Ella Enchanted (14 page)

My only ventures outside were to the royal pastures to see Apple. I had hoped to meet Char there, but the grooms told me he was still chasing ogres.

The first time I visited Apple was the day after I returned to Frell. He stood under a tree, his attention fixed on three brown leaves that clung to a low branch. As I watched, he reared back, lifted his head, and reached for a leaf just beyond his grasp.

In the bunched muscles of his back legs and the straining line from his hips to the tips of his fingers, he was splendid. If Agulen could have seen him, another pottery sculpture would have been born.

I whistled. He whirled and stared at me. I held out a carrot and whistled again, a song about mermaids, Apple’s distant cousins. When he saw the treat, he smiled and trotted to me, both hands extended.

Soon, he let me pet his mane and came when I whistled although no food was in sight. It wasn’t long before the sight of me inspired as much happiness as a carrot.

I began to confide in him. His wide-eyed attention was an invitation, and his trick of cocking his head to one side while I spoke made me feel that every word was a revelation, although he understood none of it.

“Hattie hates me and makes me do things, never mind why. Olive likes me, which is hardly an advantage. Mum Olga is odious. You and Mandy are the only ones who love me, and you’re the only one who will never order me about.”

Apple watched my face, his sweet, empty eyes staring into mine, his lips curled into a smile.

*

THE WEDDING was held in the old castle. Mum Olga wanted it to take place in our manor, but Father said the castle would be more romantic. Against such an argument she had no weapons.

When we arrived, Father went in straightaway to see to details of the ceremony and of the masked ball that would follow. I slipped into the garden to visit the candle trees, which, devoid of their leaves, resembled rows of skeletal arms bent at the elbow.

The day was cold. I passed the candles and marched up and down an avenue of elms, trying not to freeze. I even tied on my mask in a vain attempt to keep my nose warm. No matter how cold I felt, I was going to stay outside until several guests had arrived.

My toes and fingers were numb before I deemed it safe to enter. As soon as I did, Hattie rushed at me, her new false tresses bouncing.

“Ella! I’ve missed you so!”

She was about to embrace me and, I warrant, whisper a command in my ear.

I stepped away. “If you speak to me at all today, Hattie,” I hissed, “I’ll snatch off your wig and pass it around to the guests.”

“But—”

“Not a word.” Taking off my cloak, I walked to the fire and remained there while the buzz of conversation grew behind me.

There was nothing to tempt me to turn. The flames were more interesting than the talk. I wondered what made the air in front of the fire shimmer so.

“Aren’t you going to watch the wedding?” Olive knocked my arm. “Can I stay out here with you?”

The hall was silent. I said, “Don’t you want to see your mother wed?” I wanted to be there, to see the horrible event.

“I don’t care. I’d rather be with you.”

“I’m going in.”

She followed me, and we slipped into the last row of seats. Father and Mum Olga faced an alcove in which stood High Chancellor Thomas, who had begun to marry them.

His speech sounded familiar, because he’d used almost the same phrases at Mother’s funeral. The audience probably could have recited along with him. I heard coughs. A lady ahead of me snored gently, and Olive was soon asleep as well. A man in our row pulled out a knife and cleaned his fingernails.

Only one viewer was rapt, leaning forward in her seat, nodding at each trite sentiment, smiling while dabbing at wet eyes. I smelled lilacs. Lucinda!

She mustn’t see me. As the daughter of the groom, I could hardly keep up the pretense that I spoke only Ayorthaian. She would be livid that I’d fooled her. I put on my mask.

I would leave in the confusion of congratulations when the ceremony ended. I watched her, ready to duck if she turned my way.

As soon as Sir Thomas concluded, Lucinda leaped to her feet. “My friends,” she rang out, while advancing on Father and Mum Olga, “never have I been so moved by a ceremony.”

Sir Thomas beamed.

“Not because of this man’s endless droning…”

There were titters.

“…but because of the love that has united these two, who are no longer in their first youth.”

“Madam!” Mum Olga began.

Lucinda didn’t hear her. “I am Lucinda, the fairy, and I am going to give you the most wondrous gift.”

Mum Olga’s voice changed from outrage to delight. “A fairy gift! And everyone here to see! Oh, Sir P., how divine!”

I should have been making my escape, but I stood frozen in place.

Father bowed. “You honor us.”

“It’s the loveliest gift. No one can say this one is harmful or foolish.” She shook her head defiantly. “It’s eternal love. As long as you live, you shall love each other.”

FATHER WAS open-mouthed in horror.

“It’s so romantic, Sir P.,” Mum Olga sighed, entwining her arm in his.

His face changed, and he chucked her gently under the chin. “If it pleases you, my dear, my life.” He looked wondering. “My love.”

Olive climbed over my feet, trumpeting, “A real fairy!” She pushed her way to Lucinda.

Wellwishers crowded around Father and Mum Olga, but few were so foolhardy as Olive. The fairy would soon be free to look about. I fled the room.

It was too cold to hide outdoors. I decided to venture upstairs.

The stair rail was an open spiral, perfect for sliding. I resisted a mad impulse to take a ride — into Lucinda’s arms, no doubt. I heard her voice and ran up the stairs.

On the landing I opened a door and stepped into a dark corridor. Closing the door behind me, I sank down and leaned against it with my legs stretched out on marble tiles.

Would Father be happier as a result of the gift? Had Lucinda finally given a present that would benefit its recipients? I tried to imagine their marriage. Would love blind Father to Mum Olga’s shortcomings?

There must have been footsteps, but I didn’t hear them. The door opened behind me. I tumbled back and found myself staring up at — Char!

“Are you well?” he asked anxiously, kneeling next to me.

I sat up and grabbed his sleeve, scrambling back into the hallway and pulling him with me. I shut the door behind us. “I’m fine.”

“Good.” He stood up.

I think he was grinning, but he may have been scowling. The corridor was too dim to tell. How would he explain my behavior? Why would he think I was hiding?

“I thought you were still patrolling the border. I didn’t notice you at the wedding.”

“We returned this morning. I arrived here just in time to watch you dash up the stairs.” He paused, perhaps waiting for me to explain. I didn’t, and he was too polite to ask.

“My father spent his boyhood here,” he went on, “before the new palace was built. He says there’s a secret passage somewhere. It’s rumored to start in one of the rooms on this story.”

“Where does it lead?”

“Supposedly to a tunnel under the moat. Father used to search for it.”

“Shall we look?”

“Would you like to?” He sounded eager. “If you don’t mind missing the ball.”

“I’d love to miss the ball.” I opened one of the doors in the corridor.

Light flooded in, and I saw that Char couldn’t have been scowling. He was smiling so happily that he reminded me of Apple.

We were in a bedroom with an empty wardrobe and two large windows. We knocked on the walls, listening for a telltale hollow sound; we felt for hidden seams. We tested the floorboards, guessing at who might have used the passage and for what reasons.

“To warn Frell of danger,” Char suggested.

“To escape a mad fairy.”

“To flee punishment.”

“To leave a boring cotillion.”

“That was it,” Char agreed.

But whatever the reason for flight, the means remained hidden. We investigated each room less thoroughly than the one before, until our search became a stroll. We moved along the corridor, opening doors and poking our heads in. If any feature seemed promising, we investigated further.

I thought of a silly explanation for my presence upstairs.

“You’ve guessed why I shut myself up here,” I said.

“I have no idea.” He opened a door. Nothing worth examining.

“To avoid temptation.”.

“What temptation?” He grinned, anticipating a joke. He was used to me. I would have to labor to surprise him.

“Can’t you guess?”

He shook his head.

“The temptation to slide down the stair rail, of course.”

He laughed, surprised after all. “And why were you lying down?”

“I wasn’t lying down. I was sitting.”

“Pray tell why you were sitting.”

“To pretend I was sliding down the stair rail.”

He laughed again. “You should have done it. I would have caught you at the bottom.”

The strains of an orchestra wafted up to us, a slow allemande.

The corridor we were in ended in a back stair, surrounded by doors that opened on more corridors, all more or less alike.

“If we’re not careful, we’ll go down this one again,” Char said. “They’re all the same.”

“Hansel and Gretel had pebbles and bread crumbs to show them the way. We have nothing.”

“We have more than they did. They were impoverished. There must be something….” He looked down at himself, then tugged at an ivory button on his doublet until it came off in his hand. A bit of striped silk undergarment peeked out I watched in amazement as he placed the button on the tiles a foot within the hallway we had just left. “That will mark our progress.” He chuckled. “I’m destroying my dignity without sliding down anything.”

After we investigated six corridors without finding the secret passage, and after all of Char’s buttons were gone, we climbed the back staircase. It ended in an outdoor passage to a tower. We rushed across, facing into a bitter wind.

The tower room had once been an indoor garden, with small trees in wooden pots. I perched on a stone bench. It was chilly, but we were out of the wind.

“Do the king’s gardeners come here?” I asked. “Are the trees dead?”

“I don’t know.” Char was staring at the bench. “Stand up.”

I obeyed, of course. He pushed at the seat with his foot, and it moved. “This lifts off,” he exclaimed.

“Probably only garden tools,” I said, while we lifted it together.

I was right, but not entirely. We found a spade, a pail, and a small rake. And cobwebs, and evidence of mice, although how they got in and out I couldn’t tell. And a leather apron. And two things more.

Char twitched the apron aside and found gloves and a pair of slippers. The gloves were stained and riddled with holes, but the slippers sparkled as though newly made. Char lifted them out carefully. “I think they’re made of glass! Here.”

He meant for me to take them both, but I didn’t understand. I only reached for one, and the other fell. In the moment before the crash, I mourned the loss of such a beautiful thing.

But there was no crash. The slipper didn’t break. I picked it up and tapped on it. The sound was of a fingernail on glass.

“Try them on.”

They fit exactly. I held my feet out for Char to see.

“Stand up.”

“They’ll crack for certain if I do.” I could barely stay seated because of the command.

“Perhaps not.”

I stood. I took a step. The slippers bent with me. I turned to Char in wonder.

Then I was aware again of the sounds of the orchestra far below. I took a gliding step. I twirled.

He bowed. “The young lady must not dance alone.”

I had danced only at school with other pupils or our mistresses for partners.

He put his hand on my waist, and my heart began to pound, a rougher rhythm than the music. I held my skirt. Our free hands met. His felt warm and comforting and unsettling and bewildering — all at once.

Then we were off, Char naming each dance: a gavotte, a slow sarabande, a courante, an allemande.

We danced as long as the orchestra played. Once, between dances, he asked if I wanted to return to the celebration. “Won’t they be looking for you?”

“Perhaps.” Hattie and Olive would wonder where I was. Father and Mum Olga wouldn’t care. But I couldn’t go back. Lucinda might still be there. “Do you want to?”

“No. I only came to see you.” He added, “To be sure you arrived home safely.”

“Quite safely. Sir Stephan guarded me well, and the giants took excellent care of me. Did you catch more ogres?”

“szah, suSS fyng mOOng psySSahbuSS.” (“Yes, and they were delicious.”)

I laughed. His accent was atrocious.

He shrugged ruefully. “They laughed too and never listened to me. Bertram was the best; they obeyed him half the time.”

The music started again, a stately pavane. We could still talk while performing the steps.

“A fairy gave my father and my new mother an unusual gift.” I described it. “What do you think of such a present?”

“I shouldn’t like to be under a spell to love someone.”

Thinking of Father’s scheme to marry me off, I said, “Sometimes people are forced into wedlock. If they must marry, perhaps it’s better if they must love.”

He frowned. “Do you think so? I don’t.”

I spoke without considering. “It doesn’t matter for you. You can marry anyone.”

“And you cannot?”

I blushed, furious with myself for almost giving the curse away. “I suppose I can,” I muttered. “We’re both too young to marry, in any case.”

“Are we?” He grinned. “I’m older than you are.”

“I am then,” I said defiantly. “And the fairy’s gift was horrid. I would hate to have to love someone.”

“I agree. Love shouldn’t be dictated.”

“Nothing should be dictated!” An idiotic remark to a future king, but I was thinking of Lucinda.

He answered seriously. “As little as possible.”

When the orchestra finished, we sat together on the bench and watched the sky darken slowly.

Sometimes we talked, and sometimes we were silent. He told me more about hunting for ogres. Then he said he was leaving again in two days to spend a year in the court of Ayortha.