The Princess and the Hound (24 page)

O
NCE THE BOY AND
his father had gone, there was no more bone to the rest of them. They wavered this way and that, but in less than an hour the ground was clear.

George put a hand on Henry’s shoulder and led him back inside, then told him to return to the guardroom. Henry’s ordeal was over, but George still had to face his guards and all of those who thought they had known him but discovered they had not. How many of them would still be willing to serve him at the end of the day? Would he find the palace entirely deserted?

Well, let them go.

“I’ll take you to your chamber,” George said to Marit.

“You will not,” she said stiffly.

George was startled.

“Where then?” he asked.

She folded her fingers together, a gesture he had never seen Beatrice use, though he recalled it from the shared dreams with Marit.

“I am to leave in two weeks’ time, but I have never spoken to your father,” she said.

“He is ill,” he said. “I do not know if he will be up to talking.”

“Then I shall see him, at least.”

George nodded at this. There were other things he had to do, after what had happened with the crowd. Important, urgent things. But even those could wait for a few more minutes.

The closer they got to the stairs that led to his father’s bedchamber, the more concerned George became. It was so quiet, with no hint of servants coming or going. As if death had already been here and taken everything away.

Not even four-fingered Jack was at the top of the stairs.

But the door was open. George pushed his way in, Marit behind him, and saw Jack kneeling at his father’s bedside. Dr. Gharn was by the window.

“How is he?” George asked quietly.

Jack leaped up at the sound of George’s voice and moved back toward his post. “I should not have left my position, Your Highness,” he said.

Marit stared at Dr. Gharn and would not move closer.

“If you would rather I left?” the physician said.

“Does he need you?” asked Marit in a cold voice that was very much like the one George had become used to in Beatrice.

“I can do little for him now, and that I have done already for this day.”

Marit looked at George.

“Go then,” he said.

Marit breathed only when Dr. Gharn was gone, and her color was now coming back to normal.

George touched her, to offer comfort, and she flinched from him, her hands high.

He stepped away. One step forward, two steps back, it seemed they were going.

“Is he awake?” Marit asked.

George moved toward his father, and King Davit’s eyes opened. He was weak, it was clear, but in other ways he seemed much better. He was not shaking or wheezing with every breath, and his vision seemed clear again.

“George.”

“Father, I brought the princess to see you.” He motioned to Marit.

She approached, inclining her head slightly. “King Davit.” And then she said no more.

Why had she wanted to see him then?

“Do you love him?” King Davit asked abruptly.

George saw a twitch in Marit’s face, but otherwise
she held herself as hard as a sword. That was the difference between her and Beatrice, George thought. Marit only pretended to be a sword. Beatrice was one.

“I will know the answer. He is my only son, and he deserves to be loved.”

Marit took so long to speak that George was sure she was getting ready to walk out of the chamber. Then, at last, she said, “I think I could come to love him. But he deserves more than that. You are right.” Her shoulders slumped.

“Ah,” said King Davit. “Good. I am glad that you see that. It shows me that you love him more than you know. I always believed that I could not love my wife as she deserved, to the day she died. Then I found out I was wrong. May you never find out the truth as I did.”

He turned to George. “And you?”

George felt as though he were speaking to the lord general, being asked to account for his actions.

“What do you want to know?” he asked. He was only postponing the inevitable, and he knew it.

“Do you love her?”

It was the last thing George wanted to answer at the moment. Yet he could not lie to his father, not now. He closed his eyes, though, as if hoping for some magic, after all. “Yes, I do.”

His father breathed out heavily. “I did not know if you could ever love,” he said.

“I loved Mother. And you, Father,” said George, suddenly affronted.

“Yes. You loved her. But after she was gone, you loved where duty led you,” said King Davit. “And no further. But she—she is my hope for your future. Where I have damaged, she can repair. And perhaps you can do the same for her.”

George hoped so too. If Marit would let him. But if Beatrice had been obsidian, then Marit was slate. So easy to chip off and wound. So close to the weeping girl underneath.

But wasn’t that what he loved about her? Because in that they were alike.

“I had hoped to live much longer.” King Davit closed his eyes again and sagged back into his blankets.

“Father! I’ll call Dr. Gharn!” George said immediately.

King Davit raised a hand. “Why? What could he possibly do for me now?”

“He nearly killed you,” George said bitterly.

“He did kill me. Only slowly enough that I could see all of my life before my eyes and watch it drift away from me until only what was most valuable to me was left. Some might call that a theft, George.” His eyes strayed to the door, and George knew he was thinking of four-fingered Jack. “Others might call it a blessing.”

“But—” said George.

“I had hoped to see my grandchildren someday, but I can let go of that now. So long as I know you are happy, and see this woman’s face. I can imagine my grandchildren without having to hear them cry once.”
He grinned at this, a boyish grin unlike any George had seen on his father’s face before.

“A redheaded girl. She will be beautiful, I think. And with the animal magic.”

“Spare her that,” George muttered.

“No. Don’t spare her,” said King Davit. “Or she will not grow as I have seen you grow, George.”

There was a long silence.

“George, I should not ask this.”

“Ask,” said George.

“I always hoped that you would name her for your mother.”

“Yes.” George did not hesitate.

Then Marit’s mild voice was heard. “What is your mother’s name?” she asked.

George was flustered. Of course he should not have agreed without Marit’s permission.

“Lara,” said King Davit.

“Lara. A good, strong name.”

“Thank you,” said King Davit. “I always thought it suited my wife well. She was a strong woman, in features as well as in heart. As you are strong. And as I hope that my granddaughter will be strong.”

That was the end to the conversation. George left the chamber feeling oddly comforted. It was not that he had agreed to name his daughter after his mother. It was that he and Marit had agreed that they would have a daughter together. That was something to build on,
surely. And she had said she could love him, even if she did not yet fully.

In ten minutes his father had done more than George imagined possible.

When they arrived somehow back at her door, Marit said, “I will not have that man at my wedding.”

“My father?” asked George, baffled.

“Dr. Gharn.”

“Oh.”
Of course,
thought George.

“I cannot forgive him as your father has. That is not one of my gifts, whatever they are.” She spoke as though there were stones in her mouth and she could not move her lips or tongue. Her back was very straight.

Did she expect him to deny her this one request?

“He will not be there,” George said. “And you need not see him more than now and again so long as…” George did not say the rest, that Dr. Gharn needed be in the castle only so long as his father remained alive. But she understood it.

“Then I will go back to Sarrey at the end of the week as planned until the wedding.”

George nodded, feeling cold at the thought of being parted from her for so long. Would she lose all feeling for him? Would she fall in love with another now that she was changed?

But George could hardly hold her prisoner here for fear of that. Now he had changed her, he did not own her. She must make her own choices.

“And,” said Marit, a bit of the old softness in her face. Then she put a hand to George’s shoulder, and he remembered how he had felt whenever she had circled him as a hound. At peace. Always at peace.

“We can write letters to each other, get to know each other truly,” she added.

“Letters?” George tried to content himself with that. The wedding was to be in the winter. He would have to trust in Marit. And himself.

He thought suddenly of the woods in the winter, and of the bear, and Beatrice.

“Will they come, do you think?” he asked. Marit needed no reminder which “they” he meant.

“Will you call them?”

George thought about it. There was no other way for them to know the exact day, and it was unfair of him to wish them to come if he did not tell them. “I could call all the animals in the kingdom,” he suggested. “And it would be like a tale a minstrel would tell.”

“Like King Richon and the wild man,” said Marit, smiling shyly.

“Would you like that?” George asked, ready to give her anything she asked for. So long as she asked for it and let him get it for her—that was more the difficulty.

“It would be foolish, a child’s fairy dream,” said Marit. But she did not deny it.

“I will do it then,” said George. “And the bear and Beatrice before them all.”

She laughed, a small sound constrained by a hand at her mouth. George had never heard her laugh before. It was a pleasant sound. If only she were more free with it. How many times could he get her to laugh before she left?

And what letters could he write to her that would make her laugh when she was gone?

“I love you,” he said, pressing his face next to hers.

She did not move away, but neither did she move forward.

He bent his lips to hers and kissed her lightly. Then she kissed him back—for a moment, only a moment.

“I—” She started to speak.

George held up his hand and put it to her lips. “Don’t say it. Not yet. When you are ready.”

She nodded, then kissed him again, lightly, like a little girl, and ran into her chamber.

George did not know whether to laugh or cry. He thought he did both as he moved back down to see Sir Stephen. There was much still to be done before the wedding. And things that had nothing to do with the wedding as well.

“Y
our Highness?” said Sir Stephen when he saw that it was George. “How can I serve you?”

“I want to make a proclamation,” said George, coming to the point quickly.

“A proclamation?” Sir Stephen’s surprise gave away the fact that he, at least, had not heard what had happened outside the castle that morning. “But the king—”

“The King will not object to this,” George said. He hoped he was right. His father had never done this himself, but it had always been out of concern for George. George did not want that protection anymore.

Besides, his father knew that he was dying. Whether it was a month or a year from now, George would be king very soon. It was time for the people to see him in that role.

“But it is not his proclamation?” Sir Stephen looked anxious.

George wondered if it would come down to a power struggle between them after all. As a child he had sometimes seen Sir Stephen as the man who kept him from the things that he wanted. Sir Stephen was his father’s man. Would he stand in George’s way now?

“No,” said George, watching Sir Stephen very closely.

The man paused for a long moment, his face giving no hint of his thoughts. Then he said, “I trust you, George. What is the proclamation? I assume I shall make it an official proclamation for the entire kingdom.”

“Yes,” said George. He took a breath and went straight ahead, not allowing himself to think of the consequences or dangers of his action. If he thought of that, he might become like his father and put it off until next year or the year after that, again and again, until it never happened.

Sometimes there were dangers that had to be faced, no matter the cost. Though those with animal magic had always been a minority, they must not be sacrificed anymore to the rest of the kingdom’s fear. It was just possible that the animal magic was not as isolated as George had always assumed it was. Once it was spoken of openly, without taint, there might be more and more who found they could use it. Not a minority after all.

“I want you to announce that I have the animal magic and that henceforth animal magic is not to be con
sidered an offense. In fact, write that anyone with animal magic is free to come to the castle for defense or to come to the king’s judgment to ask for redress against any wrongs. And write that those who hurt or murder others who have made no offense against them save for having the animal magic will face the king’s utmost punishment.” He said it all in one breath and then found himself gasping.

Sir Stephen did not speak for a long moment. “Are you sure, Your Highness?” he asked.

“Yes,” said George.

Sir Stephen nodded and said no more, waiting for George to speak, because this was George’s proclamation.

“Add that if animal magic is used wrongly, those hurt by it must also come to the castle to ask for judgment, and it will be fairly given. As with any power, it is both the intent of the user and the consequences that will be seen as evidence. Those with animal magic are not to consider themselves free from any justification of themselves, nor are they to be seen as above other men. Rather, they have a gift and as such should be seen as having a greater responsibility than any others to use it wisely and cautiously, for the benefit of all.”

George said this in bits and pieces, for he had not thought to compose it in his mind beforehand. He did not know if it sounded kingly at all; he hoped that Sir Stephen would give him advice on how to correct it if it needed correction.

Sir Stephen wrote it all down with a pen, then looked it over with a slight frown on his face.

“What is it? Is there something wrong?” asked George anxiously.

“It is only—” said Sir Stephen. “I wonder if you might add something about the origin of the magic and its history in our kingdom.”

George looked up blankly. “But I know almost nothing of that, only a few stories, and I do not know if there is any truth in them at all.” Or how to tell the truth from the fiction.

“Ah,” said Sir Stephen. He did not need to speak the next part aloud. It was as if George could hear him in his mind. Sir Stephen had not been his tutor all those years for nothing.

“Say, then, that I wish for any men or women who have studied animal magic, either those with it themselves or those without, to come to the castle and teach me about it. For though I have had it myself all these years, I have been forced to hide it, to keep it secret, as have so many others. And so we have not spoken together or shared the varieties of magic that are possible.

“Nor do we know what the past mistakes or glories of our magic are, save for a few tales like that of King Richon and the wild man. Ask for those who know more stories to write them down or bring them to the castle. They will be rewarded for their effort.” George felt warmed at the thought of collecting the stories himself,
becoming a scholar of the animal magic like the man Dr. Gharn had met, but here in Kendel.

George thought for a moment, then burst out in excitement. “A school, Sir Stephen. That is what we need. A school for all those who have the animal magic or those who wish to get it or to learn of it. Can you imagine it? Teachers who can speak about it openly, giving lessons in the language of animals, and…all else that there might be. Students learning, talking to one another, practicing together.”

“Where?” Sir Stephen asked.

“Here, in the castle,” said George, as if nothing could be more obvious.

“But, Your Highness, there is no space for a school such as you describe here. We have only enough bedchambers for a few visitors, and there are already the servants. Unless you are imagining the dungeon—”

“No, not the dungeon,” said George with a shudder. He forced himself to stop and leaned against the wall. The light streamed in from the window and made the whole room seem as vast and bright as the future George saw ahead.

“We shall build a school then. Near the castle,” said George. “Small at first, but able to be added to when needed.”

“Yes, Your Highness,” said Sir Stephen.

“Can that be done?”

“If you proclaim it must be so, then it will be so.”

“The money for it?”

“I shall find it somewhere,” Sir Stephen replied.

“Well, then. Is that too much for a single proclamation?” George asked.

“It is ambitious,” said Sir Stephen, “but all the parts hang together.”

George did not want to be talked into moderation. “Then have it sent out, to be read in every town, every village, every noble’s house and holdings. Wherever it must be sent.”

“At your command,” said Sir Stephen.

George dismissed him, then suddenly felt much lighter. He had not known how his secret had weighed him down. Even when he admitted the truth to the crowd and saved Henry, it had not been the same as this.

For a moment George sat down to collect himself. A minute later he had to stand again. And walk. And then move around the castle. He itched to know what people were thinking, feeling, talking about.

He went to the kitchen first, not the least because he was starving. He thought simply to observe, but as soon as Cook Elin caught sight of him, she was throwing herself toward him, kissing his face and laughing and then begging pardon and pulling herself away.

She bubbled at him something about her cousin and the animal magic and her young niece and how it would all come out right and that she had always known that George was a good boy and would do great things for
the kingdom. He ended by having a good many of Cook Elin’s pastries pushed at him as he left.

He was not received as generously everywhere else. When he went to the stables, he found the lord general staring at him with a look of disgust.

“Is anything wrong?”

The lord general spat on the ground, then spoke to the stablemaster. “I cannot work here one moment longer. I will not be around men who are corrupted by animal magic. If you would be so kind as to send word of my resignation to the king?”

The stablemaster looked to George, who nodded, then turned back to the lord general. “As you say, sir.”

The lord general stared at George for another long moment, then stalked away.

George wondered whom he would get to replace the lord general. The man had not been well liked, it was true, but he had been a tradition of a sort, and George had always believed it when he heard the old soldiers say that the lord general might have a hard heart, but he could get his men to work twice as hard as anyone else.

Nor was the lord general the only man to leave the castle with hardly a word. George heard of at least nine others who had gone, servants most of them, but one of them Lord Rochester, his father’s chamberlain and the only man who could make any sense of the castle accounts. Sir Stephen sighed and shook his head, saying that he doubted there would be any sense to be got from
the records for many years to come.

George went to Henry when it was dark, partly to make sure he had suffered no bad effects personally as a result of what had happened. Henry was in the barracks, quietly packing his things into a single satchel. The barracks had been deserted, as if to give him his privacy. George was glad to be able to speak with him alone and hoped it was a good sign from his fellow soldiers and that they did not all think as the lord general did.

But if they did, well, George would have to find new men. To go with the new lord general.

“Where are you going?” George asked.

“Home,” said Henry.

“But you can stay now.”

“Yes, and I have you to thank for that. But there is someone I left behind, someone I would very much like to speak to.”

“May I ask her name?” George said quietly.

Henry first took a breath, then nodded. “Lisette.”

“Does she love you? Enough?”

“I think so,” said Henry. “But I never felt it was right of me to ask her before now.”

“If she is worthy of you, I can see no difficulty,” George said with full confidence.

But Henry was guarded. “It is not that,” he said. “She loves her family and would do nothing to hurt them.”

“What about hurting you?” asked George.

Henry shrugged. “I have been hurt before, and I will
doubtless be hurt again. I will live with it.”

“Will you come back?”

“Oh. Yes!” He looked at George, as if in surprise. “Of course. How could I go away now? You need loyal men around you, and especially those who are…like you.”

“Say it. Say those who have the animal magic,” said George.

Henry did it, stiffly. Then he did it again, half laughing, with vigor. “I did not mean for you to think I was deserting. I have a week’s leave owed me. And I thought if I went to her quickly and came back, I would be here in time for the greatest problems. After the news has spread, you see.”

“I see.” Henry had proved himself many things. Not just a loyal friend, though that might be the most important to George personally, who had had so few friends in his life. But Henry was also farseeing and closemouthed. He was a man who knew other men and could make sacrifices. In short, he was the perfect replacement for the lord general.

“I have a job for you when you come back,” George said. “If you will take it.”

“What job is that? Master of the animals?” asked Henry.

George told him.

Henry was silent for a long time. But he did not refuse it. “It is not a reward, is it?” he asked. “A job like
that—it is enormous.”

“You are wise to see that already. But you may find others who do not look as clearly at the truth.”

“Idiots,” said Henry.

“Idiots you will have to command. If you can.”

“I will do it,” said Henry.

“Even if she does not come back with you?” asked George.

“Even so.”

George stayed long enough to see Henry off with his satchel, hurrying away despite the impending dark. When he returned to the castle, he went back to his father’s bedchamber and there saw four-fingered Jack.

For some reason, he had not thought to ask Jack’s opinion before. Had he heard about it then? Certainly he looked at George differently now, appraising him, cautiously. As if George were a person Jack had never seen before and did not trust near his king.

“I am still Prince George,” said George in defense.

“Are you?” asked Jack.

George thought over it carefully and realized that it was not so easy a question as it might seem. “I am who I was before, and more,” he said at last.

“And still your father’s son?”

“Still that, above all,” said George.

Jack nodded, satisfied. And George went in to say good night to his father and was relieved to find him breathing still.