Bella at Midnight Read Online Free Page B

just held on to me tighter. I had the kitten in my other hand, and it was trying to get away. I was very unhappy.
    â€œI’ll take her, Mama,” Will said. He grabbed me around the waist and swung me up onto his back to “ride horse” as he sometimes did at home. It was at that moment—as I grabbed Will’s shoulders to keep from falling—that I dropped the kitten!
    I screamed and screamed, but the crowd kept surging forward. There was no going back, and my heart just burst open with pain! I wailed with all the force in my little body until a man behind us whacked me across the backside and ordered me to “stop that noise!”
    No one had ever struck me before, and I was stunned.
    Just then there were shouts of “to the right, to the right,” and the crowd grew even more compressed—solid bodies, we were, and sliding sideways. Ahead I could see the cause of it: the duke’s men were riding out. A long file of knights and foot soldiers streamed from the castle, ready to take on the raiding party. The villagers cheered.
    Once inside the castle walls, Mama found us a place in the courtyard, crowded already with people and their animals and belongings. We would sleep that night in the great hall, but as the day was fine, we stayed outdoors till dark. Papa was busy helping with the sheep.
    Prince Julian came looking for us shortly after we arrived. He was dressed splendidly in black and gold, with the royal coat of arms upon his tunic and a real sword at his belt. He was seven or eight, I suppose, and smitten with war fever. He told us breathlessly how he had strapped on his cousin’s spurs and helped him don his armor. Then he saw that I had been crying.
    â€œWhat’s the matter with Bella?”
    I hid my face in Mama’s lap and would not look at him.
    â€œShe lost her kitten in the crowd,” Mama said, stroking my hair. “Poor wee thing! Then Robert Miller slapped her when she cried.”
    Hearing her speak of it, I wailed even louder. I wept because the soldiers were coming. I wept because we had been forced from our home and had left my poppet behind. And I wept because the miller had hurt me. But most of all, I wept because I had lost my kitten—and it had been my fault ! I had not understood that I had to protect it; I had not understood that it could die! And so, because I had been careless, that soft, living creature, which only moments before had been playing so charmingly in our yard, was now crushed and ruined! And no one— no one —had the power to bring it back! Oh, how it frightened me, that terrible first experience of guilt and death!
    Julian sat down beside me and took me onto his lap. “Hush, Princess Bella,” he whispered, “and I will tell you a story about your kitten.” I nestled into his embrace and began to feel safe again.
    My kitten was a twin, Julian explained, so he was known as “Kitty-Pair-of-Kitties.” His brother was always good. He never bit or scratched. He caught lots of mice but always disposed of them properly. He had no fleas and kept his whiskers clean. He was, in other words, of no interest whatsoever.
    Kitty-Pair-of-Kitties was just the opposite. He was a perfect rascal and had one hair-raising adventure after another. One day, when he was still only a tiny kitten, he was accidentally dropped into a crowd of people hurrying into a castle. But he was quick on his paws, our hero! The moment he landed, he leaped nimbly onto the back of an ugly man (who was in the habit of smacking poor, innocent little girls) and dug his claws deep into the man’s back so that he shrieked like a demon and flung Kitty-Pair-of-Kitties into the bushes, where he landed safely.
    Then, as he was hungry and as he thought it likely that someone (being in a hurry) might have left some cream in a butter churn, he hurried off to investigate. Naturally he found one straightaway. He took a flying leap from a