Rumplestiltskin (2 page)

“Soon. Very soon. But first we must get you all cleaned up. I am sure the king and queen will be wanting to see what has happened to you.” The maid was afraid of the curse, but the little boy’s wet eyes checked her. Hesitantly, she held her hand out for him to hold and prayed nothing bad would happen to her.

Frederico smiled a crooked smile and clasped her hand tight.

Her eyes were wide, but she put a brave grin on her face as she began to walk back with the little prince. “Do not look at anyone right now. And be sure to walk as straight as possible. Try not to make a scene. We will head through the back door and up the servants’ entrance. Can you do that for me?”

“Yes. I think so.” He tried miserably to walk normally, but a rolling gait was all he could accomplish. Thankfully, they made it into the castle without anyone noticing.

Once they were in his room, it was just a few minutes to get the little boy undressed and in the bath. The maid pressed her lips together many a time and tried desperately not to sob at the sight of the ruined little body. He had been so beautiful before. So lively and handsome. Now his whole person was deformed, rumpled and crippled. She closed her eyes to the protruding awkward bones that formed his crooked back and sang a small song instead as she slipped the bathwater over his head.

Bathing the baby.

Bathing the boy.

Bathing the master’s dog

And its toy.

Soon they will be all clean as a whistle

Ready to scamper about in the thistle.

Bathing the baby.

Bathing the boy.

Bathing the master’s dog.

What a joy!

Frederico liked that song. He hummed along with the maid the whole rest of the time it took to get dried off and dressed with socks and boots on. She was very nice. When she was brushing out his hair, he asked her, “What is your name?”

Surprised, she looked down at his distorted features. “Why do you ask?”

“Mamma always calls you ‘maid.’ Do you have a name?”

“Of course I have a name, Your Majesty! Everyone has a name!”

“Do you know my name?”

She chuckled. “Yes! Everyone better know your name if they knows what’s good for ‘em.”

“Then what is yours? I want to know yours.”

She looked at him a very long time and then said, “Tilly, my little Rumple-stilt-skin, my name is Tilly.

CHAPTER TWO

IT HAD BEEN NEARLY eighteen years since Rumplestiltskin had been transformed. Eighteen years since the five-year-old Frederico had died and they buried a box full of his old clothes and dirt deep within the ground. The headstone still read:

Here Lies Our Beloved Prince

May He Rest in Peace Forever

HRH Frederico Baldrich Layton

Rumplestiltskin pushed away from the windowsill in disgust. His mother, the queen, was having the servants prepare his grave for the annual mourning prayer they were to have in two days’ time. Some years he would stand there and chuckle to himself watching them sobbing, but this year—this year, he could not bear to watch the preparations for an event that had never occurred. It hurt this year for some reason. It hurt much more than most years.

He clutched his oiled cloth and hobbled to the gleaming surface of the tabletop, and began to shine it once again. Trying to shut out that day from his memory altogether, the day his mother and father had decided to announce his death to the kingdom and disown him. Gone were his favorite toys and warm clothes and soft bed. All those things were saved for his brother Marcus.

Rumplestiltskin rubbed more vigorously. It was sad to see how changed his brother had become. Marcus did not deserve to be king. He was way too cruel to the peasants and treated everyone as if they were filth to be scraped off his boot.

He pulled back and hunched down, his left foot twisting wildly behind him as he began to polish the legs of the table. Of course, his brother had learned everything from their father. How grateful Rumplestiltskin was to see him buried! He had no idea how brutal his father could be until Rumple’s deformities made it impossible to recognize the boy as the prince, his son. As soon as his father declared he was too hideous to be considered royalty and therefore should be taken from his sight was the day Frederico truly died and he fully began to think of himself as rumpled and stilted.

His little heart had broken in two. For weeks he wept within the tiny back cellar under the kitchen floors. Thank goodness for Tilly and her kind heart! She proved to be his biggest ally back then, and risked her job and life many a time to see that her little Rumplestiltskin was fed and clothed in what she could find.

She would even sneak in old abandoned broken toys from Marcus for him to play with, in the room she helped him design and keep. He had a new pile of straw brought in every few months from the stables and Tilly and the other women would patch him up a royal quilt from the fine discarded clothing for his blanket each Christmas.

Rumplestiltskin had hid in the castle so long, working as best he could to ease the others from the demands of his parents and now brother, he truly did not remember much of the time before servitude anymore. It was all a blur.

His family knew he was hidden in the castle somewhere. They knew it, because he would see them stare at him from time to time and then blankly turn away. His mother’s horrified sneers had grown less over the years, and since his father had died he had been able to be seen more and more as a servant and not as an awful curse. There were times there when if the king had seen him, he knew he had just moments to escape back to the small cellar before the king’s guards were searching the premises for him. He did not come up often when the royal family was out and about in those days. However, now he was simply Rumplestiltskin, no one but the crippled servant, whose world they would not acknowledge or deem worthy of their notice.

Rumple rubbed harder into the beautiful wooden legs of the table, paying particular attention to the clawed feet. He had hours to think and perfect his wood-shining abilities. Hours to hide unnoticed in a room somewhere and polish and polish until everything in that room gleamed.

He did not mind working, though it hurt him greatly on certain days when his rheumatism was acting up and his joints did not respond as he wished. However, it gave him purpose. Something to do that would beautify his beloved home.

Though the castle was not his anymore, it was still the home he lived in and took great pride in seeing it stunningly on display. Nevertheless, today was a day more full of harm and despair than pride. Today pierced his heart and wounded his crippled frame more than he had felt in years.

In two days’ time all the villagers would come once again to weep over his false grave. To lament at the saddened state of his early death. All of them would come at the king’s insistence. But none would truly be there because they cared. No, they were more frightened of what would happen if they did not show proper respect than if they did.

They were sore afraid of Marcus. Even his mother was fearful of the king. And yet, they pretended to love a boy they discarded years ago. It was all a mockery! A sham!

His mother and brother could not have cared less and the villagers honestly wished themselves miles away from their commencement duties. No one wanted him. No one would ever want him again. And certainly no one wished to mourn for him either.

Tilly had left specific orders to the groomsmen and womenfolk to continue to provide the fresh hay and create the quilt for him as she lay within her sickbed last year. She had made them all promise they would continue to love and protect her Rumplestiltskin, but she was gone now. He had gained favor with the servants and groomsmen and the like. He had. They all respected his quiet, hardworking, cheerful ways. But they still revered him and feared him more than truly loved him as Tilly had.

Perhaps that is why it was so hard this year to bear the silliness that would happen below. Because Tilly would not be there to wrap her arm around his shoulder later that night and jest and mock in great humor all the patrons who had come.

How she would make him laugh! His chuckles at her remembered antics would keep him up many a night afterward thinking of the oddity of it all.

How Tilly had loved him!

How she truly cared about her little rumpled boy.

What would he have done without her?

What in the world will he do now that she is gone?

Rumple crawled over to the wall nearest him and swung his crooked legs around, so that his sore back was leaning against the elegant gold and maroon wallpaper. He dipped his head into his arms, the dirty polishing rag still dangling from his fingers, and wept.

He did not cry when she passed on nearly a year ago. He had remained brave and true as she had requested.

Yet now, now he was not so brave anymore. Now her love that had sustained him had grown cold and as bitter as the ground she was buried in. He needed his Tilly. This grown man wept for the only true mother he had ever known as if he were just the boy of five she had found all those years ago and not three and twenty.

Rumple’s shoulders shook as he wept, his tears plopping to the ground in great smacks onto the lustrous marble.

It was sometime before he could recall himself to where he was and even sometime much later before he could shake the feeling of helplessness and extreme sorrow from his thoughts. Eventually the forgotten prince worked his way down the steps into the kitchen, past the scurrying servants and into his room below. He tossed the old coat off his shoulders and slumped onto the straw-matted bed. His fingers wove themselves into the silken blanket Tilly had commissioned for him and slowly, pulling the soft fabric up over himself, he curled his jagged legs as tight as he could and wondered if he would ever know such warmth and laughter again.

He had long ago given up the thought of any woman falling in love with him. He knew he would never have a family, children, or true life of his own, but then it had all seemed fine with Tilly around to cheer him. Now, his future was so unsettled, so completely unsure, and undoubtedly full of intense loneliness forevermore.

His eyes roamed the ramshackle room, lovingly taking in every bit of Tilly that she had left for him. The old pictures she had purloined from the attics, the mock windowsill and draperies she had fastened out of several pieces of fabric and arranged over the large landscape paintings to create his own outside world. The ornaments and bejeweled cases she had found and fixed for him. The old clock, the battered toys, the candlesticks, the piles of papers and ink quills and the books she had managed to collect for him. They were all there. All upon old forgotten furniture and crates she had amassed over the years.

Oh, how she loved him! How she tried so very hard to make his life as happy as possible. And she truly did. She was a saint; an angel sent to lift his burdens and help carry him through everything.

Another tear crept down Rumple’s cheek as he sniffed his final sniff and accepted once and for all he would never be as wholly and perfectly loved again.

He was a curse. A nuisance. A crippled man.

He did not deserve the love of others.

He was Rumplestiltskin.

CHAPTER THREE

ON THE DAY OF the commencement of Prince Frederico’s death, Aubrynn Sloat hustled and bustled to prepare the small cottage for the trip up to the castle grounds. It was imperative every villager must attend or the king’s men would be sure to toss them in the dungeons. It was used as a day of reckoning—of final tax collecting and an accounting of all the villagers still under the kingdom’s reign.

Aubrynn groaned for the third time as she placed hers and her father’s lunches into the knapsack. Two apples, bread, and a chunk of cheese, yet no father.

Where was he? Did he not know the time? He should have returned hours ago—last night even, and yet, here it was morning and still no sign of him.

Many of their neighbors had already begun the trek up to the top of the mountain. She would have to leave soon, or she would be late.

Aubrynn collected the few coins she had managed to hide from her father for the taxes and tucked them safely into the pocket of her petticoat. She gathered up the water cups and placed them in the knapsack as well and then tapped her foot—waiting. Another ten minutes later had her glancing at the final crowds making their way past the window. It was now or never.

She must leave. Heaven knew where her father was at this time, which tavern he had decided to attend last evening, but it could not be helped, she could not wait another moment. Already she would have to rush to catch up to the last of them.

Grabbing her shawl, she threw it around her shoulders as she clutched the knapsack and dashed out the door. Fumbling with the lock as she closed the cottage up, her eyes scanned the small yard and fence, no sign of her father anywhere. Anxiety plagued Aubrynn and for a moment she felt she would be ill. How foolish could her father be? And today of all days!

With another glance around, she scurried to catch up to the last of the families already yards ahead of her.

Her trek took just under an hour. It was nearly impossible to keep her skirts from being covered in mud due to the rain the night before. It would seem the Fates had guaranteed anything and everything would go wrong this day.

Aubrynn sighed and hitched her skirts as high as she dared while still appearing modest and climbed the last of the stone steps leading to the back of the castle gardens. Mostly everyone had already paid their respects and taxes and were now gathered en masse over where the royal tombstones were.

She tried not to show her nervousness as she turned her back on the crowd, removed the coins from her petticoat and made her way up to the guards in charge of taxing. The very last to approach them, she held out her money.

“Yer name, miss?”

“Aubrynn and Daniel Sloat.”

The man scrolled through the list of hundreds of names. “He yer father?”