The Princess Pact: A Twist on Rumpelstiltskin (The Four Kingdoms Book 3) Page 5

  The queen paused and shook her head. Marie had always wondered how her mother had managed to keep it a secret for so long. Especially with such a father. She had always felt that a secret like that would be a heavy burden to bear.

  “There was a courtier in the tavern,” Marie continued for her, “and he overheard and told the king, and the king made you spin for him in exchange for marrying his son. Yes, I know the story. Everyone knows the story.” She felt a little guilty for being so rude, but it was hardly the time for rambling reminiscences.

  “No.” The queen shook her head again. “You only think you know the story. No one knows the real story except your father and me.”

  “What do you mean?” Suddenly she had Marie’s full attention.

  “As you said, one of the courtiers overheard and reported the story to the king. The king was angry because he had brought the people together to discuss the bad harvest and the upcoming winter. He disapproved of seeing his people spending their time and money drinking and making such foolish boasts. He decided to make an example of my father. So he sent soldiers to my house to collect me and bring me to the palace. They arrived in the middle of the night before my father had returned from the capital. I couldn’t understand what was going on. I was terrified.” She shivered.

  This aspect of the story was certainly new to Marie. “But you just said the kingdom had fallen on hard times. I thought that was why the king sent for you. So you could save the people.”

  The queen gave an unpleasant laugh. “Oh no, he never believed the story. It was far too ridiculous.”

  “Well, he was wrong then!” said Marie, incensed on her mother’s behalf.

  “No, he wasn’t,” said her mother, her voice dropping almost to a whisper. “I could never spin straw into gold. No one could do such a thing, except perhaps for a godmother.”

  Marie opened her mouth and then closed it again. She stared at her mother in confusion. “But… you did spin the straw into gold. A whole room full of gold. Grandfather used it to buy food from Lanover, and it was enough to see the whole kingdom through the winter. It’s one of the reasons the people love you so much.”

  “That was the official story, yes, but that’s not how it really happened.”

  “How did the kingdom survive the winter, then?” Marie was struggling to understand what her mother was telling her. The story was as much a part of her heritage as the palace itself. It seemed impossible that it could be untrue.

  “Oh, the straw was turned into gold sure enough, and the gold was used to buy food. That much is true. But I didn’t spin it.”

  “Well, who did it then?”

  Her mother’s voice dropped so low that Marie couldn’t understand her words. She shook her head, and her mother spoke a little louder. “It was that man, the stranger in the forest.”

  Chapter 7

  “What? That makes no sense. This all happened over twenty years ago!” Marie began to worry that her mother’s anxiety had somehow made her delusional.

  “What difference does that make?” asked her mother. “The important thing is that he’s returned. Have you ever heard of anyone else with bronze skin like leather? He matches the description exactly. And I always knew he would come back. He said he would.”

  Marie tried to grasp what her mother was saying, but it was too much of a jumble.

  “I still don’t understand,” she said. “Go back. What happened after the soldiers brought you to the palace?”

  “The king demanded that I spin straw into gold for him. I protested that I couldn’t do such a thing. But he said that, according to my father, I could. Then, of course, I understood what had happened. I pleaded with him, and so did my father, but he remained firm. He locked me in a tower room for the night and said that I had until dawn to spin the straw in the room into gold. If I did, I would marry his son and become a princess. If I didn’t, he would lock me up in the dungeons for the rest of my life.”

  Marie gasped. “Surely he wouldn’t have done such a thing! It wasn’t even you who made the claim.”

  Her mother shrugged. “I can’t say for sure, but I suspect you’re right. I suspect he meant only to scare us. But I certainly believed it at the time. I was utterly, utterly desperate. Just like that, my whole life was gone.”

  She stopped and gazed past Marie’s head and out the window. But her eyes were glazed, and Marie knew she was seeing a different room and a different window.

  “I spent half the night simply staring at the straw. I even tried spinning it. Nothing happened, of course. But I was young and couldn’t quite give up hope. I cried out for help and hoped that a godmother would come to rescue me.” She paused. “But it was someone else who came.”

  She shivered and forced her focus back onto Marie.

  “It was a man. A small man just like the one Rafe described. He offered me a way out, a bargain. He had a magic amulet, one that could turn anything into gold. He said he would use it to turn the straw into gold for me if I would make a bargain with him. By that point, I was willing to agree to just about anything.”

  “What did he want?” Despite her sense of betrayal at being lied to her whole life, Marie was finding herself fascinated by the story.

  “He wanted, he wanted… no,” her mother shook her head, “I’ll come back to that.”

  Marie opened her mouth to protest, but her mother cut her off.

  “After a little negotiation, I agreed to his bargain, and we made the pact. He turned the straw into gold just in time. The king couldn’t believe his eyes when he returned to the room in the morning. The whole kingdom celebrated, and the king wasted no time in packing up every last bit of the gold and sending it to Lanover. I was terrified that he was going to ask me to spin again. The amulet was a one-use item, and its power was gone. It wasn’t until later, when the ambassadors from the other kingdoms came to seek a meeting with him, that I understood why he hadn’t.

  “We were in the middle of planning a royal wedding, and the whole kingdom was celebrating, but the ambassadors were deadly serious. They came with one united demand from the monarchs of the other kingdoms. They insisted that the king immediately pass a decree outlawing me from spinning any further gold. They feared that gold would become devalued enough to destroy the economy of the entire Four Kingdoms.”

  The queen shook her head. “It seems so obvious now, but I knew nothing about such things then. The king agreed so quickly that I’m sure he had been thinking the same thing. I was just relieved to be given such an easy reprieve. My only remaining worry was what the king would do when he found out about my bargain.”

  “Yes, the bargain,” Marie jumped in eagerly, but her mother ignored her.

  “Thankfully my negotiations with the strange man had bought me time. And it turned out that my new husband, your father, was a kind man behind his formality. We had been married less than a year when I confessed to him what had happened.

  “At first, he didn’t believe me, but eventually I managed to convince him. I was terrified that he would be angry, that he would reject me for having married him under false pretences. But he thought of nothing but me and how to shield me from the consequences of my folly.”

  “Your father’s folly, you mean,” Marie couldn’t resist interjecting.

  “Well, yes, my father’s folly. But also my own folly in making such a pact. Your brother was born the year after that, and then your father organised for us to spend the next year in one of the remote royal properties deep in the forest. Your grandfather couldn’t understand why, but Richard was determined, and he carried his own way. I was so relieved.”

  “That was the year I was born,” said Marie. “When we were little children, I used to be jealous that William was born in the palace while I was only born in some forest lodge.” She smiled at the memory.

  Her mother went pale.

  “Yes,” she said, after a moment. “That was the year you were born. But you weren’t born in the lodge.”

 
; Marie’s smile fell away at her mother’s tone. “What do you mean? Where was I born?”

  “I’m afraid… I’m afraid I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know? You were there!” Marie wanted to laugh at her mother’s ridiculous words, but something in her expression stopped her.

  “I don’t know because I wasn’t there.”

  “What are you talking about?” The words made no sense, and Marie began to feel angry with her mother.

  “The bargain I made with the strange man was that one day he would bring me a child of his, and I would raise them as my own until he came to collect them. I agreed on the condition that he wait until after I had given birth to a legitimate heir. He was angry at first, but even in my fear, I knew my duty to the kingdom, and I held firm. Eventually he consented. That was why your father took us deep into the forest. So no one would ever know you weren’t ours.”

  Marie’s mind tried to process her mother’s words but failed. She couldn’t possibly be saying what Marie thought she was saying. The whole thing was ridiculous and impossible.

  The queen reached out and grasped both of Marie’s hands in her own. “I was reluctant at first, anyone would have been, but from the moment you were placed in my arms, everything changed. You looked up at me with the most trusting expression, and I knew instantly that you were always meant to be mine. I couldn’t love you more if you had come from my own body.”

  Marie pulled her hands free and strode over to the window. She stood there, looking out, her back to the room. Her mother wasn’t her mother, her father wasn’t her father, and her brother wasn’t her brother. It had all been a lie. Everything had been a lie.

  The queen continued talking, her voice growing more desperate. “I knew almost immediately that I could never bear to give you up, but it took me months and months to track the man down. I pleaded with him to make a new bargain with me. One where I got to keep you.”

  Her voice sank low again. “I think he found the whole thing amusing. He agreed that I could keep you if I could tell him his name. He gave me three days. It was utterly impossible, of course. I searched every book and talked to every teller of tales I could find, but I had no hope of finding the information. All these years I’ve kept searching, thinking maybe the knowledge would prove useful when he came to take you, but I’ve never managed to find it out.”

  Marie could hear the tears in her mother’s voice, but she didn’t turn around. After all¸ she thought, her mind strangely cold, she isn’t really my mother.

  “Every day I have lived in fear that today would be the day he came for you. But he never came. I even began to hope that perhaps he had changed his mind. Until now.”

  A long silence fell.

  Eventually her mother broke it. “So now you know why you can’t go after your brother. Now you know why you need to stay far away from the forest.”

  “Except he isn’t really my brother, is he?”

  “Don’t say that! We are your true family. No one could ever love you like we do.”

  “I notice you didn’t love me enough to tell me the truth.” Marie’s voice came out as cold as the strange ice that had invaded her mind. “Does William know?”

  “No, no,” the queen was openly crying now. “No one knows except your father and me. We had only two trusted servants in the forest with us, and they were elderly and have long since passed away.”

  “How convenient for you.”

  “Marie!” The queen gasped. “How can you say that? We were greatly grieved by their passing.”

  “Why shouldn’t I say it? I’m not a princess, after all, I can say what I like.”

  “Of course you’re a princess! You’re our daughter.”

  Marie finally whirled around. “But I’m not really your daughter. That’s what you’ve just been telling me. All my life, I’ve tried so hard to be the perfect princess. And I’ve wondered why it was so hard. Well, now I know why. Because I’m not a princess. When I think of everything I’ve sacrificed in the name of duty and family! And it was all a lie.”

  The queen didn’t seem to notice the tears streaming down her face. She certainly made no effort to wipe them away. “You are an incredible princess and you always have been. Northhelm is lucky to have you. We are lucky to have you.”

  “Have you ever stopped to consider if I was lucky to have you? Maybe I never wanted this life.”

  Marie paced once up and down the length of the room. “And what of Father?” she asked, and then quickly corrected herself. “I mean, the king.”

  The queen stood up and tried to take one of her hands, but Marie whipped it out of reach.

  “He’s still your father and he loves you as if you were his own flesh and blood. He doesn’t know this rebel is the same man, though. I’ve been trying all night to work up the courage to tell him.”

  A white-hot fury suddenly swept through Marie, melting the ice.

  “No, from what you’re telling me, it’s this rebel who’s my true father. So maybe the forest is exactly where I need to be.” Her voice was measured, but she could see each word burning across her mother’s face.

  For a moment, she felt guilty for causing pain, but then her anger overwhelmed the guilt, and she turned and fled from the room.

  Chapter 8

  She had fled without thought, but her feet took her back to her own rooms. For once, the familiar environment inflamed rather than soothed her. None of it was truly hers.

  She had spoken to her mother without thinking, but the words had taken root in her mind. If her true family was in the woods, then that was where she needed to be. Even as she packed a bag, she hadn’t quite decided whether by ‘true family’ she meant her birth father or the one member of her adoptive family who hadn’t lied to her.

  She had no way of knowing if her mother had already gone to her father or if she was still crying in her rooms. She stopped and shook her head. Not Mother or Father, she thought, the king and queen. It felt strange even in her head.

  Either way, she needed to get out of the palace fast. There was no way of predicting how… the king… would react to the news of William’s disappearance and her own enlightenment. It was an unprecedented situation. If he wanted to stop her leaving, he could do it.

  While she’d been gone, a maid had delivered a tray of breakfast. She paused only for a few mouthfuls and packed the rest into her bag. The palace residents were only just stirring when she left through one of the side gates. The guard made no attempt to stop her, merely giving a respectful half-bow.

  She wished she could have ridden her horse, a beautiful stallion, but since she wasn’t exactly planning to stroll into the rebel camp and announce herself as the princess of Northhelm, arriving with a royal horse wasn’t an option. She sighed. It was going to be a long walk.

  She had changed into her sturdiest pair of boots, but even so, her feet were pinching by the time she reached the edge of Northgate. The Northhelmian capital wasn’t as large as Rangmeros or Arcadie, the capitals of the neighbouring kingdoms, but it was still a long walk from the palace in the centre to the outskirts of the city.

  She turned to look back at her home. The white stone made it resemble the palace in Arcadie more than the grey castle of Rangmeros, but it was more utilitarian than its Arcadian counterpart. Still beautiful, but without as many elegant towers.

  She wondered if she’d ever call it home again.

  While she was contemplating the view, someone jostled her. She turned, an instinctive apology on her lips, and fear shot through her. A group of four men had appeared on the street and formed a loose circle around her. They were dirty and reeked of the tavern.

  She looked around wildly, but there was no one else in view. Clutching her bag closer to her chest, she tried to ignore them and continue on her way. Two of them moved to block her.

  Sucking up her courage, she stood as tall as she could and looked down her nose at them.

  “Excuse me,” she said, her vo
ice commanding, “you’re in my way.”

  One of them actually fell back a step, but the other laughed.

  “Well, well, well, ain’t you dignified. Looks like we have a member of the upper class amongst us, lads. I wonder what you’ve got in that bag?”

  He moved towards her, and Marie fell back a step. She wondered if she should try to run, but she knew there were more of them behind her, and she didn’t want to turn her back on the apparent ringleader.

  While she was still trying to decide, hands snaked around her, pinning her arms to her side. She struggled and kicked backwards, but he was even taller than she was and much stronger. Her kicks seemed to have no effect. The leader laughed again.

  Marie felt physically ill and wondered what the man would do if she was sick all over him. What good are all my diplomatic skills and dignified bearing now? she wondered. How did I ever get myself into this mess?

  She was still desperately trying to think of a way to break free when a young boy strolled into the street. Their eyes met, and she opened her mouth to call for help, but he turned and fled before she could do so.

  She wanted to curse after him, but truthfully she couldn’t blame him. What would she have done in a similar situation?

  She had been too distracted by the boy to listen to the continued taunts of the man in front of her, but her attention was wrenched back when he ripped the bag from her arms. The strap caught around her neck, and he yanked it roughly, making her cry out.

  He ignored her and opened the bag, pawing through its contents. He looked disappointed.

  “Come on,” he said. “With a voice like that and such fine clothes, you must have some jewels hidden somewhere. Where are they?”

  He took a step towards her, and Marie had a horrifying vision of being stripped down as they searched for hidden gold or jewels. She struggled again but with equal lack of effect.