The Olive Conspiracy (21 page)

With deep breaths, she tried to calm the
twisting in her belly.

Dressed and reading again, she looked up when
she heard the knock of a servant on her door. “Yes?”

“
Your Highness.” The maid bowed low
and didn’t meet her eyes. “Princess Carolina is awake, and invites
you back to her room for lunch and board games, if is your
pleasure.”

Shulamit grinned and clutched her book to her
chest. “Yes! I’ll come with you. Thank you.” She hopped out of bed.
Even her nervous stomach couldn’t suppress the sparks of fiery
anticipation that radiated through her.

18. A Woman Worth Daydreaming
About

Carolina’s bedroom was spacious and ornately
decorated, with plenty of room for the table and chairs at which
the two princesses now sat as they ate their salad.

“
I am sorry I slept so late!”
Carolina poured more oil from the tiny crystal decanter over her
greens. “I stayed up until dawn. These balls can be so exhausting,
but I love them.”

“
It was a lot of fun,” Shulamit
agreed. “I liked looking at all the pretty dresses. It was like a
fashion show!”

“
I’m glad you and João got along so
well together.” Carolina flung her arms out in a dramatic gesture.
“I want all my friends to be good friends!”

“
Even if we did gang up on you a
little?” Shulamit teased.

“
My father always told me that I
will be queen someday, so I should learn to listen and take all
things calmly.” Carolina’s eyes twinkled mischievously.

“
I bet you get the ‘queen someday’
speeches all the time, like I do,” Shulamit observed.

“
But our fathers are right, dear
Shulamit,” said Carolina. “It is our wonderful and terrifying
destiny.”

“
Makes me glad we have each other,”
said Shulamit boldly.

“
Me as well.”

What next?
“Do you ever…” Shulamit felt
her heart beating in her face.

“
Oh, finally! Our main course is
here.”

Shulamit, raw so that everything was extra
loud, turned to see a servant bringing in a covered dish. The woman
placed it in the center of the table and removed the silver
cover.

A beautiful roast chicken sat presented on a
bed of rice. The fragrance of lemons and garlic brought smiles to
the faces of both girls. “Wow, look at that perfectly crispy skin!”
Shulamit breathed.

“
I’ll let you have the crispiest
part, if you want.” Carolina nodded at the servant, who began
cutting the chicken into quarters. “White or dark?”

“
Oh, anything is fine.” Shulamit
waited for the servant to finish carving and leave the room before
she felt comfortable speaking about
the topic
again. “I love
how tangy this is.”

“
Imbrio is proud of its food, just
as Perach!” Carolina said between bites.

Something in Shulamit’s innards felt like it
was boiling. She
had
to get the words out. Already she could
see a hint of light gleaming through the gloomy weather outside.
This might be her only chance. “Carolina… have you ever heard about
women who love each other?”

Carolina’s face was placid. “Women should
always love and support each other. The world is a terrifying place
if one has no friends.”

Shulamit had to fight to swallow the next bite.
She felt like her nerves were strangling her. “I agree… I meant…
something else. I… it’s interesting that… sometimes women…” Deep
breaths. She bought herself time by taking a drink of water. “Women
can… be special to each other.” Then she took a very large bite, to
avoid having to say anything else for at least a moment.

Carolina paused, then broke into a smile of
understanding. “Yes, of course I have heard of this! We have women
like that in this country. There is a well-known Countess who lives
with a companion; perhaps you saw her last night? She was wearing…
oh, let’s see, what
was
she wearing?”

“
Have you ever been curious about
what it’s like? Because I wonder…” Shulamit knew she was saying all
the wrong things. What’s more, her insides were twisting and
churning and felt like they were being braided by a very cruel
hairdresser.

“
No, I never thought about it for
myself… are you all right?”

“
I’m sorry, I’m making a mess of
this.” Shulamit sighed deeply. “I’m too nervous to think, and it’s
not your fault.” She leaned sideways against the arm of the chair.
“I should just calm down.”

“
Dear Shulamit!” Carolina refilled
Shulamit’s water glass. “Here. Drink some more. Poor
thing.”

Shulamit did as she was told, more out of
weakened bewilderment than any real desire for more water. “You
already know the rest; I think I’m too scared to say it.” She
crumpled back against the chair. “I understand if you don’t feel
the same way. Most women don’t. It’s just… you’re so beautiful and
elegant and honestly
perfect
and—oh God—oh
no—help—”

Her breathing grew shallow and panicked. No.
No.
No No No No. Not here, not now. Lord God No. No. Fuck.
No.

She tried to disappear, folding herself into
the corner of the chair. What she
wanted
to do was get up
and run out of the room, but it was too late and she was too weak
and nauseated.

“
Shulamit…?”

“
Help, I’m—”

The chicken came back up with such force that
Shulamit felt like she’d been whacked in the back of the head with
a board. She heard Carolina yelp, saw out of the corner of her eye
as the other princess sprang out of her seat. Holding on to the
side of the chair because it was there, Shulamit continued to be
sick, this time on the floor.

Tears formed in her eyes and she tried to sob,
but her body wouldn’t even cooperate for that. Everything was jelly
and she was useless.

Strangers came into the room and tried to pry
her out of the chair. It took the servants several minutes to scoop
her out and carry her away, a shaking, shivering, soiled mess.
Inside her confused, humiliated skull, she clung to holy words,
repeating to herself,
Hear,
my people, the Lord is our
God; the Lord is one
and then just finally
Lord… Lord…
Lord…
over and over again as a mantra to take her mind off the
pain.

“
Bathtub,” she croaked to whoever
held her when they reached her bedroom. They put her down gently
inside the empty tub. One of the servants caressed her head, then
pulled her braids out of the way and bundled them into a knot.
“Aba. Get Aba.”

“
What?”

“
What is ‘aba’?” the servants asked
each other.

“
King Noach.” With this final
utterance, she collapsed against the side of the tub, curled in the
fetal position and quaking like flowers in a storm.

There were more embarrassing bodily functions
that she had no power to control, spaced out with unbearable pain.
Finally, a familiar pair of arms encircled her tiny body, even
through her filth. “Sweetheart. Oh, my poor sweetheart.”

“
Aba,” Shulamit gasped. “Am I going
to die?”

“
No.” He kissed the sweat away from
her forehead, his nose buried in her hair.

“
How do you know? I feel
terrible.”

“
Because I’m king, and I said
so.”

“
I hate everything.”

“
I know, sweetheart.” He rubbed her
back. “Is that better or worse?”

“
I don’t know,” she
mumbled.

“
Would it feel better if you were
in bed?”

“
Maybe, but I’m a mess.”

“
We can get you cleaned up. I’ll
call those ladies back.”

“
I don’t know if I’m
done
yet.”

“
I’ll see if they have ginger
anywhere around here. And maybe something to help you
sleep.”

She did sleep, eventually. When she woke up,
her stomach still felt like she’d squeezed into a doll’s belt.
“Aba…”

He was right there, waiting with a chamber pot.
“Princess Brainy requests her magical sick pot?”

She made a weak noise to indicate “ha-ha,” then
leaned into the pot.

“
Now that you’re up,” said her
father as he discreetly removed the evidence of her trauma, “you
should see what Carolina sent up for you.”

“
Mm?” Shulamit turned where he was
pointing. A huge bouquet of flowers, at least seven different
types, rose from the sideboard at the foot of her bed. “Mmm.” This
second mumble was in appreciation.

The weather had improved and the windows were
open. Noises from other parts of the palace filtered in. Was that
Carolina’s voice she heard?

She couldn’t make out the words. A woman who
sounded like the other princess, shouting, and another
voice—pleading, protesting. And then—
thwack!
—and
screams.

Screams and moaning. What
was
this
place?

Her father must have noticed her distress, and
he shut the window just as a servant walked in. As he handed her
the chamber pot to take away, Shulamit heard him ask, “What’s going
on out there?”

“
The princess is punishing the cook
for what happened to your daughter.” The maid disappeared with a
curtsey.

The window wasn’t even thick enough to keep out
the screams as they grew louder, and Shulamit buried her head in
her pillow. “Make her stop.” The words were a whisper, and she left
drool on the pillow when she opened her mouth.

But she could do nothing.

***

“
You see, Isaac?” Queen Shulamit
sighed. “It was all… so ruined, so
dirty
. My love for her
was gross to me, gross, damaged… After that, I was too ashamed to
enjoy her company. Otherwise, we would have been good friends, even
if she didn’t like me the same way I liked her. Who else could
understand what it’s like to be Crown Princess? She could have been
my best friend… but… I was too horrified.” After a pause, she added
in a barely audible voice, “I couldn’t even look at the flowers she
sent me without hearing those screams, over and over.”

“
You already know it’s not your
fault that she beat the cook,” Isaac pointed out.

“
But she beat her because of
me
,” Shulamit protested. “Because of my food problems,
someone…”

“
She made that choice, not you,” he
reminded her. “And you loving her didn’t cause her to oppress her
people, or hurt yours.”

Shulamit’s eyes widened. “You think it’s her,
then?”

“
I don’t know what to think,” said
Isaac, “except that I’d rather have more information before I start
having ideas. I don’t like to be wrong, and there’s still too much
chance for that right now.”

“
Anyway, I think the man she
married might have been that ‘frivolous’ young Count she mentioned
when we were in the rowboat.” Shulamit played with the fringes
she’d created on the destroyed fabric sample in her lap.

“
And yet, João still has influence
in her life.”

Shulamit nodded slowly, then sniffled. “I still
feel so tense.”

“
That’s only because you care,
which is why I’m so proud of you.” Isaac kissed the top of her
head. “I know why you think it’s your fault.”

“
Because I loved her,
and—”

“
No, it’s not just that,” said
Isaac. He took one of her hands in his. “I know because I’m the
same way. If it’s not your fault, then you have to admit to
yourself that bad things,
very
bad things, can happen
without anything you did or didn’t do. That can be terrifying. We
all want to believe we could have stopped it, we could have done
something, it was all under our control. But that isn’t how the
world works. Sometimes, maybe even most of the time, we never had
any power to stop it at all. That is hard to hear, and hard to
think about, and that’s why you want to make it your
fault.”

Shulamit blinked several times and breathed
deeply.

“
Let go, little one.” Isaac
squeezed her hand before relinquishing it. “It may be hard to
forgive yourself, but sometimes it’s even harder to make yourself
realize the trouble was never yours to be forgiven.”

Aviva walked in carrying Princess Naomi on her
hip. Even just seeing them was like a hug to Shulamit’s soul,
exposed and exhausted as it was after her reminiscences. Delicate
wisps of Aviva’s hair, like always, fell down around her lovely
face; she was constantly pulling out and replacing the hairsticks
that held it up in its customary messy bun, but in the industry and
activity of her busy life, it only took minutes for the pieces to
cascade down again.

She might not wear ribbons and skirts wide
enough to turn her into a human flower, and her speech was
impulsive and nonsensical instead of measured words of state, but
this was who deserved the queen’s love: Aviva who knew the value of
hard work; Aviva who knew physical labor to be worthy of respect.
Aviva who would only beat someone in self-defense.