The Adventure of Anna the Great

Chapter IV - A Few Rumors

  When I awoke I was glad to find myself lying down, in a bed. I was in a tiny room, not much bigger than a stall. There was enough room for a very narrow bed, a chest and, of all things, a full length mirror at the foot of the bed. I sat up and was shocked to see the battered little boy that looked back at me from the mirror. His hair was sticking out in all directions, his cheek was skinned, his expression was hollow and frightened. It was only when my muscles began to show their painful stiffness that I realized he was me. The look of fear changed to curiosity as I pulled myself up to get a better look at me.

  I made a very good boy. Nobody would suspect this creature was a young lady. I was quite dirty from my roll in the ditch, and my shirt was torn in three places. No, not torn, slashed. I examined the holes closely and I was certain they had been made during the duel.

  I felt embarrassment at the memory of that sword fight. The whole thing had been a grand tease. It was obvious to me now. The rents in my shirt showed that he could have hurt me if he had wanted to. Instead he chose to frighten me, and beat me, and that he did.

  The sound of hooves on cobblestone reverberated outside my window. It was a small window, high up, and I stood on the bed to see out. I looked on a large stable yard, with several horses being led by. I assumed I was looking from a stable, for it smelled like one; sweet and dusty. There was another stable across from me, and beyond that I could see the rooves of the palace.

  The yard, I soon realized, was actually a court, bounded on four sides by long stables. The buildings were of stone, and each had an arched walkway on the inner side, making an elegant colonnade around the yard. It was the largest stable I had ever seen, but then, I surmised the palace must have somewhere to put all the horses of visitors, guards and the like.

  I hopped down from the bed and stepped into the hall. I was at the middle of the south stable. I was surprised to find little activity there.

  To my left the building was almost empty. There were horses in each of the three loose boxes, but the long row of standing stalls, each with a wrought iron divider, marble manger, and well drained dirt floor, all were empty. The other side, however, was three quarters full, and I heard the sound of human voices. To this direction I turned.

  A man in the green royal livery popped out of a stall near the end, cursing and slamming the stall door. He was a heavy man, though not obese, with his excess weight centered primarily on his belly.

  “Hans! Hans, damn you!” he shouted. A skinny, pockmarked boy came scurrying in from the yard. “Do I have to look after everything myself? I told you to look after that horse. He bit me, damn him.”

  Hans looked at the stall with dread and slowly slunk toward it. The man examined his arm closely as he turned away and walked briskly toward me. I went to greet him. He stopped when he saw me, scowling.

  “Who the devil are you? What are you doing here?”

  “The Marquis von Furlenhaur gave me that room to spend the night in,” I said, in a polite but forceful voice.

  “Oh, did he now? He didn’t tell me about it.”

  “It was very late,” I said.

  “Well, you’ve had your sleep,” he said abruptly. “Get out.”

  “Where can I find the marquis? To thank him?”

  “The marquis has better things to do than waiting on the likes of you.”

  “Well, thank you anyway.”

  I left the stable. The man was a snob and I did not like talking to him. I realized that in my present state I was unlikely to get into the palace, so I went to the guard house to find Colonel Bartleby. There I learned that he was out, and would not be back until afternoon.

  I had a change of clothing in my saddle bags, and I thought I might look more presentable mounted on Jupiter, so I asked the guard for directions to my inn, and set out on the hour-long walk to get there.

  As I walked back to the inn, it came into my head what a marvelous position I might be in. Here I was near the palace, having practically met the queen. I was never one for history, and our governesses never taught it to girls anyway, but I did like Queen Christiana. A lot of people did not like her, and nobody had expected her to become queen four years earlier. She had several brothers ahead of her, but they all died together in an epidemic, along with the old king. Most people expected the king’s brother, Prince Hugo, to take the throne. He was not particularly likable, but many thought he should rule before Christiana, because she had been married off to the Arch Duke of Kertia, which you may not have heard of, since it is even smaller than Lifbau, and does not exist any more anyway, since it is now a part of Austria-Hungary. Christiana’s husband was dead now, however, and her son ruled in Kertia, so she came back to us. Hugo was not fast enough in grabbing the throne, but he was powerful, and he disputed it. He nearly had Lifbau in civil war for about three years, but now things had settled down. Hugo could not get rid of her, and I had heard rumors that he was trying to repair the rift between his faction and hers. The latest rumor was that Christiana might marry Hugo’s son, Duke Sigmond of Kirsau, for the greater good of Lifbau, naturally.

  And now I had a way into this situation. To be involved in the intrigue of court, and to serve the queen, however lightly and incidentally, at the age of fourteen, was both thrilling and dampening on my spirits. I had an underlying sense of failure, that all I had done so far was to make a fool of myself. It was a creeping, sneaking emotion that had always seemed to plague me. The rapid and intense events of the day before made me feel it sharply, and I think it was made even worse by the fact that I was happy, really happy, which always tends to worry me. It made everything feel especially urgent. I had failed in my first adventure. Certainly I had been exhilarated by it, and my behavior may have been considered praiseworthy by Bartleby, but I had proved nothing, either to myself or to others. I was unchanged by the experience, and dissatisfied. Due to my sex, this could easily be my last adventure as well as my first. I had to seize this opportunity. I had to prove myself. I had to change. I think, somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought that if I did it right I would, somehow, be transformed into a man. I would wake up and no longer be a small and unfeminine female. I would look, I suppose, like the marquis, tall and big and an easy match for the slender Gentleman in Black.

  The thought of new opportunities banished any sense of gloom, and I was bright and perky as I went first to the stable to greet my horse. Jupiter was glad to see me, but sluggish. He shuddered and grunted as he moved aside for me to enter his stall, raising his head up and stretching. He was stiff from the previous day’s work and I began to give him a quick rubdown to get him going.

  The groom, a cadaverous old fellow, with wispy hair and no teeth, wandered idly into the next stall and began fussing with its occupant, and eyeing me curiously.

  “Hear a soldier o’ the queen’s guard paid your bills last night,” he said conversationally, but ill concealing his itch to know what happened.

  “That was nice of him,” I said. I went on brushing Jupiter. His coat was gleaming. “Did you give my horse a hot mash like I ordered?”

  “Oh yes, sir,” he said quickly. The night before I had hardly rated speaking to. “Hot mash for dinner, and I was about to turn him out in the paddock for you just now.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I hear you were in on the excitement last night. What happened?”

  “Oh,” I said casually, gesturing with my currycomb. “A bunch of ruffians kidnapped a lady. I tried to stop them, but there were too many.”

  “Yeah, I knew they were up to no good.” He gave up the pretense of working and leaned on the dividing boards. “I took one look at them, and I knew it. So. Go on.”

  I gave him an account of the incident. I did not think he was much interested in accuracy, so I embroidered the details freely. I left out the part about having seen the queen’s carriage. He was not having any of that.

  ??
?What about the palace guards? How did they come into it?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said, shrugging. “They were just riding along the road. They tried to help too, of course, but they didn’t know what was happening.”

  “And for lack of anything better to do, they paid your bills for you. Ha!”

  “Not exactly,” I said, as if I missed the sarcasm. “There was a nobleman with them and he paid the bills. He wanted me to come with him and tell him what happened. He was very rich and he was in a hurry. He was just throwing his money around.” The man’s interest had begun to wane, but at the mention of money it came back stronger than ever. He actually winced when I mentioned it, perhaps because he had not been there to get any.

  “It was strange,” I continued. “Nobody seems to know who any of those people were. Either the lady or the ruffians. Not even the leader. I’d have thought the innkeeper or his wife would have known something, but I guess they didn’t.”

  The groom harrumphed indignantly.

  “You wouldn’t happen to know any of them, would you?” I said, still keeping a conversational tone, though it was not easy. “The leader, perhaps? You might have seen him around.”

  “I might have,” he said with a hinting tone. “And the mistress might have too.” He turned away and started fussing with the horse in his stall.

  “What?” I said. I slipped under Jupiter’s neck and climbed the boards between the stalls, hanging half over in eagerness. “What do you know?”

  “They should have asked me in the first place,” he said, pouting a bit. “I could’ve told them a few things, and a lot more than they’d say up at the house, that’s for sure.”

  “Tell me, please!” I said, swinging one leg over and sitting on the top rail.

  He laughed and said, “You’re too young to hear about those kind of things.”

  “Oh, come, tell me.” I had to beg him a bit longer, and he just kept his back to me and shook his head. Then suddenly he leaned close to me.

  “Well, I will tell you the mistress has seen that gentleman before, and I’ll tell you that he’s no gentleman. He wasn’t even a man the last time I saw him, more of a boy. And I’ll tell you one thing, the mistress has a very good reason for not wanting her husband to know.” Now that he had decided to speak, words came flooding out as through a broken dike. Unfortunately he seemed to prefer innuendo to fact.

  “What happened?”

  “You’re too young to hear it,” he declared.

  “I bet I know. I can tell. It was adultery.”

  “More like childery. A woman of her age with a nasty young whip like that!”

  “How long ago was it?”

  “Oh, four years ago maybe . . . .”

  “He wasn’t so very young, then.”

  “Compared to her he was. Yes, it was four years ago. Right around the epidemic, when Hugo came and took charge.”

  “What is his name?”

  “I don’t know. Only saw ‘em together a few times. They were always sneaking off someplace. Shameful, it was. And he wasn’t really interested in her. Out for trouble if you ask me. He did it just to blackmail her. I think he was blackmailing her just now, too.”

  “Why?”

  “Sheer wickedness.”

  “No, I mean why do you think that?”

  “Well, she didn’t say a thing to the queen’s soldiers, now did she?”

  “And you never saw anything to tell you who he was?”

  “Nope. Guessed he had money, may have been a nobleman—he did always come from the way of the palace—but he was no gentleman. That’s all I know.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and hopped out of the stall.

  “Wait!” he called. “Just tell me who was that gentleman what paid your bills?”

  “The Marquis von Furlenhaur,” I turned and said.

  “Really?” He eagerly came out of the stall.

  “Absolutely.” I dashed off before he could pump me the way I pumped him.

  From the innkeeper I bought a late breakfast and an half-hour’s use of the bath. The water was good and hot, and soothing on my sore muscles. I discovered, on closer inspection, that I was not so battered as I thought. I was merely very dirty. The removal of the dirt and the soaking of my body left me in fine shape.

  I put on a clean shirt, and pants, and polished up my boots. My old shirt was near a total loss, yet I hated to throw it out. I had so few shirts. I thought perhaps it would make a good work shirt, if I mended it. I did not like mending, but I also have a miserly streak that makes me save things I should not. In the end I sat beside the paddock where Jupiter was grazing, busily, and sloppily, mending while watching the traffic go by.

  It was not a very travelled road, at least not at that time of day, but presently I heard the clop of hooves. One horse, at a trot. I did not look up, for I was concentrating on my mending, but a voice hailed me.

  “Albert!” said the rider. It was the marquis. He was mounted on a tall gray, a different horse than the night before, and he was without his uniform. He was dressed in a quiet riding costume, a bit elegant, perhaps, but it suited him better. The uniform, when combined with his size, made him look rather too imposing.

  “Hello, sir. Johan.” I added the last quickly, on remembering that he had given me permission to be familiar the night before. He gave me a pleased smile and jumped off his horse.

  “What are you doing there?” he asked. I stood and displayed the shirt. If anything, my mending had made it worse. I had somehow got my stitches crooked, and it was totally misshapen and wrinkled. The marquis began to laugh.

  “I was mending it,” I said.

  “It looks like you need a woman’s hand there,” he said.

  “Uh, yes. I suppose,” I said, embarrassed. He did not know that I was a girl, but I felt like a dismal specimen in front of him all the same. If I could not succeed at what I was, how could I hope to succeed at what I was not?

  “Don’t worry about it, lad,” said the marquis, putting his great arm around my puny shoulders. “We’ll find some girl or other to fix it for you. I’ve been looking for you, Albert. Why did you leave the palace?”

  “The stableman kicked me out, and I couldn’t find you.”

  “The man’s an ass!” he said quickly. “I should have found you a place in the palace, but I didn’t want to wake anyone up.”

  “Oh, that’s all right, sir,” I said. “The room was very comfortable, and I’m very fond of horses.”

  “Are you, now?” The marquis seemed delighted to hear it. “Well, that’s good. I wanted to talk to you about that.” He put his hands on the pasture fence and looked out across the field. It was a small field but he seemed to be looking beyond its limits. “Where are you from?”

  “Halzig.”

  “That’s right. You told me last night. How did you come to be travelling here alone?” He turned to look beyond me. His words were clipped and businesslike, but his voice was quiet, almost shy.

  “I’m seeking my fortune, I guess,” I said. “Or, not exactly. I’m out on an adventure. A little one. I told my mother I’d be back by Christmas.” By Christmas I would be known in any case.

  “Out to see Lifbau.”

  “Yes.”

  “Perhaps you’d like a job, an easy one, while you’re here.”

  “Yes, sir?” I did not want to commit myself yet, but this looked like an opportunity to stay with my adventure.

  “We’ll be needing extra help around the stables, what with the engagement party coming up.” He raised his eyebrows at me.

  “You mean Her Majesty and Duke Sigmond?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “So they’re really getting married?”

  “As far as we know,” he said quietly. “We’ll be overflowing with guests, you see. If you want to see things, right there at the palace would be a good place to start.”

&
nbsp; “I think I’d like that, sir,” I said. “But I’d like to be sure and have free time to, well, to be free.”

  “I can see to that, but you’ll have to work for that silly ass of a stableman. I can’t do anything about him. He does his job, and everybody else seems to like him.”

  “I don’t mind,” I said, grabbing my bridle from the post where I had hung it, and scrambling under the fence. “Just let me get my horse.”

  Jupiter did not want to come. He let me catch him all right, but he would not let me bridle him. He was not a tall horse, as horses go, but I was pretty short. I needed his cooperation. The marquis came up behind me as I struggled and pulled the bridle up over Jupiter’s ears.

  “Thank you, sir,” I said. He only nodded, running his hand down Jupiter’s flank. “He’s usually much better. He’s just balky after that long ride yesterday.”

  “A fine animal,” said the marquis. He glanced quickly at me and grinned. “I was expecting a little pony, or a plow horse.”

  “A plow horse?” I said indignantly. “I’ll have you know that his father was Chronus, and that his grandmother was Cacophony.”

  The marquis’ manner had changed. The slight diffidence disappeared and he looked down at me inquisitively.

  “Where did you get such an animal?” he asked.

  “My father,” I said, looking away. Why did I have to brag about my horse? The last thing I wanted was to get into question and answer with him.

  “Who is your father?”

  I had a complex story made up, but now I felt uncomfortable relating it.

  “I . . . I don’t know, I mean, nobody in particular.” The words just fell out of my mouth. I pretended to adjust Jupiter’s bridle.

  “Ah,” he said. “You’d rather I not ask.”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ll talk another time.” I suppose I had made him curious. His tone told me he was not going to make up his own explanation, and he was not going to let the subject drop.

  I had hoped that he would think I was an orphan, or at least fatherless, and that would be that. Now I was worried. Perhaps he thought I had stolen Jupiter. I had stupidly told him the horse’s background. If he checked it could get back to Aunt Elfie’s stable, where it would be noted that Jupiter was gone. I did not know what story Andre had come up with to explain his disappearance, but whatever it was, they would be sure to want to know who this Albert character was.

  He might also think that I was running away without permission, which I was, but he could still trace me through Jupiter. I would have to remind him, several times, that I was returning home at Christmas.