"Happy Monday-before-your-birthday, Princess Patricia Priscilla," the chambermaid murmured. She held out a silk dressing gown. The princess slipped her arms into its sleeves and sat down at the table.
"Thank you," the princess replied politely. She picked up a fork, took a small bite of her breakfast, and gazed through the window to the land below and around the castle. It was a beautiful day. The sky was cloudless and clear blue, and below, the farmland stretched in rounded hills of green and gold, each field outlined by darker green rows of hedge. She could see some cows, spotted black and white, grazing, and on the smooth dirt path some small children played, rolling a large blue and white striped ball and laughing. The air was so clear that the sound of their laughter rose to her window almost like notes of a song.
Another day was beginning. Princess Patricia Priscilla sighed. "I'm so very bored," she said.
2. The Schoolmaster
Below, in the village, the new young schoolmaster was preparing his classroom. He set the little desks in straight rows, looked at the alignment, thought, then shook his head and moved the desks again until they formed a semicircle facing his own, larger desk. He decided that he liked it better that way.
His name was Rafe. Villagers, peasants that they were, all had short names. It distinguished them from nobility and royalty. Earls, dukes, counts, lords, ladies, and princesses could have names as long as they wished, even adding additional names as they chose, although sometimes the lengthy additions became unwieldy and hard to remember. There had been an incident once when the queen had arranged a ceremony to bestow special honors on a knight who had done a chivalrous deed.
"Arise!" the queen had called out, for he was on his knees before her and she had tapped his shoulder with her jeweled scepter and lowered around his neck a decorative ribbon from which dangled a medal. "Arise, Sir..."
But there had followed an embarrassing hesitation. His name was Mortimer, and she remembered that, for she had known this knight for years. But in recent months he had taken additional names, designating himself "the Manly" and "the Magnificent" and "Most Masculine." The queen simply drew a blank. She stared at him and he stared back, lifting his head slightly from its bowed position, but it would have been unseemly for him to speak during the solemn ceremony, and in any case he was puzzled by her hesitation, not realizing what it meant.
The king, who had been watching from his throne next to the queen's, whispered to his wife.
"Sir Mortimer the Manly, the Magnificent, Most Masculine," the king whispered in a very low voice. But he knew it was useless. The queen was quite hard of hearing. Both of her ears had been frostbitten during a Winter Carnival when she had, as a young woman, been too vain to wear her fur hat, and her hearing had been much diminished ever since. She did not hear her husband's helpful whisper at all.
But the queen had much presence of mind, which very often compensated for the things she lacked, such as perfect hearing. On this occasion she simply stood in a regal fashion and announced to the assembled nobility: "Let us all together intone the name of our newly honored knight. Ready?" She held up her scepter.
"Sir..." she began, and then looked at the gathering expectantly.
The king had a large baritone voice. "Sir Mortimer..." he intoned.
Finally the entire audience, which was made up of forty earls, twenty-two dukes, many spouses and concubines, three buffoons, and a barrister, perceived what was expected of them.
"Sir Mortimer the Manly, the Magnificent, Most Masculine!" they intoned, and the knight arose.
***
No such problem ever took place among the peasant populace. Their names, like that of the young schoolmaster, were short and easy to say. Nell. Jack. Will.
In fact, those were the very names that the schoolmaster, Rafe, on this day when school was soon to begin, wrote on small cards in his best calligraphy, along with the names of the other children who would be his pupils:
Neil
Jack
Will
Fred
Liz
Mick
Beth
Anne
Kate
Ben
He placed each card upon one of the wooden desks. Then he fed the small hedgehog that was caged in the corner. He had brought it to be the class pet and to teach the children responsibility for creatures.
He placed the large orange dunce cap in a highly visible spot in order to discourage misbehavior.
Rafe remembered from his own childhood and school days how humiliating it was to wear the dunce cap. Though he had always been a good student, diligent at his lessons, from time to time he had indulged his own sense of fun in ways that the stern schoolmaster, Herr Gutmann, had disapproved of. As punishment he had been ordered to don the humiliating orange cap and stand in front of the class.
Now, Rafe supposed, as schoolmaster himself, he would have to punish misconduct. He dreaded the moment when he would be forced to place the dunce cap on the head of one of the fun-loving children who were to be his pupils.
He could hear them outside, the village children, playing with a ball in the path. Soon it would be time for school to begin. He was a little nervous now, on his first day at the job. He had studied Teaching Methods at the academy, and he had done well there, excelling at Inscribing and Declaiming. He considered himself very good at Games of the Imagination and moderately adept at Proverbs. But his Mathematical Calculations were a little weak, he knew, and he was very lacking in Stern Demeanor.
"You must try to curb your affability," the Teaching Methods professor had said at his evaluation. "Work at being stern."
"I do try," Rafe said.
The Birthday Ball
"Your face makes it difficult, I know," the professor said sympathetically.
"My face?"
No one had ever commented on Rafe's face before, except his mother. He remembered dimly that she had always called him the bonniest of her boys, a sweet little joke between them because he was her only son.
His face was actually fairly ordinary. His bright brown eyes were flecked with yellow, and he had a high forehead onto which his brown hair often fell, though he brushed it back so frequently with his hand that it had become a habit.
"A stern face," the professor explained, "requires that the mouth be set in a line. Like so." He demonstrated, setting his mouth by pulling it tightly against his teeth. He looked quite fierce, actually, when he did it, and Rafe was a little unnerved.