Page 13 of Disenchanted
“This ball is a one-night affair. Do you think that makes it worth offending your regular customers?”
“You are hardly a regular customer. If I make enough money from this ball, maybe I can retire. Do you know how much I hate chickens? All that squawking and the smell! Plucking them clean is disgusting work. That is why I have decided to start charging more for that as well. If you want your hen killed, dressed, and stuffed with cornbread, that’ll cost you extra.”
I wanted to tell Barclay what he could do with his stuffing, but I just glared at him and stalked out of the shop. I soon discovered that he was not the only merchant determined to exploit this opportunity. The butcher, the greengrocer, the bakerand even the spice seller had all hiked their prices as well. And the stupid ball was still an entire month away.
As I trudged from the cheese shop, empty-handed, I muttered, “We are all going to starve.” I immediately chided myself for being as melodramatic as Amy.
Of course, we would not starve. We could always fall back on the one constant supply of cheap food in the kingdom, the great body of water that bordered Misty Bottoms— Conger River —so called because it teemed with a variety of eels.
I’d had recourse to the snigglers far more often than I or my family liked, even though I had grown quite ingenious in the many ways to prepare eels. Eel pie, eel ragout, creamed lampreys, eel fricassee. I could probably contrive another new recipe but the thought of eel again for supper left me completely dispirited.
My hair was coming undone, straggling about my cheeks. I had lost my basket; the hem of my dress was torn, and my rib felt bruised where that horrid old lady had poked me. I do not often give way to lachrymose emotions, but I felt so tired and overwhelmed by everything, I could have sunk down in the middle of the street and cried.
I forced myself to trudge onward. I managed to avoid the worst of the crowds by squeezing down a narrow alleyway between the Silk Emporium and the ribbon vendors. I emerged into the area of town behind Quad Hall, the old grey stone building that housed all the municipal governing departments. Covered in ivy, it resembled a small castle with four round towers. Somewhere behind those forbidding walls, Commander Crushington would have his office. It was likely situated near the Scutcheon barracks and the steel doors that led to the jail where the unfortunate Farmer Grey would be held, awaiting his punishment.
I was, thankfully, not familiar with that part of Quad Hall. I was regrettably too well acquainted with the Exchequer Tower, where you went to pay your taxes unless you wanted the king’s revenue collectors to come hammering at your front door. Even when it was not Collection Day, townsfolk tended to creep past the Exchequer Tower as though fearful of waking a sleeping giant.
I was surprised to see a cheerful-looking crowd queued up outside the tower door until I remembered this was where the tickets to the ball were being sold. Unlike the unruly mobs outside the shops, the crowd here milled about docilely as a flock of sheep lined up to be fleeced. As vendors moved among the waiting crowd, selling ices and sugar nuts, everyone was laughing and chattering as though it was some sort of holiday.
I spotted Fortescue Bafton and his sister near the front of the line. Florence Bafton looked disheveled but smugly triumphant as she displayed the blue silk she had bought to several other girls I recognized as some of my stepsisters’ friends. Amy and Netta should have been among them, instead of at home weeping into their pillows.
The thought did nothing to improve my mood. Ducking my head down, I slunk past the queue, in no humor to be hailed by Mr. Bafton or anyone else I happened to know. I made it, reaching the next point of the building, which contained the Ministry of Registrars. This was where one went to register births, marriages, deaths and apply for licenses to set up shopkeeping or practice magic.
It was also the tower that contained the infamous Aura Chamber, invented by the king’s chief sorcerer, Mercato. This device measured and recorded each citizen’s aura and stored it in the city’s archives. It first came into use about seventeen years ago, when every subject had to register their aura or pay a hefty fine.
It was for the good of the realm, King August had insisted. This registry would not only help protect his loyal subjects from criminal elements but would also aid in tracing children who strayed and became lost.
I was six years old at the time and was excited by the prospect of seeing this amazing Aura Chamber everyone was talking about. To my dismay and astonishment, my father balked at complying with this law. When I realized I was not to have my turn in the magic chamber, I burst into tears, wailing.
“B-but everyone has got to have their aura collected. Mal’s grandmother even took him. It is for our safety. Don’t you care if I get lost, Papa?”
My father scooped me up onto his lap, awkwardly brushing my tears away. He gave me one of his odd, sad smiles. “You will never get lost, Ella. You are far too clever for that. The only way you will ever disappear is because you wish to do so.”
His words confused me, but I was so pleased to discover my father thought I was clever that I stopped crying and beamed at him. As a child, I could not imagine any reason I would want to disappear.
That of course has changed. There have been many moments when I have been so overwhelmed, I have wished I could simply vanish and today was turning out to be one of them.
Leaving Quad Hall behind me, I reached the fountain burbling in the middle of the town square. I bent down to splash the cool water over my face until I felt somewhat revived. This great fountain with its soothing sprays of water used to be one of my favorite places in the kingdom when I was a child. Back in those days, there had been an enormous statue erected in the center depicting my heroine, Queen Anthea, the Magnificently Wise.
The ancient sculpture had been commissioned to commemorate Queen Anthea’s role in ending the Nodellian Warbefore it ever began. She had formed a secret alliance with the enemy queen, and they had amassed an army of women from both kingdoms. When the day for battle dawned, Queen Anthea led her considerable force of mothers, wives, daughters, sisters, aunts and grandmothers right down the middle of the field between the two opposing armies, thus preventing them from getting off a single cannon shot.
The women dispersed among their men folk, coaxing, cajoling and in many cases seizing them by the ear until the foot soldiers all threw down the arms and headed back home. Soon there was no one left but two pipsqueak kings and some fat, old generals. When they realized if they wanted a war, they were going to have to do the fighting themselves, they slunk homeward as well.
Hereinafter, Queen Anthea browbeat her son, the king and his council into enacting a law that no man would ever be able to go to war without written permission from his mother. The kingdom enjoyed a long period of peace until a plague swept through Arcady, killing the young king, his wife and infant son.
The aging Queen Anthea was obliged to surrender her crown to a distant cousin when he marched into the kingdom at the head of his army and thus the reign of the Helavalerians began. Some said that Arcady had never prospered since that ill-fated day Cuthbert theFirst claimed the throne. He immediately did away with all of Queen Anthea’s wise laws and embarked on a series of disastrous wars that nearly left the treasury bankrupt. Thankfully, our present king, August, was not as bellicose as his ancestor. Except for a brief skirmish along the northern border, Arcady once again knew peace, mostly because wars are expensive, and August was too much of a miser to fund an army.
When the statue of the magnificent Anthea was damaged in a storm, King August used it as an excuse to tear the sculpture down and erect another in its place. What now loomed overme represented the cause of much of my present misery, Prince Florian. It was a decent likeness of the heir to the throne, depicting his strapping, muscular frame, and flowing locks of hair. His sword clutched in one hand, his shield in the other, he looked almost noble instead of the dolt that he truly was.
I had never actually met the prince, but I had heard many tales of Florian’s idiocy, most of the stories acquired from my wandering minstrel. Harper had often been called to entertain at the palace. Afterward, he would reduce me to tears of laughter by imitating the way Florian liked to toss his thick mane and the prince’s braying laugh.
Of course, that was all before Harper simply reduced me to tears. Peering down at my unhappy reflection in the fountain waters, I trailed my fingers through it as though I could erase all memories of my faithless bard.
Harper had proved to be so false; I might have been inclined to think that his stories about the prince were all lies. But I had caught a glimpse of Florian those rare times he had ridden through town, and he gave the impression of a man fond of gazing into his mirror. The way he liked to whip back his golden mane led Mal to dub our prince the “hair apparent.” But he never said this too loudly because one could be heavily fined for mocking a member of the royal family.
There might be a touch of envy on Mal’s part because all the Hawkridge men suffer from the curse of prematurely receding hairlines. Even though Mal was only a few months older than me, he had little hair left other than a fringe.
The mere thought of my friend was enough to bring the smile back to my lips. I know that if there was one person in the kingdom who I could count upon to remain sane and aloof from all this royal ball madness, it would be Malcolm Hawkridge. My longing to be with my friend was so acute, I turned away from Midtown and raced down the hill to Misty Bottoms.
