The Beholder

by Anna Bright

  When he’d finished his last story, I cleared my throat. “Do you know how we’ll find England, Captain Anansi?”

  Elbow-deep in the sink, I nearly missed it.

  The sharp glance Anansi cut Homer. The slight shake of Homer’s head.

  I would’ve thought nothing of the boisterous laugh Anansi gave in reply, of the wave of his dark-skinned, spidery hand, of his glib response. “It’s been quiet out of there for months.” He shrugged easily, smiled a bright smile. “Who knows what you’ll find?”

  But I’d been paying attention.

  And even as he left, I wondered what Homer had asked him to keep from me.

  I did my best to put the exchange out of my mind. I worked on deck by day, tending my plants or sweating and scrubbing in the galley, ignoring Perrault’s horror at my indignity and refusing his summons to further lessons. By night I listened to the crew tell stories, peering over Lang’s shoulder as he sketched.

  I was always on the outside of their circle, but it was better than drifting across the ocean alone.

  Every night, I fell asleep reading by moonlight. Sometimes, before I drifted off, I could have sworn I heard whispers in my godmother’s voice, her words a melody even when she wasn’t singing.

  But on the twenty-seventh day after we left Potomac, there was no moon.

  Lang had forbidden me to use the stove or the oven, but I needed my book’s company, and it was too dark to see. I lit a candle from the galley’s little bundle of matches and was carrying it downstairs to my room when his door flew open onto the landing.

  Lang strode down the stairs and took the candle from me without a moment’s hesitation. “Absolutely not.”

  “Homer’s allowed to have lamps.”

  “You aren’t Homer.”

  “But it’s dark,” I protested.

  “You’re not afraid of the dark.” Lang doused the candle with a puff of his breath, and the stairwell suddenly seemed too small, too full of the two of us, our faces bathed in shadow.

  “No.” My voice was uneven. “I just can’t see to read.”

  Lang snorted. “Of course.”

  “Don’t be rude,” I huffed. I reached for the candle, stretching after it as Lang held it high, and found my face very close to his.

  “Hush,” he murmured. “The others are sleeping.”

  “I need to read. I need the light. It’s your job to look after me.”

  “It’s my job to make sure you don’t send this ship up in flames.”

  “I wouldn’t—”

  “You wouldn’t mean to do anything,” Lang interrupted. He was so close I could feel his breath on my cheek. “But a single stray spark could burn us alive.”

  I swallowed and stepped back, suddenly flushed despite the cool night. “Fine.”

  And without another word, I rushed downstairs, into the embrace of the dark.

  In olden times

  fairies were sent to oppose the evil-doings of witches,

  and to destroy their power.

  —The Fairy of the Dell

  [I]f 3e wyl lysten þis laye bot on littel quile,

  I schal telle hit, as-tit, as I in toun herde,

  with tonge;

  As hit is stad & stoken,

  In stori stif & stronge,

  With lel letteres loken,

  In londe so hat3 ben longe.

  —Sir Gawayn and þe Grene Knyȝt

  . . . and if ye will listen but a little I will tell it you

  with tongue

  As I have heard it told,

  In a story brave and strong,

  In a loyal book of old,

  In the land it has been long.

  —Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

  17

  WINCHESTER, ENGLAND: WINCHESTER CASTLE

  We beheld land the next day. The sight was like an arrow through my stomach.

  I was in my room packing a trunk when he knocked on my open doorframe. Lang.

  I sat back on my heels. “What can I do for you, Captain?”

  He shrugged and sat down on the chair beside my bed. “I wanted to look through the folder Perrault gave you.”

  I stopped folding a dress, startled. “My suitors’ profiles?”

  Lang nodded. “Perrault seems to forget that I’m leading this expedition. He has an odd talent for somehow avoiding my questions by pretending I haven’t asked any.”

  I pressed my lips together, reached into one of my trunks, and passed Lang my folder. He was kind enough to pretend not to notice my hands were shaking.

  Lang flipped through the pages as I sorted through boots and gowns and a jewelry box full of things of my mother’s. “Twenty-seven is way too old for you,” he blurted suddenly, dark head jerking up.

  “The Yotne prince?” I asked.

  Lang nodded, mouth twisted in distaste. I folded a sweater.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said quietly. “With any luck, I’ll never see him.”

  “What do you mean?” Lang frowned. “Selah, you have to. It’s an official stop on your tour.”

  “I know. But, Lang, I can’t,” I said, suddenly fretful. “I’ll choose one of the first two, or bypass that stop and go straight to Páfos, or—”

  “How do you think this ship will get to Páfos without passing through Imperiya territory, once we’re in Europe?” Lang asked. “Do you think there are wheels on the hull you’ve somehow missed that’ll just carry us over land?”

  “I don’t know,” I bit out. “But, Lang, I can’t go there. I have to figure out something else.”

  When Baba Yaga locks the door,

  Children pass thereby no more.

  I couldn’t bring myself to recite the stupid nursery rhyme. It had chased itself, singing through my head, too often lately.

  Worse yet, it had begun to feel too little like a nursery rhyme. Too little like a story in a book. Too much like reality, growing closer every moment.

  “I know,” Lang said quietly. “I know.”

  I resumed folding my clothes. Silence stretched out between us, tense and uncomfortable.

  Lang cleared his throat and picked up another paper. “Why isn’t there a portrait for this one?”

  One of my calluses snagged a beaded dress. I winced. “Which one?”

  “England. There are portraits for three of them— Oh, no, wait. Here it is.”

  I glanced over, wondering how I’d overlooked it, and lunged at him when a flash of magenta in the folder caught my eye.

  “What are you—” Lang lurched back, eyes wide beneath his lashes. A second before my fingers could close around the thick paper, he realized what it was.

  “Don’t look,” I pleaded. I leaned toward him, braced on one hand, the other stretched out expectantly.

  “Why not?” Lang batted my hand away, and I flushed as his ink-stained fingers brushed mine. His brow furrowed, and a grin stole over his face. “What’s wrong with it?”

  I rose and sat behind him on the bed, cringing at my portrait over his shoulder.

  I’d begged to be painted in the library, but Alessandra had dismissed the idea with a roll of her eyes. “We might as well have you in overalls, on your hands and knees weeding the squash.”

  Perfect! I’d wanted to say. Instead, I’d kept my complaints to myself, sat straight-backed in the fine velvet chair, worn the flashy fuchsia gown she’d picked.

  “It just wasn’t what I wanted,” I said, my face as pink as the ridiculous dress.

  Lang slid the portraits and profiles back into the folder. “There’s nothing wrong with it. But I think they’ll be pleasantly surprised to see you in real life.” He looked back at me, eyes dark and smiling.

  I huffed a laugh and dropped my gaze. “What, sweaty, covered in dirt and ashes?”

  “You know what I mean.” Lang’s tone was steady. Warm.

  Dangerous.

  “Speaking of Prince Bertilak,” he went on, “before you came after me, I was going to ask why there’s no portrait of hi
m in here.”

  “I saw that,” I said. “Or rather, I didn’t see. I don’t know. Maybe his looks aren’t his best quality.”

  “Likely.”

  I hesitated. “What’s it going to be like?”

  “England?” Lang asked.

  “England. The court.” I paused. “The prince. Courting him.” I held my face in my hands. “I just feel lost right now. In the dark. No course, no clue where to go.”

  I glanced up when I felt Lang’s hand smooth the hair that splayed over my shoulder. “I have good news for you, Seneschal-elect.” He smiled. “I know how to read a map.”

  Lang, Yu, Perrault, Skop, Cobie, and I disembarked in the port town of Southampton, into a wooden rowboat that would take us up the River Itchen. But though there was nothing threatening about the countryside unfurling dewy and deep green around us, nothing forbidding about the willows and farms and small footbridges we passed or about the sky like a pearl overhead, Perrault and I had all the cheer of a pair of pallbearers. Lang and the other sailors seemed cheerful enough as they rowed us up the river, but the protocol officer and I—we were a two-person funeral procession.

  He wasn’t particularly pleased I’d given up on my finishing lessons. I wasn’t particularly pleased to be here.

  When we finally reached Winchester, we climbed out and surveyed the village. I wrapped my arms around myself, surprised by the sharp chill in the air so unlike Potomac’s humid warmth.

  “The Seneschal-elect,” Captain Lang muttered to a man on the dock.

  “Right this way, Your Grace.” One of the men gestured toward a forest-green carriage with gold and black scrollwork on its doors. Skop climbed up after Cobie and our luggage into a nearby wagon, and Captain Lang helped me into the carriage with one charcoal-smudged hand, Yu and Perrault taking seats across from us.

  Fish stalls and old buildings swept past our window as we clattered over the cobblestones. Farther into Winchester we passed small homes with thatched roofs, inns with lamplit windows, rows of shops, and then larger houses built of stone. The color of their plaster and the warp of their wood and the tiny, damp sprouts of lichen between their stones told me many of them were older than Potomac itself. Other carts crowded the village streets, but children stopped playing to stare as our carriage rolled past.

  Cobblestones quickly became a gravel path rolling past a damp meadow swathed in fog and lavender—soft grays and greens deeper than I’d ever seen before, even during our wettest springs. Then, at the word of the men driving the wagon ahead of us, guards in red jackets and black pants moved in lockstep to admit us through a black iron gate in a low brick wall.

  We had reached Winchester Castle.

  Milky light sluiced through the stately grove of oaks and poplars just inside the gate, but we came soon to a wide emerald lawn, where blackbirds hopped over close-cropped grass and beds of pink and white roses bloomed tentatively in the mist. Somewhere nearby, water splashed against rock. Elegant topiaries flanked the edges of the path like sentries. I’d never seen such aggressively tended trees at home; I sat up a little straighter beneath their watch. But when the carriage came to an abrupt halt, I flung out an arm to catch myself.

  My hand found Lang’s as I fumbled backward.

  The crunch of footsteps and the slap and thump of luggage being passed from hand to hand replaced the sound of hoofbeats and rolling wheels. Across from me, Perrault gabbled to Yu about dinner or the weather or something. I wasn’t listening.

  For half a heartbeat I met the captain’s stare. Two of my fingers were wound between his, fingertips pressed into the hollow of his hand, the blood beneath my palm thrumming against his knuckles.

  His face was almost perfectly composed. But a tiny seam stitched itself between his eyebrows, and a faint pink color rose in his cheeks. Gingerly, as though I were an animal he was afraid to frighten, he unlaced his hand from mine.

  Before Yu and Perrault had even noticed us, before anyone could stop me, I shoved open the carriage door and threw myself out. My eyes traced the gray gravel path to the castle steps as I begged my heart to slow to a walking pace.

  Winchester Castle loomed elegant and understated a few hundred feet away, dove-colored like the sky overhead, gracious from its low holly hedges to the ivy that climbed between leaded windows over its four stone stories.

  I took a deep breath and steadied my shaking frame on the edge of the carriage, feeling it rock as the others climbed down behind me. When I looked down, I saw the wheel had left my green dress streaked with grease. Perrault eyed the mark significantly, his pretty mouth disdainful.

  Yu nodded at me. His dark eyes were unbothered, practical, cool and calm as ever. “You’ll have time to put yourself together.”

  I stared at the castle, courteous and dignified in the English morning, and wondered if even with all my thoughts assembled, all my pieces in order, I could put myself together well enough for a place like this.

  18

  My new room was wallpapered with soothing pastoral scenes, its window draped with chintz hangings that matched the ones around the chestnut four-poster. Smallish framed paintings of green fields and dogs and horses paneled the wall over the wooden mantel, and a fire crackled in the fireplace against the damp gray day, so much cloudier and cooler than late spring in Potomac. But the decor—charming, bucolic, expensive but not opulent—did little for the anxiety grinding at my bones.

  Seven o’clock, Perrault had said when he came bearing the news. A court banquet. Your first official meeting.

  I fretted and dawdled so long that, in the end, I had to hurry, hands fumbling as I put on makeup and the dress Perrault had laid out for me. “This is pretty, very ladylike,” he’d said, almost as if to himself, as he’d plucked it from among my things. “Tasteful. The right first impression.”

  The dress was all right—a demure lavender thing with long sleeves, just another of the too many elegant garments in my trunk. But the fact that he’d chosen it for me, like I was a child, made me want to wear something else.

  Hopping into a pair of white silk slippers, I charged into the hallway between our rooms. “Ready?” I was nearly breathless; the contrast I posed to the five of them waiting calmly for me made me go faintly red. Perrault opened his mouth to reply, but with no warning, the door beside Lang’s swung wide.

  The older of the two men who stepped into the corridor was small and thin, with a gray beard and glasses and papery-white skin so thin that blue veins showed beneath. His younger companion was lanky, a little over six feet tall, his skin tanned, his dark hair rumpled. The boy’s blue eyes were narrowed on me, his mouth a thin line.

  Captain Lang rubbed the back of his neck. He’d washed the charcoal smudges from his fingers, and he looked strangely formal without them. I drew my shoulders back, straightening politely, feeling almost wistful; we weren’t aboard the Beholder anymore.

  “Seneschal-elect—” Lang nodded at the older man. “This is Myrddin, the king’s chief adviser. He’ll be escorting us to dinner. Myrddin, this is Selah, Seneschal-elect of Potomac.” Perrault drew himself up, looking affronted that Lang and not he himself had introduced us.

  The older gentleman gave a slow, deliberate bow. “Your Grace. King Constantine has asked me to express his delight at having you here at court.”

  “Good evening,” I gulped. “And thank you.”

  “And who is this?” Perrault asked hastily, gesturing to the younger man, as if determined not to be left out of the conversation.

  “Ah, yes,” said Myrddin. “Seneschal-elect, may I introduce Bear Green, your personal guard for the duration of your stay at Winchester.”

  The adviser’s accent was soft—singsong, even—but I stiffened.

  “My guard?”

  “Good evening, Seneschal-elect.” The young man stepped forward. He uncrossed his arms, but his lofty accent was clipped and cynical; he practically tossed the words at me.

  I blinked at him, then turned back to Myrddin. “But�
��half my crew came ashore. Why do I need a guard?”

  “We always assign security to visiting diplomats,” the adviser explained evenly. “Merely a precaution, of course, but he will attend you at all times. And Bear’s quarters are quite convenient to yours.” Myrddin gestured to the door they had just exited, beside the rooms Lang and Yu, Skop and Perrault, and Cobie would occupy for our stay.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” I tried and failed to produce a natural smile. Bear met my attempt with a blank stare.

  Captain Lang glanced between us and squared his shoulders. “We should go.” He offered me his arm as Myrddin led us from the hall.

  I pretended not to notice. I didn’t want him to feel my hands shake.

  Grand doors opened on a crowded banquet hall hung with red and gold. An unseen voice announced us to the gathered assembly.

  Beneath the singeing heat of their staring eyes I shrank between my shoulders, withering like a vine. Cobie jabbed me in the back.

  “Would you just stand up straight?” she hissed. “They’re not going to cook you.”

  I straightened, startled by her remark, as a pale, silver-haired man rose at the center of the room. “Welcome, friends! Welcome to you, Seneschal-elect.” He drew near us, crown glinting in the lamplight. “It has been long since we have had visitors from your country. I am King Constantine.”

  I was going to pass out. Pull it together. “I’m grateful for your hospitality, Your Majesty.”

  “And I am pleased to introduce to you my son, Prince Bertilak.” One of the men at his table stood and joined him.

  My heart caught in my throat.

  My mind raced over the details I’d memorized from his profile: brown hair, blue eyes, just over six feet tall, highly educated. As far as I could see, Bertilak met those criteria, but I realized suddenly I’d been picturing Peter with blue eyes, or maybe Lang with lighter hair.