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Chapter Text

When Curdie was a very little boy, having not quite reached the age of reason, and not yet left the age of mischief – as very many not so little boys are, his mother dressed him in his Sunday best and washed behind his ears even though it was a Wednesday, and trotted him down the mountain side to the Big House.  There, they lined on the road with very many of their neighbours.

After a while, a great carriage drawn by white horses and picked out in gold, with riders before and riders behind, drew up.  Curdie’s mother tightened her hand on his so that he would pay attention as two servants from the Big House hurried out with a cushioned stool and set it before the carriage door.  A woman with a great drape of veil about her head that billowed out like a sail stepped daintily out of it, carrying a bundle of white lace and fine lawn cotton.

“Is that the Queen, mother?” Curdie asked.

“No,” his mother said gruffly.  “The Queen is poorly.  Very poorly, the Steward says.  That’s our new princess.  Irene, Steward says.”

Curdie craned his head to see if the new baby was pretty.  But what little he could see without the lace and cloths was rather red and squished looking.

“She were a lady, was the Queen,” his mother rambled on.  “This house belongs to her family, and they’d come out here in the summertimes, to take some clean air and sunshine.  An’ we’d see ‘em.”

Curdie tugged on her arm and swung on it, beginning to be bored.

“I worked there, young man, a few years gone.  When I was to be married to your father, there was nothing for it but for Her Majesty to come down to the kitchens to wish me well.  For me!  A scullery maid!  Three good pots she gave me, and a lace petticoat.  What use have I for a dainty thing like that, say I, married to a miner, and she kisses me, and says it’s to remind me o’ how I’m lovely.”

Curdie had not previously thought of his mother as beautiful, she had quite an ordinary workmanlike sort of face.  But if the Queen had said it…

His mother tugged on Curdie’s arm back, and they began to walk on home up the mountain.  “That’s a lady for you, lad.  That’s how you can tell someone’s a princess, or queen, or king.  Not fine clothes and carriages.  A princess could be dressed in rags and smuts, an’ you’d still know.  Because they’ll allus tell you the truth, an’ they’ll allus see the best of you.”

Curdie considered this as they walked home and he let her undress him into his ordinary workmanlike clothes.

“But mother,” he said, sticking to the one point where he had the evidence of his eyes.  (He was almost at the age of reason, as I have said.)  But you don’t have a lace petticoat.”

“It’s made over into your christening gown, isn’t it?” his mother said, blushing.  “Cause I like to remember.”

Chapter Text

The winter was starting to pass off from the great mountain.  Shy little buttercups and primroses – and tender snowdrops – were emerging from the ground, and yet the great height of hill and rock and pinnacle was still dressed in patches of white that yet hid from the sun.

Irene had been dressed in her Sunday best, because it was a Sunday, and after her prayers had been dutifully said had begged good Lootie to take her up the mountain to see the fresh new flowers.

There was a great bank of primroses in a shaded part of wood midway up the mountain, and Irene was having a grand chatter with them, tracing her fingers down the edges of their soft petals, and giving them all the gossip of the winter.  The girl’s nurse was seated some little way apart, resting her tired legs.  Irene liked to climb high upon the mountain.

Irene looked up.  “Hello,” she said to the woman and boy who stood watching her, shadowed by the sun at their backs.  “I’m bidding good afternoon to the primroses, who have been under the ground for such a long time.”

The woman bobbed an awkward countrywoman’s curtsey.  “Good afternoon, Princess Irene,” said Mrs Peterson.

“Oh no,” Irene said, “I’m just Irene.  I think it’s awkward having too many names.  I’m Irene after my huge great-grandmother.”  She walked forward into the light and offered her hand Mrs Peterson.  Then she turned: “why you are Curdie, the boy who rescued me and Lootie that very bad night.”

Curdie touched his forehead.  His Sundays were the one day free from the mine, from the dark moist air, the day when he could spend his hours with the sun hung up bright in the air where it belonged.  He liked to take his dear mother out for a walk when the weather was fine enough.

“Lootie, my Lootie!” the little girl was calling.  “Here is the boy.  You remember, the boy with the nice hands who helped us when we were frightened in the dark.”

The nurse roused from her slumber for, although she was ashamed to own to it, Nurse Lootie had dozed off in the sun.  “Oh, Irene,” she scolded.  “It’s that great dirty boy.  Stay away from him, dear, you must begin to learn how to behave like a princess.”

“I am,” Irene said, drawing herself up.  “I promised him a kiss as my thanks.”

Lootie gave a great huff then and muttered about what the king would think of this, and perhaps it was because of the woman’s slightly foolish irritation that he said what he said.

“I’ve no smuts on me now, Nurse Lootie.  A man’s a man for all that.  But truly, Princess Irene, I would never hold a lady to a promise made when she was frightened.  For I do try to be a man, and my father would agree with me.”

“Thank you for calling me a lady,” Irene said.  “I don’t think you can tell something like that about a person, just by looking.  It has to be a knowing.  I will tell my king-papa and he will be pleased with me.  Will you bend your head to me?”

Curdie knelt and let the princess kiss his cheek, as solemnly as if he were being knighted.  Then he bowed very formally to her and her nurse, before offering his arm to his mother and strolling away up the mountain. 

“Well,” said Mrs Peterson.

“Well,” agreed Curdie, with a wink.

Behind them, they could hear little Irene chattering away again to her nurse.

“ – because, Lootie, Curdie’s mother has the loveliest gentle hands, and is quite beautiful, nearly as beautiful as my huge great-grandmother – “

Curdie turned to his mother – neat and tidy in her best kerchief, and well-scrubbed for Sunday, with her work roughened hands, and weathered face, and her everyday ordinary features that had always bloomed with kindness.

“You are lovelier than anyone’s grandmother, dear dear mother, except perhaps when I have my own child,” he said as he kissed her in turn.  “Even if a princess has said it.”