The Princess Curse

Chapter 1

Three days after my thirteenth birthday, Armas, the Executioner and Chief of Prisons, came for me while I ate breakfast.

Apprentice, Armas said, his cold voice freezing the thyme pie in my throat. Princess Consort wants you.

Cook whispered behind me, Too many pies. I almost erped with worry. I didn’t think they actually jailed people for eating too much in Sylvania, but they probably did punish new apprentices for insubordination. And I had been a tad insubordinate to my master.

I slid from my stool, feeling stiff and weak. But I held my head high and marched ahead of Armas into the courtyard while the castle kitchen burst into excited chatter behind us. My stomach knotted and tumbled harder, and I wished for a pinch of mint to settle it.

Halfway across the courtyard, I asked Armas, Did the Princess Consort say why—?

Oh, sure, Armas said. Princess Consort tells me just everything.

I fell silent. I’d not known him to be capable of such sarcasm.

We stepped into the great hall, and I said, I don’t suppose my father . . . But then my eyes adjusted to the dimness, and I saw Pa, waiting beside the dragon-kidnaps-a-maiden tapestry, chewing at the ends of his black mustaches.

Every step across the great hall seemed to take more effort than it should have. Pa nodded to Armas and said, I’ve got her. My heart fell at his tone, and I stared at the tapestry to hide my worry. I wasn’t going to be able to lie my way out of this, whatever it was. Armas, maybe, I could lie to. Armas, maybe, I could trick into mercy. But with Pa, there would be no chance to lie. Or even to stretch the truth into a pleasing shape.

I noticed a snagged thread on the tapestry maiden’s pale cheek. It marred her face, though she was too frightened of the dragon to be pretty—and it wasn’t just any dragon, but a fire-breathing zmeu, trying to kiss her.

Armas gave me into Pa’s custody and went to inform the Princess Consort that I’d arrived. I stood there. Waiting. My favorite thing. I poked at the snag on the tapestry, trying to push it through to the other side of the cloth, mostly to avoid looking at Pa.

Well, Reveka? Pa asked. He spoke in his warning voice, the voice that had once caused thousands of men to shake in their boots but now mostly kept a lot of junior gardeners attentive to their shovels.

I know your rule, Pa, I said, exasperated but trying to sound calm.

Like I would lie right in front of Pa.

I poked harder at the thread. It wanted to go through. It wanted to disappear.

It’s not just a rule, Reveka.

I know. It’s also a promise. I wrinkled my nose, trying not to think why I’d had to promise Pa never to lie. I twisted the snagged tapestry threads together, hoping that would make them look smaller, at least.

Pa swatted my hand away from the tapestry. You’ll unravel the whole thing, and you’ve no skill to put it back together. I still wouldn’t face him, so he grabbed hold of my chin to make me meet his eye. You need not be truthful for my sake, but your own. What kind of reputation do you want to have around the castle, and with the Princess Consort?

I didn’t have a chance to answer before Armas came out of the solar. He gave Pa a deep nod, then ambled away. A minor relief: Armas wasn’t standing by to drag me off for a beating.

Of course, Pa had a strong arm, too.

Giving me the tight grimace that was supposed to be his smile, Pa guided me into the Princess Consort’s solar.

Princess Daciana, Prince Vasile’s child bride, sat sewing in a pool of morning sunlight, a red-and-black military banner spilled across her lap. She looked so calm and regal, it was hard to remember that she’d been Princess Consort for only two years, since she had turned thirteen. It would be like me getting married this year—except the common folk don’t marry so young, being more sensible than the higher folk.

Brother Cosmin stood by, looking half scarecrow, half asleep, and completely annoyed. Brother Cosmin was the herbalist of Castle Sylvian, and my master, and if anyone had a grievance against me, it was probably him. Still, I hadn’t thought that he’d take my arguments about herbs so personally, as such a challenge that he’d drag me before the Princess Consort for punishment. He didn’t look happy to be here, though. Maybe because it was before noon.

Pa went to stand beside Brother Cosmin, leaving me to face the Princess.

So, Konstantin? This is your daughter? Princess Daciana asked.

Her name is Reveka, Highness, Pa said, while I folded my hands in my apron and examined the red and black dragons painted on the high ceiling beams. Dragons were Prince Vasile’s heraldic animal, and dragons twined all over Castle Sylvian, carved into doorways, woven into carpets. They were even embroidered onto the hem of Princess Daciana’s dress.

Reveka, the Princess Consort said, holding a needle in the air between us and squinting at me through the tiny eye. Tell me how you chose the herbs for my stepdaughters’ bath this morning. She stabbed a spit-smoothed thread through the needle’s eye and bent her head to continue sewing.

I stared at her. This was about the bath herbs? I was having an interview with the Princess Consort about bath herbs? A memory came to me from earlier this morning. When the princesses—Princess Daciana’s stepdaughters, all twelve of them older than she—had entered the bath, Princess Maricara had sniffed the air and asked Marjit the Bathwoman if she’d been eating cabbage soup. I hadn’t stayed to hear the answer. I hadn’t thought anything of it, really. Cabbage has a strong smell, but—

Brother Cosmin frantically billowed the brown sleeves of his robe in my direction, urging me to answer.

The cabbage was supposed to reduce the princesses’ vigor, I said.

The Princess Consort frowned. Oops—I’d left off her honorific. I mumbled, Mostnobleserenehighness, and curtsied poorly.

The Princess coughed spasmodically. I wondered if her lungs were wet. She looked healthy; no roses of illness bloomed in her cheeks. Too bad. I knew some impressive herbs to ease the pains of consuming sicknesses.

How, pray tell, did concern about their vigor bring you to make my stepdaughters smell like—and I quote Princess Lacrimora—‘hill cottagers at sup’?

Oh, Easter!

Well, I said in my best Professional Herbalist voice, cabbage cures inflammations. It calms swellings in the liver, where the soul dwells, and the brain, where the animal feelings arise. So. Cabbage might help the princesses sleep right through the nightly effects of the curse. That way . . . I trailed off, suddenly acutely conscious that the Princess had abandoned her banner to a crumpled pile in her lap and was regarding me curiously.

I added, I didn’t think the smell would be a problem.

The Princess Consort compressed her lips. I’m glad to have someone working on the princesses’ plight, Reveka, but you must refrain from making their bathwater smell like soup—or stew, or any sort of kitchen-made item—in the future. My stepdaughters are princesses. Tonight they must charm the Saxon delegation, for Princess Tereza is to meet her betrothed. We cannot have anyone smelling like cabbage rolls.

Yes, Most Noble and Serene—

And, of course, that is simply no way to go about breaking a curse, either. Curses don’t like to be broken. She tapped her thin nose delicately. Subtlety, Reveka. A curse should never smell you coming.

Of course, Most Noble—

Now then, your punishment. You must apologize to Marjit the Bathwoman, who was so distressed by what occurred this morning.

I waited for her to continue, but she didn’t. That’s all? I blinked, surprised.

Pa shook his head at me in warning, but the Princess smiled. That is all, Reveka. You and Brother Cosmin may go.

I was astonished. I’d had no clue what I’d done wrong when I was summoned—though that wasn’t so unusual a circumstance in my lifetime—and I had expected the worst. But apologizing to Marjit was barely a punishment! Though that didn’t mean that Brother Cosmin and Pa might not each have something extra in mind for me later, just to make sure I understood my transgression.

I glanced at Pa as I turned to follow Brother Cosmin out. I knew I should bolt with my collecting basket and spend the day conveniently absent while I gathered mushrooms and wild herbs. But we’d been at the castle for only a few weeks, so I didn’t really know the forest. Still, it would put me out of Pa’s way. The Princess Consort was holding him behind to talk, and I had time to clear out.

I was three steps ahead of Brother Cosmin when I heard my name. Pa and the Princess were talking about me? I checked my stride and stepped slower, letting Brother Cosmin pass. And when I reached the door of the solar, I didn’t follow him out into the great hall but slid behind the dragon-kidnaps-a-maiden tapestry.

I didn’t hear my name again. Pa and the Princess Consort were talking about ditches and earthworks. Pa is the castle’s head gardener, which makes it sound like he spends all his time with plants and trees; but gardeners are also in charge of dirt, and digging, and ditches, and earthworks, and ramparts, and everything involving dirt. Pa was known as a magician of fortification. Though it wasn’t magic; it was just understanding how geometry and dirt could best be used for aiming defensive cannons and deflecting the enemy’s fire.

Pa said, The tunnel under the southern rampart collapsed again.

I believe that means we’re close, the Princess said. "Try again, Konstantin. The Hungarians suggest that the succession be set by autumn, and if we don’t have the possibility of an heir by then, I’m sure Corvinus will march on us."

Corvinus has problems with his own succession, Pa said. He’d do well to turn his attention there.

"Corvinus expanded his kingdom by interfering in the affairs of other princes. Dig faster. We have no time."

If Pa answered that, it was with a nod or gesture, because then the Princess said, And Reveka?

Me?

Pa’s reply was flat. No.

No? No what?

The Princess sighed. The cabbage incident tells me she wishes to help, Konstantin.

Highness, I beg you: Do not confuse her childish impulse with a calling.

This cannot be the great soldier Konstantin! I thought you seized any opportunity, and every opportunity.

We have better—wiser—options than my impetuous daughter. I thought about taking offense at this, but then the Princess Consort dismissed Pa, and I panicked. Pa was going to catch me eavesdropping! While the tapestry hid me from the hall, he would see me standing in the gap between the cloth and the wall when he came out of the solar.

I sidled deeper into the shadows and squinched my eyes tight so he wouldn’t see their gleam, and maybe also hoping, just a little bit, that I’d be invisible to him.

A hand clamped down on my arm.

So much for willing myself invisible.

Chapter 2

Pa was very patient: He jerked me out from behind the tapestry and dragged me across the great hall, outside past the herb gardens, and through the castle gates into the plum orchard before yelling.

Reveka! he cried, shaking me a little. I stared at him with wide eyes, waiting for the verdict. Pa and I had been scraping along together for only a couple of years, since he’d retrieved me from the convent where Ma had left me when she died. Ofttimes, he didn’t seem to know what to do with me.

I didn’t know what to do with him, either, though I liked him well enough. Altogether, he beat me less than the Abbess had, and only then for breaking the eighth commandment. Lying, in Pa’s view, was much worse than killing. But maybe that was because Pa was a soldier before he became a gardener, so he couldn’t think too badly of killing.

I told the Princess the truth, Pa, I said. I didn’t lie, even a little!

I know, he said.

I frowned. Why was he so angry with me, if he knew I hadn’t broken my promise to him?

"And I’m—I’m very sorry I made the princesses smell like hill cottagers. I am. Very sorry."

I’m sure you are.

"It’s just—the curse. Everyone talks about the curse, and no one does anything. And the dowry is just sitting there, waiting." I needed that dowry, far more than the curse needed lifting.

I’d no idea how the curse had started, but the biggest problem with it was that Prince Vasile didn’t have a son. If his line didn’t produce a male heir before he died, the rule of the principality would be fought over by all his neighbors. Which was bad enough, but with the Turkish Empire on one doorstep and the Hungarians on the other, Sylvania would become no more than a tattered, puppet-ruled client state.

Even with three wives, the Prince had never gotten a son. The first wife had produced a couple of daughters, the Princesses Maricara and Tereza, then promptly died. The second had died before doing that much. And the third Princess Consort wasn’t a mother yet after two years.

However, Prince Vasile had managed to have ten additional daughters by eight different women outside of consecrated wedlock. This shocked me when I first learned of it. I’d thought that God would not so bless women who had not received the sacrament of marriage—but Brother Cosmin said, No, by Easter, what did those nuns teach you? Brother Cosmin, like monks everywhere, didn’t respect nuns much.

At some point, years ago, Prince Vasile had brought all his daughters to live with him at Castle Sylvian, so that he could marry them off and get grandsons to keep the principality safe. He even ennobled the illegitimate daughters, no matter how common their mothers, including Ruxandra and Rada, daughters of a tavern wench, and Otilia, who’d grown up in a mill.

But shortly after the princesses started living together in the castle, the curse came upon them. And nobody wanted to marry women, even princesses, who lived under the effects of a curse, even a silly one.

And it was a silly curse, wasn’t it? Every morning, the princesses left their tower bedroom, exhausted, with their shoes in tatters. It was inexplicable, and it scared away all the nobles and aristocrats and royals and knights and squires—in short, everyone of gentle birth who would be even a tiny bit worthy of marrying a princess.

The curse so vexed Prince Vasile that he issued a decree: The first man who could solve the problem of the shoes would be married to the princess of his choice, no matter what his birth, age, or rank. Even if the chosen princess was one of Vasile’s royal and legitimate daughters. Even if the curse breaker was a humble cowherd.

And if the curse breaker was a woman? For her, a fabulous dowry awaited, to allow her to marry whoever she wanted. Or, I hoped, to join whichever convent she liked. It cost a lot of money to join a convent, unless one was a highly promising candidate. I’d been raised by nuns, who had made it clear to me that I wasn’t promising. But I could become rich.

The curse is dangerous, Pa said, and I don’t want you mucking about with it.

"But Pa, it’s the stupidest curse in existence! So what if the princesses are sleepy during the day and their slippers are holey in the morning? It’s a curse of shoes and naps. It’s a mystery, I’ll grant you—Marjit the Bathwoman says that no one ever hears anything when they listen at the princesses’ door, and that anyone who spends the night in the princesses’ chamber falls right asleep and doesn’t wake up."

Marjit is correct.

I wouldn’t fall asleep, I boasted. If you left me in there overnight, I’d figure it all out and save all the shoes.

No, Reveka! Pa threw up his hands. "No one cares about the shoes! That’s not why people call it a curse. Did you not understand what Marjit said? They never waken."

She meant they never waken through the night and see what happens to the shoes . . . right?

No! Pa closed his eyes, sucking in a deep breath before opening them again, whirling me around, and steering me toward the castle. Come along.

Pa marched me double time between the front gate’s dragon carvings and up to the western tower, which was shorter and wider than the eastern tower that served as the princesses’ bedroom. Pa pushed me through a squeaky little oak door into a room.

The room was full. Row upon row of men and women, lying head-to-foot on straw pallets, spread before me. On the other side of the room, by a tiny hearth, an old woman sat in a rockered chair, netting socks. She looked up when we entered. She did not smile.

The room smelled of silence and stone—like a cathedral after the incense smoke has drifted away. It didn’t smell as if dozens of people crowded into one space together.

I stared at the bodies lying on the pallets, each one abnormally still, with none of the snoring and scratching and farting normal people do when they sleep.

They fall asleep and never waken.

Pa tried to pull me back out of the room, but I shrugged away to kneel beside one of the bodies—a girl with alabaster skin and straight brown brows. I reached to touch her but paused, hesitant, noticing that I couldn’t really see her chest move. Is she alive? I asked the old woman.

The woman set aside her netting and leaned forward. You are the herb-husband’s new apprentice, yes? As well as the gardener’s daughter, she said, her voice as cracked as her face. So you’ve finally come to see the dead-alive?

I didn’t know how to answer that tactfully, so I asked, They never waken? No matter what?

Stick them with pins and they don’t jump. Thunder and handclaps alike never disturb their dreams. Neither does fire or water awaken them.

I put aside my horror to think like an herbalist. Have you tried rubbing their limbs with oil of rosemary? What effect has pepper blown into their nostrils?

I try the rosemary every week, and ground black pepper rouses them not at all. The woman looked expectant and eager, like she was curious to know what I would ask next.

Normally, I’d have been gratified to be taken seriously, but it worried me. Things were in a dreadful state indeed if people hoped for miracles from an apprentice herbalist.

I avoided her eager eyes by examining the girl more closely. She might have possessed all of thirteen years, just like me. Do they ever . . . die on you?

I feed them nourishing soups, the old woman said. Drip, drip, drip it down their throats, then massage their necks until they swallow. I swaddle them like babies and change their wrappings regularly. That is what I can manage, and it is enough for most of them. But in spite of all that, some do go around the corner alone. I never can predict which ones will go—young or old, newly fallen or asleep for years. . . .

I shivered. The girl’s sleeping face was untroubled, and her breathing so slow I could barely hear it with my ear practically pressed to her nose. She looked like a saint’s corpse, dead but incorrupt. As though she would never rot. As though she would exist, always, just like this.

How did this happen? I whispered.

They dared to look upon the princesses, the old woman said, when the princesses were not wanting to be looked upon.

I didn’t say anything. Neither did anyone else for a long time. Then Pa stirred behind me. Reveka. Brother Cosmin will be wanting you.

Yes, Pa, I said, rising to my feet. But before I followed him out the door into the living castle, I paused. "Stăpână, I said respectfully, I’m sorry, I don’t know your name."