Page 26 of The Impossible Princess
The family being all together should create an environment of candor and ease, but there is the customary tension when my mother takes her seat at the head of the table. Père, his dark hair winged at the temples with a brush of gray and wearing his suit with the effortlessness of a man brought up on the shores of the Mediterranean, sits at her right hand. I try not to notice that he’s got a faint, sardonic smile on his face as he stares at the middling landscape framed on the opposite wall. When was the last time they looked at each other? Public appearances do not call for shows of affection, and only within the cloistered walls of the palace do we know that they began keeping separate quarters last year after Grandfather died.
“Let us review the week,” Mama begins, launching quickly into her agenda, listing off successful engagements and feedback.
“The burghers of Aunslev sent a note about your brooch, Alma.” She picks up a hand-written card and reads, “How lovely to see the Princess Royal wearing a piece of jewelry created in our province, gifted to the Crown on the occasion of Queen Magda’s coronation. Throughout the engagement, Her Royal Highness showed her care of the people of Aunslev in every gesture and represented the interests and concerns of Her Majesty with unparalleled grace.”
Mama doesn’t even need to say that Alma is flawless—she’s glowing with approval. Her satisfaction in her children continues down the line. Noah hosted a luncheon with a group of business leaders group in Handsel andBQ—Businessman’s Quarterly—has asked to feature him on their cover in the coming months. Ella watched an exhibition football match of urban youth. Her photograph in the local paper—appropriately hosed and shod—wins a rare smile from our royal parent. Mama asks if Freja’s stamina was taxed by her visit to the Culinary Institute.
“Not at all,” Freja assures her.
Mama concludes with, “Clara caused the only contretemps of note.” Freja sends me a look of sympathy from across the table. She would literally prefer to be knee-deep in fragments of a medieval manuscript than hear our mother list our wrongdoings. “It was my wish that you keep a low profile, but there was that second picture in the papers as well as the dance along the parade route. Does anyone wish to share their thoughts?”
I’m always impressed that though her chair theoretically has the power to swivel, it stays absolutely still as she turns her head from one to another of us. Just as a petroleum magnate would solicit solutions for an oil leak, she serves me up as a problem to be solved.
“The dancing was charming,” says Ella. “The press ate it up.”
“It certainly diffused a tricky situation,” agrees Alma, and I smile at her. Alma is engaged to Pietor, the Hereditary Grand Duke of Himmelstein, who is richer than Zeus. Mother matched them two years ago, and Alma has been dutifully preparing herself to be the next Hereditary Grand Duchess of Himmelstein, working to become fluent in the obscure, guttural dialect. She is the perfect princess—relentlessly proper—but doesn’t let it get in the way of being a decent human being.
“Charm is not my concern. Popularity is fickle,” Mama counters, and I mentally recite the proverb along with her, “but decorum is not.”
“It would have been far less decorous to have a drunken reveler sweep me into his arms and spill his beer down my dress,” I reply, borrowing a little of Ella’s courage and a bit of Max’s certainty that I am an asset at this table.
Mama’s brow lifts in surprise. “That may be so,” she agrees, and I wonder if Caroline Tiele is noting this in her minutes.
10:45 AM: Her Majesty Helena, by the Grace of God Queen of Sondmark and the Sonderlands, considers that Her Royal Highness Princess Clara might not have been at fault.
10:46 AM: Statement is greeted with shock.
Père looks proud—anyone willing to throw even the tiniest spanner into mother’s well-oiled autocracy pleases him—as does Ella. Noah looks like he hardly notices the undercurrents. Village parades are well below his pay grade.
“Nevertheless,” says Mother, sweeping my little triumph away, “we’ll spend the next few weeks repairing your image. If you appear in the press, it will be because we wish you to. Press is a necessary evil as long as we’re the ones in control of it. I expect a recommitment to discretion and prudence.” She reaches forward with her pen and ticks that item off the agenda.
Though she doesn’t say so, ‘repairing your image’ means she will instruct Caroline to give me only the most pedestrian and PR-friendly assignments for the immediate future. That means dedicating car parks and touring animal rescue centers. I am on probation. A lead weight hits my stomach, but I push it aside, vowing to redouble my efforts to win her trust.
Mama continues. “Celebrations conclude tomorrow night with the starlight parade. Alma will be joining me in the viewing gallery…”
She has moved on to more important things.
12
Her Company
MAX
I work the next day and overnight, sleeping on a narrow bunk and slipping seamlessly into the rhythms of ship life. Stores must be replenished, a survey of repairs must be taken, a plan to address them sketched out. My hours are busy, and I return to my home on the lake to perform similar tasks for the little cottage. Replenishment, repair, and planning.
But this time as I navigate the green and blue border between worlds, Clara crosses over with me and back again, the thought of her like a spirit hovering over my shoulder. I save up interactions and observations, picking them up like a soft-edged seashell to be examined in an hour when we are together again. I look at my occupation through her eyes and wonder what she might be curious about; wonder if she will find it strange and unendurable.
And then I wonder if, like a child’s pocket after a day at the seashore, the shells and sand will be dumped out and forgotten or saved in a glass jar with other keepsakes. Clara has been honest about what she wants—a little friendship, some light relaxation, a bit of easy companionship. I’m the one lying here, saying anything to secure another date when my feelings are—well, I managed to keep myself from proposing as soon as she got out of the car, so that’s a win.
Clara had worn a summer dress that skimmed her long tan legs, and when she’d taken her sandals off and padded barefoot into the kitchen to serve up dessert, I’d almost laid all my worldly goods at her feet: the keys to my well-kept, 15-year-old hatchback and the mortgage to a remote cottage that will need a new whitewash before the summer is over.
My brother Hals gets a couple of tickets to a Dragons game, and we join the stands, choking on red smoke bombs and chanting for our team. I get a few lingering looks and have to remind myself I’ve been in the papers recently. It will pass if I keep my head down. Hals asks me how things are going during halftime, and I shout back that I’m fine. The Dragons lose. I ride the light rail north, disembarking at my nearest car park. Two fingers brush a bronze plaque as I round a corner, tracing the name of my princess.
I spend the rest of the day working on the tumbledown rock wall around the front garden. No mortar, just muscling the rough stone into place, adjusting it until the fit is right. Clara joins me again, in a spectral sort of way, and I imagine her perched on the stone wall, her ankles crossed, telling me how to do things.
It doesn’t matter that I stretched the truth about wanting nothing but a little company. The important thing is that I got her to agree to come back to my house. I grunt as the rock shifts, pinning my fingers. I jerk them free and nestle the stone where I want it. If I’m only going to get a few dinners, just as friends, I’m going to make them count, I think, putting a knuckle to my mouth before I reach for the next stone.
I finish repairing the section of the wall I’ve been working on. I run before dinner. When night falls, I can’t help myself from picking up my phone. I’ve gone as long as I can without talking to her.
