The Beholder

by Anna Bright

  “This evening, however, I must make you an apology.” Constantine glanced at Myrddin, kindly expression faltering.

  My pulse leapt. Maybe the prince wouldn’t propose, after all. But Skop’s angular eyes were uneasy beneath their sparse lashes.

  “I hope,” said the king, licking his papery lips, “that you will forgive the deception and accept that it was committed in the interest of ensuring honor and trust.”

  Sir Perrault frowned, eyes blank, but gears were working behind Yu’s and Cobie’s stares. Lang shook his head, eyes disbelieving.

  I didn’t know what they made of the king’s meandering, but his demeanor was too cheery for me to mistake his intent.

  My head throbbed beneath the tiara’s weight.

  He’s going to propose. Think. Think.

  Constantine’s wrinkled face lit up again. “To be perfectly honest, though, dear, I’m rather pleased you’re not the whey-faced baby angel they made you out to be.”

  Myrddin gave a chiding laugh. “Your Majesty, please.”

  My stomach turned to stone.

  They knew.

  They knew.

  “Well, I am,” insisted Constantine. He shook a finger at me, the gesture as playful as his cloudy blue eyes. “You’re a lovely girl, but you weren’t too virtuous to decide what you wanted and to take it. And yet, there’s not an ounce of real deceit in you.” He gave a laugh. “You, my dear, are a perfectly awful liar.”

  The crowd’s eyes were a thousand lit matches pressed to my skin.

  I looked to Perrault, but he was silent, dumbstruck. Lang was the first to find a reply, lips curling into something that bore no resemblance to a smile. “Do you have a question to ask the seneschal-elect, or not?”

  Constantine glanced to Bertilak. “Do you?” he asked.

  Princess Igraine crossed to his side. “I’m afraid not,” she said with a laugh, putting a hand on his shoulder in a particularly unsisterly fashion.

  Prince Bertilak smiled at me, apologetic. “I’m afraid I’m already spoken for.”

  It was like being tossed over a cliff. I scrabbled and groped, desperate for a handhold, but found only empty air beneath my flailing feet.

  “Then why did you bring me here?” I demanded.

  Perrault stepped a little in front of me, expression calm but chilly. His face was pale. “The seneschal-elect was here to court your prince. This is a breach of trust. This is not what was negotiated.”

  “No, it isn’t. Or, not exactly,” said a voice behind me. “But I did warn Selah to pay attention.”

  My breath expired. I didn’t turn. I didn’t need to.

  34

  Bear crossed the room amid pleased murmurs, parting the crowd. Far from his typical worn leather jacket, tonight he wore a green tunic and sash, a golden crown on his head. We match, I thought faintly.

  Silence reigned. My arms and legs began to shake.

  “Him?” Lang demanded. His eyes tracked Bear as he joined the prince and king.

  “As it happens, I’ve been married to Igraine for some time now,” said Prince Bertilak, taking the hand of the kind princess I’d been told was his sister. “So I’m not searching for a wife, myself.”

  “And you?” My words to Bear were paper-thin.

  Bertilak answered instead. “The seneschal-elect was here as potential bride to my only son, Prince Arthur of England, on whose behalf I would like to propose their marriage.”

  I stood rooted to the ballroom floor, able only to gawp at the contented family before me. Basking in her husband’s magnanimous glow, Igraine smoothed the hair back from Bear’s forehead. Bear—Arthur—her son—ducked his head, grinning.

  I had fallen for Bear. And it had been him all along. This changed everything, solved everything.

  Didn’t it?

  I’d hoped for this—for him—though I couldn’t stay, had never planned to stay. I’d never mentioned that point, the last piece of the truth, to Bear.

  And if this solved everything, why was my stomach twisting itself into a knot?

  I swallowed, finally meeting his eyes. Bear eyed me, expectant, smiling hesitantly. “You used a false name?” I asked, frowning.

  “Bear’s a nickname. Not even a very creative one, I’ve just always been tall.” He gave a nervous laugh. “Surely you didn’t think I’d been baptized Bear Green, even when I was merely a guard.”

  Bear’s exultant smile faltered as I stepped around Perrault, moved leadenly toward him. “You might’ve been. I didn’t think about it,” I said. My mouth didn’t want to work properly. “I didn’t think you’d make up something like that.”

  I stared at him, stricken.

  “Well, you weren’t completely forthcoming yourself, Your Grace,” Prince Bertilak cut in, twinkling. “We had a bargain.”

  “Wh— Huh?” I’d half forgotten Bertilak’s presence.

  Bertilak raised his eyebrows at me, feigning hurt. “Our deal. Our exchange at dinner. I brought my quarry to our table every evening, but you failed to do so yourself. Completely ruined our game, lying about your romantic dash through the rain.”

  Constantine chuckled.

  “What are you talking about?” I demanded. My breathing was ragged.

  Bertilak faltered at the crack in my voice. “I’m sorry. Do forgive me,” he said, all traces of mirth gone from his voice. “That was unbecoming. But I— Selah, dear, I was only joking.”

  “Joking?” I breathed. “You find this funny?”

  “No, I’m merely—” Bertilak broke off, dismayed. He glanced to Constantine and Myrddin as if for help.

  Myrddin stepped to His Highness’s side. “It had to be this way, Seneschal-elect,” he said simply. “We rather thought you’d be pleased to learn the truth.”

  Understanding was a series of clicks and snaps in my brain, the sound of the truth fitting itself into place, unfolding itself into its natural shape.

  Why Bertilak had left me alone, day after day. Why Bear hadn’t feared the wrath of his prince or Perrault. Why a guard would study statesmanship or sit at dinner with the king and his children. The old duchess at tea had nearly told me herself—had asked me when I’d met Bear, instead of Bertilak, and then corrected herself as if she’d merely misspoken.

  They’d watched me for two weeks, watched me try to please and impress them when they knew they’d set me up. I felt as though they’d sliced open my abdomen to pick through my innards and augur all the secrets I’d thought were mine and Bear’s alone.

  I’d been blind to it all.

  I was going to throw up.

  Briefly, fighting nausea, I imagined accepting Bear’s proposal, imagined us blissfully in love. The picture tugged at my heart and my will, but how would the court see us?

  I saw in the way Constantine nodded reassuringly at his grandson how Bear would be perceived—a romantic, helplessly in love with me. Whatever his sins, they would be forgiven. But I would be remembered quite differently.

  I would be painted England’s flightiest princess—the girl with no self-control, who gave her heart and lips to one man while being courted by another. Even the truth—their purposes—the fact that I was right—would not justify me.

  Most of all: If I stayed, if I married him, would I ever really trust him when we’d begun with a lie?

  Perhaps another girl would have found the whole affair romantic. But standing before the court, raw and exposed and sadly mistaken, I felt as if I were back in Potomac all over again, searing from the acid sting of Peter’s public rejection.

  I just wish you’d told me when it was just the two of us.

  It never was just the two of us.

  Except I knew Bear—I really knew him, and he knew me, and we cared for one another. And still, somehow, I’d found myself naked in front of a crowd.

  I shrank back and bumped into Yu, who caught my elbow. His lips were pressed tightly together, his expression sharp and cold. “Steady,” he whispered. Skop, on my right, squeezed my hand.
<
br />   I cleared my throat, blinking hard. “This is extraordinary.”

  Bear shook his head, trying to soothe me. “Selah, you don’t understand.”

  “No. I do.” I took a shuddering breath. “Was any of it real? Was that even your study?” I asked. My thoughts were shattered.

  “Ah. I told you the study was a good idea.” Myrddin looked approving. “The melee, too. You worry over him so—but I knew she’d appreciate it,” the adviser added, nodding at Bear.

  I pressed a hand to my forehead, feeling faint. “So many lies.”

  “It was one lie.” Bear drew near, voice low and reassuring. We were at the center of a crowd, but he put his hands on my face, forcing me to meet his eyes, blue and bright and utterly sincere.

  “One enormous lie,” I said. “One you told again and again.”

  “Yes, but just the one,” he insisted. “All the rest was true. I wanted to tell you so much, but—but Selah, we got to know one another without any formality, with nothing to come between us. If you knew then what you know now, how difficult it can be to get to know someone on an official basis, would you choose any differently?” He glanced at his father, who nodded encouragingly.

  I took one, two steps away from him. The distance grew between us as it had the day he’d chased me home from the library in the rain.

  Except this time, I didn’t know if I wanted him to catch me.

  I gripped Skop’s fingers again, faint with horror and humiliation. Lang simply stared at them all, his dark gaze raw and astonished. “What an elaborate invention.”

  The weight of the chaos was going to flatten me.

  “I think we all ought to calm down,” Myrddin suddenly said. His keen eyes were abruptly concerned.

  “Calm down?” I bleated.

  “Yes.” The adviser shook his head, forehead creased. “Discretion was necessary, but all has worked out for the best. No lasting harm has been inflicted.” He gestured at Bear, then at me.

  No mortal wounds, perhaps, but the scars these boys had left me would remain.

  I studied the king and the prince and the royal family, feeling my pulse high and wild at my throat and wrists and the arches of my feet, telling me to run, run, run.

  And I’d thought Sir Perrault was the only fox I should fear.

  My trembling left hand clasped Cobie’s palm, Skop’s in my right. “Prince Bertilak, thank you for what hospitality you extended. But we’re leaving.”

  Not a sound could be heard in the hall. The royal family stared, speechless.

  Shaking from head to foot, I turned to my crew. “The Beholder. Let’s go.”

  We pushed out of the ballroom, leaving pandemonium in our wake.

  Back in our quarters, Cobie packed my things with joyless efficiency. “Selah, is this your blanket? Or did you find it here?”

  “It’s not mine,” I managed.

  She flung open the wardrobe. “Are these all your clothes? Are there more anywhere else?” I shook my head mutely.

  I couldn’t help her. I couldn’t move. I stared blankly into the fire, at the chair still beside it, until she slammed the last trunk closed. “Done. Let’s get you out of here.”

  “Lang and Perrault are handling the formalities,” Yu announced grimly as we stalked into the night. He and Skop piled bags onto the waiting cart, boots crunching on the gravel path.

  “After what Bertilak’s done, this should be simple,” Cobie muttered. Lithe as a cat, she leapt onto the tail of the wagon and began arranging our luggage.

  Suddenly, we all paused, glancing back at the castle’s gray facade. Skop flexed his fingers, then fisted them. “Oh, no way.”

  But there was no mistaking the sound of the approaching crowd.

  Bear skidded onto the gravel path, panting, the end of his sash and the hem of his tunic billowing behind him. “Selah!” Servants and nobles poured outside behind him, Kay and Veery and Tristan at the head of the throng. They surrounded him, wide- and worry-eyed.

  “Keep moving,” I said darkly, fumbling with the handle on one of Perrault’s suitcases. It tumbled from my grasp, its corner tearing a hole in my skirt.

  “Selah, please let me—”

  Skop put a protective arm around me, and Cobie pulled the knife from her boot, fingers flexing around its handle. “You’re going to want to back away from her.”

  Veery surged forward. “Steady on!”

  “Cobie, no,” I blurted.

  She shoved the knife back into place but continued to glare at Bear. He waved off his friends, and they backed into the crowd, expressions ranging from fury to fear.

  I shook my head at him. “Don’t make this worse than it already is.”

  “I can’t let you leave without explaining,” Bear said, desperate.

  “Explain?” I demanded. “You had two weeks to explain the truth to me! You missed your chance to come clean.”

  “You must see, we had to be sure—”

  “What? To be sure your whole family had the chance to thoroughly humiliate me with their lies and that stupid game?” My shout was jagged in the damp night air. I dragged the back of my wrist across my tears, clenching my rosary in my other hand. “No. In violation of all convention and my trust, you tricked me.” My voice cracked, thin and weary. “I broke the rules for you. I never break the rules, and now I remember why. I won’t be so naive again.”

  I turned away from him, making to climb onto the cart.

  “Selah, we were worried about your stepmother!” Bear blurted.

  I froze. Turned back to him. Drew near.

  Bear’s chest rose and fell in agitated breaths.

  “What did you say?” I whispered.

  “Your stepmother,” he said again. “Her letter came mere months before your arrival. It was—urgent, pressing. Aggressive.” Bear shook his head, eyes luminous, dying to make me understand.

  “You lied to me because of a pushy letter?”

  “It was more than that,” he said. “We take years to consider and plan these unions. She was eager to send you within the twelvemonth. The dowry she offered to send you with was unheard of.” He cocked his head, forehead wrinkled with worry. “Besides that, she insinuated that an alliance with you, her stepdaughter, was an alliance with New York.” Bear scraped a hand through his hair. “We need willing trade partners. It was all too tempting.”

  I swallowed. “And you thought—”

  “We thought she might be staging something. In league, perhaps, with the tsarytsya. Using you to establish a beachhead from the west. So we took precautions. Father didn’t even want me as close to you as I was—he wanted me sent away.” Bear wet his lips. “Surely you understand.”

  My heart throbbed painfully.

  The problem was, I did understand.

  The Saint George of Constantine’s England did not seek dragons on foreign shores. His Saint George didn’t slay dragons at all.

  It hid from danger. It waited. It had repented of meddling and theft. It defended its own, kept to itself, kept its borders.

  I had only ever wanted to do the same.

  I had never wanted to be standing here, in a foreign court, navigating such harsh waters as these.

  “My father began that game with you when he thought you might be a spy. He was opening negotiations with you. None of us knew you were ignorant of your stepmother’s actions.”

  Sir Perrault and Captain Lang strode toward us, the latter’s posture and drawn brows forbidding.

  “It’s done,” said Lang.

  Cobie loaded the last trunk onto the wagon and jumped down onto the gravel path.

  “It is not done,” Perrault said. “The seneschal-elect is not to give her final answer until she has completed her tour.”

  My throat was tight as I took the tiara from my hair and pressed it into Bear’s hands. I watched hurt fill his eyes as he palmed it, gemstones glittering between his fingers.

  “Perhaps someday I will return to claim this,” I said brokenly. “If I do
not, you will be advised.”

  And if I do not, I thought, you will know precisely why.

  Bear nodded once, then twice.

  I looked to Lang. Gone from his eyes were the frustrated remains of our argument; his jaw was resolute, protective. I could practically see the chip balanced on his shoulder.

  He shrugged out of his dark blue jacket and draped it across my shoulders, the canvas heavy and comforting over my thin dress.

  And I walked away from Bear. And I walked away from England.

  The prince didn’t speak as we climbed into the cart. And I didn’t look back as we drove off, even as the crowd’s murmurs rose into a dull roar. But as we rowed back to the Beholder, I cried the entire way.

  35

  If the Beholder’s crew was surprised at our early return, they were even more shocked at the state of us. Cheerful shouts went up as our rowboat drew near, but when Andersen glimpsed my face, they were abruptly cut short. Lang only left my side long enough to summon Will and Vishnu to carry my things downstairs.

  More tears and smeared makeup. Another ruined gown. Six weeks had passed, but I was the same girl who’d left Potomac.

  Their eyes were more sympathetic than my pride could stand.

  As I rushed belowdecks to my room, I would have given anything for my godmother’s company, or Daddy’s. But the people I loved and trusted had never felt farther away.

  Lang went away just long enough to bring me a mug of tea from the galley. He sat by my bedside until I cried myself to sleep.

  He was beside my bed again when I woke, my copy of Beowulf in one hand, Godmother Althea’s book in the other.

  “Is this yours?” He held out the smaller volume. “I tripped over it in the hallway.”

  I tossed it into my trunk. “Bear’s.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Did—did I deserve it?” My voice quavered. “After what I did?”

  Lang frowned. “What you did . . . ?”

  I rubbed at my eyes, puffy and soft from crying. “The—you know. The lying.”