Werewolves & Glass slippers

Princes and pickled dogs

*Ella*

The French coiffeur and the two London doctors arrive together the next morning, one prepared to cut off my hair and the others to lance Anastasia’s lip. Both of us refuse. Minna has hysterics, waving her cigarillo around her head and shrieking like a fishwife.

But the session with Rosalie the evening before has cleared my mind. I’m not getting any younger, and my only crowning glory is my hair. I already look too thin, almost haggard. My face might look even worse without my masses of hair.

“I refuse!” I declare, raising my voice over Anastasia’s sobs.

The odd thing is that I have rarely refused anything. I’ve fought my stepmother tooth and nail in the past seven years: fought her when she sacked the pack steward and told me to do the purchasing instead; fought her when she dismissed the bailiff and threw the books at me, telling me to do them at night.

But I have never refused to do anything. I’ve taken up the pack books, the bills, and the general management, said goodbye to my governess, to various maids, to the bailiff, and to the pack steward.

I find it rather ironic that vanity is the point over which I discover my true backbone. “I won’t do it,” I repeat, over and over.

Monsieur Bernier throws up his hands, declaring in a trilling French accent that a smart crop would make me look ten years younger, and… he implies… I need every one of those ten years.

I harden my heart. “I am grateful for your opinion, monsieur, but no.”

“You’ll ruin it,” Minna cries, her voice careening to the edge of frenzy and back. “You’ll ruin everything. Your sister won’t be able to marry, and she’ll have her child out of wedlock.”

I see Monsieur Bernier’s eyes widen and I give him a look. Seven years of pack management has given me a quite effective glare; he flinches.

“It’s all right, Mother,” Anastasia puts in, sniffling, “Ella will simply have to wear wigs, that’s all. She’ll be hot, but it’s a matter of only a few days.”

“Wigs,” Minna says, with a kind of strangled gasp.

“I have them in all sorts of colors to match my dresses,” Anastasia says. “If Rosalie plaits Ella’s hair every morning and then pins it flat, she would be perfectly fashionable and everyone will simply assume that I love my wigs.”

“True,” Minna says, taking a hard draw on her cigarillo.

“I’ll even give you my Circassian Scalp,” Anastasia says.

I wrinkle my nose.

“No, it’s lovely, an elegant pale blue wig that goes beautifully with gowns in blue and green. Plus there’s a jeweled bandeau to wear with it, which will help it stay on your head.”

“Fine,” Minna says. “Now the doctors are going to lance your lip, Anastasia, and that is the last I want to hear from either of you for the rest of the day.”

Anastasia screams and cries, but at last the grim deed is done.

Minna retires to bed with a headache; Anastasia retreats to bed with a weeping fit; I take the dogs with me on a visit to the Crabtrees.

*Gabriel*

“So what’s the matter with the lion?” I ask Theo, walking quickly across the outer courtyard toward the makeshift menagerie that graces the back wall.

“I haven’t the faintest idea. He can’t seem to stop vomiting,” Theo replies.

“Poor old thing,” I say, coming to the lion’s cage. The beast is crouched against the back wall, its sides heaving painfully. I’ve had ownership of it for only a few months, but its eyes used to be full of light, as if it were longing to spring from the cage and eat a bystander.

It doesn’t look like that anymore. Its eyes are glazed and miserable. If it were a horse, I would have…

“It’s not old enough to die,” Theo says, as if he hears my thought.

“Augustus told me it wouldn’t last more than a year.” I point out.

Theo shakes his head, “The Alpha king no longer wished for his menagerie, so he may have exaggerated the beast’s age. The lion is only five years old and should live many more, as I understand it.”

“How are the rest of them?” I walk past the lion’s cage toward that of the elephant, and I find Lyssa swaying placidly in her cage. She has a sweet temperament; at the sight of me, she blows some straw in a companionable sort of way. “What’s that monkey doing in there with her?”

“They became friends during the ocean passage,” Theo says. “They seem happier together.”

I walk closer and peer at the monkey. “Damned if I know what kind that is. Do you?”

“As I understand it, she’s called a pocket monkey. The Alpha king was given her by a pasha.” He explains.

“And the elephant came along with that Indian raja, didn’t she? I wish people would stop giving animals as gifts. This courtyard smells.” I shake my head.

Theo sniffs loudly. “True. We could move them to the gardens behind the hedge maze.”

“Lyssa would get lonely out there by herself. I don’t suppose we can let her out of her cage now and then, could we?” I ask.

“I could ascertain whether we might build an enclosure in the orchards,” Theo says.

I stare at the unlikely pair for another moment. The monkey is sitting on the elephant’s head, stroking a big ear with her knotty-looking fingers. “Have you had any luck finding someone to care for the animals who actually knows something about elephants and the like?”

“No,” Theo says. “We tried to lure a man from Peterman’s Circus, but he refused to leave his own lions.”

“We can’t have Peterman’s lions along with our own, the poor sick bastard.” I walk back to the first cage. “What the hell could be the matter with it, Theo?”

Theo clears his throat, “Prince Ferdinand suggested that it might be accustomed to a diet of werewolf flesh, but I thought it best to ignore the implications of that comment.”

“In lieu of that, what have we been feeding it?” I ask.

“Beefsteak,” Theo says. “Good stuff too.”

I ponder for a moment, “Maybe it’s too rich. What does my uncle eat after a bad night?”

“Soup.” Theo says.

“Try that.” I suggest.

Theo raises an eyebrow but nods.

“On that charming topic, where is my uncle?”

“His Highness is working on the battle of Crecy this morning. He has commandeered the pigsty, which is happily free of occupants, and renamed it the Imperial War Museum. Forty or fifty milk bottles represent the various regiments and their leaders. His exhibit,” Theo adds, “is very popular with the servants’ children.”

“He’s happy then,” I say. “I suppose…”

I’m interrupted as a tall man with stork-like legs trots into the courtyard. He has hair like thistledown, which stands straight in the air and waves slightly every time he moves. “Speak of the devil,” I say, bowing.

“Same to you, dear boy,” my uncle Prince Ferdinand Barlukova says vaguely. “Same to you. Have you seen my poor dog anywhere?”

Theo moves slightly behind my shoulder and says quietly, “There is some belief that the lion ate him.”

“Fur and all?” I mumble.

“It might explain the beast’s current plight.”

“I have not seen your dog,” I tell my uncle.

“Just yesterday he ate a whole plate of pickled crab apples,” Prince Ferdinand says, looking a bit tearful. “I have him on a pickled diet, everything pickled. I think it’s much better for his digestion.”

The pickled apples might not have agreed with the dog… or, secondhand, with the lion. “Perhaps he ran away,” I say, turning toward the great arch that leads back to the inner courtyard. “He may have not appreciated your dietary innovations.”

“My dog adores pickled food,” Ferdinand states. “Adores it, especially pickled tomatoes.”

“Next time, try pickled fish.” From the corner of my eye, I see my two aunts approaching, out for a perambulation, waving their fingers in my direction, smiling archly.

I start moving more quickly, avoiding the cook’s child at the last minute, striding finally into my chamber with a feeling of having narrowly escaped.

The problem with having a castle is that a castle is filled with people. And they are all my people, one way or another: my relatives, my lion, my elephant, my servants... even the pickle-eating dog is my responsibility, though it sounds as if it might have escaped to the great hunting ground in the sky. Probably gratefully.

“I’ll take a gun out and look for birds,” I tell my manservant, a lugubrious man named Pole, who has been jettisoned from his brother’s court because he knows far too much about the s****l proclivities of every courtier.

“Excellent,” Pole says, putting out a riding coat and breeches. “Young Alfred could do with some fresh air. Mr. Berwick is training him in service à la française and he’s not taking to it easy-like. He will do to carry back the birds.”

I nod, “Right.”

“May I suggest that you ask the Honorable Buckingham Toloose to accompany you?” Pole says, placing a pair of clean stockings precisely parallel to the breeches.

“Who in the world is that?” I ask.

“He arrived yesterday, with a note from Queen Charlotte. You would have met him this evening, but I gather the meal will be en famille, given the imminent arrival of your nephew. So it would be polite to greet the gentleman now.”

I sigh, “And he is of what sort?”

“I would suggest that he is of a proselytizing nature…”

“Oh no,” I say. “My brother’s court was overrun by religious types. I don’t want any of those here. You don’t want that, Pole. If I turn into my brother, you and the lion would be out in the cold.”

Pole smiles in a slightly detached way, as if he has been told a joke of extreme indelicacy. “I have faith that Your Highness will not succumb to the delectations of a roving preacher, as did His Majesty Alpha king Augustus. Mr. Toloose proselytizes in a different arena. I have warned all the younger maids to stay away from the east wing. He has a quite amusing way about him; he was exerting it on the Princess Maria-Therese this morning, but I fancy she was unmoved.”

I bring to mind my beetle-browed, sixty-year-old aunt, as sturdy and ethical as a German-built boat. “I fancy you’re right about that,” I agree. “And what is Mr. Toloose looking for in my household?”

“My guess would be that he is rusticating due to debts in London,” Pole observes. “His stockings are quite interesting… a brilliant orange, with clocks… and his coat is worth more than a moderate-sized emerald.”

If Pole says that, it is true. Pole knows all about emeralds.

“All right,” I say. “Tell Berwick I’m in the gun room and send a note to Toloose requesting his company. I believe my uncle might like to go as well.”

Down in the gun room, I set to polishing the barrel of my Haas. It is a lovely tool, one of the only air guns I’ve seen with seven rifling grooves, allowing a man to switch in a moment from hunting deer to hunting pheasants.

The German hunting air gun is everything life isn’t: beautifully designed, spare, decorative. I don’t actually care to hunt anything other than game birds and rabbits. But that doesn’t mean I scorn the beauty of a Haas, its barrel etched with the coat of arms of the Royal pack of Warl-Marburg-Baalsfeld.

My older brother’s coat of arms, to be exact.

A pulse of relief, so old that it feels as familiar as my morning beard bristles, pings in the area of my heart. I’ve decided years ago that it is far better to be a prince than an Alpha king.

For all that I think my older brother is a dried-up old stick, I feel sorry for him. It isn’t a pleasant task, ruling a small royal pack, especially given the three brothers who stand between me and Augustus, each of whom rather thinks they’d like to have a crown as well.

And if not a crown, an heiress. I had a letter the other day implying that Rupert, the most handsome of my brothers, is toying with the sister of Napoleon.

My mouth tightens. If Augustus hadn’t lost his mind a few months ago, I would be in Tunis this very moment, quarreling with my old professor Biggitstiff over excavation of the legendary city of Carthage.

I wouldn’t be sitting in a damp castle in a puddle of summer rain, surrounded by elderly family members and debt-ridden courtiers… I’d be sweating in the sun, making sure the dig doesn’t turn into a greedy ransacking of history.

I look down to discover that I am polishing the Haas’s barrel so hard that I am likely to obliterate the duchy’s coat of arms.

Damned Augustus and his damned ideas. I had been on the very eve of leaving for Tunis when my brother’s religious fervor burst into flame, inspiring the Alpha king to expel from his court everyone he considered corrupt, infirm, awkward, or mad.

In short, practically everyone, and all to save Augustus’s self-righteous little soul.

One by one, each of my elder brothers has refused to intercede, either because he is toadying up to Augustus or because… like Rupert… he just doesn’t give a damn.

Finally, it was left to me. I could accept a godforsaken castle in England, big enough to house all those deemed too imperfect to grace Augustus’s court, or I could leave for Tunis and never look back.

Put Theo and Ferdinand and the pickle-eating dog and all the rest of them out of my mind.

I couldn't do it.

So… rain rather than blinding sun. A bride on her way from Russia, with a dowry to support the castle. And a castle full of miscreants and misfits, rather than an excavation site full of crumbled rocks and bits of statuary that might, eons ago, have been the magnificent city of Carthage.

Not that I believe it is Carthage. I have wrangled my way into the excavation because I don’t believe in Dido, the famous Lycan Queen of Carthage, or even the existence of the city, for that matter. It is all a myth, made up by Virgil.

And now Biggitstiff is out there in Tunis chortling and labeling half the rocks in the countryside ‘Carthage.’ Hell, by now he has probably identified Dido’s supposed funeral pyre. The next step will be articles detailing his sloppy assumptions and sloppier fieldwork. My jaw clenches at the thought.

But I have no choice, not really. I’m not Augustus, with his religious principles unleavened by a sense of humor. I can’t watch everyone I grew up with, from my cracked uncle to my father’s jester be thrown into the street because Augustus deems them likely to tarnish his halo.

The only thing I can do is pray that Augustus’s choice for my bride… probably pious and whiskered, as virtuous as she is virginal… has enough backbone to run the castle so that I can leave for Carthage.

I don’t really care who she is, as long as she can manage the castle in my absence. Beddable would be nice; biddable is a necessity.

I bend back over the Haas.