Visions (The Daevas #2)

4 | Having the Match

Hampton Court, England

October 31, 1520

It is a cold, windy evening and I am standing outside in the haven of the king's favorite garden. It has been forty-nine years since we have last been here, my family and I. We moved to Spain when me and my sister were twelve, where there is a place there which Mother's royal family established that only Daevas know. The Daevas do not stay long in a country, for they might be eyed with suspicions or accused of witchcraft or the devil's children.

We move another country or go to a safe place where there is a community of our kind. Mother's family is royalty and so therefore, Anne and I are princesses. Father is prince-consort, but a very powerful duke. We are a family of Royalties, the highest status in our kind's community. My mother's parents, Granddame Elizabeth and Grandfather Edward -- the queen and king -- have established many castles in other countries other than Spain as well. We tend to blend in, and Mother and Father thought it is best that we stay in a different country for a while. No one noticed our faces as the people who came here in 1471, when King Henry the Eight's father's enemy Richard Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester, still reigned. Only our kind who hid to be safe like us knew us, and they are happy to meet us again.

The humans cannot stop talking about us,  for they say that we are the most beautiful family in all England. Anne loves the attention, as do I, only I do not show it too much like she does.

King Henry has kept his eye on my us as we were announced a while ago and I feel overwhelmed and unnerved that I had to take a breath of fresh air to keep me calm. I am still not used to men staring at me; Anne who adores it. She is inside with our parents, being introduced to other courtiers. Later, the feast shall begin in the banqueting hall, and I had better be back soon. The king and queen are celebrating Halloween with the guests, and a masque is required. I am alone with no lady-in-waiting to attend to me, because I only snuck out. 'Tis the first time I did that, though I shan't ever do it again. 'Tis not in my nature, and I despise it; though right now, 'tis certainly an exception for I cannot stand the handsome king speculating me from across the room.

I notice that other people are beginning to stare at me, cloaked in dark velvet with my head down and mask off my face as I hold it into my bejeweled fingers. I feel uncomfortable now, and so I put on my white mask with pearls sequenced with crystal beads dangling at the right side, and white tiny feathers on top. I tighten my cloak around me and step back inside the castle so I can give my cloak to a servant and I smooth down my petticoats.

For a moment, I feel the satin in my bejeweled fingers as I run my hands onto the fabric of my gown. My silver gown is trimmed with darker silk at the square-neck bodice spilled with iridescent pearls. My shining auburn hair is unfortunately pulled back, featuring my high, graceful forehead, and covered with a headdress with chiffon trailing befind.

I begin to walk down the hall, smiling at the people I remember in my past, but them not remembering me, and I stop near a massive window, seeing the peasant crowds throng around the gates at the back of the palace to watch the nobles and gentry arrive for the feast and dance on the All Hallows Eve masque ball. The marshes around the palace are thick with peasants and thieves, and many a pickpocket goes back to his damp hiding place among the rushes with a satisfied smile, as I see with my Sight. I round another giant hall where the main entrance is now, and I think I am lost. The palace is so big that I cannot remember where the feast and dance is held. I believe my family is looking for me now, though I have naught an idea where I am.

Aye, this is the entrance all right as I see new guests arrive. I stop at a corner for a while, seeing carriages and litters trundle up the front entrance outside, discharging their splendidly attired passengers onto the cobblestones in front of the massive entryway. Many of the guests are ferried to the jetty by busy boatmen, who are making a killing on the river. Silks, satins, damasks, jewelries and masks of every view dazzle the eyes of the poorer folks gaping along the sides of the road, and the hems of the women's gowns trail in the dust as they sweep inside the vast palace. At this point, the onlookers' imaginations are forced to take over, but it is impossible for them to conceive of the sumptuous scene awaiting the new guests inside.