[Books of Bayern 1] The Goose Girl (12 page)

The line moved quickly, though it was long, and Ani soon found herself wishing she had thought to bring along a shred of breakfast from Gilsa's bag of food. The bite of hunger made her grumpy, and her thoughts grumbled,
Unfair, unfair. To have to eat out of others'

foodstuff and hope for goodness and charity, to he coinless and placeless. This palace
would have been my home.
She bent her neck back to stare up at the sheer height of the palace spires, each glittering with windows and a wind-nipped banner.

She glared down at herself, leaning against the wall in travel-crumpled clothing, nearly last in a line of patient peasants, hungry, with feet aching on the soft soles of Finn's boots.

This is not who I am,
she thought.
So who am
1? She did not answer her own question. Her mind was filling with thoughts of breakfast foods—molasses rolls, cooked apples, boiled eggs with cheese, nut breads, fresh sausages. She swallowed against her hollow stomach and waited. The line inched forward.

At last her end of the line reached the cool shadow of the palace doors. Ani stepped forward and felt herself nearly knocked over with royal smell. Her stomach turned about as though it would jump into her neck and choke her until she cried. Floor soap, floor wax, curtain perfume, old metal, expensive stone, drinking water, garden roses, mending paste, armor oil, skin soap, rosewater. A kingdom of smells poked at her memories of her father, and of being comfortable and clean. Just a few months had passed since she had left home, but the smells came at her as though from far away, an echo of a memory, like being reminded of a dead loved one in the face of a stranger.

She barely noticed stepping forward each time the line moved, absorbed in a reverie of memories. The man before her had just entered the king's chamber when Ani saw Selia.

elia's pale hair was striking among the dark heads, and she wore it up in a cap of curls tucked into a jeweled net. She was dressed in one of Ani's new gowns, the rust-colored one with the simple bodice. She strolled with slow confidence, so pleased with herself that she almost betrayed smugness, accompanied by two other women in attire of the Bayern fashion— long-sleeved tunics and wide skirts cut from separate cloth. They laughed.

Ani did not move. Her feet were heavy cobblestones. She bowed her head and tensed herself for discovery, listening to the soft sway of Selia's skirts, the rustling of claimants as they moved aside and guessed at bowing. When the women turned down another corridor, Ani looked up to see the chamber-mistress motioning for her to enter.

Selia is here, in the palace, in my dress.

"Come, you're next," said the chamber-mistress.

Selia is here, and that means she has killed them all—Talone, Adon, Dano, Radal,
Ingras, all.

"Step quickly, girl, as there's a line until tomorrow."

Ani held her breath and entered the chamber. It was long and narrow, with a window in the ceiling that poured hot sunlight onto the pale marble floor. Ani wanted to squint at the brilliance. The image of Selia still burned in her eyes, like looking into darkness after staring at fire, and she walked forward blindly.

She knew there were guards in the corners and beside each bright column. She did not raise her eyes to them. Ungolad would be somewhere close to Selia. His men were in the city looking for her, and here she had come to the palace, a mouse to the cheese, to announce herself before them, inviting them to simply murder her like her companions. Ani stopped, afraid that if she continued moving, she would run away.

"Come closer," said the king.

He was a wide man who seemed tall, even sitting. His hands, resting on the arms of the finely carved chair, were large and strong, and she imagined that if he had the need, he could still carry a sword to battle. He seemed tired but amused, perhaps by her reluctance to approach. Ani took a few more painful steps forward and performed her deepest curtsy, the one her tutor years ago had told her was for royalty only. No tutor could have prepared her for meeting a king no longer as Anidori-Kiladra of Kildenree, but as a forest girl in hand-me-down boy's boots, charcoal-darkened eyebrows, and an imitated accent.

"What's your petition?" said the chamber-mistress.

"I—don't know," she said, using the strong Forest accent.
Stupid, stupid,
she called herself. She could not reveal herself to the king now that she knew Selia had succeeded in penetrating the palace. What proof did she have? At her claim, t h e king would naturally call Selia to explain. Selia and all t h e guards could deny her story, and Ani would be imprisoned as an impostor or, perhaps worse, let go as a harmless nitwit and fall directly into Ungolad's hands. There was no appeal. Ani was lost.

The king sighed. "You're new to the city?"

"Yes, sire."

"You have a place to stay?"

"No," she admitted.

"What can you do?"

Thinking of finding Falada, Ani answered, hopefully, "I work with horses."

The king gestured to a counselor who stood to his right.

"No need at present for a new hand in the stables, sire." The counselor was a tall, thin-faced man who exuded awareness of his own importance. He looked over a parchment he had affixed to a thin board. "However, the goose boy finds himself alone and at odds with a gaggle of fifty."

"Good," said the king, and motioned for Ani to follow the counselor out of the room.

"Wait, uh, sire, I ask a boon. Could I speak with your prime minister for just a moment?"

The king gestured to the waiting counselor with impatience. "As you shall."

Ani blinked, amazed that he granted her wish so readily, thanked him, and curtsied once again as a new petitioner was already waiting. When she straightened, there was a new expression on the king's face. He seemed to see her for the first time, and the lines around his mouth deepened. She felt commanded to hold still for inspection while he looked at her, and she flushed from her neck to her hair.

"Good," said the king again, and gave her a smile before the chamber-mistress called for his attention.

After the brightness of the receiving chamber, the dark wood walls and deep-toned rugs and tapestries of the corridor were a relief to her eyes. She was going to see the prime minister, and that, too, was a relief. She waited for the counselor to lead the way, but instead he called a pageboy, instructed him to take Ani to the workers' west settlement, and then turned back to the king's chamber.

"Wait, uh, sir? The king said I could speak with the prime minister."

"I am he."

"Not you. I mean, I met him once when I was younger."

The prime minister sighed annoyance. "That was someone else, then. I am Thiaddag, the prime minister of Bayern, and have been for the last four years. So sorry I can't abandon my important duties to reunite you with your old chum."

He waved her off with the back of his hand and returned to the king.

"Well, come on, then," said the boy.

Ani hesitated. Working with a goose boy was not part of her plan. But, then, her plan had been weak enough to crumble at the sight of Selia and a new prime minister. For now, she needed a way to stay in this city until she could rescue Falada.

"Yes, all right," she said, following after the page.

When they emerged into the brightness of the courtyard, i he pageboy stopped to stretch back his arms and puff out his chest, and he smiled at the blazing day. He reminded Ani of a robin in his red tunic, his hair unruly like loose feathers.

"My name's Tatto. I'm the son of a captain of twenty. That's why I'm a pageboy already, and me with only twelve years."

"Oh," said Ani. "Congratulations."

He narrowed his eyes at her to see if he was catching her in a mocking tone. She shrugged, meaning she did not know if it was a good thing or not to be a pageboy at twelve.

He shook his head and muttered, "Forest-born."

He was talkative as they walked down the steep city streets, informing her of his many and complicated duties as page and all about the city. At length they reached the high city wall and began to travel beside it.

"On the other side of the wall are the pastures—cows, sheep, geese, and all. That's where you'll be working."

"And where are the horses kept?" asked Ani.

"Oh, they're behind the palace, on so much land you'd have to run to get past it all before breakfast."

Behind the palace wall,
Ani thought dismally. That would be a problem.

At last Tatto directed her to a long house two stories high and painted a yellow as lively as Ani's tunic. The woman inside was thin and had dull eyes that did not seem to completely take in what they saw. When she spoke, her voice dragged out of her throat reluctantly, punctuated with pauses and moans. She introduced herself as Ideca, the mistress of workers in the west settlements, and sent Tatto off with a warning not to dawdle back as he had no doubt done on the way or his captain would return him to the grease pits of the kitchen. Tatto scowled at the hall-mistress for spoiling his image and rushed out the door.

Ideca looked Ani over. "You're not to, mmm, get homesick for your Forest folks and run off at first frost."

"No, I won't," said Ani.

"Don't know why you went to the king instead of coming here direct. Suppose you think it's a grand entrance, but don't think it means you'll be treated different. We all work. That's what we do here, work."

Ani nodded and hoped that was sufficient response.

Ideca pursed her lips. "Here's where you'll take your meals, morning and night, so you may as well start off with one now, mmm." She plunked down a bowl of bean soup and a tall glass of water. Ani guzzled the glass of water immediately and then wished she had saved a few swallows t o help ease down the cold soup.

Ideca took Ani upstairs to a haphazard wardrobe and gave her a spare skirt and tunic for washday, both pale orange like the rose on a peach, a long cut of birch with a bent end for herding her geese, and a hat with a low straw rim and a ribbon that tied under the chin, effectively hiding, Ani imagined, every strand of one's hair.

"You'll be living in the third house from the south, wall-side. The rest of the day's free.

Be back here for breakfast tomorrow early." She sent Ani out and closed the door.

Opposite the mistress's hall squatted a row of dwellings, each with one window and a separate door. Ani found the third house and entered. The house was no more than a room—a very small room. With her arms outstretched, she could nearly touch two walls at once. It shared its wooden sidewalls with neighbors and borrowed the west wall of the city for its back wall. It smelled of the city—refuse, smoke, food, and people and animals living too close together. The house was built right on the square cobblestone of the street, and she felt as though she still stood on the street, and any moment hawkers might come through her door or children playing at catch-the-fly might crawl through her window and jump over her bed to climb the rough stones of the back wall.

A small bed, a side table, and three iron hooks on one wall were the room’s only furnishings. Ani thought of her apartments in the White Stone Palace, just the first room that could hold fifteen of these, and she imagined the walls before her pushing back and brightening, white paint pouring over the bare walls like water thickened with light, tapestries of children and birds and hills of autumn unrolling themselves, carpets growing under her feet the way a stream floods its banks, the bed expanding into a mountain of pillows and blankets the way dough explodes into bread, books on the walls, cats at her feet, food on her table, a serving girl at the door saying, "May I help you dress, Crown Princess?" Not crown princess. Not a princess anymore. The serving girl's face was just a round stone in the wall.

The mean dullness came crashing back into itself, hard and bleak and small. Ani sat on the bed and stared at her soft, uncallused hands.

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kidneys on the street of meat shops and the dizzying emanations of the flowers in hundreds of baskets on the florists' street, Ani finally found the market-square by following the noise. The quiet wagon people from last night had transformed into brazen city peddlers, waving goods at passersby, shouting from the seats of their wagons, standing and calling, "Apples! Herbs!

Jars of preserves and nuts and cones! Blankets for the cold, the cold, buy blankets against the coming cold!"

Ani found her traveling companions just as animated, w i t h half their bags empty and a crowd of purchasers fingering Gilsa's intensely dyed yarns and tight knits. Even Finn spoke a word or two and waved a pullover in the air. She realized he was waving it at her, and she jogged to him, still feeli n g dazed by the noise and agitation of the square.

"Hello, Isi," he greeted her, and she reminded herself that I s i was her name, for now.

The group had sold a good lot of wares, though nearly half still remained and they would have to stay on for the rest of marketweek.

"It'll be better next month," said the girl with the red scarf, "when the weather's cooling and all the world's afraid of winter."

"Finn, I've been given work here." She tried to whisper but nearly yelled to be heard above the din. "I'm to tend the king's geese." She smiled, for though it was simple labor, it sounded noble in her ears just then, as though she heard Tatto's satisfied voice swaggering the phrase.

"Good work," said Finn.

"I just wanted to tell you that, so you wouldn't wonder where I'd gone."

He patted her shoulder, then looked at her quizzically. He touched his eyebrow and smiled at her with the energy of a good, secret joke. She wondered what state they were in, hoping that the charcoal had not smeared.

"Well, I should go. Thanks for your kindness." She turned to leave, then quickly returned and spoke near his ear.

"Finn, should anyone discover you know me, and come to you or your mother, pretending to be my friend, asking where I am, don't tell them. Please." She smiled painfully.