The Door in the Hedge (15 page)

As he went slowly downhill he began to hear bits of a story that told of an enchantment that had been laid on the twelve beautiful daughters of the King.

At first the tale was only told in snatches, for it was of little interest to farmers, who have enough to think about with the odd ways of the weather, of crops, of animals—and possibly of wives and sons and their own daughters. But in the first town he came to, big enough to have a main street with an inn on it, instead of the highland villages which were no more than half a dozen thatched cottages crouched together on the cheek of some gentler hill: at this town he stopped for a time and worked as an ostler, and here he heard the story of the Princesses in full from another ostler.

The King had twelve daughters and no sons; and perhaps this was a sorrow to him, but perhaps not; for sons may fight over their father's crown—even before he is decently dead. And these twelve Princesses were each more beautiful than the last, no matter how one counted them. The Queen had died giving birth to a thirteenth daughter, who died with her; that was ten years ago, now. And it was only a little after the Queen's death that the trouble began.

The youngest Princess was then only eight years of age, and the Princesses' dancing-master had only begun to instruct her; although truth to tell, these girls seemed to have been born with the knowledge of the patterns of the dance written in them somewhere. A royal household must have a dancing-master; but the master who taught these twelve Princesses had the lightest labor of anyone in the castle, although he was a superb artist himself and could have taught them a great deal if they had needed it. But they did not; and so he smiled, and nodded, and waved his music-wand occasionally, and thought of other things.

Sometime during the youngest Princess's ninth year it was observed that during the night, every night, the dancing shoes of the twelve Princesses were worn through, with holes in the heels, and across the tender balls of the feet. And every morning all the cobblers of the city had to set aside their other work and make up twelve new pairs of dancing shoes by the evening; for it was not to be thought of that the Princesses should do without, even for a day. And every morning those twelve new pairs of delicate dancing slippers were worn quite through.

After this had gone on for some weeks the King called all his daughters to him at once and looked at them sternly, for all that he loved them dearly, or perhaps because of it: and he demanded to know where it was they danced their nights away till they wore their graceful shoes to tatters that could only be tossed away. And all but the eldest Princess hung their heads and the youngest wept; the eldest looked back at her father as he looked at her, but hers was a glance he could not read. And none of them spoke a word.

Then the King grew angry in his love for them which made him afraid: and he shouted at them, but still they gave him no answer.

And then he sent them away, dismissed them as he would servants, with a flick of his hand, and no gentle words as he was used to give them; and they went. If they dragged their feet at all, in sorrow or in shame, the soles of their shoes were so soft they made no sound. Their father, the King, sat silent on his throne for a long space after they had left, his head bowed in his hand, and his eyes shaded from the sight of his courtiers. The courtiers wondered what he might be thinking; and they remembered the Queen, for she was then but recently gone, and wondered if there was anything she might have done.

At last the King stirred, and he gave orders: that the Princesses henceforward should all sleep in the same room; and that room would be the Long Gallery. And the Long Gallery should be fitted at once with the Princesses' twelve beds and thirty-six wardrobes. And that the windows should be barred in iron, and the door also; and the door fitted with a great iron lock to which only one key would be made; and that key would be hung around the King's neck on a long black leather thong.

This was done; and although the carpenters and iron-mongers were well paid, they had no joy in their work; and the blacksmith who had made the single heavy lock for the door and the key for the King's own neck would take no payment for them whatsoever, and he went back to his own shop on the far side of the city with a slow tread, and spoke to no one for three days after. There were rumors, whispered uneasily, that the castle had shaken underfoot with more than the blows of the craftsmen's hammers while the work went forward; but no one quite dared to mention this openly, and no one was quite happy with the idea that they were imagining things.

And still the Princesses' shoes were worn through every morning. And it was seen that the Princesses grew pale and still paler within their imprisonment, and spoke rarely—even the youngest, who had been used to roll hoops down the long, echoing Long Gallery when it was still an open way, and chase them laughing. The Princesses laughed no longer; but they grew no less beautiful. The eldest in particular held the dignity of a lioness caged in her wide deep eyes and in her light step. And the King looked after his daughters with longing, and often he saw them looking back at him; but they would not speak.

Then the King sought out all the wise men of his land and asked them if they could discover anything about the enchantment—if enchantment it be, and how could it not?—that his daughters went under, and how it might be broken. And the wise men looked into their magic mirrors and their odd-colored smokes, and drank strange ill-smelling brews and looked at the backs of their own eyelids; and called up their familiars, and even wrestled with dark spells that were nearly too much for their strength, and spoke to creatures better left alone, who hissed and babbled and shrieked. And they spoke to their King again, shaking their heads. Little enough they had to tell him: that spell it was there was no doubt; and that it was one too strong for them to destroy in the usual ways, with powders and weird words, was also, sadly, beyond doubt; and several of them shivered and rubbed their hands together as they said this.

The King looked at them for a long moment in silence, and then asked in a voice so low that if they had not been wise men they might not have heard it at all: “Is there, then, no hope?”

One who had not spoken before stepped forward; his hair was grey, and his long robe a smoke-draggled green. He looked at the King for a time, almost as if he had forgotten the language he must use, and then he said: “I can offer you this much. If someone, someone not of the Princesses' blood kin, can discover where they dance all night, and bring the tale back to this earth, tell it under this sun—for you may be sure that this dark place knows neither—with some token of that land, then the enchantment shall be broken. For I deem that its strength depends upon its remaining hidden.”

The King whispered: “Not of their blood kin?”

The wise man looked upon him with what, had he been anyone but the King, might have been pity. “Sire,” he said gently, “one of the Princesses' blood would only fall under the same sorcery that enthralls them. They are still your daughters, even as they move through the web that has been woven around them. What that sorcery might do to another—we cannot tell. But if he lived, he would not be free.”

The King nodded his head slowly and turned away to begin the journey back to his haunted castle. And when he returned he gave more orders: that any man who discovered where the Princesses danced their shoes to pieces each night should have his choice of them for a wife, and reign as king after his wife's father died. Any man who wished to try was welcome: king's son or cobbler, curate or knight or ploughman. And each of them, whatever his rank, should have an equal chance; and that chance was to spend three nights on a cot set up in the Princesses' locked chamber; three nights, no more nor any less.

A king's son came first; he was the son of a king from just over the border that the soldier's regiment had fought for; but, for all that, he was graciously welcomed, and fed the same dishes that were set before the King and his daughters; and there was music to entertain them all as they sat silently at their meal, and later there were jugglers and acrobats, but no dancers; and the music was stately or brisk, but it was never dancing music, and the King and the Princesses and their guest sat quietly at the high table.

When the time came to retire, the King clasped a rich red robe around the shoulders of the son of his old enemy with his own hands, and wished him well, kindly and honestly; and showed him where he would spend his three nights. A bed had been set up at the end of the Long Gallery, behind a screen; and besides a bed and a blanket and the robe around his shoulders he was given a lamp, for it was dark at the end of the Gallery. And the King embraced him and left him; and there was perfect silence in the long room as thirteen pairs of ears listened to the heavy door swing shut and the King's key turn in the lock.

But somehow the king's son fell asleep that night; and in the morning the Princesses' shoes were worn through. And so went the second night; and even the third. On that last night the king's son wished so much to stay awake and see how the Princesses did that he never lay down at all. But in the morning he was discovered to have fallen asleep nonetheless, still on his feet, leaning heavily against the rough stone wall, so that his cheek was marked by the stone, and so harshly that the bruise did not fade for days after.

The prince went away, pale behind the red stain on his face, and he was not seen again.

Here the ostler paused in his story, and stared at the soldier, who was listening with an attention he had not felt since his first years in the Army. “You'll hear that our King cuts off the heads of them who fail to guess the Princesses' riddle. But it's not so. They fade away sometimes so quickly it's as if they have been murdered; but it's not our King puts his hand to it, nor do I believe another story that has it that the Princesses poison them to keep their secret. All that is nonsense. The way of it is just that they have to meet our King's eyes when they tell him that they've failed; and the look he gives them back has all a father's sorrow in it, and all a king's pride—and all our King's goodness, and it takes the heart right out of them that have to see it. And so they leave, but there's no heart left in them for anything.” The ostler shrugged; and the soldier smiled, and then stood up and sighed and stretched, for the story had been a long one—and then thoughtfully collected his and his friend's tankards and disappeared for a moment into the taproom. When he returned with two brimming mugs, the ostler was examining a headstall with disfavor: the new stable boy had cleaned it, and done a poor job. He would be spoken to tomorrow, and if that didn't work, on the next day, kicked. But he dropped the reins happily to take up his beer; and as he looked at his new friend over the brim there was a new flicker behind his eyes.

“And what are you thinking?” he said at last.

“You already know or you would not ask,” replied the soldier. “I'm thinking that I would like to see the city of our King, the King in whose Army I labored so long and for so little. And I'm thinking that I would like to find out the secret of the shoes that are danced to pieces every night, and so win a Princess to wife and a kingdom after.” He smiled at the ostler, hoping to win an answering smile. “It is perhaps my only chance to try to see the ways of the Army hierarchy set to rights.”

The ostler slowly shook his head without smiling, but he said no word to dissuade him. “Good luck to you then, my wild and wandering friend. But if your luck should not be good, then come back here, and we'll try to save you with good horses and good beer. They can if anything can.”

“I have little enough heart left in me now,” said the soldier lightly. “The King is welcome to the rest, for I'll not miss it.”

And on the next morning the soldier set out.

PART ONE

HE WENT
still downhill, but more purposefully; and the bundle across his shoulders was a little stouter; thanks to the ostler. He cut himself a green walking-stick by the bank of the brook his path led him beside; and the sap ran over his hand, and the sweet sharp smell of it raised his spirits. He whistled as he walked, Army songs, songs about death and glory.

The sun was high in the sky and the place of his waking miles behind him when the soldier began to look around him for somewhere to sit and eat his lunch; he hoped for a stream of clear mountain water; if luck was with him he would find a wide-branching tree at its edge to sit beneath, for the sun grew hot, and shade would be welcome. The soldier's boots began to scuff up the dust of the lowlands as the hard rocky earth of the mountains was left behind him. He had passed through several villages on his long morning's walk, for the villages sat close together at the mountains' green feet. But as he looked around now for his stream and his tree, he saw grazing land, with cows and sheep and horses on it, and fields of grain; and far off to his left he could see the hard shining of the river that led to the capital that was also his path's end. But there were few houses. He looked ahead, and saw a small grove of trees, and quickened his step, anticipating at least their leafy shadow, and perhaps a pool of water.

As he approached he heard an odd creaking noise that began, and stopped, and began again; but the trees hid from his sight anything that his eyes might discover to explain it. When his way led by them at last, he saw a small hut nestled within the grove, and before it and near his path stood a well. An old woman stood at the well, winding up the rope with a handle that creaked; and she paused often and wearily, and as the soldier watched, she, unknowing, stared into the depths of the well and sighed.

“May I help you?” said the soldier, and strode forward; and he seized the handle from the brown wrinkled hand that gladly gave it up to him, and wound the handle till the bucket tipped past the stone lip of the well; and he pulled it out, brimming, and set it on the ground.