfortable and guilty and angry all at once. On that dizzying day when Prince Charming found me, when it was clear the glass slipper was mine and he was going to whisk me off to the palace, Lucille had suddenly turned into my best friend, hugging me and going on and on about how she couldn't be happier if it were one of her
real
daughters becoming a princess, and how she knew, from all our heart-to-heart talks, that this was my dearest wish, but wouldn't it be nice if my dear, dear mother and sisters could come to the castle with me?

“Stepmother,” I'd corrected quietly. “Stepsisters.”

One of the things that had endeared the prince to me forever was that he'd looked at the pile of rags that I'd cast
off and then looked at Lucille and Griselda and Corimunde in their tacky, expensive finery, and shut the door of the coach right in Lucille's face. I hadn't seen any of the Step-Evils since. Should I? Should I, for example, ask that they be invited to the wedding?

I was so lost in thought that it took me a long time to realize everyone else at the table had suddenly stopped talking and was staring in horror at me. Was I accidentally speaking my thoughts aloud, raving like the village lunatic? Had I sprouted green hair on my face?

“Princess,” the lady-in-waiting to my right hissed, and pointed with a severe tilt of her chin.

Behind me, a servant girl darted in to wipe up the single drop of soup that had fallen from my bread to the tablecloth. Madame Bisset, seated catty-corner and five seats down, rose and came to whisper in my ear, “Only commoners place their bread into the soup. You must never, never do that again.”

“All right,” I said with a jauntiness I didn't feel. “I'll be certain to remember that.”

Everyone returned to their soup again, bowing their heads so they didn't have to look at me. A dozen spoons moved in unison, dipping out of the bowls backward so as not to drip, exactly the way Lady Wesley had tried to teach me.

Somehow I didn't think my idea of brown bread at the castle would go over very well. Would I spend the rest of my life pretending to like white bread? Pretending a drop of soup on the tablecloth was a disastrous turn of events?
Pretending I was more interested in colored ribbons than in anything else?

“So,” I said, a bit too loudly, “has anyone heard how His Excellency, the Lord Reston is doing?” I was proud I'd remembered to say his full title. Surely Madame Bisset couldn't criticize me now.

A flurry of whispers circled the table.

“I believe,” Madame Bisset said calmly, “he is resting and doing well. He was taken ill during Princess Cynthiana Eleanora's lesson this morning,” she explained to the several ladies who were staring from me to her with puzzled expressions.

Ill?
I wanted to say.
He was—apoplectic. He almost died in front of me.

The other girls and women were shifting uncomfortably in their seats. If they hadn't all been so refined, I would have said they were squirming.

“Why does this bother everyone so much?” I asked. “I mean, I could understand you being concerned about Lord Reston's health. But none of you even want to speak of this. Why?”

Madame Bisset took it upon herself to speak for everyone.

“His
Excellency's
illness is of a particularly unpleasant nature,” she said. “As you must know, our duty as women is to be protected from unpleasantness, so that our minds and our souls—and our brows—shall be unsullied by worry. Women were created to be like flowers, providing color
and beauty to the world. We leave troubling matters to men.”

The other women were nodding and murmuring assent.

“Oh, Madame Bisset, you express yourself so beautifully,” the lady beside me said.

I considered suggesting that Madame Bisset ask the female servants in the palace if they believed they were protected from unpleasantness. I thought of the response she'd get if she tried out her theory on the women I knew back in the village, who worked from sunup until sundown scrubbing and baking and wiping snotty noses.

“Surely you understand now,” Madame Bisset asked.

I didn't say yes or no, but let the conversation meander back to ribbons.

A long, dull afternoon of needlepoint stretched ahead of me, so I dawdled leaving the dining room. That meant I was alone when I felt a timid tug on my dress.

“Please, miss. I mean, Princess.”

It was the child I'd sent for the doctor.

“Me mum, she's the one tending to that lord now, she says he's got a fair to middling chance of making it, and if he pulls through the night, he could live another twenty years. Except nobody knows if he'll ever be really himself again, because he can't move one of his arms and one of his legs, and half his face don't move neither. But”—the last words came out in a rush—“me mum says he wouldn't be alive at all if you hadn't sent for help so quick and made sure he could breathe and all.”

The child stood back on her heels, looking at me doubtfully, as if afraid I might punish her for speaking.

“Thank you,” I said. “I hope somebody else thanked
you too, for running for help so quickly. You're really the one who saved Lord Reston's life.”

The girl hunched her shoulders modestly.

“That's what me mum says.”

I felt the familiar stab of envy, hearing someone talk about a mother who obviously loved her. My own mother had died when I was born, and my father said it hurt to talk about her, so I had very little in the way of even second-hand memories. Certainly Lucille was no substitute for a loving mother. And I'd lost my father, too.

I dragged myself out of self-pity and directed my attention back to the child. Her dirt-colored hair was cut in a ragged circle around her face, and her cheeks and hands were so grubby it was hard to tell how long ago they'd been washed, if ever. And anyhow, her nose was too big and her mouth was too small—no one could mistake her purpose in life to be providing beauty. But her eyes were lively and quick, and I found myself looking at them and forgetting the rest.

“What's your name, child?” I asked.

“Mary.”

“I'm—well, I guess you know who I am,” I said. “How about if we make a deal. If you get a chance, could you let me know tomorrow how Lord Reston is doing? You're the first person who's been honest with me. I don't have anything with me now, but I'm sure I can come up with some reward for you.”

Mary giggled.

“Oh, that don't matter. I just thought you'd want to know.
I heard you ask at the table. Don't that Madame Bisset beat all?”

Mary's pronunciation of “Madame” was actually better and more French sounding than mine. She probably knew more about palace protocol too. I squinted thoughtfully. Mary wasn't more than four or five years younger than me. It didn't seem fair that I was now a princess and she would always be a servant, just because I looked a little prettier than her.

“Madame Bisset does beat all,” I agreed. “You won't get in trouble for talking to me, will you?”

“Are you kidding?” Mary said. “Not as long as you don't mind.”

“All right, then—,” I started, when someone called from down the corridor, “Princess—”

“See you tomorrow,” I told Mary.

I went off to my needlepoint feeling a little cheerier.

That evening was my time to meet with the prince. We had an hour together just about every other night, depending on his schedule. I saw him at the banquet table every night, of course, but that was often from a distance, because the seating chart always changed. In the beginning, they always placed me with Madame Bisset and my other instructors, so they could correct any horrifying error I made before it attracted too much attention. I could tell someone thought I was learning something, because in the last few days I'd occasionally gotten to sit near people who hadn't heard anything but the castle's official story—that I was a foreign princess who'd disguised herself as a commoner, because I wanted to win Prince Charming's love on my own merits, not because of my father's vast lands. I thought anyone who believed the castle's official story had to be several logs short of a roaring fire, but nobody asked me.

Now I sat in the prince's vast antechamber, waiting. The protocol of these visits was strictly regimented. Someone—usually one of my older and therefore more mature ladies-in-waiting—had to walk me down the hall and make sure there was a chaperon in attendance. My lady-in-waiting would curtsy and discreetly remove herself. Then the door to the prince's bedchambers, a place I'd never seen, would open, and I'd catch my breath and try to make conversation with the prince, the man I was going to marry.

I studied the tapestry on the wall, a dramatic scene of huntsmen killing a wild boar. There were dogs yapping at the boar, blood pouring from his sides, a nobleman with a sword poised above him, ready to deliver the final thrust. Women must have stitched this gory scene—needlepoint wasn't for men. How did that fit with Madame Bisset's notion that women must be protected from all unpleasantness? I dismissed her ideas as too silly to even think about.

Behind me, tonight's chaperon, an ancient retainer of the king's, snuffled. He sounded like he had a bad cold. The candles sputtered in their sconces. The old grand-father clock by the door donged eight times. Not twelve—not midnight, the hour I had dreaded and run from on the most exciting evening of my entire life . . .

Remembering the ball, I almost missed the opening door. But then there was the prince, in all his glory: clear blue eyes, high cheekbones, rugged jaw, blond hair precisely the right length because it was cut every fourth day by the royal barber. Tonight the prince was wearing a deep blue waistcoat that exactly matched his eyes and showed off his muscular chest and trim waist. My heart quickened, as always. Dizzily, I thought back to a summer afternoon years ago, before the Step-Evils entered my life, when several of the other girls in the neighborhood and I were wading in the creek behind our house, talking of whom we would marry.

“This is posh,” Vena, a gloomy girl none of us really liked, had muttered. “We'll all settle for whoever asks us. We'll just be lucky if we don't get someone like my dad.”

Her father was a well-known ne'er-do-well, who spent most of his time in the village tavern.

“Not me,” I said. “I won't settle. If the right person doesn't ask, I won't marry at all.”

Some of the girls gasped, I remember. What would they have said if I'd vowed to marry a prince?

Now I murmured, “Your Majesty,” trying to sound properly dignified and feminine and loving. I bent forward and extended my hand for kissing. Charm took it, and the brush of his lips on my skin sent shivers down my spine.