The Paper Crown

3. The Two Princes

Selica is a mountainous country. The steam train puffs and squeals along mossy gorges, over glinting iron bridges, and through black tunnels carved into cold rock. At water-stops, I get out and tramp back and forth across dark rock and pale lichen, examining my new home with its icy air freezing in my throat. Sometimes, we stop at stations in small towns, and my uncle parades along the platform as townspeople gaze mulishly upon him, holding flags they do not wave. I remain in my compartment, peering at them through a thin gap in the curtain.

On the third day of our journey, the mountains ripple down into plains. Farmland stretches into the distance on either side of the tracks. Small villages dot the landscape. We fly past them. The farms become smaller and the villages become towns. The train slows as we enter the outer web of a city. The naked brick backs of houses loom on either side of the tracks, washing hanging from their windows, pigeons roosting in their eaves. My heart pounds against my rib cage as the train draws to a stop in a cavernous glass and iron station. My reflection in the window is wan and dishevelled. I tidy some stray hairs and rub my cheeks to give them colour before stepping out into the corridor. King Edmund is waiting for me, looking polished and calm.

"Prince Mariusz will be out there to greet you," he says.

I control the impulse to peer through the curtains. I do not want my uncle to think I am interested in the husband he has chosen for me. "It would be better if I had the chance to change my clothes and refresh my hair first," I say. "You force me to give a poor impression."

"You look well enough," my uncle says without looking at me. Then he pauses and turns his head to regard me with a look of almost pain in his eyes. "You are very pretty, I think. You have inherited your mother's beauty."

"Don't speak to me of that woman."

My uncle turns away again. "And unfortunately your father's temper."

"To me that is higher compliment than my mother's looks." I follow my uncle down the corridor to the carriage exit. "Do you think she would have bothered to come to my funeral, if you had not passed the anti-execution law in time?"

My uncle is silent.

"Well?" I press. "It is an intriguing hypothetical. It used to keep me occupied in the tower, wondering if she would come. I did not hope for her to attend my execution. After all, she did not attend Father's, and I think she hated him less than me."

"She does not hate you."

"But she did hate Father?"

Another telling silence.

"Anyway, you're wrong. She hates me too. She hates me because I was Father's child, and she hated him from the moment they met. They are dangerous marriages, these royal alliances."

"Your marriage to Prince Mariusz will be very different to your parents' marriage. Now, hush. They will open the door in a minute, and this is not a conversation I want anyone to overhear."

It galls me to follow an order, but I was not in the tower so long that I forgot to care what people think of me. Perhaps it has only made me care more. I stand silently behind my uncle, my heart racing. Prince Mariusz and I will not be like my father and my mother. I won't let us be that way.

The train door swings open to a chorus of banging drums and blaring trumpets. King Edmund goes first down the iron steps carpeted in red silk and I follow behind. A crowd of people on the platform opposite applaud politely as he bows and waves. I curtsy and smile a little, out of nervousness more than goodwill. The applause swells lightly then subsides.

There are others on the platform with us, people of royal importance, judging by the sashes and medals the men wear and the gilded uniforms of the soldiers standing with them. I scan the men, but before I can find one I suspect to be Prince Mariusz, a young woman comes forward to greet us. She carries a tray with a bowl and a loaf of bread on it. She curtsies before King Edmund.