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.