While Beauty Slept Read Free

completely understand; the nature of relations between men and women was unclear to a girl of my age. But I can still hear the harshness in her words. She blamed herself for what had happened, perhaps even more than the man who had cast her aside. How I wish I could reach back in time and release the burden of guilt that weighed so heavily upon her! Had I been older, more compassionate, she might have told me everything and found some measure of peace in the confession. But perhaps it was for the best that the secret of my parentage remained hidden. What would a girl of my age have done with such dangerous knowledge?
    “So I was not born at the castle?” I asked, a child still, and concerned above all with my place in the story.
    Mother shook her head. “No, you were born in town, in St. Elsip.”
    “At your sister’s?”
    My aunt Agna was the wife of a cloth merchant, a mysterious figure who sent rolls of wool each Christmas, allowing us to make new clothes when our old ones were shredded with wear. But I had never met her. Having come up in the world, she preferred to keep her distance from our family’s poverty.
    “Agna did her best,” Mother said. “She gave me money and some swaddling clothes. But she would not have me in her home. She was a respectable married woman with children of her own. I did not want her reputation to suffer for my mistake.”
    “What did you do?” I asked.
    “I found a rooming house, run by a woman who had once been in the same state,” Mother said. “She was kind, in her way, and helped you come into the world. Without her you might never have lived past a few days. It was there that I met your father.”
    “You mean Mr. Dalriss?”
    “Father,” she hissed. “You will call him Father, miss. He saved us from starvation, never forget that. Every time you bite into a crust of bread, you should be thanking him.”
    “Yes, Mother.”
    I feared she was angry enough to walk the rest of the way home in silence, so it was a relief when she continued her story.
    “You were two years old. I had sewn a few dresses for my landlady to pay my keep, but after a time there was nothing more I could barter. She allowed us to sleep in her kitchen, provided I help with the cooking. Mr. Dalriss came to town to buy a new horse and heard that my landlady ran a clean house. He saw me serving at dinner, inquired about me, and I suppose he thought he might as well come home with a wife. The first time he spoke to me was to ask if I would marry him. I said yes immediately, and gratefully. Not many men would take a penniless girl with a bastard child. And here was a man who owned his own farm, his own land. I had prepared myself to accept far less promising offers.”
    Perhaps he had been kinder then, less worn down by disappointment. But I could not imagine that Mr. Dalriss was ever an appealing prospect. Mother must have been desperate indeed for her to have accepted him.
    “I worked so hard to show him he had made the right choice,” Mother said. “When I told him I was with child not four months after our marriage, it was the first time I saw him smile. He told me, ‘I knew you were good breeding stock.’ I will always remember that, because it was the closest to a kind word I’ve ever gotten from him.”
    He had chosen my mother as he would a cow. She had already proved she could bear a healthy child, so he felt confident she would produce a pack of children to work the farm. And Mother had kept her side of the bargain. Did she ever regret the choice she’d made?
    “The man, my true father . . .” I began.
    Mother twisted around and slapped me hard on the cheek. “You are never to speak of him,” she said. “He would not call you daughter. He would spit on you.”
    The cruelty of her words brought tears to my eyes, more than the blow. Father would have beaten me again for crying, but my mother softened at the sight of my misery. She wrapped her arms around my body, pressing my face