The Princess Curse by Merrie Haskell Read Free Book Online Page A

noses,” I said. “Sister Anica did it for a monk who had fallen from a tree he was pruning and banged his head. He’d been sleeping for three days. . . .”
    “Did it work?”
    “Not then. But she’d seen it work other times. So shouldn’t we try it?”
    “Please do. Try.” She gestured toward the man sleeping at her feet. I knelt beside him and rolled the santolina sprigs between my hands, collecting the plant’s oils. I dropped the sprig and smoothed my fingers over the man’s forehead, across his temples, down his cheek, beneath his nose. I massaged the pulse points on his neck and wrists, watching carefully for any signs of stirring.
    Nothing.
    I stood up and brushed the leaf bits and dirt off my apron. “Well!” I said, trying to sound cheery even though tears of disappointment clogged my throat. I sat down on the low stool beside Mistress Adina and made a great fuss over straightening my shoes so she wouldn’t see me sniffling into my apron. “I guess I’ll have to try something else.”
    When I looked up, Mistress Adina wasn’t even watching me. She was staring out the window. I followed her gaze across the forecourt to the shadowed bulk of the eastern tower. Lights flickered in the princesses’ window. Mistress Adina turned back to the room to regard the sleeping figures.
    “What?” I whispered, afraid to disturb this moment, whatever it was. “What’s happening?”
    “Wait,” Adina said.
    I waited.
    As one, the sleepers opened their mouths and shouted: “Don’t go!”
    Goose bumps rose on my scalp and scrabbled down my spine. Mistress Adina stabbed her netting needle toward the window, urging me to look: The princesses’ tower was dark, the light extinguished.
    “Every night,” Mistress Adina said. “It happens every night when the light in the princesses’ window fades away.”
    My throat was too dry for words to rise.
    I went the next night at the same time to sit with Mistress Adina, and the next night, and almost every night thereafter while I was the herbalist’s apprentice of Castle Sylvian. And every night, as the light faded from the princesses’ tower, the sleepers beseeched, “Don’t go!”

Chapter 8
     
    T he next day, I woke to find a murder of crows had descended upon Castle Sylvian. I’d heard them cawing in my sleep and thought I’d dreamed it. But there was no dreaming involved in picking a path around the lacy gold-and-white patterns of their poop splattered across the courtyard on my way to the baths.
    Marjit was uncharacteristically silent while I assembled my herbs. She didn’t respond to any of my efforts to jolly her. But when I made to leave, she murmured, “Stick around,” her voice barely audible under the chatter of the arriving princesses.
    I shrugged but stayed. Marjit had me hand her sponges and scrubbers, while the princesses and I tried to ignore each other. When Marjit had settled the princesses in the soaking pool, she pulled me into the bath antechamber, calling over her shoulder, “I’ll just be attending to your toweling, dears.”
    I was halfway through the door to the far passageway when Marjit yanked me backward into the antechamber and slammed the passage door loudly. She held up her hand in a “Wait” gesture, then tiptoed back to listen at the door of the bathing chamber.
    Eavesdropper! I stared at her with big eyes, uncertain what to say, or if I should say anything at all. Marjit, the root of the castle’s grapevine, apparently gathered her information from illicit eavesdropping. People thought they were alone in the baths, but she was really on the other side of the door with her ear pressed to it.
    The princesses were talking about the crows in the courtyard. “It’s an omen,” one of them said decisively. “The Hungarians are coming.”
    “At least there won’t be more Saxons.” This was Ruxandra’s voice, sounding disgusted. Her tavern wench’s accent was unmistakable. “Every single Saxon, insisting on dancing