The Truth-Teller's Tale (6 page)

Whenever we weren't in school—which we weren't in the summer—Adele and I were pressed into service as maids, laundresses, cooks, clerks, and accountants. My father was more likely to have me count the money, knowing I would be scrupulously exact as I tallied the sums; Adele more often greeted customers when they first arrived, since she was less likely to point out that their boots were muddy and their clothes disarranged from travel. Both of us were reasonably good cooks, though Adele was apt to be creative with a recipe, while I followed all instructions. However, neither of us liked to clean.

I was extremely displeased one day that week to find five guest rooms in need of cleaning and my sister nowhere in sight. I changed the bedsheets and swept the floors and dusted the furniture in all five rooms before Adele returned. I heard her footsteps going past me on the stairs to our third-floor bedroom, so I dropped my broom and hurried up after her. I was just in time to see her closing the bottom drawer on the old dresser located on her side of the room.

“Where have you been?” I asked furiously. “I've been cleaning all afternoon! Five whole rooms!”

She turned quickly, her back against the dresser, and gave me that unreadable smile. “I'll clean tomorrow,” she said. “Or I'll do all the dishes tonight. Your choice.”

I came a step closer, instantly alert. “Where have you been?” I asked again.

“Out.”

“Running errands?”

“Yes.”

“For Mother and Father?”

She didn't answer that. She rarely lied to me outright, since I could always tell when she wasn't telling the truth. She just found ways not to tell me what I wanted to know.

“What kinds of errands?” I said. When she was still silent, I added, “You may as well tell me. I can see you've put something in the drawer. I'll just look for it as soon as you're gone. And if you move it somewhere else,” I continued, “I'll just keep looking and looking until I find it. You know how good I am at finding things.”

She hesitated a moment, then sighed and nodded. She knelt on the floor and I knelt beside her as she pulled out the bottom drawer. There, under her best undergarments, most precious ribbons, and the velvet box containing the painted miniature of Princess Arisande, she had hidden a small cloth bag. I opened my hands, and she shook a few dried leaves into my palms.

“What is this?” I said. “Some kind of herb, I can tell that, but what does it do?”

“It makes you sick,” she said. “It gives you a fever and turns your stomach.”

I looked at her, astonishment holding my whole body rigid. “Like you were telling Roelynn about the other night?” She nodded. “But why would you want any herbs like this? We don't need to trick her father anymore.”

Adele shrugged and carefully picked the withered leaves from my hands. Placing them back into the bag, she set the cloth into the drawer and closed it tight. She didn't stand up, though. “There might come another time,” she said softly, “when someone needs to feign illness. When it seems like the right answer to a wrong situation.”

“I can't imagine such a time,” I said, frowning.

She came to her feet, shrugged again, and smiled. “No. Well, you wouldn't,” she said. “Come on. We'd better go down and help Mother with dinner.”

The first news we obtained about Roelynn's trip to the city came from Melinda. After the Karros had been gone for a week, the Dream-Maker arrived at our inn, having just left Wodenderry a few days before.

It was some time before we could ask her how Roelynn was faring. First she had to be lionized by all the guests already staying at the Leaf & Berry, who confided in her their deepest desires. Then she had to spend a few hours catching up with all her special friends from Merendon, who seemed to know exactly when to drop by. It was well past ten o'clock at night, and Adele and I were just finishing up the dinner dishes, when Melinda made her way back to the kitchen to visit with the family.

“Well, Hannah, I hardly need to ask you how things are going,” the Dream-Maker greeted our mother, who was reviewing her ingredients for tomorrow's meals. “The inn looks prosperous, as always, and your girls are growing up to be the most remarkable young ladies. I would think you're very proud of them.”

“Indeed, Bob and I both are, but they're still young enough to make mischief now and then,” Mother replied. Mother loved us, but she didn't think we were perfect, as Father did.

“Anything else you'd wish for?”

“Bless me, I can't think of a thing.”

“I know what
I'd
wish for, and I know you can grant it,” I said, laying down my dish towel and going over to sit beside Melinda at the small family table. Adele sat beside me. “Information about Roelynn! How is she doing in Wodenderry?”

Mother joined us at the table, bringing a pot of tea and four cups. “Yes, do tell us,” she urged. “Everyone in Merendon is dying to know.”

“Did she meet the prince? Are they going to make a match of it?” I asked.

Melinda rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Indeed, no, she did
not
meet the prince, and Lirabel was quite angry about it, too,” the Dream-Maker said. She accepted a cup of tea from my mother's hands and sipped it with such daintiness you would have thought she was in the queen's dining room that very moment. “She was
supposed
to meet him, you understand. Lirabel had arranged two quite ordinary events at the palace during which both Darian and Roelynn could be present. They would get a chance to say hello, and it would not be very awkward, and no one would know that Roelynn had been carted down to Wodenderry for the prince to look her over as if she was some kind of mare he was considering purchasing for the stables—”

“Melinda!” our mother exclaimed.

Melinda sniffed. At times like this, her noble features seemed very pronounced. “Well, that's how it always seems to me, like some kind of breeding competition. You should have seen the men the old king paraded through the palace when he finally decided it was time to marry off Lirabel. And then, wouldn't you know, she ended up marrying a young man she'd known since childhood—noble enough, but hardly a great match—and her father was not at all pleased about it. But you couldn't change her mind, and I didn't blame her. Better pick a man you can be sure loves you than a man who will treat you badly, even if he does come dripping in gold and owning half the shipping rights to the kingdom.”

“But what about Roelynn?” Adele said gently, not at all interested in these old tales but more diplomatic than I would have been. “And the prince.”

Melinda made a sound that, in a less-refined woman, would have passed as a snort. “The prince. Well, he failed to show up for the tea party that had been arranged first. Lirabel sent the servants up to his room to find him, but he was nowhere in sight. Naturally, quite a hue and cry ensued—because, well, he's the prince. And even though he's got to be sixteen years old by now, I suppose Lirabel always fears that someone could kidnap him or do him some kind of harm.”

“And was he kidnapped?” my mother breathed.

I was fairly certain that, if that had been the case, the whole kingdom would be aware of the event by now. So I was not surprised when Melinda shook her head. “No. If you please, he and his cousin had taken it into their heads to go off to the boat races along the southern shore, and they'd left that morning. He'd written his mother a note—he just had managed to make sure it didn't get delivered to her until he'd been gone for half the day.”

“His cousin,” my mother said. “Now who exactly would that be?”

“Tobin is the son of the king's brother,” Melinda said. “Charming as they come, but completely feckless. Darian never gets into trouble that Tobin's not right by his side, cheering him on. I would think Lirabel would have him barred from the palace, but she loves him too much, and she's the type who holds tight to such family as she has.”

“So Tobin and Darian went off to these boat races,” Adele prompted. “Wasn't the queen furious?”

Melinda grinned. “Well, she
was,
but it was all her fault to a certain degree. She had been very casual about how she was going to introduce Roelynn—she didn't want Darian to suspect that she was bringing in a prospective bride—so she hadn't really told him that special company was on the way and he had to be present. And apparently he scoots off like this all the time on some lark or another. She could hardly think he'd done it on purpose to spite her.”

“I'll bet Karro was mad, though,” I said.

Melinda looked unconvinced. “Not as much as you might have expected,” she said. “He was really more focused on Lirabel and making sure
she
had a good impression of Roelynn. Because if the queen doesn't like the match, you know, it has no hope of going forward.”

“That seems unfair,” I remarked. “If the queen herself got to marry for love.”

Melinda smiled a little grimly. “It's only fair when it's happening to
you
,” she said.

“So did she?” my mother asked. “Did the queen approve of Roelynn?”

“Oh, yes,” Melinda said. “Roelynn was on her best behavior.”

“Which, you know,” I said, “wasn't something we could really count on.”

Melinda laughed. “Indeed, no! But she was having the most wonderful time. It's not every day a fourteen-year-old gets to go to the royal palace and have tea with the queen and a dozen other nobles, and have everyone tell her how beautiful she is, and have the queen sit right beside her and talk to her like an important lady. You couldn't blame her if she preened a little. She behaved very prettily, and she looked quite lovely, too, and I could see the queen was quite taken with her. And the next night, at the ball—”

“Was the prince there that night?” I asked.

“No! Still off at the races! Anyway, at the ball, Roelynn was besieged with suitors. She was allowed to dance only a few times—as were all the other young girls who had been permitted to attend—but she looked so adorable and danced so well that everyone who watched her couldn't help smiling. And everyone watched her. Karro was very proud,” Melinda added in accents of distaste. “It was almost enough for me to wish Roelynn would suddenly become very vulgar, just to spite him.”

Adele and I could not help giggling at that. My mother was more interested in the central point. “But then—it's settled?” Mother asked. “They've made the match?”

Melinda spread her hands in a delicate gesture of uncertainty. “Let us say, the queen seems very well-disposed toward Karro,” she said. “But as far as I know, no actual deal was struck. No dower agreements were discussed, no betrothal was set. But as I understand it, the queen will not be actively looking elsewhere for a bride for her son.”

“And how did Roelynn react to that?” I wanted to know.

Melinda shook her head. “I don't know. I didn't get any of this from Karro or Roelynn, you understand. I only know what I observed and what Fiona told me afterward.” She gave me a sharp look, and then sent an equally pointed one in my sister's direction. “I'd imagine the two of you would have a better idea of how young Roelynn would feel about such an arrangement.”

“Who wouldn't want to marry a prince?” our mother said, blue eyes at their widest. “And go live in the palace and know that one day you will be queen?”

“Roelynn isn't like other girls,” Adele said with a little smile.

I turned on her in exasperation. “Oh, and I suppose
you'd
want to move to Wodenderry and leave behind everyone you know and try to figure out how to govern the whole kingdom? Not that
I
ever heard you say!”

Melinda was laughing. “Adele isn't like other girls, either.”

I felt a little sulky. “The truth is, it would be hard to be bartered off to someone you don't know and leave behind all your familiar life, even if you would be rich and powerful once you got married,” I said. “I think it would be very hard to be queen. I suppose it's just as much work as it is glamour, and not much fun on most days.”

“And yet Lirabel likes being queen,” Melinda said. “And perhaps Roelynn would, too.”

Mother sighed. She was quite the romantic, and she liked to believe that all princes were charming and all young maidens were happy to be swept up into the royal embrace. “Well, I suppose we'll just have to see what happens next,” she said. “I for one would very much like to see our little Roelynn marry the prince.”

Adele smiled that secretive, infuriating smile. “I don't think we're likely to see anything like that for a while yet.”

 

 

It was three more days before we received Roelynn's report on the week in Wodenderry, but it basically tallied with Melinda's. She had had a wonderful time; the queen had been most incredibly gracious, and Roelynn had met the handsomest young men who had said the nicest things to her and made her feel quite beautiful. She would like to go spend a season in Wodenderry sometime—attend all the spring fetes, all the summer balls—and become much better acquainted with some of the young men and women she had met.

“And would Roger be going with you during this visit?” Adele asked in an innocent voice.

We were sitting under the chatterleaf tree at the time—well, Adele and I were. Roelynn was swinging in circles around the trunk. At Adele's words, she stopped for a moment and stared. “Who?” she said, and then she blushed a color deep as summer roses. “Oh!
Roger!
Yes, of course, I will always want Roger with me, wherever I go—except, I don't know, perhaps while I'm in the city he might be here in Merendon, minding the house and the business, you know—”