Rosamonde

By Christopher Bunn

The real story of Sleeping Beauty has never been told. At least, not until this moment. Rosamonde is the reluctant princess of Bordavia, a tiny, peaceful country in central Europe. Life is perfectly pleasant until an aggressive prince arrives, complete with a hot air balloon and romantic designs on Rosamonde's hand. What's a girl to do? Pigs, trickery and derring-do abound, along with a great deal of napping, of course.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christopher Bunn
• Release date: Apr 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9781533719836

Book preview

ROSAMONDE

You’re probably familiar with the story of Sleeping Beauty. I’ve always thought it a yawn, as far as stories go. It’s been told many different ways, some bad, some decent, and some just plain awful. You know how it goes. The wicked fairy gets irritated that she’s not invited to the christening of the new baby princess, so she puts her under a curse that really is over the top in comparison to the offense. The girl grows up and, of course, is irritatingly beautiful. One day she pricks her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and falls asleep for a hundred years until some sap of a handsome prince comes along and kisses her, thus waking her and breaking the curse. They live happily ever after, only to die of old age. Except the old age and dying part isn’t in the story because people aren’t fond of reading about elderly people dying.

Anyway, that story is a pack of lies. I should know. The real story was written about me.

My name is Rosamonde Baden-Lenox, and I am the only child of the king and queen of Bordavia. Bordavia, as you know if you stayed awake during geography class, is a little country. It’s a land of forests and rivers and deep, dark valleys. Bordavia lies just to the west of Lune and east across the Bordavian River from the empire of Delmania. Our country isn’t known for much. We don’t have the rubies and fantastic wealth of Lune. Nor do we have the sprawling farmlands, cattle, and sea ports of Delmania. Neither do we have much magic in our little country, certainly not in comparison to the famous talents of the rest of Europe. What we do have are trees, mushrooms, truffle hunting in the autumn, and vineyards that produce some excellent wines. Bordavia is also, if I may modestly say so, famed for the beautiful roses we grow. Red, pink, white, orange, all the colors of fire and starlight and sunlight—Bordavian botanists have coaxed such hues into rose petals down through the centuries. To be honest, a great deal of our success with roses is due to our wonderful, rich Bordavian soil. It is of such excellent quality that everything and anything grows in it with vigor and health. Naturally, the rose trade is our greatest pride, besides our land and the people themselves. Our men also have some of the finest beards in the world. It gives them something to do during the cold winter months.

As we are the royal family, we live in a small but tidy castle in the town of Bordu. The Bordu River winds away on one side of the town. On the other side is the Bordu Forest, which is a perfect blend of fir trees and oaks and pines, sprinkled with a mix of boars and deer and brigands and other forest creatures. The castle is not much to speak of, but it’s our castle, complete with a moat, several towers, a dungeon that we use for storing jams and jellies and root vegetables, and a marvelous bell tower standing tall above it all. A magical bell tower, if I may correct myself; for those bells, when rung, can be heard loud and clear all across the land of Bordavia. In fact, any noise made in the room at the top of the tower can be heard all across the land, which is why my father banned me for life from the tower when I was six years old. It had something to do with a rooster. I can’t remember exactly. It was a long time ago.

I come from a family of narcoleptics. My mother fell fast asleep during her own coronation and only awoke when the Russian ambassador, who was roaring drunk by this time, climbed out onto the ballroom chandelier and brought it crashing down onto the head of the British ambassador. This, as anyone knows, was the real cause of the Crimean War. My Uncle Milo, while out foxhunting one day, fell sound asleep. His horse had crossed the Swiss border by the time Uncle woke up. He was thrown in jail for not having a passport. Naturally, he promptly fell asleep and was still snoring when his brother, my father, came to bail him out.

Father, of course, falls asleep at the slightest provocation. I suspect that, sometimes, he does this on purpose. Whatever the case may be, this habit of his becomes more frequent whenever Grandmamma Baden-Lenox, that’s Father’s mother, is at the castle for a visit. Grandmamma is a stern, stoutish woman. She has a wisp of hair on her chin and she’s extremely fond of conversation, particularly when she’s the one who’s talking. She’s also fond of throwing vases at footmen and upbraiding shopkeepers if they don’t have the sort of cheese she wants. She does not have narcolepsy.

Mother, however, has full-blown narcolepsy. You might wonder why, as she is a Devereaux by birth, and only a Baden-Lenox by marriage. Isn’t narcolepsy a genetic trait, you might ask? Not always, I’m sad to say. I will tell you the strange truth of the matter.

It all began because of Grandmamma Baden-Lenox, long before even Father and Mother were born. In the year 1832, when she was twenty-three, she was wintering in Monaco, as she did every year. She had a great love of bridge, even at such a young age, and would play each afternoon in the sunroom of Le Hotel Chevalier, where she kept her suite. The hotel staff would arrange for the players to be grouped according to temperament. One day Grandmamma Baden-Lenox had the misfortune to be seated alongside the Duchess de la Fontaine, a woman of even sterner disposition than Grandmamma and, it was whispered in impolite company, possessed of faery blood. Grandmamma made the mistake of becoming loquacious during the second hand. The duchess, who took bridge seriously, had some sharp words with her. Grandmamma had some even sharper words with the duchess. The duchess, whose bad temper was exacerbated by indigestion from an overindulgence in magrets de canard aux cerises at lunch, muttered a faery curse under her breath and then, her temper much improved, went on to win the hand.

When Mother first told me the story, I thought it odd that the duchess would select a curse of narcolepsy. She could have chosen a myriad of other curses: a gaggle of talkative ghosts forever hiding under