Queen Abigail’s mouth pulled back into a toothy smile, and she thanked her little spy when she provided her report. But the Queen’s eyes didn’t smile. Instead they squinted into darts, piercing into the night outside the window of her chambers in the Castle’s northern wall.
Her spy retreated, thankful for the coppers she had been handed, but too afraid to ask if the news meant that the Princess would be locked away.
“They kissed?” The Queen asked probingly, looking at the young girl in front of her with a skeptical eyebrow.
“Yes, m’lady.” The girl confirmed. “And she hugged him about the neck.”
More coppers fell into the spy’s greedy hand. As much as she had hoped her news would put an end to the Princess’s visits with Stefan, she was terrified of the Queen.
Over the course of the following days, Abigail schemed. She had learned that Charles the “Badger”, now newly named “Tamed Squirrel”, had allowed the illicit rendezvous and had even encouraged it by wandering off from the love birds and giving them privacy. As usual, her intricate plan required secrecy, but the King would be easily manipulated and if everything went accordingly Charlotte would be hundreds of miles away soon enough.
The King was planning a campaign to reclaim territory to the North. The Barbarians had razed villages along the coast and discontent spread to neighboring villages. The King would need to respond, and the military force he assembled would overwhelm the disorganized enemy.
The night before the King left to lead his army into battle against the Barbarians, Queen Abigail floated into the King’s Hall carrying her Crystal Ball. “My King, before you go tomorrow, please allow me to use my Crystal Ball so that we may envision your victory together!”
The King had learned to believe in his Wife’s talents with the Crystal Ball. So many times he had avoided disaster by heeding her visions, and on those rare occasions when he had discounted her predictions he had always come to learn later how accurate her visions had been. And so it was this day when she settled down on the red velvet stool next to his table he had built of the skulls of his enemies.
Queen Abigail stroked her hands over the crystal, and her eyes opened wide. She let out a gasp, and he was alarmed when he saw her eyes fill with tears at the mysterious vision only she could see.
“What is it, Love? Do you see defeat in our future?!” He asked with disbelief at the absurdity of losing to the unorganized and illiterate Barbarians.
The Queen stared intently at her ball, and traced her fingers around it in a furtive caress. Her concentration was so great that she didn’t hear his question. Instead, her gaze became more intense and her brow furrowed. “This CAN’T be…” She whispered under her breath.
“What?!,” the King asked hurriedly. “What do you see, Love?”
The Queen’s concern grew visibly across her face before she looked up to meet her powerful husband’s concerned eyes. She hesitated, then said, “I… I don’t know how to tell you this.”
“Go on!” The King pleaded. “No matter how bad it is, we can cheat the fates! Tell me what awaits us to the North!” He boomed.
“No, it isn’t the Barbarians,” she stammered and hesitated. “It’s Charlotte…”
“Charlotte?” He repeated, not expecting her to bring up his daughter the night before a Military campaign of this magnitude.
Abigail told the King of her fake prediction. “While you are away,” she began. “Charlotte will fall in love with a Peasant. And they will run away…” Her voice trailed off in feigned exasperation.
“What? Impossible!” The King shouted.
The Queen shook her head in disbelief. “Oh, it’s worse than that!” The Queen’s fake tears poured down her icicle cheeks. “This Peasant will tell her lies about you, and teach their children to hate you. And one day, they will overthrow you!” She burst into tears and turned away from the crystal on the table as though the vision of her husband’s defeat caused her physical pain.
The King’s face twisted in disbelief and horror. How could such a thing happen? Charlotte was not even allowed to go into the Village without his most trusted Guard, Charles. It was impossible, and yet Abigail’s Crystal Ball had always been correct. Always!
He shook his head, “No, my daughter would never betray me like that!” He said, and stormed out of the room. Anger and confusion raged in his heart and his feet pounded the wooden floors and marble staircases, down long corridors and into Princess Charlotte’s chamber.
Charlotte spun around in her chair as her father threw open her door. She had known his wrath many times, but this felt dangerous! He stormed into the room, determined to say, or maybe do … something. But once he was inside her room he stopped and looked at his daughter. What was he thinking?
He saw the fear on her face and for a moment his heart sank. How could he have suspected his sweet daughter of becoming a traitor? How could she have fear in her face when she looked at HIM?
But no sooner had he thought this, than his eyes fell upon carvings of angels beside his daughter’s bed. He recognized the peasant carvings. He’d seen the children in the village playing with the little trolls and gnomes. Why were these carvings here?
The King walked to the Princess’s bed and picked up the largest carving. It was a sleeping Angel on a tree limb. And her face looked exactly like his daughter. Then he picked up the one beside it. This Angel was crying. “Where did you get these carvings?” He asked, thinking of the boys he had seen showing off their little trolls along the shore. They were everywhere among the … peasants.
He turned to face the Princess and saw that she was crying. At that moment, he knew. His Queen’s prophecy was true!
His mind raced and the powerful King flew into a rage that shook the stone walls of his mighty Castle. He had already summoned his Knights and they had arrived to begin the campaign the next morning. He couldn’t call it off now. “Who gave these to you?!” His voice exploded.
“Perhaps there is another way,” the Queen’s voice calmly restored peace in the room. She was standing in the doorway having arrived just after her husband. “Let us have a private discussion, my King,” she said coolly as she motioned the King to join her outside of Charlotte’s room.
Once they were in the hall, Queen Abigail said to The Badger, “Lock her in there.” She said in a commanding voice, “and THIS time, make sure she stays put!”
The King listened intently as she told him her well-prepared plan.
…
“Sire, your wisdom in matters of battle are unquestionable.” The enormous Guard spoke in a hesitant, and deeply concerned voice. “But, these peasant men are untrained. He will slow our progress. We will prevail, but the peasant boy will not likely survive.”
The King shot a piercing glare at Charles, “I’m COUNTING on that!”
He hadn’t told the Knight of his wife’s prophecy. He knew his most trusted guard did not understand the myths, and lived only in the corporeal. He didn’t have time to convince him, so he overruled Charles with a wave of his hand.
The Badger left his King’s quarters with clear instructions and a mind filled with confusion. And when he returned to his small home constructed against the outer wall next to the stables he was only half-surprised to find the Queen inside waiting for him.
Her meeting with “The Badger” was more brief, and far less subtle than the visions she pretended to see in her Crystal Ball.
By the time she left his home in stealthy silence minutes later, Charles had only three thoughts on his mind:
First, the Queen somehow knew he had betrayed the King’s trust regarding Charlotte. Secondly, he would personally draft the young Carpenter into the Raiding party that would attack the Barbarian Village. And thirdly, The Badger had to kill the boy himself if he wasn’t lucky enough to die in the battle first.
Despite his callousness, Charles suffered over these orders. His massive hands gripped his sword. Normally he would spend the evening before a battle getting mentally prepared for the Campaign. But the struggle in his head dwarfed the anticipation of battle. He could never kill his brother’s Son!
…
Princess Charlotte crept back from the window on the back of The Badger’s hut. She had escaped from her locked chambers and had heard enough to know her secret love was in trouble.
She snuck past the stables, bolted through the back gate in the wall, and then ran down the path to the river. The guards on the wall were sleeping, as usual, and she was completely undetected as she ran, wearing only her nightgown all the way to the Carpenter’s shop. Her body felt damp from sweat under the silken gown, but the night air blew over her body and washed her skin in its cool breath as she crept around the hill.
She approached the cottage cautiously. During the day Stefan would be carving next to his log, but at night he would likely be inside. Fortunately as she crept closer up the hill she saw him stacking wood on his father’s wood pile beside their cottage.
Princess Charlotte knelt just past the edge of the fire light that filtered through the small dingy windows of the little hut. Stefan worked with his shirt off, and Charlotte crouched in the bushes to watch. She had never seen him without a shirt on, and she smiled.
Stefan’s muscles tensed each time he picked up a log, and she admired his fluid movements as he worked. His chest was well-developed, and his arms flexed with each log. His body was almost a man’s, more than the other boys his age, anyway. He was taller, more muscular, and his beard was starting to come in. She wished she could watch him from afar all night, but the fear of what she heard the Queen discussing with Charles drove her to poke her head up cautiously.
“Psst,” she said from the shadows, and Stefan paused his work. Looking around in the shadows for the source of the quiet noise. “Over here in the bush.” The Princess whispered, waving at him quickly with one hand.
Stefan approached with acute unease. He was unsure whether he was being lured into a trap of some sort, but when he peeked around the bush he saw the beautiful Princess shivering in her nightgown.
“Princess!” He said aloud, concern thick in his voice. “What are you doing here?”
“Shhhh,” she hushed him. “I need to talk to you quickly!”
Stefan could see the fear in the girl’s eyes. He pulled the young Princess into his father’s shop where she could be warm in her thin night clothes. “No one is here right now,” he explained. “My father is at the Inn.” He could see the faint outline of Charlotte’s breasts in the fire light beneath the thin fabric of her nightgown, but he pushed that thought away, sensing her desperation. “Why are you here?”
“You have to leave,” she blurted out, and then explained what she had heard outside Charles’ hut. Once she finished, Stefan shook his head.
“No, if I leave then I will never see you again.” He protested. His bare chest heaving with the effort of his anguish in the light of the Carpenter Shop’s fireplace.
Charlotte turned away, her body was outlined against the firelight and Stefan’s eyes roamed over the silhouette of her body through her silken nightgown.
“You can’t stay,” she protested. “They will kill you.”
“Then we should leave, together.” Stefan replied, shaking his head. But he knew that would never work. The Princess was known everywhere and they would be pursued relentlessly. Taking her away would be a death sentence, even more severe than what he already faced.
Princess Charlotte shook her head. “You know we would never get away.” She approached him slowly, seeing the pain in his face. She wanted to make it better. To fix what was so obviously her fault. But if he… WHEN he left, she knew she could never see him again.
She thought of the fantasies she had had lying in bed and gazing at the wooden carvings in the gray twilight of the moon. And in those fantasies Stefan had held her in his arms, and she let him touch her. How could that fantasy never be true?
She ran her fingers through Stefan’s long brown hair and pulled him to her mouth. His lips were chapped and rough from working outside in the cold wind, but he kissed her gently. His arms slid around her thin waist, and held her against his lean body.
Charlotte tilted her head back, opened her mouth and the tip of Stefan’s tongue probed into hers, tasting her. She felt a shiver race up her spine. This wasn’t allowed, she thought. Good Princesses don’t kiss like this.
But where she knew she should feel shame, she felt something different. The desperation of the moment emboldened her, and she pulled him closer to her. She couldn’t wait for some time in the future. There was no tomorrow, “you have to leave here tonight.”
The couple held each other, each thinking about possible alternatives. But their whispered plans fell to logic and they knew there was only one solution.
“If I go, I will come back for you.” He said. “After your father leaves on his campaign, we will be together, I promise.”
Charlotte cried in Stefan’s arms. Despite his brave words, she knew he could never come back. Her father, or more likely, the Queen would have him killed if he ever came near the Castle again.
Stefan turned his head toward the window quickly. “Someone is outside…” he whispered. And a split-second later the door to the tiny shop was kicked open and slammed into the wall. The Badger charged in, and Charlotte was ripped from Stefan’s arms.