A month or so ago I posted the first chapter of an incomplete novel, and got some really nice responses, in comments and elsewhere–which is lovely, but I feel sorry now that I can’t share the rest!  Drat that “incomplete” aspect of the thing, and the fact that I still don’t quite know what to do to keep the action going for a major chunk of the book.

But I thought I could at least give you chapter two, which explains who my main character is–rather than leaving you only knowing her as “Not Evangelina Angelica Juliana Lianora, princess of Beaumont.”  It doesn’t resolve everything–it is, after all, only chapter two of what would be a novel, if I could work some things out–but it answers some of the chief mysteries that chapter one presented.  I hope you enjoy!  And if I keep thinking about it, maybe I’ll figure out what to do to write the rest…

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Chapter Two: Maggie

            Her name was Maggie.  Not Evangelina Angelica Julianna Lianora, as she had told Michael, but just Maggie.  Marguerite, technically, but Maggie for day-to-day.

            Lina had always called her Maggie.  One would likely expect a princess to treat her maidservant with some degree of informality.  Maggie had always thought it was a mark in Lina’s favor that she was willing to be called by an informal name too—rather than Evangelina Angelica Julianna Lianora, which both girls agreed was simply too long to be convenient for regular use.  Besides, it was hard to be formal with someone who, on more than one occasion, you had gone splashing through mud puddles with in childhood.  Full names had been used (by Lina’s nurse and Maggie’s mother, which only added to one woman) after those occasions.

            By the time they were both nineteen, they were focused on more important matters than mud puddles.  Matters like Lina’s engagement to the King of Gaicaveen.  Full names were used on that occasion too (by Lina’s father and Maggie’s employer, which made one man—Lina’s nurse and Maggie’s mother had been dead for six years too long to comment on the subject).  Lina took the whole idea very quietly.  Most of the castle thought this was quite wise and sensible of her—Gaicaveen was a small kingdom but very wealthy, no one had actually met the recently-crowned King but he was said to be handsome, and it was a good match from the point of view of alliances, securing access to important trade routes.  Maggie was the only one who saw Lina’s attitude for what it was—fatalism.

            Lina wouldn’t discuss her impending marriage or her thoughts on the subject, and Maggie couldn’t fathom her reaction—not until they had been traveling towards Gaicaveen for three days and Maggie stepped unexpectedly into their shared tent one evening and found Lina kissing a guardsman.

            “Oh,” Maggie said, considered leaving, decided against it, and came the rest of the way in instead.  She perched on the edge of Lina’s enormous trunk, and grinned.  “Making sure she’s well-guarded, Johnny?”  Maggie knew most of the guards by name.  All the ones who were under thirty—and handsome.

            “Well, we—I—um—well…”  Johnny fumbled with his sentence, and with the buttons of his shirt.  He managed better with the shirt than with the sentence.

            “Oh, stop looking like a cat with a canary, Maggie,” Lina snapped, smoothing her hair.

            “Purrrr,” Maggie said, grin only growing wider.  “You know, I thought you might be in love with someone.  I just couldn’t work out who.”

            “So now you found out.  Congratulations,” Lina said, dropping into the tent’s only chair.

            “Just be thankful it’s me who found out, and not someone else.”

            “No one else would enter the Princess’ tent without permission,” Johnny protested, looking shocked by the very possibility.

            “I don’t care if they do find out,” Lina announced.  “I’m so desperately unhappy that I don’t care about anything.”  She had always had a dramatic streak.

            “Why?  Don’t you like being in love with him?” Maggie asked, voice innocent.

            “Oh, it’s not that.  It’s this marriage.  If I can’t marry for love, I don’t care who I marry,” Lina said with a tragic air.  “Every possibility seems equally horrible, so it might as well be the King of Gaicaveen.”

            “All right,” Maggie agreed, “but why not marry Johnny?  I assume you’d have her?”

            “Of course I would!”  He knelt beside Lina’s chair and took her hand.  “If you’d have me?”

            “Yes, of course.”  Lina sighed.  “But it’s all impossible.”

            “Why?  Run off together, live happily ever after,” Maggie said.  “All we need is a plan for how you can get away.”

            Lina shook her head.  “You and your plans.”  Maggie had always been a great one for plans.

            “Yes, me and my plans.  They get things accomplished, don’t they?”  Maggie kicked her heels against the trunk.  “Now let’s see.  Have you got somewhere you can run off to, after you leave here?”

            “My family’s home is only a few days’ ride from here,” Johnny volunteered.  “We could go there.”

            Maggie looked at him thoughtfully.  “Say, you’re not a prince in disguise, are you?  And if you’re really the King of Gaicaveen, I stop planning right now.”

            “No, of course I’m not the king.  And I’m not a prince either.”  His tone was firm enough, but his eyes shifted away.

            “I don’t care if he’s a pauper,” Lina said.

            Maggie ignored that comment, more interested by the way Johnny’s eyes had shifted.  “Are you something else, though?  A duke or something like that?”

            “Well…I am sort of a minor lord, actually,” he admitted.

            Maggie was triumphant.  “I knew you were too good-looking to be an ordinary guardsman.”

            “You never told me that, Johnny,” Lina protested.

            “I just wanted to get out into the world and see what it was like not being a lord…and then I met you, and since I didn’t think there was any hope anyway…does it make a difference to you?”

            Lina’s fingers tightened around his.  “I’d love you if you were a prince or a pauper, so why not a lord?”

            She smiled at him and he smiled at her and they went on smiling for so long and so intimately that Maggie coughed and said, “I’m still here, you know.  And still thinking about a plan.”

            “Right.  Yes.  We don’t actually have one.”  Lina frowned.

            “All we really need to do is keep the other guards from following you, at least not right away,” Maggie said.  “If they didn’t realize that you’d gone…”

            “But that’s where it all becomes impossible,” Lina said.  “They know where I am all the time.”

            “But they don’t keep such a close eye on me,” Maggie said, her eyes lighting with an idea.  “We could switch places.”

            “Maggie, we don’t look that much alike.”

            “No.  However—it’s cold and windy, right?  You don’t want to become sick on the way to getting married.  Or—heaven forbid—have your nose turn red.”  Maggie picked up a silk scarf lying on the bed and whipped it around her face two or three times, covering from nose to neck.  “We both have blue eyes and curly brown hair.  If I dress like you and act like you—you know I can imitate you—they’re never going to guess.”

            “It might work.  She does look a lot like you, Lina,” Johnny said.

            Lina looked less sure.  “But it’s such a wild idea.”

            “And that’s all the more reason it will work,” Maggie insisted.  “It’s so wild, they’ll never suspect.  We’ll come up with some excuse for Johnny and me to stay behind—only really it’ll be you.  And I’ll go in your place so they won’t realize it.”

            “But they’ll figure it out as soon as you have to take the scarf off,” Johnny pointed out.  “How long could you really keep this up?  A few hours at most?”

            “What if we did it the day we’re due to arrive at the King’s castle?” Maggie said.  “That’s better anyway, because they’ll be especially wanting to press on and won’t ask questions about Johnny and me staying behind.  And when we arrive, I’ll announce I’m so tired from the journey that I just have to retire to whatever rooms they give me.  I bet I could keep this going until morning.”

            “But what happens when you do have to reveal yourself?” Lina asked.

            Maggie had her most flippant expression on.  “Maybe I won’t.  Maybe I’ll just marry the king myself and be Queen Evangelina for the rest of my life.”

            “That would only work if no one from Beaumont ever saw you again,” Johnny said.  “Starting with all those guards.”

            Maggie sighed.  “I suppose it’s a good thing that you’re so practical, Johnny.  And I suppose you’re right about this.  So I’ll tell His Royal Majesty that I’m only a humble servant and my mistress the princess ordered me to take her place, and what could a humble servant do but obey?”  She slipped off the trunk, dropped to her knees, and prostrated herself in front of Lina.  “And I’m so very, very sorry and I’ll throw myself on his mercy and beg forgiveness.”  Maggie had something of a dramatic streak too, though at least she generally knew about it when she was being dramatic.

            “What if it doesn’t work?” Lina asked.

            “It will,” Maggie said, forehead still pressed against the ground.

            “But what if it doesn’t?” Lina persisted.  “This isn’t Beaumont, where they’re used to your escapades.”

            “Our escapades,” Maggie countered.

            “All right, our escapades.  But the point is, impersonating a princess, lying to a king…you could be imprisoned.  Or worse.  Don’t you see what a huge risk you’d be taking?”

            Maggie sat up.  “I do see, Lina.  Really I do,” she said, voice soft and—for the first time—serious.  “But don’t you see that this is your one chance?  Once we reach that castle, you’re trapped into marrying a man you don’t know and don’t love.  You don’t want that life and I don’t want it for you.  You’re my dearest friend in the whole world.  Let me give you this chance.  Run off with the man you love.  Be happy.  Don’t worry about me.”

            Lina never promised not to worry.  But she did agree to the plan.

            They traveled three more days, until the head of the guards announced that they could expect to reach the King’s castle by the following afternoon.  The following morning, word came from the princess’ tent that her attendant felt ill—nothing too serious, but she couldn’t possibly travel.  As they were expected at the castle that day, the caravan couldn’t possibly delay.  The problem was happily solved when Johnny volunteered to stay behind as guard, while the rest of the company continued on with the princess.  Guarding was a duty no one else wanted, with the prospect of beds and a roof immediately ahead of them, so there was little argument.

            The two girls said a hurried good-bye in the tent, with a tight hug and admonishments each to the other to be careful.

            “And you’ve got that letter I wrote?” Lina asked.  “Where I took full responsibility for the whole mess?  And you’ll use it if you get into trouble?”

            “Yes, of course, I have it,” Maggie said—which was not a promise to use it.  She had already opened it and read it while Lina wasn’t looking.  Lina didn’t just take responsibility, she also gave directions as to where she could be found to further confirm the story.  Maggie had promised herself that she wouldn’t produce the letter unless there was a death sentence looming in her very near future.

            To keep Lina from pushing her into a counter-promise, Maggie hurried on to “Now don’t look so gloomy.  It’s not as though we’ll never see each other again.  After I talk my way out of pretending to be you, I’ll come look you up on your lordly estate.”

            “Promise you will?”

            “Of course.”  She didn’t mind promising that.  If she could do it, she would.  “And after you and Johnny are married and have lots of beautiful children, they’ll need a good nurse, right?”

            “Right,” Lina agreed, blinking hard.

            And then the head of the guards was standing outside the tent, saying, “Your Highness?  The carriage is waiting.”

            The girls hugged once more, as Lina said over Maggie’s shoulder, “Yes, I’m coming.  Just a minute.”

            Maggie stepped away from Lina, wrapped the scarf around the lower half of her face, and stepped out of the tent, the pale blue silk of Lina’s best dress rustling around her as she moved.

            “Very cold today, isn’t it?” she commented to the guard who helped her into the carriage, using her best imitation of Lina’s voice.

            “Yes, Your Highness,” he said, closing the carriage door behind her.

            She got past the midday meal by opting to eat alone in the carriage, citing the wind and the cold as reasons.  This would have been less likely to pass without questions had it been an evening meal.  In the early afternoon, the head of the guards called a halt and knocked on the carriage door, announcing that they were nearing their destination.  He helped her out of carriage and into the litter, and they continued on.  To the castle.