Chapter 11 In Which Happily Ever Et Cetera #2
“That’s how you are,” Bradley said. “You hold back the winter. You keep everyone warm. The cold and the dark don’t get in, when there’s you.”
“Oh,” George said, now sounding almost as damp as Bradley. “So, does that mean yes?”
“Oh, I’m so sorry—I didn’t mean to keep you waiting,” Bradley said. He was always, even in emotional extremis, awfully polite. “Yes.”
Either or both of them may have, at this point, allowed their general dewiness to turn into the shedding of a knightly tear or two.
There was also all sorts of embracing, fervent murmuring, et cetera.
Gretsella, for once in her life, felt the faintest stirrings of conscience over peeping at them in such a tender moment, and tried to retreat.
Instead, she walked backward into a particularly thorny hedge, shrieked, attempted to curse the hedge and all of its ancestors, misfired her curse on account of the three glasses of flaming punch, and accidentally turned the ornamental weeping cherry tree that Bradley and George were standing beside into a moose.
The former cherry tree—which had spent its entire life as flora, didn’t know the first thing about fauna, and wasn’t enjoying anything about its new and alarming circumstances—began mournfully honking and attempting to flap the wings it didn’t have.
“Mother?” Bradley called out into the darkness. “Is that you?”
“No!” Gretsella called back.
“Oh, good,” Bradley said. “I thought I heard you in the hedge, cursing things.” Then he took a moment to move out of moose range before he went back to kissing his fiancé.
Gretsella and Bradley had planned to depart bright and early the next morning.
This plan did not come to fruition. Gretsella woke up in a sweaty, unhappy pile of herself past noon to the sound of a knock on the door.
She flailed up into a sitting position just as her son came bursting into the room, all beaming smiles, followed a moment later by a distinctly uncomfortable-looking Sir George. “Mother, we’re engaged!” Bradley said.
“Ah!” Gretsella said, settling back down onto her pillows. “Another piece of surprising, but this time very agreeable, news! Please draw the curtains, Bradley.”
Bradley did so, then flung himself onto the bed next to her to babble happily about what sorts of flower arrangements they might have for a summer wedding. Gretsella closed her eyes and tried to pretend that the sound of his voice was the sound of seagulls squawking over the crash of ocean waves.
“So,” Sir George said when his betrothed took a second to breathe, “the news was surprising?”
“Yes,” Gretsella said. “Surprising, exactly as it wouldn’t be if I’d already known about it.”
“If you’d been, for instance, crouching drunkenly in a nearby hedge as I proposed?”
“Exactly,” Gretsella said. “I’m surprised and delighted by this news, because I didn’t spend any time yesterday trying to back out of a particularly thorny hedge.
” Then, in an entirely uncharacteristic fit of goodwill: “And if I had drunkenly gotten stuck in a hedge and turned a small tree into a very confused moose last night in the middle of your romantic evening, I’m sure that it would have been a rare misstep on my part that I would take care never to repeat.
If I had done such a thing, that is, which I certainly didn’t. ”
Sir George stared at her for a long, appraising moment. Then he smiled and shook his head. “And if I had seen you drunkenly cursing things from the hedges last night, I’m sure that I would accept your apology.”
Gretsella straightened up in bed, affronted. “Who apologized? Witches never apologize!”
“My apologies,” said Sir George, whom she now suspected of twinkling at her.
Gretsella generally couldn’t abide a twinkle, but she couldn’t help but appreciate the conspiratorial air of this one.
She suppressed a smile. Then she said, severely, “And I suppose you’ll be coming back to Brigandale with us, then?
” Her tone said that he most certainly would be if he knew what was good for him.
Gretsella hadn’t spent all that time bringing down the national government just for Bradley to end up living hours away from her in some overpriced downtown apartment.
She’d destroy the economy for a second time if she had to.
“Mother,” Bradley said, breaking back into the conversation and looking suddenly nervous, “George and I were thinking, ah, that we would get a house in the village, when we go home. So I’ll be able to walk over to see you whenever I like.
Won’t that be nice?” He was anxious, obviously, about telling her that he wouldn’t be moving back into the cottage with her.
“Good,” she said loudly. “Then I’ll only have to see you whenever I like. Who wants a man around the house all day and night anyway? High time you were out in a place of your own!”
Bradley looked relieved. Gretsella glared at him, then turned her head just enough to slip her clever new son-in-law-to-be a very quick wink. Before they both left, she sat up in bed. “Bradley,” she said, “wait a moment. I’d like to speak to you alone.”
He waited, as polite as ever, his kind, open face gone a little creased with concern. “What is it, Mother? I hope you’re not upset about—”
“Don’t be silly, Bradley,” she said. “George is wonderful. I just wanted to—”
She struggled with herself for a moment before clambering out of bed. She was in just her nightgown. Her exposed ankles struck her as pathetic. Then, before she could talk herself out of it, she launched herself toward him to give him a squeeze.
“I’m very happy for you,” she said. “And—proud.” Her voice wobbled.
“You were a much better king than you needed to be. You tried so hard, and you were kind and just and true, and when you realized you were in over your head, you asked for help, and when that was too much too, you stepped back to let someone else have a try. You were a very good king, even when you were a bad one. I love you very much, Bradley. And I’m very, very proud to be your mother. ”
Bradley, the soft, silly thing, cried. Gretsella, for her part, had not been soft and silly for many, many years. She’d made herself tough. She’d made herself clever.
She let herself cry that morning. She held her son and let him hold her back.
Later that afternoon, when they were prepared to depart, Gretsella held them up only slightly, having one last job left to do.
The faded old dress that Janet had lent Gretsella when she first arrived in the capital was still hanging in Gretsella’s wardrobe.
Gretsella used a pair of nail scissors to carefully snip out the name Carrots from where it had been neatly embroidered, presumably by Janet’s mother many years earlier.
Witches have their ways, and one of their ways is to make sure that everyone assumes their ways are much more impressive than they actually are.
Then she wrote a note, folded it up inside the dress, and left the little bundle outside the king’s bedchamber. The note read as follows:
Dear Carrots,
Once you were a little girl who thought that the world was unfair to her.
Too bad. Children shouldn’t be taken so seriously, especially when they have already grown up.
The world doesn’t need to be taught a lesson about your true inner worth.
You are a WITCH. When you are a witch, it doesn’t matter who you used to be or who you wish you were.
You are just as you are, and your worth is exactly what it is.
Don’t try to argue with me. I know that I’m right, because you are just like me when I was young, and because I am always right.
When you are sick of trying to prove that you aren’t the sort of person who was ever called Carrots, come into the woods and ask for me. You’ll be given directions.
Wickedly,
Gretsella, the Witch of Brigandale with the Reasonable Prices
PS: When you come, please bring some of that nice white soap that smells like gardenias and some good chocolates, which are difficult to buy in the forest.
This errand done, Gretsella and the two young gentlemen piled into a very nice carriage—courtesy of King Janet, who was trying to butter Gretsella up in the hopes that she would undo the Curse of Honesty (Gretsella knew this was what Janet was doing because Janet had very honestly told her so when she asked)—and got on the highway toward Brigandale.
They’d hardly gone fifteen minutes before they heard the sound of a horse galloping behind them.
“What new nonsense is this?” Gretsella asked, and stuck her head out the window to look.
The new nonsense was Herman, who reined in his horse as he drew close and immediately looked sheepish.
“Uh,” he said, “I was thinking, ma’am. I was thinking that I’m getting sick of living in the capital.
All of those buildings everywhere—it makes the horses nervous.
And I saw that Lord Brigandale was looking for a new stablemaster.
I thought I could use a bit of a change of scene, ma’am. ”
Gretsella eyed him. He looked back at her unblushingly, until he blushed.
“Well,” Gretsella said, “if we’re going to be neighbors, you might as well call me Gretsella.”