The Goose Girl, Part II

You thought I forgot to finish this one, didn't you? You were wrong. Donate, if you're inclined.

Where was I? Oh yes.

~

The journey to Isolder was peaceable enough. The roads were well-maintained and it was a pretty sort of scenery of the type birds and other forest creatures frolic in and in which the sort of soul who was inclined to such frippery might burst into song. ‘Velda’, so I had dubbed her, sulked in silence, too overcome with this inexplicable turn of events to say anything. Were it anyone else, I would say that she was too smart to attract any attention from me unless it were part of a plan. But had she had any brains at all, she wouldn’t have allowed me to trick her so easily in the first place.

The only trouble came from Falada. I counted myself as respectably skilled at the art of horsemanship, but the beast troubled itself to move roughly with every step and motion of its back. Neither carrot nor stick would cure it; soon I was sore enough as if I had travelled an entire day on the camp trail. Even focusing on the silence of it all did not alleviate my discomfort, for just on the edge of hearing, I could hear those damnable words.

“If your mother only knew, her heart would surely break in two.”

Was it directed to Velda or myself? I wondered.

~

Prince Belder of Isolder was more a boy than man – less coddled than Narthena, but with still many years of growing ahead of him. Given what our relationship was to be, though, I made the effort to discern his better qualities. A pleasant smile, a strong jaw. A frame that was just the right height, for his eyes could meet my own on the same level.

“And your handmaiden? How shall we accommodate her?”

I considered. The continued fact of her meant the possibility that she might find her courage or her pride and tell someone, anyone of the deception. Concocting some flimsy excuse for her execution, however, would arouse suspicion. Keeping her by my side would allow me to keep an eye on her, but increased the number of people of actual importance she might inform.

“She is a peasant that was hired to accompany in my journey; she is no longer needed. Please find a purpose for her elsewhere.” That was promptly agreed to. “But as for my steed... She has been a most unruly beast throughout the journey and I am afraid she is fit for nothing more than to be put down. Please see to it in the most swift and merciful manner possible.”

Velda was placed with a goose herder. I thought it appropriate.

~

Belder and I wed immediately. We enjoyed the wedding night, even though both of us were nervous despite ourselves. I shivered at his touch, he shivered at mine, and I whispered in his ear. After many long hours, he collapsed upon the mattress, exhausted. I followed not long afterwards. I am still human.

~

That night, I dreamed of my mother.

She was a handsome woman, strongly built but with the most beautiful eyes imaginable. (I had not inherited them.) She was a weaver by trade and all through the day and into the night, she would sit at her loom, weaving, weaving.

“I always knew, my daughter, that you would be strong,” she said, weaving a tapestry of fabulous patterns such as that the blessed king of Gamelin would not be ashamed to wear. I, sitting at her feet, nodded eagerly, beaming at her praise.

“That you would be strong enough to challenge princes, nations, gods, whatever your heart might set upon. And you would come out stronger still because you were my daughter and my daughter could do no less.”

Her tapestry grew ever more complex, with fields and forests and battles, moreso than any human could possibly create in reality. But this was a dream and dreams were not beholden to reality. “But this?” she asked.

My heart fell.

“Isn’t this beneath you?”

~

The days passed banally enough, the nights kindly. I allowed my brain to drown out the nonsense of the Isoldian court, it possessing no heart nor interest for me. But the nights? I allowed myself to see more than the strong jaw, but the way his breath pulsed and his lungs breathed in the whole of me. I grew to enjoy my prince’s company. I whispered in his ear every night, as per my duty, about the wicked ways of Cordelon and Tanefor and all the enemies of Gamelin and he dutifully repeated my suspicions to the High Council and to his lord father, the king.

Velda the goose girl did whatever a goose girl did during her days. I kept watch over her, because I refuse to be stupid, but she did nothing but drive the geese out every day with Conrad the herder.

I heard troubling rumours, though.

Of a horse head, hung over the gate where the goose herder and his girl passed through every morning and every night, that constantly spoke these words: “If your mother only knew, her heart would surely break in two.” I went to this gate many times, but the horse’s head was always gone by the time I arrived.

Of a girl who charms the wind so as to blow the loose strands of her hair away, so that the herder may not claim them. But when I went to see in secret, she was attending to her duties as suitable and the wind behaved as normal.

Of a herder who refused to work with the girl any longer and a king who grew suspicious and a girl who overcame her fear enough to tell her troubles to an iron stove. I whispered and whispered into the prince’s ear, but it was not enough.

~

I dreamed of my mother, night after night after night, always fluctuating between shame and pride and fear. I did not know what this constant dream meant, only that it was likely I was never to see her again.

~

Everything had gone wrong.

The prince – technically my husband, although I should not think he was of the same mind any longer – clutched the hilt of his sheathed sword as though it were a neck. The number of guards in the dining hall was just ever so slightly higher than normal and no longer kept to the perimeter. And in front of me was the one person in all the world I least wanted to see. Why did I not find some way of offing her instead of shoving her into honest labour? Ah, hindsight!

She looked very fine and composed, which was such a rare thing for her that I had to stop myself from marvelling at it and giving the game away. Not that, I suspected, that such efforts would last much longer.

“Good day, my lord,” I said, curtsying with my knees bent low and my skirts dressing the floors. “How might I serve you?”

But the king spoke first. “I have a query for you, my daughter. And I require you to answer truthfully.”

I nodded, knees still bent.

He related to me the situation of the Narthena, Velda, whomever, leaving out no detail whatsoever save for that of the name of the personages involved. I listened, nodding. Then he asked me, upon finishing, “What should be the punishment of such a blackguard?”

“Tear the clothes from her back,” I said without hesitation. “Shove her in a barrel lined with nails, and drag her throughout the city until she breathes no more.”
“So shall it be done,” said the king, as the guards rushed forward and seized my arms. I did not fight them. What was the point?

~

And yet, not long afterwards, the clothes stripped from my back – they were of the mind that the nakedness would shame me, little considering that the lack of warmth would pain me more – I was shoved in a windowless cell. Dark and bare. A cot would have been a luxury. Food and water? Ha!

I sat in the black for a long, long time. Doing nothing. Saying nothing.

But I was not Narthena. Torture? Certainly, they would like to drive my secrets and orders from my flesh with all the devices their mind could devise, whether true or false. But I refused to let that happen.

The punishment I described? A shameful thing, not fit for beasts! Certainly it would meet the needs of the bloodthirsty weaklings of Isolder and Cordelon, but they needed to create strength where they could.

But they would try and I was not certain that my strength as a soldier of Gamelin would sustain me. So I slept instead and thought.

~

In the morning – near as I could tell, as the cell had no windows and was lit by a guard’s lantern when there as light at all – they took me by the arms and carried me bodily to another dark chamber. They had many fine instruments there and they introduced me to every one of them, explaining their purpose in great detail. Then, they proceed to use them. I screamed. I refused to yield. And I tried my very level best to...

~

My vision faded. All turned black.

“If your mother only knew, her heart would surely break in two.”

I know not what I told them.

~

In the morning – near as I could tell, as the cell had no windows and was lit by a guard’s lantern when there was light at all – they dragged me out of the cell, pushing and shoving, hungry and thirsty, cold but still strong. They shoved me out into sun’s glare, crowds at my feet with an insatiable hunger ill-disguised.

The king stood before us all, explaining to the peasant and merchant and noble my ‘crimes’ in the name of my own king and country and nation, even though he knew nothing, really, as my once husband and his soon to be bride stood to the side in their grief and satisfaction. Could I detect a hint of grief on Belder’s face? Remembrances of private jests and kisses stolen when we were certain that most of the court had their gazes turned away?

Could that have been the product of my fevered imaginings as I faced my death?

It mattered not. Into the barrel they shoved me, nails all around. My breath shallowed and I am ashamed to say, I cried. But there was still more to be done.

The bottom was not lined with nails, nor the top. I braced myself against either end, allowing my breath to become ever the more shallow, lest they be pierced with the nails all around. I heard them as they tied the top of the barrel to the horses and braced myself against the top and the bottom, as they urged the horses along and the barrel tilted until it was sideways.

Hours passed. I refused to give up. Bled and scratched and pierced though I was, I did not allow myself to be driven through with every bump and turn, with every passing whimsy of an animal. I cried with the pain and I remembered my mother, at her spinning wheel, at her loom, shaking her head with every deviation from what she thought I ought to be.

The pain did not depart. But the minding of the pain! Ah, that did depart.

Hours passed. I kept my strength. I kept it until I was certain the ravenous crowds would become bored and depart and the streets would empty of all but their refuse. My arms felt like jelly, and still I held firm. As did my legs, but still I held firm. As did my will, but as an agent of Gamelin, I held firm.

It stopped. Horses could only go on forever. The good soldiers of Isolder broke the top of the barrel open again and dragged me out. They considered me. Give the public a show and admit defeat with the first go around or dispatch me then and there?

~

Which would you choose? They chose as I would have done.

The Goose Girl, Part I

Everything had gone wrong.

The prince – technically my husband, although I should not think he was of the same mind any longer – clutched the hilt of his sheathed sword as though it were a neck. The number of guards in the dining hall was just ever so slightly higher than normal and no longer kept to the perimeter. And in front of me was the one person in all the world I least wanted to see. Why did I not find some way of offing her instead of shoving her into honest labour? Ah, hindsight!

She looked very fine and composed, which was such a rare thing for her that I had to stop myself from marvelling at it and giving the game away. Not that, I suspected, that such efforts would last much longer.

But let me stop and go back to a beginning. That is how stories properly begin.

~

Let me be clear: I did not like her from the first.

She was the sort of layabout nobility that is despised in my country. An idle prince or princess insults the peasant who sweats for them and defames the name of their house. Such a one as Princess Narthena Eshlin would have had armour clapped on her back and her buttocks thrown onto a saddle the first time she sniffled prettily over a less than fawning remark. But I had my orders and I honour my king.

Said king ordered me to become her handmaiden. Let it not be said that Gamelin agents do not suffer in the course of carrying out their duties.
The posting was easy enough to arrange and it would be tedious to go into the details. Those ultimately responsible had no idea of their six degrees removed relationship with the kingdom of Gamelin, which is, of course, the way it should be when arranging these delicate operations. As it was, I met my charge the week before she was to set out to wed the crown prince of the neighbouring Isolder.

I bowed first thing, keeping my eyes pointing to the floor until I was spoken to. This took a bit. I could hear whispering.

“Rise,” said Narthena, in the quietest and daintiest of voices. I did as ordered and in doing so was met with a fairly standard example of the quintessential young noblewoman – chestnut curls framing a heart-shaped face, large and guileless blue eyes, small, slim figure with not a hint of muscle tone to it. Her skin was so pale that I doubted that the sun had ever faced it. “My mother informed me that I was to have a new handmaiden for my journey.” The previous incumbent of the position had met with a convenient marriage. “You must be she. Theon Bywell would be your name, is it not?”

I nodded mutely.

Those eyes of mine took in the details of her highness’ bed chamber – an easy enough feat when maintaining eye contact with one so far above one’s position is considered to be one of the defining marks of boorishness. Lace and light and flowers were the themes, which was what I expected. A decanter of water with crystal glasses arranged alongside lay on the side table. There was a bookcase, but the number of volumes resting upon it did not exceed the counting of my fingers and toes. A fat and thoroughly spoiled long-haired cat sprawled itself across the wide expanse of the princess’ bed. A quarter-finished embroidery had been cast onto another table and by the looks of it, it had not been touched in some time.

Flowers festooned the room, but I doubted she had grown them herself or could even name them. A large and robust wardrobe filled a not insignificant chunk of the sizeable chamber, but that was to be expected. There was not a sign of any true passion she might have held and it summoned up in me such a visceral hatred in me that I struggled to keep it from showing. Call it an ancestral thing. Or a quirk of national pride.

“Might you fetch me a glass of water?” she asked. The decanter was perhaps four feet away from her. From me, it was fifteen feet. “I am ever so thirsty.”

I did as I was bid, as per always. If I let a bit of water splash on her pretty satin dress in my haste, well! We all have our burdens to bear.

~

Over the course of the week, I played the part of an exemplary handmaiden to the most spoiled, naïve, and useless of princesses. I fetched her water, her cat, whatever flower happened to catch her eye as she strolled through the gardens under her umbrella. I cut her food – cutting a steak was ever so much effort, you see, and she was so afraid of getting sauce on her smooth, pale hands – dressed her in the most needlessly byzantine of garments, beat out her mattress when she thought she might have detected a lump, killed whatever spider or other insect happened to cross her path and throw her into a panic. Useless, useless, useless, and all throughout, I smiled, smiled, smiled. Nowhere did she go without me by her side.

Well… that is not entirely true.

The day we were to leave, she was called into the presence of her mother, Queen Aphelia. The sky was dark yet. Isolder’s capital was not far from Cordelon’s – perhaps a day’s ride, on a route so safe that we were foregoing guards for most of it – but one had to set out early. Narthena had put up such a fuss over this small hardship that only the reminder of the beauteous prince at the end of the journey diminished the whining in any discernable sense.

I attempted to eavesdrop, but could not. Guards milled about the halls so that avoiding detection was impossible. As it was, the audience took half an hour and when Narthena quit it, she was dabbing her eyes with the blue cotton of her gown. Something white poked out of the top of her bodice.

“Oh, Theon, how I shall miss this place!” she cried and I took her hand as she did so.

Just faintly, I may have heard the words, "If your mother only knew, her heart would surely break in two." But so faint it was that I dismissed it as a quirk of my imagination.

~

Narthena, to my surprise, did not receive her own mare to ride upon, but the queen’s own – Falada, strong, large, and beautiful, yet with the gentlest of temperaments. Necessities, including the princess’ dowry, were loaded up on the horse’s rump, although my beast received the larger share. The majority of the princess’ worldly possessions were to follow in another day or two.

We set out. Soon, it would be time to act.

The first four times she asked me to fetch her water from the stream that ran alongside the road, I acquiesced promptly and courteously, as a good servant should. Her goblet was filled, her hands received the goblet, her mouth received the water from the goblet in turn. Too close it was to the capital to turn my coat quite yet. And something else stopped me, something force, expressed in that faint sentence I caught in the air of the castle.

Ah, but the fifth time…

Charms and tricks though the queen of Cordelon uses, they shall not stop me from committing that which I set out to do. And they did not.

“Theon, pray fetch me some more water. I thirst terribly.” She did not perspire or appear to be in any discomfort and I suspected, not for the first time, that sometimes she had me do things simply because enough time had passed since the last time.

We reigned our horses in. Well along the path now – halfway there, if I were any judge, and well past the point where any citizenry could hope to hear us. “To be honest,” I declared. “I would really rather not.”

Narthena and, I could swear, Falada, stared at me as if I had grown an unruly appendage between my eyes. The thought of anyone refusing her royal highness, beyond, say, her equally royal mother, may never have occurred to her in her short, sweet life. “What is the meaning of this?” she asked. Incredulity dripped from every syllable.

I shrugged. Oh, it felt good to do that! “In our acquaintance with one another, I remained unaware of any deficiencies with your ears. To put it bluntly: you can fetch your own water.”

Her mouth opened and shut a few times, with nothing so noble as a word escaping it. Eventually, the shock of the situation compelling her to commit improbable deeds, she slid off of Falada onto the dirt of the trail. Her hands grasped onto the goblet for dear life as she did so, and as she bent down by the stream to fill it up. She drank, slowly. I thought I could see a glimmer in the corner of her eye.

“Quickly, now. We do not have all day.” She gulped down the remainder and as she stopped and heaved for breath, a white linen handkerchief fell out of her bodice. She scooped it up quickly, but not quickly enough for me not to see the three red dots marring its surface. Falada felt the weight of her once more and again, we moved. I swear that the cob glowered at me.

I heard the words: "If your mother only knew, her heart would surely break in two."

~

It was another three hours before Narthena asked for water again and I could believe that she actually thirsted this time. But what kind of person would I be if I did not encourage independence in my charges? I said unto her, “Your last efforts hardly broke you. You can do it again.”

Here she really did cry, rather than merely threaten it, but I paid it no heed. Instead, I watched carefully as she sat her feet onto the dirt, made her way over to the stream with her precious, impractical goblet, and knelt down by the water’s edge. The handkerchief was once again poking out of her bodice. In my hand was a bun, meant to be a snack for the road. I took aim.

Now there was a compulsion in place against throwing even such a paltry missile at her royal skull, but there were certainly ways of circumventing it for my purposes. I threw it at the water beside her instead.

She startled. The handkerchief was freed once more, but this time there was no way of recovering it – it had floated well out of reach by the time Narthena recovered from her shock. And that was enough time for the compulsion to flicker out and die, allowing me to get down from my horse myself, find a handy rock, and knock it upon her head.

The princess of Cordelon went out like a light.

~

When she awoke, I had swapped our clothes and cleaned her scalp. Her face and hair I had drubbed up a bit, but not too much. It would not do for a princess to pack around such a slovenly handmaiden. As for myself, I looked a picture – a fact I confirmed with a silver mirror from my new luggage.

Bewilderment had taken over ‘Theon’s’ face and I must admit it galled me a little bit that such a creature would be walking about with my name. Or, for that matter, that I would be saddled with hers. I placed a finger on her lips as they parted to question me.

“Now, Theon, you know what this is about,” I said. “But others will not. You will not tell anyone about this, for if you do, you will die. Are we clear?”

She nodded, mutely.

“Get on the horse.”

As though by reflex, she made towards Falada, but I jerked her back roughly. “You know very well that she is the princess’ steed. Onto the other and quickly, now. I am eager to meet my husband.” It was not long before we were underway once more, almost as if nothing had ever happened. My handmaiden was so docile about her new circumstances that it sickened me to think on it. Surely even she could not let this stand idly? Surely even now she was concocted any sort of plan, no matter how sad?
These words cut through my reverie: "If your mother only knew, her heart would surely break in two."

But the handkerchief was gone. Why did I still hear it?

Falada stepped roughly on the dirt of the trail. I could feel my teeth rattle.