The Thirteenth Princess Read Free

voice sounded harsh and accusing.
    â€œI am sorry,” I said fearfully. “I am—I just—”
    He looked at me a moment longer, and at last I dared to meet his eyes. To my surprise they were as green as mine and did not quite match his scowl. They did not seem angry to me, only sad, and I felt less afraid.
    â€œGo,” he said at last, and I ran, my tears dried and my heart suddenly full. As terrible as my birth had been, as cold as the king was to me, he was my father, and the princesses were my sisters. At last, at last, I truly felt that I had a family.

Chapter 2
I N W HICH THE D UMBWAITER I S D ISCOVERED
    F illed with a confidence that came from my new awareness of my past and my place, I began to get to know my sisters. I made sure that our paths crossed frequently. Sometimes when the girls were out boating on the lake, I would pass by on an errand, and we would shout and wave to each other. Or some of them might be out riding when I was in the woods collecting morels, and we would stop and talk for a moment. Aurelia especially made a point of speaking briefly to me when our father was not around. I thrilled to every moment of contact, as fleeting as such moments were.
    My feelings about the palace where we lived had changed as well. I was still a servant and did servant’s work there, it is true. I dusted and swept, made pastries with Cook, hunted mushrooms in the woods, and looked after the chickens, but I did these jobs gladly now, with the knowledge that the palace I tended was, in a small way, my own.
    One early spring day, when I was on the far side of the lake gathering wild strawberries, I looked up at the palace, daydreaming and marveling at its beauty. Father had it built over a wide stream, almost a river, held up by marble supports. The stream was where he had met my mother as she boated with her aunt, whom she was visiting from a distant kingdom. So strong was his attachment to my mother, and to the place where they first saw each other, that he insisted the stream itself become their home.
    The palace was made of pink stone that shone in the dawn and dusk light. It was not large, as it was hard to build outward over the stream, but instead it rose high, with towers and lacy minarets reaching toward the sky. It seemed to float above the water, and its pink stone and marble were reflected below so that you could not be sure which was the real palace, the one above the water or the one that seemed to rest amid the lily pads. It was even more beautiful at night. Cook had told methat while my mother was alive, and a party was planned, the torches on the turrets were lit and tiny lights were placed along the crenellations. Then truly it seemed like a fairy palace, when the lights danced above and below in the night breeze.
    What Father had not known was that as the years passed, the stream would gradually cease to flow, and a lake would form, its stagnant waters lapping around the mossy marble pilings. The palace itself grew damp, especially in the lower reaches. The walls dripped with moisture on humid days, and there were four servants whose job was entirely to scrub the greenish mold off the walls as it crept upward from the lake. We had few older workers in the palace, for as our servants aged, their joints stiffened in the damp. Only Nurse remained with us past the age of fifty, and she could endure the pain of arthritic hands and knees only because of her devotion to my sisters.
    From where I stood I could see my sisters’ tower window, and I squinted to try to make out their figures through the glass. Their room and the other family rooms were at the top of the palace, and below that were the servants’ quarters, where I slept. Even three floors above the lake, they were a little chilly and damp, and we had to change the stuffing in our mattresses every few months, or it smelled like rotting fruit.
    On the next floor down were the staterooms, where Father did business and