The Door in the Hedge (21 page)

And as he thought these things, clear, each of them, as such a sky as he had seen over the surface of his beloved earth only yesterday afternoon, he saw the eldest Princess stepping toward him, one white hand laid quietly on the arm of her tall black-haired escort. The two of them together made such a beautiful sight his heart ached within him for all his new sunlit wisdom; but he looked at them straight, staring the longest at the Princess. He felt then that to stare at her, to memorize each line of her face, each hollow and shadow and curve, would be a comfort and a relief to him; and if the woman at the well was correct—and tonight the hope had returned that she might be—the Princess would not begrudge it him. And so he looked at her, and as he looked the ache in his heart changed: for he saw that her chin was raised just a little too high, and she placed each slim foot just a little too carefully. The expressionlessness on her face was as flawless as her beauty, but he thought he knew, now, what it was costing her. The two of them walked by him, unknowing; he turned his head to watch them go. They left the great halls of the palace; he saw them fade into the shadows of blackness beyond the courtyard till the blaze of the torches at the portals blinded him and he could not tell them from the gems on the Princess's gown.

And so the second night wore to its end, and the soldier followed the Princesses home to the Long Gallery, and heard the stone hatch sigh closed. He lay on his bed and snored; and rose the next morning and looked around him, and remembered the night before, and the night before that one. And so he recalled that tonight was his third and last night to share the Princesses' chamber, and discover their secret if he would, as so many had tried before. And he knew that as he sat this morning blinking at his boots, so tomorrow morning would a messenger await him at the iron-bound door to the Princesses' Gallery, to lead him before them, and before the King, and to account for the boon the King had granted him.

So on the third night the soldier looked around him with the eyes of one who seeks some exact thing when he strode into the palace of haunted dreams at the heart of the black lake. Tonight he seemed to hear only the thunderous silence, for somehow the music had lost him; or perhaps he had lost it, in that quiet moment inside his own heart of the night before; and the silence held no danger for him. This third night yet he was afraid again, for all his boldness; but it was not the cowering miserable fear of the first night, but the steady and knowledgeable fear of an old soldier who dares face an enemy too strong for him.

In his younger days the soldier had slipped into hostile camps when his colonel ordered him to, with but a few of his fellows, when the enemy was asleep or unguarded, to do what they could and then slip away again. It was because of one of these raids, not so successful as it might have been, that the soldier ever since was forewarned of a change in the weather by the slow pain in his right shoulder. He might be glad that the dagger had caught him in the shoulder and not in the leg, for he had still been able to run, trying by the pressure of his left hand to hold the blood from pumping out, the mist still rising inexorably before his eyes. He found himself with his legs braced and his hands clenched at his sides, staring at circling dancers, and that same mist before his eyes. He shook his head to clear it. He thought of scorning the fact that that particular memory chose to disturb him on this particular night; but he had not lived so long by ignoring such warnings as his instinct might give him. He was glad that this third night was to be his last; he felt as though the cloak of invisibility would not be a sufficient bar to all that he felt lurked here, beyond the lights, for very much longer. Some sort of dawn would come to betray him, shining through his shadow cloak, as a simpler sort of dawn had betrayed his nighttime stealth years ago.

And he listened again to what was not there behind the sorcerous music of this place, and thought that that dawn might be of his own making; there were some things that could not bear to be known, and he was walking too near to them.

He stood beside the great gates that led outside the castle to the night blackness beyond the ballroom light, and to the black water creeping around the docks. He saw the Princesses dancing in the graceful arms of their swains. The youngest danced past him, very near; so near he could see the transparent wisp of fair hair that had escaped the fine woven net and fallen across her eyes; and as she went past him he thought he saw her shudder, ever so slightly. Her eyes turned toward him, and he stopped breathing, thinking she might see some movement in the air. Her eyes searched the shadows where he stood wrapped in his cloak of shadows, as if she were certain that she would find something that she was looking for; and behind the fine veil of hair he saw fear sunk deep in her wide eyes. But her gaze passed over him and through him and back again without recognition; and then her tall partner whirled her into a figure of the dance that took her away from his dark corner, and he saw her no more.

He stayed where he was, thinking, watching; and he saw the eldest Princess walking again with her hand on the arm of her black captain; she passed through a high arch from the ballroom to the courtyard where he stood, a little way from him; and in her free hand she carried a jeweled goblet. The two of them paused just beyond the threshold, and the Princess glanced to one side. A low marble bench stood beside her. She lowered her hand with a swift gesture and left the cup upon it; and then walked away as her escort turned and led her, almost as if she wished him not to see what she had done. The soldier, without understanding what he did, went at once to that bench and lifted up the goblet. He peered inside, tilting it to the light so that he might see its bottom. It was empty. Some inlaid patterns glinted at him, but he could not see it clearly. He thought: “This will do also to show the King.” And he hid the cup under his cloak.

That night too came to its end; and perhaps it was his own eagerness to be gone, but it seemed to him that the Princesses' step was slower tonight as they turned toward the boats, though from reluctance or weariness he could not say. But he walked so closely upon the youngest Princess's heels as she stepped into the last boat that nearly he trod upon her gown for a second time, and he caught himself back only just at the last.

As they disembarked on the far side of the lake the soldier stooped suddenly and dipped his goblet into the black water, raising it full to the brim; drops ran down its sides and across his hand like small crawling things with many legs, and his hand trembled, but he held the heavy cup grimly. He turned, the unpleasant touch of the black water still fresh on his skin, and watched the black hulls slide away like beetles across the lake's smooth surface. When he turned back again, the Princesses were already climbing the long stair, and he had to hurry to catch them up and lie back on his cot before they should look for him.

He was careful, for all his haste, that he spilled no further drop of the goblet's contents. He set it down beyond the head of his cot, and tossed his shadow cloak over it. When the eldest Princess came to look at him, he lay on his back, snorting a little in his sleep, as an old soldier who has drunk drugged wine might be expected to snort; but he watched her from under his lashes. She gave no sigh; and after a moment she went away.

He did not remember sleeping, that night. He heard the soft whisper of the elegant rainbow gowns being swept into chests and wardrobes; the heavy glassy clink of jewels into boxes; and a soft tired sound he thought might be of worn-out dancing slippers pushed gently under beds. Then there were the quiet subsiding sounds of mattresses and pillows, and the brittle swish of fresh sheets, the blowing out of candles and the sharp smell of the black wicks. And silence. The soldier lay on his back, his eyes wide open now in the darkness, and thought of all the things he had to think about, past and present; he dared not think of the future. But he put his memory in order as he was used to put his kit in order, with the brass and the buckles shining, the leather soaped and waxed, the tunic set perfectly.

He did not feel tired. And then at last some thin pale light came to touch his feet, and creep farther round the screen's edge to climb to his knees, and then leap over the screen's top to fall on his face. He watched the light, not liking it, for it should be the sweet wholesome light of dawn; but there was no window in the Long Gallery since the Princesses had slept here. And so he understood by its approach that the eldest Princess woke first, and lit her candle; and her first sister then awoke and lit hers; and so till the twelfth Princess felt the waxen light on her face and awoke in her turn, whose bed lay nearest the screen in the far corner.

The Princesses did not speak. Their morning toilette was completed quickly; and then there was a waiting sort of pause, and then he heard the sound of the King's key in the lock of the door to the Long Gallery that led into the castle, into the upper world. The door opened; and the sound of many skirts and petticoats told him the Princesses were leaving, although he heard no sound of footfall. Then the silence returned. The soldier sat up. His mind was alert, quiet but steady; but his body was stiff, especially the right shoulder.

He sat, waiting, wondering what would come to him. He creaked the mattress a little, wondering if they waited at the Gallery door already. They did. Two servants approached and set down a little table, and put a basin of water on it, and hung a towel over it. Then they folded the screen and set it to one side, and put the little table with the untouched lamp against the wall next to the screen. The soldier looked down the long row of twelve white beds, made up perfectly smooth so that one would think they never had been slept in; they might even have been carven from chalk or molded of the finest porcelain and polished with a silken cloth. He looked down and saw the tips of a pair of dancing shoes showing from beneath the bed nearest him. The fragile stuff they were made of sagged sadly down, and he did not need to see if there were holes in the bottoms.

He stood up, feeling as if his creaking bones might be heard by the waiting servants as the creaking mattress had been. He splashed his face with the water, then rubbed face and hands briskly with the towel. He pushed his shaggy hair back, knowing there was little else to be done with it. He looked up then, and the servants jerked their eyes away from the two heaps at the head of his cot and stared straight ahead of them. He wondered if these two men always waited on the third mornings of the Princesses' champions; and if so, what they had seen before.

He leaned down to pick up the heavy goblet; the cloak of shadows, nothing but a bit of black cloth to the eye, held round its stem, and clutched his wrist as if for reassurance. The wine-sodden cloak he left lying as it was.

He turned to the waiting servants, and they led the way to the door of the Long Gallery, down the stairs, and along the hall to the high chamber the soldier had sat in for three cheerless feasts at the King's right hand. Now the King sat in a tall chair at the end of this chamber; and his daughters stood on either hand. And around them, filling the hall till only a narrow way remained from the door to the feet of the King, were men and women who had heard of the new challenger come to try to learn how the Princesses danced holes in their shoes each night, locked in the Long Gallery by their father, who held the only key to that great mysterious door. And now they were come to hear what that hero had found.

The two servants that escorted him paused at the door to the great room, and made their bows; and the soldier went in alone. The subdued murmur of voices stopped at once upon his entrance. The hope and hopelessness that hung in the air were almost tangible; he could almost feel hands clutching at him, pleading with him. But he went on, much heartened; for the voices were real human voices, and he knew about hope and despair.

As he strode forward, one hand held to his breast with a thin shred of black dangling from the wrist and hand and what it held only a blur of shadows, someone stepped out of the crowd and stood before him. It was the captain of the guard, the man he called friend, however few the words they had actually exchanged; and in his hands he carried a bundle. This bundle he held out to the soldier, and the soldier took it; and he looked into his friend's eyes and smiled. The captain smiled back, anxiously, searching his face, and stepped back then; and the soldier went on to where the King sat. There he knelt, and on the first step of the dais he set two shrouded things from his two hands.

Then he stood, and looked at the King, who, sitting in the high throne, looked down at him.

“Well,” said the King. He did not raise his voice, but the King's voice was such of its own that it might reach every corner with each word, as the King chose. This “Well” now would ring in the ears of the man or woman farthest from him in this crowded room. “You have spent now three nights in the Long Gallery, guarding the sleep of my daughters, while for three more nights they have danced holes in their new shoes. Can you tell us how it is that every night, although they may not stir from their chamber, these new dancing slippers are worn quite through, and each morning beneath each bed is not a pair of shoes, but a few worn tatters of cloth?”

“Yes,” said the soldier. “I can.” His voice was no less clear than the King's own; and a hush ran round the room that was louder than words. “And I will.” He bent and picked up the bundle that the captain had given him; and was surprised at the suppleness of his body, now that the waiting was finished.

“At the foot of the eldest Princess's bed is a door of stone that rises from the floor. Each night the Princesses descend through that door, and down a long stairway cut in the rock there. At first these stairs are dark, the ceiling low and dank; but then the way opens on a cliff-face that the stairs walk still down; and this open way is lined to the cliff's foot with jeweled trees. On the first night as I followed the Princesses I broke a branch of one of these jeweled trees.” And he opened the first bundle and held the branch aloft, and the wicked gems in the smooth white bole glittered and leaped like fire; and a sigh wove through the crowd. The soldier had faced the King as he spoke, although he fixed his eyes on the King's hands as they lay serenely in his lap; now he saw them clench suddenly together and he raised his eyes to look at the King's face and saw there a sudden joy he could not quell for all his kingdom leap out of his eyes, not as a king but a father. The soldier noticed also that while the line of Princesses was now motionless, the hand of the youngest had risen and covered her face.