Just Ella, Page 3

  He jerked his head toward me, jolted by the urgency in my voice.

  “The hunt,” he said, then looked puzzled. I may have surprised him into telling the truth.

  “You went hunting today,” I said, trying to coax more out of him. “Did you catch much?”

  The word catch sounded odd. Back home we used to talk about catching fish. That’s what I was thinking of. But the deer and wild boars and other animals worthy of royalty’s attention weren’t “caught.” Should I have said “killed”? Were ladies allowed to say that? How could Prince Charming and I ever talk the way I wanted to—no holds barred, our thoughts as close as our bodies had been at the grand ball—if we couldn’t even use the same words?

  The prince smiled indulgently.

  “Don’t trouble your mind about that,” he said. “The kingdom is in fine shape. Why, we throw away food here at the castle that would be a feast in Suala.”

  Suala was a neighboring kingdom. We had been at war with Suala for as long as I could remember, so maybe the prince was only showing bravado, the way street urchins brag about the number of maggots in the bread they steal. But still, I wondered. . . .

  “Why?” I asked. “Why throw away food when some of your own subjects go hungry each night? Why, I myself know—”

  The prince toyed with a ringlet that had escaped from the ribbon holding my hair in place. He wrapped and unwrapped my long blond curl around his fingers. I wished my hair had feeling. I wished he were touching my hand instead. I couldn’t remember what I was going to say I knew.

  The prince chuckled.

  “So my princess worries about the poor,” he said. “If it pleases you, I’ll order that our table scraps be set outside the palace gate each evening.”

  “It’s that easy?” I asked. “Just like that?”

  The prince shrugged.

  “Why not? It matters not to me.”

  He smiled and I should have smiled back, given him the gratitude he deserved. But his last words stopped me.

  Why didn’t his own hungry subjects matter to him? What was wrong with this man?

  5

  The next morning, when the time came that I normally met with Lord Reston, I sat wondering if someone else would replace him or if—miracle of miracles—I’d actually have some time to myself. I was irritated that, once again, nobody had told me anything. The servants all knew my schedule—how else did the maids know exactly when to flounce in to make my bed, exactly when to make themselves scarce? But I, the supposed princess, never knew from one minute to the next what I was supposed to do or where I was supposed to be until someone hissed last-minute instructions to me. Probably the little servant girl, Mary, could have told me yesterday who was going to take over teaching whatever it was Lord Reston was supposed to be teaching me.

  I had just decided that if I did have a free moment, I’d like to hunt Mary up to check on Lord Reston, when a strange knock sounded at my door. I say strange, because until that moment, I’d never thought about the fact that every single person in the castle knocked in one of two ways. All the servants knocked once loudly, as if to guarantee they got my attention, and then once softly, as if to apologize that their humble selves were so disrespectful as to disturb royalty. Everyone else, all my instructors and the ladies-in-waiting and other nobility, knocked four times, emphatically, the knocks as good as saying, “I am important!” and “Acknowledge me at once!”

  But this knock was like a half line of music: Duuunhduh da da da. Without thinking, I went to the door and gave the two answering knocks it seemed to demand. Duh duh. Then I pushed open the door.

  A young man I’d never seen before stood in the corridor. He was perhaps a half decade older than me, tall, and much too thin for his frame and his clothes. The clothes also seemed too formal for his comfort somehow, although by castle standards they were practically slovenly: dark velvet breeches with worn knees, a wrinkled white shirt, a brown coat and waistcoat of obviously good wool, but poorly sewn. His dark curly hair could most charitably be called mussed; it reminded me of the way our village had looked after a windstorm toppled three houses and knocked down six trees.

  The man’s muddy brown eyes were as wide open and stunned-looking as if he’d just personally witnessed such a storm.

  “Yes?” I said.

  “Princess—I had no idea—I mean . . . I don’t mean to be forward, but you’re even more beautiful up close,” he stammered.

  I sighed. I hated this reaction. About the time I passed my thirteenth summer, two years ago, men had begun looking at me strangely. The butcher’s boy, whom I had previously considered a sensible fellow, followed me around for five days with an expression as addlepated as a cow off her feed. He got in the way when I tried to scrub every flagstone of our front path by hand, the way Lucille demanded. I finally had to tell him I’d pull every one of his fingernails out with my bare hands if he didn’t leave me alone. (I wouldn’t—and couldn’t—have done it, of course, but he was too stupid and lovesick to know that.) That got rid of him, but I still hated to go to the butcher’s because of him. Or I did, before I became a princess and didn’t have to sort through animal entrails anymore.

  Of course, if I’d bothered pondering it, I would have thought becoming a princess and wearing fancy dresses instead of rags—and having several maids whose sole purpose in life seemed to be making me beautiful—would have subjected me to more addlepated expressions than ever. But it hadn’t. Maybe being the prince’s betrothed was as good as wearing a sign that said; “Addle or pate over this girl, and the prince could have you beheaded.” Before this young man—or boy, really, he wasn’t much more than a boy—every glance directed my way had been perfectly discreet and bland. But he was still gawking.

  “Well,” I said, “thank you. But please, I beg you, don’t let it bother you.”

  He shut his gaping mouth and gave a little jerk and returned to what I guessed must be normal for him. He dipped into an awkward bow, almost laughably off balance, then swung back up sideways and introduced himself.

  “I’m Jed Reston. I’m sure someone told you—I’m going to be teaching you because my father is . . . er, dang it, I’m not used to talking to princesses. What words am I allowed to use to tell you what happened to my father?”

  I stepped aside to let him into the room.

  “I’m not really a princess,” I said, forgetting myself. Then I quickly added, “I mean, I wasn’t raised the way a princess would be raised in this kingdom. And I saw what happened to your father. How is he now?”

  “Just fine. Thank you for your concern.” The words came out rapid-fire, like blasts from several cannons at once.

  “No, really,” I said. “Tell me. I don’t care what words you use.”

  Jed grimaced.

  “Still mostly paralyzed. But you can tell that underneath, he’s furious at not being able to get up and walk and talk and act pompous. Oops. Dang it again. Dad’s right. I never will learn to be diplomatic.”

  He looked so nonplussed, I couldn’t help laughing. After a second, he joined in.

  “I suppose I shouldn’t do that when Dad’s not around to defend himself—but he already knows I think he acts pompously. He says it’s part of his job. Which I’m supposed to be doing now.”

  I’d met Jed only moments earlier, but already I knew he could never carry off pomposity. He did seem serious, though, about doing his father’s job. His eyes were scanning the room.

  “Where do you study?” he asked.

  I pointed to the pair of chairs where Lord Reston and I had sat only the day before. I was delighted that Jed sat down immediately without doing the elaborate cat-and-mouse dance all my other instructors followed: “Princess, may I help you to your seat?” (Deep bow.) “May it be your pleasure that your humble servant be seated as well?” (Deep bow again.) Madame Bisset had told me that if anyone failed to show me the proper respect of that ridiculous little routine (“ridiculous” being my term for it, not hers) I should feign
a fainting spell and call for a guard to have the cretin removed. I had never bothered to ask how I could call for a guard while fainting. I hastened to my chair for fear that Jed might realize his error and attempt to correct it. In the past weeks, I’d been “Princess”-ed and “humble servant”-ed enough to last a lifetime.

  Jed was busy taking a slender booklet out of his jacket.

  “Can you read?” he asked.

  “Of course,” I said, blushing indignantly, though there was no “of course” about it. Even in the palace—maybe especially in the palace—plenty of women couldn’t read. And since I was a commoner—if Jed knew what I really was—he couldn’t assume I’d even seen an alphabet, let alone ever opened a book.

  “My father taught me,” I said. “He collected old books, and sometimes I would help him appraise them. . . .” I was overcome with a flash of memory: my father and I, our heads bent close over an old book dusty and brittle with age, yet richly gilded, full of beautiful script and words that sang. The candlelight around us ebbed and flowed, and I felt like we were sitting in an ever-changing dome of light, while all around us was darkness. It was not one particular moment that I remembered, but dozens, for we had often looked at books together in the evenings before the Step-Evils arrived.

  “Does he only buy books, or also sell?” Jed asked. “There are a few rare volumes of philosophy I’ve been looking for.”

  In truth, my father had had to sell almost as much as he bought. That was how he supported us. But, of course, I couldn’t say that if I was supposed to be a princess.

  “My father is dead,” I blurted instead. The words brought back the pain I’d felt when I heard the news three years ago. I could still see Lucille clutching the letter and practically cackling, “The fool was trying to cross the Sualan border. For books!” And she’d rolled her eyes. Now I closed mine momentarily.

  “I’m sorry,” Jed said with an air of deep sincerity.

  “Thank you,” I said. I had not known what to do with condolences when the news was fresh, and I did not know now. I bent forward to look at the book in Jed’s hand. It was the first one I had seen since coming to the castle, so I felt genuine eagerness. “What would you have me read?”

  He showed me the title: The Book of Faith.

  “My father has not showed you this?” he asked in puzzlement.

  I shook my head.

  “But he was instructing you in the official religion. He was to certify that you were a fit companion for the prince and would raise your offspring in the faith.”

  I started laughing as I hadn’t since coming to the castle. I probably hadn’t even laughed like that since before the Step-Evils entered my life.

  “Religion?” I asked incredulously. “I thought he was teaching me royal genealogy. All those dull, dead kings—”

  I was laughing so hard, even Jed had to smile.

  “Aye, to my father ’tis much the same thing,” he admitted.

  My laughter turned into snorts, very nonroyal. I calmed myself.

  “About the faith—,” Jed began.

  I began giggling again and calmed myself only to start again. And again. I was a fountain of hilarity, shooting out bursts of laughter every time Jed tried to speak. At last he gave up and laughed too.

  6

  After that, my days fell into a happier pattern. I still struggled to stay awake during needlepoint lessons, and Madame Bisset still corrected my pronunciation and my posture and my manners about fifty thousand times for every five minutes I spent with her. I still longed to go outside. (Madame Bisset turned down my timid request for riding lessons with a horrified sniff and the words: “A princess would never be without her carriage.” Then she fainted.) And I still wished that Prince Charming and I could talk, even just once, without a chaperon there making us all stiff and formal and tongue-tied. But at least now, with Jed, I knew I had one person I could talk to in the castle.

  As the days passed, I decided that the servant girl, Mary, was another. She began springing up at odd moments with odd bits of information about Lord Reston (“Criminy! Would you believe he heaved his pillow at the wall yesterday? And him a lord and all?”) or touchingly eager offers of help. (“You don’t need anything, do you? Because if you did, I could get it for you. I’ve dusted the whole castle since breakfast, seems like, and now me mum says I’m allowed to do whatever I want.”) I found myself telling her things I probably shouldn’t have, because she was so much like a puppy dog bouncing around me, ready to fetch anything I wished without so much as a pat on the head for a reward.

  “Vinegar will get that out,” I told her one day when she informed me she wouldn’t be around for a day or so because she’d been given dozens of stained napkins to wash.

  “Yes, that’s what me mum said,” Mary answered. She squinted, an expression that made her features look even more unmatched than ever. “But how do you know? Is it true, what people say about you?”

  “What people? What do they say?” I braced myself for Mary to accuse me of having washed plenty of dirty laundry in my lifetime, and of possessing no more royal blood than herself—an accusation that was certainly true. I was more than prepared to confess. But Mary was backing away from me in awe.

  “Oh . . . nothing. Is . . .” She started timidly, then grinned with a bit more of her usual flippancy. “Is magic easier than vinegar?”

  It was my turn to squint, puzzled. But Mary just melted away because yet another instructor was being shown into the room to teach me something I didn’t want to know.

  “Do you believe in magic?” I asked Jed later that morning when he showed up for my religion lesson.

  “It depends,” he said slowly. I was discovering that Jed never gave easy, automatic, or quick answers, but had to ponder out every side of things. “I believe there can be extraordinary events that ordinary humans tend to label as magic because we can’t fully understand.”

  “And are you an ordinary human?” I teased.

  He hesitated and seemed about to ask me something, then appeared to think better of it.

  “I’m certainly no prince,” he said. “Now, about that catechism I gave you . . .”

  I recited it word for word, the list of twenty beliefs I was supposed to swear to that would make me a fit wife for the prince and a fit mother for a future king. This catechism was much longer, more formal, and less understandable than the one children learned back in the village. Of course, that one ran: “I believe in God. He is good. I will obey Him”—so there was lots of room for improvisation. But I had a hard time believing that my ladies-in-waiting—the moronic Simprianna? the breathtakingly beautiful but addled Cyronna?—had spent much of their lives pondering “the transubstantiation of the Spirit” or “the resurrection of the physical being of our entities.” For that matter, the king, queen, and Prince Charming didn’t seem like the types to sit around considering weighty religious matters, and they supposedly were in charge of the entire church.

  “Good, ah, good.” Jed nodded encouragingly. “That’s really all you need.”

  I stared.

  “So, that’s it? I’ve—graduated?”

  He looked away.

  “No, no, of course not. Now that you know the creed, we have to make sure you understand it.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. That could last at least until my wedding, if not until my dying day. Jed opened the Book of Faith between us and pointed at the first line of the catechism I had just recited. He opened his mouth to begin an explanation.

  “I wasn’t raised to be religious,” I said suddenly.

  “No?” Jed asked, typically patient with the interruption.

  “No. My father was a doubter—he carried that around like a belief.”

  “So you’re just reciting this? It means nothing to you?”

  “No, no . . . I don’t know. I knew people back in the village—I mean, where I come from—who had a great deal of faith, and it truly meant something. It made a difference.” I told Jed ab
out my neighbor Mrs. Branson of the ten children. Once, years ago, her husband broke his leg and couldn’t work for many weeks, and they ran out of food. This was during a hard winter, and even if the Bransons hadn’t been too proud to beg, there were few people who could spare enough for twelve extra people. So she prayed. And then that very night, food appeared on her doorstep. Several loaves of bread, a wheel of cheese, a cured ham. Enough to tide them over.

  “Did she ever find out who left it?” Jed asked.

  “No. But I knew. Those exact foods disappeared from our larder. And my father’s shoes were muddy in the morning, even though I’d cleaned them—I mean, they’d been cleaned—the night before.”

  Jed digested this story, which I’d never told anyone before. Lucille would have killed my father, had she known.

  “I think you lost me,” Jed said. “How does that story argue for belief? Maybe your neighbor should have just prayed to your father.”

  “Wouldn’t have worked,” I said. “He hated beggars. But her faith gave Mrs. Branson the sense of peace and dignity that even my father, a doubter, had to respect.”

  Jed nodded thoughtfully.

  “I wasn’t really raised to be religious either,” he murmured after a moment.

  I turned to him in astonishment.

  “What? But your father is priest to the king!” I’d only recently learned that from Mary. So that was why he was supposed to be addressed as “His Excellency.” I continued in my amazement, “After the king, he’s the most powerful person in the church!”

  Jed shrugged.

  “State religion—you’ll learn this—it’s got nothing to do with God. It’s all show. Smoke and mirrors. If any of these people really believed what they mumbled about, they’d go do something, instead of just talking.”

  “So what does that mean about you?” I teased. “Why aren’t you doing something, instead of just talking?”

  I thought we’d been friends long enough that I could joke like that. But Jed flushed a deep red and turned shy, as if I’d just accused him of being sweet on some maiden.