Sickness had a smell. It was thick like honey, dusty like a summer without rain and acidic like the heavy stench of vinegar. Incense burned in each of the four corners of the cold stone room. Sickness also had a sound. Ten priests sang journey-songs around the dying king’s bed, their voices deep, resounding and somehow inspiring.
High above this mourning chamber, at the highest point of the highest tower, a white flag hung limply in the hot, still air. It was a white flag of surrender, proclaiming, “Our king has given up. Our king has given up.”
In his chamber, far below that traitorous flag, the king opened and closed his fist, nails digging into his palm. He swallowed, blinked, swallowed again. “Get me my daughter,” he whispered. “Get me Corinne.”
The small serving boy, Dell, who crouched by his bedside amid the dirges and the incense, nodded resolutely and dashed off. His feet were light, his eyes wide with fright and hard with dedication. Never had such a young boy been called to serve the king so much. Dell’s mother made no secret of her favoritism for him, telling him that oneday he was sure to be the captain of the royal servants. And now, true to his mother’s words, Dell was going to fetch the Princess. He would speak words to her! Few people in the entire world broke her solitude.
He flew up the nine flights of stairs to her tower room, caught his breath and knocked thrice on her unadorned wooden door. “Your Highness, I come from the king. It’s urgent.”
From beyond the door her heard her voice, the princess’ voice, slow and deliberate, as if forming each word took immense effort. Only two servants in the entire city had ever heard that voice, her voice. “Come in,” she said calmly, “but do not make a sound. Close the door behind you.”
Dells’ heart pounded. He did as she said, carefully closing the door behind him without any noise at all. And then he saw her. Princess Corinne, whose name was shrouded with mystery, the girl who was destined to become queen when the sickly king passed into the next world. She sat turned away from him on plain wooden stool, facing a simple wooden desk covered in papers pens and open inkwells. Something was terribly wrong here, that much Dell knew. The princess should have been wearing the most elegant gown in the entire kingdom, but instead she wore merely a white smock and white woolen slippers. Her long brown hair hung in greasy tangles from the back of her head.
Dell furrowed his eyebrows and looked around the room. That, too, was horribly wrong. Not one item in the whole room proclaimed her high title. In fact the only pieces of furniture beside desk and stool in the small stone room were a straw pellet mattress in one corner and a wooden stand in another. On the stand rested a brass bowl in which she might draw drinking water or wash her hair. It seemed she used it mostly for drinking water, as her hair was filthy. The one beautiful thing in the room was a window that looked out over the city; from this high up, Princess Corinne must get a wonderful view.
“Come closer, boy,” she murmured. Dell slid towards her turned back. The whole time he had been watching hr and observing her chamber, the princess had been writing slowly. She did not stop as she spoke. “Do you know what I’m writing?”
“No, your Highness.”
“A book,” she said slowly. Her pen formed round, full, elegant letters on the page. “It’s called A Young Ruler’s Guide to Etiquette. Do you know why I’m writing it?”
“No, your Highness.” Dell couldn’t wait to tell the other boys what he’d seen.
Princess Corinne’s quill pen traveled smoothly from the page to the inkwell and back again. “It’s a test. If I complete this book by the time my father dies, I will succeed. I will become queen. If I fail, I lose everything. I will be forced to leave the city and never return. I have not stopped writing for . . . nine days. Nine days, boy. Do you understand how long that is?”
“Yes, your Highness.” He didn’t understand. What would happen if she failed? Who would become ruler of the kingdom?
The princess’s voice was unlike any he had ever heard. Her words came from somewhere fat back in the corners of her mouth and each individual word carried a double meaning. Although her words were of a book and an all-important test, she spoke also of her eternal confinement in this tower, her longing to be free. Dell understood all this, and wished for the first time that he had never come to this tower.
“Let me tell you something else, boy,” she said. “There is another way in which I might fail this test. Do you want to know what it is?”
“Yes, your Highness.”
She turned to look at him and Dell saw her face for the first time. He almost gasped. It was a beautiful face, and a shocking one. Her full pink lips were pursed in silent determination. Her pale white skin was unmarred by the pimples and freckles of other teenage girls Dell knew. But it was her eyes that sent shivers down his arms and back. They were purple. They seemed to be at once bright and dark, as if every moment was a battle fought inside her, a battle so crucial that the very windows of her soul flared with the violence of it. Princess Corinne, all of her, was a battleground.
“I will tell you. The other way I might fail this test, boy, is if I spill a single drop of ink on a page. A single splat, a jerk of my hand, a gust of wind, and I am nothing but a beggar. I have written two thousand pages, boy. I have never left this room. My entire life, everything, everything, depends on this book.” She fell silent, those flaring purple eyes looking directly into Dell’s soul. For seven heartbeats, there was no sound at all in the room. Dell could not tear his eyes away from the terrifying beauty that was the princess, but his insides pulled away from her. This is not for you, he told himself. This is not your world.
The girl turned back to her simple wooden desk. She picked up her quill, dipped it in the ink and returned to writing. “Why did you come up here, boy? You know I am allowed no visitors.”
The grip of her magnificent eyes shattered and Dell backed away. “Your father the king was calling for you, your Highness. You are to join him in his sickroom.”
Her pen clattered to the desk. One foot, in its woolen slipper, tapped four times on the stone floor. “He said that?”
“Yes, your Highness.”
“Leave, boy. I will call for you when I am ready.”
Dell nodded and slipped silently out the door.
-----------------------------
Corinne watched the boy go. She bit her bottom lip, furrowed her brows and looked down at herself critically. You don’t have to go, a voice inside her argued.
It’s my father, said another part of herself.
You’ve never met the man!
There’s a first for everything.
She shoved her fingers through the rat’s nest of her hair. And then again, and again. She dove for the desk, flipping through piles and piles papers. It was in there somewhere. Years ago she had written the etiquette of fashion, taken from a book some servant had shoved under her door. That, at least, might give her some hint as to how to make herself presentable. There were too many loose papers. The etiquette of dining with foreign diplomats. The etiquette of dealing with uncontrolled servants. Desperation rose in her throat with the taste of pennies and she swallowed it back.
“Boy?” she called. She calmed herself, fighting for control, pushing back the unbearable mix of emotions swirling in her stomach. By the time he peered around the door, she was standing firmly and carefully, her surface clear of any turmoil.
“Your Highness? Are you ready to go?” He looked worried that perhaps she intended to leave her room looking like that.
“I was hoping you would know how to make myself presentable,” she said clearly. It would not do to sound pleading.
He looked her up and down. He was a small boy of probably twelve years, but he carried himself the way an eight-year-old might. “Um, well, I’m not really sure how a princess ought to look, your Highness. I mean, it’s not my place. But . . . you might want to start by combing out your hair and putting it back.”
“How?” This time a bubble of helplessness flitted out with the word and the boy looked up sharply.
“Do you have a comb?”
“No.”
“Well, um . . . try running your hands through it, like this.” The boy ran his fingers through his own short hair, combing through invisible knots.
Corinne mirrored him. He showed her how his sisters tied their hair up, braiding it from the base of the neck all the way down to their waists. He showed her how to wind the long, thin braid around her head, leaving a tail to fall elegantly from behind her ear to the middle of her chest. Corinne nodded and smiled her thanks. “What now?” she asked. Her voice was strong; she could trust this boy.
“Wash your face,” he suggested. Corinne did, splashing water from the copper basin onto her cheeks and forehead and wiping it off on her bedspread. Dell continued. “I don’t suppose you have another dress, do you?”
“No.”
“Okay. Well then, I guess that’s it. You’re ready.”
Corinne cast a glance at her book on the desk and the open window and wondered whether she ought to close the shutters. The hot, humid air showed no hint of a breeze, so she followed the boy out the door. For the first time in her life, she stood outside her tower room.
“Follow me,” said the boy.
”Wait!” Corinne called after him. He turned and gave her a questioning look. “What’s your name, boy?”
“Dell, your Highness.”
She smiled. “Call me Corinne.”
