My mom will be happy. I’m seeing something not many people get to see in Europe. An actual dungeon.
It’s not like I’d have pictured a dungeon. Maybe that’s because it’s so dark I can’t see my own froufrou tights, much less any beds of nails or cat-o’-nine-tails, or that thing where they stretch people. It just seems like a cold, damp, dark room, like my grandmother’s basement in New York.
And it’s quiet. I never really thought about quiet before, but at home, there’s always the stop-start of the air-conditioner, the buzz of the computer fan. But there’s nothing except silence here, and I have nothing to do but think about it. The walls are thick around me, and the ceiling is thick above me, like being dead. There is no one here but me.
And the rats.
The more I get tuned in to the silence, the more I realize there are noises after all. Little ones. Little ones like feet. Scurrying feet.
I bet the rats are really hungry after sleeping for three hundred years.
Don’t think about this!
The guards didn’t take away my iPod, so I turn it on. It starts in at the same song the king was listening to.
I said something wrong, now I long for yesterday.
Hoo-boy, did I. And I did something wrong. I kissed some stupid, spoiled brat princess who couldn’t even trouble herself to tell her father I didn’t “defile” her. And now I’m stuck here, rotting, maybe forever.
And why did I do it? Because she was hot-looking. You’d think I’d have learned from Amber.
I switch to another song. Rap. Loud. One of those songs about what some guy’s going to do to some other guy’s girlfriend. Good stuff.
Maybe they’ll let me out tomorrow.
Maybe they’ll decapitate me.
No. There are rules about how you have to treat prisoners. I read about that in school. Geneva Convention.
Except I’m not sure the Geneva Convention’s been invented yet here.
Also, that’s just for prisoners of war.
I am a prisoner of love.
I close my eyes and try to sleep. But I can’t, so I just close my eyes and try not to hear the rats in the darkness. It sounds like a big one’s creeping up.
I feel red-hot liquid on my arm.
“Ouch!”
Are they torturing me? Boiling me in oil?
“Be quiet!” a voice whispers. It’s Talia.
“But that hurt.”
“It is but a candle. The wax dripped. Do not be such a baby.”
“I’m in a dungeon!”
Suddenly, she’s all, “Oh, you poor, poor dear…yes, I do apologize for that. Father is in a peevish mood.”
“You don’t say. How’d you get down here?”
“Everyone is asleep, except the guard. He let me pass.”
“But are you allowed down here?”
“I am a princess. I am allowed wherever I wish to go.”
“You’d better go,” I say. “I know how it is. You come in here, and then in a few minutes your lady-in-waiting or whatever notices you missing. You lie about what happened…and all of a sudden I don’t have a head.”
“Do you wish to escape?”
“That would be a yes.”
“Then you must speak to me. If not, I shall be forced to—”
“Don’t…”
“I will. I shall be forced to scream, and everyone will come running. I will tell them this knave has abused me grievously. The kiss will be nothing in comparison. I will be pitied, and perhaps it may affect my marriage prospects, but they were slight in any case. You, however, shall be stoned at sunrise…but only if you do not let me stay and talk to you.”
A chill runs through me when she says “stoned at sunrise.” Do they actually do that? In any case, she’s clearly not going to stop them.
“You know, you’re not as sweet as I thought you were,” I say.
“I am sweet.”
“Could have fooled me.”
“I am. Sweet and compliant. Or I was, my first sixteen years, the most docile, malleable creature one might ever imagine. I would have made someone a fine wife. But then everything changed. Or rather, nothing did. I am grown up, and I am still being treated like a child, or an animal. Do you know what it is to be treated as chattel?”
I don’t even know what a chattel is. “Sorry. I was too caught up in the whole being-locked-in-a-dungeon thing.”
“To be treated like you have no choice in what you do in life?”
“My dad wants me to take over his business when I grow up. He’s a developer, like he builds communities where all the houses look alike. I hate it, but he won’t take no for an answer. I guess it’s irrelevant, though, if I’m going to die here.”
“You wish to leave, then?” When I don’t answer, she says, “Well?”
“That was a question? Of course I wish to leave.”
“Then I shall help you leave, but upon one condition.”
I think I know what the condition is.
“You must take me with you.” She grabs my hand and squeezes it.
And we have a winner.
I know I should keep my mouth shut, but I say, “Yeah, about that. I know I’m supposed to be your true love and marry you and all, but I’m only seventeen. It might be perfectly normal to get married at seventeen in your time—your old time. But no one gets married that young now.”
She laughs. “Marry? I do not wish to marry you!” She laughs so hard I’m worried stuff will start flying out of her nose.
She doesn’t need to laugh that much. “You don’t?”
“Hardly. Let us not forget that you were the one who kissed me.”
“Oh, I get it. It’s because I’m not a prince.”
She sighs. “It does not signify. I do not wish to marry you, and you do not wish to marry me, but I do wish you to take me with you when you go.”
“Look, Princess…Your Majesty…”
“Talia will do.”
“Talia will not do. Don’t get me wrong. You’re beautiful, and there’re a lot of guys who’d love to take you wherever they’re going.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. Those others are all dead. Every suitable consort is dead and has been for nearly three hundred years.”
“But your father will never let you go away with me, especially if we’re not married.”
“No, of course he will not.”
“Okay, so we understand each other.” I try to shake off her hand, which is difficult with her grasping mine. “Anyway, it was nice meeting you. Good luck with the princess thing. Now, if you can just get your father to let me out of here—”
“No!” She’s still holding my hand. “I am not asking to marry you, nor am I going to ask my father’s permission to let you go or to leave with you. I wish to sneak out, under cover of darkness, and leave Euphrasia. I wish to go with you, not as man and wife, but merely as friends, travel companions, the sort of happy-go-lucky chums about whom rollicking old ballads of the road are written.” She grips my hand even harder. “You owe it to me.”
“I owe you? How do you figure?”
“You woke me up. You ruined everything. Had you not come along with your intrusive lips, someone else would have woken me, someone who loved me and could have saved me and Euphrasia. A prince. Or perhaps we would have slept forever.”
“And that would be a good thing?”
“It seems preferable to waking and having everyone know that I am the ruin of my kingdom, to having my father despise me. Jack, you desire to escape. I wish to run away. I thought we might help each other. And if you don’t…” Her voice trails off.
“And if I don’t?”
“Well, then, I shall run away on my own, venturing out into the cold, cruel world full of buses and telephones and other matters of which I know nothing. I have no map and no money, save a large quantity of priceless jewels.”
Did she say jewels?
“Without you,” she continues, “I might be robbed or…worse.”
“And me…?”
I feel her shoulders go up. “I suppose you shall rot here…although once Father finds out I am missing, he may have you riding the three-legged mare.”
“What?”
“The gallows. He shall order you hanged.”
She had to say the H word.
And that is how I end up running off with Princess Talia.