Mary's Path
The invitation

“Mom wants you to come and have dinner with us tomorrow,” Zerden said suddenly. Mary stared at him. “She wants to thank you for teaching me to read and write. I think she’s very proud that I know how to” he said, turning a little red across his cheeks.

Mary didn’t know what to say, she had eaten all her meals in the kitchen dining room since she got to the castle.

“I need to ask Mrs. Karrots,” she said. Zerden seemed pleased with that response. Mary thought about it a little more and then jumped up from the flour bag she was sitting on. “If I ask right now, you can wait here, and I can come back and tell you what she said” Mary decided.

Zerden nodding and waiting as she ran out in the rain. Mary ran into the kitchen and soon found Mrs. Karrots.

“Isn’t it your afternoon odd?” she asked Mary.

“Yes, ma’am, but I have a question,” Mary said and Mrs. Karrots nodded, waiting for the question. “The castellan and his wife have invited me to dinner tomorrow as a thank you for teaching Zerden. Can I go?” asked Mary, holding her breath as she waited for the answer.

Mrs. Karrots looked at her a little surprised before smiling one of her sunny smiles.

“Of course you can go girl. You don’t say no to the castellan” she said, laughing. “Now go away and enjoy your afternoon off” she said, waving Mary away.

On quick feet, Mary ran out into the rain again. She could hardly feel the cold winds twitching and pulling on her skirt. When she entered the storeroom, she told Zerden the answer, who, in turn, promised to tell his parents and to come and pick her up the next afternoon.

The rest of the time they sat on bags of flour and talked about everything from when they thought the snow would come to what game the prince would manage to trap.

The darkness fell quickly and all too soon they had to leave the storeroom, Zerden to go home to his parents and Mary to have dinner in the dining room with the others. But Mary was happy and was looking forward to the next night.

When she returned to her small room after dinner, she opened the chest and looked at the dresses she had stored away all those months ago. She picked up a red one and held it up. She realized that it was too short both in the sleeves and in the length of the skirt.

Had she grown so much, she wondered and looked at the dress she was wearing. Yes, even on that one, the sleeves were too short, and the skirt ended a little too far above the floor. Mary realized that she soon had to go to a tailor.

She picked up the money pouch she kept in the chest. There was the money she received after her mother and father and those she had earned since she came to the kitchen. Except for a couple of vorm that she always gave in the collection in the church, she had not used any money.

What would she have used them for? She had food and shelter, and for Mary it was enough. But now she needed new clothes. Perhaps she could persuade Zerden to join her in the city next Wednesday. She took the red dress and put it over the footboard on the bed. It would have to do, she thought, before she fell asleep.

Thursday seemed to never end, never had Mary waited so for the evening to come it felt like. Even when Mrs. Karrots tasked her with peeling and cutting apples into archers for a pie, she could stop thinking about dinner at the castellan family.

Mary tried to concentrate on the apples, it was a job she was not used to, and it was tricky to get the pieces even and the same size. When she had sliced a whole bucket, she sighed and felt relieved that it was over.

But instead of being given an easy task, she was set to knead dough. The prince would be bringing bread for the hunting party, so Mary stood for a long time and kneaded one loaf after another. She could feel her muscles slowly turning into trembling jelly and her hands almost go numb.

No matter how slow the day creped along, no one could stop time. Mary looked up when Mrs. Karrots called her.

“It’s time to get ready,” she told Mary. Mary nodded and ran to her room. She washed herself thoroughly and combed out her hair, which she then braided and tried to get up into a knot in her neck. It wasn’t quite successful, but Mary thought it would due while she pulled on her red dress.

The dress looked a bit too short, but it wasn’t horrible, she thought. Then she just took her grey cloak and went down to the kitchen to wait for Zerden. It wasn’t long before he arrived.

“Haven’t you bought a new cloak yet?” he asked as they walked across the castle courtyard. She shook her head.

“It looks weird,” he said, confirming his first impression of it.

“Maybe” she replied.

They walked across the yard and in through a small gate leading to a staircase. They continued up the stairs several floors until they got to a door. It led out to the battlement.

As they walked up on the high wall surrounding the castle, Mary could look out over the city. It seemed so calm where it lay embedded in darkness with the glow of the pale-yellow lights. But she remembered that the city was not a quiet place when it was dark.

To avoid thinking about the memories, Mary instead looked the other way, towards the castle.

“I didn’t know there was a garden inside the castle grounds,” she told Zerden.

“Ladies and handmaidens like to sit there in the summer,” he said. Mary didn’t think of anything else to say but followed him in silence.

They came to another door that they entered and then a corridor. Along the corridor were several doors. Zerden walked past everyone until he got to the farthest.

He opened it and waited for Mary to enter first. Mary walked through the door and Zerden followed and closed the door behind her.

“We’re here now,” he shouted. Mary saw that they had entered a small room where there were cloaks hanging and boots standing along the walls. There was also a shelf where a sword lay and there were other weapons leaning here and there.

Through a door at the other end of the room came a woman walking. She was beautiful but not as conspicuously beautiful as the Lady, she looked graceful and almost fragile. Her brown hair was tied up in a knot and her eyes smiled.