The Door in the Hedge (12 page)

The Prince saw that his family lacked for nothing that a full pocketbook could buy, and returned to his father with a heavy heart.

“Tomorrow I ride with the Hunt,” he told the King. “And I ride the day after, and the day after that, till I find what I seek: and that which I seek is the Golden Hind, and her I will pursue till I learn the mystery of her, and of the death and madness she causes; and I will stop these things if I can. Even if I cannot, try at least I will; my vow is taken.” For after he had looked into the eyes of his friend, that were his friend's eyes no longer, he did not doubt that the two men who had not returned from the Hunting of the Hind had on that Hunt met their deaths. And so the Hind must not be permitted to range the kingdom, for the proven risk of her.

The King moved to stop him, for he would lose any number of his people before he would risk his son; but the Prince left before the King could speak, and no man saw him again till morning, when he rode out with the Hunt.

It was three days that the Prince rode before he saw what he sought; three days that he spoke to no man and locked himself in his rooms as soon as he dismounted and his horse was led away; three days that he refused to see his father, even when the King himself came and knocked on his son's closed door.

No man saw him to speak to him: but a woman did; or perhaps more rightly, a girl.

The King had married in his youth a woman that he loved, and she loved him, and the country rang with their love; and at the end of several years of hopeful waiting she bore a son. The baby was strong and beautiful; but the Queen had been much weakened by the labor of bearing and birth, and when she bore a second child little more than a year later, it was too much for her unrecovered strength, and she died, and the baby died with her.

The King was shattered by his loss, and the only thing for many months after the Queen's death that could make him smile was his little son, the Prince, who grew more and more like his mother every day; and between the father and son there grew a great love.

But after four years the King yielded to the pleas of his ministers and married again; not because he believed that any child but the beloved son of his first wife would rule after him, but because he could see the usefulness of other sons, to ride at the heads of his armies, and go in state to visit other kingdoms, and be loyal friends (for he could not imagine otherwise) to their eldest brother.

The second Queen was chosen for political compatibility rather than any personal inclination on the part of herself or her new husband. She was as small and dark as the first Queen and the son she had borne were tall and fair; and if this second lady had her own quiet and poignant beauty, few noticed it, for all including the King compared her always with her who had gone before.

But the second Queen carried her part with dignity and without complaint—so far as any knew; and hers was a pale still face at the beginning, so none would notice if it grew paler or stiller.

In one thing was she a disappointment that could be mentioned aloud: she bore no children. At last, in her seventh year as Queen, she became pregnant, and a certain subdued pleasure was visible in the King, who then treated her with a less conscious and more spontaneous kindness than had been his way since she became his wife.

But the child was a girl; and this second Queen too died in childbed, her strength unequal to the effort.

The little Princess grew up, cared for with vague kindness by those around her; the same vague kindness, if she had known it, that had characterized the King's and his country's attitude toward her mother. She, like her half-brother after his, took after her mother: small and quiet, neat in all her motions, and graceful with the unconscious air of a village girl who has never known the attentions of a court. And as she grew she bloomed with her mother's quiet beauty, and perhaps something more that was peculiarly her own; and by the time she reached her seventeenth year, which was the second year since the Golden Hind had first been sighted in this kingdom, her father's ministers, who had not dared mention marriage again to the King, began to think that the little-valued daughter of the second Queen would make a better political gamepiece than they had anticipated. And, all unconscious of the Hunt and the Hind, they smiled, and began to make plans.

But the Princess knew nothing of these plans. She enjoyed her freedom: That this freedom was the result of the indifference of those who had taken care of her since her mother died she did not notice, or chose not to. She loved her father dutifully, and was always well fed and well dressed, and as she got older, well taught; but there was an unexpected depth to her nature, and she might yet have felt her freedom as sorrow if she had not found someone to love: and the someone was her glorious elder brother.

The Prince was past his eleventh birthday when she was born, but he accepted her at once, and, unlike the rest of the court including his own dearly loved father, the young Prince's acceptance of his little half-sister was sincere and whole-hearted. He called her pet names like “Sparrow” and “Fawn,” which suited her and, though she did not realize it, made her mind the less that she was not tall and blond as he himself was. And he not only permitted but encouraged her to follow him around with the unquestioning devotion that most elder brothers find awkward and embarrassing in their younger siblings.

When she grew older, he helped her with her lessons; older yet, and he made sure that her horses were as fine as his own, though lighter-boned to carry her slight weight.

She would have done anything for him; and he, while his love was less single-minded than her own for having more opportunities for loving, cared for her enough that he never took advantage of her; and when she was old enough to understand, he paid' her perhaps the highest compliment of all, and made her his friend. The Court noted this, and were perhaps a little more deferential to the little half-sister than they might otherwise have been; and the Princess, by the time she was twelve, knew almost as much about the kingdom as the Prince did, and as much as he could tell her; and by the time she reached her seventeenth year, had a wisdom and discretion far beyond her years.

And so, when the Prince had locked himself away in his rooms and would see no one, the Princess's gentle tap on his door brought him up from his chair to let her in. He told her that he would ride with the Hunt until he saw the Golden Hind; and her he would follow until he learned her secret. He repeated it as if it were a lesson got by heart; and the Princess had already heard the story from several members of the horrified court. She had not doubted it, for she knew the strength of the friendship that had caused her brother to break his promise to the King. Now she wished only to bear him company for a little while; and when she heard the words from his own lips, she only shook her head and said nothing. As she knew her brother, she knew that no argument would sway him.

“Take care of our father till I return,” said the Prince; it was the closest he would come to admitting that he might not return. “He loves you better than you know.”

The Princess smiled, but shook her head again, for this was one thing she knew better than her elder brother. “I will try.” And neither of them spoke of the further grief that made the King's heart desperate at the knowledge of the Prince's vow to follow the Golden Hind: the Prince, although he had passed his eight-and-twentieth birthday, had not yet married. If he died now he would leave no heir. The Princess did not count in the King's thought, as she knew and the Prince did not; so when the Prince commended the King to her care, he thought that he truly left their father some comfort, and did not realize the impossible burden that he laid on his sister's small shoulders.

He rode away with the Hunt the next morning, and returned with them in the evening when they came bearing a brown stag and several hares. He rode away with them on the second dawning, and again on the third; but on that third day, as the sun began to fall down the afternoon sky, the Hunt saw the Golden Hind; and the Prince, with a cry of wild gladness, rode after it. His horse that day was the same tall stallion that had fretted so ill months before, when the Prince had watched another man ride in pursuit of the elusive Hind and had remained behind.

The Hunt came home slowly, but the slinking hounds told their own tale, even if the Prince's shining presence among them had not at once been missed.

The Princess had no sleep that night; nor had the King. But while the King had to rise from his sleepless bed and attend to his state and to his ministers, the Princess remained where she had been since the evening before, after she had run out to meet the Hunt and found her brother no longer with them. She had knelt on the windowseat of her bedroom all that night, her head leaning against the corner where the window met the wall; there she could stare out over the wide dark forest where her brother rode after his fate. By the time dawn began to chase the shadows out of the castle courtyard, her eyes were sore and her eyelids stiff with watching.

And so the next evening, late, after the Hunt had returned that day, sober and slow and with little to show for their long hours of search and chase, and after all had gone to bed whether they slept or not, the Princess saw from her window the figure on horseback that stumbled out of the great wood and turned toward the city walls. And there were others keeping watch, so she was not the first to run out and greet the Prince, for it was he, as he sat his staggering horse; but she was among the first to welcome him home. Her voice sounded strange in her ears, high-pitched with fear, but at the sound of it the Prince, who seemed to ride in a daze, turned toward her and said, “Little sister, is it you? Are you there?” She seized his hand joyfully and said, “It is I. You are returned to us safe.”

But when he looked down at her, his eyes did not seem to see her; and his eyes should have been blue, but seemed covered with a grey glaze. “Little sister, I have seen her,” he said, but he leaned too far over, and tumbled from his horse into her small young arms; and if several of the men had not been standing near and so caught her and him, they would have fallen to the ground.

The Prince was all but unconscious for the rest of the night; he rambled in his unknown dreams, and spoke snatches of them aloud, but the Princess could not understand, nor could the King, who sat motionless at his son's bedside. With the dawn, some ease came to the Prince, and he did not toss so restlessly, and seemed to sleep. The sun was above the trees when he opened his eyes; and his eyes were blue again. But still he could not seem well to see those around him, and he repeated, “I have seen her at last,” again and again. “She is more beautiful than you can imagine,” he said, holding his sister's hand in his feverish one. “She could make a man blind with one glimpse of her beauty; and he would count it a favor.”

The Prince was too weak to rise from his bed, and grew weaker as the days passed. He recognized his father and sister, and others who came to his bedside, and called them by name; but he could not or would not shake himself free of his dreams, of her whom he had seen, and his blue eyes remained cloudy, and focused only briefly and with evident effort on the faces around him. He slept little and ate less; and the doctors could do nothing for him.

Still the Hunt rode out, because they must; but all feared the sight of the Golden Hind as they might fear Death herself, and no one after the Prince ever sought her.

A month after the Prince rode home from his Hunting of the Hind he was declared to be dying.

The King rarely left his son's room, and his cheeks were almost as pale as the Prince's; the ministers might have run the country as they liked, for all the attention the King paid them; but perhaps almost against their wills they found they loved the bold young Prince too, and their political schemes held no savor.

It might have been that now the little Princess, hitherto neglected for her glamorous elder brother, would come into her own; but this did not happen. Everyone forgot about her completely, except as a small quiet presence forever at the Prince's bedside. Everyone, perhaps, but the Prince himself; for when he asked for anyone, it was most often her name on his lips, and she was always there to answer his call; and she it was who could most often persuade him to take a little food, although even her success was infrequent and insufficient. Again and again he would seize her hand and say to her as he had done on the first night: “I have seen her. At last I have seen her.” And his cloudy eyes would be too wide and too brilliant with something she did not recognize and could not help but fear.

The day after the murmur of the Prince dying had passed through the castle and out into the city, the Princess quitted her brother's bedside, where she spent her nights and dozed as she could, just at dawn. She went down to the stable and saddled her favorite horse with her own hands; and when the Hunt gathered, she rode out to join them on her long-legged chestnut mare.

PART TWO

THE HUNT
had been quiet enough the last weeks while the Prince lay on his bed and raved; but on the day that the Princess joined them no word at all was spoken, and everyone averted his eyes as if afraid to look upon her, and even the horn-calls to the dogs were subdued. The Princess left no message behind her; but the stablemen would notice the empty stall of the Princess's favorite, as the watchers at her brother's bedside would notice her empty chair.

Morning had barely broken, and the first sunlight had only begun to find its way through the leaves of the forest when the Hunt were brought to a standstill by the long-drawn-out wail of the lead dog. Into a tiny green clearing before them stepped the Golden Hind.

She was a color to make wealthy men weep, and misers drown themselves for very heartsickness. New-minted gold could not express the least shadow of her loveliness; each single hair of her magnificent coat shone with lucent glory. Her delicate hoofs touched the earth without a sound; she turned her small graceful head toward the little group of hunters, seemingly unconscious of the miserable dog that had flattened itself almost at her feet. Her eyes were brown, and for a moment the Princess's eyes met those of this creature of wonder; and it was as though they were only inches from each other in that moment, looking into the depths of each other's souls; for the Princess knew at once that the Hind had a soul, and hope stirred within her. The brown eyes she looked into somewhere held a glint of green, and somewhere else, almost too subtle for even the Princess's lonely wisdom, a glint of sorrow.