Rosamonde: The Real Story of Sleeping Beauty (2 page)

Other than Uncle Milo tripping and bringing down a sideboard covered with cream cakes, the ball was a real snoozer. I fell asleep while dancing with a lord or an ambassador or someone else equally forgettable. A trio of footmen hovering nearby swooped in and caught me before I hit the floor. They’re quite good at that. They’ve had a lot of practice.

“Take her to her rooms,” said my mother.

“Yes, Your Highness,” said the head footman.

My maid, Celeste, was waiting in the hall.

“Be careful,” she said. “She is not a rolled up carpet
,
n’est-ce pa
s
?”

“Of course,” said the head footman stiffly. “Do you think I am stupid? Besides, a carpet is much heavier. Thank the good Lord the princess is not fat.”

“Don’t be insolent,” said Celeste, pointing her finger at the footman. He gulped nervously. As he well should have. Celeste’s particular magic talent is much more interesting and useful than mine. It involves shooting small sparks of fire from her left index finger. It comes in handy when one needs to reheat a pot of cold tea or light candles or encourage lazy pages to hurry.

The Delmanian ambassador, for it was he I had left standing on the ballroom floor, frowned after the small cavalcade that bore me away. He was a tall man, with an iron-grey mustache and an upright bearing made rigid by decades of soldiering and Delmanian manners.

“A strange girl, your daughter,” he said to the Queen. “Exceedingly strange.”

“But practically normal for a princess,” said my mother, trying not to yawn. “The royalty have an obligation to be peculiar. It makes the general population much more fond of them. Besides, I’ve always found eccentricity to be a charming quality, particularly if done in a well-mannered fashion. Your own crown prince has a fondness for hot air ballooning, does he not?”

“Yes, he does, Your Majesty,” said the ambassador, frowning again. “He will outgrow it. It is a peculiar habit for our future king. If he were my son, I would have him thrashed with a horsewhip.”

“Oh?” said my mother, raising one careful eyebrow. “Does it have to be a horsewhip?”

“A horsewhip or a bullwhip, Your Highness. They are essentially the same. We do not coddle our children in Delmania. Strength comes from strength. Our king, however, has an unfortunate blind spot where his son is concerned. He is an able general. We have defeated all of our enemies and subjugated them under our boot. He is a wise and learned statesman, a scholar in the arts of magic and alchemy. He is also an excellent pastry chef and has a luxurious mustache, but his son? Prince Fenris will make an excellent king, but he still has some growing up to do.”

“I am surprised that you speak so freely, given your office.”

The ambassador shrugged one massive shoulder. “Delmanians respect honesty, not like other countries. You have a beautiful daughter. She has an elegant neck.”

Perhaps because of my elegant neck, the prime minister of Delmania sent a telegram to my father the following week. Roaring with laughter, he let me read it, thinking that it might improve my curiously depressed spirits.

Crown Prince Fenris to arrive Bordavia Thursday STOP Traveling via hot air balloon STOP Have fire crew standing by STOP Clear the princess’ schedule STOP Trust she will make favorable impression STOP Army will be engaged in maneuvers on border STOP Pay them no attention STOP.

“I see nothing amusing in this,” I said, handing the telegram back to him. “First of all, I will not clear my schedule—”

“My dear, with the way you constantly fall asleep, you’ve never kept a schedule in your life.”

“—and secondly, I am not interested in making favorable impressions. From everything I’ve heard, Prince Fenris sounds like an impossible boor. Besides, he’s sure to have a mustache.”

“I have a mustache,” pointed out my father.

“Yes, but you have a beard as well. That makes all the difference. Beards and mustaches must go together, just like scones and cream or flugelhorns and yodeling. Really, if you’re going to look like a bear, then look like one. I can’t abide the indecision of a mustache. Mustaches epitomize the fear of commitment.”

“I have a mustache as well,” said our prime minister somewhat nervously.

He was standing in the corner of the drawing room and looking ill at ease. He always looked ill at ease. It came with the job.

“Yes, you do, Pierre,” said my father, “and it is a very fitting mustache. Wear it with pride. I’m afraid, however, your beard is rather scraggly. Have you tried washing it with yogurt? Now, what do you think of the Delmanian telegram?”

The prime minister peered through his spectacles at the telegram, his lips moving silently as he read it. He looked up when he was done.

“It gives me indigestion, Your Highness,” he said, rubbing his stomach gently. “I, er, think it best that the princess clear her schedule and practice her smile for the benefit of the crown prince. Perhaps if she smiles nicely enough, the Delmanian army will go do their maneuvers on the border of some other country. France, perhaps.”

“You’re right,” said my father. He sighed and shook his head. “On second thought, his telegram is not amusing at all, the more I consider it. Not after a second reading. I’m afraid when the Delmanian army does border maneuvers they sometimes forget where the border is. Last year, when they engaged in such maneuvers on the border of Belgium, they somehow ended up marching right into the middle of Brussels.”

“And they haven’t left yet,” mumbled the prime minister. “It has affected the price of Brussels sprouts. I love Brussels sprouts.”

“Rosamonde, my dear,” said my father, “I’m afraid you will have to put on your best dancing shoes when Prince Fenris arrives.”

“But he’s probably an insufferable bore,” I said. Tears threatened to well up in my eyes, but I blinked them back.

“Almost a certainty. It does not matter if he has all the character and fascination of a stale slice of pumpernickel spread with braunschweiger.”

“He’ll step on my toes when we’re dancing.”

“I’m sure of it.”

“He’ll talk of nothing but himself!”

“Undoubtedly.”

“And he’ll expect me to smile and nod and simper and flutter my eyelashes like some fat Delmanian cow!”

The prime minister edged away from me and looked longingly at the door. I’ve never been privy to his magical talent, but I suspect it was something along the lines of transforming himself into a small potted plant.

“That, my dear, is what princesses must sometimes do.” My father sighed. “On such small things do the fortunes of empires rise. Or fall.”

And so it was that, bright and early the following Thursday morning, I stood on the East Lawn dressed in a new silk gown and angrily twirling a parasol in my hands. I wasn’t alone, of course. My parents were there, along with several dozen functionaries of the court, the Royal Bordavian Brass Band, the entire castle staff, a large army of gardeners armed with hoses and water buckets, and a photographer with several assistants, all scurrying around with their flash powder and tripods and silver plates. Uncle Milo wandered along the border of rose bushes on the edge of the lawn, looking uncomfortable in a long tailcoat and bow tie. Behind me, the usual contingent of footmen, under the watchful eye of my maid, Celeste, waited in dutiful anticipation of my narcolepsy. The sun shone at just the right temperature in a perfectly polished sky of the palest blue.

Someone shouted out in excitement (a young assistant gardener, perhaps, possessing an excellent pair of eyes but no sense of decorum). “Here he comes!”

There was a rumble of excited murmuring in the crowd, and then a tiny round speck suddenly appeared in the sky, high above the treetops of the Bordu Forest. A hot air balloon. It rapidly grew in size, the sun glinting off its bulging sides. I put a pair of opera glasses to my eyes and gloomily inspected the balloon. It was a monstrosity of red and black silk, the colors of Delmania, swollen like an overripe tomato and hurtling through the air at an alarming speed. Every now and then, the black pipe beneath the balloon emitted a gout of flame and smoke. I found the balloon’s velocity, I must admit, rather fascinating. I have forever been enamored with things that go quickly, whether it be horses or hunting with hawks or hurling vases from the fifth floor of the castle (a diverting pastime I inadvertently discovered with Henri when we were young—I had thrown a vase at his head, intending to harmlessly brain him, when he ducked in that cowardly, annoying fashion he has, allowing the vase to go flying out the window).

“He’s going quickly, isn’t he?” I murmured.

“Yes, he is,” said my mother. “I declare, these modern inventions are quite frightening.”

“Perhaps he’ll crash,” I said hopefully.

“Rosamonde.”

“That would make for a tremendous conflagration,” said Uncle Milo somewhat enthusiastically. “Helium, I imagine. It’s a newfangled vapor. Burns rapidly. I think you would find it a highly educational experience.”

“Milo!” said my mother.

“Maybe old Marcel the gamekeeper is on duty today,” I said. “I can’t remember if he works Thursdays. He might be down in the forest as we speak. His eyesight is getting bad, Mama, and he’s very excitable. If he sees a blurry red and black blob floating through the sky, he might think it a pheasant and try to shoot it. He once shot at Henri. He claimed he thought him a wild boar. I’m sad to say he missed.”

“Rosamonde, really.”

Unhappily, and without any mishaps, the hot air balloon set down on the lawn with a thump as the enormous wicker basket hit the ground. Lines flew out from its sides. Several smartly uniformed Delmanian soldiers hopped out with spikes and mallets in hand and promptly hammered the lines fast into the turf. Father’s lips compressed at that, as one of his favorite pastimes is practicing his golf swing on the lawn, whacking golf balls hundreds of yards down the lawn (it’s a large lawn) toward the forest on the eastern edge of the grass. Henri used to earn extra pocket money when he was younger retrieving the golf balls for Father. He would dress up in several layers of coats, place a soup pot on his head, and then dash about on the far end of the lawn with a bucket as Father whacked the golf balls toward him. In the excitement of running around and dodging the flying projectiles, however, Henri would often, without realizing it, lose the soup pot as he sprinted across the grass. Mother banned him from this activity after he was knocked unconscious one too many times.

The Bordavian Brass Band struck up the national Delmanian anthem, and there was a great deal of cheering from the castle staff. Father had paid them all an extra florin to do so. The cameras went off with a pop-pop-pop noise as the flash powder ignited. A door in the side of the wicker basket opened, and several bowing servants emerged and arrayed themselves in a row, still bowing. A tall man dressed in a military uniform appeared in the door, paused, and then marched straight toward my father. A short, fat man, built along the lines of a child’s rubber ball (except much larger) bounced along behind him.

The tall man stopped in front of my father, clicked his heels together, and bowed stiffly from the waist. Now that he was much closer, it was apparent that he wasn’t much older than I was. Twenty, perhaps. I had to admit that he was absurdly handsome in a blond, blue-eyed, tanned, muscular, gleamingly white-toothed sort of way. He had a mustache as straight and as clipped as new toothbrush bristles. His uniform fit him perfectly, and the starched front of it was festooned with enough ribbons and medals for an entire battalion of highly accomplished soldiers.

The short, fat man bounded up and made an even deeper bow, somehow managing to graze the grass with his nose in the process.

“Your Majesties,” he said, bouncing upright, “allow me to introduce yourself. I am Count Mundo Glissando, aide-de-camp of His Highness. May I present His Royal Highness, Crown Prince Fenris Alluvio Gonzales y Smithson Vincenzeranza, Grand Duke of Listeria and Heir to the Imperial Throne of Delmania!”

“I am pleased, Your Majesties,” said Prince Fenris in a deep voice, “to make your acquaintance.”

“As we are yours,” said my father. “Allow me to introduce my daughter, Princess Rosamonde.”

Prince Fenris turned toward me, bowed and, before I knew it, had somehow acquired my hand in his. He lifted it to his lips. This did nothing to impress me. On the contrary—I’ve always thought it a foul tradition and an excellent way to spread germs.

“Princess,” he said, “I am overjoyed. The reports of your beauty have not been exaggerated. All the poets of Delmania are writing sonnets in your honor. Some write three, four, maybe five a day.”

“If not, they are flogged,” said the diminutive Count Glissando, smiling broadly.

“How delightful,” I said.

The arrival of Prince Fenris meant a dreadful round of balls and dinners and concerts and plays. I detested all such events. Invariably, they meant I would be forced into making polite conversation with simpering ladies, soppy lords, diplomats who smelled of snuff or strong cologne (both make me sneeze in an alarming fashion), and courtier after courtier, each one vying to compliment me or bring me a canapé or throw themselves down into the nearest mud puddle so I don’t have to get my shoes muddy.

Oh, for crying out loud! I don’t mind getting my shoes muddy.