The crowd of spectators could only gape at how this conversation had turned. Duncan decided to voice an objection of his own.
“I am not worthy of such an honor as this, your Majesty,” he spoke up in a firm voice. “I am not worthy.”
King Edwin and his daughters all stared. “Nonsense,” he said once he had regained his wits. “I say you are worthy, so you are worthy.”
“Your Majesty, I am peasant-born and illiterate,” Duncan insisted. “I am not a worthy match for any of your three daughters.”
“I don’t care about your birth,” the king replied. “Your valiant heart makes you worthy enough, Sir Goldmayne!”
“It’s a terrible thing to force a man into an alliance he feels unworthy to enter, Father,” Alberta suddenly remarked, and a cunning glint leapt to her eyes. She had thought of a way out of this whole mess, Duncan realized with budding hope. She would know how to preserve herself from an unwanted marriage.
To his surprise, though, she simply inquired, “Shouldn’t he have to prove his worth to his own satisfaction?”
“What are you saying, Alberta?” asked King Edwin, and he eyed her warily.
“I’m saying I’ll only marry him on one condition: that he completes a quest of my choosing to prove his worth to himself and everyone else here.”
Her father appeared torn by this proposal. He wanted his daughters married, but he also had a weakness for quests.
“As always, you’re only trying to stall the inevitable, Alberta,” said Margaret dangerously. “I will marry regardless of whether he fulfills your quest.”
“And you should, Mae,” Alberta replied. “In fact, we can have your wedding day mark the time he has to complete the quest. If he can accomplish it by then, I’ll marry him. If not, he need never show his face in Midd again.”
Duncan had no idea where she was going with this, except perhaps to give them both a means of escape from the proposed alliance. Margaret, too, saw nothing suspicious in her suggestion.
“All right,” she agreed.
“It will take at least a month to prepare a proper wedding for the future queen of Meridiana,” said Alberta. “What say we make that the time limit, then?”
“Fine,” said Margaret.
Bellinda glanced between the pair warily. Their father, too, seemed uneasy by the suddenly tense atmosphere. Reluctantly he asked, “And what sort of quest would you put to him, Alberta? Nothing impossible, mind you.”
“Of course it’s not impossible,” Alberta replied. “That wouldn’t be fair to any of us.”
“Then what must he do to win your hand?” her father asked. He seemed more and more interested in the prospect of a quest with each passing second.
The whole court seemed to hold its breath as everyone waited to hear Princess Alberta’s answer. She fixed her gaze on Duncan’s frowning eyes and spoke at last.
“He must find and bring back Prince Julian of Delamore,” she said plainly.
Several stricken gasps sounded as all eyes in the room shifted to Princess Margaret. She had turned ashen. “Father said it couldn’t be an impossible quest,” she protested. “Julian may very well be dead.”
“Then he need only bring back proof of Julian’s death,” Alberta replied with a steady voice. “That way we can know once and for all. If he does bring Julian back, though, you’ll have to call off your wedding and marry him instead. He has prior claim, you know.”
For fully a minute, no one spoke. All eyes nervously watched Alberta and Margaret and the silent battle of wills that stretched between them. At long last, the elder sister spoke in a trembling voice. “Sometimes I truly hate you, Alberta.”
“You can dictate my marriage but I can’t dictate yours?” Alberta replied archly.
Margaret straightened. “Fine. Have it your way.”
“Fine,” said Alberta.
King Edwin no longer looked so eager. “What say you, Sir Goldmayne?” he asked. “Will you accept this quest to prove your worth?”
“Of course he’ll accept it,” Alberta replied before Duncan had the chance. “He’ll leave this very evening, in fact. Did you have something you wanted to say, Goldmayne?” she added with that dangerous edge to her voice.
“No,” he replied as he always did.
“Nothing at all?” she prompted.
“Only that it’s my honor to undertake such a quest,” he said politely, but inwardly he wanted to yell at her for her foolishness. If he failed, Princess Margaret would be trapped in a mismatched marriage. If he succeeded, Alberta would be. How very like her to sacrifice herself for her sister’s happiness, he thought. It really made him quite furious, but for the moment he held his peace.
“What are we waiting for, then?” Alberta asked. “Father, shouldn’t you have Sir Goldmayne’s horse prepared for his journey?”
“But—well, yes, of course,” said King Edwin, and he gave orders to his guards to outfit Wildfire with provisions and supplies. Already the crowd was dispersing, running off to spread the word of Sir Goldmayne, of his astonishing betrothal to Princess Alberta of all people, and of the quest laid upon his shoulders. There was, too, the excitement of Princess Margaret’s decision to marry. The crowd was abuzz with the news of it all.
Amid this growing chaos, Princess Alberta abandoned the room. Bellinda surged forward to where Duncan knelt and pulled him up. “Go after her,” she hissed in his ear, and she propelled him toward the side door. King Edwin was too busy giving orders to notice. Duncan thought this would probably be his only opportunity to have a word with Alberta in private, so he took it.
He saw her disappear around the corner at the end of the corridor and immediately trotted after her. “Alberta, wait!” he called as he went. He turned the corner to discover, to his great surprise, that for once, she had heeded him. She stood, back stiff and one hand grasping the knob of a door about halfway down the hall.
“I’ve provided you the means to run away,” she said caustically. “You should take it while you can, before my father decides to send a company of knights along with you.” She twisted the knob then and entered the room beyond.
Duncan followed, unsure what to make of her. Did she truly expect him to fail, at the expense of everything she had worked toward in the last five years?
The room was a small parlor, one that he had never before visited. Alberta stood at the window, her back to him, and he recognized the view beyond as the same courtyard where he had pulled weeds on his very first day as a castle under-gardener. He had met Princess Bellinda there and had heard Princess Alberta’s voice from this very window, he realized. Back then, he had never imagined the twists in fate that would bring him to this moment.
“How could you propose something so foolish?” he asked her bluntly. “I can’t tell whether I’m meant to succeed or fail!”
“You’re meant to succeed, of course,” she said, and the forced hardness of her voice almost hid its trembling. “My goal from the very beginning was to restore Julian to Mae.”
“At the expense of yourself,” Duncan said accusingly. “How can I possibly bring him back and trap you into a marriage when we both know I’m not your equal? How could you agree to enter into the very situation your mother warned you against?”
She kept her gaze trained out the window. “My parents only knew each other for a few hours before they decided to marry. I’ve known you for months. It’s not the same situation at all.”
“No, it’s worse! At least they had a prospect of happiness! You’re consigning yourself to a life of misery!”
“A life of misery? You told me you loved me.”
“I do! That’s why I want you to be happy, not chained down to someone you don’t love in return!”
She glanced back over one shoulder, her face in profile to him. “Why must you concern yourself with my happiness rather than your own?” she asked. “Think on your own welfare before you think of mine—I have been nothing but unkind to you. I’ve bossed and bullied you m
ercilessly from the moment we first met. Shouldn’t you be terrified of the prospect of tying yourself to a tyrant such as me for the rest of your life?”
He had no response that she would accept. He had already told her he loved her, but as long as she did not believe that, she could never believe any other argument he made. The prospect of a life alongside her did not frighten him, tyrannical though she claimed to be. She had shown him kindness on more occasions than he could count, too, but a list of those kindnesses now would not sway her against her conviction that she was a villain. Duncan had no power to convince her of anything, stubborn as she was.
“I’m not an honest person,” she said suddenly, and she wrung her hands in a telling show of nerves. “I’ve trained myself to be ill-tempered, to scowl by default and to drive people away from me. I’m not honest, and I don’t know how to express myself to you honestly, but I’ll try. You have to bring him back, Duncan.” Her voice broke on that sentence, and sudden tears tumbled from her eyes. “You have to! Even if he’s nothing more than a pile of bones, you have to bring him back! I’ve done all I can up until now, but this is the breaking point. If you fail, Mae will marry the man Bella loves, and we’ll all be miserable for the rest of our lives. And that’s exactly why Bella suggested Percy as the perfect match, too, the self-sacrificing little fool!”
“You’re one to talk,” Duncan retorted. He could well see Bellinda drawing that conclusion, though. She had ensured Margaret’s marriage to a good man by suggesting someone she would have married herself. In the meantime she would shoulder her own misery in the same manner that Alberta had for the last five years, by sacrificing what she wanted for her sister’s happiness. It was on his shoulders to prevent a miserable outcome for all, and he had not the faintest clue how to break Wildfire’s curse.
“Just find Julian and everything will be made right,” Alberta continued in her wavering voice. “Even if he’s dead, it will force the nation into a period of mourning that will postpone the wedding. Mae spoke on impulse today—she’ll have a chance to rethink things, to get her head straight and choose a husband she wants rather than one that someone else chooses for her.”
“And what about you?” he asked.
“Don’t worry so much about me!”
“That’s impossible! Of course I worry about you!”
“Which is why I’ll be perfectly fine as long as you bring back Julian,” said Alberta. “He disappeared up north, in Borealia, so that’s where you’ll want to start. With Dame Groach out of the way, your search should be a lot easier.”
“I’m not worried about finding him,” Duncan snapped. “I’ll do everything in my power to bring him back, I swear, but you don’t have to marry me as a reward!”
“You don’t want to marry me?” she asked archly.
“Don’t twist my words around,” he retorted. “I’m the honest one, remember?”
Alberta made a harrowed little laugh. “You’ve already promised to bring him back. There’s not much more I can ask of you, is there?”
He scowled. “You don’t have to ask anything of me.”
A complex expression danced across her face—frustration, regret, helplessness. Immediately she stepped forward and, cupping his face with her trembling hands, she drew him down to her eye level. Duncan’s heart thudded erratically in his chest, but he somehow managed to maintain that steady gaze with her. He even managed to keep breathing as she studied him, though his breath was light and shallow.
Suddenly she closed her eyes and kissed him. “You have to succeed,” she whispered fiercely.
It was a wonder he had any self-control left. Any more temptation from her and it would crumble away entirely. “I already said I would,” he told her irritably. “You don’t have to try to convince me.”
She looked him square in the eyes. “If you fail,” she said with her customary sharpness, “you will break my heart, and I will die a miserable old spinster because there is absolutely no one else in this world who would put up with me the way that you do.”
Then she kissed him again, and it finally occurred to him that, in her own dishonest way, she wanted him to know that she returned his affection.
“Can’t you just tell me straight that you like me back?” he complained, feeling harassed.
She mustered a dignified expression even as she fought her rising blush. “I refuse,” she declared, but the look in her eyes belied the resolve in her words.
She was absolutely adorable. For once he decided not to resent her dishonest, roundabout methods of getting her way. Instead, he thoroughly embraced them.
Chapter 31
“Where on earth did you disappear to earlier?” Wildfire asked. “There was about half an hour there where the castle descended into utter chaos because no one could find you.”
Duncan coughed and averted his eyes. “I was just… working out some arrangements with Alberta,” he said awkwardly.
“Ah,” said Wildfire. “So you finally realized she’s in love with you too. You needn’t look at me like that,” he added when Duncan glanced up sharply. “It’s been plain as day to me ever since your injury. You didn’t see what a state she was in when she found you. I had my suspicions before then, too, for what it’s worth.”
Duncan, in self-consciousness, thought it best to let the subject drop.
Darkness had fallen. True to Alberta’s quest conditions, Sir Goldmayne and his horse had made their exit from the castle and then from Midd itself, but they had not ridden very far beyond the gold-strewn battlefield outside the city’s gates. King Edwin had ordered a contingent of his men to guard the wealthy aftermath of Duncan’s fight against Dame Groach. It was a hard enough job, as any number of enterprising citizens had slipped from the city walls to make their fortunes, but it was made harder by visitors from the forest as well. A dozen or more fairies had already emerged to salivate over the gold, and that number would only increase as the night wore on.
Duncan and Wildfire passed by as yet another distraction for everyone to gape at. Once they were beyond sight, though, the pair immediately circled back the long way to the abbey. Their best bet for a cure to Prince Julian’s curse lay at Dame Groach’s estate to the north, but they had a brief errand to run before they left.
“Your wig is just slightly askew,” said Wildfire. “You don’t want any of your hair poking out, you know.”
Duncan immediately straightened the sheepskin. “Is that better?”
“Yes. Come along then.”
They were heading back into the forest, back along the same path they had traversed weeks ago. Duncan wished that Alberta could come along this time, but she had already sworn she wouldn’t see him again until he returned with news of Prince Julian. He and Wildfire were left to seek out the ancient fairy-glen on their own.
Well, almost on their own.
From above, two high-pitched squeals sounded, and a couple globes of fairy-light descended to the path ahead. Two childlike figures flashed into view.
“Goldmayne!” one cried joyously.
“Goldmayne!” echoed the other.
Duncan recognized the two canary-fairies from the battlefield. “You two got your fill of Dame Groach’s statue?” he inquired.
The pair exchanged covert glances. One of them dipped its hand into its shirt and brought forth a fistful of curved golden blades. “Look! Grass!” it declared happily.
The other patted its chest with a smile to indicate that it, too, had successfully pilfered from the site.
“Goldmayne,” said the first as it stored its stolen treasure again, “you saved us. We have to go with you to the fairy queen, to see that you get your reward. Hurry!”
In a flash both childlike figures transformed back into glowing orbs to lead the way. Duncan looked to Wildfire dubiously.
“That is why we’ve come,” said the horse.
Together they fell into step behind the dancing globes. Deeper and deeper into the forest they went, until the telltale hum
of the fairy-glen met their ears and the glowing whirlwind of fairies circled before their eyes.
As before, the whirlwind parted to allow Duncan and Wildfire entry. The fairy-buzz grew in volume as the pair passed beneath the brilliant canopy. The two canary-fairies danced ahead to where their childlike leader awaited.
Duncan had the presence of mind to bow before the small figure.
“You have come for your reward,” she said in her piping voice.
“I’ve killed Dame Groach, as you asked me to,” he replied. He was wary of claiming an unknown reward and wanted to avoid doing so outright.
The fairy queen gestured over her shoulder. The two canary-fairies, in their child-forms again, trotted forward with a pale wooden box between them. This they set at Duncan’s feet. They grinned up at him gleefully.
“Here is the reward, as we promised you,” the fairy queen said. “You will find it most useful. Go on—open it.”
Duncan spared a glance toward Wildfire before he crouched to hinge back the lid of the box. A number of possibilities coursed through his mind in an instant: the chest might contain gold or jewels, some magical item of protection or an enchanted article of clothing. It might have magic beans that would grow overnight or a magic elixir that allowed him to understand animal-speech. Every fairy tale he had ever heard flooded his memory in that instant and then dissipated as he laid eyes upon the true contents.
Before him was the polished handle and gleaming blade of a new ax.
“Wh-what—?” he started in confusion.
“The blade is enchanted to split anything it falls upon,” said the fairy queen sweetly. “It will never rust or dull. It’s perfect for your horse: just simply swing it down on his neck—”
Duncan suddenly slammed the lid shut in horror. Silence flooded the fairy-glen.
“We’re about to embark on a journey north,” Wildfire remarked, and he kept his voice genial. “We thank you very much for this wondrous gift, but would it be too much trouble to ask you to keep it until after we’ve returned?”
Duncan looked up at him with wide eyes, and the horse minutely shook his head, a clear warning for him to remain silent.
Goldmayne: A Fairy Tale Page 37
