Garnett: A foolish girl

Her voice lilted in a playful singsong as she recited some herbs and their uses, pride evident on her thin freckled face. She had worked hard to remember these things! Green eyes glinted with a wildness as the old woman looked on with a narrowed gaze, though her calloused hand was gentle as she brushed the girl's untameable hair back from her face before returning to her grinding.

Shifting her weight on her stool, she shot another question at the reed-slender girl in front of her, all aquiver with excitement and nerves. "And for fever?"

"Blankets to sweat it out, a cool cloth to the brow, tea of hyssop, licorice root and thyme, but if that does not bring it down, a cool bath and possibly bleeding!" Once more she chanted it as if it were a song to the laughter of the herbwoman.

"Very good, Garnett, very good. Now help me here." And she did, carefully plucking the dried flowers apart to discard the few useless bits and crumbling the rest small before dumping it into the woman's mortar for her to grind, the young Princess watching on with naked fascination. In quiet low voices they spoke, Barra gently imparting her craft to the girl who soaked up the knowledge.

The castle herbwoman had no children of her own, and when Queen Sabia fell so ill after the birth of the Princess, the girl's care had been given over to her. Initially it had been treating the mother during the first five years of the girl's life, Barra a contant companion to the ailing woman and thus her young child. As the Queen grew weaker, more and more, she and Garnett relied on the stolid woman, the King too busy and too disinterested in his only daughter. In the three since her mother's death, it seemed her father and his new Queen scarcely remembered that she existed for she had turned into a quiet shadowy thing, though her brothers took great delight in teasing and tormenting the sensitive girl in the cruel fashion of children.

More often than not, when they became unbearable, she would fly from the castle to Barra's little hut and bury her face in the woman's prodigious bosom to weep and rail against them, and was always met with soothing and comfort there. It was in these times, to distract the distraught girl, that Barra began teaching her. To her great surprise, the Princess took to it with a knack she'd rarely seen even in young women pursuing the craft.

Soon, the girl began showing up at her door every day, an hour or two before dinner, stealing a few precious moments to learn up all she could. It was those times that she saw the shy thing come alive with her songs and chattering, and the two grew close.

Today was just such a day of talk and teaching when a knock on the door reverberated through the small hut. Garnett's eyes immediately went to the window. Was she late for dinner? No, the sun was yet high for that, so she bounded off to open the door at Barra's nod, staring blankly at one of Queen Viridian's serving girls.

"Pardon me, Your Highness, but your lady mother wishes a word with you."

"I'm busy, and she's not my mother." It was a rare childish snap, but her annoyance at having her favourite time of the day disturbed by that woman seethed.

"Garnett!" Barra scolded, frowning at the girl. "You may come back later. Now go."

Her thin lips rolled in a pout that had no effect on the old herbwoman, and she shooed her off to do the Queen's bidding with a shake of her head and a swat to her rump, admonishing her to behave herself.

With a great put-upon sigh, the Princess let herself be lead off without a thought to how her appearance might be received in the Queen's chambers. Though her hair had been braided earlier in the day, much of it had escaped, hanging in haphazard fashion around her face and neck. Brushing it back while working with the herbwoman had left smudges of dirt and grime over her pale skin, and her woolen gown too bore signs of it, sitting askew on her skinny frame.

Serving women tittered as she mustered up as much solemn grace as she could to curtsey to the Queen, the woman's eyes flashing over her with undisguised annoyance. "Is it too much to ask, Garnett, that you make yourself presentable before you come to see me?"

Blood suffused the poor girl's cheeks, her head hanging as angry tears burned in her eyes already. Her jaw set in stubborn fashion, her response barely polite through clenched teeth. "I didn't wish to make you wait, Mother."

Silence hung in the room as the Queen studied the girl that was not her daughter with displeasure, angered by her less than regal appearance. "You've been visiting Barra again." It wasn't a question.

Nervously, the young princess brushed at her soiled gown with trembling hands as she nodded wordlessly. The hot flush of her cheeks would not die down, anger and embarassment seeming to seal it to her skin, her whole slight frame shaking.

"Why do you persist in seeing that old woman? It's ridiculous. I'm your mother now." Delicate as a spider, the Queen plucked up a cake to nibble on as her unforgiving eyes pinned on Garnett.

No words have as eloquently said what the Princess thought of that as the expressive wrinkle of her nose and deep scowl on her lips, but words burst from her regardless. "I don't want you as a mother. I want her! She's teaching me to be an herbwoman!" She yelled, young voice shrilly with anger.

And the Queen laughed, a rich full-throated sound, her ladies joining in with her, shaking their heads at the foolish young girl.

"An herbwoman, child? You can't be an herbwoman. You're a Princess." The caution came from one of the snickering ladies, earning her a dark glare from the affronted Princess.

"I can so! And I shall tell Father that you laughed at me!"

Her protests drew more gales of laughter such that the Princess nearly ran from the room, anger rising in vicious fashion. All she wanted to do was go hide in Barra's hut and never come out, ever again..and she was poised to do such a thing when the Queen's sharp-edged voice cut through the room.

"Enough!" The ladies at least had the grace to look embarassed as the Queen silenced them, her fingertips tapping on the wood arm of her chair as she stared at the furious girl. "Your lessons with her are at an end, Garnett. I will speak with your Father if need be. Such an occupation is entirely unfit for a woman of your standing."

"But, Moth-"

"I am not through, Garnett, and do not test me on this. You will learn to be a lady and a Princess that will not disgrace this family. You must, and I will see to it that you do."

The Princess had no response to that for she was engrossed in too fierce a struggle against tears. How her eyes and cheeks burned! How she hated them all at that moment! She would do it! She would show them all! Alas, the Queen continued:

"Do you know why, Garnett?"

The girl managed to shake her head.

"Because you are to be married."

She stared at the Queen as if she was daft. Of course she was to be married, one day, when she was terribly old, but now such things were stuff of daydreams.

"Your Father has arranged for you to marry Prince Uhtred of Nharati when you are sixteen, and he is intent that this union will work and that you will not disgrace us. It is a steep task, but I will succeed, and you will go there a proper Princess rather than this wild thing I see before me now."

Garnett openly gaped at the Queen, her eyes darting from woman to woman within the room looking for sympathy or understanding. True, sixteen was a long way away, but to have her entire life already planned out for her at eight seemed a ghastly thing. "But..I..." They all stared at her with what seemed to the girl utter coldness. "An..herbwoman.." She protested brokenly, pale wet eyes pleading with the Queen, but she was unrelenting.

"You're dismissed for now, Garnett. Go clean yourself up and let me hear no more of this foolishness."

And she left, shoulders hunched, though tears didn't fall until she made it to her own quarters. Pillows and blankets, rugs and even toys were destroyed that day as she screamed and wept until she could do so no more, finally escaping into deep, dark sleep.