The Olive Conspiracy (18 page)

Carolina pointed out a tiny blossom of
white-and-cream tendrils. “This one is very special, because you
can drink it.” She carefully picked one and used her fingernail to
remove the stem, then lifted it to her lips. “Here, I will fix one
for you.”

Transfixed, Shulamit watched as she retrieved
another flower and prepared it. Drinking flowers. That was
practically a metaphor for… wasn’t it?

She realized Carolina wasn’t going to literally
feed it to her, so she accepted it in her trembling hand and
mimicked what she’d seen Carolina do with it. The drop of nectar
was sweet and fragrant and only contributed to the swirling clouds
of hormones in her mind.

“
It’s called honeysuckle,” said
Carolina. “One day, when I was very small, Papai and I were riding
in a carriage, and we reached a bridge that men were fixing. We
would not have taken that road, but nobody knew the bridge was
down. So we got out of the carriage while we waited and ate all the
honeysuckles on the side of the road.”

“
Sometimes when Aba tours our farms
back home, he takes me with him and the farmers always give me
things they’ve grown.” It wasn’t a
great
story and not
really the same thing, but Shulamit felt like she had to respond
and it was the first thing that came out.

“
The landowners give me cookies we
call cat’s tongue,” Caroline replied, “because so many of the
things we grow you can’t give someone just to eat. Like cotton, or
rice, or indigo.”

“
Can’t really eat fluffs of
cotton!” Shulamit wanted to hide in the roots of the camellia bush.
That was possibly the stupidest thing she’d ever said. Ugh. Were
boys this dumb when trying to talk to girls?

She wished she could ask her father for help
with this sort of thing. He was
fabulous
with women and
usually had more than one girlfriend at a time. But when she tried
to tell him how she felt about women—how she felt about Princess
Carolina, and how she was a little bit in love with Queen Esther
from the Purim story—he just dismissed it as something she didn’t
understand and would grow out of. The good part was that he’d
promised her he’d never choose a husband for her. But he definitely
thought her heartfelt, honest feelings were something she was
misstating and exaggerating.

“
Where are we going now?” Deep in
her fretful reverie, Shulamit had missed the transition of their
walk from walls of flowers to walls of plain and thorny hedge, a
hedge that was cultivated and trimmed within an inch of its life
and rose several heads above them.

“
This is our garden maze,”
explained Carolina, “but I know the way to the middle.”

“
Then I’ll feel safe with you
because we won’t get lost.” Shulamit then spent the next several
steps worrying that her comment had been too forward, too
flirtatious, too obviously something that ordinary girls said to
boys, not to other girls. See, this was why she wished she could
have her father’s help!

Maybe she didn’t need it. After all, Carolina
was a girl, just like her, so why not just speak to her the way
she, Shulamit, would wish to be spoken to herself?

Eyes wide open with admiration for Carolina’s
beauty and elegance, the little princess realized this wasn’t much
help. They might both be women, but they weren’t the same people.
Carolina was tall and broad and gorgeous; Shulamit, an awkward waif
with a body, she thought with a grimace, that didn’t seem any
different from the way she’d looked at eleven.

What she could bring to the table was her
brains. She wondered if she could impress Carolina with them, and
tried to think of something relevant to say.

Luckily, Carolina didn’t seem to mind the
silence as Shulamit frantically scrubbed her brain for interesting
trivia.

“
Here—we’ve found it!” Carolina
stepped into the clearing, her arms outstretched. Delicate lace
drooped from the edges of her sleeves and floated in her
wake.

There was a small stone tower at the core of
the maze’s center. “Wow, this looks really old.” Shulamit’s eyes
were wide with admiration as she ran her hand over the cool, gray
rock.

“
Good eye!” said Carolina. “It has
been here almost a thousand years. It was part of the castle that
stood here long before my family’s dynasty. Now it is all that
remains, so we have built a maze around it to help protect
it.”

“
That’s great!” Shulamit was happy
that she could stop feeling so self-conscious about smiling all the
time, because now there was an excuse to smile that wasn’t an
eighteen-year-old goddess with big hips.

“
Do you want to go to the
top?”

“
Oh, can we, still?”

“
Yes, we make sure to keep it free
of damage and debris.” Carolina turned and led her into the narrow,
winding staircase. “And since it rises over the maze, you will love
the view.”

When Shulamit slipped into the crevice in the
rock tower, she found herself pressed close against Carolina’s
fragrant warmth. A throbbing awoke between her legs, and she ached
to be held. She followed her up to the top, wanting nothing more
than for Carolina to turn around suddenly on the stairs and kiss
her.

I’d better get it together or I’m going to
fall off the top of the tower if I’m not careful
, Shulamit told
herself angrily.

Still, when Carolina reached the top and
reached out for Shulamit’s hand to help her up, Shulamit took her
hand into her own with as much sensuality and reverence as if they
had been lying betwixt each other’s thighs.

The gardens, however, provided a welcome
distraction. “This is beautiful!” Shulamit gaped at the view of the
walls of azaleas through which they’d walked, and the camellia
garden, and on the other side, pools of water lilies and neat,
orderly rows of blossoming peach trees, and loquat trees in full
fruit like little plums of yellow velvet. Workers maintained the
tidiness of the grounds, picking up dead leaves and trimming
hedges. Beyond, she saw the palace where Carolina lived, and the
high walls shielding it from the world outside. “If I lived here
I’d come up here to read, and between pages I’d take a break and
pick a different flower to stare at each time.”

Carolina was looking down at the loquat trees,
her brow furrowed. “Do you see that? What impudence!”

“
What?” Shulamit looked down into
the grove. There were workers harvesting some of the fruit, placing
them into small boxes on the ground. Everyone looked like they were
taking great care with them.

“
That man has eaten two of the
loquats he picked,” Carolina said in a huff, “instead of putting
them in the boxes as they belong.”

“
Those fruit are for the palace
kitchen, right?”

Carolina nodded vigorously. “Yes, they are.
They are not his to eat. I will tell my father. It scares me that
they do not fear the whip more, and still persist on—”

“
Whip?” Shulamit exclaimed.
“They’re going to whip him for eating two loquats?”

“
It is not the first time,” said
Carolina. “He says he is hungry, but he has the same rice in the
morning as the rest of them. And don’t we pay them? If he does not
like what he earns, he should leave, instead of sneaking our fruit
like a thief.”

“
Oh, Carolina, please don’t tell
anyone.” Shulamit’s cheeks were burning, and she shook a little.
“Just let it go, just this once.”

“
Why?”

“
Because it’s just fruit, and
because I feel sorry for him. Rice doesn’t really sound like enough
food. I mean, I’ve been eating a lot of rice on the way here, and I
know I feel better when I have more than that.”

“
But he is only a worker. You are…
Crown Princess of Perach.”

“
Please
. Don’t make my first
memory of Imbrio be like this.” Shulamit didn’t know what else to
say. “And if you want, I’ll pay you for the loquats.” She looked
down at the grove. “I’ll give you my earrings.”

“
Oh, funny Shulamit with her big
heart!” Carolina squeezed her upper arm, and Shulamit melted in a
wave of confusion as she thrilled at the touch. “All right, I won’t
say anything, and you don’t have to give me your
earrings.”

“
Thank you.” Shulamit tried to
smile and felt the muscles of her mouth moving too awkwardly to be
attractive.

“
The sun is getting lower. Is it
time for us to head back to get changed for dinner?”

“
Already?” Shulamit looked westward
and saddened slightly. Even with the unpleasant bits, she was
enjoying being up here in this beautiful place in such close
quarters with the girl she loved.

“
We can go back the other way, so
you can see the water lilies up close.”

She headed back down, holding her skirts close
to her so their vastness wouldn’t scrape against the sides of the
staircase, with Shulamit following close behind.

16. En Bateau

Princess Shulamit looked around the grand
dining hall at the Imbrian royal family and their guests, admiring
their exotic, ornate clothing and wondering what the next course
would be. It was so nice to have varied food again, after all the
rice she’d eaten on the way here. The vegetable soup was simple but
flavorful, with a base of pureed potato, and the simple green salad
that followed was so fresh and crisp that it almost looked too
perfect to eat. The olive oil provided to pour on it with the
vinegar and salt tasted different from the oil back home, but still
very good. Shulamit knew there were people who could tell whether
an oil was Perachi or Imbrian just by the taste, but she was far
from being one of them.

Princess Carolina was seated across from her,
but the pleasure Shulamit took in her food took some of the
pressure off the infatuation. It was almost easier to enjoy
Carolina’s presence when she had something else to think about at
the same time.

Still, she ate
impeccably
—at any moment,
those large, dark eyes might be on her, and she didn’t want to have
lettuce leaves poking out of her mouth or vinegar dribbling down
her chin.

Her heart sank a little when she realized the
next course was
more rice
, accompanied by a strange, gray
meat she didn’t recognize. She reached out her hand for the serving
spoon to take some anyway, but her father stopped her with a gentle
touch to the wrist. “That’s not for us, sweetheart.”

She looked at him curiously. “What
animal…?”

“
It is wild boar,” said Queen Ines,
“from our royal forests. Don’t worry! There is also fish and
potatoes on the way.”

“
Thank you.” Shulamit moved her
braids so that they hung down her back instead of over her
shoulders, out of the way of her food.

The fish was saltier than she was used to, but
it was still delicious. Dessert was made of little custards,
overwhelmingly sweet and drenched in a brown syrup that Shulamit
thought was going to be honey but was thinner and runnier. She
found herself licking the spoon as she studied the novel flavor,
peering at Carolina across the table. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to
kiss her after they’d eaten something like that? She imagined a
moment alone with her—just two girls pressing together their
sugared mouths, kissing each other spotless.

“
I think your daughter is enjoying
the flan,” said King Fernando to King Noach with amusement. “Is
this the first time she’s had it?”

“
Maybe so,” said Noach. “It’s good
to see her eating like this. She ate so timidly during our
travels.”

“
You can have a second, if you
like,” said Queen Ines warmly.

“
Mmmm.” Shulamit put the spoon down
with embarrassment.

King Fernando pushed back his chair and stood.
“Now that dinner is over, we can all take our coffee in the salon.
I think my daughter has prepared something to entertain
us.”

“
Oh?” Shulamit turned to Carolina
with interest as she followed everyone away from the
table.

“
Yes, I have improved in my singing
lessons.” Carolina grinned, her face radiant.

“
I love your voice,” said Shulamit.
She was excited about the informal recital; at last, an excuse to
stare at Carolina for minutes at a time!

She accepted her coffee cup and curled up next
to her father on one of the sofas, wrapping her pink, filmy scarf
around her shoulders like the embrace she wanted from Her
Lady.

Carolina was standing at the far end of the
room talking to a tall man with a beard that went all the way
around his face. He was a little older than they were—maybe in his
early or midtwenties, and his broad shoulders and trim waist made
him seem vaguely triangular. He held a guitar that was also
strapped around his neck and back with a piece of
leather.

“
Good evening, Visconde!” called
King Fernando to the stranger.

“
Good evening, Majesty!” the man
replied jovially.

“
Give us some good music tonight,”
said the king.

“
I always try, Majesty.” The man
bowed, then took a place behind Carolina.