Chapter 2
Belle-Belle
After three months passed, we received word from the new capital in the northeast, Laons.
King Aristide was not to suffer the indignity from Emperor Matapa for long, and thus he published a decree that all the gentlemen of the kingdom must come serve in his army or send a son.
They would be well-provided with horses and weapons as needed and must be willing to support all the king’s undertakings to win back what was rightly his…
but each bringing his own men, with their own horses and weapons encouraged, or so the message seemed to indicate.
It was no great secret that the king had been impoverished by the constant war, and was in need of funds as well as knights.
However, not only the words, but their implications were quite serious: the oaths all the nobles had to swear to their liege and to their subjects had become governed by magic in the last few generations…
…when the faeries appeared.
Our land was too war-torn to devote the resources to better attempt to understand which oaths sank terrible teeth into their breakers and which did not—though minstrels bringing news from afar told us that scholars in Kar Hadast to the south and Holbaek in the far north were studying the issue to better understand it—but we knew an oath broken was more likely to erupt in serious consequences the more its breaker had power.
A child’s promise bore less value than that of an adult; a peasant’s oath was lesser than a lord’s.
In my lifetime alone, a nobleman three counties over had sworn to take a low-born maiden as his wife, wishing to have dominion over her.
He swore the old wedding vows, wishing her to be exclusively his, but not intending to keep his promise to only share his bed with her.
While the young wife had her suspicions, she was not able to prove anything—and did not have to.
The next time her husband opened his mouth to lie, his body split open, blood pouring to the ground, while his ribs formed into a lyre strung with his hair and sinew.
It sang a song that led her to the other lover, and the two women ruled in the lord’s stead thenceforth.
This night, though, my father gathered me and my sisters in his decaying salon to relay this information, and oh, how he trembled with fear.
“What are we do to? If a family of rank is unable to send someone to serve the kingdom, they must pay a fearsome fine. I cannot pay the tax, thus I am in a terrible bind, facing ruin or the death of an oathbreaker.”
Nobody uttered the other consequence that we all inferred: that there might be a fate worse than death, a faerie-devised torment for our father, if fate’s fortunes did not favor him at random.
I threw myself at his feet, caring not if I dirtied my dress. Marguerite and Colette followed as quickly as they might, rearranging their skirts so as to face the fewest stains later.
“Father, we will find a solution,” I said.
“Surely we can seek employment in the village, to teach the girls their letters, to supplement the midwife’s skills in mixing potions?
” Marguerite was a fair hand with the needle, and Colette could work wonders with herbs.
I was less talented in the womanly arts, preferring to ride horses and play-fight with my cousins back before their departure.
Even now, I hunted small game regularly.
“I will not suffer my daughters to work like peasants,” he moaned.
We all fell to comforting him once more, but I could see Marguerite’s mouth straightening into a line.
She was quite good at making sure I knew my place, but that also meant that she knew her place, and as eldest, she would act to save our family.
She was gone the next morning. So was a horse. Colette whispered to me that she’d overheard Marguerite arguing with Papa—arguing!—but their tone had scaled back from dangerous heights before long.
Marguerite was back two days later, dressed rather astonishingly in men’s clothing. She wore it ill, though, scowling prettily as she dismounted and sent the horse back to the stables. I hid my smile behind my hand; she was brave, I’d give her that, but she was also too headstrong to be cunning.
She flounced past me and Colette to change back into her own clothing, leaving us to speculate on what had happened. Our father did not chastise her for going, only shaking his head as though he’d known how it would end up.
Colette tried the following week. She was better on a horse than Marguerite, though not as good as I.
By now I had pieced together that an old shepherdess had recognized Marguerite as a woman even in men’s attire, thereby ruining her plan to serve in Papa’s stead.
Papa praised her prudence in returning, for if even a peasant woman could recognize her as a disguised woman, surely someone in the royal court would as well.
The deadline to either send a member of the family to serve as a knight or pay the fine loomed. It pained me to think of leaving our father, but I threw myself on my knees before him and begged his leave to depart.
“I know not to wish success for myself beyond that which my sisters have achieved, but please allow me to try, Papa,” I pleaded.
“You know I ride and hunt, and perhaps I stand a better chance at succeeding in this ruse, that I may return sooner to you.” I rested my head in his lap, remembering how he would read stories to me when I was young.
As he aged and his eyesight worsened, I had started to read to him, and oh, how I treasured those times.
“Oh, dear daughter, your absence might mean my death!” my father lamented, stroking my hair. “Even if you should carry out your journey safely, I would not be there to see you crowned in laurels. I will not suffer the same fate as my brother, separated from his beloved child.”
“If my going away troubles you, if troubles me even more,” I responded, not looking him in the eye. It was the truth, but a partial truth; I would be glad to be away from my sisters. I knew it was not their fault they took out their misery on me, but that did not mean I enjoyed it.
His frail arms embraced me, and through his tears, he gave me his blessing.
Marguerite had altered one of our father’s old riding suits for herself, and in turn adapted it for Colette, who was bustier than her.
By the time it was my turn, the poor suit had more stitches in it than our patched-up old quilts My sisters had each taken the only two good horses and returned them lamed, so I rode out on a wretched horse at dawn.
The open air agreed with me, and with my horse, who whickered pleasantly as we crossed through many a meadow on our path to the makeshift capital. Although it was not her fault, she was old and worn down, so we did not make as good a pace as I had hoped.
We had stopped for a midday meal and then gone a few more hours when I noticed that the meadow we were in had a sharp ravine on one side of it. Bushes dotted the periphery, twisted and thorny.
An old shepherdess crouched at the side, clad in a tattered blue dress and cloak, and I noticed some sheep nearby.
Remembering my disguise, and my intention of emulating an honorable young man, I rode to her side.
“What are you doing, shepherdess? Do you require assistance?”
“Oh, young man, I am trying to rescue this sheep that has fallen into the ditch. Half my flock has perished in this way, and if someone would help me I could save this poor creature at least.”
“Truly, I shall help you,” I decreed, trying to sound as brave as I could. The last time I’d touched a sheep, an ornery goat had head-butted me for my efforts.
I dismounted, counting on my horse to be too docile to run away, and set about maneuvering through the hedges, taking more than one thorn to my hands while working my way in.
I slid down to the ravine, gaining many a rock in my ill-fitting boots, and located the sheep.
It bleated at me but did not fight when I gathered it into my arms and struggled back up the steep sides of the ditch.
It lost about as much wool to the hedges as I did skin, and I had to push its fuzzy butt through rather forcefully, but we made it through.
Panting, I nudged the sheep towards its owner. She knelt to give its head a good rubbing.
“Here is your sheep, good madam, and it seems to be in tolerably good condition still,” I said, trying to discreetly pluck some thorns from my sleeves.
She looked up from where she was crouching, surprisingly spry for someone with a head of fully white hair. And her eyes gleamed brightly as she spoke.
“You have done a kindness to one who is well-equipped to show her gratitude. I recognize you, sweet Belle-Belle, just as I recognized your sisters when they passed through this meadow. But they were so hard-hearted and ungracious that I took measures to prevent them from continuing their journey. You have acted very differently, and you shall profit by it, for I am a faerie and am glad to heap benefits on those who are deserving.”
I took a small step back, forgetting my pretense of being a brave youth. Not simply because she had recognized me as a woman, dashing my disguise to dust, but also because the fair folk could be quite fickle and dangerous.
“I see that your horse is terribly skinny, so I shall give you another.”
She sprang to her feet and stamped her crook into the ground, and I heard a neighing coming from behind the bushes guarding the ravine. Moments later, a fine golden stallion stepped into view.
He was everything I could admire in a horse, and he cavorted around the meadow while I watched. His eyes, too, glinted with intelligence, and I began to fear the faerie gift.
“My old horse, though…”
“Fear not, young Belle-Belle, I shall make sure she is cared for. And you are, yet again, to be praised for your kind heart. Your new horse is named Comrade, and he shall be your faithful friend and advisor.”