A Pearl Among Princes Read online

  There is a commotion on the field nearby. “You snarling yellow-bellied . . .” Sir Peter is shouting, yanking Sir Humbert by his lace-trimmed collar. “I saw you beat that horse, you dog. If you killed my friend, I’ll kill you!” Sir Peter punches Sir Humpty so hard surely his shell will crack.

  Where is Nurse Hartling? “Stay with me, Mackree,” I say, not a wish, a command.

  After a while, Doctor Jeffers stands and moves out into a clearing. “Sir Richard will be fine,” he pronounces. The assembled crowd cheers. Professor Pillage nearly weeps with relief. I nearly vomit with disgust and worry.

  Nuff runs to the doctor and pleads with him to come attend to Mackree now that the prince is okay.

  “Princes before peasants,” Tattlebug says to me, shaking her head angrily, “always been so, always will be.” She sneers at some Muffets who have come to hover over us in search of new drama now that Sir Richard is off to the hospital.

  “Get away, ya spiders,” she says, thrusting out her hands to swat them off.

  “That’s right. Go!” Nuff says to the Muffets. She and Lu spread their arms out around Mackree and me.

  “Leave them be,” Lu says.

  I close my eyes. A child is there in my mind. With sunken eyes and hollowed cheeks. “Please,” she says, “I am starving.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Nobility

  The lion and the unicorn

  Were fighting for the crown;

  The lion beat the unicorn

  All about the town.

  Some gave them white bread,

  And some gave them brown;

  Some gave them plum cake,

  And sent them out of town.

  Mackree lives! Thank the heavens, gods and goddesses, goodness, everything.

  The wound on his forehead was deep, but it will heal. He heard me crying out to him as he lay injured on the field, but he pretended not to hear. This he confessed to me when his family had left the hospital room and I lingered longer.

  “I wanted to be sure ya loved me,” he explained.

  “What?” I said. “I was scared near to death for you!”

  “Aye,” he says with a weak smile. “’Twas a mean trick, Pearl. I am sorry.”

  “You know how I feel about you,” I say.

  “Aye,” he says, “and I wanted to feel it one last time before you go.”

  “But I—”

  “Tattlebug suspects you’ll be getting two offers at the ball.”

  “Mackree . . .” My head is throbbing. I look at his bloodied lip. I want to kiss those lips. “I wasn’t ready before, but now my feelings for you are different. I will not leave you.”

  “Pearl, I see how you are called from Miramore. Your path is clear. Choose a prince and go.”

  “No, Mackree.” I touch his hair. He flinches.

  I lean in toward him. He turns away.

  “Go, Pearl, now.”

  I shake my head, crying. “No.” Even as I know he is right.

  “All I ever wanted was you, Pearl. You want me and something more. Something I can never give you. I may not be a prince, but I can’t be a man either and know I’ve denied you your dreams.”

  “Mackree.”

  “Please, Pearl, go. Have courage. Go.”

  I rush from the hospital, feeling cleaved in half, bewildered, beheaded, bleeding. How can life be so cruel? Destiny draws me, the call is so fierce, every fiber of my being, like a tide pull not denied. I am willing to accept. To set course for the unknown. But must I leave my heart to dry up dead as fish, as driftwood on the hot, parched Miramore sand?

  How noble of Mackree to set me free. To insist I heed this call. He is as much a prince as Richard or Peter or any of them.

  Cruel, cruel fate.

  A week passes. Mackree and Sir Richard are both discharged from the hospital and are up and around again.

  Today is August 10, the morning of my sixteenth birthday.

  I walk to the beach before dawn, climb the steps to the top of the old bell tower. I watch the sky blush pink and then orange, then close my eyes from the blinding light as the sun births a brilliant new day.

  Happy birthday, dearest daughter, Mother’s voice sings sweet inside me. Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday, dear . . .

  “Mother. I am frightened.”

  I open my eyes and look down at the water. The tide crashes in upon the rocks. I step back scared from the opening, pull my cloak about me.

  Fear is a pebble, Pearl, a grain of sand. Should you choose to accept this day’s gift, you will have power as great as the sea within you. It is already there, daughter. It has always been. You alone can claim it.

  “Gracepearl! Gracepearl!”

  I look down at the beach.

  Tattlebug.

  “Come to the hospital,” she screams up to me. “Hurry!”

  Oh no. I nearly stumble racing down the stairs.

  “It’s Cook,” Tattlebug says, all out of breath when I reach her. “It’s bad I fear, Grace, run. I’ll go fetch Mackree fer ya.”

  “I’m sorry, dear,” Nurse Hartling says, tears welling in her eyes when she sees me in the hallway. “He asks for you. Go to him.”

  No. I rush to the now familiar room. Father’s eyes are closed, but I see his hefty belly rising up and down with air. I rest my head on his chest. Be strong, I shout a silent command to Father’s heart. Don’t fail Father now. Do you hear me!

  Someone comes into the room. I turn.

  Mackree. He comes to my side. “Pearl,” he says, awkwardly. “Happy birthday.”

  I feel my heart slice in two.

  Father opens his eyes. He smiles at me. He nods a warm welcome to Mackree. “Do me a favor, son?”

  “Anything, sir,” Mackree says with great earnest.

  Father reaches to his neck. With effort he raises his head and lifts the thin leather rope with the key up and over. He instructs Mackree to bring the trunk from beneath his bed in the cottage. “Posthaste, son. Run.”

  “I shall return in an instant,” Mackree says, and dashes off.

  I kneel beside my father, trying to force a cheerful, confident smile, but I was never good at masking true emotions.

  “My dearest daughter,” Cook says in a labored voice, no longer veiling the pain weighing heavy on his chest. “I am not long for this world.”

  “Father!” I wail. “Please, stay. You cannot leave me. You must not leave me. You are the only family I have.”

  Father smiles, lifting a shaking hand to stroke my hair. “Soon I will join my beloved Miriam, but please do not despair. Just has your mother has never left you for a moment, I promise you, neither shall I.”

  CHAPTER 27

  A Revelation

  Lucy Locket lost her pocket,

  Kitty Fisher found it;

  There was not a penny in it,

  But a ribbon round it.

  Mackree is back, the fastest runner on Miramore, carrying the purple trunk.

  “Set it here, son,” Father says, patting the space beside him.

  My heart clenches at his use of the name “son.” It might have been. Once in another life, another time, it might have been. I turn away to wipe the tears from my eyes. I must have courage for Father.

  He unlocks the trunk. I stand back by Mackree.

  “This year there will be three gifts,” Father says.

  “No, Father, just the sixteenth . . . please. Keep the seventeenth for next year, and the eighteenth for the year after that.”

  Mackree squeezes my arm as if to strengthen me.

  “Please, daughter,” Father says in a halting voice, “there may not be much time.”

  I stop trying to stop the inevitable. I lean my head on Mackree’s shoulder.

  Father fumbles in the trunk. He pulls out a book.

  “Go ahead,” he says, “open it.”

  I take the leather volume from his hands. It is the book of history Mother used to teach me from. I turn back the cover.
Father has written something there. I’d recognize his handwriting anywhere.

  “To our beloved daughter, Gracepearl, on the occasion of her sixteenth birthday.”

  There is a sheaf of papers stuck inside the back cover. I turn to them, again recognizing Father’s cursive scrawl.

  This must have been what he was writing that day in the cottage.

  “Read it,” Father says.

  I pick up the papers and begin. “Once upon a time . . .” My voice shakes as I read. And then I hear Mother’s voice reading the story aloud to me as my eyes follow the words.

  Once upon a time there was a princess who, as she stood with her mother and father in the tower waving down to the subjects gathered to honor them each day, had begun to wonder why the people of the kingdom looked so sad. She asked her nurse, who bitterly explained that the people were hungry, sick, and homeless. Why then couldn’t her parents help them? “Your parents have tried to help, dear girl, but the forces against them are too powerful. It will take a mightier strength to turn the tides of this mass misfortune.”

  The princess could not erase those faces from her mind. She vowed that if one day she took the throne, she would melt all the crowns, all the gold in the palace, and help the people who haunted her dreams.

  At the mention of the dreams, I gasp and shudder.

  Father nods at me. Mother reads on . . .

  Mass rebellion broke out and war ensued. To protect their daughter, the princess’s parents sent her off in the charge of a trusted sea captain. The captain delivered the princess and her baggage to an island enshrouded by a circle of mist, a place where royal families sent princes to study the charming arts in summer. It was winter and only the servants who lived on the island year-round were there. The sea captain left the princess in the safekeeping of a kitchen baker who, as fate would have it, was already providing safe haven for a young Pine duke also sent to escape the war.

  Years passed and the young royals fell in love. She gathered fruits and vegetables, gave names to all the fish. He became quite a good cook. She loved to dance. He learned to play the fiddle.

  My pulse pounds so I fear I may faint. I look at Father. His eyes are closed and he’s smiling. Mother reads on . . .

  When the time was right, they professed marriage vows in the forest beneath a pine canopy, stars twinkling like diamonds above them. Years passed and the Royal Order, now but twelve branches, as the king and queen of Pine had been killed and there was no apparent heir, kept the summer school for princes in good operation. The Order feared the working-class ranks were growing disillusioned with the throne and more charm might provide a calming tonic. The people always liked a good show.

  The island’s royal couple, still keeping their lineage a secret, gave birth to a child, a daughter. And on that bright August day when she was born, they determined to raise her free of the burden of royal patronage and expectation. This girl would have a childhood full of the joys of nature, the sea, the forest, and the field. She would acquire humility forged from hard labor, compassion wrought from service to others, the friendship of those who would love her for the kindness of her character, not the cash in her coffers, and she would have peaceful stretches of solitude, so quiet she could hear the wisdom of her truth and one day choose her calling, whatever that would be.

  My body is shaking. Mackree’s hand supports my back.

  I shut the book. Father’s eyes search mine.

  “Is it true?” I ask in a struggled whisper.

  “Yes,” Father says.

  His face winces and he touches his chest. He reaches into the trunk and takes out a large envelope, wrapped in a purple ribbon with a gold seal. “Here are the papers to prove it, Gracepearl. Here is your seventeenth gift.”

  My head swoons. I sit down on the chair.

  Father winces again. “You were to have two years to consider your decision, but with my health, now—”

  “I’ll get the doctor,” Mackree says.

  “Father,” I shout, standing.

  The pain subsides. His face softens. “It’s gone,” he says. “Stay, Mackree. Here, Gracepearl, the final gift.”

  Father reaches into the trunk. He takes out a purple satin box, tied with a gold ribbon.

  There is an envelope, “Happy birthday, Gracepearl,” in Mother’s writing, on top.

  I unseal the envelope and read the letter, again hearing Mother’s voice inside.

  My dearest daughter, Gracepearl, in whom we are so delighted.

  Being your mother was the greatest joy of my life. I hope you have found pleasure in my birthday gifts to you through the years. With this last present, the trunk is empty, and yet, like your life, full of possibility.

  Today you are an adult, my daughter, so you may choose to take your throne.

  This moment is yours. You alone will write the next chapter.

  It is for these reasons that I say to you, the gift inside this box may be destiny or decoration. It will be for you, and you alone to decide, our beautiful, precious, beloved daughter, Princess Gracepearl Cole.

  I hear Mother laugh gently.

  That is Cole with an “e.” C . . . o . . . l . . . e.

  With trembling hands, I untie the ribbon, open the box, and lift out the last gift.

  A crown.

  I am keeling, the room is reeling. Mackree wraps his arms about me.

  I look at my father. “But, what now . . .”

  “My darling,” he says, “this is overwhelming news. Please forgive me if you think I should have told you sooner.”

  “No, Father. It isn’t that. It’s just, what do I do now? What does this all mean?”

  “You can still take your time, Gracepearl,” Father says. “Whether I live or die, you have a choice. It will be a shock to the branches, to the Order, to the world, that a sturdy sapling of the thirteenth branch, the noble House of Pine, lives on. In that envelope is all of the paperwork, the letters and documents you will need to claim the throne—in my absence, it can be yours before you turn eighteen.”

  My hand reaches out, then back, trembling.

  “Or, burn the papers,” Father says, “and keep the crown for whimsy when you dance in the woods.”

  My head is throbbing. I look at Mackree.

  “Ahhh!” Father shouts, his face contorted in pain.

  He struggles for air. Mackree rushes for help.

  “Cook!” Nurse Hartling races in, then off to get the doctor.

  “Father, Father.” I kiss his cheek, tears raining down on his beloved face.

  “Happy birthday, darling daughter,” he whispers. “Enjoy your gifts.”

  “The only gift I want is you,” I sob. “You, Father.”

  “Sing me something, princess,” he says.

  I gulp and begin to sing a lullaby, one Mother often sang to me. The melody is light as a breeze, the words soft and warm as a blanket. My voices catches on the word in the lyric “ma-kree.” My heart.

  “I’m here, Pearl,” Mackree says, holding me. I am here. Don’t worry. I’m here.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Pearl’s Place of Peace

  Pussy cat, pussy cat,

  where have you been?

  I’ve been to London

  to visit the Queen.

  Pussy cat, pussy cat,

  What did you there?

  I frightened a little mouse

  under the chair.

  Father still breathes, but just barely. He sleeps and sleeps and sleeps. I do not leave his side.

  “He may never awaken,” Doctor Jeffers says. “You must brace yourself for that.”

  “No,” I say. “I won’t.”

  Mackree stays with me as much as he can, but his duties call him to the stables each day. Lu and Nuff bring me food and company. “Go home and rest,” Lu implores me. “We will stay,” Nuff says. But I will not leave my father’s side.

  I pray to Mother to intercede on Father’s behalf. “Please let him live, God, please.”

 
; Finally, on the fourth day, Nurse Hartling insists I go home for a rest. She will not take no for an answer. “You need fresh air, Gracepearl. Go now, go. I’ll attend to him constantly, I assure you.”

  I walk home in a daze, like a ghost in a dream.

  At the cottage, I boil water and bathe myself. I wash my hair and put on clean clothes. I pick up the jeweled mirror and look at my reflection.

  There in the corner is the purple trunk Mackree carried back here from the hospital. The memory of the revelation sweeps over me, but all I can think about is Father.

  “Mother, why are you so silent of late? Why do you not speak to me?”

  I walk to Father’s room, pick up the pine pillow and press it to my nose, breathing in the comforting scent, a soothing salve for my spirit.

  My place of peace beckons. I hurry to the forest.

  Passing by the kettle pond where Mackree and I first held hands, I pause and dip my hand into the water. It is soft and warm. I touch my fingers to my lips, remembering the kiss we shared on the beach. Not a kiss between friends. A kiss between two in love.

  Something rustles nearby and I turn in fear. Just a squirrel, how silly. Since when do I scare so easily? I walk by the birch tree sentries, standing post on either side of the path, past the brambleberry bushes now hanging fat with sweet-tart treasures. I part the heavy thicket of evergreen branches and now, at last I am here.

  The smell of pine envelops me in perfume, like incense from the church. I breathe in and out, deeply, fully, in and out and in again. The House of Pine? A princess? Perhaps a queen? I shiver. How can this be true? Shocking news, but yet not so shocking. It is as if somehow I have known all along. Now the longing, the dreams, my choice . . . it all begins to make sense.

  I am frightened. I hug my arms about me. What will my future be?

  Gracepearl, my girl.

  “Ohhh!” I cry out. “Mother, at last. So you haven’t abandoned me.”

  I am with you always.

  “Will Father live? Please tell me. Why didn’t you answer me these long days in the hospital? When I needed you most, you left me alone.”