My earliest memories of my father, strangely enough, are of waiting for him. Sometimes I'd be half an hour in the carriage outside the house while he 'sorted out his affairs' before whatever journey we were embarking on, usually taking me to visit some rich, elderly relative in the hope that they remember me in their wills.
"Désolé, princesse," he'd say when he finally arrived, motioning for the footman to close the door of the carriage behind him. He never seemed sorry, but I didn't mind. Not when he called me 'Princess'.
That was Father's dream for me. I was a funny little girl, I hardly dreamed at all. I didn't need to – I had everything I wanted. Father would buy me dresses and beautiful little toys. He said nothing was too good for me. He wanted to raise me to be a lady. He wanted me to marry well. A comte, perhaps. High society. That was why he hired Madame Caquet. He said she would teach me to be a lady of high society. For a few months, she did. She told me about dancing and fans and dressing and make-up. Father always oversaw our lessons, watching me and talking to Madame. We had a good time during those few months. I always felt that Madame Caquet disliked me, that whatever I did, she would never entirely be pleased. I was sad, because I wanted her to like me.
She liked Father, and I knew Father liked her. It wasn't until that dance lesson that I really realised, though. They danced together, slowly, her eyes capturing his, her hands gripping his fingers, as though she would never set him free. We were both trapped.
They were married a month later. She was widowed, like Father, and that was when I met her daughters. Sophie and Mélissande. I tried to like them as my sisters, but I couldn't. Something about them felt…wrong to me, somehow.
At least when we were children, there was the one thing I could say about life with Madame Caquet, and, more to the point, Sophie and Mélissande. Never boring. Many, many things, some of which I could not bring myself to utter aloud even when alone, but never boring. Now, though, all they thought about were men – and the accessories they see as necessary to acquire that favourite commodity. Bonnets, gowns, slippers, powder, lipstick. That was all I did, now. Sew, polish, embroider, tidy their hair, lace up their corsets. That was the only way their dresses would fit. It wasn't that my sisters were fat – they were widely held, among their many suitors, to be the most beautiful ladies in the kingdom, both in face and figure – it was merely that their dresses had been designed for some alien creature of a completely different shape. Every morning, Madame and I would struggle with the laces while the girls screamed. Il faut souffrir pour être beau – you have to suffer to be beautiful. One of Madame Caquet's favourite sayings, and one of which she liked to think her daughters were a stunning example.
I never thought I'd miss the days of their games. At least they spoke to me, then. Now, they were too busy, too beautiful even to taunt the servant girl. Because that was what I became, when Father didn't come back. A servant in my own home.
"Cendrillon…" they'd hiss. That was what they called me. Ash-girl. "Où est ton Papa, Cendrillon? Où est il?"
It was a question I didn't know the answer to. It was one I asked every night. Where was my father? Why wouldn't he come back?
"Je… je ne sais pas!" I sobbed, honestly. I didn't know. I hadn't known, not since that night. I waved goodbye to him from my bedroom window, even though I knew he wouldn't be looking. That was the last time I saw him.
"Il est mort, Cendrillon!" Sophie cackled, her face inches away from mine, leering.
No, not dead. Not my Papa.
"Non, Sophie! Il…"
"Oui," Mélissande was enjoying herself.
"Non!" I cried, launching myself at her. I was wild, passionate, incensed. My fingers bent like claws towards her eyes. Mélissande froze with terror, but Sophie screamed. Madame Caquet, followed by half a dozen servants, burst into the room. The expression on her face was one I would never, ever forget.
"Éléonore!" she cried. She used my real name – my given name. Not a curt "Mademoiselle Noblesse", nor even Sophie and Mélissande's childish "Cendrillon." She called me Éléonore. It was the first time – and the last.
I think I fainted after that, though I don't know why. That was the last thing I could remember. The world melted around me, and when I woke up, I was in a cold, bare room overlooking the stable yard. It took me a moment to recognise it. This was Marie's room.
Marie was – or had been – one of Mama's ladies' maids. I only vaguely remembered her – as I did Mama. I could see her in my mind, dressing Mama's hair. She'd do it ever so carefully, twisting each strand and piling them up on top of her head, pinning them with special glittering pins. No one else had hair like Mama's. It was long and black and smooth, like threads of the finest silk. Mine was coarse and brown. I looked nothing like Mama.
Marie had been more of a friend to Mama than a servant, talking to her far more often and animatedly than Father's butler would do with him. After Mama died, Marie just…disappeared. She could do things like that. Darn stockings that were worn through in more places than they were whole and have them looking good as new, or, when food had been scarce on Father's land one year, I had seen her make a loaf of bread big enough to feed the whole household from a mixture of ingredients that would have fitted into the cup I could make from my little hands. That was the other strange thing about her – as Mama's maid, her duties were only to follow her orders, but she would often be found mysteriously haunting the kitchen – or anywhere there was work to be done. Everyone knew it, but no one said anything. Why would they? She chose to do jobs that others would otherwise have been forced to do themselves. Even Father knew there was something special about her. Even after Mama's death, he would have kept her on in the house, even when there were no ladies for her to attend to, but she just vanished. A butler had seen her last, or so he said. She had walked into her room, he said, locking the door behind her. When, the next afternoon, having heard no sound from her, they forced the door, they found the room empty. It had been tidied, the sheets pressed and the bed made, and it was as if no one had ever been there. Some claimed that the room was haunted, others suspected Marie – and, occasionally, when the mood took them, each other – of witchcraft, but whatever strange magic it was that had whisked Marie away, no one would enter the room after that.
And now I was trapped here.
They locked me in there for three days, sending in a maid every morning with a bowl of water and a crust of stale bread. They treated me like an animal. That wasn't the worst of it, though. Whenever I closed my eyes to sleep, I fancied I saw a face. I couldn't make out the features, but I knew it was a woman. Somehow, I thought I recognised her. On the third night – the last night – she spoke to me.
"Éléonore," she whispered. I opened my eyes, but saw nothing. The room around me had disappeared. "Éléonore, je peut t'aider. I can help you."
But that was it. That was all she said. Those four words and my name. I can help you. They echoed round my head every day for the next eight years of my life.
Things only got worse after that. Before, I had been treated like a servant. Now, I was little more than a slave. I performed the most gruelling, horrible of jobs, but I always did the best I could. Despite everything, I still wanted Madame to be pleased with me. She never was. For all those years, I did everything she asked of me, but it still wasn't enough, and slowly, I began to realise. It would never be enough. Whatever Madame Caquet and her daughters thought, I was human. I needed love, and I would never find it here. I needed a plan.
The royal ball was announced weeks in advance, something I might have considered unnecessary had I not plenty of experience of the two Mademoiselles Caquet preparing for a ball. Merely deciding upon a colour for the gowns took some days of bickering and fighting. Invariably, Mélissande would choose a colour, Sophie would declare that she too wanted to dress in 'rose pink with a dash of sunset gold', Madame would insist she choose another, she would select one that clashed horrendously with Mélissande's, and so the process would continue. Then there was the visit to the tailor, the demands for frills and bows to be made, the purchase of new fans and hats and jewels, and, of course, the endless and torturous anticipation. With a royal ball approaching, every member of the household but the ladies themselves would soon find themselves ready to hurl crockery at the next person to declare, "and of course, I shall dance with every young man in the room".
This ball, though, was worse than ever. It was almost as though our beloved royal family were doing this deliberately to spite me. Why, now that I needed more than anything in the world to find the way to my salvation, must they announce the ball at which the Prince – the most eligible and desired bachelor in the kingdom – would choose a wife?
"Éléonore…" whispered the voice in my mind. "I can help you…"
It was a typical dream. The lowly servant girl, dreaming of a magical solution to her problems. I had waited long enough for my three wishes, for everything to come right in the end. I was going to take this into my own hands.
The day of the ball seemed longer than any other day, not least, I supposed, to Mélissande and Sophie. At breakfast, they could scarcely sit still, despite now being grown ladies of nineteen and twenty-one. When they had finished, and I saw them, from my position in the hall outside the morning room, turn and run for their respective bedrooms the moment they were given permission to rise.
The preparations for the ball took the best part of the day. I escaped for an hour or so to help the stable boys prepare the Madame's carriage and brush the horses' sleek coats, but eventually, I heard "Cendrillon!" shrieked from an upstairs window. The girls were apparently making their toilette. There would be hell to pay if I didn't go now.