Thirty-One

 

The next night, the girl was not in the crown tower nor the maiden's one, and Abraham despaired of finding her. He searched the castle in vain for three days, until he stumbled across the guard captain carrying a meal out of the castle gates. Curious, he followed the man to the tithe barns by the river, and that was where he found the princess.

Abraham hid in the shadows, waiting for the guard to leave before he stepped inside the barn.

He didn't see her at first, for the place was stacked with baskets, much like her chamber in the maiden's tower. But what he'd seen in the maiden's tower was a mere millpond compared to the endless sea he saw here.

She sat slumped over her wheeled table, with a half-full spindle beside her. The basket of filled spindles at her feet told Abraham she'd been labouring for the king again, until she fell asleep.

"Princess?" he said, then repeated it, a little louder each time, until he managed to rouse her.

She sat up, blinking. "You," she managed to say before she slumped over the wheel again with a groan. This was more than simple tiredness.

She vomited into a bucket at her feet, then rose unsteadily. "Must...lie down..."

Abraham caught her before she fell. "Are you ill?" he asked, dreading her response. For he might be able to save her from some foe, but illnesses were not something a man could fight with a sword. He laid her gingerly on the pallet she'd been headed toward and backed away.

"Not ill. 'Tis just the baby. The sickness mothers get..." She coughed, and Abraham handed her the bucket just in time.

Maja had been the same, he remembered now. Ill and swearing she was not, until she'd seen the seer and admitted she was carrying his son.

Childbirth could kill a woman in more ways than a sword could. And that was without a king who'd threatened to execute her if she didn't spin straw into gold.

So much for her breaking the curse quickly.

And now he couldn't.

Abraham stared around the barn, and the piled-up baskets of flax. Even if she could break the curse now, it would cost her her life, for without his curse turning the stuff to gold, the king would kill her.

No wonder she didn't consider it a curse.

If he wanted his son to live, he would have to do the work for her. Saving her, and his son.

Abraham sat down on the stool she'd recently vacated, twisting the thread between his gloved fingers as he spun the wheel experimentally. Long ago, Maja had tried to teach him how to spin, but she had not done it with a wheel like this princess did. The thread broke, stuck between his fingers, and Abraham swore.

Too late he remembered the princess was present, but she had fallen asleep and not noticed his foul language. Fortunately.

He tried again, but every time, the thread caught on his gloves and broke. He would have to take them off.

Perhaps it was a good thing the king wanted his thread spun into gold, for between Abraham's bare fingers, the thread glittered as it wound its way around the spinning spindle.

The hours galloped past, but Abraham focussed only on his work. He rested occasionally, making up a second pallet in the shadows at the far end of the barn, where the guards would not see him when they brought the princess her meals.

One day, he woke to find her at the spinning wheel, her nimble fingers working faster than his could, though her slumped shoulders said she did not wish to.

"Let me do that, Princess," he implored. "You are in no state for such things. Return to your bed and rest."

Her eyes seemed sunken, or perhaps it was a trick of the light. "I will rest when I am dead, which will be soon, if the king has his way. You said once you wished to save your son. Well, I wish I could save my daughter. It seems we will both fail at our respective quests." She stroked her belly wistfully.

That's when it hit him. All the times she'd refused him, told him she could not break the curse. What if it was not the princess, but her daughter? Her daughter would be a princess, too.

"Were you carrying the child when we first met?" he asked eagerly.

"What does it matter to you, bringer of bad fortune? Because of you, she will die when I do."

"Please. I mean you no harm, Princess. Truly. Whatever sins I have committed against you, I pray you will forgive me."

She looked at him long and hard. "I pray I will, too. But not yet. And if it matters, though I have no idea why it might, yes, I was already carrying my husband's child the night you invaded my chamber and made the king think I can work miracles."

Abraham shook his head. "Your husband did that, not I. I was listening when he presented your work to the king. Miracles is his word, not mine. Come with me now, and I will save you from the king and your thoughtless husband, and when your child is born, I will see she is treated like the princess she is."

"I will not leave the man I love. Not for the king, or you, or anyone." She coughed, and reached for the bucket. "Prince Lubos will return. He will help me, and will marry me, just like he promised." She rose shakily to her feet, staggered to her bed, and fell face-first into the straw. After a long moment, she moved so she lay more comfortably. "I must rest. When I wake, I will...work more."

"Swear to me you will give me the child when she is born, and I will spin all the straw in this room into gold," Abraham said. "You will live and stay with your husband, and your sacrifice will save my life and my son's.

The princess coughed again, but she did not reach for the bucket. It took Abraham a moment to realise she was laughing. "Give up my child to you? A strange man I neither know nor trust? You are a fool. No. You shall not have her."

Abraham folded his arms across his chest. "Then I will not help you."

The standoff did not last long. The princess fell asleep, and Abraham went back to work. For he could not let the girl and her daughter die, not if one of them could save his son. And as long as he stayed, he would keep trying to convince her. She would agree eventually. She had to.