Garden Princess

He had never seen so much wealth in one place.

There was so much jewelry here that he could take as much as he wanted and no one would ever notice anything was missing. He picked up a golden bracelet, a necklace with a pearl the size of a bird’s egg, and a silver brooch shaped like a star. He slipped them all into his pocket, then glanced over his shoulder at the open window across the room. He was sure nobody had seen him leave the garden party. It had been easy enough to slip away, but he had yet to meet his hostess. What if she noticed he was missing and sent a servant to find him? He had better hurry.

But as he turned back to the table piled with jewels, he caught sight of his reflection in the mirror above it. He stared. Was that what he looked like? There was no mirror at home; he had seen his own face only a few times before in his life. And he had never seen himself like this, looking like a splendid gentleman in these fine clothes. . . .

Stolen clothes! He had lied to his mother when she had guessed they were stolen, pretending he had bought them with money made from work he had never done. But it would be the last time he lied to her, he told himself now. This would be the last time he stole anything. After today, they would have enough. He could pay a doctor, and his mother would get well, and they would have enough to eat, and they would never have to worry again.

He picked up a diamond ring, watching it sparkle in the light from the window. “The last time,” he whispered.

And then the door behind him was thrown open. Startled, he looked up and saw a woman in the mirror. He had no doubt it was the woman who had invited him here. Someone had told him she was a great beauty, and he supposed that she was. But now, as their eyes met in the glass, he was too frightened to turn and look at her directly.

“You’re a thief,” she said.

He shook his head and put down the ring. “No, I —”

Her laugh sent a chill through him. “A thief
and
a liar.”

He watched in the mirror as she raised her hand. Then his eyes locked on his own terrified expression.

“Steal from me, and you’ll be a thief forever.”

Princess Adela laced her fingers under a clump of creeping Charlie and pulled, enjoying the satisfying crackle of roots ripping free of soil. She tossed the weed onto a heap of similarly vanquished garden invaders and pulled out another clump.

She had been up since dawn weeding this particular flower bed, only one of the many beds the palace gardener had given over to her care and planning. She was getting this one ready for the bulbs she wanted to plant — red tulips, yellow daffodils, and grape hyacinths. The tulips would not be the tall, stately ones that graced the more formal beds of the palace gardens but a shorter variety with curving petals and patterned leaves. In spring, the tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths would give the illusion of having come up by chance, like wildflowers. Adela loved having a wild look to her garden.

She also loved mornings. Even a chill October morning like this one was preferable to the rest of the day, which would be spent doing what other people wanted of her. At nine o’clock, Adela would have lessons with her tutor, Dr. Sophus. After lessons would come lunch with her father, King Adalbert; her stepmother, Cecile; and her half-brother, Henry. Adela adored her father and four-year-old Henry, but Cecile never stopped talking. She tended to say whatever popped into her mind, and most of the time it had to do with Adela:
Now, dear, you really mustn’t stuff yourself so — it isn’t at all attractive. . . . Adela dear, I do wish you would remember to wear a hat outdoors. Your face is quite pink with sunburn.

After lunch, Adela would have to suffer through two or three hours of embroidery instruction supervised by her stepmother, a torturous afternoon tea with the queen and her ladies-in-waiting, and then a dancing lesson. Cecile was determined to make a lady of Adela, and it did no good to complain about it, for Cecile was sure to mention the complaining at supper. At which point Adela’s father would say, “You must listen to your stepmother. She knows what she’s talking about.”

This early in the morning, no one was ever about except for the palace servants and Adela. Her mother had died when she was born, and when she was small, Adela had done her best to escape from the various nannies and governesses her father had hired to care for her. Down to the kitchen for breakfast and then out into the garden. “Morning, my lass,” the cook used to say when Adela was a girl. Now that Adela was seventeen, she still ate breakfast in the kitchen, but the cook’s greeting had shifted to a more respectful, “Morning, Your Highness.” Worse, she scolded the other servants when they forgot to curtsy to Adela.

This new deference was Cecile’s doing. The queen had put a stop to what she called “lax and overly familiar behavior” from the servants when she had married King Adalbert five years ago. Cecile most certainly would have put a stop to Adela having breakfast in the kitchen had she known about it, but fortunately she didn’t, and Adela trusted that the servants wouldn’t say a word. She did wish the cook wouldn’t scold the others, and she would have preferred that none of them curtsy, because, except for those formalities, she felt like she belonged with them, sitting quietly at the long wooden table, eating porridge and drinking coffee and listening to the kitchen gossip, which was always more interesting than the gossip at Cecile’s afternoon tea.

The last weed was a dandelion, and Adela used her trowel to pry out the long root. She added the dandelion to the pile of weeds and stood up. She brushed off her smock and trousers and surveyed the result of her morning’s work. Except for several patches of late-blooming daisies and black-eyed Susans, which she counted as wildflowers rather than weeds, this bed was cleared and ready for planting. Of course, the other flower beds still needed her attention, but that work would have to wait. It was nearly time for lessons.

“Miss Adela!”

Looking up, she saw Garth, the nineteen-year-old son of the head gardener, hurrying toward her. He was waving a piece of pink paper in the air and — what was that behind him? Of all things, a large magpie was hopping across the lawn! Adela stifled a laugh. “You’re being followed,” she called.

Garth glanced over his shoulder. “Stupid bird’s been after me all morning,” he said.

The magpie was greenish black with a white breast and a sharp black beak. Stark white stripes across the tops of its wings made Adela think of the epaulets on her father’s military uniform. “He’s rather handsome, isn’t he?” she remarked.

“I never heard anybody call magpies handsome,” said Garth. “Thieves is what they are. They’ll steal just about anything.”

“Look how he’s watching us!”

“Miss Adela, I’ve received a letter!”

Garth was the only person outside her family who didn’t say
Your Highness.
He had tried once not long after Cecile had married the king, and Adela had at first thought he was joking. “We’ve been friends all our lives! You’ve always called me Adela,” she had told him.

“My father says I’ve got to be more respectful” had been his reply.

Adela suspected Cecile’s influence, but Garth’s sense of duty to his father was so strong that they had settled on the compromise of
Miss Adela.

“The letter was right outside our door this morning, on the front step,” said Garth, who lived with his parents in a cottage at the edge of the palace grounds. “The handwriting’s all fancy, and I couldn’t make any sense of it.”

Adela took the paper from him. “It smells like roses.” She wrinkled her nose. “Too many of them!”

“Fairly makes my head swim,” Garth agreed. “What’s it say?”

Adela glanced at the signature, and her eyes widened in surprise. Then she read aloud, stumbling a bit because the handwriting was indeed difficult to decipher — lacy and overly elegant, and yet careless, with unexpected loops and tangles: