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“Why?” I asked.
“I spent quite a few years around this time with Zagan in Italy. So hopefully I’m still there and there's no… doppelganger mix ups this time.” She shot a look to Pip who held up her hands and said,
“Hey, the trunk option was all I had.” I decided not to ask.
After this we made good time getting across the fields and closer to a road that obviously wound around the back of the hill and toward the other side of the castle. Thankfully, the heavens opened just as we had made it to the sweeping mud road as my legs felt like they were filled with iron weights as trudging across the muddy countryside wasn't exactly easy. Not now my body was back to being mortal. This also meant that I was clearly the one that kept lagging behind. Meaning my two aunties had to keep on stopping for me to catch my breath. But one look and they understood, so there was no complaint on their part.
“So, my dad, please tell me he wasn't some badass tyrant in this time period.” Sophia's expression didn't exactly incite confidence in me.
“Let's just say he's a bit of a broody bastard,” Sophia said making Pip snort, like this was a huge understatement.
“But he wouldn't have hurt my mum, right?”
“Gods no! No king would ever hurt his Chosen One… now chain her to his bed, then yeah, most likely, but he wouldn’t have hurt her. No, my brother would sooner hurt himself than he would your mother. You can trust me on that, Keira is safe,” she assured me, and I relaxed at the knowledge.
“Well, that's something at least.”
“Now, as for how he's going to react to her being broken out of his castle and snatched away from him, well that's where things are gonna get tricky,” Sophia added, making me realize that this historical adventure had just got even more complicated really quickly.
As soon as the full glory of the castle came into view, I found myself breathless. Although modest in size, it stood proud and majestic against the open vista of the countryside it looked to have dominated. Its stone seemed to change colour in the light, being pale grey with hints of red in the stone that only came out when touched by the sun. It was all square in its shape with sharp corners and no round towers To speak of. It also had a rough charm and I could see why my father liked it. It was less the type you’d have expected in a fairytale and more the type where you expected to see armour clad warriors running out of its doors.
Sophia suddenly pulled me behind a wall as servants scurried past carrying armfuls of the flowers in beautiful bouquets.
“What’s going on?”I asked in hushed tones,
“It looks like my brother must be holding a ball… it must be a celebration for finding his Chosen One.”
“Oh shit… this soon? He’s known her for all of a day?” Sophia shrugged her shoulders and said,
“My brother works fast… but I actually think this is perfect.”
“How?” I asked, making Pip agree,
“Yeah, I am with little bean on this one, how is this good?”
“Whenever you throw a ball or celebration, we enlist more help from nearby villages as more servants are needed, some of them you won't even recognize… come on, I have an idea,” Sophia said when the coast was clear.
“She walked us up a cobbled path toward what looked like stables.
“We can hide in here until then.” We walked under the arch of stone and into a cobbled stable yard that was surrounded by not only stables but small buildings where they kept supplies and housed the stable staff. It was in one of these building we slipped inside and hid behind some bales of hay.
“Pip, do you think you could get us a couple of outfits.”
“Gotcha!” Pip answered, winking before slipping out of our hiding place and making her move.
“What exactly is your plan, Sophia?” This is when she gave me a naughty grin and told me,
“It istime we go to a ball.”
31
ACTING THE PART
“This isn't exactly what I had in mind when you said we were going to a ball,” I said now looking down at my maid’s uniform that I gathered was typical for this era. It was black woollen dress with a white linen apron pinned into position at the front. Sophia had twisted my hair back in plaits and pinned it under my maid cap that was embarrassingly frilly around the edges.
“Yeah, I kind of feel like me and little bean have drawn the short straw here,” Pip added as we both looked down at our servant outfits and then looked to Sophia who was dressed in all her beautiful finery.
She wore a low-necked gown of blue silk with large flowers shimmering thanks to the silver thread. This was worn over a pale blue petticoat with a skirt that was opened at front to show the petticoat beneath. The bodice of the gown was also open at the front and filled in with a decorative stomacher, one pinned to the gown over the laces. Of course, she had need help getting into this and, man, wasn’t that a complicated process.
