Upon A Time

Chapter Eighteen

“Fetch the small blue bottle from my bedside table, in the drawer on the left side,” the Queen said to Charlotte, gesturing toward a door on the other side of the room. Charlotte was too stunned to move for a moment. She was being asked to run an errand in the Queen’s own room?  

“Go on!” The old woman added, spurring Charlotte at last into action. She returned with the bottle, secured the door again, and hurried to begin administering the medicine to Julien’s future bride.

The girl on the chaise stirred, and out of the corner of her eye, Charlotte noticed that Thomas had stopped eating and was still staring. Julien’s betrothed was a remarkable beauty, to be sure, with full lips painted red and her hair in perfect ringlets to her waist. Her gown was of pure white, and even Charlotte thought the woman looked much like an artistic depiction of an angel.

“Wake up, child, listen to me!” The Queen addressed the maid now, and she slowly opened her eyes and sighed.

“Your Majesty?”

“He is injured, yet your betrothed lives!”

Upon hearing the news a second time the girl had a completely different, unexpected reaction; she laughed.

She laughed, and clasped her hands to her mouth in joy that seemed oddly inappropriate considering the news she’d just been given.

Instead of immediately expressing her relief, praising God for the miracle, or even inquiring as to the condition of the Prince, the maid spoke instead a sentence that made Charlotte’s stomach turn. “I am saved!”

“I beg your pardon?” Charlotte stood taller beside the chaise and balled her hand into a fist around the bottle of medication she’d administered.

“Now I will not have to marry the Duke! I am saved!”

“That is fine news, indeed,” Thomas said, using a napkin to wipe his hands before rising and moving toward the three women. “No one should have to marry any man capable of such evil.”

“You have no idea,” the girl shook her head. “The things he has said to me make me sick to the point of wishing for death to take me before we were wed; and now I am free!”

“And you are pleased the Prince will recover,” Charlotte prompted, causing embarrassment to dawn upon the maid’s features.

“Of course. He will be quite well, I am sure?”

“He will live,” Charlotte replied, and Thomas decided it was time to intervene. He knew Charlotte’s limits, and he also knew her feelings for the Prince were clear. If she began speaking the way he certain she was close to doing, her feelings toward this young maid would be clear, as well.

“I am Thomas Vallery, My Lady. I am the one who found the Prince at the edge of the forest, in a stream and barely alive. This is Charlotte. She nursed the Prince’s wounds as her father treated them, and he has been in their care all this time. But while we are here we have taken the names of second cousins of the Queen, to enable us to gain entry into the palace. So I am to be known as Michel and she as Isabel.”

She nodded her understanding. “I am called many things, mostly by the town criers who like to inject mystery and fiction into daily life to try and make the people believe in magic.”

“You are not rightfully called Ella?” Charlotte asked.

“I am rightfully called Renee, but no one ever uses my name. I am ‘My Lady’ and ‘the future queen’… merely a title now. I am also known as the Prince’s betrothed, ’Ella’, to go with the whole ‘cinder-maid’ story manufactured by the Court. Along with the myth of fairy godmothers and magic coaches.” She shrugged. “There was nothing magical or destined to be about our union. It was fully arranged, in advance.”