Rosamonde: The Real Story of Sleeping Beauty (6 page)

Count Glissando ran across the grass in great excitement and then began scurrying around in circles, his face close to the ground as if he were looking for footprints. The Delmanian soldiers stood rigidly at attention.

“Well? Will no one answer me? You! Lieutenant. . .”

“Sergeant, actually. Sergeant Grenouille, Your Highness, sir.”

“Whatever! Your name and rank are irrelevant to my tragic loss. What do you have to say about this devastating disappearance, Lieutenant?”

“Er, well, Your Highness, sir. It was the boars, sir.”

“Boars?”

“Exactly, Your Highness. The boars. Large, wild animals of the porcine variety. Somewhat similar to the common farm pig, but. . .”

“I know what a boar is, you imbecile!”

Celeste and I were spying on them from behind a bougainvillea arbor. It was difficult to maintain proper secrecy, chiefly due to the fact that the footmen in my usual retinue were chuckling and snorting in a most unprofessional manner. Celeste turned and quelled them with a very French stare.

“There are many tracks here, Your Highness!” hollered Count Glissando. He got down on his hands and knees in order to more closely investigate the grass. “Many tracks!”

“So, you swine,” growled the prince, “you say you were attacked by boars?”

“We fought bravely, Your Highness, but there were many of them.”

“Hordes,” offered one of the other soldiers. “Galloping herds of hordes. With enormous tusks.”

“And these porcine pillagers then pilfered my balloon?”

“Well put, Your Highness. Your alliteration, my lord, is sheer genius, if I may say so. Er, we tried to stop them, sir, but, the sheer numbers. The sheer numbers were overwhelming. They called down insults as they floated away. Very demeaning insults, Your Highness. In their own incomprehensible language, of course, but I’m relatively confident they were insults.”

The prince stared at the officer and the little troop of soldiers for a moment of frozen silence. His face turned red.

“Cowards! Fools! Bellhops! Defeated by a pack of pigs! Ballooning pigs, no less! I’ve never heard anything so absurd. You have humiliated Delmania! You, Lieutenant, you are demoted to sergeant, effective immediately—”

“Er, but I’m already. . .”

“Silence! And the rest of you cretins are demoted to the ranks!”

“But, sir, we already are. . .”

“Shut up! Dismissed!”

***

The following few days went by in a whirlwind of dinners and receptions and dances. Prince Fenris cheered up after a while and seemed to forget the theft of his balloon. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves, except for my parents and me. My mother spent many hours weeping in her rooms. True, I never actually saw her crying, but I could tell from the slight puffiness around her eyes that never went away. My father was more difficult to read. He’s always been that way, which is one of the reasons why he’s so adept at diplomacy. However, he was not eating during meals, and my father loved to eat. Eating for him was an affirmation of all that was good with life. Just like the sun rose every morning to provide yet another chance at living a day well, so did breakfast arrive every morning. And then lunch. And then afternoon tea. And then dinner. And then evening tea. And then perhaps a late-night snack or two. These days, he only toyed with his food, pushing the cold crab salad around on the plate, staring fixedly at the bouillabaisse as if the lobster was on the verge of offering advice, or slicing through his baked potato and then stacking it to one side in piled slabs as if he were excavating for rubies in a Lunish mine.

Other than trying not to fall asleep, I spent most of my time smiling, my face stiff and aching, nodding, and greeting an endless procession of Europe’s nobility as they came to the castle by train, by boat up the Bordu River, by carriage, by horse; one young ducal sprig from Poland even arrived on foot, outfitted with several pairs of leather boots and an ingeniously framed sack on his back. Back-sacking, he called it. Apparently it is all the rage in the Americas, but that is understandable, as the people who live there are mostly crazy and believe in such things as exceedingly small dogs, going for walks without umbrellas, and a curious system of government in which the population votes for the candidate who kisses the most babies and tells the most outrageous lies with a straight face.

The king and queen of Delmania arrived on Thursday, along with what seemed like half of the entire population of Delmania and a whole brigade of the Delmanian army. The soldiers marched up the road in endless rows, their polished leather boots shining in the sun, and their faces turned toward us in rigid attention.

“It is customary, my dear,” said the crown prince, patting my hand in the way you would pat a small dog on the head. “Royal weddings in our country are always witnessed by the flower of our military. Consider them merely part of your newly extended family, but you needn’t buy them Christmas presents.”

The castle overflowed with people. The inns in the towns around were stuffed as full as tins of sardines. Tents, small and large and enormous, popped up overnight in neat rows on all four sides of the castle. The grounds were completely covered. Such an influx, I’m afraid, meant the grass was badly trampled, the ducks were sulking in the water garden, and there was a shortage of well-aged cheese.

The king of Delmania was a larger and louder and greying version of his son. While it might be said that Fenris was made of brass and silver and bright polished steel, his father was made of iron. His voice boomed like a bassoon, and his eye was a hard staring blue that sent servants darting off in a frenzy to do his will or to merely escape his presence. Everyone seemed to wither and pale around him, as if he were the sun and the rest of humanity merely flowers quivering in the heat and light of his presence. His wife, Queen Grizelga Helena Roquefort de Vincenzeranza, was impossibly beautiful. She looked like the living version of a Greek statue, a work of Michelangelo somehow brought to life, complete with skin as white as marble and a glance that was just as hard and as cold as stone.

“What a charming little place,” said Queen Grizelga, glancing around the entry hall. “It reminds me of the guest cottage at our summer castle, only the ceilings here aren’t as high. Is one of your castles nearby?”

“This is our castle,” said my mother. I could hear her grinding her teeth. “Our only castle.”

“Really?” Queen Grizelga brought out a diamond-encrusted lorgnette and scrutinized Mother closely through it. “How fascinatingly quaint. I suppose the provincial past is coming back into fashion. I read that recently, but I can’t recollect exactly where. A quarterly about peasant whatnot, I think. And you, my dear, I suppose I can see why Fenris seems so enamored with you.” Here, she directed her steely gaze in my direction. “You do have a rather captivating beauty in a rustic, untidy sort of way. Yes, I do see that. And I trust you have a unique trait? Good bloodlines always display excellent traits, particularly for royalty.”

“Magic?” I said sweetly. “But of course. I can make roses bloom at whim.”

The queen looked perplexed at this. “Blooming roses? Of what use is that? Well, no matter. You do have good wide hips. That’s promising. Breeding is such a necessary quality, no?”

“I’m so glad I meet your exacting standards, your majesty,” I said, trying to smile and grind my teeth at the same time. Celeste drifted to one side and put her hand protectively on a vase. “If you have such a keen interest in breeding, perhaps you’d be interested in touring the royal cow barn?”

Before I could cause an international incident, my father stepped in and captured the Delmanian queen’s attention with a comment about the weather and how it was affecting the rose market.

Later, I fumed to my mother in the refuge of my bedroom. I didn’t just fume. I hollered, raved, waved my hands around, and stomped. Not that stomping did much good on three-inch-thick carpet.

“She is a cow! We should house her in the royal cow barn! She and all her family! A supercilious cow. . . I’m going to have a cow for a mother-in-law. Moo!”

The rose buds in a vase by the window abruptly bloomed and then withered, their petals dropping to the floor. I breathed in deeply, slowly, but I could not calm myself.

“Now, Rosamonde,” said Mother soothingly, “you’re being overly dramatic. I’m sure she has her good side.”

“Yes,” I snapped. “Her back side. When she’s leaving.”

I regretted speaking so harshly with my mother. None of this was her fault. Her face was drawn and her eyes were sad. Lightning crashed outside in the falling dark of the evening. A storm was rolling over the mountains to the east. I went to the window. Rain whipped down through the darkness.

“Where are you?” I whispered out loud.

“What’s that, my dear?” said my mother.

“Nothing.”

But there was nothing to be seen outside except for the storm. Nothing for the last two days. They should have returned by now. High overhead, the bells in the watchtower tolled the hour for the entire land to hear. Ten o’clock. Exactly twenty hours until the wedding. Less than a day until I was irrevocably chained to that insufferable clod, His Royal Highness Crown Prince Fenris Alluvio Gonzales y Smithson Vincenzeranza, Grand Duke of Listeria and Heir to the Imperial Throne of Delmania.

Twenty hours.

I wasted most of them by falling asleep. I couldn’t help it. Sleeping is what I do. Maybe it’s the only thing I do well. Embroidery? I prick my thumbs and bleed on the stitching. Feeding deserving orphans? I invariably spill soup in their laps. Cutting ribbons at dedications? I’ve been known to drop the scissors. I do poorly at all things princesses do, but I certainly can sleep.

***

Morning came too soon that next day. Celeste drew the curtains to reveal a stormy half-light. Clouds still obscured the sky. I suppose such gloominess was apropos for the dismal prospect of the wedding. Lightning grumbled somewhere in the distance.

“A strong cup of coffee, no?” said Celeste calmly. A chambermaid whisked in with a tray and set it beside my bed. “Drink
,
ma petit
e
.”

“They aren’t back yet, are they?” I asked.

“No,” she said, and we both sighed.

The remaining hours passed in a blur. Hairdressers and tailors whirled around me like horses around a merry-go-rig. A veritable army of maids and footmen hidden behind mounds of roses and roses and more roses marched forth. They scurried here and there, depositing blooms and bouquets and buds on every surface of the castle, from chapel to ballroom, until the whole place looked like a garden. Lunch skittered by in a succession of cucumber sandwiches and tiny mint cakes. My mother drifted about, sunlight sparkling determinedly in her wake despite the stormy skies outside. Down in the castle kitchen, the cooks and the bakers and the cheese makers and pastry chefs and every other denizen of that steamy and fragrant domain, from the most senior parsley chopper down to the youngest scullery boy, worked away in a frenzy of culinary dedication. Geese were roasted, pigs were plucked, cakes were baked, pies were pruned, oysters were scandalized, lobsters were lobbed into boiling cream, beets were dipped in chocolate and rolled sumptuously in sugar, and great wheels of cheeses were carved into fantastic and forbidding shapes. For, despite the presence of the hated and feared Delmanians, there was going to be a royal wedding!

Out on the Great Lawn, pelted by blowing leaves and rose petals and a tumbling wind, a contingent of the Royal Delmanian Honor Guard marched and wheeled about to the sound of bagpipes and tubas. It was most annoying. I slammed down my window. Everyone else in the room—two dressmakers, three maids, a hairdresser, a servant from the kitchen with a fresh pot of tea, and Celeste—avoided my eyes.

“Must they carry on so?” I growled. “They’re giving me a headache.”

“It is the Royal Wedding March of Delmania, my lady,” said Celeste, “or so I’ve been told. The fat little creature, Count Glissando, he tells me it is accompanied by the explosion of cannons. They bombard peasant hovels while the bride marches down the aisle.”

“They will not!” I said, horrified.

“Already it is taken care of,” said Celeste soothingly. “I tell him we have no peasants available. They are all too busy to be bombarded
.
Très désol
é
. He was very disappointed. He wanted to import some—Switzerland is probably the quickest with thei
r
magnifiqu
e
trains, no?—but I pointed out there was no time and that Swiss peasants, no doubt, would be absurdly expensive to rent.”

She poured me a cup of tea.
“
Voil
a
. The perfect cup, of course. It will calm the nerves.”

But my nerves were not calmed, and the sky remained empty except for the storm clouds rumbling by overhead, black and menacing. I stood like a statue. The two dressmakers flitted around me, draping and nudging and twitching until they were reasonably happy. The bells in the watchtower tolled the half hour.

“It is time,” said Celeste. And she would not meet my eyes.

I despised weddings on the best of days, even when they weren’t mine, even when the weather was perfect, and even when the canapés were sublime. I despised them for their stilted pomp, their quiet hysteria, and their excessive amount of simpering. Simpering? Yes. There was always simpering at weddings. Aunts twittering about the flower arrangements. Uncles gibbering about the oysters. Friends of friends nattering about the dresses. I don’t even like the word simpering.