Princess Ben Read Online Free PDF Page B

sweaty grip as we passed from banquet room to corridor, she pulled me aside. "See, Ben? These doors don't even lock—you can open them whenever you want."
    "It wasn't these doors," I replied stubbornly. "It was the ex-library."
    She smiled. "The ex-library doors don't lock, either. And that was the cabinet, remember?"
    I had once managed to lock myself in one of the library's map chests and was ensnared there for some time until an elderly scholar heard my screams. That I had trapped myself while holding a treacle tart only made matters worse, for the maps I did not damage with my frantic kicking I managed to cover in crumbs. Surely I would have suffered some ghastly fate at the hands of Queen Sophia had I not been a blood relation of her husband. As it was, her glare terrified me enough.
    However busy the multiple doors kept the footmen, the purpose of the ex-rooms escaped me completely. Only the thickness of the walls could justify their existence, and only
giants could explain the wall thickness itself. I knew better than to point this out to my mother, who believed, correctly, that such talk only fed my too active imagination. But my father indulged me by agreeing. Together we invented tales of the giants, who would someday return to the castle from the cloud-veiled reaches of Ancienne.
    How frequently did I now dwell on these memories each time I passed through an ex-room to the main corridor, and every reminiscence drove another nail through my heart. The endearing pink hedgehog of my own Peach Rooms pained me most of all; I recognized too well that, for all its charms and the beauty of my new suite, I would have abandoned the entire ensemble without a breath of regret for my own home above the soldiers' barracks.
    Yet I could not. I was not permitted even to leave the castle proper for my old residence. This tragedy I learned several days following my arrival, when I managed to slip away from the servants now dressing and feeding and escorting me and made my own way to the castle gates. To my great relief, I recognized the guard Paolo, who had often teased me when I played jacks in the dust of the parade ground.
    "And where might you be off to, Your Highness?" he asked, barring my way with a kind look.
    "Don't 'Your Highness' me. It's Ben."
    "Yes, Your Highness. And what help can we be to you this fine day?"
    "I just want to walk about a bit. There are some books I'd like, and ... little things." I nodded at the barracks.
    "You just tell me what you want, now, and I'll bring it back for you, safe and sound," Paolo said in his grandfatherly way.
    "You mean that I can't even visit my own home?"
    Paolo patted my arm. "It's a job for soldiers now, not fragile young things like yourself. Get back to the castle now, to your own people."
    Somehow I held my tears in check until I returned to the privacy of my room, or rather my
rooms,
my new rooms. Then I collapsed. How could Paolo think the queen and her ilk were my people? I had no more relation to them than a pigeon does to a flock of swans—or a vortex of vultures, which the castle's denizens better resembled in both attire and attitude. The ladies in waiting had revealed themselves to be as gossipy and cruel as their reputation, and I avoided them utterly. As for the queen, I had no more interest in her company than in plunging my face into a nest of hornets.
    My old life proved just as frustrating. Three friends from
Market Town, girls I had known all my days and who had survived countless scrapes and reprimands with me, trekked up to the castle in their Sunday best to pay their respects to the princess. With trepidation they entered my private receiving room, and their jaws dropped at the sight of plump little Ben now adorned in silken robes, my curls clean and styled. I longed to giggle at their amazement and hug them tight. Soon as I caught sight of them, however, I began to sob with homesickness, and the girls were promptly hustled from my chambers. Learning of this