Alberta’s expression remained aloof. “That’s not why I sent you.”
Confusion twisted through him. “Then why?”
“My father insists on riding at the head of his soldiers. These marauders needed a more tempting target than the king. I told you before that I’m a villain,” she added. “I ensured his safety by endangering yours.”
Duncan fixed his attention on the stables some twenty yards away. “A real villain wouldn’t confess to such a crime,” he said, “and as I told you before, the responsibility was mine. Any danger I’m in is of my own making.”
She did not respond. Duncan hazarded a glance in her direction to see the customary furrow between her brows, but she wasn’t scowling, exactly. It was more of a studious frown.
“Should you be out here alone?” he asked her suddenly. Only a few days ago, a group of men had plotted her abduction, after all.
She waved a dismissive hand. “I told everyone my ankle was throbbing and I was going to bed early. Briarly’s still confined to his rooms, as is his valet and most of his entourage, so I have nothing to fear from that corner.”
“Was one application really that potent?” Duncan asked, both impressed and terrified of her at the same time.
Her expression turned naïve. “One application?” she asked. “Probably not.”
“There were others?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, and her eyes went heavenward. She rocked back on her heels, childlike.
Duncan laughed. He couldn’t stop himself. It was plain as day that she was proud of her handiwork, and even more so that she felt unable to brag about it openly to anyone.
“I’m sorry,” he said through his amusement. She was watching him with a stern expression, but it wasn’t stern enough to scare him sober again. “It’s not funny, I know. It’s terrible what you’ve done, what you’ve had others do, but at the same time… He sort of deserved it, you know?”
“Of course he deserved it,” said Alberta pettishly.
“Of course,” he echoed, still mirthful. He didn’t bother to tell her that a real villain wouldn’t have cared whether a victim deserved harsh treatment or not. If Princess Alberta was determined to see herself as a villain, nothing Duncan said would convince her otherwise.
“Bella’s going to summon you tomorrow,” she told him abruptly.
That wiped the smile clean off his face. “Why?” he asked.
“Prince Perceval wants to hear stories of Sir Goldmayne, of course. They would’ve summoned you tonight to tell them, but you weren’t back from visiting your sick mother.”
“Why do I have to be the one to tell them?” he demanded with rising horror. “I’m sure any of the servants could cobble something together—”
“You did such a fine job last time that Bella’s decided you’re an expert. I was only warning you,” she added with a dangerous glare. “Don’t take this as some sort of opportunity to reveal your true self in front of my father and the nobles of the court, either.”
A knot of panic welled up in his throat. “Why would they be there?”
“I have no idea who your audience will be,” said Alberta. “It would’ve been the entire court tonight, if you’d been here.”
He was suddenly thankful that Wildfire had taken the long route, and that they had lingered on their way back from the abbey. That relief must have shown on his face, because Alberta suppressed a laugh.
“I’ll leave you with that happy experience to look forward to,” she said. “Sleep well tonight, Scurvyhead.”
No intelligible response emerged from his lips. He helplessly watched her go until she was nearly to the little side door of the castle. Wildfire tugged on his reins at last, reminding him of his presence.
“She really enjoys making people miserable,” Duncan said to the horse in wonder.
“Yup,” replied Wildfire. “I hope you dream up some amusing stories tonight. That might be a hard crowd to please.”
“I’ll just tell them more about Goldmayne’s ridiculous talking horse,” he retorted. “It kept them captivated well enough last time.”
Chapter 20
“Wait, wait! I’m not ready yet!” Princess Bellinda prettily rearranged herself upon the sofa where she sat. “Are you comfortable, Percy, or shall I have the maids bring you another pillow?”
The prince of Austrina colored sheepishly beneath her attention. “I’m quite comfortable, thank you… um, Bella.”
Princess Bellinda beamed at him. She’d done a superb job of ensnaring the prince with her charms. Perceval was completely besotted with her, if these three minutes’ observation was accurate. Duncan shifted uncomfortably and tried to keep his eyes from resting in any one place.
True to Alberta’s warning he had been summoned to attend a party of royals in one of the larger parlors of the castle. He supposed he was lucky not to be summoned directly to the king’s court. Here assembled were only Bellinda, Perceval, and Alberta, along with a handful of courtiers, who had come for the novelty of the experience, and a couple of servants to tend to their needs.
“You may begin, Scurvyhead,” Bellinda prompted.
“Shouldn’t we wait for Father?” asked Alberta, much to Duncan’s horror. She watched his reaction from the corner of her eyes and seemed amused by it.
“He said we needn’t,” replied Bellinda.
Alberta shrugged, and all eyes in the room turned upon Duncan. He fought the urge to squirm beneath that collective stare.
“What story did you want to hear?” he asked reluctantly.
Bellinda brightened. “Why not the one about the—” The parlor door opened, and she halted her speech to view the newcomers. “Father!” she cried in delight. “Mae, too!”
“Are we late?” King Edwin inquired. He entered with his eldest daughter while Duncan’s heart plummeted into his knees. “We’ve only just finished with court, but we came right over. Is this the servant who knows so much about this Goldmayne fellow?” he asked with a dubious glance in Duncan’s direction.
“Scurvyhead knows ever so many stories,” said Bellinda.
“Most of them are complete rubbish,” Alberta added.
Everyone turned Duncan’s direction a second time, and he realized that the king expected him to give some sort of account for his knowledge. “I only know what other people tell,” he lied, and he ducked his head humbly.
“Scurvyhead,” the king mused thoughtfully. Then, “My own storytellers have proven their lack of knowledge on the subject of this Goldmayne. Let’s see if you can do any better.”
Duncan shrank beneath that gaze. One of those storytellers was already positioned in the corner of the room, summoned there to learn and quite resentful of having his place usurped.
“I’ll do my best,” said Duncan.
King Edwin hummed, unconvinced. Still, he took his rightful position in the centermost seat with his eldest daughter next to him, an arrangement that required everyone else in the room to move accordingly. Profoundly nervous, Duncan waited for the signal that they were all settled and ready to begin.
The delay was excruciating. At long last, “You may proceed,” said King Edwin imperiously.
Duncan hesitated. “Where shall I start?”
“At the beginning, of course,” King Edwin replied.
“The beginning?” he echoed in confusion.
King Edwin looked harassed at having to explain. “Yes, the beginning. This Goldmayne fellow, how did he come to have hair of solid gold? What are his origins?”
Helplessly Duncan’s eyes sought out, of all people, Princess Alberta.
“If you don’t know, you can make it up,” she told him.
“Alberta,” protested her father, “I want to know the truth!”
“No one really knows the truth, Father,” she replied, “least of all Scurvyhead. Goldmayne is only a collection of stories.”
“I’ve seen him with my own eyes!”
“It’s pr
obably some enterprising young man who’s capitalizing on these rumors to make a name for himself,” she replied logically. “What of it, Scurvyhead?” she added. “Can you tell us the origins of this Sir Goldilocks? Better yet, can you tell us the origins of his talking horse?”
“Talking horse?” said her father sharply.
“I can,” Duncan declared before the conversation could get any further out of hand, “but I can only tell what’s hearsay.”
“Just be careful not to tell anything too incredible,” said Alberta then, and he took this as a reminder not to give himself away.
He swallowed as, once again, all eyes in the room focused on him. “Once upon a time,” he said, “there was a common boy, with a common head full of common hair.”
“What was his name?” King Edwin interrupted.
“John,” said Duncan instinctively. It was the most common name he could think of, especially here in Meridiana, where every third person he met seemed to be called that. “But he was small,” he added when the king made a noise of disappointment, “so everyone called him Little John. He lived with his father, who used to beat him like a dirty rug.”
“Why?” asked the king. “Was he a wicked boy?”
Duncan frowned. “No. His father just didn’t like him. He didn’t like anyone, I think. He used to get drunk and beat Little John black and blue. One day, the boy decided that he’d had enough of such treatment and ran away from home. He journeyed a few days on the road, tired and hungry, with no roof over his head and not a friend in the world. Then one day, he came upon a great manor house. ‘Surely they can spare a morsel of bread for me to eat,’ he thought, and he knocked upon the door.
“A wrinkly old woman answered. Little John didn’t know it, but she was a witch. Not only did she let him into her house and feed him, but she gave him a place to stay and a job to keep him busy. She made him caretaker of her whole estate, and handed him a set of keys that fit every single lock in the place. There were two conditions to him staying there. ‘You must never enter the closet beneath the stairs,’ she told him in her sternest voice, ‘and you must beat the white horse in the barn every evening before sundown.’”
“What strange conditions,” said King Edwin.
“Little John thought so too, but he was hardly in a position to complain,” said Duncan, encouraged by the man’s apparent interest in the story.
As he continued, his narrative picked up speed. He told of the first encounter with the talking horse and of how the hero took mercy on such a pitiful creature. He shortened his stay at the manor house and reduced Dame Groach’s strange trips from three in number to only one. Little John was a selfishly curious character, and the talking horse was more openly helpful than Wildfire had been, and all the while the noble gathering before him listened intently.
When it came time for the hero to plot his escape, Duncan thoughtfully left out the part of the sheepskin wig, in order not to draw attention to that item atop his own head. In his story, Goldmayne pronounced the road-charm the moment Dame Groach reappeared from her journey, and then fled with the talking horse. His blazing hair streamed out behind him like a beacon in the night, but he was saved by the mountains of bridles and combs and bottles.
“And the witch searches high and low for him even to this day,” he finished. “Goldmayne roams the countryside always one step ahead of her clutches, never able to have a moment’s rest, lest she and her great black horse run roughshod right over him.”
He stopped talking, and silence filled the room for three breaths.
“I say,” King Edwin remarked, “that’s quite a story.”
“How much of it is true?” Alberta asked. Her voice held its usual cynicism, but there was a perceptive glint in her eyes that Duncan didn’t entirely like.
“You’d have to catch Goldmayne and asked him yourself,” he replied pragmatically.
She pressed her lips together.
“But if he’s a commoner,” said Bellinda with a frown, “where did he learn how to fight? He fights quite well, doesn’t he, Father?”
“Like a true knight,” said King Edwin. “I’m not sure I believe this business of him having common origins.”
“I can only tell what I’ve heard,” said Duncan apologetically.
“If I may,” said a voice from the corner, and everyone turned expectantly to the storyteller who sat there. “This story would have been much better if the hero had come from a noble family, a nobleman tragically cursed to roam the wilds. Perhaps instead of calling him Little John, you could have given him a nobler name.”
Duncan opened his mouth and then shut it again stupidly.
“Isn’t it only natural for a story told among commoners to center on a commoner as its hero?” asked Alberta archly. “Scurvyhead’s no professional storyteller. He didn’t know to customize his tale for his audience as you do.”
“I don’t want a customized tale,” said King Edwin in annoyance. “I want the truth! Who is this Goldmayne character?”
“Perhaps he’s a long-lost nobleman,” suggested one of the courtiers.
“Perhaps he’s Prince Julian,” said another impulsively.
A stricken hush fell over the group. The speaker bit his tongue and hummed nervously. Everyone else looked anywhere but at Princess Margaret, who had gone quite stiff.
“He’s not Prince Julian,” Alberta declared, her voice full of scorn. She leveled a steely glare toward the courtier who had been foolish enough to make this suggestion. “If he were Julian, he would have presented himself here ages ago.”
“O-of course,” said that cowed individual.
“He might not have,” Margaret spoke up at last, and there was a forced lightness to her voice. “There’s no reason he should present himself here, after all.”
Then, she stood and walked out of the room.
King Edwin seemed to be on the verge of calling her back; instead, he merely shook his head and let her go.
“Bella, go after her,” Alberta commanded. Bellinda didn’t question the order, but darted from the room.
Duncan and Perceval were the only two who seemed not to know the particulars behind the sudden discomfort. Duncan at least knew the basics, that Prince Julian had been the one to break Princess Margaret’s heart a few years back. Perceval didn’t even know this much.
“You’re talking about Julian of Delamore?” he asked. “This Goldmayne character couldn’t really be him, could he? I heard he was dead.”
“It’s not him,” said Alberta firmly.
“We don’t actually know whether he’s dead or not,” King Edwin said delicately.
“It’s not him, Father,” she repeated. “There’s no way Julian would have stayed away from here, even if he had a head full of gold hair.”
“Maybe he’s embarrassed by it,” he replied to her. “Oh, yes, yes, Alberta! I know it’s not him! But to be quite honest, I can’t help but wish… that is, he just vanished into thin air! It would be nice to know what became of him.”
She said nothing to this, but a troubled expression danced across her face.
“I say,” said Prince Perceval to break the tense atmosphere, “couldn’t this Goldmayne character just cover up his head if he wanted to move among the general population? Maybe he lives in a village, not out in the woods—terribly wet and drafty, the woods.”
Alberta’s eyes widened apprehensively.
Duncan, though, brightened and said in his most idiotic voice, “Maybe he wears a sheepskin wig like I do!”
The response he hoped for came in a collective scoff from the group before him.
“A turban style from the east would be more suitable for such a hero,” said the storyteller in the corner knowingly. “It would add an extra layer of mystery—an exotic figure by day, perhaps a merchant in a traveling bazaar, and a gallant hero by night.”
“Has anyone seen Goldilocks at night?” asked Alberta flippantly. “I thought it was always in the afternoon.” She smiled blan
dly at the storyteller, who glowered back at her.
“All of this speculation is pointless,” her father spoke up abruptly. “It seems I really will have to catch Sir Goldmayne if I wish to know the truth about him. I must speak to my captain about the matter.”
With no other word of farewell, he hefted himself from his chair and exited through the open door. The handful of courtiers and servants followed him, as did the storyteller in the corner after he shot one final glare in Duncan’s direction. The only people left in the room were Duncan, Alberta, and Prince Perceval of Austrina.
“That was rather abrupt,” said Perceval in nervous wonder, and he spoke more to Duncan than to Alberta. Duncan rightly guessed that he was afraid of the middle princess.
“Such is the way of things here,” Alberta replied carelessly. “Have you visited Lord Briarly yet today, Prince Perceval?”
“Ah! No! What an ungrateful guest I’ve been, to come here on his invitation and then not pay my respects to him while he’s indisposed! This illness of his seems to be of some duration.” He scrambled from his seat as he spoke, torn between the opportunity to bolt from the room and the potential rudeness of taking that opportunity so eagerly.
“Some of the servants contracted it before your arrival here,” said Alberta. “It does seem to be quite debilitating. When you see him, be sure to tell him I do hope he recovers soon.” She smiled thinly. Perceval took this as an open dismissal. After a short, grateful bow, he left the room.
Alberta uncurled her legs from beneath her and stood. “Walk with me,” she commanded Duncan, and she did not wait to see whether he obeyed.
Confused and apprehensive, he followed her from the parlor and down the corridor.
As they approached a pair of doors that led outside, she spoke up severely. “I said ‘with me,’ not ‘two steps behind me.’” Duncan reluctantly closed the gap, a frown upon his face. Her sharp eyes bored into him as he took his place beside her. “How much of your story was true?”
She meant the tale of Goldmayne’s origins. She had already asked that same question back in the parlor, too. “I changed some details,” he admitted.
Goldmayne: A Fairy Tale Page 24
