Rosamonde: The Real Story of Sleeping Beauty (9 page)

“What is going on?” boomed a deep voice. It wasn’t just a deep voice. It was an angry voice, a grouchy voice, an extremely irritated voice. The king of Delmania strode forward, followed by servants and soldiers and the Delmanian ambassador. He pushed through the crowd until he stood by my father.

“Is this some sort of strange Bordavian marital custom?” he demanded angrily. “One moment I was telling an insignificant duke from Austria how pastry cream in Vienna is usually overly sweet, and the next moment I’m waking up on an imperfectly polished marble floor. I am not amused!”

“Look!” stammered a voice.

Sunlight shone in through the front doors of the Great Hall. Not much, though, because the doors were only slightly ajar. And something else was blocking out the light. Vines. Rose vines. A thick layer of rose vines, matted and woven together across the front of the castle.

“Look!” shouted someone else.

“Yes, yes!” said the king of Delmania grumpily. “Roses and thorns. What else do you expect in this dismal little country?”

“No, Your Highness. Not the vines. Your. . . your. . .”

“Your beard!” It was the Delmanian ambassador. His jaw dropped.

“My beard? Nonsense! I don’t have a beard! I’ll have you whipped for such a ridiculous suggestion! And your beard, sir? What, pray, are you doing with such a monstrosity on your face? Do you wish to be reassigned to Patagonia? Have you gone quite mad?”

“Er. . .” said the Delmanian ambassador. He had never said “er” before in his life. Despite his years of soldiering, despite his years of possessing an iron-ramrod spine, he was almost at a loss for words. But not quite. “Um. . . if you could touch your chin, Your Majesty.”

“My chin?” said the king suspiciously. “Why should I touch my chin?”

“It has a morsel of cheese on it. Perhaps an excellent Gouda.”

The ambassador turned red at his own lie, but the king didn’t notice. He wasn’t that good at noticing unless it was to notice himself. Besides, since most of the ambassador’s face was covered by an enormous beard, it would have been difficult for the most observant of detectives to have noticed his face turning red. The king’s hand flew to his chin. Cheese was meant to be eaten, not worn. His face whitened.

“Wh-what is this? What is this on my face?”

“A beard, Your Majesty,” said the ambassador wretchedly. “I seem to have one as well. Everyone does.”

And it was true. Every man in that crowded Great Hall, except for the young pages, had a beard. Some were scraggly and sparse. Some were bristly. Some were long. Some were luxurious. The king of Delmania’s beard was both long and luxurious. It was quite impressive.

His eyes popped. His mouth gabbled. His ears waggled and turned bright red. He waved his arms around like a flapping duck. An odd sort of quacking sound came from his lips, but he was too overcome to actually speak.

“I think,” said my father, speaking slowly, “we have all been asleep for a very long time. The vines have overgrown the castle and our beards have grown.”

“Asleep?”

“It happens in Bordavia,” I said, pushing my way through the crowd. My chin went up. “We may be a small, insignificant country, but there’s a tremendous curse on this land and we’re proud of it.”

“We are?” said my father, looking startled. Then, realization glimmered in his eye. He smiled at me. “Yes, we’re extremely proud of it. The curse makes us fall asleep at the strangest times and the strangest places.”

“And it has the strongest effect on our royal family and those near us,” I added. I stepped closer to the Delmanian king. He looked alarmed and took a step back. “But, really, it affects the entire country. Goatherds, cheese makers, squires, old women washing their laundry at the village well, the priest at his pulpit—they all have a tendency to fall asleep without the slightest provocation.”

This wasn’t exactly true, of course, but it was true enough for the moment. Besides, our plan was working perfectly. The look of horror in my intended father-in-law’s eyes was the buttery frosting on th
e
Schwarzwälder Kirschtort
e
. I do so enjoy that cake.

“How long have we been asleep?” quavered the Delmanian king.

“Oh, days and days,” I said carelessly. “Weeks, probably.”

“Six months, to be precise.”

The voice rang out across the Great Hall. Everyone turned. It was Uncle Milo. He smiled.

“Six months!” The Delmanian king looked as if he was about to topple over in a dead faint. “Six months! But. . . but. . . but that’s impossible! Outrageous! I won’t stand for it! Six months. We were scheduled to invade Sweden in February.”

“I’m afraid you missed your appointment,” said Uncle Milo.

“And Latvia!” mourned the Delmanian king. “We were going to appropriate all their cows and their creameries and that delightful little village—I forgot its name—on the Baltic, where they made those delicious ham blintzes, we were going to pillage it to the ground. In March! In March, when the winds blow out of the north and freeze your mustache.”

“You’ll have to march another year,” said Uncle Milo.

I yawned. “I’m feeling rather sleepy all of a sudden.”

“Get me out of here!” shouted the Delmanian king. “Immediately! Out of this wretched little country! I never want to set foot here again!”

Things went rather well from there. It took a good half hour to hack through the rose vines in front of the doors. They were thick and prickly, and it isn’t the easiest job in the world to cut through green wood like that. Fenris, the crown prince of Delmania, was found sleeping in a linen closet (Uncle Milo confided that he had dragged him there, as he found his snoring too loud). He did a great deal of hysterical shouting and vase throwing when he woke up and discovered he had grown a beard. Throwing vases is uncouth behavior and should never be tolerated in royalty.

In a matter of several happy hours, the brigades of Delmanian soldiers were drawn up and marching away down the road to the west. Puffs of smoke poofed up into the sky as the long black train pulled away from the village station below the castle, loaded down with Delmanian nobility and several barbers busily pruning away with their clippers. I went down to the station to see them off. Not that I was feeling nostalgic, but, after all, we had almost been family. The crown prince, of course, was forced to travel by train as well, seeing that his balloon had come to such an unhappy ending on the castle roof. Count Mundo Glissando was the last to board the train. His step was considerably less bouncy than normal, but he turned to bow from the platform.

“Princess,” he said solemnly.

“Count,” I said, nodding my head.

“It has been, er, delightful.”

“Likewise,” I said.

“Delightful in a rather painful and horrifying way.”

“I’m pleased to hear that,” I said.

He smiled and winked, and then the train pulled away.

An army of gardeners were swarming around the castle when I returned from the village. They looked like ants—large ants, of course, armed with shears and pruning hooks and ladders. There was a great deal of yelling and stifled curses, for the Scarlet Blevias and the Peach Springfields are extremely thorny. An enormous bonfire burned in the East Meadow. Bluebirds whistled in the apricot trees. I spotted old Marcel stumping along in the shadows at the edge of the forest. A rifle dangled from one arm, and several hound dogs trotted along at his heels.

“All’s well that ends well,” said my father.

I looked around, startled. He smiled at me. His hands were dirty, and there was a long scratch down one arm.

“I imagine you were thick in that plot, my dear,” he said. “It felt like you.”

“To be honest—no, don’t raise your eyebrows like that, I can be very honest—it wasn’t my idea. It was Uncle Milo and Henri.”

“I’m not surprised at Milo, but Henri?”

I glanced around. It seemed like the entire population of the castle, from the lowest scullery boy to my mother herself, was outside, clipping and pruning and sawing and hauling lengths of vine off to the roaring bonfire. Uncle Milo was nowhere in sight. Neither was Henri, but I wasn’t looking for him, of course.

Honestly, I wasn’t.

“I think Milo is somewhere in the castle,” said my father mildly. “He said something about waking someone up.”

I hurried across the grass and up the front steps. A contingent of servants scrubbed their way across the Great Hall. All the windows were wide open. Sunshine and fresh air flooded in. The stairs were already polished, and I almost tripped as I rounded up the flight to the fifth floor.

Uncle Milo was dismantling his strange contraption when I finally reached the tower.

“It’s called a phonograph,” he said, frowning down at the thing. “I’m not sure why. Might as well call it a Frederick or a Hortense. Rather odd American fellow invented it. Quite ingenious of him, but he’s as mad as a mercury-dipped hatter. These wax platters spin around and around and the needle picks up the vibrations and turns them into sound. We did it in reverse and captured the sound of your grandmother’s voice after we arrived at the convent. Almost put us into a coma, the way she nattered on about having tea and crocheting and the different kinds of wool the nuns use in their habits. Had to keep our fingers in our ears the whole time. Still, very useful for us, eh, my dear?”

“Is he still asleep?” I asked.

“Like a hibernating bear. I didn’t want to bother him in case he bites.”

“Hmmph,” I said.

Henri was snoring abominably in the corner, his head pillowed on his coat.

“Quite a sleeping beauty,” said Uncle Milo, laughing.

I frowned at him. “He looks as if he hasn’t had a bath in, well, a very long time.”

“Six months.” Uncle Milo shook his head. “We first thought a week or two would do the trick; at least, that’s what I was prepared to do. But then we decided on a much longer time. Long enough to put the fear of Bordavian curses into the king of Delmania. One year was too horrifying to contemplate, so we decided on six months. What a strange six months it was! We lived in complete silence with these wretched earplugs stuffed in our ears. Did a great deal of reading, of course. Henri and I took turns cooking in the kitchens three flights down, and then one of us would trudge back up the stairs with a basket of hot food and a pile of fresh books from the library. We didn’t dare leave the Victrola alone in case it stopped and everyone woke up. That wouldn’t do. Henri insisted on carrying you down to your own room. Six months sleeping on this stone floor, my dear, would’ve put your back out for good.”

“You don’t say.”

I stared down pensively at Henri’s sleeping form. There were some large dust balls in the corner. I considered dropping them into Henri’s open mouth. That would hopefully teach him how unwise it is to sleep with one’s mouth ajar. I’ve found that the best learned lessons always involve a certain amount of discomfort. However, I’ve also found over the years that Henri can be mulishly resistant to learning, particularly when I’m trying to share my own knowledge with him. Still pondering this, I looked up. Uncle Milo was gone.

I nudged Henri in the ribs with my slippered foot. He did not wake up, but simply continued with his snoring. I kicked him again, slightly harder. He opened one eye.

“Wh-what?” he mumbled.

Then he saw me. His eyes widened and he sat up, yawning hugely.

“Are you. . . did you. . . ?”

“No,” I said.

“So you’re. . . ?”

“Yes.”

“Er, good.” Henri looked both relieved and embarrassed at the same time. “Well, that’s that. All’s well that ends well. Prince Fenris must’ve been off his rocking chair to want to marry you. Classic case o
f
idioticus romanticu
s
. Probably due to a hyperactive thyroid gland.”

“Off his rocking chair?” I said, eyeing him closely.

“Yes. Completely.”

“Obviously an idiot for wanting to marry me?”

“Oh, definitely.”

“Bad taste?”

“Er,” said Henri, his brow wrinkling a bit. “I didn’t mean—”

He didn’t make it any farther than that, due to me kicking him in the ribs. As he was still sitting on the floor, he was perfectly placed. This time I put my heart into it and followed through correctly. I left him gasping there. One of the lessons that royalty always must learn is the art of the elegant exit. We are often the first to leave a room due to the fact, or the theory, that royalty always have better things to do. There is much to be said for a proper turn, a brisk step, and then a well-slammed door.

***

And that is pretty much the end of the story. Oh, I suppose there is a bit more to it for those interested in such things. There’s always more to stories. They don’t simply end with a last sentence and disappear into nothingness. There’s more to it, even after you’ve closed the book and walked away. The characters continue on with their lives, in their own worlds, with their own hopes and considerations and problems. They even might be reading a book about you.

I did get married one day, if you must know. It was inevitable. My mother was fond of pointing out the unavoidability of it all, particularly whenever I started enthusing about running off to Patagonia or devoting my life to herding sheep in the Alps. Royalty don’t have the option of walking away from things. There must be another king or queen, which means babies being born (because, if you did not know, kings and queens start as babies), and babies need families to begin with, and families mean a man and a woman getting married. So, yes, I did get married. And, no, I did not get married to some stuffed shirt of a prince (being a stuffed shirt is a prerequisite to being a prince these days).