Princess Ben (11 page)

***

Oh, the vistas that opened for me that night. Every major wall in the castle contained a secret passageway, the portals always marked by a hedgehog: gilded on ex-rooms, carved into obscure walls and panels, even woven into tapestries. (In the light of day I would discover a hedgehog scratched on the wall of my cell; I had never before noted it.) Through the veiled openings of these portals I observed corridors, parlors, reception areas, the throne room, the ballroom, the grand and desolate king's apartment, workrooms, armories, and stockrooms. The very soul of caution, I refrained from stepping through a single doorway ... until I reached the royal larders. Stacked before me, a veritable oasis, rose shelf after laden shelf of food. My heart beat fast; my hands began to shake so that my handful of light trembled, then perished. With a cursory test of the doorway, reassuring myself I could reenter, I leapt into the room.

One might assume, given knowledge of my passions, that I would embark on a complete orgy of consumption. This
assumption would be correct. And yet, half mad with desire though I was, I had sense enough to avoid the rarest and most notable items. Frosted cakes perched upon their own shelf, for example, I gave wide berth, as cooks monitor such precious foodstuffs most carefully. Instead I enjoyed the oddest but most delectable feast one could imagine: three apples from a packed bin, fistfuls of dried fruit, a moldy quarter of tart that would not be missed, slabs of smoked ham from a half-finished haunch, a mouthwatering spoonful of tallow—well, two spoonfuls; large spoonfuls—a cupful of sugar, deliciously crunchy, more apples still ... I soon felt quite ill, but continued to gorge in compensation for my months of imposed restraint. Famine, as they say, makes all food a feast.

Finally I halted, my cloak soiled with grease and jam. Why was it that jam always coated me so? I noticed, horrified, that my footprints covered the floor, first gray from dust, then white as I trod back and forth through a patch of flour I had not even noticed. Frantically I scrubbed away this evidence, grateful for my recent education in housekeeping. A second scare came when I could not locate the hedgehog! But no, I had simply mistaken the scratched outline for a random graffito.

Return proved far more strenuous than I had anticipated.
The passageway, though I continued to remind myself that this was illusion, felt ever narrower and more constricting. My physical discomfort grew to intense nausea as I ascended one narrow staircase after another, for the kitchens of course occupied the castle's basement, and my cell the highest tower.

At one point, passing an opening to the servants' quarters, I near exclaimed in surprise. Shuffling toward me, clear as day in the moonlight that poured through a high window, was none other than my tormentor Hildebert, doubtless on her way to the privy. Ill tempered from queasiness, giving no thought whatsoever to the consequences of this rash act, I impulsively decided to exact revenge for the abuse to which the ogress had for so long subjected me. As she neared the portal, I thrust my head through the veil. How horrifying it must have looked, my face materializing out of the wall before her. Adding to the nightmare, I rolled my eyes in a most ghoulish manner.

I can recall few times in my life when disappointment leveled me as profoundly as it did at that instant. Hildebert glanced at my leering face and continued onward without a pause in her step. I pressed my head out further, but she had
passed. Her mutter filled the corridor: "Always knew the ruddy place was haunted."

***

Once, when I was a child playing beneath an open window, that busybody Frau Lungonaso came upon me, and roughly scolded me that eavesdroppers punish themselves. Had I the wit and knowledge, I would have responded that she better than anyone should know. As it was, I had been so busy tucking my wee worm children into their tiny mud beds that I had not even been aware of the adult conversation occurring inside. Be that as it may, her aphorism would ultimately prove more than true.

I awoke the following morn sated, and my preoccupations carried me through another long, tedious day. No sooner had Hildebert locked me in my cell than I verily leapt from my Doppelschläferin. Securing my snug cloak, I headed downstairs at once, so eager was I to begin exploring, and eating as well, for gluttony like most sins inspires hasty vows but few improvements.

As I descended, the steps shimmered in a pale light, and it took me a moment to realize they were illuminated by yet
another portal, this to the queen's reception room. In fact, as I peered in, I found myself looking straight into the face of Sophia herself!

I leapt back, cracking my head. Of course she could not perceive me, but the noise caught her attention.

"Is everything quite right, my queen?" asked a familiar voice. Clutching my throbbing skull, my eyes wet with pain, I leaned forward to observe Lord Frederick resting on a chair. I had not known the two were meeting.

"Of course! We heard only a mouse ... Are you certain, Frederick?"

"My sources give me no reason to believe otherwise. The possibility of Prince Walter's return no longer restrains them."

My father! My breath caught at his mention. But restrain whom from what?

The queen paced. "Then we have no alternative but to marry."

The queen? My jaw fell open. Who would ever want to marry
her?

Frederick sighed to himself. "I see no alternative."

"Oh, there is an alternative! Drachensbett's absorption
and destruction of our nation. Perhaps water does in fact flow uphill."
At least water does not flow uphill
is a traditional Montagne expression referring to the fact that Drachensbett cannot attack
up
the waterfall. But the queen now seemed to believe an attack was imminent, however much those fiends smirked their regrets over the Badger Tragedy.

"Yes, Your Majesty," the lord murmured, with seeming—and inexplicable—regret.

She resumed her pacing. "We shall host a great ball, inviting every man of rank within six days' ride."

I listened more intensely than ever I had. The queen could not seriously consider marriage. As regent, she had not even a country to offer as dowry. At least, I thought with a shiver, I hoped not.

Lord Frederick's words brought me back to the present. "I believe the announcement of such an event would delay their attack, knowing they have a chance at the throne through legitimate means."

"If
his
son be the mate we select," sniffed the queen. "Regardless, their presumption serves us well, and so shall we hold them at bay until we identify a spouse for Benevolence."

This time I gasped audibly. How dim I was! It was not the
queen; it was
I
whom they intended to marry off as a brainless brood mare.

The queen stepped closer to the portal. She glared—unknowingly, though this was small comfort at the moment—into my face and ran her hand along the very space through which I peered, my lips pursed to silence any betraying breath.

"Are you quite certain we are alone?" she asked, never taking her eyes from the wall.

"I have taken every precaution, Your Majesty."

Finally the queen turned away as I panted in relief. "As we were saying..."

"She is young, Your Majesty."

"Not so young," the queen sniffed. "We have seen girls of ten used to avert crises smaller than this. With a decent ally, our country may yet be preserved."

She continued to speak, but I had heard enough. I stumbled back to my room, all interest in exploration snuffed. I was to be married—joined in union forever with as much thought to my feelings as a cook gives the carrots she drops into a pot.
Every man of rank in six days' ride:
that was the population from which they intended to choose? I had met many of these men through my father. Several, indeed, my mother
would scarce allow in our home, and now I was expected to
wed
one of them—possibly even the prince of the nation that forever sought to conquer Montagne!

Eavesdroppers punish themselves indeed. Too despondent even to weep, I huddled under my quilts, wishing more than ever for my father. He alone could save me from a fate verily worse than death into which I was about to be so indifferently plunged.

In the months that followed, all castle activity centered on the ball. Few other topics crossed the queen's lips, and Lady Beatrix regularly worked herself into such a state over the arrangements, every detail of which she considered her fundamental responsibility, that Hildebert took to keeping smelling salts on her person at all times.

Though I regarded Chateau de Montagne, my secret places notwithstanding, as an adequate model of domestic hygiene, I appeared to be alone in this opinion. The staff, augmented by relatives and a scurrying crew of day laborers, laundered curtains, beat rugs, washed walls, scrubbed floors, and polished windows to such a gleam that one could scarce see through them, so reflective their surface. Even I, a princess and heir to the throne, which I could not help but point out in a rare flaunting of my rank that served me no benefit whatsoever, was drafted into the effort.

"Are the guests truly going to be examining
this?
"I demanded, kneeling inside a chest in an obscure hallway far from the ballroom and guest chambers.

"Just keep to your scrubbing," Hildebert ordered.

Lady Beatrix fluttered past in a cloud of fabric swatches. "Remember, Princess, the ball is in your honor. Perhaps you will catch the eye of an eligible young prince and thus free yourself forever from such drudgery."

There is a chance—a paltry one, I concede—that such a tactic might have appealed to me had I been ignorant of the ball's true purpose. Surely the promise that marriage would relieve me of housework (a promise that every sane woman knows as falsehood) had appeal. As it was, however, I simply glowered and renewed my secret vow to remain unwed.

Now could I understand Queen Sophia's constant harpings on my figure. She cared little about my appearance per se, but she required me presentable to snare herself an ally. She had taken protection of her adopted country to heart and appeared ready to defend it with the zeal of a lioness. It caused her no end of frustration that however minuscule my meals, my waist did not shrink, and my cheeks retained a cherubic plumpness more common to well-fed babies than marriageable royalty. Although the news of my impending
betrothal broke my appetite as well as my heart, the former soon returned in force, and every night I applied myself with unprecedented gusto to the castle's larders, pantries, and storerooms. It soon took the efforts of two grunting handmaids and a straining corset to provide any hint that my solid form was in fact female. My strangled discomfort at these constrictions was eased somewhat, however, by my satisfaction at the despair my expansion caused my tormentors.

Novice that I was, I considered myself the model of stealth, and I soon expanded my thievery beyond food. Creeping through the servants' quarters, I pilfered a rough pair of trousers, heavy woolen tunic with jerkin, and thick boots and socks, for my black cloak offered no winter protection to my lower limbs, and not nearly enough to the rest of my body. As my days continued to pass in a fog of exhaustion and catnaps, I paid scant notice to the rumors and minor scandals that forever season the human experience. So it transpired that I, ironically enough, was perhaps the last citizen of Montagne, and certainly the last castle resident, to hear of the malevolent powers that now haunted Chateau de Montagne, forcing guards to tread the battlements in uneasy pairs and quaking maids to sleep with charms grasped in their damp little fists.

My eyes were first opened to this crisis one evening at dinner as I picked genteelly at a meat pie, knowing I would soon sate myself in the larder. Indeed, I would dine better than the queen herself, for while the filling was quite savory, the golden crust bore a close resemblance to shoe leather. I knew the location of the pot that held the filling and could scarcely wait to make it mine.

"Dear Princess," Lord Frederick began, startling me to attention, "I could not help but notice you lingering in the north salon ex-room this afternoon."

My cheeks flushed. Whenever I could travel the castle corridors unescorted—a rare event, and thus doubly cherished—I delighted in pausing in every ex-room to plunge my arms through the hedgehogs.

I stuttered through an explanation. My powers of reasoning—of fibbing, if truth be told—were creaky with disuse.

To my great relief, the queen interjected. "Was she perhaps eating something?" she queried the lord, with a suspicious glower in my direction.

Frederick chuckled. "There is little of sustenance in an ex-room,Your Majesty. Though perhaps she conjured some up, it being a witch room, after all."

My fork clattered from my nerveless hand.

" 'Tis one of those trifles of Montagne history—I should not be surprised you do not know it. When the castle was first constructed, the ex-rooms were known as
Hexeraumen,
or witch rooms. One can see easily how 'hex room' would evolve to our own vernacular 'ex-room.' Quite fascinating, really, though of course no one today knows the origin of the term." He swirled his wine contemplatively.

I gulped. The
witch rooms.
Extraordinary.

Lady Beatrix gazed transfixed at the old man beside her. Her heavy powder could not hide her pallor, and her hands gripped the table's edge with white-knuckled force.
"Witches,
you say?" she squeaked.

"How interesting," the queen inserted. "Of course, there are no witches in the castle presently, if there ever were, and we would all be wise to silence any discussion indicating otherwise." This last comment she aimed at her lady in waiting.

Lord Frederick only smiled. "I shall do my best, Your Majesty, though surely the gossip will fade as a more rational explanation is found."

"Explanation for what?" I had heard nothing, and now I burned to know.

Lord Frederick laughed. " 'Tis only prattle. I would
attribute it to indolence, but the staff clearly toils with heroic effort. Tell me, dear lady, how go the preparations?" So the wise ambassador parried his way from an awkward corner, in the process drawing Lady Beatrix from her panic to her passion.