While Beauty Slept (51 page)

At long last my Beauty slept.

Yet I could not. I watched her throughout that night, attentive to every breath and whimper. When the sun came up, I cooked a mix of oats and nuts in the fireplace and devised a list of activities to fill the day, just as I had done when Rose and I were first locked away. I took out my sewing basket and asked Prielle to join me in embroidering handkerchiefs. I found the poem that Rose had written to honor Dorian and read it aloud, trying my best to add dramatic flourishes. Prielle listened, wide-eyed, and gushed in admiration at the end. But Rose made no response. She would not speak or eat. She refused even to look at me.

As the hours passed, I became increasingly desperate. In the evening I exhausted myself baking a cake in a skillet over the fire, using up the last of our sugar on a dish I hoped would tempt her. The cake itself emerged sunken and half burned, and though Prielle accepted a piece gratefully and gobbled it down in a flurry of crumbs, Rose turned away from my offering without a word. In a fit of frustration, I threw the pan to the floor. Even that clatter failed to rouse her interest. Her face remained toward the wall, resolutely blank. As the shadows overtook the bedchamber once again, her empty eyes seemed to gleam, a point of harsh clarity when all else was dim.

Prielle sat huddled on the floor in front of the dying fire, her thoughts as much a mystery to me as Rose’s. She had told me once she hoped for nothing more than a good marriage and a home filled with beautiful things. Was that simple wish to be denied her as well? I felt a wave of love for that frightened yet good-hearted girl, even as my patience with Rose’s willfulness dwindled.

“Tomorrow you will rise from this bed,” I told her. “You must eat, else you will never get well.”

“And what then, Elise?” The words were clipped, cold. “Prepare for my coronation? Push aside my mother’s body that I might sleep in the bed where she died?”

“Of course not,” I snapped. And yet what else had I imagined? This was the seat of the kingdom’s rulers. If she were to take up the crown, it would be from here. “We will leave the castle for a time, until it has been put back to rights.”

“To rights?” she asked mockingly. “As if I could ever forget what I have seen here!”

“You will not. Yet this is your home.”

“No longer. Not without Mother and Father. I never wanted the throne, or the jewels, or the adulation. My parents are dead, and I wish myself dead alongside them. Better that than condemned to a lifetime as queen!”

She had not yet regained the strength to shout, so her final words came as a rasp. Yet I saw the fire blaze once again in her cheeks. If she were set against the life laid out before her, she would not fight to regain it.

Before I could protest further, she had pulled the cover over her face, hiding from my judgment. I turned to look at Prielle, who sat with her knees drawn up toward her face and her arms wrapped around her legs. She looked like a cowering child, and for once I had no words of reassurance to offer. Darkness overcame us, and I did not rise to light a candle or move from the chair in which I collapsed. I simply sat through those endless dark hours, my mind tormented with the twists and turns of a puzzle that had no solution.

I must have dozed at some point, for I awoke with a renewed understanding of why it is wise to retire to bed come nightfall. For evil thoughts take strength from the dark, while hope thrives in the light. With the coming of day, my circumstances did not seem as dire as they had at midnight. Rose and Prielle remained listless yet unfevered, and I gave thanks for their continued health. It would not be long before I could seek out Marcus—my heart fluttered at the thought—and he would help us decide our next steps. For a time, at least, we would be free of the castle’s misery.

Despite her lethargy I insisted that Rose get out of bed and wash. I changed her covers and took off her sweat-stained nightdress, insisting she choose a clean gown from her trunk. Pouting, she pulled out the first that came to hand, a simple dress, free of adornment, that seemed in keeping with her dreary mood. The bodice hung loosely at her waist, and I was dismayed by the proof of how much weight she had lost. Yet her face showed none of the hollowness that illness often brings. Her once expressive eyes no longer sparkled, and her pale cheeks had lost their healthy pink glow, but she was still beautiful. When I attempted to brush her hair, she pushed my hand aside, and I used the ribbons I had picked out to arrange Prielle’s wavy tresses instead.

Rose sank into the chair before the window, overlooking the country view that had first drawn her to this room. Silently, she watched the unchanging hills and fields, and I tried not to be discouraged by her languid manner as the day progressed. I convinced her to take a few sips of soup at midday, but she did not join Prielle and me in hushed conversation. Noting Prielle’s weary expression, I urged her to lie down for a rest in Rose’s bed, and she soon drifted off, the worry easing from her face. How very peaceful she looked, free of all cares, and I wished I could be granted the same respite. Minutes dragged as if they were hours. How many times had I warmed water over the fire, tried in vain to ply Rose with food, stared at these four walls? I felt I had been trapped in that tower for years, watching over a princess whose loveliness remained unchanged, even as the last of my own youth melted away.

It was the rumbling I heard first, faint yet steady. Hoofbeats.

“Rose? Do you hear that?”

I might as well have addressed an empty room. Rose sat as she had all day, ignoring me. I leapt to my feet, straightening my gown and smoothing loose curls off my face. Though I could not see the front courtyard from the tower windows, I heard the clatter of horseshoes on the paving stones, a familiar sound from the days when the castle bustled with life. I had thought our visitor must be Marcus, but surely the pounding was louder than what a single carriage would make?

“I will see who it is,” I told Rose.

My spirits lifted as I fled the room. I rushed down the stairs to the entrance hall and out the front doors, pulling up short when I saw what awaited outside. A contingent of proud, muscular horses stamped and whinnied along the drive. Their riders had the stiff bearing of soldiers, but the finest sort, dressed in velvet tunics and tall leather boots. A few held swords with elaborately carved handles. As I walked warily toward them, they gathered in a ring around me, staring with the wonder of people confronted by a mythical creature. At the center was a slim man who led his white horse forward to stop next to me. He held himself with the stillness of authority, and every aspect of his appearance signaled noble birth, from the soft leather of his riding gloves to the way he gazed at my face and clothes, assessing my importance.

I bowed my head. “I am Elise Tilleth, lady-in-waiting to Princess Rose.”

“She lives?”

The voice rang out to my left, and I turned to see a man slide down from his saddle, doffing the slouched hat that had partially obscured his face. It was Joffrey, the ambassador from Hirathion, staring at me with a desperate intensity.

“She fell ill, but the worst is past.”

“Ah. . . .” The gentle exhalation was a poor expression of the relief that washed across his face.

“I regret to report that the pox did not spare her parents,” I continued. How easily the polite words came, neatly glossing over the horrors that lingered in the building behind me. “Our losses have been terrible indeed.”

Joffrey was silent a moment, allowing the effect of my words to settle among his companions. Then, collecting himself, he indicated the imperious man on the white horse and said formally, “May I present His Majesty Prince Owin of Hirathion.”

“We heard tales from travelers who fled your kingdom,” the prince said. “Tales of a royal princess locked away, awaiting rescue. Joffrey was most insistent we come and discover the truth of the matter.”

The prince was still quite young, I noted. The age when a man is most likely to be tempted into a quest to save a beautiful maiden. He dismounted and glanced about. “Where are the groomsmen?”

“Gone, or dead. Along with the guards and the cooks and everyone else.”

“You and the princess are here alone?” Joffrey asked me, horrified.

“That will not do,” said Prince Owin. “Take me to her.”

The demand brought a restless movement from one of the soldiers. Moving forward, he revealed himself as a burly man of middle age, the sort of loyal fighter entrusted with the safety of an heir to the throne. “If she’s been sick, it would be better to stay away,” he urged.

Joffrey looked at me searchingly, his eyes silently begging for approval. “You say she is recovered?”

I thought of Rose, sitting in mute despair. Could this man’s face help lure her back to the world?

“She is weak, but the pox is no longer with her,” I said. “I am sure of it.”

Prince Owin pulled off his gloves and tossed them to one of his men with the carelessness of someone whose needs have always been tended to by others. “Gilbart, take the men and search the grounds for other survivors. Joffrey and I will see to the princess.”

I had been granted time by then to accept the state of the castle as it was, but its air of eerie foreboding struck me anew as I led the two men inside. They flinched at the stench that filtered out from the chapel, and the silence of the halls settled upon us as we walked. There were no questions, there was no conversation. Just the sound of our footsteps climbing higher and higher, to the tower at the top of the castle.

I tapped lightly on the door to alert the girls to my arrival, then pushed it open. For a moment an image was framed before us: Prielle, lying asleep on the bed, her golden-brown hair tumbling onto the pillow, skin burnished by the sunlight. Her delicate pink gown—a princess’s garment—enhanced the blush of her cheeks. One hand lay demurely across her stomach; the other was flung sideways across the bed, as if in a gesture of welcome.

Ignoring all propriety, Prince Owin strode into the room and fell to one knee beside the bed. “Princess Rose,” he murmured.

Directly behind me Joffrey caught his breath, and I whirled around to see if he would be the one to correct his master’s error. But Joffrey was not looking at me, or the prince, or Prielle. He was looking at Rose, sitting in the chair by the window, in a position initially hidden by the open door. Her lower lip had dropped in surprise, and she stared at Joffrey in astonished silence. Joffrey was at her side in an instant, reaching for her hands, clutching them to his heart as her expression softened from bewilderment to joy. Here, at last, was the girl I had thought forever lost. A girl who might yet be capable of happiness.

“Elise?”

Prielle’s perplexed voice carried from the bed, and I saw that the prince’s voice had roused her from sleep. He reached out a hand to clasp hers, then pulled it toward his lips for a kiss. It was a reckless gesture, to touch one he thought recently felled by the pox, but the prince was flush with the bravado of youth.

I had every intention of clearing up his confusion. But then I heard something that made my heart leap. Rose’s laugh. And I knew immediately that I might never hear that sound again if I told the prince the truth. To those who would judge me harshly, I can only say that the idea came to me fully formed, as if delivered by a higher power. With a simple switch of names, Prielle could live the pampered life she had longed for and my dear, darling Beauty would be free.

For so great a deception, it was easily accomplished. Prielle was dressed in a manner befitting royalty, while Rose, her striking looks muted by illness and clad in a plain gown, was easy to dismiss as a mere attendant. Joffrey’s thoughts were quick to follow my own. He was the only member of the long-ago delegation from Hirathion who had seen Rose up close, the only one who could have pointed out the prince’s mistake. It was treason for him to go along with such a ruse, yet he did it willingly, risking death to secure Rose’s happiness—and his own.

With a few whispers and glances and nods, it was done. It was Prielle whom Prince Owin carried down from the tower, Prielle whom he insisted be swathed in a blanket and cradled in his arms on his white horse. Rose took a place on Joffrey’s mount, clutching her arms around his waist and pressing her face against his back, until they seemed to form a single figure. Prince Owin’s man Gilbart tied my satchel of possessions to his saddle and lifted me onto his horse behind him.

We rode off, and I did not look back.

Those who tell the tale of Sleeping Beauty end it here, with the princess saved by a prince’s kiss. Is it the truth? A princess was locked in a tower, and she was discovered by a prince. But she did not sleep, and it was not his kiss that brought her back to life. Though a royal wedding was celebrated—completing the requisite happy ending—the princess was not the woman who said her vows that day. She disappeared into a new name, a new life. One she had finally been able to choose for herself.

Attendants make for poor heroines, and I do not care if my role in Rose’s story is forgotten. But I do not wish the lesson of her life to be obscured in myth. What saved Rose was love. Not the infatuation an impressionable youth may feel on seeing a pretty, helpless girl asleep on a bed. No, the love I speak of is far more powerful. It is the love between those who have grown from girls to women together, exchanging laughter and tears, sharing a bond no one can break. The love that kept me at my dearest companion’s bedside, hour after hour, willing her to survive. The love of a mother and father who deafened themselves to their daughter’s cries in order to keep her safe. The love of a man who risked everything to give his beloved a fresh start.