A Dove's Tale

Chapter 160

The day after Chevalier's birthday was a Sunday. It still felt strange to dress in my least formal clothes before I went to church, especially after wearing an elaborate ball gown the night before, but I knew it felt stranger still to walk into a chapel full of servants and not look like them. At least the commoner's dresses I had were fancier than anything I'd ever owned when I actually was a commoner, so I didn't feel underdressed. My best used to be the worst in the congregation, after all.

So much had changed, and yet, so much was the same.

The palace chapel was a beautiful building, much larger than the one Mother and I attended in the village, and every window bore ornate stained glass images of roses. A massive organ took up the entire wall behind the altar, its golden pipes extending all the way to the ceiling. People filled most of the pews, but none were members of the royal family. There were a handful of party guests in attendance, though. Whenever there was a big event, I could expect to see at least one or two of the visiting nobility in church. Otherwise, it was just me and the servants. The people I used to work with.

It had been really hard at first. Walking into a new church without Mother had been difficult enough, and then I had to fake a smile and tell everybody to stop bowing and curtsying, and please, just call me Ivetta, not Princess. And they'd all assumed I wanted to sit in the front row where everybody could see me. What I'd wanted to do was burst into tears and run away, but I sat there, trying to focus on the sermon, not looking at the unopened Bible on my lap, knowing a single glance at it would do me in. I'd fled as soon as the service was over and spent the rest of the day crying in my room.

Sometimes, I still did that.

I glanced at the empty pew beside me. Mother and I used to sit alone at the back of church until I was seven or eight years old, when she took me next door to volunteer our assistance to Mrs. Stotts. Baby Henry had been squalling all afternoon, and Mrs. Stotts had been the definition of harried when she opened the door, bouncing him on her shoulder while Jason, then a toddler, tugged at her skirt and jabbered on and on. She was far too tired to care about the gossip and rumors regarding Mother's background. Mother and I took them off her hands until Mr. Stotts returned from work, and it wasn't long until we were babysitting regularly, inside and outside of church, which meant we weren't sitting alone anymore.

I smiled, envisioning the familiar scene: Rachel, asleep on her father's lap, looking so small encircled in his brawny blacksmith's arms; one or both of the twins sitting on my lap, much to Jason's dismay, although he couldn't explain why that bothered him or even meet my eye for all his awkward blushing; Mother and Mrs. Stotts separating a fidgeting Henry from a grumpy Ron, warning them with looks and hissed shushing to behave. Of course, the seating arrangement changed as necessary to keep everybody quiet and under control.

My mind was wandering a lot today. I tried to return my attention to the pastor's sermon and the open Bible on my lap, but it wasn't long before my focus shifted again, this time to the notes Mother had scrawled in the margin on every page. It was just a word here or there, with an occasional paragraph of thoughts in places.

So true.

Love this.

Remember!

It was a breath of fresh air sometimes, like I had a little piece of her still speaking to me. And sometimes, it felt suffocating.

She wasn't the reason I was in church today, not directly. I hadn't walked through those doors for tradition's sake, or out of a sense of duty to her. Yes, she had brought me to church every Sunday as far back as I could remember, and we'd read the Bible together every morning, too, but somewhere along the way, it stopped being her faith and truly became mine. Although I'd nearly lost it when she fell ill.