The Birthday Ball (2 page)

His name was Rafe. Villagers, peasants that they were, all had short names. It distinguished them from nobility and royalty. Earls, dukes, counts, lords, ladies, and princesses could have names as long as they wished, even adding additional names as they chose, although sometimes the lengthy additions became unwieldy and hard to remember. There had been an incident once when the queen had arranged a ceremony to bestow special honors on a knight who had done a chivalrous deed.

"Arise!" the queen had called out, for he was on his knees before her and she had tapped his shoulder with her jeweled scepter and lowered around his neck a decorative ribbon from which dangled a medal. "Arise, Sir..."

But there had followed an embarrassing hesitation. His name was Mortimer, and she remembered that, for she had known this knight for years. But in recent months he had taken additional names, designating himself "the Manly" and "the Magnificent" and "Most Masculine." The queen simply drew a blank. She stared at him and he stared back, lifting his head slightly from its bowed position, but it would have been unseemly for him to speak during the solemn ceremony, and in any case he was puzzled by her hesitation, not realizing what it meant.

The king, who had been watching from his throne next to the queen's, whispered to his wife.

"Sir Mortimer the Manly, the Magnificent, Most Masculine," the king whispered in a very low voice. But he knew it was useless. The queen was quite hard of hearing. Both of her ears had been frostbitten during a Winter Carnival when she had, as a young woman, been too vain to wear her fur hat, and her hearing had been much diminished ever since. She did not hear her husband's helpful whisper at all.

But the queen had much presence of mind, which very often compensated for the things she lacked, such as perfect hearing. On this occasion she simply stood in a regal fashion and announced to the assembled nobility: "Let us all together
intone
the name of our newly honored knight. Ready?" She held up her scepter.

"Sir..." she began, and then looked at the gathering expectantly.

The king had a large baritone voice. "Sir Mortimer..." he intoned.

Finally the entire audience, which was made up of forty earls, twenty-two dukes, many spouses and concubines, three buffoons, and a barrister, perceived what was expected of them.

"
Sir Mortimer the Manly, the Magnificent, Most Masculine!
" they intoned, and the knight arose.

***

No such problem ever took place among the peasant populace. Their names, like that of the young schoolmaster, were short and easy to say. Nell. Jack. Will.

In fact, those were the very names that the schoolmaster, Rafe, on this day when school was soon to begin, wrote on small cards in his best calligraphy, along with the names of the other children who would be his pupils:

Neil
Jack
Will
Fred
Liz
Mick
Beth
Anne
Kate
Ben

He placed each card upon one of the wooden desks. Then he fed the small hedgehog that was caged in the corner. He had brought it to be the class pet and to teach the children responsibility for creatures.

He placed the large orange dunce cap in a highly visible spot in order to discourage misbehavior.

Rafe remembered from his own childhood and school days how humiliating it was to wear the dunce cap. Though he had always been a good student, diligent at his lessons, from time to time he had indulged his own sense of fun in ways that the stern schoolmaster, Herr Gutmann, had disapproved of. As punishment he had been ordered to don the humiliating orange cap and stand in front of the class.

Now, Rafe supposed, as schoolmaster himself, he would have to punish misconduct. He dreaded the moment when he would be forced to place the dunce cap on the head of one of the fun-loving children who were to be his pupils.

He could hear them outside, the village children, playing with a ball in the path. Soon it would be time for school to begin. He was a little nervous now, on his first day at the job. He had studied Teaching Methods at the academy, and he had done well there, excelling at Inscribing and Declaiming. He considered himself very good at Games of the Imagination and moderately adept at Proverbs. But his Mathematical Calculations were a little weak, he knew, and he was very lacking in Stern Demeanor.

"You must try to curb your affability," the Teaching Methods professor had said at his evaluation. "Work at being stern."

"I do try," Rafe said.

"Your face makes it difficult, I know," the professor said sympathetically.

"My face?"

No one had ever commented on Rafe's face before, except his mother. He remembered dimly that she had always called him the bonniest of her boys, a sweet little joke between them because he was her only son.

His face was actually fairly ordinary. His bright brown eyes were flecked with yellow, and he had a high forehead onto which his brown hair often fell, though he brushed it back so frequently with his hand that it had become a habit.

"A stern face," the professor explained, "requires that the mouth be set in a line. Like so." He demonstrated, setting his mouth by pulling it tightly against his teeth. He looked quite fierce, actually, when he did it, and Rafe was a little unnerved.

"And the forehead should be furrowed," the professor went on. "With the forehead furrowed, the eyebrows quite naturally fall into a state of increased bushiness. Like so."

He demonstrated again, this time setting his mouth and at the same time furrowing his forehead.

"It's an extremely stern look," Rafe agreed, feeling quite uncomfortable at the sight of it.

"Yes. Well. Work at it."

"Yes, sir."

"Your face falls into affable lines. The corners of your mouth turn up. Not good for a schoolmaster. It deceives the children."

"Oh, I certainly don't want to be guilty of deceiving the children!" Rafe had said. It was something he felt most strongly about.

Now it was his first day as schoolmaster, a day that had come upon him sooner than he had expected, because of the sudden retirement of the previous teacher, who had held the job for many years. Arranging his classroom, Rafe tried also to arrange his face. He furrowed his brow and set his mouth in a line. It was hard to hold it that way, because it ached a little, and

though he didn't realize it, the corners of his mouth kept creeping out into the beginning of a smile.

Herr Gutmann, Rafe's own teacher from his childhood, had been gray-haired and bearded. Rafe, in contrast, was quite young—only eighteen. He had completed his studies and had been preparing for an apprenticeship in a distant domain when quite suddenly he had been called back to this village, the very one in which he had been born, because of the sudden departure of Herr Gutmann.

(He had not been told why Herr Gutmann had left. But it was rumored that the love of his life, a woman named Gertrude, had been widowed and had sent an imploring letter from the distant domain where she lived, saying she was now lonely.)

Thinking of it, Rafe wondered what it might be like to have a love of one's life. It had never happened to him. What was love, anyway? He wasn't certain. He thought of the females he knew well.

His mother? Oh, yes! He had loved her. He remembered her singing him to sleep when he was small. But she had died not long after giving birth to his little sister, when he was still a tiny boy. She was buried now in the churchyard down the lane from the schoolhouse. He had tipped his hat in her honor as he had walked past this very morning.

His sister? He had loved her, too. But sadly she also was lost to him forever. She had simply disappeared while he was away pursuing his studies. When Rafe, on returning from the teachers' academy, had asked his father about the whereabouts of his sister, the burly, loud-voiced man had wiped some breakfast grease off his beard with one hand and bellowed, "Useless things, girls! I sold her!" and would give no further explanation. So he had mourned his beloved younger sister ever since, and without even a grave toward which he could tip his hat.

Other females? Well. He had a cousin. But she was a dull girl who tended to talk too much, and aimlessly, telling long, tedious stories with no point to them.

Then there was Aunt Chloë, who worked as the cook at the castle. But she had whiskers and warts. Rafe knew that beauty was within. But when the
without
had whiskers and warts, it was hard to venture beyond.

Anyway, none of those, he thought, had anything to do with the love of one's life. It was a concept he would probably never understand. Rafe sighed and stopped thinking about love and what it might mean, realizing that it would probably never come to him. He would love teaching and would love his pupils; perhaps that would be enough. Carefully he stacked his papers on his desk in a tidy pile. He cleaned his fingernails one more time with a small knife that he kept in his pocket. Then he took out his handkerchief and wiped the dust once again from his shoes.

I will do my best to be a good teacher.
He said it to himself two more times.
I will do my best to be a good teacher.
I will do my best to be a good teacher.

Then he looked at the carved cuckoo clock on the classroom wall. (It had been his mother's, but he didn't want to think about that. It made him sad.) The clock told him that it was time. He took a deep breath and went to the doorway to ring the bell that summoned the village children to school.

3. The Chambermaid

"I don't see how you can be bored, miss, when you got so many lovely things."

Princess Patricia Priscilla frowned. "Nothing I want," she said to the chambermaid.

The freckle-faced girl picked up a silver-backed hairbrush. For a moment she looked at her own face reflected in the silver. She grinned at herself, and blushed.

"Not this, miss?" She held up the brush. "It's beautiful. If you like, I can brush your hair for you, a hundred strokes. I can count to one hundred, truly I can. And you can sit at the mirror and watch yourself while I do it."

The princess sighed. "We do that every day. I'm tired of it. I know! What if..." Her face lit up with interest.

"What, miss?"

"What if we turned things around and I brushed
your
hair a hundred strokes?" Princess Patricia Priscilla reached for the hairbrush.

But the chambermaid hastily returned it to the dressing table and backed away. "Oh, no, miss. That wouldn't do."

"Not allowed?"

"Not allowed at all."

"Punishable by torture?"

"Oh, I dunno. Maybe not torture, not for that. But punishment, for sure!"

The chambermaid paled and looked so genuinely alarmed that the princess sighed and gave up the idea. She picked up the brush and pulled it through her own hair a few times. "There," she said, with a sigh. "Now I should dress, I suppose. Have you chosen a frock for me for today?"

"I thought the blue organdy, miss? It matches your eyes."

Princess Patricia Priscilla groaned. "It scratches," she said, "and causes a rash on my shoulders."

"Then the yellow silk? It falls all smooth and soft."

Princess Patricia Priscilla made a face. "My cat slides off my lap when I wear silk," she pointed out, and then looked affectionately at her pet. "The yellow silk is inauspicious, isn't it, Delicious?" The cat yawned and tidily cleaned her whiskers.

The princess wandered to the window and looked down at the village again. The children were still playing in the path near the schoolhouse. She could hear their laughter.

"What is your name?" she asked suddenly, turning back to the chambermaid.

"Seventeenth chambermaid, miss." The girl curtsied.

"No, no—I mean your
real
name."

A blush darkened the chambermaid's freckled face. "Tess," she whispered.

"And you're a peasant girl, right? From the village?"

"Yes, miss. Born there."

"Did you play on that path?" The princess pointed through the window.