Princess Awakening: Tower of Sand

Stained Glass

Trumpets blasted through the stillness of the morning, tooting the lilting notes of a gavotte. Aurelie woke, wincing. She'd heard the herald's new apprentice practicing for weeks, and she'd thought it charming at first, but the loud volume of this public performance did not improve his skill. "Whose idea was the gavotte?" she said, kneading her throbbing head.

"All I know is they didn't ask us," Sera said. The old woman, draped in her loose brown dress, stood on the deep sill of the window, peering out of the singular clear pane in the center of the colorful glass. She might have looked like a statue in a church if she had not been hunched and facing in the wrong direction.

"Last night—" Aurelie began. Dark memories teetered on the edges of her consciousness.

"Try not to worry about it, mon caneton," Sera said. "It's not our problem your mother's a witch." She beckoned. "Come look."

Aurelie rolled out of bed, adjusted her stiff new undergarments and stepped up beside Sera.

Below her window, the courtyard was filling with a party of nobles, riding, strolling and rolling in on banner-bedecked wagons. Aurelie studied the men—any one of whom might be a prospective suitor. She noticed that fashion had shortened their tunics since the last gathering. A few of them wore little more than tight stockings over their long legs, yet their shoes looked too large, some of them twice the length of a regular foot. Aurelie had to laugh. They all looked so completely unfit for anything but dancing. The women had dressed for show, too, their gem-colored dresses trailing such long sleeves and trains that they had to be tied up. But what stood out was their hair. They wore it loose, flowing out in shiny ringlets and waves, and the few who wore veils or nets had designed them both to hide and to reveal, a calculated peek-a-boo of feminine sensuality. Aurelie groaned with wonder—and worry. She hoped that she, too, would have a dress like theirs. She hoped that her extravagant father and even her proud mother would want that. Aurelie reached up and touched the coil of hair wrapping severely around her skull. Tighter. The queen's whisper flashed through her mind, but she pushed it away.

A playful wind blew just then across the party of nobles, displacing veils and scattering hats, and in that moment, the most noble members of society all began to squawk and flutter like a nye of pheasants. Aurelie let out a hearty laugh.

One man riding a black palfrey laughed too as he broke apart from the floundering group. He waved away a footman offering a stepladder and shook off another one trying to take his reins. Then he leapt down from his horse with ease. He put an arm around the steed's neck, rubbed her head and spoke into her ear. The man wore no sword, and his clothes looked plain, just a green tunic and brown breeches, but they were cut well to his powerful form. Though Aurelie had never met him before, she thought she recognized the curly black hair, the sundrenched skin and the sure stance of her father's good friend, Sir Roland. He spoke a word to his horse, then turned, and she followed him toward the stables. Just before he passed out of sight, he looked up.

Aurelie pulled away, heart beating fast. Then she put her hands over her flushed face and laughed at herself. Tower life had made her shy, but she did not intend to stay that way. She grimaced at Sera, who had stepped out of view as well, and then she covered the new tear in the neckline of her dress with her hands, and she looked back out of the window.

The man was gone.

Aurelie gazed down at the others, tumbling off their horses and into their servants' arms, and she smiled. Tonight she would be dancing among this whole merry group. More than that, she would be introduced as their future queen. She would have the honor of guiding and leading all these people—both the ridiculous and the admirable. She felt a swell of love and gratitude at the glorious weight of her destiny. By comparison, the challenges and restrictions of her life in this moment seemed small.