All the Ever Afters Read online

  Dedication

  In memory of Anne Shreenan Dyck, the best mom in the whole world

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue: The Royal Court

  1: The Manor House

  2: The Laundry

  Journal Entry: The Royal Court

  3: The Lord of the Manor

  4: The Lord’s Chambers

  Journal Entry: The Royal Court

  5: The Messenger

  6: Ellis Abbey

  7: Rose House

  8: Enlightenment

  Journal Entry: The Royal Court

  9: Fernan

  10: Old Hilgate

  11: Motherhood

  12: Misfortune

  Journal Entry: The Royal Court

  13: Return to Aviceford Manor

  14: Ella

  15: Manorial Business

  Journal Entry: The Royal Court

  16: Valley of the Shadow

  17: Betrothal

  18: Ugly Stepsisters

  19: Cinderella

  20: Godmother

  21: The Ball

  22: Glass Slippers

  23: The Royal Court

  24: Return to Rose House

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  The Royal Court

  Suppers at the royal court have become entirely too oppressive. It isn’t just that they are interminable, or that we must adhere to the newest fashions, the face powder, our hair tortured into great bejeweled rams’ horns, the silks with sleeves so tight that it’s impossible to raise one’s spoon to one’s carefully tinctured lips— No, the worst is the gossip, the sinister buzz of wasps ready to slip their poisonous stingers into whatever tender flesh lies exposed.

  This evening I was ordered to sit next to the Earl of Bryston, a pompous halfwit who has rarely been to court. He presides over some godforsaken swamp in the north, and he seems to believe that his family’s long history of loyalty to the crown gives him the right to opine on the behaviors of the royal family.

  “My lady,” he said, plucking at cuffs so voluminous that they draped into his soup, “I understand that your noble daughters are not yet wed?”

  “No, my lord,” I answered as briefly as courtesy would allow.

  “And yet, I have heard that they once vied for the attention of Prince Henry himself?” The earl dabbed his crimson lips daintily. “That they tried to alienate his affection from Princess Elfilda?”

  “You seem amused, my lord.” He could not have mistaken the coldness in my response. “I fear that much of what you have heard is not true.”

  “Ah, well, it is an incredible tale!” He smiled broadly. “The beautiful downtrodden maiden who ascends to the royal palace, the jealous stepsisters, the glass slipper that would not fit . . .”

  “My lord, I cannot credit such a tale.”

  “Come, my lady! You know that the whole kingdom is enthralled by our radiant and benevolent princess! I have heard a great deal about you and your daughters.” He looked at me knowingly.

  “Compelling fiction often obscures the humble truth.”

  “I do hope that you will tell me about the slipper,” he said, ignoring my reluctance. He broke a piece of bread, leaving a trail of crumbs across the table. “My wife is frantic to know the particulars! They say that the prince let every maiden try the shoe, even your daughters!” He laughed.

  “It is droll to imagine them receiving attention from a prince?”

  “Well . . .” His shrug was eloquent.

  “They are ugly, and Elfilda is beautiful.”

  The earl frowned and pursed his lips. It is genteel to imply nasty insults, not to speak them directly.

  “My lord, I may have heard some of the rumors to which you allude. To my mind, these stories insinuate a plague of blindness. Prince Henry would have to be blind not to recognize the object of his admiration or to distinguish an ugly girl from one of unsurpassed beauty. My daughters would need to be blind to their reflections in mirrors and on the faces of those who behold them—” My voice rose, so I paused and began again blandly. “They would also need to be blind to the truth that men persuade themselves that beautiful women possess virtue and good character, whereas no amount of virtue can make an ugly woman beautiful.”

  “My lady, Princess Elfilda is a dazzling star who shines in the royal firmament, where she belongs.” He did not attempt to conceal his disdain. “That she invites you and your daughters to dine here at the palace is a testament to her compassion, forgiveness, and generosity.”

  “Indeed, my lord,” I murmured. “Indeed that is so.”

  I am only of interest to the Earl of Bryston and his ilk because of my stepdaughter. Princess Elfilda is the most celebrated woman in the kingdom, perhaps in all of history. Commoners line the streets for endless hours, even in dark and sleet, hoping to glimpse her face through the window of her gilded carriage. When the princess has her gown cut in a new way or adopts a different hairstyle, every female creature in the city imitates her appearance. Last autumn she wore a choker of pearls to church on Michaelmas, and the next day every noblewoman’s throat was wound snugly with pearls or other jewels. By Christmastide even the peasant girls wore chokers of beads or ribbon, whatever material they could find to replicate the fashion.

  Princess Elfilda’s popularity derives in large part from her astonishing beauty, but there is something else about her nature that attracts the masses. Her habitual muteness and the gentle hesitancy of those rare words that do fall from her lips make her seem bashful, as does her manner of ducking her head and looking up through sweeping lashes. Apart from her collections of baubles and kennel of favorite dogs, she appears to have no passions or vices, and when she attends royal functions, her gaze drifts to invisible spectacles that only she can apprehend. Her elusive character is a blank parchment upon which any story may be written, and every girl who dreams of becoming a princess can imagine herself in Princess Elfilda’s famously tiny shoes.

  I know more of the princess’s history than anyone else alive, and the true tale is not as fantastical as the one sung by troubadours. Nobody is interested in the story of a flesh-and-blood nobleman’s daughter, one who wet her bed, complained of boredom, fought with her kin, and turned up her nose at winter greens just like any mortal child. Nor do I have any desire to diminish the adulation for the princess, which makes both the admiring and admired so content.

  I do not set out to write the princess’s history, but my own, the only tale I have the authority to tell. My quill may resurrect ghosts to keep me company during the long days at the castle, and if it cannot, at least my mind will be occupied and my hands busy. As for fables about good and evil and songs about glass slippers, I shall leave those to the minstrels. They can invent their own tales about Cinderella.

  1

  The Manor House

  I hardly remember my own mother. I have a memory of arms surrounding me and pushing my head into a soft bosom that smelled of kitchen smoke, lye, and some light acrid scent that I can no longer identify. This memory evokes comfort, but also childish impatience and distaste for yielding flesh.

  I do remember her singing; she had a pretty voice. She had heavy auburn hair that she would sometimes allow me to braid.

  I was told that she died in agony while my brother tried and failed to enter this world. She labored for three long days as the baby died inside her. Then she too was called to God’s side. I do not know where I was as she lay those three days on the birthing bed that became her deathbed. Maybe I was sent away to a neighboring home. Maybe my mind recoiled so violentl
y at the scene of her death that the memory ripped free. I wonder sometimes if the thoughts that flock my nightmares are abandoned memories coming home to roost.

  Several years after my mother died, I was sent to work at the manor house. I would have been sent there eventually, because my father was only a half-virgater, poorer than most, and I was the youngest of three children. My brother and my father did what they could with our land, but they also owed work in other parts of the manor’s holdings. I was certainly not going to have a dowry, and there was no need for two girls to tend to our cottage. Under more fortunate circumstances, I might have remained at home several years longer to help my mother with the baby, but as it was, I left home with half of my milk teeth. I was a sturdy child, big for my age and strong. My father must have believed that I would fare well at the manor house.

  On the day I was to leave home, I lay in the loft long after everyone else had risen. I kept my eyes shut, listening as my sister made the fire and chided the hens that got in her way.

  My father said, “You should wake Agnes.” Still, I did not move.

  “Agnes!” my sister scolded. “Get up and say good-bye to Father and Thomas!” Reluctantly, I rose and lowered myself from the loft. My father’s gaze was grave but unapologetic. He opened his arms to signal that he wished me to approach and embrace him.

  “Remember that your mother will be watching from heaven,” he said gruffly. “Be godly and good. We shall see you on May Day.” He released me and turned toward the door.

  “Bye, Nessie,” my brother said softly, “we shall miss you.”

  I watched them dissolve into the morning twilight mist as they left to harness the oxen.

  “Let’s get you a warm bowl of pottage before you go,” my sister said. She stirred the steaming pot on the hearth briskly. When she looked up, tears glistened in her eyes. “Oh, this green wood smokes too much,” she said. “It makes my eyes sting.”

  The walk from our cottage in Over End to the church in Nether End was as familiar as a lullaby, but I had never been beyond the church. The crouching woods of Aviceford Manor’s demesne lay beyond the river that divided the church from the manor’s holdings. On the Sabbath, it was my habit to steal a moment before Mass to visit the riverbank, where I would scour the sand for pretty stones. Even in winter, as long as the snow was not too deep, I would risk a scolding to slip over the embankment. Once near the river, however, I cast only a rare glance into the dark underbrush on the far bank. I knew of fairies who dwelt in rotting mossy trunks, fairies who stole babies from hearthsides at night and left changelings in their places. I was too big for the fairies to snatch, but I did not care to glimpse a scurrying shadow in the woods, sly yellow eyes gleaming.

  Once safely inside the church, I would sit beneath a high lancet window facing the trees, holding a smooth stone in my hand and following the dance of dust motes animated by wavering sunlight. There I would remember that fairies are not real.

  On that day in early spring, the swollen river swallowed the banks nearly whole, and bare branches scratched at low clouds. Though it had rained heavily the night before, the sky still hung close and dark, pregnant with water. It settled itself over me, making it difficult to breathe.

  I counted twenty-two wet logs beneath my feet as I crossed the slippery bridge. Once on the other side, entering the mouth of the forest, my breath eased a little. The trees on either side were quite ordinary, and the wet road remained familiar underfoot. The mud sucked greedily, pulling a shoe right off, and my stockinged foot squelched deep into the muck. After that, much to my irritation, my shoe slipped from my slick foot every time my attention wandered.

  I carried with me a small bag containing my other gown, my cloak, the wooden cross my father had made for me, warm stockings my sister had mended, and my collection of stones. Stones are a foolish thing to carry through the countryside, but I was attached to my collection, which I had curated over the course of years. For every stone that I kept, I rejected twenty. Each had to be unique, and it had to harmonize with the others in the collection besides. My favorite place to hunt for stones was at the river, where the water wore them smooth, and the damp brought out color and patterns in the rock. My most treasured stone was oval and flat like a flagstone. The green face was shot through with gold lines, like silken threads in a tapestry. I would hold that stone in the palm of my hand to soothe myself when I had trouble sleeping at night.

  Where the woods thinned, yellow coltsfoot pushed through dead grass and leaves, the coarse, genial blooms undimmed by midday blackness. The woods gave way to meadowland, and as the road began to climb, orchards. I knew that my father sometimes worked in these orchards and nearby fields, and I marveled at the distance he had to travel for his week-work.

  I struggled to keep my shoe on my foot as I climbed toward the manor house, and this distracted me enough that the appearance of a gate in front of me took me by surprise. I had expected a grand building, but I was unprepared for the scale of the surrounding wall. The wooden gate was reinforced with bands and studs of iron, and it stood at least twice as high and three times as wide as the doors of the church. To my relief, the gate rested ajar, and I pushed with my shoulder to open it farther.

  The stench of pigs was first to greet me, and then the confusing sight of several squat structures, some of wood and some of stone. The ponderous sky chose that moment to release its burden; thick sheets of rain obscured my view and battered me with fat, tiny fists. I ran to the nearest building to escape, realizing as I approached that it was a stable. If the horses objected to my intrusion, their noise was drowned by the hammering of rain on the slate roof.

  I huddled in a corner, away from the draught, watching the drops gather and fall from the ends of my hair, yearning for our warm hearth and my sister’s chatter. I would only be allowed to leave the manor on saints’ days and other holidays, and I would never again wake up snug against my sister’s warm back. A prickling behind my eyes and tightness in my throat told me to think of other things. I could make out the glossy flanks of horses in the dim light; sometimes a shadowy eye gleamed over the edge of a stall. The air was pungent, but I was comforted by the smell, which I associated with the warmth of their sturdy bodies. I never learned to ride, but I think that I would have enjoyed it.

  I never understood why Elfilda—Ella, we called her then, before she became a princess—was so afraid of horses. Her father insisted that she learn to ride. At some point, it was left to me to enforce this dictate. Ella fought the poor stableboy like a cat when he tried to lift her onto the back of a palfrey. When I took the reins and slapped her pale hands sharply, she desisted long enough for the boy to lead her on a slow walk. She never did learn to ride properly, however. It is probably just as well, since hawking makes her cry for the dead bunnies, and hunting is even worse. When the royal court hunts, she feigns illness, though by now her husband must have realized that she will never join them. She takes refuge with her dogs in the kennel, or with us, until the horses are stabled and the meat hung out of sight.

  When the rain slowed, I made my way back outside. The sky had brightened a little, and I took in the scene around me. I could see now that there were two gates, the one I had passed through and a second gate farther on, surrounded by tall hedges. Over the hedges, I could make out what I assumed to be the roof of the manor house.

  The gate swung briskly open, and a man and a boy appeared. I had not passed a single soul on the road, and I was pleased to see two of my own kind. They wore plain jerkins and hats to shade their faces, and the boy carried a gardener’s scythe in his belt. I hastened toward them, my bag bouncing on my back.

  The man turned his furrowed face, his pale eyes nearly vanishing beneath wrinkles when he smiled.

  “Ho, missy!” He tipped his hat. “What brings a drowned mouse like you out of the woods?”

  “My father heard from the bailiff that the manor house is in need of a new laundry girl.”

  “Is that so? And you think a
wee girl like you will be useful to the laundress?”

  “I am not small!” I pointed to the boy standing sulkily beside him. “I am taller than him!”

  The man laughed. “True enough, true enough. Well, I don’t know much about laundry, but it does not surprise me that Miss Elisabeth is in need of another new laundry girl. She has a sharp tongue, that one.”

  My heart sank again, but I said nothing.

  “My name is John, and this here is Benedict. He is going to help me to prune some trees in the orchard, aren’t you, Benedict my boy?” The boy scowled, and John jostled him. “You will have to excuse the bad manners of my young apprentice; he is an odd boy who does not like to climb trees. What might we call you, missy?”

  “Agnes, sir.”

  “Well, Agnes, I am very pleased to meet you. If you run along to the house, the chamberlain will find Miss Elisabeth for you. Go to the back door, past the herb garden. That is the kitchen entrance, and someone there can point you to Mr. Geoffrey. If Mr. Geoffrey is in a good mood, he might let you have a spot of bacon and some ale while you dry out.” John winked as he turned back toward the orchard. “Take what you can get when you can get it, Agnes, and you will fare all right here.”

  His parting comment did not settle my nerves, but the mention of bacon made my mouth water. The rain had stopped entirely. With a deep breath, I entered the gate through which John and Benedict had appeared and saw Aviceford Manor for the first time.

  The sky continued to play games with me: The same moment that the house came into view, the sun leapt from behind a cloud, beaming sudden life into the red sandstone walls of the manor. Rows of glazed windows shone golden, diamond panes glinting. The only glass windows I knew were the narrow lancet windows at church; this house boasted grand mullioned windows, recessed under decorative arches. To my young eyes, the house might have been a castle. The massive main building was flanked by crenelated turrets, ornamented with three stories of lacey cusping and delicate, clover-shaped quatrefoil windows. Lion head corbels guarded the vaulted entrance; above them squatted fanciful spiky-eared gargoyles, their wide mouths holding trumpetlike water spouts.