Free The Princess Who Rode on a Mule by Sheela Word Page A

much
affection. King Valentine was delighted with the match at first, but as time
passed, he began to look darkly upon the youth and at last denounced him as a
traitor. Poor James fled from Glerny, lest he be imprisoned, and Joan had had
no word from him since.
    But
Princess Hadley, whom King Valentine termed “Mistress Clodpate,” was most often
called upon to deal with her father’s worst excesses. He sent for her when he
was filled with mad elation, for at such times, he trusted no other to pour his
wine. Many a night, she sat silently by, her head nodding, whilst he raved of
the conquests he would make, the empires he would build, and the glory that
would be his after his enemies were laid to rest. When sleep overcame him at
last, she wiped the spittle from his face, combed the crumbs from his beard,
and bade the servants carry him to his chamber. Then she trudged to her own
bed, and slept soundly until cockcrow.
    Hadley
was seventeen, but seemed younger, for she was short of stature, her hands and
feet were small and plump, and the brown eyes that gazed out of her freckled
face were as round and innocent as a child’s. Her dress, too, was often plain,
and she wore her light brown hair in two plaits wrapped about her head and
crossed and tied in front. She little resembled her mother or sisters, who were
tall and dark-tressed; nor did she have the golden locks and pale complexion
that marked her father’s kin. She was so unlike the others, in fact, that she
was sometimes taken for a serving maid.
    Her
nature, likewise, was mild and calm, although she was sometimes unexpectedly
willful. Her mule, for instance. She had purchased it from a farmer some two
years past, and would accept no other mount. If her father bade her to ride a
palfrey, she obeyed, but managed the creature so ill that she scarcely gained
any distance. When his Majesty railed at her stupidity, she begged his pardon
humbly, but insisted that her limbs were too little or the horse too large. She
then forbore to ride at all, until such time as the King had forgotten his edict
against the mule, whereupon she quietly resumed riding it.
    Her movements and
speech were slow, and the King was not alone in deeming her dull-witted.
Certainly Ingrid and Joan learned their lessons more quickly and could retail
them with greater fluency. But Hadley, her tutors observed, had a prodigious
memory and was willing to ponder a complex matter until she had thoroughly
grasped its essence. “Though her sisters rival Roger Bacon,” one young tutor
jested, “Princess Hadley is like to Thomas Aquinas.”
     
    The Princess gave
no thought to her own repute, and did not repine if she were held in low
esteem. She seemed to accept all treatment, good and bad, as her due. Indeed,
she had always been thus…until the babe was born.
    ~~~~
    ‘Twas
All Hallow’s Eve, the last day of October. Jenny, one of the palace
chambermaids delivered up a son. The poor girl was unwed, but the child’s
father, awed by the auspicious day of birth, vowed to marry her ere the babe
was baptized.
    Yet
King Valentine, learning of the birth, became strangely excited and vowed that
he himself had lain with the maid and sired her child. The babe, he said,
should henceforth be known as Stephen, Crown Prince of Glerny, and the maid
should become his bride. When his attendants besought him to remember his
Queen, the King commended them and said they had preserved him from perdition.
    “For,”
said the King. “If a man hold many wives, his heart shall be led astray. Our
Queen shall go to the Tower forthwith that we may not lay eyes upon her more.
And her daughters shall attend her.”
    The servants dared
not openly disobey his Majesty. However, the household Steward quietly saw to
it that their royal Highnesses were taken not to the Tower of Glerny, which was
situated some ten furlongs from Court, but to a chamber in the palace tower.
And there they remained still.
    ~~~~
    A maid
brought provender and