The Princess Curse (7 page)

“It’s . . . just no good,” Brother Cosmin said.

“Fairies,” the boy suggested.

“No, not fairies.” Brother Cosmin stooped and scraped a bit of moss off one of the stones, revealing an inscription written in a language I didn’t know. “Two Turkish prisoners dug this well, and when it was finished, they cursed it with this carving.”

Another curse? I craned my head, even though I couldn’t read Turkish. “What’s it say?”

“Are you sure they were Turks and not fairies?” the boy asked.

“Who are you?” Brother Cosmin snapped.

“I’m Mihas,” the boy said. “I came to the castle just yesterday to sell a cow, and they gave me work in the gardens.”

“Get back to your work, Mihas.” Brother Cosmin turned to me. “And you, Reveka: Go find Didina!”

Mihas slouched after me out of the courtyard. “He didn’t have to throw the bucket down the well,” he said. “That was Master Konstantin’s bucket. He’s going to be angry.”

“Yes, well, don’t lie to him about it, whatever you do. Master Konstantin can’t abide liars.”

“Why would I lie, when that monk is the one who threw it into the well?”

I half shrugged. When I was very young, I might have made up a story about forgetting the bucket, to put off getting beaten for losing it. Of course, when I was a little older and the Abbess eagerly noticed my every transgression, I would have lied and said I never borrowed the bucket in the first place, or whatever I thought I could get away with to avoid trouble. Later, once my reputation was firmly established with the Abbess, I could have told the truth entirely about a monk throwing the pail down the well, and no one would have believed me—and I would have had to go a week without wearing a shift between my wool clothes and my skin, fast for three days on bread and water, and recite extra psalms for the dead, as well as endure a beating. I could almost feel the sting of alder sticks smacking my thighs.

I came back to the present with a shiver. Mihas was staring at me, mouth open.

“What? Why are you staring?”

He licked his overpink lips. “I hope the fairies didn’t curse you,” he said earnestly.

The boy was an idiot. Brother Cosmin had told him that there was a Turkish curse on the well, and he still thought it was fairies. I couldn’t believe Pa had hired him.

I turned on my heel and went looking for Didina.

Chapter 9

A
fter checking the kitchens and the privy, I went to look for Didina in the western tower, where her mother slept and her grandmother watched.

I climbed the tower, assessing the whole time whether I felt sick from drinking at the Little Well, but . . . nothing came of it. I had a small ill feeling in my midsection, but that was because I was a little bit afraid of why Didina hadn’t come to work in the herbary that afternoon.

When I opened the door to the tower, my worst fears were realized. Didina huddled in Mistress Adina’s arms, crying.

My throat went dry. “Is it . . . is it your mother?”

Adina looked up over Didina’s scarf-covered head, eyes sad and red. “Yes. My daughter is—slipping away.”

I sat down hard on a stool and stared in shock at my fellow apprentice.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. I couldn’t even imagine what I would do if Pa were lying cursed before me—could imagine even less what I would do if he were dying. We hadn’t gotten along perfectly—he was too quick to believe the worst about me—but he was all I had, and he’d done more for me than many fathers might.

“There has to be something you can do, Grandma,” Didina pleaded.

Adina looked helplessly at the girl. We all knew there was nothing anyone could do. I had talked it over with Adina. When any of the sleepers started to fade, in a matter of weeks they wasted down to skin and bones and simply . . . died.

Since it was better than sitting there, crying, Adina got us up and moving, to help her with the caretaking of the cursed sleepers. We washed their bodies, we fed them, we moved their limbs. We checked for sores and lice and fleas.

I moved in dumb silence, berating myself for my selfishness, swearing to do better. I’d jumped headlong into the puzzle of curse breaking, so pleased about the dowry and the opportunities it represented that I hadn’t bothered to discover the truth of what the curse really
meant
.

“I’m sorry,” I said again, staring at Didina’s calm, strong hands combing out her mother’s hair.

“Sorry for what?” she asked. “You didn’t do this to her. To any of them. It was all set in motion long before you arrived.”

I gave Didina a regretful smile. “If my ma weren’t dead, but just asleep, I’d steal the sun and stars to try and wake her.”

“If you knew how,” Didina said coldly, and I realized it sounded like I blamed her for just not trying hard enough.

“No—no, that’s not what I meant. I meant . . . thank you for being so kind to me, Didina.”

The cold anger melted from her face, leaving behind a puzzled expression. “How do you mean? I’ve not . . . I’ve not been particularly kind to you, Reveka.”

“Not
particularly
, no. But wouldn’t I just want to slap silly any girl who thought the dowry was more important than my mother, even for a moment?”

Didina’s expression thawed further. “Reveka, you actually tried to wake the sleepers. I”—she clasped her hands over her heart—“I thank you that you tried.”

I nodded. “And I thank you still, for not slapping me silly.”

I stayed with them until the sleepers made their nightly cry, then took Didina down to the herbary loft, where we slept. I gave her valerian tea to help her rest while I stayed up for some hours combing through
Physica
in hopes that Saint Hildegard had performed a miracle and left the clues to a cure within the pages of her herbal.

When finally I slept, I dreamed.

Sunlight fell on my shoulders as I followed a road through wide, striped fields. The road rose slowly into the mountains—never steep, though. My feet carried me without effort. There was something at the top I had to see, something I had to know about.

I climbed to the crumbling gate of a large palace hewn from a type of shining rock that I didn’t recognize. The whole edifice was a ruin, and the only truly intact piece was a doorless archway. Carved into the keystone was a sleeping human face, troubled in its repose.

I started forward to examine the face, and its stone eyes opened. “Ruin is everywhere,” the mouth said. “A reminder that eternity exists.”

My heart pounding in my ears woke me.

I rose early, unable to sleep after the dream and not wishing to disturb Didina’s slumber. I lit a candle and studied the list of Plantes Which Confer Vpon the Wearer Invisibilitie.

I copied the whole list to a tiny scrap of vellum, rolled it tightly, and tucked it behind my ear, underneath my cowl. Maybe if I carried it near my brain, it would make more sense. And if I studied it in leisure moments, that might help, too.

At dawn, I went out to the herb garden, coating my bare feet with chilly dew, to smell the scents of earliness. In the convent, I would have been roused for Lauds at dawn to pray, but I hadn’t seen this hour since Pa came for me. I’d expected to have to keep the night watches for prayer again when I was apprenticed to a monk, but Brother Cosmin’s lax monkishness didn’t demand prayer even the night before an important saint’s feast.

I had gathered great armfuls of mint and tansy and was headed to the baths when I caught a flash of red and black in the shadows near the Little Well. It was Frumos—the strange man from the woods.

He was less handsome than I remembered, and he was younger than I remembered, too.

“The herbalist’s apprentice,” Frumos said slowly. “Remind me of your name?”

I tried not to mind that he’d forgotten me, even though I remembered every detail of him, from the ugly tusks on his cloak clasp to the way his eyes smiled more than his mouth.

I said, “If you can’t remember my name, then I won’t remind you.”

He cocked his head. “I didn’t think you were old enough to be so coy.”

I shrugged and scrutinized him. His clothing was exactly the same as it had been in the woods. What did that mean? Did he not have another suit of clothes? Owning only one set of fancy clothing seemed like the sort of thing an impostor would do, but who was Frumos imposing on?

“What are you doing here?” I asked, thinking that the only reason I knew for random men to show up at Castle Sylvian was if they were going to try to break the curse.

“I came to see if the Hungarians had arrived yet.”

I pointed to the crows clustered on the eaves. They had returned in the night and now shuffled and eyed us with annoyance. “Just those ones. Do they count? Everyone says Corvinus sent them.”

Frumos eyed the birds. “Not Corvinus himself, of course,” he said. “But someone close to him.”

“What?” I asked, startled. “What does that mean?”

“I mean, he has a . . . magician of sorts, a
hultan
on his side, who controls the crows and uses them as spies.”

I shivered.
Hultani
were great wizards, powerful enough to harness a
zmeu
dragon and ride it.

I wanted to ask Frumos how he knew that, about the
hultan
and the crows, but he was staring at the Little Well, tracing his fingers over the carving where Brother Cosmin had scraped away the moss. “Well,” I said, reluctantly hefting my basket of herbs, “I have work to do.” I bobbed about half a curtsy less than what a lord was due, turned, and marched out of the courtyard.

There was laughter in the voice that followed me. “Have a good day. Reveka.”

I didn’t turn around, even when he said my name. I don’t think I even broke my stride. But I did wish him luck breaking the curse—not because I wanted him to steal my dowry, but because I didn’t want him to end up in the tower asleep, or simply gone, like all the others.

Chapter 10

M
arjit thought I was early enough that I should have a bath before the princesses arrived. She never could forgo an opportunity to scrub someone.

I let her soap me and put me into the hot bath, but I stewed only a moment; it was really too warm at this time of year. The green-blue dolphin mosaic at the bottom of the cool plunge looked trapped beneath glass, and I shattered the smooth surface with a yelp. The sudden change in temperature made my skin prickle, but it cleared the dream and the conversation with Frumos from my mind.

Marjit held out a big towel for me. “A bath every two days!” she said with mock wonder. “I don’t know, Reveka. You might just become a sybarite. Weren’t you raised in a convent?”

Marjit’s teasing was always the price of getting such a good bath. So I just grinned and toweled myself. But my grin faded when Princess Otilia entered the bathing room. I froze. We’d lost track of time, and the princesses were here!

Princess Otilia looked as surprised to see me as I was to see her—but Marjit’s expression was cool as fresh butter. “Oh, Mar—Marjit, I came early,” Otilia stuttered. “I thought you’d be alone.”

I tried to curtsy, but the towel gaped, and it was not my most graceful moment ever. I backed away and put my clothes on while pretending to be invisible.

“Did you . . .” Otilia hesitated, looking from me to Marjit. She seemed to decide I wasn’t a threat. “Did you have something for me?” she asked the bathwoman.

Marjit raised her eyebrows. “Nothing but a nice bath, Your Highness,” she said.

“Oh, well, I’ll come back for that,” Otilia said hastily, and retreated up the passageway.

I dressed with speed, biting my tongue to keep from asking what all
that
was about. Not out of any respect for Otilia’s or Marjit’s privacy, mind you; but there are no secrets in a tiled room, and I didn’t want Otilia to overhear me on her way out.

I silently raised my eyebrows at Marjit.

Marjit waited until Otilia was probably out of earshot. “That one has never really taken to being a princess,” she said.

I shrugged. “Who really could? They wear ridiculous hats, and overlong shoes, and dresses that collect all manner of dirt along the hem.”

Marjit snorted. “I don’t think you’ve thought the matter through.”

I ignored that and started preparing the bath herbs—hollyhock and mallow today—while waiting for Marjit to give me the gossip. She didn’t, though. How disappointing! I’d been told there were three things you could rely on at Castle Sylvian: sunrise, sunset, and Marjit’s gossip.

Frumos was nowhere to be seen on my way back to the herbary, but I did spy Mihas trimming back the yew hedges. I’d rather have found Frumos, but on the other hand, I didn’t need more mysteries today.

Didina and I worked steadily all morning, not saying much to each other. I attributed the silence to her sadness for her mother, but I wondered if something else was going on. She kept chewing mint. To settle her stomach?

At midday, she asked Brother Cosmin if she could go sit with her mother, and he granted her request. I worked twice as hard in her absence so she didn’t have to feel she was making a hardship for us.

I went to deliver my posies to the princesses, and ran into the Mihas boy again in the narrow courtyard outside their tower. Now he was trimming ivy from the tower walls. I tried to scoot past without acknowledging him, but he called my name and then stood there, staring at me with his mouth open. I grimaced at him, with what could be taken as either fierceness or regret, and scurried into the tower as though I didn’t have time for pleasantries. He was gone when I came back out.

I headed to the kitchens, plagued with a growing knot in my stomach that just didn’t seem to want to go away.

Didina never showed up to supper. I rushed through Cook’s fine dish of trout in garlic sauce and went to the western tower, hoping to find Didina visiting with her grandmother.

But for the sleepers, Adina was alone, netting socks furiously as though winter were coming and no one had boots. She waved me in to sit with her, but I begged off.

I double-checked the herbary, but Didina hadn’t returned.