The Golden Braid Read online

  ADVANCE PRAISE FOR The Golden Braid

  “Melanie Dickerson’s The Golden Braid reimagines a beloved childhood fairy tale with wit, heart-thumping action and wonderfully endearing characters. Her mastery of faith-woven tales enveloped in the charm of a true storybook world simply can’t be beat. It’s enchanting from once upon a time to the very end.”

  —KRISTY CAMBRON, AUTHOR OF THE RINGMASTER’S WIFE AND THE HIDDEN MASTERPIECE SERIES

  “The Golden Braid is a delightful, page-turning retelling of the story of Rapunzel. Dickerson brings this familiar fairy tale to life with a fresh and unique plot that is full of complex characters, a sweet romance, and danger at every turn. Rapunzel’s search to understand her place in the medieval world is a timeless identity struggle that modern readers will relate to. Her growing courage and faith are inspirational and will have readers cheering her on and sad to see the story come to an end.”

  —JODY HEDLUND, BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF AN UNCERTAIN CHOICE

  “Fans of Melanie Dickerson’s fairy tale retellings will love the chance to return to Hagenheim with Rapunzel in a story about the price of revenge, the rewards of forgiveness, and the unfailing love of God.”

  —STEPHANIE MORRILL, AUTHOR OF THE ELLIE SWEET SERIES

  “If you like beautiful medieval romance that leaves you with weak knees and butterflies in your stomach, then Melanie Dickerson’s latest book, The Golden Braid, is for you. I fell in love with sweet, determined Rapunzel from the very first chapter, and Gerek’s tortured past made me ache for him to succeed. Packed with mystery and adventure, Melanie’s tales never disappoint!”

  —KATIE CLARK, AUTHOR OF THE ENSLAVED SERIES

  “Readers who love getting lost in a fairy-tale romance will cheer for Rapunzel’s courage as she rises above her overwhelming past. The surprising way Dickerson weaves threads of this enchanting companion novel with those of her other Hagenheim stories is simply delightful. Her fans will love it.”

  —JILL WILLIAMSON, CHRISTY AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE BLOOD OF KINGS TRILOGY AND THE KINSMAN CHRONICLES

  PRAISE FOR The Huntress of Thornbeck Forest

  “Readers will find themselves supporting the romance between the sweet yet determined Odette and the insecure but hardworking Jorgen from the beginning. Dickerson spins a retelling of Robin Hood with emotionally compelling characters, offering hope that love may indeed conquer all as they unite in a shared desire to serve both the Lord and those in need.”

  —RT BOOK REVIEWS, 4½ STARS

  “I’m always amazed at the way Melanie Dickerson creates a world. Her writing is as fresh and unique as anyone I know, and I am always pulled into the story and taken far away on a wonderful, romantic, and action-packed journey.”

  —MARY CONNEALY, AUTHOR OF NOW AND FOREVER, BOOK TWO OF THE WILD AT HEART SERIES

  “Melanie Dickerson does it again! Full of danger, intrigue, and romance, this beautifully crafted story will transport you to another place and time.”

  —SARAH E. LADD, AUTHOR OF THE CURIOSITY KEEPER AND THE WHISPERS ON THE MOORS SERIES

  “Melanie Dickerson’s The Huntress of Thornbeck Forest is a lovely, romantic read set during one of the most fascinating time periods. Featuring a feisty, big-hearted heroine and a hero to root for, this sweet medieval tale is wrapped in a beautiful journey of faith that had me flipping pages well after my bedtime. Delightful!”

  —TAMARA LEIGH, USA TODAY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF BARON OF GODSMERE

  “The Huntress of Thornbeck Forest reminds me of why adults should read fairy tales. Author Melanie Dickerson shoots straight to the heart with a cast of compelling characters, an enchanting story world, and romance and suspense in spades. Reaching “The End” was regrettable—but oh, what an ending!”

  —LAURA FRANTZ, AUTHOR OF THE MISTRESS OF TALL ACRE

  “For stories laden with relatable heroines, romantically adventurous plots, once-upon-a-time settings, and engaging writing, Melanie Dickerson is your go-to author. Her books are on my never-to-be-missed list.”

  —KIM VOGEL SAWYER, AUTHOR OF WHEN MERCY RAINS

  “Ms. Dickerson deftly captures the flavor of life in medieval Germany in a sweet tale filled with interesting characters that will surely capture readers’ hearts.”

  —KATHLEEN MORGAN, AUTHOR OF THESE HIGHLAND HILLS SERIES, EMBRACE THE DAWN, AND CONSUMING FIRE

  OTHER BOOKS BY MELANIE DICKERSON

  THE MEDIEVAL FAIRY TALE NOVELS

  The Huntress of Thornbeck Forest

  The Beautiful Pretender (Available May 2016)

  YOUNG ADULT

  The Princess Spy

  The Captive Maiden

  The Fairest Beauty

  The Merchant’s Daughter

  The Healer’s Apprentice

  Copyright © 2015 by Melanie Dickerson

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Inc.

  Thomas Nelson titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected].

  Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

  Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.

  ISBN 978-0-7180-2627-1 (eBook)

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Dickerson, Melanie.

  The golden braid / Melanie Dickerson.

  pages cm

  Summary: In medieval Hagenheim, Germany, seventeen-year-old Rapunzel asks God for guidance as she tries to dutifully serve and obey her unpredictable mother, yet fulfill her dream of learning to read and marrying.

  ISBN 978-0-7180-2626-4 (hardback)

  [1. Mothers and daughters--Fiction. 2. Love--Fiction. 3. Christian life--Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.D5575Go 2015

  [Fic]--dc23

  2015020898

  15 16 17 18 19 20 RRD 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chap
ter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Acknowledgments

  Discussion Questions

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Late winter, 1413, the village of Ottelfelt, Southwest of Hagenheim, the Holy Roman Empire

  Rapunzel, I wish to marry you.”

  At that moment, Mother revealed herself from behind the well in the center of the village, her lips pressed tightly together.

  The look Mother fixed on Wendel Gotekens was the one that always made Rapunzel’s stomach churn.

  Rapunzel shuffled backward on the rutted dirt road, “I am afraid I cannot marry you.”

  “Why not?” He leaned toward her, his wavy hair unusually tame and looking suspiciously like he rubbed it with grease. “I have as much land as the other villagers. I even have two goats and five chickens. Not many people in Ottelfelt have both goats and chickens.”

  She silently repeated the words an old woman had once told her. The truth is kinder than a lie.

  “I do not wish to marry you, Wendel.” She had once seen him unleash his ill temper on one of his goats when it ran away from him. That alone would have been enough to make her lose interest in him, if she had ever felt any.

  He opened his mouth as if to protest further, but he became aware of Mother’s presence and turned toward her.

  “Frau Gothel, I—”

  “I shall speak to you in a moment.” Her mother’s voice was icy. “Rapunzel, go home.”

  Rapunzel hesitated, but the look in Mother’s eyes was so fierce, she turned and hurried down the dirt path toward their little house on the edge of the woods.

  Aside from asking her to marry him, Wendel’s biggest blunder had been letting Mother overhear him.

  Rapunzel made it to their little wattle-and-daub structure and sat down, placing her head in her hands, muffling her voice. “Father God, please don’t let Mother’s sharp tongue flay Wendel too brutally.”

  Mother came through the door only a minute or two later. She looked around their one-room home, then began mumbling under her breath.

  “There is nothing to be upset about, Mother,” Rapunzel said. “I will not marry him, and I told him I wouldn’t.”

  Her mother had that frantic look in her eyes and didn’t seem to be listening. Unpleasant things often happened when Mother got that look. But she simply snatched her broom and went about sweeping the room, muttering unintelligibly.

  Rapunzel was the oldest unmarried maiden she knew, except for the poor half-witted girl in the village where they’d lived several years ago. That poor girl drooled and could barely speak a dozen words. The girl’s mother had insisted her daughter was a fairy changeling and would someday be an angel who would come back to earth to punish anyone who mistreated her.

  Mother suddenly put down her broom. “Tomorrow is a market day in Keiterhafen. Perhaps I can sell some healing herbs.” She began searching through her dried herbs on the shelf attached to the wall. “If I take this feverfew and yarrow root to sell, I won’t have any left over,” she mumbled.

  “If you let me stay home, I can gather more for you.”

  Her mother stopped what she was doing and stared at her. “Are you sure you will be safe without me? That Wendel Gotekens—”

  “Of course, Mother. I have my knife.”

  “Very well.”

  The next morning Mother left before the sun was up to make the two-hour walk to Keiterhafen. Rapunzel arose a bit later and went to pick some feverfew and yarrow root in the forest around their little village of Ottelfelt. After several hours of gathering and exploring the small stream in the woods, she had filled two leather bags, which she hung from the belt around her waist. This should put Mother in a better mood.

  Just as Rapunzel reentered the village on her way back home, three boys were standing beside the lord’s stable.

  “Rapunzel! Come over here!”

  The boys were all a few years younger than she was.

  “What do you want?” Rapunzel yelled back.

  “Show us that knife trick again.”

  “It’s not a trick.” She started toward them. “It is a skill, and you will never learn it if you do not practice.”

  Rapunzel pulled her knife out of her kirtle pocket as she reached them. The boys stood back as she took her stance, lifted the knife, and threw it at the wooden building. The knife point struck the wood and held fast, the handle sticking out perfectly horizontal.

  One boy gasped while another whistled.

  “Practice, boys.”

  Rapunzel yanked her knife out of the wall and continued down the dusty path. She had learned the skill of knife throwing in one of the villages where she and Mother had lived.

  Boys and old people were quick to accept her, an outsider, better than girls her own age, and she tried to learn whatever she could from them. An old woman once taught her to mix brightly colored paints using things easily found in the forest, which Rapunzel then used to paint flowers and vines and butterflies on the houses where she and Mother lived. An older man taught her how to tie several types of knots for different tasks. But the one skill she wanted to learn the most had been the hardest to find a teacher for.

  She walked past the stone manor house, with the lord’s larger house just behind it and the courtyard in front of it. On the other side of the road were the mill, the bakery, and the butcher’s shop. And surrounding everything was the thick forest that grew everywhere man had not purposely cleared.

  Endlein, one of the village girls, was drawing water from the well several feet away. She glanced up and waved Rapunzel over.

  Rapunzel and her mother were still considered strangers in Ottelfelt as they had only been there since Michaelmas, about half a year. She hesitated before walking over.

  Endlein fixed her eyes on Rapunzel as she drew near. “So, Rapunzel. Do you have something to tell me? Some news of great import?” She waggled her brows with a smug grin, pushing a strand of brown hair out of her eyes.

  “No. I have no news.”

  “Surely you have something you want to say about Wendel Gotekens.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Endlein lifted one corner of her mouth. “Perhaps you do not know.”

  “Know what?”

  “That your mother has told Wendel he cannot ever marry you because the two of you are going away from Ottelfelt.”

  Rapunzel’s stomach turned a somersault like the contortionists she had seen at the Keiterhafen fair.

  She should have guessed Mother would decide to leave now that a young man had not only shown interest in her but had declared his wish to marry her. The same thing happened in the last two villages where they had lived.

  Rapunzel turned toward home.

  “Leaving without saying fare well?” Endlein called after her.

  “I am not entirely sure we are leaving,” Rapunzel called back. “Perhaps Mother will change her mind and we shall stay.”

  She hurried down the road, not even turning her head to greet anyone, even though the baker’s wife stopped to stare and so did the alewife. She continued to the little wattle-and-daub cottage that was half hidden from the road by thick trees and bushes. The front door was closed, even though it was a warm day for late winter.

  Rapunzel caught sight of the colorful vines and flowers she had only just finished painting on the white plaster walls and sighed. Oh well. She could simply paint more on their next house.

  Pushing the door open, Rapunzel stopped. Her mother was placing their folded coverlet into the trunk.

  “So it is true? We are leaving again?”

  “Why do you say ‘again’? We’ve never left here before.” She had that airy tone she used when she couldn’t look Rapunzel in the eye.

  “But why? Only because Wendel said he wanted to marry me? I told you I would not marry him even if you approved of him.”

  “You don’t know what you would do if he shou
ld say the right thing to you.” Her tone had turned peevish as she began to place their two cups, two bowls, pot, and pan into the trunk.

  “Mother.”

  “I know you, Rapunzel. You are quick to feel sorry for anyone and everyone.” She straightened and waved her hand about, staring at the wall as though she were talking to it. “What if Wendel cried and begged? You might tell him you would marry him. He might beg you to show him your love. You might . . . you might do something you would later regret.”

  “I would not.” Rapunzel’s breath was coming fast now, her face hot. It wasn’t the first time Mother had accused her of such a thing.

  “You don’t want to marry a poor, wretched farmer like that Wendel, do you? Who will always be dirty and have to scratch out his existence from the ground? Someone as beautiful as you? Men notice you, as well they might. But none of them are worthy of you . . . none of them.” It was as if she had forgotten she was speaking to Rapunzel and was carrying on to herself.

  “Mother, you don’t have to worry that I will marry someone unworthy.” Rapunzel could hardly imagine marrying anyone. One had to be allowed to talk to a man before she could marry him, and talking to men was something her mother had always discouraged. Vehemently.

  Mother did not respond, so Rapunzel went to fold her clothes and pack her few belongings.

  As she gathered her things, she felt no great sadness at the prospect of leaving Ottelfelt. She always had trouble making friends with girls near her own age, and here she had never lost her status as an outsider. But the real reason she felt no regret was because of what she wanted so very badly, and it was not something she could get in tiny Ottelfelt.

  Rapunzel was at least nineteen years old, and she could stay in Ottelfelt without her mother if she wanted to. However, it would be difficult and dangerous—unheard of—unless she was married, since she had no other family. But if they went to a large town, there would certainly be many people who knew how to read and might be willing to teach her.

  “Mother, you promised someday you would find someone who could teach me to read. Might we go to a large town where there is a proper priest who knows Latin, a place where there might dwell someone who can teach me to read and write?” She held her breath, watching her mother, whose back was turned as she wrapped her fragile dried herbs in cloths.