“There now,” Doll said when she was finished with me. “You look a lot like her around the eyes.”
I caught her eye in the mirror, and we stared at one another, each knowing exactly what the other was thinking. She had piled my silver-gilt hair up, making it look plentiful and curly. She’d told me before that my eyelashes were as thick and black as Mama’s, and my mouth curved just the way Mama’s did. The dress fit like a glove, so I knew I was built the way Mama was, too, slender in the waist and nicely plump other places. I even guessed I knew why Doll had found the dress for me. She had got me up to look rather like Mama to remind Papa of Mama because Doll didn’t think Mama was dead. I smiled at her and winked. She winked back.
There was no pocket in the pink gown, but it had long, full oversleeves. I broke the seal upon the letter and pinned the letter inside my sleeve.
When I came into the hall, Papa gave me a puzzled look, as though he might have seen me somewhere before. After a bit his face cleared and I knew he had remembered. Then he looked at Weasel-Rabbit for a while, frowning. I could see him thinking that his second wife was a paltry substitute for his first. All the aunts gasped when they saw me, but they didn’t dare say anything with the abbot right there at the table. I simply smiled and sat in my place. So there we all were: Sibylla and her mama and my papa and five aunts, also the abbot and Father Raymond and a little princeling from somewhere as guest of honor, looking at me with admiration and saying courtly things. As luck would have it, I was sitting between the princeling and the abbot.
My friend, Giles, was at a table just below me. I saw him watching me, and I blushed and nodded at him, letting him know I thanked him for what he had done. Father Raymond saw me see Giles, and he saw me blush and nod. I know because his brow furrowed up, the way it sometimes does, and he looked first at me, then at Giles, several times.
I waited until everyone was eating hungrily and the musicians were playing and the wine steward was going around for the second time. Then I said to the abbot, quite loudly, “Your Reverence, I have the most amazing news. Today I have received a letter from my mama.”
Silence. Everyone had heard me but Papa, who was busy telling Aunt Terror about a pilgrimage, and everyone stopped chewing or talking except Papa.
I said, “It’s the most wonderful thing, Your Reverence, though I’m sure you’ve heard many wonders in your life. I brought it to show you.” And with that I tugged it out of my sleeve and spread it out on the table, using his wine flagon to hold it down flat. Everyone was whispering to everyone else. Weasel-Rabbit had gone dead pale. Her mama had little sweat beads all over her forehead. The princeling was very attentive, ready to enjoy whatever happened.
The abbot read the letter. He handed it to Father Raymond. Father Raymond read it, flushed, and gave it back to the abbot, his mouth in a funny little quirk as though he couldn’t figure out whether to laugh or frown. The abbot read it again, mumbling it out loud, then it went to someone else. By this time, Papa had some idea that something was more than merely a little wrong.
The abbot rose to his feet. “I cannot unite in matrimony a man who already has a living wife,” he said, loud enough for everyone to hear him well below the salt. He got Papa’s attention at last. “Your daughter has received a letter from her mother. It is dated only four days ago, and thus we know you have a wife still living.”
“Impossible,” said Papa, going very pale.
“Ridiculous,” said one or two aunts.
“I knew it,” cried Aunt Terror. “I always knew she’d come back just at the wrong time!”
I need say no more about the banquet. Papa was so angry he could not speak. It wasn’t an hour after I had come back up to my room that I was startled by the carpenter nailing my door shut. Over the years that poor door has had more than its share of spikes driven through it.
“You thankless wench,” Papa cried. “You’ll not go off like that flighty witch, your mother.”
I feel I have achieved considerably more than I had intended. Disrupting the marriage seemed a good idea, merely to get even with Sibylla. Making Papa furious at me wasn’t part of the plan. Papa gets so silly when he gets furious. He puts people in the dungeon and then just forgets about them. We used to have a perfectly marvelous goldsmith who made the most wonderful things. Papa got irritated at him and put him in the dungeon. A month later, Papa wanted the man to make him a new salt, but when they took him out, he was almost dead and didn’t recover. Papa was fully capable of going off on another pilgrimage and just leaving me locked in the tower to die. Then, when he got back, having happened on an advantageous marriage opportunity for me, he’d probably ask, “Where’s Beauty?”
Remembering what Doll said about the time Mama was nailed up in here, I went out and took the firewood rope down from the spar and coiled it up under my bed. Then I lighted a splinter at the coals of the fire and the candle from the splinter and read Mama’s letter again, the first page. The page I had used ended up with the princeling. He purloined it from the abbot, probably intending to take it back to court and share it with everyone, including the King. On
