Once Upon a Winter's Night (3 page)

“Bu-but, what if—”

“The Prince of the Summerwood has so ordered,” said Camille, gesturing at the letter.

“Prince?” gasped Aigrette, her eyes flying wide, a gleam of expectation within. “Henri,” she barked, “do as Camille says.”

Sucking in air through gritted teeth, Henri loosed his hold on Giles and stepped to the door and lifted the latch and opened it wide, the wild wind and snow howling about to set the strings of beans and turnips and other such to madly sway, the pots and pans to clang, and the fire and wrapped ’round blankets to whip and flutter in the blow. “Enter, Monsieur Bear,” Henri called, his voice trembling, and then quickly stepped wide of the way. The great Bear ambled inward, the girls scrambling together and in a body retreating, Camille and Giles standing firm on the side of the table nearest the Bear, the mother cringing but remaining opposite.

Taking up most of the free space, with a “
Whuff!”
the Bear sat down and grunted as if in satisfaction.

Shutting out the storm, the father closed and latched the door, though momentarily he peered out into the fury beyond, as if perhaps seeking more bears or mayhap thinking of bolting.

With pale eyes, the Bear looked at Camille and the opened scroll and cocked his head.

“He wants you to go on,” Aigrette whispered across the board.

Camille nodded and peered at the scroll again and started at the beginning once more:

“Not fair!” cried Lisette, outrage honing her words as she glared with dark blue eyes at Camille. “I am the eldest, and I should be first to marry. And to a prince at that.”

“And I next!” called out Colette indignantly, her own blue eyes ablaze. “And a prince for me as well.”

The Bear swung his great head toward the pair and a growl rumbled deep in his chest, and with small yips the two fell silent.

“A prince,” hissed Aigrette to Henri, her eyes narrowing in calculation. “A prince wishes to marry our daughter. Go on, go on, Camille; pay your sisters no heed. Go on, read the rest.”

Taking a deep breath, Camille continued:

“In Faery?” blurted Giles, and then began coughing again.

Embracing the rail-thin lad, the father repeated, “In Faery? But therein dwell monsters most dire, and—”

“Quiet, both of you,” snapped Aigrette. “Our daughter is to marry a prince. Read on, Camille. Pay no heed to your father and brother.”

Now the Bear sat back on its haunches and glanced from fretting father to avid mother and back again.

“Oh, but isn’t this wonderful,” said Aigrette, rubbing her hands together and beaming, her usually downturned mouth smiling for the first time in months. “Our own Camille is to be married to a rich—”

“But, Maman,” protested Camille, “I don’t wish to be wedded to someone I have never met.”

“Hush, child,” replied the mother. “You knew someday we would arrange a marriage for you.”

Lisette shoved forward. “But you should first arrange a marriage for me,” she angrily snapped, “for I am the eldest, while Camille is the youngest of all.”

A clamor arose from the other girls, each crying out that they were certainly older than Camille, and the twins began arguing with each other as to which of the two had been born first, Gai crying, “Me!” and Joie crying, “No, me!”

“Be quiet, all of you,” shouted Aigrette.

When a disgruntled silence fell, Aigrette said, “Don’t you see, the prince asks no dowry, but instead will pay us a bride-price and an annual stipend for the hand of Camille. By accepting this proposal, not only will we have wealth to escape this dismal life your father has visited upon us, we will also have dowries for each of you, wealth to attract suitors.”

With sharp intakes of breath, the girls looked at one another, realization illuminating the face of each. And then, clamoring, they turned to Camille, and she in turn looked at her father, tears in her eyes, but he could not meet her regard. In that moment Camille wished that Fra Galanni were there to comfort and advise her. Again she looked at her father and whispered, “Papa.”

Henri turned to the Bear and said, “We will sleep on it.”

“What?”
demanded the mother in shock. “Sleep on it? Henri, the one who made the offer is a
prince
!”

Henri flinched, but then took a deep breath and gritted his teeth. “I said, we will sleep on it.”

The great white Bear grunted, and lay down and closed his ashen eyes.

Henri took to his bed; Aigrette, sissing angrily, followed him. The girls, too, retired—Camille and the twins sharing the lower bunk, Lisette, Felise, and Colette sharing the upper—and Giles took to his cot by the fire.

In spite of the blizzard, the cottage was cozier that night, made so by the presence of the Bear, his huge bulk shedding warmth into the room. Yet at the same time the chamber was distressingly chill, for Aigrette seethed in frigid ire. Camille lay a long time awake in the angry whispers coming from her parents’ bed—Aigrette raging at Henri, her furious hissings muted by the storm rampaging without and the great sleeping breaths of the Bear within.

 

The next morning dawned to quiet, for the blizzard had blown itself out sometime in the night. At breakfast, at the mother’s urging, once again Camille read the letter to them all, and over their gruel they argued, and only Camille and Giles were opposed to the proposal: Camille would not wed someone she had never seen, and Giles would not lose the one sister he had come to love, who made him laugh and played riddle games and taught him échecs and who sang so sweetly. Henri did not speak, his ears weary from Aigrette’s late-night harangue. The mother and sisters, though, clamored for Camille to quickly accept the fact that it was a prince whom she would wed.

The Bear sat silent, though he did share a bowl of the porridge with Camille, who had no appetite at all.

Finally, Henri said, “We must write a response unto the prince.”

“Papa,” said Camille, sighing, “we have no parchment, no pen, no ink.”

“And even if we did have such,” hissed Lisette, “how would we know what she had written on any note we would send?”

At this the Bear growled, and Lisette snapped her mouth shut.

“He seems to know what we are saying,” said Aigrette, nodding toward the Bear. “Simply tell him that we accept and send him on his way to bring back the promised gold.”

Tears in her eyes, Camille silently gazed at her father. Henri once again could not meet her mute stare. He turned to the Bear. “Come back in a sevenday, for then we will have our answer.”

Angrily, Aigrette glared at him.

Grunting, the Bear moved to the door, and, before anyone else could stir, Aigrette sprang to her feet and opened the wooden-planked panel and led the Bear outside. ’Round the corner of the cottage she went with him, and there she said, “Come prepared to pay the bride-price and bear Camille away, for I shall see to it that she goes with you.”

The Bear growled low—whether in ire or agreement, Aigrette could not say—and then ambled away from the stone hovel and toward the twilight border of mysterious and dreaded Faery, for therein strange and terrible creatures did dwell, or so it was said. Hugging herself against the cold, Aigrette didn’t blink an eye as the Bear rambled across a pristine white field of new-fallen snow, leaving heavy tracks behind, to pass into the silvery twilight and vanish; but inside the cottage, with an eye pressed to a chink in the back wall, Camille watched as well, her heart beating swiftly in fright.

“B
ut,Maman, hemaybeoldbeyondyearsandugly,” cried Camille.

Pushing out a hand in a swift motion of disallowance, Aigrette said, “Camille, if he’s old, then you will inherit his fortune and estates more quickly”—she gestured at the letter on the table—“and he is a prince with a great mansion and considerable lands.” She glanced at Henri. “And as for ugly, it matters not. After all, look at what I got.”

For his part, Henri merely sighed.

“Papa is not ugly,” rebutted Camille, reaching out to touch her father’s sleeve.

“But Mère is right,” said Lisette. “And if the prince had made the same offer to me, as he should have, I would have accepted without hesitation. Camille, he is a
prince
!”

“It is not yours to choose,” said Giles, receiving a glare from Lisette in return.

“Your frère is right,” declared Aigrette. “It is not yours to choose, nor, I add, is it Camille’s to choose. It is mine to say whom she will marry, or no.”

“What about Papa?” exclaimed Camille, turning to her sire. “Has he no voice in this whatsoever?”

Henri sighed and peered at the floor.

“Would you not marry a
prince
?” asked Joie.

“Aye, a
prince,
” echoed Gai.

“But he lives in Faery among monsters dire and creatures fell,” said Camille, “a place Humans are not welcome.”

“
Pah
!” snorted Aigrette. “As far as not being welcome, the prince invited you, and so you are welcome to travel within that realm, to travel to his principality of Summerwood, for he wishes you there as his wife.”

“But what of the peril?” asked Giles. “The monsters and other dire creatures of Faery? Ogres and Trolls, Bogles, Dragons, and Goblins like the Redcaps, who dye their hats in the blood of Humans, or so Papa says.”

Although the other girls blenched, Lisette glanced at her brother, and then at Henri. “
Bah
! As for things of peril, Camille will have the Bear for protection, and a finer guardian none could want.”

Camille touched Giles’ hand in thanks, then looked at her mother. “Then answer me this, Maman: what if this Lord Prince is not right in the mind, a simpleton or other such.”

“He would have to be a loon to have chosen you,” gibed Felise, her blue eyes dancing, her sprinkle of freckles wrinkling ’round her nose as she grinned.

“This is no laughing matter, Felise,” said Camille, though she grinned at the light-brown-haired girl in return.

“If he is simpleminded,” said Aigrette, “then you will command his wealth all the easier.”

Camille sighed. “Then what if he has the deadly plague or some other spreading ill?”

“All the better,” said Lisette, glancing at her mother, “for as Mère says, it means you will inherit sooner than late.”

Camille glanced about the table. “What if the prince himself is a monster dire, a terrible thing to behold, perhaps even a murderer of women?”

Even as the sisters’ eyes widened in alarm at this newly imagined possibility, Aigrette again pushed out a hand of negation. “Then you can merely run away, Camille, but only after we get the gold.”

“Is that all you are interested in, Maman? The bride-price, the gold?”

Aigrette gestured at the room. “Would you have us live in destitution, when wealth is within our grasp?”

“Oh, Camille,” said Colette, turning to her sisters for support, “would you deny us dowries to attract suitors?”

“Aye, dowries,” chimed in Gai, glancing at Joie, who added, “Would you have us be old maids?”

“Do none of you think of aught but yourselves?” asked Giles in anger. “Camille is the only—” But the boy began gasping for air, leaving the rest of his words unsaid.

Camille embraced the lad as he wheezed, and Aigrette’s eyes narrowed in cunning. “With the gold we can afford a healer for Giles, Camille. Would you deny him such relief?”

Tears welled in Camille’s eyes, and she did not answer her dam.

“Yes, a doctor for Giles,” said Lisette, following her mother’s lead. “We could afford the medicine needed to make him well.”

“D-don’t pay h-heed,” panted Giles, but he could say no more.

“With the gold, we could have a bigger and better house,” declared Aigrette. “One of warmth and light. One where Giles could escape the draft and damp and dust of this hovel.”

“And warm clothes,” added Felise. “Something to keep Giles cozy.”

Catching his breath at last, Giles said, “Oh, Camille, I don’t need doctors that badly. You shouldn’t go off to an unknown fate, no matter the count of coin.”

Camille smiled at the entirely too-thin nine-year-old, but she knew in spite of his bravado that he was truly ill.

And thus did the arguments and harangues go for the full sevenday: the mother harping that she deserved a better life, the one her failure of a husband had promised her when they first were wed, “. . . but look at what he gave me instead”; the father looking everywhere but at Camille, though often tears ran down his cheeks, for he knew that his achievements as a provider had never amounted to much, and whatever spirit he might have once had as a young man had been nagged into abject submission; the sisters’ eyes lighting up at the thought of rich dowries and the suitors to come; and all the women arguing that with the gold they could afford a doctor for Giles, even though Giles denied that a doctor or medicine or other such was needed, that he was healthy enough.