Flash Fiction #379 -- Pretend

When Clara was seven, her parents moved her to the family castle far from the city. Alone and afraid, she sometimes pretended to be one of the maids.  Surely that was the best of all lives!  Esquia dusted her rooms and then moved on to dust somewhere else, free to move through the building.  Clara remained in her suite and sat with her tutor or learned to embroider from her elder great-aunt Maylyn who was mostly deaf and maybe a bit blind.

On rare occasions, servants and guards would take Clara out to the grounds, sometimes just to walk the gardens, which was nice enough.  They never went to the village, for which she was grateful. There had been large groups of people in the city, yelling and throwing things.  She had a small scar on her cheek and still remembered the pain and blood.

That was when she got sent to Dunmoreland.  Cut off from her parents, who had only visited once in the last few years, Princess Clara had long suspected that she must have done something terribly wrong.

Being a maid would be better.

By thirteen, though, Clara had given up pretending.  She became so studious that her tutor even gave her a key to the archives after a solemn oath not to damage any of the books.  Letters sometimes came from her mother, but they were rare and before long felt like notes from someplace -- and someone -- she did not remember well.

Then matters changed again.  Clara had heard the news that there was unrest in the country, but it didn't touch her until late in the autumn when soldiers marched into the keep and took over the castle.  She'd been at her desk, about to ring for the maid set the fire for the night.  The evening felt chill -- but then Clara heard the sound from the grounds below.  Shouting.  Anger.  She had not heard those sorts of sounds since she left the city.

Esquia rushed into the room without even a knock.  A few others followed, all of them frantic.

"Come with me, Clara.  Come quickly.  You," she pointed to a maid.  "Strip the bed.  Take all her papers and burn them in the downstairs oven.  Get the books out of here.  Quickly!  Clara, come with me!"

Clara rushed toward the woman whom she trusted.  "What?" she dared ask as they hurried out into the hall.

"There are people who have come to take the castle from your parents.  Not good people. They don't know that you're here.  We've all done our best -- here and in the city -- to make people believe you died in the riots.  We had to so you would stay safe, my sweet.  Do you remember how you used to follow me and pretend to dust?  I want you to pretend again.  You will be my daughter.  Can you do that?"
Esquia sounded frantic.  They were taking the servant's stairs.  She'd never gone this way before, down and down the narrow stone-lined stairs.

"Clara?"

"Yes.  I can pretend," Clara said.

So she became someone else.  Elsie, a young girl learning her mother's trade.  Lord Tornwood was an old man with squinting eyes and a loud voice, and he hardly noticed the servants except to yell at them.  His soldiers stayed in tents outside the building, at least after their original search of the building. Only a handful of guards kept with him, all of them bad-mannered. Tornwood was almost always angry, and he yelled at Great Aunt Maylyn, who ignored him, and sent the archivist -- her tutor -- out of the castle.  That was, she admitted, better than killing him.  He never visited the archives after the first day, and since she had a key, that was where Esquia told her to go and stay when she could not be with one of the others.

Autumn turned fast into winter.  The shock of the invasion of her home had worn off after the first few days.  The work of a maid was also not as much fun as she had hoped, either.

Tornwood's guards were apt to turn up at any time.  She dared not ever be out of character as the maid's daughter, and that meant she rarely talked at all.  She did not dare ask about what would happen, either.

The first snow fell.  There was no sign that Lord Tornwood would leave.

And then her father arrived.  He came with hundreds of soldiers -- so many riding in from the snow that Tornwood's soldiers threw down their swords.  Tornwood was at dinner, and Clara's father raced into the room and grabbed the man by his collar, dragging him from the chair and throwing him to the floor.  She had never seen her father angry.

"What have you done with my daughter!" he demanded.  He pulled his sword and put it to the man's neck.  "If you've killed her or harmed her --"

"But -- but --" Tornwood was wide-eyed and pale.  "But everyone said she was dead!  Before -- long before I came here.  In the city!  I never saw her!"

"But you did," Clara said and dared to step forward.

Her father turned her way, shocked for a moment, and then smiling -- yes, smiling the way she remembered from before she'd been sent away.  He sheathed his sword and rushed to gather her up in his arms.

They celebrated that night, a grand dinner while Tornwood went in chains to the city, despite the weather.  Clara realized she had never been exiled, only sent away to be kept safe.  Now, though, she had her choice.  She could go back to the city --

"Maybe in the spring," she said with a bright smile.  "I do like winter here.  The quiet. I think maybe you should stay here, too."

He did stay for a while.  Clara's mother came to stay in the spring.  She became Princess Clara again ... but sometimes she still helped Esquia dust.