The Girl with the Golden Eyes chapter 1
Fuck it, I'm posting it anyway.
"A woman is a worthy thing,
They do the wash and do the wring.
'Lullay, lullay,' she doth sing,
And yet she hath but care and woe.
A woman is a worthy wight,
She serveth man both day and night,
Thereto she putteth all her might,
And yet she hath but care and woe."
~15th century poem, author unknown.
***
It was the late 1400s when Aras was born, in the capital city of Krakow, in the country called the crown jewel of Europe: the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth. The king and queen had two children already - Prince Stanisław Aleksander, age two, and Princess Ariadna Zofia, age one - and the queen Monika was pregnant with what would one day be Princess Ożanna Konstancja. Prince Stanisław would not live to see his third birthday, but the eldest daughter of King Karol and Queen Monika would one day become very close to Aras - it was just that at this point, neither knew this yet.
Aras was the youngest daughter of Sir Jurgis, an ethnically Lithuanian knight who had fought beside the king at the Battle of Grunwald in their youth. He already had three daughters, and had always wanted a son. But his wife was very sick, very weak from giving birth to yet another girlchild, and Sir Jurgis knew she would not live many more days. Saddened, an idea came to him that was perhaps crazy, but at this point he did not care. Aras would be raised not as yet another girl, but as the son this brave knight and nobleman had always wanted!
***
The first time Aras met Ariadna was at the baptism of the twin sons Queen Monika had just borne. Ariadna was eight, Aras was seven. The twin boys were named Nikuś Jan and Karol Jozef, and Aras was finding it very difficult to focus on the holy rites of the baptism of the older twin, Nikuś, with the chaos that followed.
It had started with the youngest daughter, then four year old Karolinka Elzbieta, tattling because young Ariadna had hidden a French copy of "The Canterbury Tales" in her bible, and was reading that instead of the holy words. So the stern queen was already upset, stressed from her husband away doing kingly business in Wilno, when disaster struck:
"M-my queen!" the favoured priest of the nobles of Krakow, Father Krzysztof, looked pale as he held Prince Karol, who also, young Aras noticed, looked incredibly pale. For the younger twin had taken too large a gulp of holy water when submerged, and did not survive the baptism.
Already on edge from lecturing her eldest daughter, dark eyed Queen Monika hissed, "Finish the baptism, Father Krzysztof."
"But with all due respect, my queen, his soul has already been taken by our lord and saviour. Nothing I can do now will h-"
"Finish. The. Baptism," the queen glared at the holy man, speaking in a quiet tone that still made the younger princesses, Ożanna and Karolinka (Called "Linka" as a nickname), hold onto each other and cry. "Remember, Father, I can have you castrated if you do not baptise both my sons!"
Aras, having just entered her training to become a knight like her father, was no stranger to death, and thus understood most of what was going on as her father comforted her three older sisters. But what she did not understand was Ariadna's behaviour throughout all of this. The young crossdresser walked over to the pew where the princesses three sat together, and plopped down next to the eldest princess with the long dark curls before her father could stop her.
"Are you not upset, milady, that your brother has died?" she asked, feeling slightly shy - though her father was on good terms with the royal family, she had never met any of them before.
The princess turned slowly away from her book to face Aras, and the to-be knight was immediately taken aback by the princess's eyes. King Karol had blue eyes, and Queen Monika's were dark. Princess Ożanna had inherited her mother's eyes, while Linka had her father's. But Ariadna's were neither that black-brown nor blue nor green like Aras's own. Ariadna's eyes were the exact yellow colour of polished gold!
"I have lost brothers before," Ariadna spoke as if she was measuring what she was saying before letting it be said. "He was but a baby anyhow! If a baby lives to age five, it is a miracle. It is perhaps unfair, but babies usually die you know. In a way, because they die so often, there is no use carrying on about it."
Aras felt her mouth gaping rudely and found herself arguing, "But because children are so rare, then they must be precious!"
The eldest princess silently stared at the young, to-be knight for an uncomfortable amount of time before replying, "You are very odd, you know."
"I-I am sorry for my impertinence, princess!"
The princess smiled a small smile. "Don't be. I find it refreshing! Who are you?"
Before she could answer, Aras's father was there in a flash.
"Aras!" Sir Jurgis pulled his 'son' up swiftly, scolding in Lithuanian. "Do leave the young princesses alone before I box your ears!" As she was being pulled back to her pew, Aras gave Ariadna one last look to see if the young princess would protest that she indeed liked Aras's company. But the princesses, for all the languages their parents had them learn, did not speak Lithuanian. It was supposedly a 'peasant' tongue. Polish was the language of nobles, and French and Latin were the tongues of choice to learn, but not Lithuanian like Aras spoke at home.
***
It was years before Aras again saw Ariadna, and she had in fact almost forgotten her and her freakish gold eyes. At this time, Aras was twelve, nearly ready to be knighted, though this frightened her a bit too. For even though Queen Monika gave to the poor and made many friends and was indeed a handsome woman for her age, rumours still abounded of her hidden cruelty. In fact, at this point in time, Father Krzysztof was being put to death because Queen Monika insisted he had tried to have sex with her, while Krzysztof insisted she had come on to him and was enraged he had not indulged her desire to commit adultery with him. King Karol believed his beloved wife, and Aras next saw Ariadna as the priest they had listened to every Sunday their whole lives was burned alive.
"You do not seem upset," Aras noted. For while Ożanna could not bear to look and Linka and Nikuś were not even allowed to be present, Ariadna watched very calmly.
"Father Krzysztof shall be redeemed in Heaven," Ariadna answered stoically before looking down demurely. For she had been groomed by her mother to be an ideal princess for all of Poland-Lithuania to look up to. "Do I know you?"
"I am Aras, son of Sir Jurgis."
"Ah, yes - you jousted at last spring's faire, did you not?" Ariadna held out her hand expectantly, and Aras kissed it as a gentleman would. "The visiting Austrians were so very shocked that we let a woman joust! Father was so amused in explaining to them that we see you as a man! Poland is simply too revolutionary for Austria, nie?"
"T-tak," Aras agreed, a bit surprised that Ariadna had heard of her. Though she supposed she was a bit of an oddity, she was so used to being thought of as a man it was strange for someone to address her womanhood so frankly like that.
"Human flesh smells strange when it is cooked," Ariadna noted, then suddenly blushed. "I am sorry, that was improper of me to say."
"Is it improper of me to say it reminds me of pork and makes me hungry?" Aras joked quietly. The princess started to giggle, but then covered her mouth to stifle it.
"You are very odd, you know."
Aras blushed, recognising the words as the exact same thing Ariadna had said to her five years ago when she was seven, though not knowing why this fact made her blush so.
"Is it refreshing, princess?"
"Ah, so you do remember our conversation so many years ago?" Ariadna smiled coyly, not quite looking Aras in the eye. The Lithuanian sputtered indignantly:
"Y-you did remember me!"
The princess did not answer that, instead calmly, stoically watching the priest burn to a crisp. If she felt anything at all, be it joy or sadness, she knew better than to show it.
***
Ariadna was very close to her sister Ożanna, the two being only two years apart in age. Ariadna was fifteen, Ożanna thirteen, Linka eleven, and Crown Prince Nikuś seven when King Karol and Queen Monika decided their eldest daughter needed her portrait painted. After all, Ariadna had to be married off to one of the royal families of Europe - nothing less would do for the eldest daughter of a Jagiellonian king!
Queen Monika picked out the gown for her daughter's portrait. The gown was of a deep, dark, and expensive blue colour, the underskirt adorned with fleur-de-lis embroidered with spun gold to offset Ariadna's odd and beautiful eyes. The blue gown itself was lined with soft ermine, which showed through slits in the sleeves and was encrusted with rubies. Another, larger ruby on a gold chain adorned the young princess's neck, along with many pearl strands. More pearls still were woven into her hair, at least the small bit of dark curls not shoved into gold cauls or under a very heavy, jeweled coronet.
When the portrait painter arrived, Queen Monika was beside herself with glee. She was practically dancing around Karol, tweaking his silver-tinged blonde beard, her dark eyes glittering as she told her eldest daughter:
"We are coming closer, closer to you someday being someone's lovely bride!"
"Yes, maman. I know, maman," Ariadna answered calmly, calling her mother affectionately in French since Monika had been born Monique of France.
"And how are your dancing lessons going, my daughter?"
"Maman, I shall be still in the portrait, not dancing."
Monika laughed heartily and pinched her daughter's cheeks. Ariadna would later recall this as being one of the few times her mother had used such tenderness with her.
"You see, sir," the queen, as usual much more talkative than her husband, told the painter, "though my daughter may not be as conventionally pretty as her sisters, she has wit, this one. She'll adapt well to any court that will have her."
If the princess was taken aback by any of her mother's comments, she knew better than to show this. She tried to sit still, with a kind and demure expression, but she later confessed to Ożanna:
"Oh, sister, it was horrible! I had to sit there in an uncomfortable position under all those heavy jewels for hours!"
The younger princess flipped her blonde hair and laughed. "Ariadna, you know paintings take time. You cannot rush perfection!"
"As if you are one to lecture me, Ożanna, I know you are much less patient than I!"
"But I am not the one getting my portrait painted and sent off to strange men."
"Not yet anyway. It would not have been so bad if Matka had just let me read a book."
"Ariadna!" Linka, who was also in the room, butted in to her elder sisters' conversation. "All you ever do is read! Think of what your future husband will say if you are too busy reading to bear him heirs!"
"Linka, do not be silly!" Ariadna blushed, for unlike her sisters she knew how heirs were made. "And do not speak of such improper things!
"Why are you blushing, sister?" Linka and Ożanna both smiled twn grins, knowingly, causing their older sister to blush even more furiously, and look away, focusing on one of many tabby cats that caught unwanted mice in the Krakow palace.
"Never mind. Forget it, you'll understand when you are both older. Now, let us speak of something else!"
***
The next morning, after mass but before lessons, Ożanna and Ariadna strolled through the royal gardens, talking of, what else, Ariadna's portrait!
"Do you think you'll someday be a queen, my dear sister?" Ożanna was saying, smiling wistfully at the prospect. If Queen Monika had her way, all three of her daughters would become queens.
"It is what Matka wishes of me," Ariadna nodded.
"I bet you are hoping it is the French king who takes a liking to you!"
"What? Why would you say that?" the older princess looked taken aback. "Because Matka is from France?"
"Nie, silly! Honestly, Ariadna, for someone who does nothing but read, you sure are dense sometimes!"
Ariadna frowned. "Then what did you mean, Ożanna?"
The blonde princess laughed in a loud, braying matter her mother would not have approved of. "Well if you go to France, you do not need to learn a new language, since we all already speak French!"
The dark haired sister crossed her arms and tried to look stern. "Now who is dense?!"
"Who is dense?" A third voice behind the sisters caused them to whirl around. Since she was younger, Ożanna's loose blonde tresses whipped her in the face, but Ariadna was old enough that her dark curls were up under a headdress - this time of day a simple wimple rather than the elaborate gold cauls she would later don for her portrait.
"Aras!" Ariadna smiled when she recognised the face belonging to the third voice, a somewhat androgynous face with bright green eyes, tanned skin, and a bump on the nose due to a nasty fall off of a rowdy horse a few years prior.
"Moja księżniczka," Aras bowed deeply, kissing the outstretched hand of Ariadna, then rising to bow again slightly toward young Ożanna. Young Ożanna was looking back and forth between the two, confused.
"Is this young knight a friend of yours, Ariadna?" she asked.
"Not a knight," Aras corrected. "Not yet. Not for at least another month." She grinned. "I'm Aras."
Ożanna pursed her lips in a thin, white line.
Ariadna gently pushed her younger sister on the shoulder. "Ożanna, do not be rude. Aras is the son of Father's good friend, Sir Jurgis, the knight he fought alongside in the last crusade. She is also a dear friend of mine."
Blushing at being called a "dear friend", Aras nodded vigourously.
"Introduce me," Ożanna muttered to her sister quietly.
"Aras, this is the eldest of my younger siblings, my sister Princess Ożanna Konstancja Jagiello."
Aras bowed again and the blonde princess curtsied. "So, my princesses... what is it you were talking about, then?"
"Ariadna is having her portrait painted by an artist Matka chose from France!" Ożanna burst out in a rather un-mysterious, un-ladylike manner. Were she the type to do so, Ariadna might have scowled.
"Oh..." Aras really had no clue what to say to that, having no basis for comparison in her own experiences. "How... exciting?"
"Not really," Ariadna shrugged. "Between you and me, it is actually quite boring, but do not tell my mother I told you that. After all, as she always says, it is my duty!"
"It is your duty to sit still and have someone make a pretty picture of you?"
Ariadna blushed and Ożanna laughed her loud donkey laugh again. The dark haired princess protested:
"It is not, as you put it, a 'pretty picture'! My parents will have copies of my portrait sent out to all the royal families of the civilised world - England, France, Austria, Spain! And then - god willing - at least one of them will make me his bride!"
The Lithuanian knight to be smirked. "And then?"
"Well... I suppose then I shall be a queen. Of whatever country." Here, she turned to her sister, "And I shall learn their language as fluently as the Polish I speak now, whether I'm learning German, Swedish, Italian, or anything else!"
"Which would you prefer?"
"It matters not what happens to me," Ariadna replied, "so long as I fulfill Matka's wishes."
'But Ariadna,' Aras thought to herself, 'What about what you wish?!'
"Truth be told, however..." The dark-haired princess bit her lip before reluctantly continuing, "I do find it dreadfully boring, and the jewels sewn into the bodice - how they do dig into my flesh so uncomfortably! But a little pain is not so much to bear, it's the lack of anything to engage the mind that I dislike about getting a portrait done."
"Well..." Aras found herself blushing ever so slightly in a very unmasculine manner that was unexpected by someone like herself. "I cannot help with the problem of the bodice... but I can accompany you and give you at least some conversation while you sit there for the painter."
Suddenly the older princess's eyes lit up not unlike the sun itself, and the corners of her mouth turned up in a most becoming matter. "Really Aras? You would do that?"
"Just to keep my sister from being bored?!" Ożanna added, not sure how to take this new person that her sister was now paying attention to rather than paying attention to her. "But surely you have other tasks - training for your knighthood!"
"Not really - I am done with my lessons, and I am to be knighted hopefully by the months end. I am good with a sword and with a bow, on foot or on a horse. I would be glad to accompany you, Princess Ariadna."
The dark haired princess suppressed the urge to hug the young almost-knight, instead merely nodding her happiness, unable to fully keep from grinning despite self consciousness that her teeth may be too yellow. (If they were, Aras did not seem to notice, and Ożanna either also noticed nothing, or already knew and did not care.)
***
And so Aras, Lithuanian royal knight in training and female son of the king Karol's good friend Sir Jurgis, sat with Princess Ariadna Zofia of the Jagiellon dynasty - closer to the painter than to the princess, actually - while the French painter continued to work.
"Ah, could it be?" the Frenchman asked in French, and with a sly grin, when Aras escorted the princess in. The Lithuanian did not speak French, but Ariadna did, as everyone in her family did, and introduced her companion:
"Monsieur, this is Aras, who will soon be a knight. What did you mean when you asked 'could it be'? Could what be?"
Aras looked back and forth between the princess and the painter, utterly confused.
"Oui, I can see it in his eyes!" the Frenchman smiled wistfully as he made a few strokes on his canvas that would become the princess's left cheekbone. "Courtly love!"
"Wh-what?!" In her surprise, Ariadna sputtered rather ungracefully and switched back to her beloved Polish, blushing furiously.
"What? What'd he say?!" Aras demanded.
"N-nothing!" Ariadna insisted, then switched back to French to tell the painter, "It is nothing like that! Aras is merely a friend!"
The painter smiled and nodded. "If you say so, princess. Now please, do not blush so, or I shall not have enough crimson left for the rubies in your dress. Nodding, Ariadna forced herself to take a few deep breaths in hopes of getting the flush out of her face.
And as luck would have it, if it could be considered lucky, at about thirty minutes after this exchange, King Karol decided to drop in and see how things were progressing. Ariadna's expression did not change when he entered the room, but secretly she was just a little delighted. Her father was always so busy, it wasn't often the royal children saw him outside of a dinner every now and then. Mostly, it was their mother who they saw when they had a parental audience - it was said that King Karol ran the commonwealth while Queen Monika ran the household. And even when he was at the same castle as his wife and kids, and not off in Gdansk or Wilno, King Karol was much closer to Linka (his namesake) and Nikuś (his heir) than he had ever been to Ożanna or Ariadna. So though she did not show excitement like only a small child would have, Ariadna was, very deep down, pleased that her father had taken time out of his busy schedule to check up on her portrait.
Aras jumped from her seat and began to sink to the floor, but was stopped by the king's hand on her shoulder. "Y-your magesty?"
"There is no need for that, Aras. I know you, I was there as your godfather when your father and mother - bless her soul - had you baptised. Your father Jurgis and I have been good friends since we fought side by side against those Teutonic monsters!"
"Father," Ariadna questioned. "Why is it that you are here? Is Monsieur Roquefort not doing an acceptable job with my portrait?" She questioned this tentatively, as she had not even really seen her own portrait.
"The good monsieur is doing an exemplary job," the king nodded gracefully, then switched to French to tell the painter himself: "C'est magnifique, monsieur."
"I cannot thank you enough for your kind words, your majesty!" the French painter answered, not looking up from his delicate, distinctly French brushstrokes.
"Have you given any thought as to the attribute you are to draw my daughter holding?"
"Attributes, my father?" Ariadna asked, her father explaining to her immediately:
"What he is to draw in your hands, my golden girl."
The princess nodded, then translated into Polish for poor, confused Aras, who didn't really understand any of what was going on. If she'd thought becoming a knight was hard, being a princess seemed just dreadful in her opinion!
"I had a few considerations, your excellency," the Frenchman paused, chewing the end of the brush in his hand. "Perhaps one of the many palace cats, to accentuate how kind and graceful she is, like the Holy Virgin Herself. Or perhaps mask to show her fun loving side, but that it hides a more serious demeanour when needed. Or maybe one of the books she has been said to love so much."
"Nie, nie, none of that will do," the king had already decided. "In one hand, she is to be holding a globe, reminding her suitors that to marry a royal daughter of Poland is to marry one of the largest, most powerful countries in the world. The other hand shall be outstretched, resting upon the keys of a clavichord. If it is a problem, you shall be richly compensated."
"Oh, non, your grace, not a problem at all. Your wish is my command. I live for the smiles of royalty."
"And Aras," the king switched back to Polish as gracefully as he had into French.
"Taip- er, y-yes your majesty?" the Lithuanian squire was taken by surprise.
"You are to be knighted the first Saturday of next month; I have already spoken to your father about it. I congratulate you in advance as I will be away in Gdansk on business that day."
She couldn't help herself - Aras broke into a wide smile, her lips stretched nearly to her ears, as the king exited the room of the painter.
"Well," Ariadna smiled graciously at her companion, "it seems we are soon both to be fulfilling our destinies soon, are we not?"
"A woman is a worthy thing,
They do the wash and do the wring.
'Lullay, lullay,' she doth sing,
And yet she hath but care and woe.
A woman is a worthy wight,
She serveth man both day and night,
Thereto she putteth all her might,
And yet she hath but care and woe."
~15th century poem, author unknown.
***
It was the late 1400s when Aras was born, in the capital city of Krakow, in the country called the crown jewel of Europe: the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth. The king and queen had two children already - Prince Stanisław Aleksander, age two, and Princess Ariadna Zofia, age one - and the queen Monika was pregnant with what would one day be Princess Ożanna Konstancja. Prince Stanisław would not live to see his third birthday, but the eldest daughter of King Karol and Queen Monika would one day become very close to Aras - it was just that at this point, neither knew this yet.
Aras was the youngest daughter of Sir Jurgis, an ethnically Lithuanian knight who had fought beside the king at the Battle of Grunwald in their youth. He already had three daughters, and had always wanted a son. But his wife was very sick, very weak from giving birth to yet another girlchild, and Sir Jurgis knew she would not live many more days. Saddened, an idea came to him that was perhaps crazy, but at this point he did not care. Aras would be raised not as yet another girl, but as the son this brave knight and nobleman had always wanted!
***
The first time Aras met Ariadna was at the baptism of the twin sons Queen Monika had just borne. Ariadna was eight, Aras was seven. The twin boys were named Nikuś Jan and Karol Jozef, and Aras was finding it very difficult to focus on the holy rites of the baptism of the older twin, Nikuś, with the chaos that followed.
It had started with the youngest daughter, then four year old Karolinka Elzbieta, tattling because young Ariadna had hidden a French copy of "The Canterbury Tales" in her bible, and was reading that instead of the holy words. So the stern queen was already upset, stressed from her husband away doing kingly business in Wilno, when disaster struck:
"M-my queen!" the favoured priest of the nobles of Krakow, Father Krzysztof, looked pale as he held Prince Karol, who also, young Aras noticed, looked incredibly pale. For the younger twin had taken too large a gulp of holy water when submerged, and did not survive the baptism.
Already on edge from lecturing her eldest daughter, dark eyed Queen Monika hissed, "Finish the baptism, Father Krzysztof."
"But with all due respect, my queen, his soul has already been taken by our lord and saviour. Nothing I can do now will h-"
"Finish. The. Baptism," the queen glared at the holy man, speaking in a quiet tone that still made the younger princesses, Ożanna and Karolinka (Called "Linka" as a nickname), hold onto each other and cry. "Remember, Father, I can have you castrated if you do not baptise both my sons!"
Aras, having just entered her training to become a knight like her father, was no stranger to death, and thus understood most of what was going on as her father comforted her three older sisters. But what she did not understand was Ariadna's behaviour throughout all of this. The young crossdresser walked over to the pew where the princesses three sat together, and plopped down next to the eldest princess with the long dark curls before her father could stop her.
"Are you not upset, milady, that your brother has died?" she asked, feeling slightly shy - though her father was on good terms with the royal family, she had never met any of them before.
The princess turned slowly away from her book to face Aras, and the to-be knight was immediately taken aback by the princess's eyes. King Karol had blue eyes, and Queen Monika's were dark. Princess Ożanna had inherited her mother's eyes, while Linka had her father's. But Ariadna's were neither that black-brown nor blue nor green like Aras's own. Ariadna's eyes were the exact yellow colour of polished gold!
"I have lost brothers before," Ariadna spoke as if she was measuring what she was saying before letting it be said. "He was but a baby anyhow! If a baby lives to age five, it is a miracle. It is perhaps unfair, but babies usually die you know. In a way, because they die so often, there is no use carrying on about it."
Aras felt her mouth gaping rudely and found herself arguing, "But because children are so rare, then they must be precious!"
The eldest princess silently stared at the young, to-be knight for an uncomfortable amount of time before replying, "You are very odd, you know."
"I-I am sorry for my impertinence, princess!"
The princess smiled a small smile. "Don't be. I find it refreshing! Who are you?"
Before she could answer, Aras's father was there in a flash.
"Aras!" Sir Jurgis pulled his 'son' up swiftly, scolding in Lithuanian. "Do leave the young princesses alone before I box your ears!" As she was being pulled back to her pew, Aras gave Ariadna one last look to see if the young princess would protest that she indeed liked Aras's company. But the princesses, for all the languages their parents had them learn, did not speak Lithuanian. It was supposedly a 'peasant' tongue. Polish was the language of nobles, and French and Latin were the tongues of choice to learn, but not Lithuanian like Aras spoke at home.
***
It was years before Aras again saw Ariadna, and she had in fact almost forgotten her and her freakish gold eyes. At this time, Aras was twelve, nearly ready to be knighted, though this frightened her a bit too. For even though Queen Monika gave to the poor and made many friends and was indeed a handsome woman for her age, rumours still abounded of her hidden cruelty. In fact, at this point in time, Father Krzysztof was being put to death because Queen Monika insisted he had tried to have sex with her, while Krzysztof insisted she had come on to him and was enraged he had not indulged her desire to commit adultery with him. King Karol believed his beloved wife, and Aras next saw Ariadna as the priest they had listened to every Sunday their whole lives was burned alive.
"You do not seem upset," Aras noted. For while Ożanna could not bear to look and Linka and Nikuś were not even allowed to be present, Ariadna watched very calmly.
"Father Krzysztof shall be redeemed in Heaven," Ariadna answered stoically before looking down demurely. For she had been groomed by her mother to be an ideal princess for all of Poland-Lithuania to look up to. "Do I know you?"
"I am Aras, son of Sir Jurgis."
"Ah, yes - you jousted at last spring's faire, did you not?" Ariadna held out her hand expectantly, and Aras kissed it as a gentleman would. "The visiting Austrians were so very shocked that we let a woman joust! Father was so amused in explaining to them that we see you as a man! Poland is simply too revolutionary for Austria, nie?"
"T-tak," Aras agreed, a bit surprised that Ariadna had heard of her. Though she supposed she was a bit of an oddity, she was so used to being thought of as a man it was strange for someone to address her womanhood so frankly like that.
"Human flesh smells strange when it is cooked," Ariadna noted, then suddenly blushed. "I am sorry, that was improper of me to say."
"Is it improper of me to say it reminds me of pork and makes me hungry?" Aras joked quietly. The princess started to giggle, but then covered her mouth to stifle it.
"You are very odd, you know."
Aras blushed, recognising the words as the exact same thing Ariadna had said to her five years ago when she was seven, though not knowing why this fact made her blush so.
"Is it refreshing, princess?"
"Ah, so you do remember our conversation so many years ago?" Ariadna smiled coyly, not quite looking Aras in the eye. The Lithuanian sputtered indignantly:
"Y-you did remember me!"
The princess did not answer that, instead calmly, stoically watching the priest burn to a crisp. If she felt anything at all, be it joy or sadness, she knew better than to show it.
***
Ariadna was very close to her sister Ożanna, the two being only two years apart in age. Ariadna was fifteen, Ożanna thirteen, Linka eleven, and Crown Prince Nikuś seven when King Karol and Queen Monika decided their eldest daughter needed her portrait painted. After all, Ariadna had to be married off to one of the royal families of Europe - nothing less would do for the eldest daughter of a Jagiellonian king!
Queen Monika picked out the gown for her daughter's portrait. The gown was of a deep, dark, and expensive blue colour, the underskirt adorned with fleur-de-lis embroidered with spun gold to offset Ariadna's odd and beautiful eyes. The blue gown itself was lined with soft ermine, which showed through slits in the sleeves and was encrusted with rubies. Another, larger ruby on a gold chain adorned the young princess's neck, along with many pearl strands. More pearls still were woven into her hair, at least the small bit of dark curls not shoved into gold cauls or under a very heavy, jeweled coronet.
When the portrait painter arrived, Queen Monika was beside herself with glee. She was practically dancing around Karol, tweaking his silver-tinged blonde beard, her dark eyes glittering as she told her eldest daughter:
"We are coming closer, closer to you someday being someone's lovely bride!"
"Yes, maman. I know, maman," Ariadna answered calmly, calling her mother affectionately in French since Monika had been born Monique of France.
"And how are your dancing lessons going, my daughter?"
"Maman, I shall be still in the portrait, not dancing."
Monika laughed heartily and pinched her daughter's cheeks. Ariadna would later recall this as being one of the few times her mother had used such tenderness with her.
"You see, sir," the queen, as usual much more talkative than her husband, told the painter, "though my daughter may not be as conventionally pretty as her sisters, she has wit, this one. She'll adapt well to any court that will have her."
If the princess was taken aback by any of her mother's comments, she knew better than to show this. She tried to sit still, with a kind and demure expression, but she later confessed to Ożanna:
"Oh, sister, it was horrible! I had to sit there in an uncomfortable position under all those heavy jewels for hours!"
The younger princess flipped her blonde hair and laughed. "Ariadna, you know paintings take time. You cannot rush perfection!"
"As if you are one to lecture me, Ożanna, I know you are much less patient than I!"
"But I am not the one getting my portrait painted and sent off to strange men."
"Not yet anyway. It would not have been so bad if Matka had just let me read a book."
"Ariadna!" Linka, who was also in the room, butted in to her elder sisters' conversation. "All you ever do is read! Think of what your future husband will say if you are too busy reading to bear him heirs!"
"Linka, do not be silly!" Ariadna blushed, for unlike her sisters she knew how heirs were made. "And do not speak of such improper things!
"Why are you blushing, sister?" Linka and Ożanna both smiled twn grins, knowingly, causing their older sister to blush even more furiously, and look away, focusing on one of many tabby cats that caught unwanted mice in the Krakow palace.
"Never mind. Forget it, you'll understand when you are both older. Now, let us speak of something else!"
***
The next morning, after mass but before lessons, Ożanna and Ariadna strolled through the royal gardens, talking of, what else, Ariadna's portrait!
"Do you think you'll someday be a queen, my dear sister?" Ożanna was saying, smiling wistfully at the prospect. If Queen Monika had her way, all three of her daughters would become queens.
"It is what Matka wishes of me," Ariadna nodded.
"I bet you are hoping it is the French king who takes a liking to you!"
"What? Why would you say that?" the older princess looked taken aback. "Because Matka is from France?"
"Nie, silly! Honestly, Ariadna, for someone who does nothing but read, you sure are dense sometimes!"
Ariadna frowned. "Then what did you mean, Ożanna?"
The blonde princess laughed in a loud, braying matter her mother would not have approved of. "Well if you go to France, you do not need to learn a new language, since we all already speak French!"
The dark haired sister crossed her arms and tried to look stern. "Now who is dense?!"
"Who is dense?" A third voice behind the sisters caused them to whirl around. Since she was younger, Ożanna's loose blonde tresses whipped her in the face, but Ariadna was old enough that her dark curls were up under a headdress - this time of day a simple wimple rather than the elaborate gold cauls she would later don for her portrait.
"Aras!" Ariadna smiled when she recognised the face belonging to the third voice, a somewhat androgynous face with bright green eyes, tanned skin, and a bump on the nose due to a nasty fall off of a rowdy horse a few years prior.
"Moja księżniczka," Aras bowed deeply, kissing the outstretched hand of Ariadna, then rising to bow again slightly toward young Ożanna. Young Ożanna was looking back and forth between the two, confused.
"Is this young knight a friend of yours, Ariadna?" she asked.
"Not a knight," Aras corrected. "Not yet. Not for at least another month." She grinned. "I'm Aras."
Ożanna pursed her lips in a thin, white line.
Ariadna gently pushed her younger sister on the shoulder. "Ożanna, do not be rude. Aras is the son of Father's good friend, Sir Jurgis, the knight he fought alongside in the last crusade. She is also a dear friend of mine."
Blushing at being called a "dear friend", Aras nodded vigourously.
"Introduce me," Ożanna muttered to her sister quietly.
"Aras, this is the eldest of my younger siblings, my sister Princess Ożanna Konstancja Jagiello."
Aras bowed again and the blonde princess curtsied. "So, my princesses... what is it you were talking about, then?"
"Ariadna is having her portrait painted by an artist Matka chose from France!" Ożanna burst out in a rather un-mysterious, un-ladylike manner. Were she the type to do so, Ariadna might have scowled.
"Oh..." Aras really had no clue what to say to that, having no basis for comparison in her own experiences. "How... exciting?"
"Not really," Ariadna shrugged. "Between you and me, it is actually quite boring, but do not tell my mother I told you that. After all, as she always says, it is my duty!"
"It is your duty to sit still and have someone make a pretty picture of you?"
Ariadna blushed and Ożanna laughed her loud donkey laugh again. The dark haired princess protested:
"It is not, as you put it, a 'pretty picture'! My parents will have copies of my portrait sent out to all the royal families of the civilised world - England, France, Austria, Spain! And then - god willing - at least one of them will make me his bride!"
The Lithuanian knight to be smirked. "And then?"
"Well... I suppose then I shall be a queen. Of whatever country." Here, she turned to her sister, "And I shall learn their language as fluently as the Polish I speak now, whether I'm learning German, Swedish, Italian, or anything else!"
"Which would you prefer?"
"It matters not what happens to me," Ariadna replied, "so long as I fulfill Matka's wishes."
'But Ariadna,' Aras thought to herself, 'What about what you wish?!'
"Truth be told, however..." The dark-haired princess bit her lip before reluctantly continuing, "I do find it dreadfully boring, and the jewels sewn into the bodice - how they do dig into my flesh so uncomfortably! But a little pain is not so much to bear, it's the lack of anything to engage the mind that I dislike about getting a portrait done."
"Well..." Aras found herself blushing ever so slightly in a very unmasculine manner that was unexpected by someone like herself. "I cannot help with the problem of the bodice... but I can accompany you and give you at least some conversation while you sit there for the painter."
Suddenly the older princess's eyes lit up not unlike the sun itself, and the corners of her mouth turned up in a most becoming matter. "Really Aras? You would do that?"
"Just to keep my sister from being bored?!" Ożanna added, not sure how to take this new person that her sister was now paying attention to rather than paying attention to her. "But surely you have other tasks - training for your knighthood!"
"Not really - I am done with my lessons, and I am to be knighted hopefully by the months end. I am good with a sword and with a bow, on foot or on a horse. I would be glad to accompany you, Princess Ariadna."
The dark haired princess suppressed the urge to hug the young almost-knight, instead merely nodding her happiness, unable to fully keep from grinning despite self consciousness that her teeth may be too yellow. (If they were, Aras did not seem to notice, and Ożanna either also noticed nothing, or already knew and did not care.)
***
And so Aras, Lithuanian royal knight in training and female son of the king Karol's good friend Sir Jurgis, sat with Princess Ariadna Zofia of the Jagiellon dynasty - closer to the painter than to the princess, actually - while the French painter continued to work.
"Ah, could it be?" the Frenchman asked in French, and with a sly grin, when Aras escorted the princess in. The Lithuanian did not speak French, but Ariadna did, as everyone in her family did, and introduced her companion:
"Monsieur, this is Aras, who will soon be a knight. What did you mean when you asked 'could it be'? Could what be?"
Aras looked back and forth between the princess and the painter, utterly confused.
"Oui, I can see it in his eyes!" the Frenchman smiled wistfully as he made a few strokes on his canvas that would become the princess's left cheekbone. "Courtly love!"
"Wh-what?!" In her surprise, Ariadna sputtered rather ungracefully and switched back to her beloved Polish, blushing furiously.
"What? What'd he say?!" Aras demanded.
"N-nothing!" Ariadna insisted, then switched back to French to tell the painter, "It is nothing like that! Aras is merely a friend!"
The painter smiled and nodded. "If you say so, princess. Now please, do not blush so, or I shall not have enough crimson left for the rubies in your dress. Nodding, Ariadna forced herself to take a few deep breaths in hopes of getting the flush out of her face.
And as luck would have it, if it could be considered lucky, at about thirty minutes after this exchange, King Karol decided to drop in and see how things were progressing. Ariadna's expression did not change when he entered the room, but secretly she was just a little delighted. Her father was always so busy, it wasn't often the royal children saw him outside of a dinner every now and then. Mostly, it was their mother who they saw when they had a parental audience - it was said that King Karol ran the commonwealth while Queen Monika ran the household. And even when he was at the same castle as his wife and kids, and not off in Gdansk or Wilno, King Karol was much closer to Linka (his namesake) and Nikuś (his heir) than he had ever been to Ożanna or Ariadna. So though she did not show excitement like only a small child would have, Ariadna was, very deep down, pleased that her father had taken time out of his busy schedule to check up on her portrait.
Aras jumped from her seat and began to sink to the floor, but was stopped by the king's hand on her shoulder. "Y-your magesty?"
"There is no need for that, Aras. I know you, I was there as your godfather when your father and mother - bless her soul - had you baptised. Your father Jurgis and I have been good friends since we fought side by side against those Teutonic monsters!"
"Father," Ariadna questioned. "Why is it that you are here? Is Monsieur Roquefort not doing an acceptable job with my portrait?" She questioned this tentatively, as she had not even really seen her own portrait.
"The good monsieur is doing an exemplary job," the king nodded gracefully, then switched to French to tell the painter himself: "C'est magnifique, monsieur."
"I cannot thank you enough for your kind words, your majesty!" the French painter answered, not looking up from his delicate, distinctly French brushstrokes.
"Have you given any thought as to the attribute you are to draw my daughter holding?"
"Attributes, my father?" Ariadna asked, her father explaining to her immediately:
"What he is to draw in your hands, my golden girl."
The princess nodded, then translated into Polish for poor, confused Aras, who didn't really understand any of what was going on. If she'd thought becoming a knight was hard, being a princess seemed just dreadful in her opinion!
"I had a few considerations, your excellency," the Frenchman paused, chewing the end of the brush in his hand. "Perhaps one of the many palace cats, to accentuate how kind and graceful she is, like the Holy Virgin Herself. Or perhaps mask to show her fun loving side, but that it hides a more serious demeanour when needed. Or maybe one of the books she has been said to love so much."
"Nie, nie, none of that will do," the king had already decided. "In one hand, she is to be holding a globe, reminding her suitors that to marry a royal daughter of Poland is to marry one of the largest, most powerful countries in the world. The other hand shall be outstretched, resting upon the keys of a clavichord. If it is a problem, you shall be richly compensated."
"Oh, non, your grace, not a problem at all. Your wish is my command. I live for the smiles of royalty."
"And Aras," the king switched back to Polish as gracefully as he had into French.
"Taip- er, y-yes your majesty?" the Lithuanian squire was taken by surprise.
"You are to be knighted the first Saturday of next month; I have already spoken to your father about it. I congratulate you in advance as I will be away in Gdansk on business that day."
She couldn't help herself - Aras broke into a wide smile, her lips stretched nearly to her ears, as the king exited the room of the painter.
"Well," Ariadna smiled graciously at her companion, "it seems we are soon both to be fulfilling our destinies soon, are we not?"