The Golden Braid (2 page)

Chapter One

Late winter, 1413, the village of Ottelfelt, Southwest of Hagenheim, the Holy Roman Empire

Rapunzel, I wish to marry you.”

At that moment, Mother revealed herself from behind the well in the center of the village, her lips pressed tightly together.

The look Mother fixed on Wendel Gotekens was the one that always made Rapunzel's stomach churn.

Rapunzel shuffled backward on the rutted dirt road, “I am afraid I cannot marry you.”

“Why not?” He leaned toward her, his wavy hair unusually tame and looking suspiciously like he rubbed it with grease. “I have as much land as the other villagers. I even have two goats and five chickens. Not many people in Ottelfelt have both goats and chickens.”

She silently repeated the words an old woman had once told her.
The truth is kinder than a lie
.

“I do not wish to marry you, Wendel.” She had once seen him unleash his ill temper on one of his goats when it ran away from him. That alone would have been enough to make her lose interest in him, if she had ever felt any.

He opened his mouth as if to protest further, but he became aware of Mother's presence and turned toward her.

“
Frau
Gothel, I—”

“I shall speak to you in a moment.” Her mother's voice was icy. “Rapunzel, go home.”

Rapunzel hesitated, but the look in Mother's eyes was so fierce, she turned and hurried down the dirt path toward their little house on the edge of the woods.

Aside from asking her to marry him, Wendel's biggest blunder had been letting Mother overhear him.

Rapunzel made it to their little wattle-and-daub structure and sat down, placing her head in her hands, muffling her voice. “Father God, please don't let Mother's sharp tongue flay Wendel too brutally.”

Mother came through the door only a minute or two later. She looked around their one-room home, then began mumbling under her breath.

“There is nothing to be upset about, Mother,” Rapunzel said. “I will not marry him, and I told him I wouldn't.”

Her mother had that frantic look in her eyes and didn't seem to be listening. Unpleasant things often happened when Mother got that look. But she simply snatched her broom and went about sweeping the room, muttering unintelligibly.

Rapunzel was the oldest unmarried maiden she knew, except for the poor half-witted girl in the village where they'd lived several years ago. That poor girl drooled and could barely speak a dozen words. The girl's mother had insisted her daughter was a fairy changeling and would someday be an angel who would come back to earth to punish anyone who mistreated her.

Mother suddenly put down her broom. “Tomorrow is a market day in Keiterhafen. Perhaps I can sell some healing herbs.” She began searching through her dried herbs on the shelf attached to the wall. “If I take this feverfew and yarrow root to sell, I won't have any left over,” she mumbled.

“If you let me stay home, I can gather more for you.”

Her mother stopped what she was doing and stared at her. “Are you sure you will be safe without me? That Wendel Gotekens—”

“Of course, Mother. I have my knife.”

“Very well.”

The next morning Mother left before the sun was up to make the two-hour walk to Keiterhafen. Rapunzel arose a bit later and went to pick some feverfew and yarrow root in the forest around their little village of Ottelfelt. After several hours of gathering and exploring the small stream in the woods, she had filled two leather bags, which she hung from the belt around her waist.
This should put Mother in a better mood.

Just as Rapunzel reentered the village on her way back home, three boys were standing beside the lord's stable.

“Rapunzel! Come over here!”

The boys were all a few years younger than she was.

“What do you want?” Rapunzel yelled back.

“Show us that knife trick again.”

“It's not a trick.” She started toward them. “It is a skill, and you will never learn it if you do not practice.”

Rapunzel pulled her knife out of her kirtle pocket as she reached them. The boys stood back as she took her stance, lifted the knife, and threw it at the wooden building. The knife point struck the wood and held fast, the handle sticking out perfectly horizontal.

One boy gasped while another whistled.

“Practice, boys.”

Rapunzel yanked her knife out of the wall and continued down the dusty path. She had learned the skill of knife throwing in one of the villages where she and Mother had lived.

Boys and old people were quick to accept her, an outsider, better than girls her own age, and she tried to learn whatever she could from them. An old woman once taught her to mix brightly colored paints using things easily found in the forest, which Rapunzel then used to paint flowers and vines and butterflies on the houses where she and Mother lived. An older man taught her how to tie several types of knots for different tasks. But the one skill she wanted to learn the most had been the hardest to find a teacher for.

She walked past the stone manor house, with the lord's larger house just behind it and the courtyard in front of it. On the other side of the road were the mill, the bakery, and the butcher's shop. And surrounding everything was the thick forest that grew everywhere man had not purposely cleared.

Endlein, one of the village girls, was drawing water from the well several feet away. She glanced up and waved Rapunzel over.

Rapunzel and her mother were still considered strangers in Ottelfelt as they had only been there since Michaelmas, about half a year. She hesitated before walking over.

Endlein fixed her eyes on Rapunzel as she drew near. “So, Rapunzel. Do you have something to tell me? Some news of great import?” She waggled her brows with a smug grin, pushing a strand of brown hair out of her eyes.

“No. I have no news.”

“Surely you have something you want to say about Wendel Gotekens.”

“I don't know what you mean.”

Endlein lifted one corner of her mouth. “Perhaps you do not know.”

“Know what?”

“That your mother has told Wendel he cannot ever marry you because the two of you are going away from Ottelfelt.”

Rapunzel's stomach turned a somersault like the contortionists she had seen at the Keiterhafen fair.

She should have guessed Mother would decide to leave now that a young man had not only shown interest in her but had declared his wish to marry her. The same thing happened in the last two villages where they had lived.

Rapunzel turned toward home.

“Leaving without saying fare well?” Endlein called after her.

“I am not entirely sure we are leaving,” Rapunzel called back. “Perhaps Mother will change her mind and we shall stay.”

She hurried down the road, not even turning her head to greet anyone, even though the baker's wife stopped to stare and so did the alewife. She continued to the little wattle-and-daub cottage that was half hidden from the road by thick trees and bushes. The front door was closed, even though it was a warm day for late winter.

Rapunzel caught sight of the colorful vines and flowers she had only just finished painting on the white plaster walls and sighed. Oh well. She could simply paint more on their next house.

Pushing the door open, Rapunzel stopped. Her mother was placing their folded coverlet into the trunk.

“So it is true? We are leaving again?”

“Why do you say ‘again'? We've never left here before.” She had that airy tone she used when she couldn't look Rapunzel in the eye.

“But why? Only because Wendel said he wanted to marry me? I told you I would not marry him even if you approved of him.”

“You don't know what you would do if he should say the right thing to you.” Her tone had turned peevish as she began to place their two cups, two bowls, pot, and pan into the trunk.

“Mother.”

“I know you, Rapunzel. You are quick to feel sorry for anyone and
everyone.” She straightened and waved her hand about, staring at the wall as though she were talking to it. “What if Wendel cried and begged? You might tell him you would marry him. He might beg you to show him your love. You might . . . you might do something you would later regret.”

“I would not.” Rapunzel's breath was coming fast now, her face hot. It wasn't the first time Mother had accused her of such a thing.

“You don't want to marry a poor, wretched farmer like that Wendel, do you? Who will always be dirty and have to scratch out his existence from the ground? Someone as beautiful as you? Men notice you, as well they might. But none of them are worthy of you . . . none of them.” It was as if she had forgotten she was speaking to Rapunzel and was carrying on to herself.

“Mother, you don't have to worry that I will marry someone unworthy.” Rapunzel could hardly imagine marrying anyone. One had to be allowed to talk to a man before she could marry him, and talking to men was something her mother had always discouraged. Vehemently.

Mother did not respond, so Rapunzel went to fold her clothes and pack her few belongings.

As she gathered her things, she felt no great sadness at the prospect of leaving Ottelfelt. She always had trouble making friends with girls near her own age, and here she had never lost her status as an outsider. But the real reason she felt no regret was because of what she wanted so very badly, and it was not something she could get in tiny Ottelfelt.

Rapunzel was at least nineteen years old, and she could stay in Ottelfelt without her mother if she wanted to. However, it would be difficult and dangerous—unheard of—unless she was married, since she had no other family. But if they went to a large town, there would certainly be many people who knew how to read and might be willing to teach her.

“Mother, you promised someday you would find someone who could teach me to read. Might we go to a large town where there is a proper priest who knows Latin, a place where there might dwell someone who can teach me to read and write?” She held her breath, watching her mother, whose back was turned as she wrapped her fragile dried herbs in cloths.

Finally, her mother answered softly, “I saw someone in Keiterhafen this morning, someone who . . . needs my help with . . . something.”

Rapunzel stopped in the middle of folding her clothes, waiting for Mother to clarify the strange comment.

“And now we will be going to meet him in Hagenheim.”

Her heart leapt. Hagenheim was a great town, the largest around.

She tried not to sound eager as she asked, “Isn't that where you lived a long time ago, when Great-Grandmother was still alive?”

“Yes, my darling. Your great-grandmother was the most renowned midwife in the town of Hagenheim—in the entire region.” She paused. “Someone I once knew will soon be back in Hagenheim after a long stay in England.”

“I don't remember you saying you knew anyone who went to England. Is it a family member?”

Her mother turned to Rapunzel with a brittle smile. “No, not a family member. And I have never mentioned this person before. I do not wish to talk about it now.”

The look on Mother's face kept Rapunzel from asking any more questions. Mother had never had friends, and she had never shown any interest in marrying. Although she could marry if she wished. She was still slim and beautiful, with her long, dark hair, which had very little gray.

Later, as Rapunzel finished getting her things ready to tie onto their ox in the morning, she hummed a little song she'd made up. Mother enjoyed hearing her songs, but only when no one else was around.

When night fell, Rapunzel sang her song as Mother finished braiding Rapunzel's long blond hair. Mother smiled in her slow, secretive way. “My precious, talented girl.”

Rapunzel embraced her and crawled under the coverlet of their little straw bed.

The next day Rapunzel trudged beside her mother down the road, which was nothing more than two ruts that the ox carts had worn deep in the mud that had then dried and become as hard as stone. She led their ox, Moll, down the center between the ruts, careful to avoid stepping in the horse and ox dung. Their laying hens clucked nervously from the baskets that were strapped to Moll's back.