Another fairy story! Fit the third

While Natalia busied herself in her small scullery, decanting wine and water from large pitchers into the warming pan, raiding small bags of spices and gently stirring the intermingled liquids, the Princess looked closely at the hem of the dress. The gold tracery made delicate lilies, each stitch exact and precise. The child for whom this dress was being made was clearly a child of some import. Natalia did “not do shoddy work” as she herself would say but this was truly exquisite, a work of art. Natalia returned some minutes later, two goblets of steaming wine redolent with the scent of cloves, cinnamon, bergamot and ginger root, on a tray with oaten cakes, each topped with strawberry preserve, for which Natalia was almost as renowned as for her seamstressing. “I have no cream, alas, you will needs make do with preserve alone. Would that I could afford a cow!” She sighed. Clearing a space on the workbench, she gently laid down the tray. She too gently laid herself down and placing the goblet before the Princess bade her speak. “Come child, out with it! What ails thee? Hah! You think I presume too much? A lowly seamstress does thee and thou a Princess? In mine own home, I will do as I please! Come, tell me thy woe!”

The Princess told her what she had heard and how she could never go back to what had once been so joyous. In between fits of sobbing, she told of the pain gnawing like a canker at her heart. “A cuckoo,” she cried. “Parasite!” She spat. “No more than a pair of hands to change the soiled towelling and rinse her clean!” How had she been so deceived? So misled? Cheated? All the while, the seamstress just looked, her piercing azure eyes, flicking from eyes to hands to heaving breasts as if slowly but surely, with her eyes, leeching the pain from the Princess, and leaving her whole. “Drink,” she said. “It will get cool, and mulled wine is, like love, of no good when cold!” She placed the goblet in the Princess’ hand and lifted it to her lips.

“May I stay here?” the Princess asked. “I can cook and clean and perhaps you can teach me to sew? I will not be a burden, I promise you. I will dig and I will learn how to grow, to tend herbs and roots. I will ask my mother to send a cow, or at least silver pennies to buy one at market. And we will have cream! Please, Natalia, let me stay?” The seamstress smiled, smiled as though a smile could heal all of the woes of the world, and laughed. “Of course stay thou may’st, child. Where else would thou go’st? This is but a rude and simple cot, we will perforce need to share the one room above but I will ask the gaffer along the lane to make a bed for thee; he will do so for such a dress as I will make for his gran’daughter. Spare palliasses I have and coverlets and sheets a plenty. Come child, drink! And we will try to make merry amidst this sadness, for I too have lost that which was most dear to me and stitching only lightens the pain, it does not release me from it!”

Many times that night was the Princess’ goblet replenished, until finally, as she teetered on the edge of her bench, swaying gently from side to side, the seamstress began to sing, a voice of pure, unblemished, liquid crystal:

"How often she has gazed from castle windows o'er,
And watched the daylight passing within her captive wall,
With no-one to heed her call.

The evening hour is fading within the dwindling sun,
And in a lonely moment those embers will be gone
And the last of all the young birds flown.

Her days of precious freedom, forfeited long before,
To live such fruitless years behind a guarded door,
But those days will last no more.

Tomorrow at this hour she will be far away,
Much farther than these islands,
Or the lonely Fotheringay."

Natalia sighed. “I am sorry, child. Sometimes, the pain over-rides all else and song is all that will soothe. Tho’, perhaps, there is hope even here. I miss him, terribly, but he comes, sometimes, fleetingly, a dim shadow in my mind, through the day, as I work, though he is these five years gone. Come! Our bed is wide, wide enough for two and we are but both tindersticks. Come! Until the gaffer can deliver.”

They rose late the following morning. The Princess stared from the upper window at a bleak and dreary sky. It was as if the whole world had turned to lead overnight. She was queasy, her head hammered and her legs felt weak. “I must remember to more incline to moderation in all things,” she thought. “If this is how a surfeit of wine feels so soon after the heady pleasure, I do not wish to taste more of such pleasure, the price is too high.” Lost in her thoughts, she did not hear Natalia enter the room and nearly knocked the pitcher and bowl from the seamstress’ hands as the Princess turned to gather her clothes from the small rustic chair behind her. Gathering her dress in front of her to hide her nakedness, the Princess flushed.

“Come, child. Are we not female here, both? Do we hide from each other as we would from them?” She emphasised the last word, but not with malice, merely an emphasis on difference. “Come, wash and prepare for thy day. Thou hast much to learn and I have little time to teach. Come, here is hot water, soap and some towelling to dry. Be quick, there is much to do!” Thus began a pattern that would mark out each new day for many years to come. Each morning, the Princess would learn some new, small skill; how to pinch the growing tips of the herbs to make them bushy, how to use seed potatoes to grow more potatoes, how to cut fabric in a straight line, how to sew small stitches, invisible, except on the inside. And slowly, she forgot she was a princess and, in truth, became a peasant girl, an apprentice seamstress.

The Queen became a more frequent visitor to the seamstress now. Forever was she ordering dresses, for herself, her other daughters, their friends, even for the Princess herself, although the child had little need for such finery. Her coarse clothes suited her new life and there was little opportunity to parade her beauty. Oft times her mother would stay overnight, sleeping on a simple rush palliasse on the floor and would help the Princess in small tasks during the following day. Cutting flowers for the table, helping to prepare the noonday meal, drying herbs in bunches on the ‘kitchen maid’ in the scullery. The Princess was at first horrified that her mother, a Queen, should be engaging in work more suited to a scullion, but she did at last come to understand; only by doing so could the Queen prolong her visits.

To be continued

Thanks to Sandy Denny for 'Fotheringay'