Only where Julian was concerned.
“But she—”
I decided to end Dorinda’s tirade of complaints with a grand entrance. I pushed open the door. “I return!” I pretended surprise at Dorinda’s presence and swept her an elegant bow. “Good Mistress.”
I turned to Julian. “Have I interrupted? I shall return later.”
“No, no.” Julian gave me a kind smile. “We were done talking.”
“Yes.” Dorinda gave me a sour, knowing look as she stood. “We are finished.” She was kind enough to close the door as she left.
After night fell and the city quieted, I went to the palace and entered with ease. The wall, the gates and the guards were meant to keep men out. They were nothing to a cat. Likewise, I entered the royal treasure house through a small, high attic window. Once there I surveyed the gifts of gold and jewels, satin, velvet and ermine that had been given to the kings of our land since the start of the line.
I selected a great many coins and some few trinkets of high quality and small size: a brooch of square-cut emerald surrounded by sapphires, a bracelet of diamond and jet, and a small jade carving of a cat. I put these gifts in my bag, and made my way back to the inn.
The next day, I again attended the princess’s afternoon reception. This time, when I presented her with gifts from the Marquis de Carabas she smiled and said, “How lovely. These gifts are as fine as anything in the royal treasure house.”
“Indeed, Your Highness.” I bowed to her. “My master’s lands are rich with jewels and gold.”
The councilors present nudged each other with creaking elbows and whispered excitedly. Fortunately, my feline ears were more than adequate to the task of detecting their conversation.
Prince Osmont said, “This Marquis de Carabas sounds to be as fine a prospect as Galfridus. His lands are rich and vast, and better yet, the princess does not hate him.”
“But who wants to be the one to tell Galfridus his suit has been rejected? I don’t fancy being turned into a frog. My vote remains with the wizard.”
“Aye,” said a second antique.
“And with Galfridus’s vote, that makes a majority,” Prince Osmont said. “Drat, but I don’t want to give that man any more power than he already has.”
“Do not let him hear you speak so, Highness. He is due to return from his lands the day after tomorrow.”
“Your Highness,” I said to the princess. “The Marquis of Carabas invites you and your council to ride out to his lands tomorrow. It is no more than half a day’s journey by carriage.”
The princess gave me a long look, no doubt wondering what I was playing at. “Very well, Cat. Tell your master we shall see him on the morrow.”
Julian was waiting for me when I returned from the palace. “Pack up,” I said. “We’ve a long way to walk before morning.”
“Where are we going?”
“To the lands that will be yours.” I gave him my superior, smug cat smile. “By sunset tomorrow, you’ll be the Marquis of Carabas, affianced of Princess Etheldred.”
“But I’m a miller’s son. I have rough hands and common clothes—”
“We shall have to do something about the clothes.” I sat down and meditatively washed my paws while I pondered the question of clothing.
“I’ve an idea. I can take off my clothes and bathe in a river on the route the princess will travel. Then, when her party stops to help me, I could tell them my clothes were stolen.”
“No.” I shook my head. “Oldest trick in the book. I’d scarce believe it even if I knew the man in the river was an emperor. Instead, you will meet her carriage as it travels through the woods. You shall pretend you were out hunting.”
“But I lack even proper hunting clothes.”
“That is why I shall steal you a set of hunting clothes. I know a lord who is roughly your size and shape.” Indeed, I had known Lord Germaine’s size and shape intimately. “Wait here.”
It took all my skill and stealth to steal Lord Germaine’s hunting clothes from his closet in the broad light of day, but I did it. And with style. Not two hours after I’d set out, I was walking down the street with my bag slung over my shoulder. Had I my human features, I might have whistled—so proud was I.
I entered the inn through the main entrance, and walked up the stairway to our room to find the door open a crack. I eased it open a bit more, and snuck in, quiet as could be. Julian was sitting before the window, his back to me, using the last of the light to shave.
I stood silent, watching his sure hand guide the sharp razor across his cheek. There is a reason aristocrats employ valets or barbers to shave their faces—practicing the art upon oneself requires a measure of skill and certainty few men can master.
“Come in, Cat,” Julian said without turning. “You won’t startle me.”
“How did you know I was here?”
“Those boots of yours make a distinctive tap against the floor. I should know the sound of your walk anywhere.”
“Oh,” I said.
His laughter was a rich, easy sound I’d come to enjoy far too well. “You were trying to be stealthy, weren’t you?”
I raised my chin. “Perhaps.”
He grinned before turning his eyes back to the cracked mirror resting on the windowsill. I watched him for a few moments more before forcing my gaze away. I would have watched him ’til the sun set and night rose—until there was no light left to see—but there was something far too intimate about watching him perform this ablution. It seemed a sight meant for a beloved or a wife, and I was neither.
Instead, I turned my gaze to the small writing desk beside the bed. Julian’s book of tales lay facedown upon it, and several sheets of the cheap stationery we had used to forge notes from Galfridus’s estate manager were stacked face up. I hopped onto the bed and leaned over the desk.
Julian’s hand was as elegant and sure in his writing as it was in his every other endeavor. I looked longingly at the smooth flow of words, wondering what they meant. When I asked, he paused in his shaving, and was silent a moment.
“Please tell me,” I said.
“It’s a tale. Like those from my book, but…”
“But…?” I prodded. “How is yours different?”
“It is about our adventure. ’Tis about a miller’s son, and a cat who wears shoes.”
“Will you read it to me?”
“It—it isn’t finished.”
“Whyever not?”
“Because our adventure isn’t finished.”
“But you already know how this will end. The cat will destroy the wicked wizard. The miller’s son will marry the princess.”
“And once the princess becomes queen, she will divorce the miller’s son, leaving him free to use his new title and wealth to court the widow of the princess’s late father. It’s tawdry, Cat. Hardly the stuff of tales.”
“Of course it is fit for tales,” I said. “What do you think the tales mean when they say, ‘and they all lived happily ever after’?”
He shook his head. “You’re a cynic, Cat.”
“You are a dreamer, Julian.”
“You know you’re lucky you have me. I keep you sweet, else you’d be sour as a lemon.”
I did not have a ready rejoinder for that comment, and so was forced to consider the truth of his words. He was right. My life was sweeter with him in it. Happier. As eager as I was to have him see me clad in my dazzling finery—to make him fall madly in love with me—part of me wished we could stay, always, as we were right now.
I forced those thoughts from my head. “Look at my spoils, Julian,” I purred, pulling the fur-lined cloak, embroidered tunic, leather breeches and polished boots from my brocade bag.
“Is that gold thread? Are those pearls?”
“Indeed they are.” I was proud of myself.
“What manner of vain peacock hunts in such finery?” He laughed.
“Lord Germaine,” I said. “He happens to be a very handsome man
.”
“And I’ll bet he knows it. He probably spends more time in front of the mirror than he does in the woods.”
“You speak as though there is something wrong with being handsome.”
“No,” Julian said. “Just something wrong with caring overmuch about it.”
“You do not seem to mind a pretty face when it comes your way.”
“But beauty is fleeting, as is youth. There’s no point in being vain of them, for they will always leave you in the end.” He tossed the tunic onto the bed.
“So you would bed an ugly woman?”
“If I loved her, she wouldn’t be ugly. Not to me.”
“Ha!” My laugh was more bitter than I’d intended. “Men may say they want a woman with a kind heart and a sterling character, but beauty never fails to turn their heads or raise their cocks.”
“Is that what your beauty has taught you?” Julian’s words were sad. “I believe that if a man truly loved his lady, he would not care for other women at all because he would compare them each to her and find them lacking.”
“I might imagine the same thing,” I said, “but that wouldn’t make it true.”
“Such the cynic.”
“And you should be glad of it. I keep you tart. Without me, you’d be cloying as treacle and you know it.”
After a pause, he said, “I am glad of you. I do not think I would have fared very well in this city by myself. I would not even have escaped my brother’s house.” He scratched behind my ears. “You take good care of me, Cat. We take care of each other.”
I felt a strange lump in my throat. Briefly I wondered if I would at last engage in that most shameful of feline habits and cast my accounts onto the floor. But no. The lump was not physical, it was something emotional. It was longing.
I wanted nothing so much as for Julian to love me—not my perfect face and form, but my imperfect soul. I wanted to spend all the years of my life saving him from his own kind heart even as he saved me from my cynicism. But I was not fool enough to entertain those thoughts for long.
Come tomorrow I would be myself again, beautiful and human, and I would make Julian fall in love with me. Faced with the Lady Catriona, he would forget his dear friend, Cat, and all his promises that beauty did not matter. He would worship at my altar as humbly as every man before him. And I would try my best to forget that once upon a time, we had been friends instead of lovers.
Chapter Eleven: The Journey
We set out for the ogre’s lands before dark and walked late into the foggy, overcast night. I did not regain my human shape beneath the moonlight, because the moon was hidden behind clouds. Julian had to use a lantern to light our way.
At last we passed a mile marker set into the ground. It was a tall, oblong stone with writing chiseled crudely into its surface.
“What does it say?”
Julian held the lantern close and read, “Galfridus Keep, three leagues east.”
“Can you change it?”
“If I’d a hammer and chisel, it would take but a few hours’ work.”
“Well, then,” said I. “Change it to Carabas Keep, if you please.”
“I said, if I had a hammer and chisel, I could do the deed.”
“In my bag. Did you think I would come less than fully prepared? I’ve paint, too.”
Julian slung the sack from his shoulder and removed the mallet and chisel. “No wonder this bag is so heavy.”
Julian set about changing the marker using small strokes to keep the noise down, but the sound still roused a farmer from across the meadow. “What do ye think ye’re doin’ with that sign?” the old man cried.
“Improvements, my good man. Improvements.” I took one of the gold coins I had liberated from the royal treasure house and carried it to him pressed between my two front paws.
“What’s this?” said he. “A walking, talking cat bearing gold coins?” He held his palm to his mouth and checked his breath. “I don’t remember having any wine before I went to sleep.”
“Relax, kind sir,” said I. “I am but the humble servant of the Marquis de Carabas. These lands are his now. He would appreciate it if you would say as much to anyone who asked you on the morrow.” I offered him the gold coin, which he promptly took and crunched between his teeth.
“If this gold is still in my purse come sunrise, Puss, I’ll tell anyone anything you like.”
“You only need tell them of the Marquis de Carabas, and, please, don’t call me Puss.”
Julian left off his chipping and chimed in, “Call her Cat.”
“Thankee kindly, Mistress Cat.” The farmer sniffed his breath again and bit the coin, before turning and walking jauntily back to his farmhouse.
“Where did you get those coins, Cat?” Julian asked when the farmer was out of earshot.
“You don’t want to know.”
“I do. I’d hate to think they were stolen.”
“Not stolen, just liberated.”
“From?”
“The royal treasure house.”
“What?”
“I told you that you did not want to know.”
“What will the princess say when she discovers you stole from her treasure house?”
“If my plan succeeds, likely, ‘Many thanks, Cat.’”
“And if your plan fails?”
“I won’t be alive to hear it. And I would suggest you run as far and as fast as your legs will carry you. But never fear. We will succeed.”
“I do not want you to risk your life for this plan of yours.”
“But the princess—”
“No!” Julian almost shouted. “You are the one I worry for. I don’t care what the cause, I do not want to see you harmed.”
“No adventure is without risk. This risk is my choice.” I turned from him. “Come, we should set up camp and get some sleep before morning.”
At dawn, Julian and I rose and walked several miles together. Each time we passed crofters in their fields, I hurried over to them with coin and bribed them to say the lands belonged to the Marquis de Carabas. After one or two hours of this, we came to a dense wood thick with game.
“This is where we part,” I told Julian. “You stay close and wait for the princess’s carriage and I shall roust the ogre.”
“I do not want you to do it, Cat.”
“You must trust me,” I said. “Everything will be fine.”
He hesitated.
“Trust me.”
“Very well, Cat, but if you get yourself killed, I will never forgive you.”
I laughed as I walked away from him. When I looked back, he was still watching me, a worried expression upon his face.
I followed the road out of the wood and up a gentle hill. At the top of the hill, overlooking a sedate river, was a lovely keep of gray stone and ivy-covered walls sparkling with tall leaded-glass windows. There was a small, decorative moat of clear, clean water around its perimeter. The drawbridge had been replaced by a stone bridge wide enough to accommodate a modern carriage and the courtyard within the bounds of the old defensive wall had been decorated with all manner of fanciful topiary.
No one greeted me when I entered the courtyard, so I stamped my stacked wooden heel upon the cobblestones and shouted, “Attend me!”
Two servants in Galfridus’s blue-and-silver livery came running from their posts at the alcove outside the main doors. “Yes! Yes, my…” They stopped short at the sight of me.
“Tell your master the Lady Catriona is here to see him.” I spoke as though I expected to be obeyed, and I was.
“I—uh, yes, my lady,” the taller of the two servants said before dashing inside.
“Uh, may I make you welcome, my lady?” the second servant asked.
“Yes.” I let him lead me into a grand entryway.
The old flagstone tiles had long ago been replaced by marble floors, and the cold stone walls covered by warm wood paneling. It was altogether a charming seat. I was certain Julian would be very
happy here.
“May I take your hat?”
“No,” I snapped at the servant. “I am a lady. You do not take a lady’s hat unless she requests it of you.”
“Begging your pardon, my lady, but you are a cat.”
I glared at the cheeky servant. “What has that to do with anything?”
The servant dropped his eyes. “Nothing, m’lady.”
“Very good. Now, show me to a sitting room of some sort, and fetch me a bowl of warm milk.”
“Very good, m’lady.”
The servant did as I instructed, which just goes to show that they respond to a firm tone and clear orders regardless of a person’s sex or species. There really are no poor servants, just weak masters.
I perched ladylike upon a low velvet divan and waited for the servant to return with my warm milk. Before that happened, there came a great clamor in the hall with shouts and hurried footsteps. The doors to the sitting room burst open and Galfridus stood there, his hair a mess, his eyes wide and red-rimmed with rage.
“What is the meaning of this?”
“The meaning of this?” I gave him a calm feline smile. “The meaning of this is that I have learned my lesson. I respect your considerable abilities, and would appreciate it if you would return me to my original form.”
“You came here to ask me that? I tried to kill you, woman.”
“But you didn’t kill me. Naturally, I assumed that you meant only to frighten me, for had you truly meant to kill me, I would be dead. Likewise, I could only assume from the fact that I retained the ability to speak and walk upright, that you meant me to have the wherewithal to find you and humbly ask your forgiveness.”
“You assumed all of that, did you?” Galfridus sneered the words.
I blithely ignored his sneer and prattled on as though I hadn’t the slightest idea he was furious to see me perched upon the divan in his sitting room. “Oh, yes. I’ve had a great deal of time to think since I became a cat, and the more I thought about it—about what you can do, the more impressed I became.
“It was terribly short-sighted of me to throw in my lot with the princess, when you are so obviously her superior in power, judgment and cunning. Why, when I think how much skill and arcane knowledge it must take to transform a person into a cat—well, it’s impressive.”
Cat's Tale Page 9
