Once Upon a Marigold (15 page)

Bub and Cate wondered what Christian was trying to get them to do.

Olympia changed clothes time after time and concentrated on keeping all her balls in the air: arranging the wedding, keeping Swithbert out of the way, deciding what method of extermination to use on Ed and Christian once they'd been convicted of treason, and being charming to her many guests.

Swithbert and Marigold sought a solution to the problems of Olympia and Magnus.

Marigold's sisters, Calista, Tatiana, and Eve, all worried about what they would wear to the wedding that would please their mother enough to keep her off their backs. Now that they had their own kingdoms and the power to arrange their lives to suit themselves, they recognized how little they wanted to be the kind of wife and mother that Olympia had been. Getting away from her had freed them to be smarter and more sensible than she'd ever given them credit for being. Mostly, she'd been interested in how they looked, which had always been spectacular, even though Olympia could invariably find some fault.
Oddly, since leaving home, they all seemed even more beautiful, in a ripe, fully realized way.

Rollo decided to take a troop of soldiers across the river to search the troll's cave for evidence they could use to seal the fate of Edric and his girlfriend-stealing pal.

Magnus tried to participate in all the festivities while wondering what it would be like to be married to someone he had so little in common with. Oh, it would be wonderful to have his own home, but what would they talk about? What would they do together? He'd never finished a book in his whole life, and she had at least one with her at all times. He loved to fish—maybe she did, too—and he loved drawing elegant maps that showed where the rivers and forests and dragons and sea serpents were; maybe he could interest her in that. But he was afraid of dogs and she had three. He knew he really was a shy and simple person, and Marigold was anything but. It just didn't seem as if it could possibly work for either of them—and that was even without considering Olympia, his terrifying mother-in-law-to-be.

The wedding guests thought only of the next meal, the next entertainment, the next amusement. They were there for a good time, weren't they?

Rollo and his soldiers ransacked the cave, not even stopping to admire the gorgeous light that filtered through the crystals. Walter and Carrie perched in a candleberry tree outside the cave and watched, their heads cocked quizzically.

The soldiers couldn't understand why there was so much stuff in the cave: piles of clothing and piles of tools, shelves of books and rows of boots, all carefully segregated by type. It was the racks of weapons that firmly convinced Rollo that an insurrection was under way. The boots and clothing and other things must belong to the insurrectionists—and from the looks of things, there were a lot of them.

"No clues as to where his army is hiding," Rollo said, "but we can prevent a tragedy by confiscating these weapons. Anybody find anything else suspicious?"

"This band sure has a lot of junk," a soldier said. "Lucky this cave has so many rooms to put it in. There's a whole room of left gloves!"

"Is there one of right gloves?" asked another soldier.

"Not that I've found yet. There's a chest full of forks and right next to it is a chest full of jewelry, as if forks and jewels were equal in value. I can't figure out the system."

"You think this is important?" a soldier asked Rollo, showing him the wickerwork hamper with the napkin-wrapped bundle in it. "Seems funny, just this one little thing in the hamper when every other container in the place is stuffed full."

Rollo unwrapped the napkin, revealing the little blue velvet suit. It had been untouched for so long that it had begun to split along the folds. As Rollo shook it out, a tiny tinkle made him look in one of the pockets. He held up the chain, still as golden and shiny as the day Ed had put it there, and examined the charm hanging from it.

"Holy buckets!" he said. "We've got to tell somebody about this! That troll is in a lot more trouble than we even knew. He's a murderer!"

C
HRISTIAN PUTTERED
over his contraption, adjusting this and that, moving the dogs around to different places inside of it, making them whine and cock their ears in puzzlement.

"Oh, quit looking like I'm doing something bad to you," he said to them. "You'll be heroes by the time I'm through."

Bub whimpered while Cate rolled her eyes and yelped dramatically.

O
LYMPIA, WITH
F
ENLEIGH
crouched next to her, fussed over Swithbert's evening dosage. She didn't want to give him too much—he'd have to be alert enough in the morning to walk Marigold down the aisle. But she wanted to make sure he stayed well out of the way until then. She tapped a finger against her teeth and pondered.

A knock at her chamber door caused her to start, and then to throw a scarf over her table. "Enter!" she called.

Calista, Tatiana, and Eve came in, done up in their wedding finery. Olympia embraced them one by one and kissed the air beside their cheeks.

"My darlings!" she exclaimed. "How splendid you all look. There are no more beautiful daughters in all the world."

"Thank you, Mother," they said in unison, breathing a collective sigh of relief. Tatiana, the eldest of the triplets by three minutes and the one who had been given the fairy birth-gift of boldness, said, "We knew you'd want to see what we're wearing to the wedding." Under her breath, she muttered, "So we thought we'd get that ordeal over with."

"My angels!" Olympia exclaimed. "How could you look any better? Though, Tatiana, don't you have a tiara with a bigger diamond? Why don't you wear that one? Bigger is always better when it comes to diamonds, don't you think?"

Tatiana had always thought the bigger diamond was vulgar. She only wore that tiara in the privacy of her chambers when she was playing dress-up with her little daughter.

"Calista," Olympia went on, "are you sure you want to wear that color? Wouldn't the ashes-of-roses gown bring out your eyes better? What you have on makes you look a little, oh, sallow. Didn't you notice?"

Calista's huge blue eyes, which always looked marvelous no matter what she had on, narrowed with exasperation. She got more compliments on this gown
than on any she owned. How was it that when she was growing up she'd thought her mother was always right? What a relief to know it wasn't so.

"And Eve," Olympia continued. "How pretty you'd look if your hair were just a bit more—oh, I don't know,
arranged,
I suppose. Do you know what I mean?"

Eve, whose birth-gift was gentleness, and who had always been the most intimidated by Olympia, didn't have the faintest idea what her mother meant. She and her abigail had spent a long giggly time that afternoon getting her hair into this arrangement, and they both thought it looked quite splendid.

"Would you like to see Marigold's wedding dress?" Olympia asked.

"Of course," they agreed, remembering the wedding-gown-in-triplicate they'd had to wear at their own triple wedding—the one their mother had designed in such an extravagant fashion that they had all felt overwhelmed, as if
it
were wearing
them.
But they had made a pact that they would wear whatever they had to in order to marry their royal sweethearts and get out into their own kingdoms and their own lives.

If anything, Marigold's gown was even worse than theirs had been. It was so rococo as to be grotesque,
with no inch unembellished by a bow or an embroidered flower or an appliqued something-or-other; or a brilliant, a seed pearl, or a bead.

The sisters exchanged appalled glances before Calista, the one whose birth-gift was practicality, asked, "How does Marigold look in it? She's so petite, she must be completely buried."

"Don't be ridiculous," Olympia said, at her most imperious. "She needs all the help she can get. She wanted a completely unadorned gown and a plain veil with her best everyday tiara. Can you imagine? Why, she'd look like a washerwoman."

"I think that sounds just right for her," Eve said softly.

The triplets agreed that Marigold had never been as plain as their mother insisted to everyone that she was. Marigold was just different from the rest of them, that's all—small and delicate, dark eyed and dark haired, with ivory skin, while the triplets were blond and tall and buxom, with pink cheeks and sapphire blue eyes.

"Oh, really, Eve," Olympia said. "What judgment you have. The way you and Calista will run Zandelphia when Beaufort breathes his last—well, I shudder to think."

Truth be known, Eve and Calista were shuddering
to think about it, too, since King Beaufort had recently been taken quite ill—so ill, in fact, that he hadn't been able to make it to the wedding. He was so awfully bossy and dyspeptic that they weren't sure they'd actually miss him if he were to go to his reward, but when he did,
they
were the next in line.

Calista and Eve and Princes Teddy and Harry had had many talks about how to be good monarchs, and they thought that they could probably pull it off most of the time. But they didn't really want to do it. Worrying over affairs of state and regal demeanor and stuff like that didn't appeal much to them. They would prefer to have someone else run Zandelphia while they continued doing what they best liked to do: play with their children, breed championship Norfolk terriers (of which the sale to neighboring kingdoms greatly benefited the Royal Treasury of Zandelphia), and arrange fairs for Zandelphia's subjects.

They quite admired the fact that Tatiana was already Queen of Middle Sanibar, had taken to it almost effortlessly, and was reigning spectacularly well—with very little help from King Willie. He was a dear, nobody could argue with that, but he was more interested in his horticultural experiments than in governing. Luckily, he was smart enough not to interfere with Tatiana's natural leadership talents. As a
consequence Middle Sanibar was enjoying great peace and prosperity.

"I haven't seen Papa since we arrived," Calista said, dropping the fruitless discussion of Marigold's wedding dress. After all, wearing a dreadful dress for a few hours was a small price to pay for one's freedom. "Is he well?"

"Oh, your poor papa," Olympia said sadly. "He's failed quite a lot since you last saw him, I'm afraid. You must prepare to be shocked when you see him tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?" Tatiana said. "Why can't we see him now?"

"He's resting. He needs all his strength for the wedding. I must forbid it."

The triplets made silent vows to get in to see him that very day no matter what their mother said.

"And Marigold," Tatiana said, "we must see Marigold before the wedding."

"Tomorrow will be soon enough," Olympia said smoothly. "She's prostrate with nerves, poor dear."

The sisters looked at each other. Mother calling Marigold "poor dear"? Marigold, who was tough as an old boot when she needed to be, "prostrate with nerves"? Papa stashed away? What was up around here?

"I'm going to see her," Tatiana stated, sounding
like the queen she was. She had learned how easy it was for a queen to push people around just by the tone of her voice—she'd had her initial instruction from Olympia, hadn't she?—and, though she didn't do it often, she recognized that there were times when it was appropriate, and even necessary.

"Tomorrow," Olympia said definitively. She'd been a queen longer than Tatiana had, after all. "Now run along, girls, and change. I must change, too. Soon it will be time for the jugglers and the fire-eater and the trained bear to perform in the Great Hall."

"I don't know about you two," Tatiana said as they left their mother's apartments and headed down the hall, "but I want to see Papa and Marigold right now."

"Me, too," Eve said. "How come we let Mother get away with pushing us around so much when we were girls? Why were we so afraid of her?"

"Because she yelled and wouldn't speak to us, and when she did, she said mean things," Calista said. "It's what we call a tantrum when our children do it."

"But she did more than that," Tatiana went on. "Remember all the maids she banished? All the footmen she exiled? All the servants who've gone from dining hall duty to shoveling out the stables?"

"But we weren't maids or servants. We were her family," Eve said.

"I don't think she made a distinction," Calista said. "We were all supposed to do what she said."

"Apparently she still thinks that," Tatiana said.

The sisters stopped walking. The carpet they trod upon was handwoven in France and had taken twelve years to create. The walls were lined with gilt-framed portraits of generations of ancestors, back to Louis the Stammerer. On pedestals along the hall sat priceless porcelain vases and statues sculpted by master artists. And the sisters were thinking that it all amounted to a high-class prison, run by a beautiful and tyrannical warden.

"I wonder," Eve said slowly, "if Marigold really wants to marry Magnus?"

"Why do you wonder that?" Calista asked. "I've never met him, but he sounds all right."

"Has it occurred to you that now that we're married and gone, Mother has only to get rid of Marigold and Papa to have the throne all to herself? Doesn't that sound like something she'd want to do?"

"But Magnus has no kingdom of his own," Tatiana reminded her. "He and Marigold would stay here. If that was what she was thinking of, why wouldn't she find a prince or a king who lived far away?"

"She's tried," Eve said. "Marigold hasn't cooperated. Magnus is the bottom of the barrel."

"But why would Marigold marry Magnus—I swear, saying that makes my lips vibrate—if she didn't want to?" Calista asked. "She doesn't have to marry at all to inherit. And you know Marigold has never been crazy about marriage, considering the one she grew up watching."

"We watched the same one, and we have happy marriages," Eve reminded her.

"We've been very lucky, too," Tatiana responded.

They were silently grateful for a moment until Tatiana said, "She'd do it to please Papa. If she thought Papa was ... you know, on his way out ... and he wanted to see her married before he ... you know ... she might. Papa's the only one she's ever wanted to please."