The Door In The Hedge Part 6

The King said: "Come and eat with us." And he led the way to the high table; and the soldier followed, with his bundle still over his shoulder, and in it he felt the cloak move, like the skin of a horse when a fly touches it. s.p.a.ce was made at the King's right hand, and another chair was brought; and the King sat down in the great chair, and the soldier sat down beside him, and felt his tired bones creak and sigh; and he placed his bundle carefully between his feet, where it curled itself and sat like a cat. And he looked around him as his place was set before him, and counted the other places set; and there were twelve, and twelve chairs before them. Then the white-robed men all stood back, and the Princesses entered.

The soldier would not have been sure that there were twelve of them, had he not counted their chairs before they entered. For each one was more beautiful than the last, in whichever way one counted; and the soldier, who could see an a.s.sa.s.sin hidden in a tree when the tree was behind him, or notice fear in a new private's face before the private felt it himself, was dazzled by the enchanted Princesses, and nothing he had seen or done or imagined in his life could help him.

The soldier could not remember later if there was any conversation. He remembered that the Princesses moved too slowly for girls as young as they were; even the youngest hovered on the edge of her chair like a chrysalis before the b.u.t.terfly emerges; barely could the. soldier see her eyelashes flicker as she blinked; and her slow fingers only occasionally raised some morsel to her lips. He sat next to the eldest daughter, and he remembered the well woman's words of her, and turned toward her to try to speak, or at least to see something that might guide him; but somehow her face was always turned from him, and he saw only the heavy smoky braids of her hair wound at the nape of her neck; and even if he caught a glimpse of cheekbone or chin, it seemed shadowed, although he could not see where any shadow might fall from: and he thought abruptly that the relentless blaze of light from the many-tiered chandeliers seemed wary, uncertain, as if light was merely the nearest approximation to what actually was sought. The Hall was not lit up for the light, but for the keeping out of the darkness.

The soldier looked across the table to another Princess: she had hair the color of the glossy flanks of the fawn he had seen earlier, and was speckled as it had been too, for she had woven white flowers around her face, and through the delicate crystal crown she wore above her forehead. He caught her eye for a moment, with a trick of the hunter's eye that had seen the fawn: and he saw her eyes widen for a moment as she realized she was caught. He thought she might struggle, as a wild thing would, and he prepared to look away, at a vase, a plate of sweetmeats, because he did not want to see a Princess rearing up like a cornered deer-or worse, cowering away. But to his surprise she met his gaze firmly after that first flicker, and then the tiniest and most wistful of smiles touched her lips and was gone. He looked then at the vase and the sweetmeats but did not see them.

He did not remember what he ate any more than he remembered if there had been conversation. He did remember that men in white robes caught round the waist with belts of bronze and women in silver gowns, their long s.h.i.+ning hair caught up in nets like starlight, served him, and the King, and the Princesses, with many dishes; and he thought that he ate a great deal, for he was very hungry and had traveled far on dry bread and hard cheese, and that no one else ate much at all. He also remembered there was music, and music of a complexity, of melodies and drifting harmonies, that described a large number of musicians, and perhaps they played to mask the silence, to distract from the feast that none but the soldier ate, and none enjoyed.

At last the King rose, and with him the Princesses: behind them, on the long high walls of the Great Hall were hung tapestries of all the n.o.ble and beautiful and fearful things that had happened to the kings and queens who had lived in the castle for centuries upon centuries past. But nothing in those proud scenes of heroes and ladies and war and mercy was any more n.o.ble or fearful than the beauty of the twelve living Princesses who stood before them. The soldier watched the King as he looked at his daughters, each one in turn, and he saw how the sadness of his eyes was so deep that none knew the bottom of it; not even the King himself could reach so far. The soldier knew then the truth of what his friend the ostler had said: that the young n.o.blemen who had had to meet those eyes and say that they had failed could have but little strength or purpose ever after.

Then the Princesses turned, and the youngest leading and the eldest last walked out of the Hall through the door the soldier had entered at, the door they themselves had entered by not long since; and yet, since these twelve pa.s.sed through it, as light on their feet as hummingbirds resting on the air, so light that it was impossible to imagine their wearing holes in their shoes, be the soles of the thinnest silk: since the Princesses used it as a door the soldier felt suddenly that he must have come in some other, more substantial way. As the dark hair of the eldest, and, the last primrose gleam of her gown disappeared through the door, the soldier thought: "How do I know that she is the eldest? Or that the first of them is the youngest? For none has made me known to any of them. I have never heard their names." The King turned to him when the door of his daughters' leave-taking was still and empty again, and said to him: "You need not take tonight as your first watch. You have traveled a great distance and deserve a night's untroubled sleep. Tomorrow night is soon enough to begin." The soldier, standing, as he had stood since the King had risen and the Princesses silently left, felt the lightest of brushes against his ankles, barely a tremor against the heavy leather of his high boots; as if a cat had twitched its tail against him. He heard himself reply: "Sire, I thank you, but your meal has refreshed me enough, and I am anxious to begin the task and trouble your hospitality no further than I must to accomplish it."

The King bowed his head; or at least his eyes dropped from the soldier's face to the white tablecloth.

"One favor I will ask: and that a bath. I fear me travel is a dusty business at best, and I am not the best of travelers."

The King's smile touched his mouth again briefly; and at the raising of his hand, another of the bronze-belted men came up to the two of them, and stood at the foot of the dais so that his head came no higher than their waists, and bowed low, till his white robe swept the floor. "A bath for our guest," said the King. "He then wishes to be brought to the Long Gallery." The man bowed again, the lesser bow the soldier was coming to recognize, if not resign himself to, as indicating himself; but the man still kept his eyes on the floor so the soldier could catch no glint of his thoughts. Then he turned and slid smoothly away from him, on feet as silent as a hare's; and the soldier stepped awkwardly down from the dais, and followed him, listening to the clumsy thunder of his own boot-soles.

The soldier was appalled by the royal guest bathtub. It was like no indoor bath he had ever seen: it was a lake, and not even the smallest of lakes. As he approached it and looked into the steaming perfumed water, he half expected to see some scaled tropical fish, with fins like battle pennants, peer back at him. But the water was clear to the marble bottom. The steam played delicately with his dusty hair, caressed his cheeks. He closed his eyes a minute. The perfume reminded him of-He opened his eyes again, hurriedly, and began to take off his clothes.

He felt silly, floundering around in an indoor lake-an outdoor one was different, with minnows nipping one's toes, and perhaps a squirrel for company, or a deer come to drink and wonder at the water-monster-and he did not dare stay long in the warm luxurious water, for he had a wakeful night before him. Just a moment he reconsidered the King's offer of a night's grace; regretfully he considered it, and then put it finally aside. He climbed out of the bath and unwound one of the long cream-colored towels that hung on a golden rack shaped like two mermaids holding hands. There were several of these towels, wrapped around the mermaids' necks and lying across their outstretched arms, and the single one he held was big enough to wrap, he thought, all twelve Princesses in.

There was fresh clothing for him in the outer room: a dark red tunic and gold leggings and high soft boots-a soldier's pay in a year's time would not begin to account for the price of one of those boots-and a red cloak with a dark blue collar. He looked at the red cloak, lying in fluid ripples over the back of a silver chair, and then looked around for his bundle. He whirled the red cloak round his shoulder with a gesture, had he known it, that every high-blooded young n.o.bleman had used before him, and picked up his bundle. It sighed at him.

The servant-if it was the same one: they were all white-robed and brown-haired and somber-appeared at the door as if he had waited for the c.h.i.n.k of a belt-buckle as a summons to enter.

That belt the soldier had found under the red cloak: the tails of two green dragons wound together at the small of his back, and their golden fangs locked in front. Their sapphire eyes glittered at him as he looked down at them. The bundle, hung idly over his wrist when he grasped the belt, s.h.i.+vered with impatience; and the serving man stepped through the door.

The soldier looked up and nodded; the man never quite met his eyes, but bowed his bow and turned again and left the room, and the soldier followed, his footfalls now as silent as the servant's. This man led the way down a long corridor and up a flight of stairs that blazed with light as the Great Hall had; but at the top of these stairs the light abruptly ended. The servant seized a candelabrum from a niche at the stairhead and raised it high with a hand that did not tremble, and the light's rays flew down the corridor as swift and straight as hawks. To the left was a plain wall, running from the stairhead to the end of the corridor, which was blind but for a tiny barred window a hand's-breadth above man-level. "No escape that way," thought the old campaigner's part of the soldier's mind. He looked left, at the wall: in it was set one door, only two steps from the head of the stairs where they stood. It was a door tall and broad, seven feet high perhaps and four wide, and bound with iron. There was no gap or break or fissure in it anywhere but for a keyhole so heavily wound around with iron that the opening seemed no thicker than a needle. From the keyhole a flake of white light shone from inside the door.

He looked to his right: here the wall was pierced by a series of arched windows, their lower edges at waist level, where one might rest elbows and gaze out, if one ever wished to linger in this weary spot.

"But perhaps the view from these windows is very fine by day," thought the soldier. "You can see what is coming up the river at you," thought the campaigner. But now the windows were m.u.f.fled in the shadows of a cloudy night. No star glittered; the very air seemed grey beyond the cas.e.m.e.nt gla.s.s. "And," thought the soldier, "the air must always seem grey in this place from the shadow of the iron-barred door of the Long Gallery, which looms behind you on the brightest of summer mornings." One of the shadows now moved and became the King; and the soldier realized that he had expected him to be here before himself. Something dark hung against his breast: as he came into the candlelight that swooped to touch the end of the hall but left the clouded windows to themselves, the soldier saw that at the center of the royal silken robes hung a small iron key. Its very refusal to glitter or s.h.i.+ne made it catch the eye.

The King lifted the thin chain from around his neck, and slowly fitted the key into the lock. The light-flake disappeared; and then with a gentle chunk the lock turned, the door began to open, and an edge of light appeared instead around its frame. The servant stepped back, the soldier's instincts, rather than his eyes or ears, told him; then in the background the shadows moved, and as the door swung fully open, the man set the candelabrum back in its niche and retreated down the stairs.

The light seemed too white and pure for candlelight, as it flooded out and swept around the soldier and the King; but perhaps this was due to the snowiness of the linen it reflected. Twelve white-hung beds stood, their heads to the far wall, in a long line down the Gallery; and six Princesses in long white nightgowns with fragile lace at the wrists and throats sat on the counterpanes, or on stools, and had their hair brushed by their white-gowned sisters. No one spoke: the air was stirred only by the soft crackle of comb-teeth and fingers through long sleek hair. The soldier thought confusedly of barracks; and then he blushed like a boy at his first dance, and his feet would not cross the threshold. He could not do what he had come so far to try; it was not right, and what he had heard could not be. He looked at the warm gleam of their foreheads and chocks, the gentle rise and fall of the white nightgowns as they breathed, and watched the murmur of the light in the waves of hair, and was certain that it was all the most terrible of mistakes. These girls were not haunted. They were too beautiful and too serene.

Too calm. He remembered the youngest Princess at the banquet none enjoyed; and then her father stepped around him till he could look in his eyes, and waved him across the doorsill. This time his feet agreed, if reluctantly, to take him forward. Perhaps he heard, or perhaps he imagined, the King whispering, "G.o.dspeed"; and then he did hear the door close behind him. For a moment even the hands twisting the heavy falls of hair were still, so the closing of the door spoke in perfect silence. The soldier heard no sound at all of the turning of the key; but he was no less certain that the key had turned, bolting him and twelve Princesses into the Gallery for the night. His pulse pounded so it threatened to obscure his sight as well as his hearing. Perhaps the Princesses' young ears caught a sound his cannon-hardened ones could not: for as he was thinking all this, and feeling his heart beating in his throat, twelve Princesses sighed and bowed their heads, and stared at white laps and white hands for a moment, and then took up again the movements the King and the soldier had interrupted so recently.

Several turned their eyes slowly toward the soldier; their faces were without expression as they gazed at him, but with an expressionlessness that he did not like. The eyes glittered like the eyes behind masks.

If they had been men, he would be watching their hands, waiting for the quick hard appearance of hidden knives: and then he did look at the hands of the Princess nearest him, and saw them clenched in her lap.

The pale purity of her skin was pulled taut and unhappy across the frail knuckles; and his own face, softened. When he looked at their faces again, the expressionlessness now seemed that of a burden almost too heavy to bear, and the glitter in their eyes that of unshed tears.

Then the Princess he remembered, who had sat across from him at dinner, approached him; and he saw the same wistful smile hesitantly curl her lips and drop away again at once. He followed her to the end of the Gallery, listening to the slightest rustle of her long white skirts; and he noticed suddenly and with a shock he could not explain that her feet were bare.

There was a screen set up in the farthest corner, next to the windowless end of the long chamber.

Behind it, next to the narrow wall, was a low cot, with blankets and pillows. The Princess gestured toward it, bowed her head to him briefly, and left him. He turned to catch a glimpse of her bare heels as she vanished beyond the screen.

He sat heavily down and stared at his feet in their fine boots. His bundle lay on the cot beside him and rested against his knee. He found himself thinking of his age, turning the years over, one by one, in his mind, like the leaves of a book. His eyes slowly focused on a lamp that stood by the screen on a little three-legged table, with a tinder-box beside it; but he made no move toward it.

He looked up to see the eldest Princess framed by the light that flowed around the edge of the screen. He could not see her face, but he was sure it was she, as he had recognized her as she sat beside him at dinner. He wondered if his silent understanding of these Princesses was true; and if it was, was it an omen for good or ill? The Princess held a goblet in her hand; her arm was held out in a graceful curve, and the white sleeve fell back to reveal her slim forearm. She held the goblet high, as if it were a victory chalice, and the soldier was reminded of old statues he had seen, of the G.o.ddess of war: thus she might carry the severed head of the conquered hero, beautifully and pitilessly. The Princess offered him the goblet, and he took it, and found it surprisingly heavy. "Drink, and be welcome," she said, but there was no warmth or greeting in her voice.

He raised the goblet to his lips, but turned his head as he did, so she might see only his profile; and he poured the sweet-smelling wine gently down his back, and he felt the red cloak sag with it. "I thank thee, lady," he said, "for wine and welcome."

She bowed her head as her sister had done, but for the s.p.a.ce of a minute or more; then she straightened herself abruptly, with a gesture he recognized from battlefields he and his fellows had won their weary way across, and left him without another word.

He sat looking after her for a moment, and then reached up to unfasten the dark red cloak. It was warm and wet to his fingers as he pulled it off; it came heavily now, sodden as it was, with none of the brisk furl and unfurl it had greeted him with when he picked it up first. He dropped it on the floor beside his cot; it steamed with the drugged wine, and he blinked as the clouds of it rose to his eyes.

He listened. The blood no longer pounded in his ears. The blaze of light from around the edge of the screen continued unwavering; and the silence was perfect. It waited. He wondered for what: and then he knew. So he sighed, and moved on the cot till it creaked; and as he did this, he opened his bundle, and lifted out the night-colored cloak the woman at the well had given him. He lay heavily down, full-length, on the cot, and noisily rearranged the linen-clad pillows with one hand; he held the cloak in the other, and it wrapped softly around his wrist and up his arm. Then he sighed once more, and lay still, crossing his hands on his breast. The cloak wandered over his shoulders and brushed his throat.

The silence still waited. The soldier snored once. Twice. A third time.

Then the rustling began: the sound of hasty bare feet, of skirts, of chest-lids almost silent but not quite; then of silks and satins and brocades, tossing together, murmuring over each other, jostling and sighing and whirling. And the sounds of bare feet were no more; instead the soldier, between snores, heard the sounds of the soles of exquisite little shoes: dancing shoes, made for princesses' feet; and he knew that only haste, that caused even princesses to be careless of how they set their feet, enabled him to hear them at all. Then the soldier, with a last snore, stood up as softly as many years of the most dangerous of scouting missions had taught him, and whisked the black cloak around his shoulders. It blew like a shadow around him and settled without weight. Then he heard a laugh, low and brief, as if cut off, and not a happy laugh; a laugh from a heart that has not laughed for pleasure in a long time. It was the only voice he heard. He stepped around the screen.

The twelve Princesses huddled at the opposite end of the Long Gallery; and he walked toward them, softly as a scout in the enemy's camp, softly as a fox in the chicken coop, softer still for what haunted things with quick ears might be listening. He heard a sound again like the lifting of a chest-lid; but this must be a ma.s.sive chest, with a great lid. The Princesses all stood back and gazed toward the floor: there a great hatch had been uncovered, at the foot of the farthest bed, and beside it the eldest Princess knelt, with her hands at the edge of the trapdoor she had just raised. She stared downward with her sisters.

The Princesses were all dressed in the loveliest of gowns; they s.h.i.+mmered like bubbles caught in the sun's rays, that look clear as gla.s.s, but with every color finely in and through and over them, till the eye is dazzled. Like some faerie bubble the eldest Princess seemed as she rose to her feet and floated-down.

Each of her sisters followed lightly after; and as the last bit of the rainbow skirt of the youngest disappeared through the trap, the soldier stepped down the dark stair behind her.

It was dark for only a moment. There was a light coming mistily from somewhere before them toward which they descended. It made its way a little even into the long black flight of stairs that sank below the King's castle. The walls that clung close around those stairs were moist to the touch, as if they walked by the river. Down they went, and still farther down; the grey light grew a little stronger and the sullen air no longer felt like a cloud in the lungs. The soldier blinked, and looked at his feet, or where his feet should be, for he had forgotten his cloak; and at that he stumbled-and stepped on the hem of the youngest Princess's dress. A tiny breathless shriek leaped from her, and she clutched at the glittering necklaces at her throat.

Her sisters paused and looked back at her, and the soldier recognized the same voice that had earlier laughed so mirthlessly. "Someone just stepped on the hem of my dress," she said, trembling, but her hands still clutched at her jewels, and she did not, or could not, look behind her.

"Don't be absurd," said the eldest; her voice drifted back along the shadowy corridor, touching the walls, like a bird so long imprisoned it no longer seeks to be free, but flies only because it has wings.

"That soldier drank the wine I gave him; you heard him snoring. You have caught your skirt on a nail." The soldier leaned against a dank wall, his heart pounding till he thought the fever-quick perceptions of the youngest Princess must hear it; but as her eleven sisters began their descent again she followed after, with only the briefest hesitation. One small hand clutched at her skirt, and pulled the edge up, so that it would not trail behind her; and she hurried to walk close at the heels of the eleventh Princess, as if she feared to linger; but not once did she look behind her.

Still they descended; but the dark walls rose up till the soldier could no longer see the ceiling; and these heavy brooding walls were now pierced with arches, and within the arches there were things that s.h.i.+mmered, red and green and blue and gold. The soldier peered into them as he pa.s.sed; and then suddenly the walls fell away entirely, and still they descended, but the stairs were cut into what appeared to be a cliff of stone, black, with veins of silver and green; and the thin s.h.i.+ning lines seemed to stir like snakes. And lining the stairs on either side were trees: but the trees were smooth and white, with a white that was frightening, for it was a white that did not know the sun; and in the strange branches of these strange trees, if trees they even could be called, grew gems, as huge and heavy as ripe plums and peaches. The soldier paused and thought: "A branch of a tree will help me tell my story to the King," and he put a hand out, quickly, so his fingers touched the cool white bole before he was overcome again by the vertigo of not being able to see himself; and so his hand closed around a branch, and he did not fall.

He let his fingers creep blindly to a twig's end, and broke off a spray of young gems, delicate as rosebuds and no larger than the fingertips of the youngest Princess; but these rosebuds were purple and blue and the s.h.i.+fting greens of hidden mosses.

The crack of the breaking branch echoed terribly in that vast underground chamber; and again the youngest Princess shrieked, a high, thin, desperate sound. But this time she whirled around, her hands in fists, and her fists against her mouth, holding in the weeping. Her eyes stared back up, and up, the way they had come, and the soldier stood motionless, although he knew she could not see him. He held the branch as he had broken it, as if it still were a part of the tree; and he looked at the youngest Princess's wide wild eyes, and he felt pity for her.

Then the eldest came back to her, and put an arm round her, and whispered to her, but the soldier could not hear what she said. But her little sister slumped, and rested her head against the elder's shoulder, and they stood so a moment. Then the youngest straightened up and dropped her hands, and they turned back to the other ten of their sisters, who were still looking up the long stair. "We will go on now," the eldest said, like a general to his tired army.

The soldier slipped the branch under his cloak and followed. The cloak clung to his shoulders as if by its own volition; but he no longer heard its whispering, and it held to him closely, motionless, not as any other cloak would sway and swing to his own motion.

The soldier now turned his eyes back to the eldest Princess as she descended the stairs in small running steps; her sisters turned round as she pa.s.sed them, but none stirred from their places till she was again at the bottom of the luminous rainbow line of them. And now the soldier saw that the stair was almost ended, and before them was a wide black lake: so wide he could not see to its far bank. He blinked, as if his eyes were somehow at fault; but they were used to the light of the upper earth, of sun and moon and stars, and they were unhappy and uncertain here. He squinted up toward the-ceiling? It was a dull green, like a pool that has lain in its bed too long undisturbed. As a ceiling, it was high and vast; as a sky, it was heavy and watchful. The soldier's shoulders moved as if they felt the weight of it, and the cloak of shadows was wrapped around him almost as if it were afraid.

He let his feet take him gently down the last stairs; they were broad and low and smooth now, and any treachery they carried was not in their shape. As he reached the sh.o.r.e of the black lake he saw there were boats on the water, boats as black as the ripples they threw out, and-at their sterns stood men with poles. He listened to the sound of the ripples as they lapped against the sh.o.r.e; and they sounded like no water he had ever heard before.

The eldest Princess stepped forward, head high; and she took the outstretched hand of the steersman of the first boat, and stepped lightly into it. The soldier, watching, thought the rails did not dip with her weight, nor the small boat settle any deeper in the water. And he still listened to the small claws of the bow-waves walking on the sh.o.r.e. The second, then third Princesses mounted the second and third boats, and the soldier noticed that there were twelve of the black skiffs, and twelve men to pole them; and each man wore a black cape, and a black wide-brimmed hat with a curling feather; but the black-gloved hands held out to the princesses sparkled with jewels.

The soldier stood beside the youngest Princess, and stepped in as she did; and the boat dipped heavily. The Princess turned pale behind her bright-painted cheeks, but the soldier could not see the man's face. He poled the boat around swiftly and with an ease that the soldier read as many nights'

experience of the Princesses' mysterious dancing. There was no room for the soldier in the little boat; when the Princess had settled, gracefully if uneasily, in the bow, he stood amids.h.i.+ps, his soft-soled boots pressed against the boat's curving ribs. The small waves on the boat's skin sounded with a thinner keen than they had on the sh.o.r.e.

"We go slowly tonight," said the youngest Princess nervously, turning her head to look at the eleven other boats fanned out before them. The gap between them and the next-to-last boat was widening. The soldier had his back to the man, who after a moment replied: "I do not know how it is, but the boat goes heavily tonight."

The Princess turned her head again and gazed straight at the soldier: it seemed she met his eyes. He stared back at her, unblinking, as if they were conspirators; but she took her eyes away without recognition. The soldier found he had to unclench his fists after she looked away. He breathed shallowly, and tried to time his breathing to the slow sweep of the pole, that if it were heard at all, it would sound only as part of the black water's echo.

The man said; "Do not fear. There will still be enough dancing for you even if we arrive behind the others by a little."

The Princess turned back to stare ahead, and did not speak again.

The soldier made out fitful gleams across the water: lights s.h.i.+ning out against the dull toad-colored air.

As they approached nearer, the soldier could make out the sh.o.r.e that was their destination; and it was blazing with lights, lanterns the size of a man's body set on thick columns barely an arm's length one from another. The soldier thought of the banqueting hall where he had dined but a few hours ago, but he stopped his thoughts there, and turned them to another road. He saw that it was not the opposite sh.o.r.e they approached, but a pier; and the eleven other boats were tied there already, and their pa.s.sengers gone. The boats moved quietly together on the water, empty, as if they were holding a sly conversation.

The soldier looked left and right, and saw the dark water stretching away from him, breaking up the chips of light from the lanterns into smaller chips, and tossing them from wave to wave, and swallowing them as quickly as they might, and greedily reaching for more. He wondered if the pier was on no sh.o.r.e at all, but built out from an island raised up out of the waters after some fas.h.i.+on no mortal could say. Then he looked forward again, beyond the lights, and saw the castle, and many graceful figures moving within it; and through its wide gates he could see eleven rainbow figures, a little apart from the rest still, turning and lightly turning, moving across the lights behind them, disappearing for a moment behind the pier lights that dazzled the soldier's eyes, and as lightly reappearing: dancing. And each of them seemed to be dancing opposite a shadow, whose arms round their waists seemed like iron chains, breaking their slender radiance into two pieces.

Then the boat touched the pier, and the last Princess leaped out, as silent as a fawn, and the soldier followed slowly. The white castle reared up like a dream out of the darkness, hemmed around by the great lanterns that seemed to lift up their light to it like homage. The Princess stood as if standing still were the most difficult thing she had ever known; and then a man stood beside her. The soldier thought he must be the same man who had poled the boat; but he had thrown his cape and overshadowing hat aside, and the soldier, who had never had any particular thought of a man's beauty, was shaken by the sight of this man's face. He smiled upon the Princess a smile that she should have treasured for years; but she only looked back at him and held up her arms like a child who wishes to be picked up. The man closed his black-sleeved arms gently about her, and then they were dancing, dancing down the pier, and across the brilliantly lit courtyard and through the s.h.i.+ning gates, till they joined the rest of the beautiful dancers, and the soldier could no longer tell one couple from the next. He could tell the walls of the castle, he felt, only because they stood still; for there was a grace and loveliness to them that seemed too warm for stone: warm enough for breath and life. And now as he looked back within the castle gates he realized he could pick out his twelve Princesses by the pale luminescence of their gowns against the black garb of their partners; but this time the soldier admired them longingly and humbly, for he saw the perfect pairs they made, like night and day. And the twelve couples wove in and out of a vividly dressed, dancing throng, brilliant with all colors.

He stood where he had first stepped out of the boat, and felt as he stood that his legs would snap if he moved them; then they began to tremble, and he sat heavily down, and leaned against one of the lantern pillars, and for the first time he wondered why he had come, why he should wish to break the enchantment that held the Princesses captive. Captive? The magnificence of this castle was far greater than the simple splendor that the Princesses' father owned. He looked up from the foot of his pillar. He could not see the low green sky against the lanterns' brilliance, and such was the power of this place he was now in that he almost wondered if he had imagined it; this palace could not exist beneath that sightless sky.

His eyes went back to the tall castle, smooth as opal, with the flas.h.i.+ng figures pa.s.sing before its wide doors, and the light flooding over all. He thought again of the unearthly beauty of the man who had danced with the youngest Princess, and knew without thinking that the other eleven were as handsome.

He remembered the weary old woman at the well, the shabbiness of her hut and her gown-how could she know the truth of what she said? She could never have seen this place.

The soldier shut his eyes. Then for the first time he heard the music, as if hitherto his mind had been too dazzled by what his eyes saw; but now the music glided to him and around him, to tell him even more about the wonder of this island in a black lake. This music was as if the sweetest notes of the sweetest instruments ever played were gathered together for this one orchestra, for this single miraculous castle at the heart of an endless black sea.

He bowed his head to his knees and sighed; and the cloak of shadows loosened a little from his shoulders and crept over his arms and neck as if to comfort him. Then he felt an irregular hardness against his chest and remembered the branch of the jewel tree. He drew it out and gazed at it, turning it this way and that in the abundant white light; and it sparkled at him, but told him nothing. He put it away again and felt old, old.

"And if I do this thing," he thought suddenly, "not only will they never see this castle of heart's delight again, nor their handsome lovers; but-one of them must marry me.

"Not the youngest," he thought. "At least not the youngest."

He tried to remember seeing her in her father's hall, to remember the feeling he had had then of an unnatural quietness in her, in her sisters: and he thought, indeed it was a hard thing to live by day on earth, when the mind is full of the splendors of this place; splendors only seen the night before and in the night to come. Soon, the old woman had said, soon the Princesses would open their father's world to this one, and dwell freely in both, forever, with their bright-faced princes. Soon.

The soldier had no idea how long he sat thus, back against a lantern post, knees drawn up and head bowed. But he stirred at last, looked up, stood; faced the castle as if he would walk into it boldly. But as he looked through the gates, he saw several of the dancing pairs halt: not the ones wearing greens and blues and reds, but the ones brilliant in black and white, moonlight and darkness. Three of them; then four-six, seven, nine. Twelve. Other dancers whirled by, careless of any who must stop, and the music continued, eerie and marvelous, without pause or hesitation. But twelve couples slowly separated themselves from the crowd and made their way toward the pier where twelve black skiffs and a sad and weary soldier waited.

The soldier stepped into the last skiff with the youngest Princess as he had done before; and again he stood amids.h.i.+ps and stared out over the bow. But his thoughts lay in the bottom of his mind without motion, and he saw little that his eyes rested on. Occasionally he touched the branch of the jewel tree with his fingers as if it were some charm, some reality in this land of green sky: the reality of a world whose trees budded gems.

The black boats grounded softly on the lake sh.o.r.e, their wakes scratching at the land. The soldier stepped out and followed the Princesses up the long stair. He did not turn back to catch any last glimpse of the black boats and their shadowed captains: nor did any of the Princesses. He saw instead, as he looked ahead of him, an occasional dainty foot beneath its skirt, leaving a step behind to reach a step above: and in a quick flash of delicate soles he. could see the slippers were worn through, till the pink skin showed beneath.

The heavy trapdoor at the end of the stair still stood open, and a blaze of candles greeted them as they drew near, though the tall candles they had left were now near guttering. The soldier wondered that his breath slid in and out of his breast so easily, after bending and straightening his stiff legs up so many stairs: and thought perhaps it was but more of the enchantment of the land of green sky, of gemmed trees and black water, and a white castle upon an island.

The soldier slipped through the Princesses who stood around the hatch in the Long Gallery, gazing down for one last look at the land they lived in each night, before the eldest Princess knelt and closed it.

The door fell shut like a coffin-lid, with the same rough whisper it spoke upon opening. The soldier made his way down the Long Gallery to his screen and his cot; and he pulled off the cloak of shadows, which sighed and then went limp in his hands as if it too were sad and exhausted. He lay down silently upon his cot, the cloak bundled beneath his ear, the jeweled branch protected by the breast of his tunic, and he turned his back to the Princesses' Gallery and faced the blind wall, so that any that might choose to spy upon their spy could not notice the curious bulge it made.

And he felt, rather than saw, that the eldest Princess came and looked upon him. He could feel the shadow of her lying gracefully across his legs, and feel the silence of her face, the sweep of her glance.

Then she went away, as straight and proud as he had seen her when she brought him the wine.

Part Two

THE SOLDIER awoke late that morning as though he were climbing out of a pit, hand over hand. He was stiff, as with battle, but the stiffness was not so much that of the muscles as of the mind: the reluctance to rise and look upon yesterday's battlefield, though you bore no mark yourself; to look upon the faces of those who had been your friends and had been killed, and upon those belonging to the other side, whom you and your friends had killed. And upon those of that other army who returned in the morning as you were doing, to bury their dead, their living faces as stiff as your own.

But the soldier, lying in his cot at the end of the Long Gallery, with his night cloak under his ear, awoke to a terrible sense of not knowing where he was. Having clambered up and out of the pit of sleep, he peered over the edge, blinking, and did not recognize what he saw.

For all his long years in the Army the soldier had depended on his ability to awaken instantly, to leap in the right direction if need be to save his life, before his eyelids were quite risen, before his waking mind was called upon to consider and decide. In the moment that it took for the soldier to feel the sharp points of the gem-tree at his breast, to recognize the blind stone wall before his eyes, he lay chill with a horror that was infinite, lying as still as a deer in its bed of brush, not knowing where the hunter stood but sure that he was there, waiting. When memory swept back to him he breathed once, twice, deeply and deliberately, and slowly sat up; and he thought: "I left the regiment just in time. I am too old indeed to live as a hunted thing, hunted and hunter." He looked down at the cloak of shadows that lay curled over the pillow, and a second thought walked hard on the heels of the first: "But what adventure is this that I have exchanged for my own peace?" For suddenly it appeared to him that his life in the regiment had at least been one of simple things, and things that permitted hope; and the path he walked now was dark and unknowable.

The Long Gallery was empty and the heavy door the King had locked the night before stood open.

The soldier paused to wrap the jeweled branch in a blanket from his cot; then he threw the wine-stained cloak over his shoulder in a manner such that one could not see the bundle he carried under his arm; and he walked swiftly out. Suddenly he wanted no more than to stand outside the haunted castle with its haunted chamber, and look upon the world of trees that bore green leaves and blue sky, and hear the birds sing. He remembered that birds did sing in the deep forests around the King's castle; and he thought perhaps this was a thing he could take hope from.

He made his way as quickly as he might down the stairs to the great front doors of the castle, and through them he went without pausing. He saw no one, nor did any challenge him, as he walked through the King's house and into his lands as if he had the right to use them so.

The day was high, clear and cloudless, and the world was wide as he stood looking around him. He could taste the air in his mouth, and the memory of the night before was washed away like brittle ashes from a hearth when a bucket of clean water is tossed over it. He walked on, the bundle still held close under his arm: and his steps took him at last, without his meaning them to, to the guardhouse; and there the captain was the man the soldier had spoken to the evening before; and the captain came out of the guardhouse as the soldier neared, but he said no word.

"I have come to ask a favor," said the soldier, for he had thought, as he saw the captain's face again, of the favor that this man might do him.

"Name it," said the captain. "We are comrades after all, for each of us walks at the edge of a dangerous border, and makes believe that he is the guardian of it." The soldier bowed his head and brought out the blanket-wrapped bundle. "Can you keep this safe for me? Safe from any man's eyes, or anyone's knowledge?"

The captain's eyes flickered at anyone. "I will keep it as safe as mortal man may," he replied. "I have the way of no more."

A bit of a smile twisted one comer of the soldier's mouth. "Nor have I," said the soldier. "As one mortal man to another, I thank you."

Another wandering piece of a smile curled around the captain's mouth, and the soldier held the bundle out to him, and the captain took it. "Good hunting to you, comrade," he said.

"Thank you," said the soldier, but the smile had disappeared. He turned away and off the path, and walked into the forest.

He walked a long time, breathing the air and rubbing leaves between his fingers that he might catch the sharp fresh scent of them; and he went so quietly, or they were so tame, that he saw deer, does and bucks and spotted fawns, and rabbits brown and grey, a fox, and a marten which clung to the branch of a tree and looked down at him with black inscrutable eyes. Birds there were, many of them: those that croaked or rasped a warning of his coming or going, those that darted across clearings or from bush to bush before him; those that sat high in the branches of the trees and sang for or despite him; and those that wheeled silently overhead.

In the late afternoon he sat on the bank of the river and watched the sun go down and reluctantly admitted to himself that he was hungry, for he had had nothing to eat that day but the fruit he had pulled from the trees of the King's orchard. But it was with a heavy foot nonetheless that he took the first step back to the castle.

A servant stood by the door at his entrance, and he was escorted directly upstairs to the bath-room, where the deep steaming pool again awaited him, and fresh clothes were laid out in the dressing-room.

He washed and dressed, and then he picked up the wine-stained cloak of the night before and looked at it thoughtfully.

He carried it back into the bath-room and looked around. A ewer of fresh water stood near the ma.s.sive bathtub, and the soldier dropped the cloak into it. He dropped to his knees beside it-like any washerwoman, he thought wryly-and swished the cloak clumsily around in the water. He could smell, faint but clear, the odor of the wine lifting out of the ewer. He brought soap from the bath, and scrubbed and wrung and scrubbed the cloak till his knuckles were sore and his opinion of washerwomen had risen considerably; and then he rinsed the draggled cloak in another water urn, and hung the sodden ma.s.s over the edge of the tub where it might drip without harming the deep carpet that lay in front of the door to the dressing-room. "I've ruined it, no doubt," he thought. "Well, let them wonder." And he picked up the fresh cloak that was laid out with his other new clothes, and turned and went downstairs to the banquet.

The banquet was as it had been the evening before: magnificent with its food and the beauty of the Princesses and the splendor of their clothes-and he observed this evening with interest that the clothes they wore were of ordinary, if rich, hues; their rainbow gowns did not appear in their father's hall-and oppressive with a silence that hung in the ear like a threat, and was not m.u.f.fled by the music of the King's elegant musicians. The soldier ate, for he was hungry; but he barely recognized his own hand, the wrist and forearm draped in a sleeve too gaudy to be that of an old soldier too weary for war, and the food in his mouth was as tasteless as wood chips. And the blaze of the candelabra hurt his eyes.