Sophia, Princess Among Beasts Read online

  In these moments, I didn’t have to hold my head as if a queen’s crown were upon it already. I could simply be a girl like any other. A girl with no responsibility to rule a kingdom alone—at least, not yet.

  The golden, late-autumn sun had come out, and with it my mood had brightened. It was impossible to imagine anything bad ever happening to us.

  “Don’t lean your head out the window like a hound,” Odo said, trotting next to me.

  I laughed and kept doing it just to spite him.

  We were but a mile from the village. Already we’d come to their fields, barren now at the end of harvest season. Nothing was left of the oats and barley but broken stubble. The beans had all been picked, and the land lay naked.

  The breeze carried the smell of something burning.

  I squinted. In the distance, I could see black roils of smoke above the cottages. “Odo, what’s happening?” I asked. “What is that burning?”

  But he didn’t answer, and this time I knew that it wasn’t a matter of loyalty to my father: he didn’t know, either. Odo’s brow darkened, and he spurred his horse ahead to the village.

  CHAPTER 6

  When my carriage rolled to a stop at the village gate, the horses wouldn’t settle. They shook and stamped their feet in their rattling harnesses. I could hear the driver speaking soothingly to them, but they whinnied and tossed their heads. It was as if they, too, knew that something was terribly wrong here.

  Acrid smoke hung heavy in the air, and a putrid smell, like that of a bloated carcass left to rot in the sun, assailed my nose. I pressed the sable edge of my cloak to my face and tried not to gag.

  What in the world was going on?

  From the little thatched huts, the children came running, their legs dirty and their feet bare.

  “Princess,” they called, and then they dropped to their knees beside the carriage.

  I’d never wanted the villagers to fling themselves into the mud to show obeisance, but it was a habit I could not change; they’d been doing it for generations. I quickly motioned for the children to stand again, and they did, not bothering to brush the dirt from their clothing.

  “Fina, what’s wrong?” I asked a little girl with dark copper hair and a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. She and her younger sister, redheaded Rosa, were always the first to reach my carriage, the first to touch a grubby finger to its ornate, gilded curves, their eyes wide with awe. In the summertime, they brought me wildflowers from the meadow and pale green eggs from their beloved chickens.

  “It’s the sickness,” Fina whispered, curtsying. She wiped a grimy cheek with the tattered corner of her dress.

  “You’re crying,” I exclaimed.

  She shook her head. “Mama said I’m not to cry in front of the princess.”

  “Don’t worry about that, child. But what do you mean, the sickness?”

  As if in answer to my question, a young boy began to sing.

  Blood and blister, fever and sore—

  Death is knocking at your door.

  Bodies fill all graves with gore,

  But still the dirt cries out for more.

  Then Abra, who was second in command to Odo, urged his mount close to my carriage window. “You must return to the castle, Princess.” His sword glinted in the sunlight, and his horse’s nostrils blew grassy, humid air into my face.

  I gestured to the children with their thin arms, their hollow eyes of hunger. It was my responsibility to give them what I could, no matter the smoke and the stench. No matter the sickness, whatever it was.

  “After I distribute the food,” I said.

  “You must go now,” he said.

  Immediately I stiffened. “Who are you to tell me—”

  “They are just beasts!” Abra interrupted. “Not worth dying for.”

  I leaned out the window. “Beasts, you say? Yes, perhaps they are lower born than you. Does it mean we should ignore their suffering? Does it mean they do not need food?” His gaze flickered. “Do you not give your horse oats when it is hungry? Or are these people’s lives worth less than an animal’s?”

  Silent, Abra turned away from me, and the boy’s voice rang out again.

  Young man, your bride is dying,

  Though she be young and fair—

  Now Death will be her husband,

  No jewels but worms she’ll wear.

  What was that awful song?

  I knew that I couldn’t leave, but nor did I want to linger. The smell turned my stomach, and the smoke seared my throat raw. I turned to my protector and friend. “Odo,” I called, “give out what we brought. And please hurry.”

  The knight dismounted and began to toss out bags of food, one for each household. No one was too proud to hold out a hand, and no one complained that it was less than they might have wished for. Mutely they pushed their way forward, bowing their thanks.

  When Odo gave a sack to a toothless old woman, she held it for only a moment before it slipped from her grasp and spilled into the mud. He tried to hand it back to her, but she brushed it away as if it were trash. “Luca is gone,” she cried, pointing at Odo as if it were his fault.

  Odo shot me a worried look. Go, he seemed to be saying, go.

  The singing urchin had now been joined by others, including a girl who banged a stick on a plate like a crude drum as they intoned:

  Maid, your betrothed forgets you

  As he shivers and cries in dread.

  He’ll marry a grave instead of a girl,

  With a coffin for his wedding bed.

  “Tell me what is going on,” I called out to the crowd.

  “It’s the Seep, my lady,” someone said.

  I turned to see who was speaking. “The Seep—what is that?”

  A haggard, hunch-shouldered man pushed his way through the villagers toward me. “I can tell you everything, Your Highness,” he said.

  “You will spare her,” Abra commanded. “She doesn’t need to know.”

  “Should she be ignorant of this the way she is ignorant of our other miseries?” the man asked. He turned to me. “I’ll tell you, Princess, with your leave.”

  His words stung, but they were true. I came to the village only weekly—I didn’t know what it was like to live here in poverty. I didn’t know how it felt to be hungry and cold and sick. Loneliness was my only burden.

  “Please tell me,” I urged the man.

  He removed his hat and clutched it in a grimy fist. “The sickness comes on quick in the night. First you shiver so badly it feels like a devil’s shaking you,” he said, “and a great pain comes into your head. Next, Your Highness, it’s like a fire is burning your guts. You want to tear out your insides with your own hands, that’s how bad the fever burns. As you lie there, shook by devils and pains, the sores start to come. Tiny blisters pop out all over your body, and they ooze liquid clear as water. And then… then you’d better call a man to dig you a hole in the ground, for that’s where you’re going next.” He bowed and put his cap back on. “That is what we call the Seep, Princess.”

  “Is there a cure?” I asked, horrified.

  The man wiped his sweating brow, and I wondered if he, too, felt the heat of fever. “We know of none yet,” he said. “And even strong men die screaming.”

  Whatever he said next was drowned out by another verse of that grisly song.

  Mothers, don’t cry for your children,

  The babes that were taken from you.

  You’ll see them again before the dawn

  For the Seep is your destiny, too.

  With sudden alarm, I searched for Fina in the crowd. “Fina,” I called, “where is your sister, Rosa?”

  Fina tugged at one of her coppery braids. “In our bed,” she answered.

  “She’s sleeping, though, right? Not sick?”

  Before Fina could answer, the chiming of great bells split the air. Their somber notes clanged seven times before stopping, and then only their echoes were left, hovering above
us like the terrible black smoke itself. Hearing them, Fina paled.

  “What are those?” I asked Odo, as they did not ring the correct hour. “What are they for?”

  His hands twisted in his horse’s dark mane. “They are the Passing Bells,” he said softly.

  “He means the Bells of Death,” Abra said, his voice much harsher. “They ring when a soul has departed this world.”

  I turned back to Fina. “Your sister—tell me she’s all right!”

  For a moment, the girl seemed unable to answer. Then she gathered herself up and spoke steadily as tears streamed down her freckled cheeks. “I do not suppose she is all right now,” she said.

  “Blood and blister, fever and sore,” the little boy sang on.

  “Stop it!” I cried, leaning out the window. “Have you no respect?” I struck the side of the carriage in anger. But even sharper was my grief. Poor, sweet Rosa, dead of a plague at six years old. How could this be?

  Then nearby I saw a dark-skinned boy—my age, or a season older—turn toward my voice. I saw him raise his arm. And something came spinning through the air, straight at me.

  CHAPTER 7

  A clump of thick, dark mud, flung from the boy’s clenched fist, exploded wetly against my cheek. Some of it dropped down to my chest, smearing into the blue silk. Most of it hurtled into my open, shocked mouth.

  I choked and gagged, and by some awful reflex swallowed some of the mud down. The taste was warm, earthy, fecal—

  No! Suddenly I couldn’t catch my breath. I leaned out of the carriage, retching. My hair, already loosed from its intricate coils, hung like ropes before my face as I coughed and gasped, my lungs heaving, my stomach twisting into knots.

  That wretched boy had flung manure at me!

  My tongue felt coated with it as I spit again and again into the dirt. When I looked up through streaming eyes, he was still standing there, as motionless as a post. His defiant gaze never left my face, even as my father’s guards rushed toward him, their billhooks raised.

  Abra reached him first and grabbed him by the throat. He drew his sword from his belt and lifted it high above his head.

  In another instant, he’d split the boy in half, right down to his groin.

  “Stop!” I yelled. “Do not harm him!”

  Wiping my tear-streaked face, I tried to sit up straight. Tried to summon the imperious attitude I’d been trained to exhibit, regardless of circumstances. I had been humiliated, and rage flooded through me. But my anger was accompanied by something else. As the boy stared at me so boldly, I felt a flicker of… admiration.

  Because, obviously, he feared nothing.

  “Princess,” Odo said, handing me a cloth.

  As I wiped myself clean as best I could, I kept my eyes locked on the boy’s. His face was fierce, darkly handsome, and in its own way, almost regal. He didn’t struggle in Abra’s grip; he merely waited, watching me. I could tell that he knew the punishment for what he’d done. Were my father here, he’d already be dead.

  But my father wasn’t here.

  Abra’s sword hung in the air. His arm trembled, so badly did he want to bring the blade down and cleave the boy in two.

  “Lower your weapon, Abra,” I commanded.

  Abra’s face grew sullen. He hesitated, but he did as I told him to do. He released the boy’s throat, and I could see the bruises blossoming already.

  “What is your name, stupid boy?” I shouted.

  He flung back his shoulders and raised his strong chin. “I am Raphael and proud of it!”

  “Why have you done this to me, you insolent beast?” I heard my father’s harsh words echo in mine and, chagrined, I lowered my voice. “Defend yourself, villager,” I muttered.

  “It is a lesson,” Raphael answered boldly. “In subjects your tutors will never teach you about—suffering and degradation. You live in comfort and luxury in your castle on a hill, and you have no idea what it’s like to be down here in the village. Here we live in hunger and squalor and shit.” Then he smiled. “You’ve never known hunger or squalor, I’m sure, but now I expect you understand the shit part.”

  His defiance shook me. No one had ever spoken to me like that—not least a subject I could have skinned alive if I chose. “I don’t need any lessons from the likes of you,” I hissed.

  Though he was now held captive between two men who’d rather kill him than watch him draw one more breath, Raphael managed to stagger a few steps toward me as he spoke. “I not-so-humbly beg to differ,” he said. “Everyone must learn suffering, Princess, even you. Those mighty Bandon walls can’t keep it out forever. I hope Ares and his knights destroy your towering castle. I pray for the quick—no, make that the slow—demise of your father, the so-called Warrior King.” Then he spat upon the ground.

  That was all it took. Abra’s sword had been sheathed, but there was no stopping his fists. He cut the boy a vicious blow across the cheek, nearly spinning him around like a top. Stunned, the boy wobbled and reached out, grabbing onto Abra’s arm so he didn’t crumple to the ground.

  He would have been wiser to fall.

  Abra struck him again, and more guards rushed to surround them. The villagers surged forward, and I could no longer see Raphael at all.

  “Odo, don’t let them kill him,” I cried.

  Grimly, Odo spurred his horse into the melee, shouting something I couldn’t make out. The villagers fell back, and the guards stepped away. I saw the boy’s crumpled form lying half buried in the mud. One of his boots was missing, and his bare foot looked impossibly small and fragile.

  After another word from Odo, the guards began to drag him away. I could not make out his face, but I could tell there was no life in his limbs. Had they killed him already?

  Odo rode back to the carriage and answered the question I hadn’t even asked out loud. “The villager lives,” he said. “For the time being, anyway.”

  A guard slung Raphael onto the back of a horse like a sack of grain, and then they galloped away. What he’d said and done was treasonous and an outrage, yes. But he didn’t deserve to die by our hands. There were enough ways for him to perish without us being involved: in a battle with Ares’s men, or by the fever of the Seep. The threat of death hung in the air, as thick as the curling black smoke.

  “Your Highness,” Odo said. “We must leave now.”

  But instead I flung open the carriage door, and I hesitated only an instant before jumping out.

  Among the beasts.

  CHAPTER 8

  My slippers sunk into the cold mud of the lane as I stood face-to-face with the hungry, sick villagers.

  Startled, Odo’s horse stomped its hoof, further splattering my ruined gown. “Princess Sophia!” Odo said. “Do not—”

  I held up my hand, and the ruby ring that had been my mother’s shone like blood. “You will not stop me, Odo.”

  His face twisted in dismay. “I beg of you, do not touch them,” he said.

  “Are you afraid of us, Princess?” asked the crone who’d dropped her bag of food. “We have no gold, no crowns, it’s true—but we are flesh and blood like you.”

  “I am not afraid,” I said. But in truth I could hardly breathe from fear. I knew the villagers would never harm me, but a deadly plague walked among them.

  Just as I was doing now.

  The villagers stretched out their hands to me beseechingly, as if a caress of my silk sleeve would bring them luck. How carefully my father and I had protected ourselves from them—and yet how fervently they still showed their loyalty. Even now, when their very survival was threatened, they bowed to me, and tried to kiss the hem of my dress.

  How could Leonidus ever call them beasts?

  As I walked onward, a man stepped out of his cottage, wrapped in a threadbare blanket and nearly too weak to stand. “I’ve buried my wife and five of my children, Princess,” he said. His legs faltered, and he sank to the ground. “Who will be left to bury me?”

  A woman in a ragged dress pulled at my
cloak. “Our children cry themselves to sleep at night,” she said. “Is it better to wake hungry and afraid, or better to go to sleep forever?”

  These cruel questions I could answer in only one way. “Follow me to the castle,” I said. “My father will give you food and medicine—I will demand it.”

  But the woman who held my cloak shook her head. “Any one of us might carry the Seep. We cannot risk bringing it into the castle.”

  Any one of us.

  I felt myself begin to shiver as I looked at the anguished, poverty-stricken crowd. What if this woman clutching my cloak had the Seep? What if Fina did? I tried to breathe calmly. I didn’t want them to see my fear—only my strength, that they might draw hope from it. If I didn’t touch anyone directly, I would be safe. That’s what I told myself.

  Fina’s mother came into the lane then. She walked slowly, carrying in her arms a small, lifeless form. Her ravaged eyes met mine, and then she turned, bearing away her dead child.

  I stifled a sob when I caught sight of Rosa’s pale, blistered hand dangling above the mud. That sweet girl had once shyly whispered to me that she wanted to be a princess, too. “W-where is she taking her?” I asked the gaunt woman at my elbow.

  “To the mass grave,” she said. “The child will burn with all the others.”

  Grief and helplessness nearly overwhelmed me, and tears coursed down my cheeks as I walked among my subjects. “I will bring more food,” I promised them. “I will help. You are not alone.”

  Though my cloak dragged in the mud, and the wind smelled like snow and death, I held my head high, encircled with its invisible crown.

  “We must go now, Princess,” Odo said. His voice was sharp, and this time I listened to him. I bowed to my subjects, and then I pulled up the dirty folds of my gown and climbed back into the carriage.

  I thought again of the boy, Raphael. He had risked his life to display his anger at the horrible state of his village. And as I watched the cottages grow smaller behind me, I understood one thing: there had already been so much dying—and, on the horizon, there was more death to come.