Chapter 26 Knight in Shining Armor #2
I don’t know! I’m not the sort of prince—or minstrel, or beggar, or whatever it is I am now—that jumps fences and rescues beautiful ladies! I have no idea the first step in scaling a wall! And yet, here I go!
Reaching up on my tiptoes, I can just barely curl my fingers around the top of the wooden gate. I give it a tug. If I’m lucky, it’s so rickety that I can yank it right down and saunter through like a hero.
I am not lucky.
Am I strong enough to pull myself up? My princely body was not especially toned, but perhaps the fairy blessed me with a greater amount of upper body strength? I grip the gate more tightly, straining to hoist myself over the top.
Not that lucky, either.
A running start, perhaps?
I let go of the gate and walk backward six paces, eyeing it nervously, as if it’s an untamed stallion that’s likely to lash out if I touch it again.
Then, with an awkward yell—why did I yell? I’m not rushing into battle—I run toward the gate.
I jump too soon, too far away to actually grab the top, and flail uselessly in midair before falling the great distance (three inches) back to earth with a heavy thud.
I cough. No one saw that.
I hope.
If I glance around now though, whoever is (theoretically) watching will know how embarrassed I am. And somehow, the admission that I am embarrassed would be more humiliating than pretending I don’t care about all the imaginary eyes that are boring into my back.
I can almost hear the derision, the laughter. The whispered insults, the tittering laughs that erupt as soon as I move away in the crowd …
I’m not in the shady lane behind the duke’s house anymore, but in a ballroom, in the courtroom, at a formal dinner. I’m reliving the politeness, the oily smiles that dissolve as soon as I move to the next courtier, the barely-disguised scorn.
And the only way to bear it all was to pretend that I didn’t care, even though I did.
Oh, I did.
And that’s why I asked—no, begged, tears slipping down my face like the misplaced little child I am—that fairy godmother to take it away from me. “I don’t want to be the prince. I don’t want the crown. Please, please … just make me not the prince anymore. I don’t care about anything else.”
The godmother warned me that I might not like the consequences. I didn’t care. I just needed to be out of it all. I was never supposed to receive the title. I’m not a good fit. I don’t have the brains to rule. I’d be a pathetic leader.
Pathetic, Agatha had said.
Foolish. Idiotic.
She didn’t know how true those words were.
If she could tell, from only one meeting, how useless, how helpless, how utterly inadequate I am …
“Sir? Sir?”
A voice breaks my reverie, and I start, my face heating as I realize I’m standing in the middle of the lane, my eyes hot with unshed tears, my fingers curled into defensive fists that I don’t even know how to swing. A young girl tugs on my sleeve to get my attention.
“Sir?” she says again.
I clear my throat. When I speak, my voice is even gruffer than usual, thick with my shame. “What?”
She cringes away, and my face flames even hotter. She looks like she’s afraid I’ll bite her head off.
Is this really the sort of man I am? Too inept to climb a simple gate and a danger to scrawny children?
I swallow the thickness in my throat and try to smooth the scowl lines from my face. “Yes?”
“Do you need to get into the duke’s place?” she asks. She settles a basket on her hip, dipping her tawny-blonde head toward the gate.
“Um. Yes.”
“You can follow me in,” she says.
I blink, but she’s already skittering away. She looks over her shoulder, probably wondering if I’m going to come along.
“How—” I clear my throat again. “How are you going to get in?”
Her look of fear vanishes, replaced by a look which I can only describe as how did such an idiot survive into adulthood. “I’m going to open it?”
She does.
Because it’s not locked.
Why … why did I not try that?
“Oh,” I say stupidly.
“Are you coming?” The girl holds the gate open with one hand, the other supporting the basket that’s too large for her.
“Oh,” I repeat. “Uh, let me carry that for you?”
The girl shrugs. “Alright.” She passes the basket off to me, and I follow her through the gate and into the duke’s backyard.
We enter through a tunnel of unkempt bushes and spill out onto a wide, wild lawn, hedges stretching out on either side.
The man who’d dragged Agatha away seems to be stuck halfway inside one.
That’s where the curses I’d heard were coming from, I gather.
“Er.” I turn my head so the ruffian doesn’t catch sight of me. He seems rather preoccupied, but perhaps it’s an act. To lure me in? On further thought, that doesn’t make much sense. “Do you know if the hedge normally eats people?”
The girl stares at me.
I have a sudden realization. I’m not clever and I’m not quick, which is probably why this has taken me so long.
“You know what I like about Agatha?” I say to the girl, who has no clue what I’m talking about. “She looks at me like that, too.”
“Sir?”
The memories that had me frozen in the lane puff away like flower seeds in a prairie wind. “People used to pretend to like me to my face, then laughed behind my back. Agatha, though—she never pretends to like me at all.”
“Is Agatha your lady?” the girl asks hesitantly.
Is she? I glance to the right, where the thug still struggles in the hedge. I stand a little straighter and answer the girl with unwarranted confidence. “She is.”
“But she doesn’t … like you?” The girl sounds doubtful. “Isn’t your lady supposed to like you?”
I shrug. “I’d rather be despised by Agatha than adored by anyone else.”
And it’s true. So here I am, doing my best—which is not very good—to storm the duke’s (figurative) castle and rescue a fair maiden who has no use for me. I hold up the girl’s basket. “Where does this go?”
She opens her mouth to direct me, but she’s interrupted by a figure in cobwebbed clothes limping quickly through the wild yard.
“Excuse me!” the man says as he hurries by.
My mouth drops open.
“Henry?”
Agatha
I haven’t reached a gate, but this might be even better: I’ve found a loose board in the fence itself. I jab an elbow to test how much it will give and smile. I can work with this.
Even if I have to chew myself out again.
Thankfully, it does not seem like it will come to that. A shove, and the board moves again, more this time. I lean on it, feeling it creak beneath me. Good.
I shuffle so I can wedge a foot into the gap at the bottom of the fence. The loose board shifts as one of the nails holding it precariously together pops out. If I can just push a little harder, the whole board should give …
It does. It does!
I laugh triumphantly. The board, now listing uselessly, leaves a gap that’s not quite big enough to squeeze through, but I’m going to do it anyhow.
I’m going to do it anyhow.
First my right arm, then my shoulder and my head duck through the gap. The branches of the hedge reach after me, trying to accompany me into the shady lane beyond the fence.
“Sorry.” I wriggle my hips through. “You have roots. I don’t.”
My skirt was already torn, and one of the tears snags on the nail sticking out uselessly from the fence.
A loud ripping sound accompanies me as I finish shoving myself through, and I burst into the lane with a swirl of tattered clothing and a soft whirlwind of leaves from the bushes.
I take only a moment to catch my breath, then I run helter-skelter down the lane.
Lem
“Henry!” I yell again, since he ignores me the first time. I press the basket back into the girl’s arms. “Excuse me.”
Henry’s already hurried back through the hedge tunnel. His limp hasn’t slowed him much, and I have to hustle to catch up.
“Henry! Wait!”
I don’t know if he finally hears his name, or if his attention is drawn by the fact that I’m speaking in Rhylorrian, but he slows and looks over his shoulder. His gaze flicks over me, searching for someone or something else, then jerks back, his eyes widening in surprise.
“Lem?”
Relief floods my chest. He recognized me. “Have you seen Lady Agatha?”
Shouting comes from the other side of the hedge. Henry shakes his head. “She was ahead of me, last I saw.”
“Ahead of you?” I peer both ways down the lane. “But where—?”
“No time. That oaf will be after us in a moment.” He grabs my arm to haul me off.
I freeze, digging in my heels. What should I do? Go with Henry, or search for Agatha? If she was ahead, why didn’t she come through the gate first? Is she still within the yard?
I shake my head and pull myself out of Henry’s grip. “I don’t care,” I say. “I’ve got to help Agatha.”
Agatha
I feel bad about leaving Lem’s brother behind. Truly, I do.
But not bad enough to stop running.
My skirt trails in streamers behind me as I pelt down the lane, my side already aching from the exertion. I’m not a runner, and I haven’t had anything to eat today, and I’d much prefer to find a nice mossy spot under an oak tree and lie down for a bit of a snooze.
But whenever that thug extricates himself from the hedge, he’s sure to be on my trail, and I will not let him find me sleeping on the side of the road like a stupid child in a fairy story.
I’m not concerned with direction at the moment.
I only run down the hill because it’s easier than running up, and in general, returning to the more populated areas of Glen Violet seems like the wise course.
I can blend in with the crowds—or at least, I can find security in the crowds.
Perhaps I can find a benefactor, someone who can take me in, shelter me, give me a place to lick my wounds while I figure out what to do next, wonder what’s happening to Lem …
Silly. Lem’s probably still at the inn, waiting for Henry to show up and tell him what to do.
I groan. Going back to the inn is the least responsible decision; that’s probably the first place the duke will check when my escape is discovered, which it already has been. But Lem is almost certainly still there, waiting for rescue, and I can at least tell him where Henry was a little while ago.
Well, I never intended to play the part of the knight in shining armor, but if I must, I must.
Without looking behind me, I wipe sweat off my forehead and plunge down, down, down into the city.