The Princess Curse (5 page)

I shoved my herbal underneath my mortar, glaring at Didina. She said with ruthless cheeriness, “Make sure you take the left fork on the riverward path. You wouldn’t want to get lost in the forest.”

Chapter 6

I
n the three weeks since I’d been at Castle Sylvian, I’d not managed to learn my way around the Prince’s hunting park at all.

This was partially because I was simply unaccustomed to wild-herb gathering. I’d grown up inside the stone walls of a convent-fortress in Transylvania, which was fortified for a reason: We were close to the Turks and always under threat of their raids.

That’s just what it’s like to live in the last outpost of Christianity—you don’t count on having food to last all winter, and you don’t take many forest walks.

We were safe here in Sylvania at the moment, or maybe I just felt safer with Transylvania and Wallachia between us and the Turks, and with Hungary at our backs. The Hungarians were a threat to Prince Vasile’s sovereignty, but they were also a threat to the Turks’ expansion.

But safety was a matter of perception. Prince Vasile obviously felt enough danger to have hired my father for his ditching skills.

Safety was also a matter of degree. I might not have to worry about running into a Turkish raiding party here—but there might be bears or boars or ogres among the trees. Didina had been my guide through the forest the last three times, and I wished she were coming with me now.

Nonetheless, with wicker collecting basket in hand, I marched past the Little Well, through the dragon-carved gates, down the rows of trees filled with ripening plums, and into the hunting park.

Here, the trees grew so closely together that daylight never touched the forest floor, even on the main paths. That would never do: Day’s-eyes were a cheerful flower dressed in plain white petals and with a sunlike center. All sunny plants like sunshine, not forest shadows. There were wide meadows deep inside the park, but I wasn’t sure
where
. Didina had said “left fork” and “riverward path,” hadn’t she? I knew right from left as well as anyone, but how could I know if I was on the riverward path?

The forest grew darker as I went, and the calls of cheerful, sun-loving birds faded behind me. I crept slowly along the path, clutching my basket to my side, trying to look in every direction at once. I was going to laugh at myself when I found the meadow full of day’s-eyes; I was going to laugh even harder when I put them into the princesses’ posies. But knowing that didn’t make me feel less uneasy in this forest.

The dark path wound on and on and on. I began to despair of finding sunlight in this direction. I was just about to march back to the castle to tell Brother Cosmin that Princess Nadia was going to have to live with the disappointment of no day’s-eyes when I rounded a bend and found a man standing in the forest gloom, plucking handfuls of plum blossoms from a plain kerchief and dropping them into a stream. Hundreds of blossoms, it seemed, drifted like snow to bob and float on the current.

The man himself was tall, dressed like a lord in red velvet, his black military cloak fastened with a clasp that appeared to be made from boar’s tusks. In spite of the fact that he wore Vasile’s colors—red and black—I didn’t recognize him as one of Vasile’s men.

I must have made a noise, for he whirled suddenly, dropping the kerchief and the rest of the blossoms into the stream. He drew a sword as he turned. I raised my collecting basket between us like a shield—an unexpected reflex—and took a step backward.

The man glanced at the basket with a quirked eyebrow. “You know that a wicker basket isn’t much protection against a sword, don’t you?”

“Yes, but it’s all the protection I have,” I said.

“Courage in the face of certain defeat is admirable.”

“Certain defeat?” I asked. My voice wavered like a flute, showing my fear, which annoyed me.

“
If
we were adversaries,” the man said, lowering his sword, “do you not think that I would defeat you?”

“Well, you do have a sword,” I said pragmatically. “And in any contest that pitted your strength against mine, you would probably win. But in a contest of wits? I might hold my own.” I lowered my basket and raised my chin.

“Alas, but we shan’t find out the truth of that today. I find that in those sorts of contests, it takes far too long to ascertain the victor. And I have to be home by sunset.”

I laughed, because I thought it was a joke; the man was younger than Pa, but clearly too old and rich to care for curfew. But he didn’t laugh with me. I said, “I’m sorry I startled you, and I’m sorry that you lost your kerchief.” I pointed to the stream, which still swirled a few plum blossoms on its calmer eddies—but the kerchief was long gone.

He glanced at the water. “I have no lack of kerchiefs,” he said.

“Oh.” He still stared at the water, and I noticed then that he was a little bit handsome in his way, with his lean cheeks and dark eyes. He wasn’t wearing a huge mustache like the men of his class so often did, but rather bore a close-cropped beard along his jaw, barely more than stubble.

“What are the flowers
for
?” I blurted out—rudely, I knew, but I was dying of curiosity.

The man’s dark eyes darted toward me. I didn’t think he would answer. “A memory,” he said at last. “And a debt.”

Clear as mud. Something in his demeanor kept me from asking a further question, in spite of my curiosity ailment. “All right, but how did you get plum blossoms at this time of year?” To force blooms out of season was a skill; to delay blooming by months was another art entirely, and one I’d never heard of.

He cast me an acute look. “It’s not plum blossom season?”

How could he not know what time of year it was? Even in this dark forest, the broadness of the leaves suggested high summer. I took a step backward, wondering if he was a sort of ghoul, not a man at all. These things happened. The dead did not always know where to go. . . .

My collecting basket fell out of my suddenly strengthless fingers. The man stooped forward, picked up the basket, and handed it to me, and I almost laughed with relief. No ghoul could pick up a basket
and
hand it to me.

“Are you all right?” he asked, looking into my face.

I ignored the question and asked my own. “Are you a vassal of Prince Vasile?”

“Vassal? Hardly.”

“Then what are you doing in the Prince’s hunting park, Mysterious Nameless Stranger?”

“Call me Frumos,” he said. “Handsome,” the name meant; Frumos was also the hero of all the great tales, and further, Prince Frumos was the one who fought the
zmeu
. This fellow certainly thought a lot of himself! “What’s
your
name?”

“Reveka. I’m the herbalist’s apprentice at Castle Sylvian. Well, one of them. So—why are you out here in the hunting park, Prince Frumos?” And when he looked as though he might have cheerfully strangled me, I said, “Oh, you don’t like being called
Prince
Frumos?”

“It might be a joke that I’ve heard too often,” he suggested.

“Yes, but what does your Marvelous Horse have to say about it?” I asked, smirking. Prince Frumos in the stories was always taking counsel from his horse. Then again, it was a pretty smart horse, so it made sense in the stories.

“My horse tells me that you’re like the old woman on the road who offers Prince Frumos two impossible choices,” he said.

“How’s that?” I asked, not sure if I should be offended or delighted by this comparison.

He shrugged a little, looking as if he was biting back something rude. While I didn’t want to be insulted, I was terribly annoyed that he wouldn’t just say what he thought of me.

I said, “I don’t think it’s an apt comparison. The old women who meet Prince Frumos say things like ‘If you turn right, you’ll walk through sorrow; if you turn left, you’ll walk through sorrow as well.’ I don’t think that’s offering impossible choices, anyway. I think that Frumos was a fool for accepting those as the only two choices. What if he went backward? What if he went straight? Maybe saying that left-right thing was the old woman’s way of saying, ‘Don’t turn!’ How did you mean this comparison?”

“I meant only good things, I assure you.” He had started smiling broadly at me during my diatribe. I didn’t know what to make of him at all. By now, Pa would have told me to shut up and claimed a nattering-induced headache. “I was merely commenting on the fact that we had a chance meeting on a path in the woods, like Frumos and the old woman in the story. What are
you
doing in the forest, herbalist’s apprentice?”

“I am collecting day’s-eyes,” I said.

“Day’s-eyes are a sun-loving plant,” he replied, gesturing at the thick canopy of trees overhead. “You won’t find them here.”

“There’s a meadow farther on, I think—I’ve been there, I just don’t quite remember where it is.”

“Ah, the meadow. I can guide you. It’s not far.” And he offered me his arm, exactly as though I were a lady and not just an herbalist’s apprentice. I stepped forward and took the offered arm, but my head heated up with a blush—there’s no use pretending it didn’t. I couldn’t explain why this man—this “handsome prince”—was being so nice to me. It was disconcerting.

We were not far from the meadow, as it happened. I’d been on the right path all along. “There,” Frumos said, releasing my arm and pointing to day’s-eyes bobbing and swaying on a gentle breeze. “Your meadow.” He bowed, as if bequeathing it to me.

Delighted, I stepped forward into the bright sunlight, stooping down with my herb knife to cut a quick armful of flowers. I stood with the day’s-eyes in my arms and turned back to thank Frumos.

But there was no one there at all; I saw only the shadows of the forest and the path back home.

Chapter 7

L
ater, after I’d returned to the herbary and made up the posies, Brother Cosmin stepped out to the kitchens for a bite of food and a dab of wine. I immediately turned to Didina to wheedle some information about Plantes Which Confer Vpon the Wearer Invisibilitie.

“If pig’s weed and mistletoe
really
turned people invisible,” I said, “there would be a lot more petty thefts and useful assassinations in the world.”

“Pig’s weed and mistletoe don’t work, even woven together,” Didina said.

Keeping my head bent over my task of sorting mint leaves, which were rotting in the oddly damp summer weather, I suppressed the urge to grin at Didina. She was going to talk to me about the list! I didn’t even have to wheedle. “I don’t suppose you’ve tried anything else on the list,” I said.

“I’ve never been able to afford a golden knife, or to find a tiny horn, or to get a red lizard skin. . . .”

“What about the nepenthe seeds?”

“Drinking nepenthe wine on a three-day fast . . .”

I looked up and caught her eye. “Seems like a good way to
believe
you’re invisible, without actually becoming so.” We both laughed. Nepenthe was notorious for causing forgetfulness and strange behavior.

“Also a good way to stop your heart,” she added.

“Or that,” I said, sobering. “I thought you said the dowry wasn’t worth it, but you’ve done all these experiments with the list. Were you just trying to scare me away?”

She set her mouth. “The dowry
isn’t
worth it. It’s not worth getting cursed with the sleep, anyway.”

“Then . . . why bother with the list? Unless you were planning a career as a sneak thief.”

She looked toward the window, where the eastern tower loomed. “You’ve met the woman who takes care of the sleepers,” Didina said slowly. “Did you know she’s my grandmother?”

“No. I’m sorry, no, I didn’t know.”

Didina took a deep breath, and said, “Did you also know that my mother is one of the sleepers?” Mute, I shook my head. “Ma was
their
favorite servant, and the first to fall. She wasn’t trying for the dowry—the dowry hadn’t even been thought up yet. She was just trying to serve the Prince, to help the princesses; she was loyal to them, and what did that get her?”

I was silent, trying to comprehend this.

Didina continued, “I want to—I
need
to—break the curse so my mother and grandmother can leave that tower.”

I understood what it was like to want your mother back—hadn’t I wanted that my whole life? “So, when
we
break the curse,” I said, “we can split the dowry?”

She tilted her head, eyes downcast. “Reveka . . .”

“We’re going to do it,” I said, trying to reassure her, to help sweep some of the sadness from her eyes. “We’re going to break the curse, Didina.”

She didn’t look up. She spoke in a low voice, as though talking to her mortar and pestle: “If you do it—if you wake up my mother—you can have
all
the dowry. You’ll need it. I . . . just don’t want to be an orphan anymore.”

I hadn’t known she was an orphan. I blurted out the obvious question: “What happened to your pa?”

“He was a soldier.”

I bit my lip and nodded. I knew too well what that meant; it was all she had to say.

I left the herbary a little before sunset and went to gather some of Pa’s yew.

Herbalists do not grow yew, but if assassins had gardens, they would cultivate it. Yew is a deadly poison, but it also makes a good hedge. Pa wouldn’t care if I pruned his yew out of season—he was always arguing that gardens needed fewer tall plants for enemies to hide behind, not more, and would go on for hours about the dangers of overgrown hedges, and how ivy is just as good as a ladder for a soldier.

Yew branches in hand, along with some santolina from the herbary, I climbed the western tower to see Mistress Adina.

Nothing had changed. The sleepers lay still, and Adina rocked in her chair and netted her socks. “Herb-husband’s apprentice!” she cried, more pleased to see me now than she had been on the day we met.

“
Stăpână
,” I said, dropping the plain curtsy that indicated respect for an elder. That was an easy curtsy, and I didn’t bobble like I did with the deeper gestures. But then, because I can spare only so many good manners in one day, I asked, “Why do you call Brother Cosmin ‘herb-husband’?”