“Now,” she said. “Follow me.”
Jack Dory answered her aloud.
“Wherever you lead, light of my heart, river of my soul,” he said to the goat. “Take me to her.”
He followed the goat, and Brother Edik, having heard Jack Dory’s words, followed the boy.
In the dungeon, the king said, “Tell me how the story ends.”
But Beatryce did not speak.
The king and the girl sat together in silence.
The only sound was that of the far-off weeping.
“I will tell you the rest of the story if you answer a question for me,” said Beatryce.
“You dare to bargain with a king?”
“Who weeps?” asked Beatryce. “Whose crying do we hear?”
“Your mother, Aslyn of Abelard, weeps,” said the king. “Now, tell me the rest of the story. Tell me what becomes of the mermaid and the king.”
Beatryce’s heart was loud in her ears. It beat out two words over and over: your mother, your mother.
Your mother.
“Tell me,” said the king. “How does it end?”
When the whole castle was asleep, the boy put the mermaid on his back. The seahorse was entwined in her hair. They went together down the twisting stairs and through the gilded hallways and over the drawbridge and into the dark woods.
The blackbird appeared from the trees and spoke two words: “This way.”
They followed the bird. They went deeper into the dark woods and through them and came to a cliff.Beyond the cliff was the sea.
The sky was indigo, and the stars were just beginning to fade, and the boy and the blackbird and the mermaid stared together out at the purple light reflecting on the water.
“It’s even more beautiful than you told me,” said the boy.
With the mermaid in his arms, he made his way down the cliff to the sea, where, moving toward them through the dark waters, was another mermaid.
Rosellyn’s mother.
Rosellyn leapt from the boy’s arms into the sea.
Her mother swam to her, weeping, smiling.
The seahorses surrounded them as they embraced. The seahorses sang to them.
And one-eyed Morelich at last spoke again.
He said, “Home. We are home.”
The boy stood at the water’s edge.
“But where now should I go?” he called to the mermaid. “Where is a place for me? I cannot return to the castle. The king will never forgive me for what I have done.”
Here, Beatryce fell silent.
“That is not the end, surely,” said the king. “What happened to the boy? What happened to the king?”
Beatryce did not answer him.
She was listening.
She heard the clatter of hooves. And the high, sweet song of a bird—a bird singing a beautiful, sad song.
The king, too, listened.
“What is that?” said the king. “What bird sings?”
“It is not a bird,” said Beatryce. “It is a boy. And also a goat. And I would wager that a monk is with them as well, and somewhere, too, a true king, a wise king.”
She felt suddenly that her heart might lift her up right out of the dungeon.
She did not feel imprisoned at all.
“They have come for me,” said Beatryce. “They are here to take me home.”
And then she called out, “Answelica! I am here! Here!”
Could Answelica open the lock on a dungeon cell?
Of course she could.
Her head, after all, was as hard as rock. And truly, what was a rusty lock compared to her love for Beatryce?
It was nothing at all.
It was naught, as Jack Dory would say.
Jack Dory and Brother Edik kicked at the door, and Answelica knocked her head against the lock of the cell until it had no choice but to give way.
They crowded into the cell with her.
Beatryce knelt down and opened her arms to the goat.
Brother Edik put his hand on Beatryce’s head.
Jack Dory said, “Ah, Beatryce. There you are. I have come to learn my letters.”
She smiled at him. “This is the second time you have come and rescued me from a dark room, Jack Dory. And you already know your letters.”
“Aye,” said Jack Dory. “And now I would like to learn to form them into words.”
“I will teach you,” said Beatryce.
“But how does the story end?” said the king.
Beatryce drew herself up and looked the king in the eye. She said, “The counselor you rely upon is an evil liar. And you are nothing but a fool.”
She took the candle from the king’s hand just before Answelica head-butted the man from behind, sending him flying through the air.
And then Beatryce shouted one word: “Mother!”
There came a strangled cry.
“This way,” said Beatryce. She held the candle, and Jack Dory and Brother Edik and Answelica followed her.
They found Beatryce’s mother in a cell, her mouth gagged, her hands bound. Answelica, with her hard head, made short work of the lock on that door, too.
Beatryce undid the gag on her mother’s mouth and the rope on her mother’s wrists. She wept as she worked. Her mother wept, too.
“Beatryce,” said her mother when at last she could speak. “I could hear you. I could hear you the whole time. And I, too, want to know how the story ends.”
Beatryce threw herself into her mother’s arms. “This way,” said Beatryce. “This is how the story ends.”
King Ehrengard ruled wisely for one full day.
Within that day, he exiled both the foolish king and his scheming counselor.
He sent the two of them far out to sea in an impossibly small boat with no sail and no oars.
“Go and tell lies to each other for all eternity,” said King Ehrengard. “That is my punishment for you.”
When they were gone, when the two men had disappeared from sight, King Ehrengard sat slumped in his throne. “I cannot bear it,” he said. “I have no appetite for vengeance and no wish to be king.”
Beatryce said, “Then why not walk away?”
“I have done that once,” said the king.
“Yes,” said Beatryce. “And now you have been given a chance to become the king who walked away twice.”
King Ehrengard looked at Beatryce. He sat up straight, and then he threw back his head and laughed.
“Cannoc,” said Beatryce to the laughing king, “did you not once say that it is perhaps time for a queen? I know of a wise woman who could rule well.”
And so it was that Aslyn of Abelard was summoned to the throne room.
“Lady Abelard,” said the king, “you are a noblewoman who wanted your children to be learned. You had the foresight and the courage to educate Beatryce. Beatryce is too young to be queen. She does not want the crown, in any case. But she believes, and so do I, that you have the wisdom and the fearlessness to lead. Will you take this crown from me?”
Aslyn said, “I will take this crown. I will take it to honor Asop and Rowan and Beatryce. I will do it for my children.”
And so there now sits a queen upon the throne.
To the right of the queen sits Cannoc. He advises her on all things.
His beard has almost reached his feet. He laughs often. He looks closely at every face.
He listens well.
But he does not rule.
It is Aslyn of Abelard who rules.
It is Aslyn of Abelard, mother of Beatryce and Asop and Rowan, who rules wisely and well.
And Beatryce?
She stands on a cliff with the great green sea before her.
Jack Dory stands to the left of her and Answelica to the right of her.
Beatryce rests her hand on the goat’s head.
The girl and the boy and the goat all look out to sea.
“And so, by royal decree of Queen Aslyn, we three will go out into the land and teach the peop
le to read,” says Jack Dory.
“All the people,” says Beatryce.
“All the people,” says Jack Dory, smiling.
The wind blows Beatryce’s hair around her face.
She can see far out to sea, very far.
And she is smiling, too.
And in the dark woods, snug inside the trunk of a tree, Brother Edik bends over a manuscript. He is drawing a mermaid with a bejeweled tail. He is drawing a seahorse with one eye. He is drawing a char boy and a blackbird and a king.
He is illuminating the world of Beatryce’s story.
He is making a book.
He writes the words that end the story:
The mermaid looked down and saw that the jewels on her tail were returning. One after the other, they appeared.
Rosellyn laughed aloud to see it.
A bee buzzes around Brother Edik’s head.
He hums as he works.
“You will find your way home,” said the mermaid to the boy. “Here, take this ruby; take this sapphire. I give them both to you with my whole heart, for you are beloved, beloved of me.”
All of this happened long ago.
Or perhaps it has yet to happen.
It could be that this book, the book of Beatryce, is the story of a world yet to come.
Who can say?
One thing is certain, though: what matters in the end is not prophecies.
Ask Brother Edik if that is not so.
What does, then, change the world?
If the hardheaded goat Answelica could speak, she would answer with one word: “Love.”
And if you were to ask Beatryce of Abelard?
She, too, would answer “Love.”
Love, and also stories.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2021 by Kate DiCamillo
Illustrations copyright © 2021 by Sophie Blackall
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.
First electronic edition 2021
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number pending
The illustrations in this book were done with real and digital pencils.
Candlewick Press
99 Dover Street
Somerville, Massachusetts 02144
www.candlewick.com
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The Beatryce Prophecy Page 12
