A Tale of Two Castles

How much would kill me?

I had an idea what it might be, and I couldn’t eat a bite. When she paused, I said, “Your Highness, alas, my hunger is banished for now.” I shivered. “Do you feel a chill?” I held my hands out to the fire, which was blazing, and leaned in as well to redden my cheeks.

She took my shoulders and turned me. “Are you ill, dear?”

I shook my head. “Only cold, and my throat is sore.”

“Food will warm you.”

I bit on my cheek, hard. “You are too good, but I cannot choke down any.” I coughed and wiped my mouth on my sleeve, taking care that she saw the blood.

Her face relaxed. “La, it is chilly.”

Oh, my cheek hurt.

She held my hands, which were still hot.

I saw her gold bracelets again, but none of twine. Perhaps she thought she didn’t need an eejis.

“Ehlodie, my father will be just, and I’ll see to it that you don’t suffer here. I’ll leave you now.” She twitched the bed-curtains aside. “I see you have enough blankets to make you warm.”

She’d made sure of that. I had guessed right about the poison.

She left.

I sniffed my bowl. The scent was faint but detectable: eastern wasp powder. Rare and expensive, but she was a princess. The poison acted in an hour or two, caused chills, fever, tremors, a tight throat, death. A single swallow would be enough to kill me. But I would feel no sharp pain, no agony. No suffering.

If she was her father’s poisoner, too, she would have used something slower on him, because his symptoms had appeared much later.

I climbed to the window, tied my cap to a bar, and descended for my stew and tumbler. As I was about to tip them out, I realized the danger. Even in the rain, she might come out to look for spilled stew.

I threw the meal into the fireplace and began to pace. My masteress said that one culprit was elegant, but there had to be two in this case. Master Thiel had certainly been the poacher and the thief of castle valuables. I would assume Her Highness responsible for everything else: stealing Nesspa, signaling the cats, poisoning her father.

Why do any of it?

Put myself in their steads. That’s what I’d told Master Thiel about mansioning, and I’d thought the words significant. Now I knew the meaning: put myself in Princess Renn’s stead. She might poison her father because he was about to betroth her to an infant, and she wouldn’t be allowed to say no.

But the new betrothal had come after the feast, and he was poisoned at the feast.

I felt bewildered.

Let the king go for now. Why set the cats on the count?

She told me that the king had betrothed her to the count. Put myself in her stead. Suppose she hadn’t wanted to wed an ogre, but she had pretended to love him.

And signaled the cats.

To simplify the task, she stole Nesspa. She must have been horrified when I found him. But then, luckily for her, he needed to leave during the feast.

How had she stolen him?

With treats.

How had she kept him hidden?

The answer broke on me like a mallet on the head: by poisoning him, just enough to keep him docile. When I found him he was alert, but he didn’t have to be quiet on the wall walk where no one would hear him. Likely she had dosed the other dogs in the hall, too, and that was why they did nothing to stop the cats.

I had tied my cap to the window only a few minutes ago, but I climbed up to look for IT.

The rain prevented me from seeing as far as I had yesterday, and I didn’t see IT.

I climbed down.

She must have lulled the ox with poison, too, then raked its shoulder. Why?

She’d spoken about thoroughness when she tied her cap laces three times under my chin. If she did a thing, she did it more than once, or in more ways than one.

Why?

Think elegantly.

If His Lordship (as a mouse) had been seen being devoured by a cat, she would have had to do nothing more about him. But when the mouse escaped, she had no certainty, so she mauled the ox and frightened the town into believing the ogre a hungry lion. If he returned in his ordinary form, the people of Two Castles would find a way to kill him.

I wished IT would come.

Now for the king’s poisoning.

Perhaps at the beginning she didn’t want to kill anyone but an ogre. Causing a monster’s death wouldn’t be evil, according to her. She didn’t intend for Nesspa to die. He would have been freed when she was safe from His Lordship.

But when her father announced her new betrothal, she realized—while I was alone with the two of them—that he would go on making matches for her. She decided that he had to die, too. She couldn’t have much daughterly affection for him, horror that he was.

That meant he wasn’t really poisoned at the feast. She might even have dosed him while I watched. I shuddered.

How?

The fashion of long, flowing sleeves! Perfect for concealment. Prepared for anything as she was, she could have kept a hidden pouch of poison on her always.

With closed eyes, I recalled the scene. I saw her spear a chunk of sausage on her knife with her right hand. Her left passed over the meat to gather up her right sleeve and keep it from trailing through the food. Likely the poison was in her left sleeve. She sprinkled with her left hand.

I remembered the missing mortar and pestle on the morning of the feast. She might have taken them to grind her poison.

Where was my masteress? As soon as King Grenville recovered enough to do without constant watching over, his daughter would feed him something else. In his weakened state, he would certainly die. Everyone would think he’d merely taken a turn for the worse. Cures for poisoning were uncertain.

IT had to come soon!