"Gardner Dozois - Fairy Tale" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dozois Gardner)

Even a town of this size had a few such, and the life they lead was nothing to envy or
emulate. No, she would set her sights higher.
Why not set them as high as they would go?
The Prince. She had seen him go by in a parade once, the year before, up on a
prancing roan stallion, tall and handsome, his plumed hat nodding, the silver
fastenings on his uniform gleaming in the sun. SheтАЩd even had hot dreams about him,
those nights when his ghost rather than CasimirтАЩs had visited her in her bed.
She was realistic enough to know that marriage was out of the question.
Princes didnтАЩt marry commoners, even those from families with a lot more money
than her own. That was so ingrained in her worldview that she never entertained the
possibility that the Prince would marry her, even as the remotest fantasy.
Princes did fuck commoners, though, that happened all the time, and always
had. And if they liked them well enough, sometimes they kept them. Being a royal
mistress didnтАЩt sound so bad; since she had no choice, sheтАЩd settle for that.
All she had to do was get him to want her.
Why not? He was a man, wasnтАЩt he? Every other man she knew pursued her
and tried to grope her or worse when there was nobody else around, even men three
times her age. Maybe a Prince would be no different.
And if for some reason the Prince didnтАЩt like her, she thought, with a flash of
the practical shrewdness that was so typical of her, the palace would be full of other
rich men. Somebody would want her.
There was a Ball at the palace every weekend when the King and his court
were in residency during the summer months. Her family was not rich enough for
any of them to be invited to these affairs, nor ever had been, even at their most
prosperous. But she would get in somehow.
Well, we all know what comes next, of course. The dress made in secret,
although there were no birds or mice to help her. Nor did she need anyтАФshe was,
after all, a seamstress. There were no Fairy Godmothers either, no pumpkins turned
to coaches, no magically conjured horses. She slipped out of the house while her
step-mother, a woman who had been embittered and disappointed by life, was
slowly drinking herself sodden with her nightly regimen of alternating glasses of
tisane and brandy, and walked all the way through town to the river, the night air like
velvet around her, the blood pounding in her throat, the castle slowly rising higher
and higher above the houses, blazing with lights, as she drew near.
Somehow, she got inside. Who knows how? Maybe the guards were reluctant
to stop a beautiful and well-dressed young woman who moved with easy
confidence. Maybe she walked in with a group of other party-goers. Maybe the
guards were all drunk, and she just walked by them. Maybe there were no guards, in
this sleepy backwater in a time without a major war brewing. Maybe there were
guards, but they just didnтАЩt care.
However she did it, she got in, and it was everything sheтАЩd ever dreamed of.
It was glamorous. Give them their due, the aristocracy has always known how
to do glamorous.
Although the grim Gothic tower with its battlements and crenellations and
murder-holes still loomed darkly up behind, this part of the castle had been
modernized and made into a palace instead. In the Grand Ballroom, there were
floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the whole sweep of the town, which was
stretched out below like a diorama on a tabletop, there were balconies and tapestried
alcoves with richly embroidered Oriental hangings, there were flowers everywhere,
and a polished marble floor that seemed to stretch on forever, shimmering in the light