Reflect - Snow White Retold

Part 7

SEVEN

"The white silk. His Majesty commands it."

The whirl of activity around Guinevere ceased, and the maids fell silent. Judging by the quality of her dress, the noblewoman who spoke of silk was some relation to the King.

But Guinevere had been her father's chatelaine for too many years to be cowed by a commanding tone, and here she would be queen. "White silk is impractical, and nothing like I saw the women wearing in court. Something darker would be much more sensible."

"The King commands that his bride will be wed in white. His queen will stand out in court, no matter what she wears, for you will sit beside him." The woman's stubborn chin jutted out as she matched Guinevere's gaze, then bobbed the slightest bit in a mocking curtsey. "Your Highness."

"Yes, Lady Ragna," the maids chorused. The maids bustled about her with the white silk, ignoring Guinevere's quiet protests.

"Your veil will be embroidered with gold thread, the same shade as your hair," Lady Ragna continued. "I will see to it myself." And with that, she turned in a swirl of skirts, and was gone, but for the clinking of the keyring at her girdle as she marched down the corridor.

The castle chatelaine, Guinevere guessed. One who already grasped the reins of the household firmly in hand. With such a woman already here, perhaps Guinevere could sit around in white silk, embroidering handkerchiefs or whatever took her fancy, for she would have little else to do. A situation as alien to her as the surface of the moon, for even when her mother was alive, Guinevere had been learning how to keep a castle. For, her mother had often said, a king might rule a kingdom, but it was the queen who ruled the castle, and to do that, she must know everything that went on within it, to make sure it ran as smoothly as possible. Yet Castrum coped fine without a queen.

Castrum was shaping up to be a very different place to home, she reflected. She wasn't sure if that was a good thing, or a bad one.

Then again, in her two days in Castrum, no one had shouted at her, threatened to kill her, or brought her an impossible problem and begged her to solve it.

Perhaps she could learn to like it here. White silk, idleness and all.