The Black Knight
In this fairy tale, we shall start, like most fairy tales, with a princess. She was as usual, the youngest, but she was far from sweet hearted and would-never-harm-a-fly- even-if-it-had-a-death-wish kind. Instead she led her ladies in waiting on wild goose chases, snuck tarantulas and pythons in her sisters' beds, and once came to a banquet in a dress covered in mud. It was a terribly fancy banquet too, the richest men and women where there, in their jewel studded fancy-ness.
Where this story begins, we find the young princess, Julia, well Julianna Mariposa Her Majesty Youngest Royal Highness, in the garden, just beneath her balcony, digging through the mud for worms in one of her best dresses. A small crown perched precariously on her head, threatening to fall off.
Her balcony was a beautiful one, made of polished marble stone, with flowers veining up the railing. Julia had been put in that room, solely because of the balcony. It was considered romantic, and every one knows the youngest is always the one to be picked by a handsome and worthy prince. At least this was the thought process that was going through the King and Queen's mind when they put her in that room. As Julia grew older, the royal family realized how far fetched these fantasies would become.
"Princess Julia! Princess! Where are you?" Hearing the voice of one of her hand maids. Julia stiffened, and then gathered the worms she could find in her skirts. They created interesting designs in the silk, thought the princess. Julia darted behind a nearby bush to hide.
The maid hand came into view, she was a young one, but already worn thin from the Princess's antics. "Princess, this isn't funny! You could be killed by bandits! I heard that there is a black knight running about, it isn't safe for young princesses to be running about unescorted!"
Julia listened amused; she knew that there where guards all around the wall that surrounded the palace. She was completely safe in the garden, and completely trapped, like the parrot bird that her father had given her for her twelfth birthday. It squawked pitifully and struggled against the bars of the cage. Julia set it free that night, she had been lectured brutally by both her parents, and her previous hand maid called her a 'wicked, spoilt brat.' Julia knew that old maid had been eying the colored feathers and was imagining herself in a new hat.
"Princess! If I can't find you, they'll behead me! Now that's not fair is it?" Called the hand maid. She had a point there, thought Julia bitterly. She stood, but not before cupping the worms in her hands and setting them down, carefully in the dirt around the bush. The hand maid nearly fainted when she saw the state of her ruler.
"Princess, you're in such a state, my hair has turned white by just looking at you." She said sadly. Julia gave a sort of half shrug, mostly lost due to the puffy sleeves. "Come along, if you would please, your highness, I'll get you set up with a bath. Would rose scented be pleasurable?" The Hand Maid marveled how much talking to the youngest princess was so much like talking to a wall.
Julia followed the hand maid to the bathing room, dragging her slippers on the stone floor of the castle. "Really, Princess! Can't you walk without dragging your feet as so?" She snapped at the princess. Her eyes widened when she realized that she had yelled at a future queen. "Oh Princess, please don't tell! I didn't mean to yell, honest, I've just had a bad week... My mother..." She trailed off; she was going to be executed for sure. What would her poor, elderly mother do with out her?
"What's your name?" Asked the Princess in a quiet voice. It rasped from not using it in a while.
"Abigail Mcgulard, your Highness." She said, she could taste her bile rise in her throat, she could feel the end of her life coming.
"Well, Abby," The Hand Maid sputtered at the Princesses shortening of her name. "You should know that over twenty people have told me to stop dragging my feet, and I still do." She said with a proud 'humph.' The princess said no more and walked on to the bathing room. The hand maid followed behind confused to why she wasn't being dragged down to the dungeons.
The Princess took her sweet old time in that bath, Abigail did not mind, she was busy conversing with, her opinion, a very handsome harp player about the local gossip. "Well, as I'd be saying to my manager, I've been saying, 'with this black knight, we best be getting off the road' he's all for saying, 'we ain't got nothing, why should we be going into hiding?' I'd be a reckoning that that black knight will give this kingdom a spot of trouble."
"Well, as long as that horrid beast doesn't come near the princess, I suppose I'd be content." She said, her words were a clever cover up for, "As long as that string of offensive words not fit for a lady says away from the palace, which is where my mother is, I will not think much of him."
"Ah, that'd be righteously noble of you, to think of the Highnesses before all else." He said, and then announced, to her disappointment, that he had to leave. She waved her farewell, and went to fetch the Young Princess, from the bath. Surely by now the Princess's water would be cold. The Hand Maid pushed the door only to find the Princess trying to clasp the hooks on her under dress, her hair dripping wet. "Stupid hooks, why can't they use ties?" She was muttering to her self.
"Princess, why didn't you call me? I would've helped you, surely you knew that?"
"Of course I knew you would come running if I called. But what is the point in having fingers if you're not going to use them?"
"You're such a wild child." The Hand Maid said disbelievingly. If she had servants acting on her whim, her fingers could fall off and she wouldn't notice.
"I'm a wild child because I try to dress myself? No offense to my family, but I don't understand why the 'higher education' my sisters and I receive, don't include how to put on a dress." She said her fingers slipping over the hooks.
"Here, Princess, let me teach you."
The two were seated in Julia's room, smelling of roses, The Hand Maid was telling a humorous story about her grandmother, when she was still alive, but losing her memory, she had ended up in a very odd situation involving a cauldron, a sheep, two tons of thread and the milk boy who she thought was her granddaughter.
"That's a bit odd, don't you think? How did your grandmother end up on her head?" Julia asked brushing a long still damp lock of hair out of her face.
"Lord knows, I only wish she was still around, she could tell the most amazing stories, when she wasn't looking for the hair pin she put in her bun two seconds before." She said, putting her hand in front of her mouth to hide a giggle.
"Why do you do that?" Julia asked suddenly pointed to the Hand Maid's delicate hand poised over her mouth.
"Why do I do what?" She asked, alarmed, would the princess get rid of her if she found a flaw?
"That... thing, I've seen almost every woman do that, when they hide that their giggling behind their hand. Everyone knows their laughing, why hide it? Isn't being happy a good thing?" She said, her brows knit together.
Abigail stuttered at first, she never thought of it. "Well... You're Highness, I mean... I've never truly thought of it... my mother used to do it, so I picked it up from her. Mother used to say, a lady is meant to be seen, never heard."
"Why? What's so bad about us talking? We might have good advice." Julia said her head tilted delicately to the side.
"Those sort of things are best left to the men, dearie." She said, needless to say, she had gotten to know the princess. Earlier this day she would have never dared to call a future leader, 'dearie.'
"Well, that's just stupid," the princess said, her arms crossed.
"You're Majesty!" The Hand Maid said in shock, her hands flew to her face, "You mustn't use such language! No one will wish to marry you if you're vulgar!"
"Is that all I'm here for? The only reason my sisters and I were kept around? So that we could be married off?" She asked.
"Child, that's why all women on earth are here," The maid said defeated, her head hung with the reality of it all. She was taking care of her mother now, her grandmother before that, soon she'd have to take care of a man, and how many children he wanted.
"I don't want that, I want to run away." The girl said bravely.
"Where would you go?" she said quietly.
"Anywhere without walls anywhere else instead of here." Abigail nodded her head at the girl's fancies. She heard a clanging and shouts from outside.
"Oh really!" exclaimed the hand maid. "Those knights, can't they practice elsewhere? It's almost time for your reading." She got up, and tried to smoothen her crumbled skirts, and then went out to the balcony. Then quickly shouted to the Princess, "Oh! Julianna, come here quick!"
Julia stood and wandered on to the balcony. The clanging happened to be as Abigail suspected, knights practicing with their heavy swords. But they weren't the normal knights. In the middle was a white knight. He was a hero to the kingdom. Julia gazed upon the face that one day she would most likely marry. He was so old at least thirty. She was only sixteen, their marriage wasn't official yet, but the King and the Queen would hint at it almost obsessively.
The hand maid sighed at Julia's stony expression. She led the princess to her bed, and tucked her ruler in like her mother had once tucked herself and her brother in.
Julia lay in her bed, having just been startled awake, but by what she could not figure out. The shadows crept over the stone walls and tapestries as shadows do. It wasn't particularly cold, or hot. But if she strained her ears and held her breath, she could hear a clanging echoing in the hallways, as if someone with metal shoes was walking down the stone tiles. Dismissing it as a patrol guard's newest fashion, she fell back on her still warm pillows, and made a metal note to talk to the heads of the guards about the clanging. She fell back to sleep. Her dreams full of metal shoes and dancing guards.
The sunlight hit her eyelids with sudden vengeance. "Abby, do be a dear and shut the curtain won't you?" she mumbled and rolled over to get away from the sunlight. When the room did not darken, signaling the shutting of heavy curtains, no shuffle of dainty slippers to the window. Instead the pungent smell of something burning mixed with the fresh smell of grass. The usual satin sheets where heavy and itchy, she could hear crickets chirping.
She observed her surroundings without opening her eyes. Either her sisters where playing a joke on her for putting spiders in their glossy ringlets, and stink plants in their perfume. This was unlikely, her sisters had no sense of humor, their revenge consisted on telling the Queen and King what she had done. Her other option was that she had been kidnapped, Oh how romantic said a mocking voice in her head. Her advisers had warned her before that there was a high probability that they could be kidnapped. Julia had actually laughed at this, there were guards everywhere, and how could anyone get passed?
As you can probably guess, this is a very critical part of the fairy tale. This is when she meets her captor. There have been studies that say when you have become kidnapped, and they don't torture and kill you straight away, you come to develop a bond with them. You get used to them; you develop a friend ship... But that comes later. Usually at first the two hate each other.
She stiffed when the clanging of something loud and very metal pasted her. And again, and again. Someone was trying to wake her up? Or kill a scuttling spider with two frying pans?
Julia rolled over, trying to make look as natural as someone rolling over in their sleep, and opened her eyes just a crack. She saw an armored man pacing, he looked rather nervous, or she guessed he looked nervous his visor was over his face. Or maybe her face, the armor clad person could just as easily be a woman.
How adventurous it would be to sneak into a King's army being a girl? Being a hero! Julia's adventures with the tame pythons were nothing compared to the wild adventures playing in her head. If she could own a horse that was not plump with sugar cubes and without ribbons in its hair, but one that was lean and very, very fast, with its mane cut short like all the other war horses.
Then again, who's to say, this isn't an adventure, thought Julia happily. She was away from the walls, away from the heavy skirts and corsets that she could hardly breathe in, not to mention move in. Then a horrid thought struck her, she was in her nightgown, in front of a complete stranger. Maybe, she reasoned, maybe she'll (Julia was quite sure the armored figure was a girl.) lend me some breaches.
She stirred; to make it known she was awake. "Um... hello, knight, may I borrow some clothing please?" That sounded rather stupid she realized. Wasn't it proper curtsy to ask for their name first, before you request something from them (unless they were a servant of course)? Did the same rule apply to kidnappers?
The knight stood there for a few moments, as though she had forgotten Julia was there. Then she lifted her visor, and there was a very confused, very male face.
"HOW CAN YOU BE A MAN?" She exclaimed in anger. If the face of the knight was bewildered it was at least ten times that now.
"Err... I believe I was born... are you in the right state of mind? Usually people ask, 'Where am I?' and 'Why did you kidnap me?' When they realize someone has stolen them" He said, there was dirt on his cheek.
"Humph. Very well... Why did you kidnap me?" she said still simmering.
The knight suddenly went red, at least Julia believed it went red, it was rather hard to tell with all of that dirt on his face. Why had he told her to ask a question that he did not want to answer? At first Julia thought he wouldn't answer, like many maids would simply bow their heads and bite their tongues, but then to Julia's dismay, he opened his mouth, again. "Well I need help... you see,"
"Political help can be received between the hours of twelve and one. Require within castle walls." The Princess automatically recited. It had been drilled into her mind countless times. She was never to answer to a beggar, instead she was to recite this and walk away, quickly.
"No, I don't need political help; do you really think a black night could approach the King without getting pierced through the gut?"
Julia raised an eyebrow mulling it over. "Are you certain you do not wish to attempt to be heard by my father?" The knight shot her an annoyed look.
"No, I need the great sum of money that your ransom will get me." He plowed on as though her comment wasn't important enough to mull over. "And that, your majesty is really the only thing you need to know."
"That's not polite, you shouldn't hint at something and then refuse to tell." Julia argued. She was upset, she strongly belived that due to the fact that she was a vital part of some money making scheme, then she should know what for.
"No, that's being smart." He replied then placed the visor back over his face, signaling that he was finished with the converstation. Julia wondered for a moment how he could see out of the pitch black helmet, but then the Black Knight tripped and fell flat on his shiny, metal face, and Julia came to the conclusion that he simply couldn't.
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A/N Thanks for reading this, It means allot to me. Yes so I've gotten very annoyed at the normal type of fairy tale with the shinning white knight and the stupid defenseless princess so I'm going to attempt my own fairy tale thats a bit different I hope. But I don't really know what to write next, or if I should just abandon the story all together, tell me what you think or how you think the story should go, I'll thank you forever.