Several of the young men came over to us where we waited, looking us over in an insolent manner, until they saw the coffin itself. Then they became quiet. One of them, a boy scarcely fourteen or fifteen years old, pressed his face to one of the transparent bits of crystal and peered within. I thought it best, since he was surrounded by his fellows, not to antagonize him or cause any notice by using enchantment. I had seen similar gangs of young men, though not noble young men, in Bayonne, where they were said to roam the streets at night, seeking unprotected young women they might rape and ruin. It was a kind of game with them, and the insolence of these young nobles seemed also a game: cockiness pushed to its limits.
The coffin-peering youngster stood up, very arrogantly, and asked me who she was.
“My granddaughter, child,” I said, unthinking.
One of the other young men started toward me, angrily, but another courtier, a very handsome, slightly older young man, put out his hand and said softly, “The young man who addressed you is Prince Edward. Fourth son of King Zot of Nadenada.”
I bowed, as best I could from atop my little horse. “Your Highness,” I said to the arrogant lad. The soft-spoken courtier regarded the prince with a worried expression.
“And you are, sir?” I asked the pleasant-voiced courtier.
“Vincent,” he told me with a smile, taking his eyes from his master for only a moment. “Vincent d’Escriban.”
Giles returned from the encampment shaking his head. No horse for sale. Well, it had been worth the trial.
I bowed again. “We must depart,” I said. “It is a long journey to Compostela.”
“Is she dead?” the prince asked, taking hold of my horse’s bridle to prevent my moving.
“We think not,” I said. “She may be under an enchantment.”
The young man looked at Vincent and said, “I want her.”
Vincent and I exchanged uncertain glances.
“I want her,” the boy repeated. “Buy her for me.”
“She is a person,” I explained softly. “Not a toy. Not a mannequin. She is not something one can buy.”
“Buy her for me,” screamed the prince, growing very red in the face.
Vincent shrugged an apology toward me and moved to take the young prince in hand by distracting him from his madness. Esky took the right-hand coffin horse by the reins and led him purposefully onto the road. Giles and I followed, on our horses. The prince broke away from his keeper, dashed into the road and threw himself in front of the coffin horses. One horse stumbled. The rope came loose. The other horse bolted. The coffin fell into the road. The lid bounced off. My granddaughter’s body rolled out of it into the road and lay there, coughing.
Beside her in the dust lay a piece of apple.
The mad young prince sat up, looked at my granddaughter with great satisfaction, then smiled. “Buy her for me,” he said again, “I want to marry her.”
I had slipped off my horse and then had been knocked down in all the confusion. Giles was busy picking me up and seeing that nothing was broken. Eskavaria was cuddling Snowdrop and crying. Vincent was remonstrating with the mad young prince. Persons of great self-importance arrived from across the road to see what all the fuss was about and succeeded in making an even larger one. Questions were shouted at me, which I was too confused to answer.
We are now camped at the edge of the forest, being waited upon by the servants of King Zot of Nadenada while the mad young prince and my granddaughter play at shuttlecocks in the road.
“Who is she?” King Zot himself asked me, having been introduced through Giles and Vincent.
His tone was peremptory. I didn’t like it.
“She is the daughter of the hereditary Prince of Marvella and his former wife, Elladine, who was the daughter of Lord Edward of Wellingford and granddaughter of the Duke of Monfort and Westfaire,” I said with chill hauteur.
“Oh well, that’s all right then,” he said, glancing at me out of the comer of his eye. “Related to you?”
“My granddaughter.”
“Ah,” he said, scratching his nose. His manner changed to one of respect. “How old would you say she is?”
“I would say she is…” And I paused, wondering for a moment how old she really is. She had been born quite some time ago. “I would say she is twelve or thirteen,” I said. “She spent some time under an enchantment, but she did not age during that time.”
“Virgin, is she?”
I snorted. “Of course.” Though I wouldn’t have put it past Esky or one of his brothers to have tried.
“Ah,” he said again, and then sat down, leaned forward, and began to tell me about his kingdom.
Nadenada, it seems, is a pocket realm just over the mountains toward France. It is larger than Marvella, but not by much. The mad young prince is a pocket prince, not the heir, but still a prince, and at fourteen it is time he was married. So said King Zot.
“Undoubtedly you will think of alliances when you consider a wife for him,” I said stiffly.
He stared gloomily at the dust between his feet, drawing circles in it with an ornamental dagger. “Not much of that kind of thing in Nadenada,” he said, summoning Vincent with one hand. He sent the young man for wine and settled himself more comfortably on the chair he had brought over from his camp. Then he drew more circles. “France wouldn’t care, far too big and far away. England wouldn’t care, they’ve enough to worry about warring with France. Navarre wouldn’t care, nor Aragon; everything is religion with them, and we’re not that observant in Nadenada. And the same applies to Castile, come to that.”
“Then you’re not concerned with alliances.”
“Not really, no.”
“Some affair of state, perhaps, which could be helped along by a judicious match?”
“Haven’t any affairs of state, either. There was the matter of the wool tax, but that’s been decided.” He gloomed into his linked fingers. “Shepherds said they’d go over the mountains into Spain, so we relieved them of it. Can’t have all one’s shepherds absconding to Spain.”
“It wouldn’t look well,” I agreed. “No other affairs of state?”
“None I can think of,” he said.
“The prince…” (I’d almost said “the mad prince,” catching myself just in time). “The prince will want a large dowry, undoubtedly.”
“Not … not really large,” the King murmured, giving me a straight look. “It’s not as though he were in the succession, you understand.”
“An elder brother?”
“Three elder brothers.”
“Things can happen,” I murmured.
“Yes,” he said in a plaintive voice. “They can. Put it, then, that he’s not likely to be in line for the throne.”
“So he wouldn’t need a very large dowry.”
“Not very large.”
I considered this. “Did you happen to notice the … ah … case that my granddaughter was traveling in? Before your son dumped her out into the road.”
“I had noticed that, yes. Brass, is it? And crystal?”
“Gold,” I said. “And gems.”
“Ah,” he said again. “One wouldn’t have known.”
I nodded in agreement. One really wouldn’t have known. If one hadn’t met Esky’s brothers, one wouldn’t even have thought it likely. I said, “Of course, your … fourth son is very young. Perhaps too young to think of marriage.”
The King scratched his head again and sweated gently into his beard. “Let me be frank,” he said. “Since the boy became a man, which happened just a year ago, he has been quite … quite…”
“Urgent?” I suggested.
“Urgent,” he agreed. “We are having some trouble keeping maidservants at the castle. His mother and I are agreed it is time he was married.”
We parted, each to think about that. Vincent came to summon the mad young prince to lunch. Snowdrop, thus deserted, came to sit by me in the shade.
“Have you been having fun?” I
asked.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “It’s so nice.”
“What about the young man?”
“He’s so nice,” she replied with a happy expression. I offered her some cakes which the King had brought with him, and she took one, eating it greedily. I was reminded of her mother.
“Tell me, Snow,” I asked. “Why did you let the witch poison you with that apple when the little men had told you not to let her in?”
She gazed at me wonderingly, her little brow furrowing with the attempt at thought.
“Because I was hungry and it looked so nice.”
Her father, Prince Charming, was never long in the brains department, either.
ST. FRANCIS’S DAY, OCTOBER,
YEAR OF OUR LORD 1417
Giles and I are here in Nadenada for the wedding. We are honored guests. Since the Death ravaged all of Europe, no one wonders if fathers and mothers aren’t present at weddings. A grandmother does quite well enough, even one so obviously old as I. The Queen even offered her dressmaker in order that I might be suitably clad for the occasion. Prince Charme and Princess Ilene have been invited to the nuptials. I mentioned to the Prime Minister of this place that Ilene was probably responsible for the spell which had been laid on Snowdrop. He talked with the archbishop, and formal charges of witchcraft are being considered. As a princess, she is not subject to the laws of a neighboring kingdom, but the archbishop believes the Church has authority to examine her even if civil authority cannot. I’m not sure how I feel about this. I don’t like Ilene, but then I don’t much like heresy trials, either, and I certainly don’t like anything which might involve Ilene’s patron in the mirror. The archbishop has sent someone posthaste both to Avignon and Rome to attempt to get a ruling from one or more of the popes on the matter. I can’t remember whether there are three popes at the moment or only two.
If I were wise, and if I had the conviction wisdom should lend me, I would seize Snow up and take her somewhere away from this pathological child she is going to marry. And yet, one asks, where? Where does one take a gloriously beautiful twelve-year-old girl who has not two tiny brains to rub together to make even one wee warm idea in her head? And when one gets her there, what does one do with her? No monastery would take her. No, that’s not true, given a sufficient dowry some monastery would, but she’d be miserable there. Marriage is her only hope. And yet…
Well. Beauty does not breed true. I said that before, when Elly died. Beauty exists in all ages, but it does not necessarily breed true. Mixed with dross, it becomes dross. I am only her grandmother, after all. I am not God, who presumably made her as she is for some reason!
ALL HALLOWS’ EVE
Tomorrow is the wedding. Tonight I was sitting alone in my warm, tapestry-hung room, with my cat on the bed and Giles next door, remembering Mama. I saw her last on Samhain Eve, so long ago, when Thomas the Rhymer got loose from Faery. I wondered if she would care that her great-granddaughter was being married.
“Fenoderee,” I whispered.
And he was there, sitting on the window sill, looking out at the night. Puck lounged against the bed, chewing at a fingernail. Call one, get both.
“I was thinking about Mama,” I said.
“Ah,” said Puck. “Well, she’s in Faery, looking well.”
I tried to think of something to ask about her, but I couldn’t. Instead, I wondered, “Was it the Dark Lord I saw in the witch’s glass?”
“It was,” said Fenoderee.
“Did he see me?”
“Carabosse thinks he may have. Israfel thinks he did, also. They’re both frightened for you, though they say it was probably going to happen, sooner or later. Once you went back to the twentieth, it showed up in the Pool that he would.”
Puck added, “They think the Dark Lord will come looking for you, manipulating things. Be careful, Beauty.”
“How much do you know about …” I started to ask, then shut my mouth, remembering they didn’t know.
“About your burden?” Puck asked. “We’ve known since almost the beginning. It’s not her fault, but old Clockwork Carabosse is one of the Sidhe, after all. She can’t get out of the habit of thinking of us Bogles as slightly subnormal. She thinks we don’t notice what’s going on under our noses.”
Fenoderee said, “I don’t know what made her think we wouldn’t see what she was up to. She and Israfel did it right there in front of us.”
I sighed. “I’m getting old, you know. I won’t last too much longer. They’d better start thinking of somewhere else to hide it.”
Puck nodded deliberately. “They’re cogitating, looking in the Pool, thinking deep thoughts, the way they do.”
“And I’m still just supposed to go along, is that it?” I was surprised to find myself still capable of a little anger!
“For now,” said Fenoderee. “Is that why you called?”
I shook my head. “No, it was just I was thinking about Mama. I was thinking of going to Faery to say hello, but when I returned here, wouldn’t a lot of time have passed.”
Puck nodded. “Oh, yes. No way around that. Your mortal part ages whenever you travel back and forth by magic.”
I wanted to see her, but I couldn’t risk that. If I died before Carabosse took away my burden, it might be lost forever. Besides, Giles and I couldn’t look forward to that much time together. Nor Grumpkin, either. “Could you take a message for me?”
He smiled.
“Tell her … I love her,” I said.
I think I do. Despite what she is and how she feels, I think I do. In my long life there have been few enough people, mortal or Faery, for me to love.
ALL HALLOWS’ NIGHT
Well, we have had a wedding. There was the mad young prince, all dressed up in taffeta and furs with a plumed cap, looking very handsome, and there was Galantha, Snowdrop, in silk and velvet, both of them standing outside the church door, exchanging their pledges. I had hired a local goldsmith to break up the coffin and melt down the gold into nice little ingots. That gave me a goodly sum for her dowry, and the King settled a house and land on his son. They have enough to live on; neither of them is bright enough to get into serious trouble; and I laid a happiness spell on them as a gift. It was the least I could do. The King is quite a jolly fellow, several decades younger than I, but gallant and well-spoken. He says to call him Zot, and that he’ll send word to me in England how the children get along. He flirts with me and tells me I don’t look a day over eighty.
After the pledging was done and the rings exchanged and the papers signed, we went into the church and had the nuptial mass. And after that was done, we went to the feast, and there was Princess Ilene of Marvella. I’m not sure whether she knew who the bride was. I’m not sure the invitation mentioned the bride’s name. If it did, she may have assumed it was someone else by the same name, or that Snow would have aged during the thirty years she’d been asleep, or something. At any rate, when Princess Ilene saw Snow, her eyes bulged. I’ve never seen that actually happen before, but it happened this time. Ilene was standing beside me at the time, her eyes bulged, and then something quite dreadful happened to her face. It sagged, melted, and began to fall off the skull. She raised her hands, just as she had when invoking the presence in the mirror, and they were all bones. Well, she’d said the Dark Lord held her beauty in thrall, and she’d been safe so long as no one around was prettier than she. However, Snow certainly was prettier and it seemed the Dark One was ending his contract and taking Princess Ilene for his own.
I was the only one who saw what was happening. Ilene crumpled to the floor, very slowly. I’d brought my cloak to the banquet with me, folded over my arm, thinking I might want to escape if things got dull. I spread it like a fishing net, to hide what was left of the Princess. “Fenoderee,” I whispered, and there he was. “Take it away,” I said. “And put the cloak back under my bed upstairs.”
He was gone only for an instant. Then he was back. “Where did you put her?” I whispered.
<
br /> “Under the church with the other old bones,” he whispered back, then made a face at me and departed. Faery folk aren’t very respectful, sometimes. That was consecrated ground!
Then I caught myself and realized that was merely another way of saying “magical ground.” She could lie there as well as anywhere.
A few moments later, Prince Charming, the hereditary Prince of Marvella came wandering toward me with Snow on his arm and a silly smile on his sweet old face. He was looking for his wife to tell her he’d found his long-lost daughter, but Princess Ilene was nowhere to be found. I helped them look for a while, until I got tired. Then I came up here to bed.
Giles brought me a cup of wine and asked where we would go now.
“Home,” I told him. Meaning Westfaire. Or, at least, somewhere near there. I long for home.
NOVEMBER
King Zot of Nadenada gave us an escort to Bayonne. There we found it simple to join a group of travelers who were seeking passage to England. Good weather held. A merchantman presented itself in due course. Five days north, we landed once more at Bristol and found a carriage we could hire to take us to Sawley, where, after inquiries, I found the man who claimed to own Wellingford (though I much doubt his claim would stand a legal test). I paid him a few years’ rent on the Dower House.
And in that house we have come to rest, Giles and I, keeping our old bones busy hiring people to refurbish the place and manage the farm land around it, and finding half a dozen women to keep it clean. It is not a wreck, not like some places in the countryside, but it is certainly dilapidated. I converted gems back to cash, and cash into investments with a certain House of Levi in England. This time, just in case I decide to go away and come back in five hundred years, the money is to be paid to whoever knows a few code words. I’ve had enough of darting about planting forged documents.
SPRING 1418
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