A Tale of Two Castles

The knife thudded to the floor. “Not from Tair, Your Highness. From right here. She”—he pulled my head up by my hair—“by thunder, she said there was an intruder in the donjon.”


I saw the princess more clearly. She had a heart-shaped face, cleft chin, small mouth, and a long, sloping nose. She might have been pretty if her blue eyes had been merely large, but they were enormously large with too much white. If she missed beauty, however, her mouth was sweet and her big eyes full of feeling, both fear and outrage.

“Who are you?”

He pulled back his shoulders. “Master Jak, His Lordship’s chief third assistant cook, Your Highness.”

Princess Renn’s lips twitched in a hint of a smile. She turned to me.

“I’m Ehh”—I extended the vowel even longer than a Two Castles person would—“lodie, the new kitchen maid.” If they were going to oust me or imprison me, they should know my proper name.

In the silence, I listened but heard no dog whimpers, no scrabbling paws, no panting.

“Ehlodie,” the princess said, “why did you come to the donjon?”

Feigning innocence, I said in a rush, “I’m the new kitchen maid and I woke and couldn’t fall back to sleep and I’ve never been in a castle before and thought I might look around and I’d heard that His Lordship lost his dog and if I could find it, it would be a fine thing and I came here and I didn’t see you, Your Highness, I saw your shadow.” I pointed.

The shadow still hulked. Princess Renn was thin, but the blanket expanded her. Her shadow suggested a bearlike creature with a tiny head.

She laughed and held out her arms, making the shadow even bigger. “La! Look at me!”

My shoulders relaxed in relief. Master Jak laughed, too, although his laughter sounded forced.

“I am afraid myself of myself! Jak, rise! Ehlodie, rise! Spread your arms.”

Papa and mama and daughter monster shadows filled the donjon. Master Jak’s laughter turned genuine.

When our laughter subsided, the princess said, “I commend you both on your courage. Ehlodie! To come back after you’d seen the monster! And Chief Third Assistant Cook Jak! To brave the monster with only a knife! Jak, you may return to your well-deserved rest.”

But I might not?

Master Jak picked up his knife. As he backed out of the donjon, his eyes were on me, and their expression was not friendly.

“Ehlodie, stay awhile. We are both sleepless, and my maid is snoring. I should like company.”

How would I be company for a princess, unless she wanted to hear about mansioners’ plays or the antics of Lahnt geese?

When the door closed behind Jak, Princess Renn held her candle up to my face. “La! You are a child!”

“Fourteen, Your Highness.”

“You are not a minute past twelve.” She frowned. “You don’t sleep in a cap?”

“No, Your Highness.”

“But during the day you wear one?”

“No, Your Highness. On Lahnt, where I come from, only married women and men wear caps, except in winter, when we all wear them.”

“But you live here now. Are you too poor to own a cap?” She put so much feeling into poor that I almost wept for myself.

I shifted from my left foot to my right. Probably everyone who’d seen me since I’d arrived thought of me as The Girl Too Poor to Own a Cap. “I will save to buy one.”

“You can have mine. I have others. Here.” She raised her hand to her head. I saw a gold ring on her middle finger. As her sleeve fell away, two gold bracelets gleamed in the candlelight. “Hold this.” She removed her crown and held it out to me.

I took it. How strange she was. Kind, very kind, but strange.

And the crown was strange in my hands, dreamlike, unexpectedly heavy for such a thin band, only an inch or two wide, without a single jewel. The metal had the sheen of moist skin, the upper rim unexpectedly sharp, the lower smooth. For a mad moment I imagined running off with it.

She donned her crown again and put the cap on me. “You have a small head.” The cap’s flaps nearly met under my chin. “But you’ll grow into it.” She inspected me, her face close to mine.

I smelled cardamom oil, the same perfume Mother wore.

Woe invaded her voice. “Oh! It’s too fine. They’ll think you stole it.” She walked in a circle in the small clear space among the barrels. “My maid has several caps, which would do, but I don’t want to waken her.” She put a hand on a barrel. “Might there be caps in a barrel?”

“They probably hold pickles or some such, Your Highness.” The stores were for a siege, and no one could eat caps. I took off the cap, but I wanted it. “I can turn it, Your Highness.”

“What?”

I spoke louder. “I can turn it.”

“La! I heard you. Turn it?”

A princess wouldn’t know what ordinary folk did. “Some people, when their caps are worn, turn them on the other side where the fabric is less used. No one will think me a thief in a turned cap.”

“Then I may give you the gift! Ehlodie, you are clever.” She kissed my forehead.

Lambs and calves!

I reversed the cap and tied it back on.

“Let me.” She tied the strings twice more. “There. This is how I tie my cap. Now you will not lose it. I believe in thoroughness. See?” To my astonishment she lifted the hem of her kirtle. “Two chemises underneath. Thoroughness. Now let us search for Nesspa together. For Jonty Um’s sake, we’ll put our sleeplessness to use. Where shall we look, Ehlodie?”

“The stables?” The count had probably searched there—

and here—but the dog might have been taken somewhere else first.

“Excellent. The grooms will be asleep. La! Hide an animal among animals, like hiding a ring in a mountain of rings.”

Nothing like hiding a ring among rings, but I didn’t say so.

She held out her hand. “We’ll go there now.”

How courteous she was, to clasp the hand of a kitchen maid.

We left the tower. The princess walked with a bounce as we crossed the inner ward and passed between two apple trees laden with fruit.