Wisdom's Kiss (25 page)

ENSORCELLED
(en•SOR•seld) [From French
sorcier,
"sorcerer"] Enchanted; the verb
ensorcel
can mean "to bewitch" and also "to fascinate."

FORTITUDE
(FOR•tih•tude) Courage in the face of adversity or pain.
Fortitude, fortress,
and
fortify
all derive from the strapping Latin
fortis,
or "strong"; a student's forte (FOR•tay), or strength, might be spelling, naptime, or gym.
Fortitude
implies emotional strength: one has courage to enter a fistfight, but fortitude to resist the taunting.

LADY-IN-WAITING
A lady-in-waiting was an attendant—usually well-born herself, and most definitely not a servant, thus not paid—to a princess or a queen. A lady-in-waiting might be a trustworthy relative who served as a confidante, or a noblewoman who took the position as a form of title. Depending on the country, era, and individuals involved, a lady-in-waiting might be expected to accompany her lady on her travels, to serve ceremonial functions at public events, or to perform such tasks as writing letters, sewing, dancing, or performing music.

MELANCHOLIA
(mell•un•COAL•e•a) [From Greek
melan,
"black" + khole, "bile"] Profound sadness; historically, depression. From ancient times until well into the nineteenth century, physicians believed that four fluids, or
humors,
controlled the human body. These four fluids—
phlegm
(phlegm),
sanguine
(blood),
choler
(yellow bile), and
melancholy
(black bile)—bore a corresponding mood: impassive (phlegmatic), optimistic (sanguine), angry (choleric), and depressed (melancholic), emotional descriptors that are still in use today—although without the leeches, vomiting, and purges that traditionally accompanied treatment of the cardinal humors. The concept that one's humors affected disposition evolved into the notion that
humor
meant "mindset" or "inclination"—"My boss was in a foul humor today"—and from there the idea that humoring someone would improve their mood. Thus the modern definition of
humor
as "amusement" or "comedy."

MOSSBACK
[American] Originally a large, old fish; during the Civil War, a man who fled to avoid conscription by the Confederate army, implicitly hiding until his back sprouted moss. It now denotes any narrow-minded or old-fashioned person.

MYCOLOGY
(my•COLL•uh•gy) [From Greek
mukes,
"mushroom"] The scientific study of fungi.

SAGACITY
(sa•GAS•it•ee) [From Latin
sagire,
"to discern quickly or keenly"]
Sagacity
originally meant "good sense" as in "sense of smell": a sagacious hound. It has since evolved into "good sense" as in "shrewdness" or "judgment": a sagacious advisor. Oddly, the word has no relation to the similar descriptor
sage
(SAJE), which derives from the Latin
sapere,
"to be wise" (also a root of
Homo sapiens).

SANG-FROID
(sang-FRA) [From French
sang,
"blood" +
froid,
"cold"] Cold-blooded or, more aptly, cool-headed. Someone with sang-froid displays composure in the face of adversity or danger. The word is not necessarily a compliment: sometimes a little emotion—empathy, say—is very much what the situation requires.

SILVICULTURE
(SIL•ve•cull•chure), or
SYLVICULTURE
[From Latin
silva,
"wood," +
cultura,
"cultivation"] The cultivation of trees; forestry. It is akin to agriculture [from Latin
agri,
"field"], the science of farming, and horticulture [from
hortus,
"garden"], the science of gardening.

SLATTERNLY
(SLAT•urn•ly) [Archaic] Untidy, messy. A
slattern
was a messy, dirty woman, by implication a loose woman, and derived from the obsolete, wonderfully descriptive verb
slatter,
meaning "to splash or spill."

TEMPERANCE
(TEM•pur•ence) Moderation, especially in regard to drinking and eating; alternatively and just as commonly, complete abstention from alcohol. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the American temperance movement at various times promoted both definitions, though the movement is most associated with the effort to end alcohol production and sales by outlawing them via prohibition. The word
temperance
derives from the Latin
temperare,
which means either "self-restraint" or "mingling"—two very different definitions each based in the concept of balance. Thus the notion that someone whose four humors (see
MELANCHOLIA
) were in proper proportion would be well balanced, or in a good temper.

VICTRIX
(VICK•tricks) [From Latin
victor
+ the feminine suffix
-ix]
A female victor. A female aviator once bore the honorific of aviatrix; a female director, directrix; a female executor, executrix. Thus, a female victor was a victrix, a victress, or even a victrice. English similarly contains the outmoded
authoress, poetess, proprietress, manageress,
and
editress.
Such words are now seen as inherently disparaging—the belittling
governess
or
mistress,
for example, compared to
governor
or
mister
—which explains why
actress, stewardess, heiress,
and
hostess
are now obsolescent, and
adulteress
is just plain goofy.

A Thrilling and Romantic Adventure, Incorporating Magic, Villany, and a Cat

WRITTEN BY
Catherine Gilbert Murdock

Houghton Mifflin
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Boston New York 2011

Copyright © 2011 by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce
selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York,
New York 10003.

Houghton Mifflin is an imprint of
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

www.hmhbooks.com

The text of this book is set in Abrams Venetian, Centaur MT, Clois Oldstyle, and Perpetua.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Murdock, Catherine Gilbert.
Wisdom's Kiss / written by Catherine Gilbert Murdock.
p. cm.

Summary: Princess Wisdom, who yearns for a life of adventure beyond the
kingdom of Montagne, Tips, a soldier keeping his true life secret from his
family, Fortitude, an orphaned maid who longs for Tips, and Magic the cat
form an uneasy alliance as they try to save the kingdom from certain destruction.
Told through diaries, memoirs, encyclopedia entries, letters, biographies,
and a stage play.

ISBN 978-0-547-56687-0

[1. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. 2. Supernatural—Fiction.
3. Princesses—Fiction. 4. Soldiers—Fiction. 5. Household employees—
Fiction. 6. Orphans—Fiction. 7. Cats—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.M9416Wis 2011
[Fic]—dc22
2011003708

Created in the United States
E-ISBN 978-0-547-55082-4

To Nick and Mimi

Truth requires many voices,
for it is a relentless foe
but a most unobliging mistress.

>

An Introduction,
Presenting Several
Important Characters,
But Not All of Them
>

T
HE
S
TORY OF
F
ORTITUDE OF
B
ACIO
, C
OMMONLY
K
NOWN AS
T
RUDY, AS
T
OLD TO
H
ER
D
AUGHTER

Privately Printed and Circulated

TRUDY'S SIGHT revealed itself one warm summer night when the child was no older than three.
>

The Duke's Arms had been lively all evening, denying Trudy's mother even a minute to put her to bed, for Eds made it clear that customers always came first, and Mina was the inn's sole server.
Trudy
, however, was an easy child, happy to play in a kitchen corner with her yarn doll and tattered little basket, her head a halo of auburn curls streaked with gold. So settled, she did not observe the stranger's arrival or his demand for a meal and a room, and right quick with them both. Nor for that matter did anyone else pay notice to this rawboned traveler missing half an earlobe, for dusty foreigners stopped there daily. Mina was just beginning to serve him when
Trudy wandered in from the kitchen, caught sight of the man, and began to scream.
>

The room quieted at once, and Mina rushed over to take her away. Yet Trudy stood unbudging. "Go!" she shrieked, pointing at the stranger with one small shaking finger. "Go away! Go away! Go away!"

The man flinched at the clamor, and more so at the two dozen pairs of eyes now focused upon him. He flicked a hand toward Trudy and demanded that Eds take the brat from earshot; this place was supposed to be an inn for God's sake, not a damned madhouse.

That may have been the man's gravest mistake, for while Eds readily agreed about the racket, he abided no criticism of his beloved Duke's Arms. He also knew, with the innate discernment of a successful host, that though this fatherless child meant little to him, she was a favorite with the locals, unlike, say, the miller's youngest son, who—everyone agreed—was a rascal through and through. The regulars who kept the Duke's Arms solvent during the lean summer months were now muttering among themselves, uneasy about this stranger who so distressed their wee sweet Trudy.

Eds thus, without another moment's consideration, ordered him to leave.

"Ye can't toss me out!" the man spat back. "This is a public hostel, it is, and I've nowhere else to sleep!"

"It's my establishment, and I operates as I please," Eds replied coolly. "Besides, I hear tell the heavens make a very fine blanket"—a riposte, it should be confessed, that he had wielded many times, always to widespread mirth. His patrons laughed now, but smiles faded as the stranger cursed Eds and with cold viciousness described his imminent and painful demise. It was only Eds's girth, and cudgel, that got the stranger past the threshold, and no one objected when Eds slammed the door behind him.