Heartless (15 page)

13

Another suitor announced his intention of paying his respects at Oriana Palace.

“Iubdan’s beard, they’re thicker ’an flies in July, these wooers of yours, Miss Princess!” said Nurse.

“Who is it this time?” Una asked. She scarcely glanced up from the
Bane of Corrilond
tapestry when Nurse entered the room bringing word. She found herself less able to work up any measure of excitement over the matter than before. So far suitors had afforded her more distress than anything.

“The Duke of Shippening,” Nurse said. “A powerful man, master of Capaneus, the greatest port city on all the Continent!”

Una paused with her needle pulled partway through a bean man’s eye. “The Duke of . . . But Nurse, he’s older than Father!”

“A sturdy age, practically the prime of life.”

“Practically?”

“Close enough, anyway. And his estates are – ”

“He’s been called the largest man south of Beauclair!”

“As I said, he is quite wealthy – ”

“Regarding his girth, not his riches!”

Nurse sniffed. “Good health is always desirable in a spouse. Why, my Uncle Balbo was a man of no mean scope, but he always . . .”

Una ceased to hear Nurse champion the virtues of famous Uncle Balbo as she stared in horror down at her needlework. The bean man she was currently working had his mouth open in a silent scream as he fled the onslaught of the flaming threads. Una felt her own face mirroring his expression. “The Duke of Shippening?” She closed her eyes. “Why me? Why couldn’t some other princess be blessed with such suitors?”

Before Nurse had quite run out of steam for her monologue, Una leapt up and fled the room, deaf to Nurse’s cries of, “Where are you going now, Miss Princess? If you go off in that Wood of yours and come back a mass of burrs, just see if I’ll – ”

The door shut, and Una hastened down the hall, hardly knowing where she went. For all the grandeur of Oriana Palace, with its hundreds of rooms and sweeping corridors and pillared halls, she felt trapped like a bird in a cage. Not even the gardens seemed welcoming once she got out into them, for rather than enjoying the summer beauty, she felt aware only of the walls rising all around. So she gathered her skirts and made once more for her beloved Wood.

Five weeks had passed since Prince Aethelbald had taken himself away, and summer was bursting with full glory, including gnats and bugs. But as soon as she stepped into the shadows of Goldstone Wood, the insects disappeared and the heat of the sun passed into coolness. She followed familiar landmarks down to the Old Bridge.

The Duke of Shippening?

All romance seemed to have vanished from life in one fell swoop. She might as well give it all up now and begin preparing herself for the role of spinster princess of Parumvir –

“Ouch! That
was
my foot.”

Una screamed and leapt back. “Oh, Leonard! It’s you!”

Sitting in the shade of a spreading oak was the jester. He was propped with his hands behind his head and his feet spread out before him, facing the stream and the Old Bridge. He drew back one foot and rubbed it.

“Did I step on you?” Una asked. She felt the blotches leaping into their accustomed places and self-consciously covered her face with her hand.

“No,” said the jester. He rose politely, dusting dirt and bracken from his trousers, then bowed with all the courtesy of a lord. “You kicked me. Hard. Like unto broke the bone!” But then he saw the distress on her face and shook his head. “No, m’lady, you scarcely touched me. You appeared so set on your path, I feared if I didn’t speak up, you might walk right on into the stream and drown without noticing.”

“Without noticing you or without noticing drowning?”

“Both, probably.” He grinned. “Do you come here often?”

Una nodded. She found herself reminded suddenly of her meeting with Aethelbald in this same spot, many weeks ago now. But she shook that thought away. Aethelbald was gone, and if all went as she expected, he’d never return. She folded her arms and regarded the jester. “What are you doing out here?”

He inclined his head. “You mean, of course, don’t you have a certain amount of mopping or sweeping, or some such menial task you could be attending to as we speak?”

“I didn’t – ”

“But in fact, m’lady, this humble riffraff has already completed his quotient of demeaning labor for the morning and was given the afternoon off to practice his foolishness. And he needs the practice badly enough, for he is beginning to fear that he shall have to give up this brilliant career.”

“What? Why?”

“Why? She asks me why?” Leonard picked up a handful of acorn caps and started juggling them as he spoke. “Three times,” he said, “three times I witnessed the princess yawn last night as I sang. Not once, not twice, but thrice! And yet m’lady asks me why.”

“Don’t be silly,” Una said.

“Can’t be helped. It’s my job.”

“But I didn’t yawn when you sang, Leonard!”

“Then why did you cover your mouth with your handkerchief? I saw it with my own eyes!” He bowed his head, the picture of dejection, but continued juggling the acorns at lightning speed.

“I was trying to keep from laughing too hard!” Una said, her eyes darting as they tried to follow the progress of the acorns. “I was. So you see, you must continue your brilliant career, jester. Where would my amusement come from if you abandoned it?”

He looked up. “Do I indeed amuse you, m’lady?”

“You amuse me vastly.” She shook her head. “Silly, how could I not be amused? Why, you’ve gone and tied bells to your elbows and knees. Just when I thought you couldn’t look more ridiculous!”

“I am droll, though, am I not?” With that he tossed the acorns up in the air with feigned clumsiness; a trick which he must have practiced a thousand times, for it took skill to make each one, though they appeared to fly at random, land on his head, one after the other. He made a different face as each struck, and Una had to laugh.

“You snicker at me,” he said, shaking a fist at her, “but I know that you are secretly jealous. ‘Ah!’ the lady sighs, ‘if only
I
could wear bells upon my elbows, then my life should be complete!’ ”

“Heaven forbid,” Una said. “Oriana has room for only one Fool, I believe.”

“Especially so great a fool as I,” the jester replied without a smile. “And what brings you down here, Princess Una?”

She sighed. “Suitors.”

“You make it sound like the descending hordes. How many this time?”

“The Duke of Shippening.”

“Ah. Comparable to a half dozen at least.” Leonard turned and strode to the Old Bridge, but he didn’t step onto it. Instead he climbed down the bank to the rocks alongside the stream and began collecting pebbles. He juggled them a few moments, then tossed them back into the stream and searched for more.

Una took a seat on the bridge and dangled her feet over the edge, watching the jester. “Have you ever,” she began, then paused, considering her words. “Have you ever dreamed of one thing for so long, wanted nothing more than to have that dream fulfilled, only to find out that maybe it wasn’t what you actually wanted all along?”

He juggled four stones lightly. “I believe that’s called growing up.” He switched to one hand, the little rocks flashing wet in the sun.

Una watched without actually seeing and continued to think aloud. “But then you find yourself lost without your dream.” She toyed with her opal ring, twisting it around on her finger and watching the light reflecting in its depths. “Like half your heart is gone right along with it.”

Leonard tossed the four stones out into the stream in a quick series of splashes. “Dreams are tricky business, m’lady. It’s best to hold on to what you know, not what you want. Know your duty, know your path, and do everything you can to achieve what you have set out to do. Don’t let dreams get in your way. Dreams will never accomplish the work of firm resolve.”

Una looked at him, pushing wisps of loose hair out of her face. “What have you resolved, Leonard, that you won’t stop for dreams?”

He did not turn to her but stared out at the water. The gurgling current had swallowed his stones with scarcely a ripple. She watched him fix his mouth in a frown.

“I am resolved,” he said in a low voice, “to return home as soon as I may.”

“Home?” she said. “You mean Southlands?”

He nodded.

“Is it far away?”

“Very far, m’lady.”

Southlands can burn to dust for all I care.

Una knew very little of Southlands, far down at the southernmost tip of the Continent, a peninsula connected to Shippening only by a thin isthmus. But there were rumors about that land, particularly in the last five years. It was cut off from the rest of the Continent now, held captive by . . . The rumors were vague on that point. But the king and queen had not been seen in all that time; no one, in fact, had either come or gone through the mountain paths that encircled Southlands. And heavy smoke hung thick as death over all the land.

Una shuddered. Nurse would not permit her to listen to gossip, but she could not help but pick up little pieces of information. Southlands was so far from the concerns of her life that she had paid little heed to the rumors. But she remembered words overheard here and there.

Death. Demon.

Dragon.

Southlands can burn.

“Is it true, Leonard?” she asked, twisting the ring on her finger again.

“Is it true what they say about . . . about your homeland?”

“Maybe, maybe not.” He tossed a larger rock with a
gloomp
into the middle of the stream. “I don’t know what they say.”

A shiver passed through Una’s body despite the heat of the day. “Did you escape before the rest of Southlands was imprisoned?”

Leonard looked sidelong up at her. “Does it really matter how or when I escaped, if escaped we must call it? I am here, my people are there. My friends. My family. So I will return.”

“Can you do anything, though?” Una knew she should not pry when the jester so obviously did not want to talk about his life, but the questions came anyway. “Not in five years has anyone succeeded in crossing to Southlands alive. Don’t you think you should stay away for now? What could you do by returning anyway?”

“Princess Una,” he replied, “you are young and sweet. You can’t know about such things. I may be only a Fool, but even a Fool must see his duty, and when he sees it, he must follow through. What else can he do and still consider himself a man? Perhaps I cannot help my people.

Perhaps I will live long enough to see their destruction and then perish in the same fire. But nevertheless I will go.” He turned away from her and kicked another stone into the passing water. “As soon as I can put together funds enough for the journey.”

“Then I think you are a very brave Fool,” Una said quietly.

“If I were not a Fool, do you think I could be brave?”

They looked at each other, a silent gaze. And Una thought she’d never met a man of such firm resolution. Prince Gervais would not be so courageous.

What the jester thought she could not fathom, but he smiled slowly and at last ended the moment by crossing his eyes and sticking out his tongue so that she laughed and shook her head at him. “Clown!”

“The things you call me,” he replied, dashing his bell-covered hat from his head and sweeping a deep bow. “M’lady, the day lengthens. If I do not return you home soon, questions will be asked, and do you think this humble floor-scrubber will escape a kicking from his superiors for hindering a princess in her daily schedule?”

So Una took his arm when he offered it and allowed him to escort her up the hill, through the tiered garden, and back to Nurse’s well-prepared scolding. She sat quietly through the rest of the afternoon, allowing Nurse’s words to skim over her head, and tried not to think the thoughts that pried at her mind.

A pity he’s a jester.

But, no more of that! Get back to work and remember who you are.

Leonard had called her sweet. Did he mean it?

“Dragon’s teeth!” Una muttered and attacked her tapestry with more vim and vigor than she’d given it in a long while, stabbing her finger with her needle. She was well distracted from her thoughts as she tried to keep blood from staining her handiwork.

–––––––

The Duke of Shippening arrived five days later.

Not even Nurse, once she saw the man, thought Una should consider his proposal. For all her practicality, Nurse did not wish to see her beloved princess in the hands of a man more than twice her age and five times her size. But she did not express this opinion; when asked, she refused to express any opinion whatsoever. It is wise never to speak negatively of one so rich and powerful as the duke.

As for Una, she could hardly look at the man without trembling.

He joined the royal family at dinner that night, speaking in rumbling tones of Capaneus, of his vast estate, of his hundreds of serfs and acres upon acres of grounds, of hunting adventures, of tearing a wild boar apart with his bare hands – Felix’s jaw dropped nearly to his collarbone as he listened – and all the other sweet details of his domestic existence.