Once Upon a Marigold, Page 3

  "He's not going far," Christian said. "Just one trip across the river." And he rushed out again.

  Well, Ed had been wondering when something like this would happen. He knew who Christian was watching through that telescope. He'd tried to be a good parent, emphasizing that honest toil was the route to success, insisting on regular brushing and flossing, teaching every single manner in the etiquette book, even though Christian would never need most of them—"Good day, Your Grace" was the way to greet a duke; the oyster fork was the one with the three little tines; never be late to the opera. Yet somehow he'd never gotten around to any discussion about girls. Women. The opposite sex. For pete's sake, how could he discuss them when he didn't even know what to call them? Besides, his own love life wasn't anything to blow your horn home about. He admired the same red-haired troll maiden every year at the LEFT Conference and still, after all these decades, had never gotten up the nerve to speak to her.

  Ed sighed. Now he'd have to stand by while the boy got his heart broken, and he wasn't looking forward to that. A princess, even a plain, unpopular one, wasn't going to give Christian the time of day, you could bet your bottom doubloon on that.

  CHRISTIAN ROLLED his message into the metal cylinder and attached it to Walter's leg. He didn't know why he hadn't thought of this before. It's what carrier pigeons were meant for—and if the technology existed, he was a fool not to use it. How much harder communication had been before p-mail.

  He told Walter where to go, released him out over the waterfall, and scurried to hide behind a bush, where he watched through the telescope.

  It seemed to take Walter forever to cross the river, but finally he fluttered to a halt on the arm of the girl's chair. Absently, without looking up from her book, she tried to push him away with her elbow. Walter squawked and stayed where he was. She tried again, and again he squawked. This time she looked up. He stuck out his leg. She hesitated, looked quickly around, and then unhooked the cylinder, read the message, and hurried inside. Walter flew along beside her; he'd been trained not to leave until the cylinder had been reattached to his leg, preferably with a return message in it. Walter could make a terrible nuisance of himself. It was Ed's way of getting prompt answers.

  Oh, man, Christian thought. Ed's going to kill me if we never get Walter back. What was I thinking? She could have a dragoon of castle guards over here in the morning to hunt me down.

  As it so often does, an impulsive, daring act suddenly—and too late—seemed seriously flawed in its conception and in its inability to be retracted.

  But the princess returned in a few minutes, Walter in her arms. She took him to the terrace wall and flung him out into the darkening sky. As he flew away, she leaned forward, squinting, trying to follow his flight. Even after Walter had landed in the bushes on his side of the river, Christian could still make her out, leaning over the wall, her pale yellow gown glowing faintly in the dusk.

  Christian hustled Walter back into the cave, snapped the cylinder off his leg, and popped him onto the perch next to Carrie. Walter gave Christian a baleful look, fretfully settled his feathers, and tucked his head beneath his wing. All the while Ed bent over his letters, giving furtive glances from under his shaggy eyebrows as Christian opened the cylinder, extracted the message, and read it.

  He looked up at Ed. "She's reading Greek myths. I asked her what she was reading and she told me. Greek myths. We have those, too! I've read them a bunch of times. And she signed her name. At last I know her name."

  "Well, what is it?" Ed asked with resignation. For some reason he was remembering King Louis the Stammerer, who had died on horseback while chasing a girl who'd run into her house, splitting his head open on the lintel of the door. Ed always wondered if that was because he hadn't been able to say "W-w-w-whoa" in time. What had happened to King Louis supplied plenty of evidence about how dangerous getting interested in a girl could be.

  "Marigold. Isn't that a pretty name? Marigold." His eyes on Marigold's tiny letter, Christian left the room in search of the book of Greek myths.

  Now why'd she have to go and answer him? Ed wondered. Is she just going to play games with him before she breaks his heart, the way a cat will toy with a mouse? That's about what he'd expect a princess to be: heartless and scheming.

  2

  Christian sat up late rereading the myths, and with every one that he finished, he framed a new letter to Marigold in his mind. He wanted to ask her—well, to tell the truth, he wanted to ask her everything.

  When he finally blew out his candle and lay down on the furs with Bub and Cate, he couldn't sleep. He'd never felt the way he felt tonight—all tingly and fizzy, as if he'd had a spell cast upon him. He hoped he wasn't coming down with something.

  Walter and Carrie were busy all the next few days carrying Ed's lengthy missives here and there. They were too exhausted by the end of each day to make even the short trip across the river. Christian was be side himself, wanting to send another message to Marigold and not being able to do so.

  All he could do was watch her. She seemed the same as ever, tending her flowers on the terrace, reading, playing with her dogs, walking with her father, acting as if being royalty was nothing special. She wasn't all tingly and fizzy, though she did seem more interested than usual in the birds that flew over the terrace.

  One morning Chris got up extra early, while Ed was still conked out on his bed of furs, snoring loudly enough to make the purple crystals on the ceiling of his bedroom shiver and chime faintly. Walter was awake on his perch, busily preening himself. So much mail delivery gave him little time for personal grooming, and he was vain enough that that bothered him.

  Christian had already written his message and put it into a cylinder. All he had to do now was get it onto Walter's leg.

  "Hey, Walter. Good morning. Nice morning for a short warm-up flight, isn't it?"

  Walter gave him a suspicious, beady-eyed look.

  "Just across the river. To ... to Marigold." Merely saying her name made him feel happy. And, even though he knew he should think of her as Princess Marigold, he wanted to call her just plain Marigold.

  Walter sighed heavily as Christian clipped the cylinder to his leg. "I told her I read Greek myths, too. I told her my favorite is about Jason and the Argonauts and all their adventures. Even though it has a sad ending, it's exciting up until then. And Jason grew up in a cave, away from his original home, too."

  Christian had watched Walter take off before he realized that it was way too early for anybody at the castle to be up, and Walter would have to hang around on the terrace, maybe for hours, before Marigold appeared. Oh, what a knucklehead he was. Way too stupid to be corresponding with a princess. Christian felt his lack of worldly knowledge more than ever. He might know how to address a duke or recognize an oyster fork, but he had no clue whatsoever about what went on between human males and females.

  Through the telescope he followed Walter's progress. The sun was still below the horizon, but the sky had that magical deep lavender opalescence of a high-summer day that was going to be a scorcher—but later. For now all was still and pearly and perfect.

  And to make it more perfect, just then Marigold, wearing something gauzy and flowing, stepped onto the terrace, yawning and stretching. She leaned on the wall, looking across the river just as Walter landed by her right elbow. He held the leg with the cylinder out to her in a long-suffering manner, but she just smiled at him and undipped it. She read the message, smiled bigger, and held one finger up to him, signaling him to wait.

  When she came back, she had paper, pen, ink, and a handful of grain she scattered along the terrace wall for Walter to peck at while she pondered her answer. Mollified, he enjoyed his breakfast as she wrote three lines, waited for the ink to dry, then clipped the cylinder onto his leg. He finished the last of the grain and flapped off.

  Christian hid in the bushes so Marigold couldn't see where Walter delivered the message. After Chris undipped the cylinder, Walter headed back inside,
but not before executing a few carefree loop-the-loops in pure pleasure over having had a hearty breakfast and an easy job accomplished on a splendid summer morning.

  Christian took one more quick look through the telescope. Just then Queen Olympia emerged onto the terrace in her full satin-dress-and-pearl-tiara regalia, with some kind of fur piece draped over one arm. She found Marigold, in what apparently was her nightie, gazing off across the river. Christian couldn't hear what the queen was saying, of course, but there was no mistaking that a scolding was taking place. Marigold stood, casting her eyes slightly above Olympia's head, looking like a thundercloud with a clamped-shut mouth.

  She almost quivered with the effort not to talk back to her mother, though Christian was sure that Queen Olympia deserved a little back talk. He'd seen plenty of the way she bossed everybody around—including King Swithbert. He had to admire Marigold's self-control. Bursting out with angry words was always so much easier than maintaining one's dignity and self-respect. But not reacting often had the satisfying side effect of further enraging the person who was giving you trouble. That's what Ed's etiquette book said, though Chris had had no personal experience with such things. Just as he'd had no personal experience with just about everything—something that was becoming more of a consideration for him every day.

  The first thing he wanted to do now—whether the etiquette book would like it or not—was to run over there and stick up for Marigold. What was so bad about wanting to see the sunrise in your nightie?

  Christian watched Marigold until she and her mother went inside. Then he opened her note:

  Do you know the story of Andromeda?

  He knew he should, but there were so many of them, he couldn't remember which one that was. He ran back to the cave and flipped madly through the pages of his Greek myth book until he found it. Then he remembered Andromeda was the daughter of a vain queen who had angered Poseidon, the sea god, so much that he sent a sea monster to devour her kingdom. To save the kingdom, the king had to sacrifice Andromeda to the monster. Chained to a cliff she called on her fiancé, a prince, to rescue her, but he was too cowardly. Perseus, a poor humble youth who didn't know he was really the son of the god Zeus, showed up just in time to slay the monster. After that he and Andromeda lived happily evermore. And when they died, Zeus put them into the sky as constellations so they could be together always. There was a drawing that showed which stars were Perseus and Andromeda.

  And of course, Christian recognized those constellations. He'd seen them through his telescope.

  Did Marigold feel she was being sacrificed to her mother's vanity? Did she need to be rescued? Who was the monster? Was there a fiancé? Christian's mind spun with dramatic possibilities.

  Or maybe Andromeda's myth was just a nice story with a happy ending and that's why Marigold liked it. Maybe she was shallow and stupid and he'd hate her if they ever met. What could you really tell about somebody from a couple of p-mails?

  The answer, it seemed to him, was to send more p-mails, to get to know more about her. To find out why she liked the story.

  He waited until he saw her alone again on the terrace, now wearing a proper morning dress. Message in hand, he ran to the cave, hijacking Carrie from Ed just as he was about to snap her cylinder on. "Hey!" Ed yelled as Christian grabbed the pigeon. Carrie squawked, too, but Chris hustled her out to the waterfall and sent her across the river.

  It turned out that Marigold liked the myth because she loved watching the stars and liked knowing their stories. But Christian thought there was more to it than that.

  He wished he could ask her. Because he felt instinctively that asking her about that would be too personal and intrusive, he decided to ask her about other things. Like when her birthday was. He wanted to know where she belonged in the zodiac.

  And that was how their long p-mail correspondence began.

  April 19. I'm 17. I'm an Aries. Why did you

  decide to write to me?

  —Marigold

  You seemed so absorbed in your book. I

  wanted to know what you were reading.

  —C.

  For some reason, he was reluctant to tell her his name. The more anonymous he stayed, the bolder he felt—as if he were someone else, an alternate version of himself, a version who casually corresponded with a princess. A version who couldn't tell her his own birthday because he didn't know it.

  You can see me?

  —Marigold

  PS. What does C. stand for?

  He thought her first question sounded a bit alarmed, as most people would be if they found out they were being watched. But the fact that she'd added a P.S. meant she was curious about him, which he took as a good sign. He debated for a long time about how to answer.

  Sometimes I can see you. C. stands for my

  name.

  He knew he was being tricky and evasive, but he could see her only sometimes. He couldn't see her if she wasn't on the terrace. He couldn't see her at night even if she was. He knew the thing about his name might be sort of irritating, too, but he wasn't ready to tell her his real name—he liked being his alternate, bolder self—and he didn't want to lie to her ever.

  She sent the pigeon back with an empty cylinder that time, so he knew she had backbone. But he wasn't at all glad that might be the last thing he'd ever find out about her. He waited a few days, brooding and grumpy, and then shanghaied both birds and four cylinders for a try at an apology.

  I'm sorry. I can see you from afar with my

  telescope. I'm shy about telling you my

  name.

  Besides, using C. instead of my whole

  name saves space for other things I want to write to you

  about. Okay?

  Can't we leave it at C. for a while?

  It's a perfectly ordinary name,

  anyway.

  I didn't mean to sound smart-alecky. I

  hope you'll write back. You are such a

  good correspondent.

  —C.

  To Chris's great relief, Carrie came back with a message.

  Charlemagne? Crispin? Colin? Cosmo?

  Christian? Chauncey?

  —Marigold

  He told her she'd guessed his name, but he didn't tell her which one it was.

  Charlemagne: Can you see the stars with

  your telescope? Can you see Perseus and

  Andromeda? I envy them.

  PS. I know that one time out of six I'll

  have your name right.

  —Marigold

  Why do you envy them?

  —C.

  He couldn't think of anything else he wanted to know just then.

  Crispin: Because they had a grand

  adventure together, and because they knew

  great love and because they were each

  other's companions and best friends

  and bulwarks.

  —M.

  He had to look up bulwark in the dictionary that Ed had found in the forest just a few days before. It meant (1) a defensive wall or rampart and (2) any safeguard or defense; anything that protects or shelters. Suddenly he wanted to have a bulwark, a protection and shelter—other than Ed, that is. And he wanted to be one for someone else.

  Colin: Has anybody ever tried to marry

  you off? What did you do about it?

  —M.

  No. But here's what I would do if they

  did—be as unpleasant and as undesirable

  as possible.

  —C.

  Christian: You're a genius! It worked! I

  picked my nose and didn't brush my hair

  and wiped my hands on Flopsy, one of

  my dogs, after I ate. That boring suitor

  left in a hurry after dinner.

  —M.

  Christian loved that this message had his name on it. And he laughed when she told him what she'd done. But he suspected that this wouldn't be the last suitor to show up. He'd seen how Queen Olympia had paraded suitor
s through for the triplets, and he knew that scoldings would follow whenever Marigold scared away any of her parade.

  Cosmo: As punishment my mother says I

  must pick out all the bollixed-up ladies-

  in-waiting embroidery. I hate that.

  —M.

  Marigold: When I have to do something I

  hate, I whistle. Then at least my mouth is

  happy.

  —C.

  It gave him a funny feeling in his stomach to think about her mouth.

  Chauncey. I tried the whistling, which

  drove Mother absolutely mad. She says it's

  undignified and unladylike. I'll use it on

  the next suitor. He arrives next week. I

  don't want to be dignified or ladylike

  for him.

  —M.

  Marigold: How do you know? Maybe you'll

  like him.

  —C.

  Christian hated to even suggest this, but he needed to know how she could be so sure she'd want to drive him away.

  Colin: I don't want to marry anybody who

  thinks of me only as a dowry and an

  alliance instead of a partner and a best

  friend. Royal marriages are arrangements,

  not love matches. Except for my sisters,

  who are lucky in everything.

  —M.

  He wanted to tell her that if she needed a best friend, he could be it. But of course he didn't. No matter how bold his other self might feel, he was still a forest commoner and she was a princess.

  Charlemagne: Whistling worked, but I

  can't use it again. My punishment this time

  is 3 hours a day at the harpsichord—

  she can hear if I stop. I have to play the

  same tune all 3 hours. Can you hear me?

  —M.

  He tried. He whipped up an ear trumpet from random items in one of the storage rooms and, once in a while, thought he heard a few tinkling notes above the sound of the river. But maybe he was only imagining it.