Goose Chase Read online

  Goose Chase

  Patrice Kindl

  * * *

  HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

  BOSTON

  * * *

  Copyright © 2001 by Patrice Kindl

  All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections

  from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company,

  215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com

  The text of this book is set in 11.8-point Berkeley Book.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Kindl, Patrice.

  Goose chase : a novel / Patrice Kindl.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Rather than marry a cruel king or a seemingly dim-witted prince,

  an enchanted goose girl endures imprisonment, capture by several ogresses,

  and other dangers before learning exactly who she is.

  ISBN 0-618-03377-7

  [1. Fairy tales. 2. Orphans—Fiction. 3. Geese—Fiction.

  4. Kings, queens, rulers, etc.—Fiction.) i. Title.

  PZ8.K575Go 2001

  [Fic]—dc21 99-35595

  CIP

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  QUM 10 9 8 7 6

  * * *

  TO ALEX ROEDIGER

  I HOPE YOU LIKE YOUR NAMESAKE

  AND THANKS TO

  Kit

  * * *

  Contents

  ONE The Tower 1

  TWO The Tale of My Life to the Present Date 11

  THREE Escape from the Tower 23

  FOUR In Flight 33

  FIVE The Cottage in the Wood 41

  SIX In Which I Become a

  Servant to the Ogresses 53

  SEVEN The Misfortunate Knight 62

  EIGHT In Which I Remain Tied by the Hair 72

  NINE On the Run 83

  TEN Little Echo 97

  ELEVEN In Which We Are Arrested 110

  TWELVE The Bad Baroness of Breakabeen 120

  THIRTEEN Down in the Dungeon 132

  FOURTEEN And Out Again 145

  FIFTEEN On the River 157

  SIXTEEN In Which We Travel to the King's Court 166

  SEVENTEEN The Castle of the King 175

  EIGHTEEN Marriage Threatens 185

  NINETEEN In Which Fowl Is Now Fair 196

  TWENTY Happily Ever After, More or Less 205

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Tower

  A HARD BEGINNING

  MAKETH A GOOD ENDING.

  —JOHN HEYWOOD, PROVERBS

  The King killed my canary today.

  Now, I know full well that the customary way to begin such a tale as mine is: "Once upon a time, when wishes still came true, there lived a poor orphan Goose Girl," or some such fiddle-faddle. But what do I care for custom? Tis my own story I am telling and I will tell it as I please. And as I find myself plunged into it right up to the neck, I see no reason why you should not be also.

  I resume.

  The King killed my canary today.

  He slew him with his great big hunting bow. The arrow was buried several handbreadths deep into a tree trunk and all that was left of poor Chipper was a few fluffy yellow feathers sticking out around the shaft.

  "Why did you do that?" I cried, leaning down from the tower window.

  The King strolled over to view his handiwork.

  "That was my canary!"

  "A thousand pardons, my lady," he said, bowing. The scar running down his left cheek gave him a sinister one-sided smile. "Methought 'twas a plump pigeon I might offer for your supper." He bared his teeth at me.

  I stared down at him coldly. I ought never to have allowed the unfortunate bird out of his cage while the King was here. The King was bored with all this waiting about, that is why he did it. That, and because Chipper was a gift from the Prince, his rival. But in truth, the real reason he did it is because the King has got a heart like a lump of coal: black and stony. 'Tis not for nothing he is known as King Claudio the Cruel.

  Much as I longed to wipe that smirk off of his face with a few well-chosen words, I kept my tongue behind my teeth until I had mastered my wrath. The King frightens me witless, even though he is out there and I am in here, with a grille of iron bars and several hundred tons of stonework between us. Though being locked up in this tower was certainly none of my choosing, I will own that I am glad to know the King does not possess a key to my prison.

  "Do your subjects not miss you?" I asked, with restraint. "Sire," I added, grinding my teeth.

  "No doubt. But if I left you, then you might miss me, and that would be infinitely worse."

  "O, but will they not get up to all sorts of mischief while you are away?" I asked hopefully. "Insurrections and mutiny, sire, and other deeds of villainy I cannot think of at the moment?"

  "They would not dare," he said indifferently. This seemed so likely to be true that I could think of naught else to say.

  "Mayhap I should be going in," I said after a silence during which I watched him sharpening a little silver dagger on a stone.

  "But why? If you go you will take the sunshine with you." He straightened up and secreted the fresh-sharpened dagger somewhere on his person. "Come, one so lovely as you could never be so cruel." I noticed that his teeth were pointed, like a dog's. Or a wolf's.

  "Yes, well, I must make haste to, ah..." I searched my mind for some urgent reason to withdraw. Wash my hair? Embroider a tapestry? My sewing kit was right on my lap as I sat next to the window where he could see it quite well, so that had no merit as an excuse.

  "'Tis the Prince," I said unwisely. "I believe that I see him coming."

  He whirled on his axis like a dancer. He might be old enough to be my father but I must say he was flexible in the joints.

  "You do?"

  The little silver dagger flashed out of hiding again.

  "Where?"

  "O," I said, gesturing vaguely into the forest, "over thereabouts."

  "I will go and meet him," the King decided, obviously pleased to have something to do which would not require him to behave well. "We have much to ... discuss." And he stepped out of the clearing and melted into the shadows of the trees.

  I sighed with relief and then sighed again, this time with resignation. Without meaning to, I had spoken the truth. Prince Edmund of Dorloo was in fact emerging from the forest, leading his horse. The horse was so decorated with braids and bows and tassels that it took all one's ingenuity to guess what 'twas that moved under the mound of finery. The Prince himself was clad in white satin and an elaborate damascened metal breastplate. He looked hot, though not of course so hot as the horse. He doffed his feathered hat and swept a deep bow in my direction.

  "Hail, lady."

  "'Tis not," I said crossly. I could see the King skulking behind the trees, creeping ever closer to the Prince.

  "Not?" the Prince said, assuming his usual expression of someone who has missed a step in the dark.

  "'Tis not hailing," I snapped. I simply was not in the mood for the Prince right now, and he did not affright me in the slightest.

  "The King is right behind you," I added.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "TURN AROUND."

  "O, well met," said the Prince with a great happy smile, catching sight of the King. Disappointed, the King straightened up and resheathed his dagger.

  "Your Royal Highness," he said smoothly, bowing.

  The King and the Prince, I must tell you, are both courting me. They each swear to be sick with love-longing for me, and so they may be for aught I know. I am of the opinion, however, that the sacks of diamonds and gold dust under my bed are as bewitching as my more personal attractions. They are not father and son; they c
ome from neighboring kingdoms. I am to choose between them, which is why I am shut up in this desolate tower.

  I have been considering my fate, and the way it appears to me is this: if I agree to marry the Prince, who is young and handsome and somewhat less intelligent than a clod of dirt, he may perchance let me out of this tower before the wedding takes place. 'Twould not occur to him that I might run away when once I had given my word. Which I would do, I assure you, in the winking of an eye.

  On the other hand, if I do agree to marry the Prince, the King will simply have the Prince quietly assassinated, and I will end up marrying the King anyway. He would never risk losing anything he wanted through foolish trust in a woman's word. No indeed; I shall be treated like the wife of Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater, who kept his poor lady in a pumpkin shell, and most uncomfortable that must have been. I daresay I'll be walled up in some tower or other until the day I die, which could turn out to be a great deal sooner than I might otherwise have expected.

  If I agree to marry the King from the first, why then, the Prince is less likely to find a knife between his ribs, which I recognize is a much happier outcome for the Prince. Yet look at what I am left with: the old sinner with the concealed weapons and a smile that makes you wonder how, precisely, his first two wives died.

  And then I'll be married. Married! At fourteen, in the very flower of mine age! O, I know that many women my age are already married and mothers to boot, but it simply won't do for me.

  I am, you see, no pampered Princess, but only a simple Goose Girl with a business to tend and no need of a husband to poke his nose into my affairs. Imagine having to account for your whereabouts to a husband every time you stepped out of the house to relieve yourself behind the gooseberry bush!

  Even if I married the Prince and he survived the King's murderous schemes, I don't think I could bear to listen to him going on and on about his horse and his armor and his prowess on the field of battle for the rest of my life. Not to mention having to tend his wounds and darn his hose and embroider his coat of arms on every scrap of fabric that we own.

  I tried on several occasions to tell my suitors I was too young to marry, but I succeeded only in baffling them both.

  "Too young, you say? I am but fifteen summers myself," said the Prince, wrestling with this idea. "Would you have me marry an old woman?" This struck him as being witty. He guffawed and slapped his knee.

  "You could not possibly be too young for my liking," said the King, licking his lips unpleasantly. "Young, yes. And tender too, I'll warrant."

  I am quite, quite certain that I do not wish to marry the King.

  I have tried to persuade them to release me by offering them my wealth, but to no avail. The Prince, when I suggested it, fell to one knee, thumped himself mightily on the chest, which, oddly enough, resulted in a muffled twanging sound. He paused to peer inside the breast of his satin tunic and produced a mandolin, which he regarded dubiously for a moment.

  "Goose Girl—er, lady," he cried, "you smite me to the soul! I seek your heart and your hand, not your riches."

  He struck a bold, discordant note on the mandolin. Several strings flopped loose and a peg flew off over his shoulder.

  "Allow me to sing a love song of my own composition in your honor," he said, flinging the crippled mandolin aside and fixing me with the determined eye of a novice performer who sees his audience retreating.

  "I thank you, Your Highness, but I must away," I said, and ducked my head back inside.

  I knew, of course, how the King would treat my offer even before I made it. He readily promised to allow me to return to my little cottage unmolested, in return for my sacks of treasure. Then, as soon as the servants had loaded them on his horse, he simply rode off, the poor horse staggering under the weight. The next morning he was back again, pretending I had dreamt the whole incident.

  "Gold? What gold?" queried His Highness. "Diamonds? What diamonds?"

  O, I know very well what you are thinking: "The poor maid must be bedaffled in the brain to entrust all her fortune to a man like that!" But it made no odds to me. There was always more where that came from and I certainly did not want to have to carry those heavy bags with me when I left.

  My wealth was a perfect nuisance anyway. All of my gifts were, but the gold dust was the worst. It got into everything: my clothes, my bed, my food. Every morning after the maidservant finished combing and dressing my hair, she had to sweep up piles of glitter off the floor and then shake out my bed linens. Back in the old days when I was a Goose Girl, I used on occasion to find something nasty crawling around on my scalp, but let me assure you that head lice are a rapture and a delight compared with perpetual twenty-four-carat-gold dandruff.

  I did not mind the diamonds so much. As they were formed of my own crystallized tears, they only appeared when I wept, and however much my current predicament annoys and distresses me, I never did believe that wailing and puling like an infant does much practical good in the world. It occurs to me, however, that should I be forced to marry the King, he will doubtless see to it that I have good and sufficient cause to fill his treasure rooms up to the very brimful top with the tokens of my grief.

  Yet another reason, if aught were needed, to remain a single woman, and I promise you that I shall.

  Somehow.

  Thus far the best I had managed was to arrange a postponement. I swore by all that was holy that I would choose my husband as soon as I finished sewing my wedding garments. 1 planned, you see, to be married in a solid gold gown.

  "But why?" protested the Prince.

  "The gown you are wearing is perfectly adequate," snarled the King, much wroth.

  I pointed out that as I was a Goose Girl marrying a royal personage it might be wise for me to be presented to my new subjects as a desirable acquisition, rather than as a liability. The King merely growled irritably but the Prince nodded thoughtfully.

  "You mean that if my people could see how rich you are they might not mind you being so low and common?"

  I agreed that he had understood my meaning very well.

  "What difference does it make what your people think?" interrupted the King. "If they don't like it, your remedy is perfectly simple. Drag them out of their homes and chop off their heads in the village square. That's what I do."

  "No, no," said the Prince. "The Goose Girl—er, the lady—has a point. Quite clever of her, actually. We will wait, my lady, until you have sewn your wedding clothes."

  And since the tower and the land on which it stood both belonged to the Prince, they waited.

  And waited.

  Not being an utter fool, I first demanded the finest of gold workers to fashion the gold threads for my gown from the dust collected every morning. Then I found fault with them and sent them away. Once we had run through every goldsmith in both countries, and once it became necessary to admit that I had almost an embarrassingly large quantity of thread, I reluctantly sat down at the loom provided and began to make the cloth.

  Naturally, at nightfall I unpicked the work I had done during the day. Well, my friend, what would you have done?

  Unfortunately, one of the lady's maids acted the spy and caught me at it. After that a servant was required to be at my side both day and night. I didn't much care for that, I can tell you!

  Even working as slowly as I dared, the cloth was by and by finally woven, then cut out and pieced together. I was sewing it now, with great sloppy stitches and uneven hems. I am in fact an expert seamstress, but I did not wish to advertise any wifely skills, and, naturally, my clumsy seams kept ripping out and requiring resewing.

  Yet however hard I might try to delay it, my wedding day was drawing so near that I could all but smell the meats roasting for the bridal feast.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Tale of My Life to the Present Date

  SHE LOOKETH AS BUTTER

  WOULD NOT MELT IN HER MOUTH.

  —JOHN HEYWOOD, PROVERBS

  My name, I must tell you, is Al
exandria Aurora Fortunato, and the reason for all this royal rivalry for my hand—besides, of course, my inexhaustible wealth—is that I am as lovely as the dawn.

  You need not laugh; 'tis perfectly true. Back when I was a simple Goose Girl and this calamity first befell me, I used to go down to the duck pond at sunrise to see if 'twas really so. 'Tis not terribly easy to see yourself in a duck pond—your hair hangs down and gets in the way, for one thing—but if anything, I would have to say that I am a great deal lovelier than the dawn. After all, there are dismal dawns and rain-drenched dawns and dawns as cold as charity, but I am always the same: perfectly, flawlessly lovely. Why, for sheer loveliness I'll warrant I could beat the dawn nine times out of ten. And that is without even trying.

  I have not always been as lovely as the dawn. Six months ago I was no more lovely than—what shall I say?—a pickled onion. Well, not so very bad, perchance, but all knees and elbows and I didn't always keep my face and hair clean. Well, why should I? It never seemed important. The Geese didn't care how often I scrubbed myself, and that pond water is cold.

  I was only a poor orphan Goose Girl, you see, with no more use for a perfect profile than I had for a slops basin encrusted with emeralds. I still have no use for either; it seems to me that the combination of great beauty and great wealth is a monstrous cruel handicap for a girl who simply wants to tend to her own affairs and her own Geese. In the future I shall know precisely what to do if another old beggar woman comes pestering me for a bite to eat while I'm herding my Geese in the high meadow. Will I give her my last crust of bread, like the softhearted, simpleminded dunderpate that I am? No I will not; I'll send her away with a flea in her ear, that's what I'll do. 'Tis said that no good deed ever goes unpunished, and so I am learning to my sorrow.

  Before that dreadful old hag saddled me with my three "gifts," which in my opinion were more like a trio of millstones hung around my neck, I was quite alone in the world. My father died before I was born and my mother ten years after. How my father died I cannot say, but 'twas a fever killed my mother. O, but that was a terrible time! She sickened and died, my poor mother, between a dawn and a dusk. Rosy-cheeked and cheerful by morning's first light, she was cold and stark by nightfall.