Scarborough Fair and Other Stories by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

also something of a relief. The truth was, no one seemed to recognize her for herself. It was as if Princess Babette was someone else entirely and she was just—this largish girl, who was actually rather hungry.
    This proved to be a bit of a problem for everyone else though. Now, when Babette reached for the sweetmeats the princes had left behind, her father sighed and her mother gave her a Look. The closest lady in waiting said, “Your Highness, perhaps you would like to wait until we can order more rare and lustrous fabric from the importers?”
    And though she took no more at meal times than she was accustomed to taking, she felt eyes watching each morsel she put to her lips, and found she had quite lost her appetite until she was alone, back in her rooms again.
    She was, as one wit put it, “The mock of the town.” From being a proud and beautiful princess surrounded by suitors, she had gone almost overnight into being plump and ignored, even by those who she was quite sure loved her.
    It was as if she were a ghost in her own castle. Her own servants snubbed her and when she reacted angrily her mother, passing by, overheard, and took her aside. The Queen searched her daughter’s face, her eyes full of pain, and said, “You must not blame your maidens, daughter, or anyone else if you are not as well treated now as in your slimmer days. Wrath will not restore your beauty, nor the power it lent you. With your slenderness, you have lost something of your character.”
    â€œBut Mama, that’s ridiculous!” Babette stormed. “I haven’t lost my character at all. I’m still a virgin!”
    â€œOf course you are. And likely to remain that way unless you take yourself in hand.” The sad thing was, Babette could see that the Queen thought she was being kind and giving wise advise. Part of it was wise. Babette never again took out her own frustration on her handmaidens or other people. She learned to get what she needed from them by looking them in the eye and getting them to stick to their jobs. If she saw in their expressions some pain or worry unrelated to herself, she got them to tell her of it, and relieved it if she could. Otherwise she would never have got anything done.
    But still, without hours to fill dressing and dancing and entertaining suitors, she had a great deal of time on her hands. She drifted quite by accident into the great hall where her father was teaching her elder brother, the Crown Prince, about ruling and making good decisions and passing judgements. She sat on the sidelines and listened, day after day, as her father heard each case and spoke to his advisors and listened to them, then he and her brother weighed each fact until they came to a verdict, issued a decree, upheld or struck down a law, granted an exemption or a punishment, as the case required. Her father, she realized suddenly, was a very good king. Her brother would be a good king too, she could tell. They were both fair, listened well, and truly cared about the fate of the people in front of them. They understood how other problems within the kingdom would affect the welfare of those same people.
    She came to feel extremely humble, and saddened. With such an example she could have been a good ruler too, at the side of one of those princes. Even one of the ones who wasn’t really handsome or daring might have been good at kinging with her help.
    Vladimirror watched her from afar and saw her bursting and bulging in her dresses, looking bewildered and shocked at how people treated her, and then sad and whipped, sitting alone in her chambers. He sent a message by carrier bat and it came in the night and tangled in the hair of her chambermaid.
    â€œWhat does it say?” the chambermaid asked, when the princess had quieted the servant’s shrieks, disentangled the bat, taken the message vial from its leg and was reading.
    â€œIt’s from that wily wizard of the East,”