The Birdcage
It happened so fast: Sidonie’s feet slipped out from under her, and she went down in a flurry of skirts. The gilded birdcage she had been carrying flew out of her gloved hand, bounced, rolled on the icy cobblestones in the square. The door popped open. Two of the finches stayed where they were, dazed, but one flew straight out the door. It circled up and landed on the top of the fountain in the center of the square, perching directly on the stone diadem of the graf’s grandfather, Prince Bernd von Nuremberg. Sidonie immediately burst into tears.
It had been the worst possible afternoon. She had set out with her beloved finches to the hospital, planning to make amends for what she realized had been poor manners on her part the other evening. She was going to leave her finches for the patients to enjoy through the Christmas holiday, and give Ursula her Christmas present, and perhaps, if she were lucky, see the graf…. She was wearing one of the dresses she had had made for her Salzburg trip over the New Year–dark burgundy velvet with gold embroidery that set off her hair and skin nicely–and a matching cloak trimmed with fox fur. She was pleased to be so arrayed when she ran into a group of her girlfriends in the Weihnachtsmarkt: Jana the daughter of Landgraf Markus; her cousin Amalia, the eldest daughter of the Duchess von Pfauberg; and Amalia’s sister, Isabeau. Sidonie curtsied and showed off her finches to admiring kisses and coos.
“Wherever are you taking them?” Jana asked, and Sidonie told her, lowering her gaze as she did so as not to appear to be boasting about her charity. She left out the part about hoping to see the graf.
Still, a few moments after she had taken her leave of the girls, when she stopped to tie a slipped bootlace behind one of the market stalls, she heard Jana say, “The poor thing thinks she has a chance at marrying the graf, if you can believe it!”
“You don’t have to tell me, my dear, I saw it with my own eyes at the burgermeister’s sad little ball.” Sidonie tingled all over at the sound of Amalia’s scornful tones, as if she had been plunged into icy water. “What a fool she’s making of herself–and her family.”
“It’s the mother who’s to blame,” Isabeau opined wisely. “She was a landgraf’s daughter, you know. She married down, and now she thinks she can marry her daughter back up, as if rank were a ladder you could just climb up and down willy-nilly.” The girls laughed as they moved away through the market.
Sidonie felt dizzy, sick to her stomach. When she could stand again, she took her finches and ducked around behind the stalls on the side of the market toward her house. Then, she made a dash homeward across the open square. That was when she slipped on the ice and the cage went flying.
Sidonie looked down from the finch perched on Prince Bernd’s head to find Jana, Amalia, and Isabeau all standing there clutching each other, staring at her, their mouths perfect O’s in their perfect faces. Then, a hand descended between her streaming eyes and her various humiliations.
Sidonie looked up the velvet-jacketed arm to find the handsome face of the young Knappe Ulrich von Ritter hovering over her. “Are you hurt, Fraulein?” he asked. She shook her head and wiped her cheeks. Von Ritter helped her to her feet, then retrieved the birdcage and righted it, shutting the door. He looked up at the finch on Prince Bernd’s head, held up a finger, and whistled. The little finch cocked its head, then flew down and alighted on Ulrich’s hand. He put it back in the cage. “You’re sure you’re not hurt?” he asked. But as he spoke, his eyes were not fixed on her, but rather on the three girls gawking nearby, who scurried off immediately, tittering like swallows.
“N-no,” Sidonie brushed at her skirts, checking for mud or tears in the fabric and, mercifully, finding none. “Thank you, ever so much. Preiselbeere–the finch, I mean,” she felt herself flush, “was my first, and she means so much to me. I don’t know what would have happened if she just flew away into the cold. And I can’t believe she just flew down to you when you whistled like that!”
The Knappe smiled, which pushed his cheeks up like a cherub’s. “Birds are a good judge of character,” he said simply. He was a few years Sidonie’s senior, the younger son of the graf’s chief councillor, Sir Bernard. Sidonie had heard her father say he was squiring for a graf who was Prince John’s chief retainer in Salzburg. Ulrich lifted the birdcage and held out an arm to her. “May I walk you home, my lady? The ice is perilous this evening.”
Sidonie smiled up at him as she put a gloved hand lightly on his forearm. “You may, my Lord.”
The Rookery 