The Runaway Princess

Chapter 1

“Oh, what a tangled web we weave...when first we practice to deceive.” Walter Scott, Marmion.

---

Chapter One

Derbyshire, England, 1849

“Marisol, might we find something to eat?” begged Elena whose stomach felt as though it had begun to eat itself.

“English, Elena!” Marisol chided. “You must disassociate yourself with Spain.”

Elena’s accented English had mellowed much with Marisol’s tutelage, but she still preferred to speak her mother tongue. Spanish came naturally to her. She still had to think about her English words to make sure she had selected the correct ones.

After eight years of secret English lessons, Elena and Marisol had fled Spain in the uniforms of palace maids. Marisol had bought passage on a ship months earlier using the money she had received from her father’s estate upon his death and together they had escaped in the dead of the night.

They dared not take a horse for fear of alerting the stable hands and the dared not take any jewellery to sell along the way for fear of leaving a trail of Spanish gold behind them. Instead, they packed as much food as they could carry before leaving for England.

But they had eaten the last of their food. Elena and Marisol had gone hungry for three days now.

Their escape had been methodically planned. Over several months, Elena and Marisol made notes of how many guards manned each palace entrance and exit. They memorised the times when they snuck outside to relieve themselves and they also memorised which guards were easily distracted by a passing maid.

On the night of their escape, the eve of Elena’s eighteenth birthday, Marisol had paid a young maid to walk past a guard with a wandering eye at exactly midnight. The plan had worked beautifully. The guard had followed the maid like a lost puppy and had left his post leaving a small window of opportunity for Elena and Marisol to steal away.

Just like that, the youngest Spanish princess had disappeared.

Elena was at great risk of detection as her face was well known among the Spanish people. Her first portrait had been painted a year earlier and although Elena believed the artist had been kind to her, all who viewed it thought it a great likeness.

Elena kept her head down and allowed Marisol to speak for her. They were to pose as sisters Elena and Marisol Marquez. Their plan was to go to England and find maid work in a great house in England. Marisol believed they would be safe concealed behind closed doors.

To practice, Elena had helped Marisol with her chores within Elena’s bedchamber. Elena made her own bed to the proper standard, laundered her own clothing, polished her own jewellery and scrubbed her own floors. At first Elena had detested the labour, but she knew it was either labour or an arranged marriage.

“Do you believe my English?” asked Elena worriedly in English.

“How so?” Marisol asked.

“I was thinking that we might pretend we were born here and that our parents are Spanish. What do you think?” she asked. “You did want to disassociate ourselves with Spain.”

“I think that is a fine idea.” Marisol smiled. “Shall we say we were born in Cornwall?” she suggested. “It is apparently lovely, right next to the seaside. That is what the shop boy told me in London. He was from Cornwall.”

Elena rolled her eyes. They had run out of food in London so Marisol had flirted with a poor shop boy in order to receive their next meal without charge. “Cornwall it is,” she agreed.