Carmen Ferreiro-Esteban - Two Moon Princess

“Princess Andrea,” she said as I raised myself from my curtsy. “You come to me today to begin your training for ladyship, and I welcome you with pleasure. And yet it is not for me to teach you what you already know.”

I frowned.

“I can do no more than help to bring forward what is already in you. As I have done with your sisters.”

As she talked, she turned to look at my sisters. Her hands tightened around the arms of her chair. “Where is Princess Sabela?” she asked, her voice as cold as winter snow.

Nobody answered.

“She has been late for several days now. I would like to know why.”

From behind Mother’s chair, my sister Rosa chuckled. Margarida moved closer to her, grabbing her arm. But Rosa shook herself free and, pushing Margarida aside, faced Mother. “Princess Sabela is probably talking to Captain García,” she said and giggled. “They are engaged.”

My mother’s face turned even paler than her usual ivory color. She did not smile. In fact, not a muscle in her face moved. I knew from experience her silence was the prelude to a dangerous storm.

At the sound of a knob turning, I looked toward the door. As if conjured by Mother’s wrath, my sister Sabela stood under the archway. For what seemed a long time, she remained still, her long auburn hair floating around her shoulders. Then lifting her dress over her silver slippers, she glided toward us, her eyes intent on Rosa’s. Under Sabela’s stare, Rosa’s self-satisfied smile disappeared, a spark of fear flickered in her eyes, and she moved back.

“Princess Sabela.” Mother’s voice, cold and strained, broke the silence. “Have you disobeyed my direct orders regarding Captain García? Have you talked with him?”

Sabela bent slowly in what seemed to me a deliberate parody of a curtsy. “Yes, Mother, I have been with Captain García. Father has moved his guard duty so I cannot see him at any other time, and I had something important to tell him.”

She let the last sentence float in the air like an open invitation Mother did not take.

“Princess Sabela, if you insist on seeing him, you will be confined to your quarters.”

Sabela’s eyes locked onto Mother’s. “You command and I obey. But Her Majesty cannot keep me there forever.”

Mother again avoided the confrontation. “Please take your seat now. We will discuss this matter later with your father, the King.”

Her face raised in defiance, Sabela walked away, toward the farthest window. For a moment Mother did not move, her face a pale mask hiding her thoughts. Finally she turned toward me. “Princess,” she said, her voice even, “you must always remember that being royalty is a big responsibility, one you must assume with dignity.”

I nodded, not sure whether she was addressing me.

“Although being a lady is not only a matter of appearance,” Mother continued, “we must not forget that sometimes appearance is all the world has to judge us by. Thus, it is your looks we must first consider. You are to learn how to walk properly and dress according to your rank. You will let your hair grow, and you will brush it until it outshines the sun itself.”

Her eyes glided over me, lingering on my hands. I tried to hide them, but I did not find any pockets in my fancy gown. As I jerked them under my long loose sleeves, my right fingers found the flat pebble I had sewn there for luck—the way Tío Ramiro wore his on the front of his shirt—and I grabbed it so tightly that my hand began to ache.

Mother didn’t need to mention my short broken nails, nor my rough-looking hands, to make her point. She simply raised her own perfect one and said, “And now, if you have nothing to add, we shall proceed with the day.”

As I curtsied to her to take leave, she added almost in a whisper, “And please, Princess Andrea, never curtsy to my ladies again.”

“Why?”

Mother ignored my question and, with a rustle of silk, rose majestically from her velvet chair and moved toward the window. Her train perfectly arranged around her slender waist, she sat on the window seat and started working on a tapestry.

“But why?” I repeated.

Rosa giggled. I jumped forward, fists ready.

“Andrea! No.” Margarida’s hands, surprisingly strong, grabbed my arms.

Slowly, deliberately, Rosa turned, and as she did, her hair fell over her back in a cascade of gold. If she had done it to impress me, she succeeded. I felt so dirty and ugly, it hurt. Not for the first time, a pang of jealousy twisted my heart. Maybe , I thought, if I were fair and pretty like Rosa instead of tanned and skinny, I wouldn’t mind being a lady . Not that her dark complexion seemed to matter to Margarida. But Margarida was so content and loving, you would never think of her as plain. Actually, she had always had lots of suitors around her.

So maybe it was not my looks after all, but as Mother never tired of pointing out, my unruly temper that kept admirers away. Because the truth was that except for one of the kitchen boys when I was about seven, I had never had a single admirer. I still remembered with embarrassment all the stares imbued with deep feeling that I had wasted on Don Gonzalo, my trainer, a couple of years past, when I had been so hopelessly in love with him. Not only had he not returned any of my love notes, but soon afterward he had married boring Lady Alicia, at the time I had believed just to punish me. It had taken me a full year to get over my broken heart. And no one had captured my fancy since. Not that I cared. I did not need anyone. But still, it would have been nice to have a suitor. Rosa seemed to enjoy their company well enough, if her giggles were any measure of it.

Anyway, there was nothing I could do about it. Even if I let my hair grow and dyed it blond, how was I ever to change my very nature? As far as I was concerned, the matter was settled. I would never marry. Or worse still, Mother would marry me to some horrible lord just to get rid of me. So it was just as well my heart belonged only to me.

“Don’t worry,Andrea,” Margarida was saying as she pushed me toward the middle window. “You’ll learn soon.”

“Learn?”

“How to act like a lady, you silly.”

“Oh, that.” If ladyship meant being sneaky and vain like Rosa or ostracized like Sabela, it held no interest to me. As for being like Margarida, I could not even consider it. She was too different from me. She seemed to have an inborn desire to please others and do their bidding. But my will was too strong to accommodate anybody else’s without a battle. Obeying did not come easily to me.

“Why can’t I curtsy to the ladies?” I asked Margarida after we had taken our seats.

“Because they are below your rank. They thought you were making fun of them.”

“But I have always curtsied to them.”

Margarida pushed the needle through her embroidery. “You have indeed,” she said. “But you are fourteen now, Andrea. You are not a child anymore.”

“Right.”

“Of course, you still have to curtsy to Lady Esmeralda and Lady Isabel,” Margarida continued, her eyes on the cloth. “You know that Andrea, don’t you?”

“No. Why?”

Margarida sighed and looked up from her work. “Because they have ancient titles and—”

I refused to listen anymore. It was all so complicated, I wanted to scream. As doing so in my mother’s quarters was hardly acceptable, I closed my mouth and started to embroider some silly red flowers in a snow-white cloth I had somehow managed to arrange in its wooden frame. At least I knew that much from Ama Bernarda’s patient instructions.

After a dozen roses, that dreadful first morning was over, and we were dismissed by my mother after more curtsying and a light kiss to her hand. I left the room excited at the prospect of seeing a good fight between Rosa and Sabela. But to my disappointment, they ignored each other and walked in opposite directions.