The Door In The Hedge Part 7

He dreaded the night ahead; but for all that, he was relieved when the banquet that was no banquet was finished; and he stood at the King's side as the Princesses went their way from the hall, one after another, heads high, their jewels shining, their eyes shadowed. The soldier stared at the eldest as she walked toward the door at the end of the procession; and she turned her face a little away from him as if she were aware of his look. "No," he thought. "If she turns from anyone's gaze, it is from her father's." When the last Princess was gone, the King turned to his guest, and the soldier read the helpless, hopeless question in the father's eyes. But the soldier remembered sitting on a pier, leaning against a post, and watching a dance in a hall so grand as to make this castle look a cotter's hut; and the soldier's eyes dropped. Another man in the King's place might have sighed, have touched his face with his hand, have made some sign. But the King did not. When the soldier glanced up at him again he saw a face so still that it might have been a statue's, cold and perfect and lifeless, and the soldier looked at the straight brow, the long nose, and the wide mouth; a mouth that had once known well how to smile and laugh, but had now nearly forgotten; and the lines of laughter in that face hurt the heart of any who recognized them for what they were. And the soldier thought again of the ostler's tale.

Then the King's eyes blinked, and were no longer staring at something the soldier would not see even if he turned around and looked into the bright shadowless corner the King had looked into; and he began to breathe again, lightly, easily, and the soldier realized that the King had drawn no breath since the soldier had first dropped his eyes before the King's unanswered question.

The King turned and led the way from the Hall, and they went up the stairs to the grim hall off which the Gallery opened through one thick ungraceful door. The two of them, weary King and weary soldier, leaned their elbows on the bal.u.s.trade and stared into the night; this evening the sky glittered with stars as bright as hope. A single servant stood at the head of the stairs, who had followed the King softly when he first left the dining hall; and the servant held a candelabrum of only three candles. Their light brushed hesitantly at the darkness of the corridor.

The King turned at last and took the iron key on its chain from around his neck, and pulled open the door to the Long Gallery. The soldier entered and stood, his eyes upon the toes of his boots; and this night as he stood he heard with the twelve listening Princesses the sound of the door swung shut behind him, a tiny pause, and then the snick of the lock run home.

The evening pa.s.sed much as had the evening before. The soldier, his eyes still lowered, made his way down the long chamber, past twelve silent white-gowned Princesses, to his dark narrow cot behind the screen. There he sat, thinking of nothing, staring at the unlit lamp, the cloak of shadows beneath his hand and another handsome cloak, this one of deep blue, over his shoulders. The eldest Princess came to him again, and offered him wine to drink; and they exchanged words, but the words left no mark upon the soldier's memory. He poured the hot wine, gently and carefully, into the folds of his handsome blue cloak; and even the heavy spiced steam of the drink seemed to make his eyelids droop, his head nod.

And he was sharply aware of the Princess's glance, and kept his mouth firmly closed, as if he were afraid that his hand, under her look, might somehow stray and bring the wine to his lips against his will. And he wondered at what it might be that directed her hand when she drugged the wine, what peered through her eyes as she gave it to the mortal watcher waiting behind the screen. He handed the empty goblet to the tall waiting figure, and she left him silently.

He lay down and began to snore, but with pauses between the snores, that he might hear the sound of the heavy door being opened, the door that led to the underground kingdom. He snored still as he rose, and tossed the black cloak around him, in place of the wine-heavy blue one that lay in its turn on the floor beside the cot; and then he stopped snoring, and slipped around the edge of his screen, and saw the twelfth Princess watching the tail of the eleventh's dress gliding through the hatch. Then she too descended, and the soldier cautiously followed.

Nothing marred their descent this night; for the soldier knew what he would find, and he made no mistakes. He looked at the jeweled trees as he pa.s.sed them, but he did not touch them; their purpose was served. Tonight he must seek something further.

The twelve black boats waited by the sh.o.r.e of the black lake; the water's edge, clawing at the pebbles, seemed almost to speak to him; but he dared not listen too long. Tonight the oarsman in the twelfth boat must have put more strength in his labor, for despite the soldier's invisible presence athwartships, staring toward the glittering island he knew would be there, the last boat kept near the others, and docked with them. The soldier set his jaw, and leaped ash.o.r.e behind the Princess, as the black captain held the boat delicately touching the pier; and he watched as the captains of all the twelve boats whirled out of their long black cloaks and wide-brimmed hats and stood at the princesses' sides, as fearfully handsome as the Princesses were beautiful. But the soldier clutched his black cloak to him all the closer, and was curiously grateful for the way it clutched back. And as the gleaming pairs of dancers swept from dockside into the arms of the music that reached out from the castle's opened gates, the soldier followed after them, walking slowly but without hesitation.

There were many others within the broad ballrooms of that castle besides the Princesses and their partners; he had not realized, the night before, even as he was dazzled and bewildered by the bright colors they wore and the intricate dance steps they pursued, just how many others were present. The music thrummed in the soldier's ears and beat against his invisible skin till he felt that anyone looking at him must see the outline that the melodies and counterpoints drew around him.

But none appeared to suspect his presence, and he walked boldly through the high rooms, and blinked at the light and the glitter. The rooms seemed as intensely lit as the banqueting hall of the Princesses' father, and he found the glare here no less disquieting to his mind, and much more so to his eyes, which were dazzled by twelves upon twelves upon twelves upon twelves of dancing figures, all glorying in gold and silver and gems, not only in headdresses and necklaces, rings, brooches and bracelets, but wrought into their clothing; even fingernails and eyelids in this enchanted place gleamed like diamonds; and none was ever still. He found he could think of the unnatural stillness of the Princesses in their father's home as restful, soothing, something to remember with pleasure and relief rather than bewilderment.

The soldier had no sense of time. He wove through the crowds and stared around him; he felt confused by the light and the brilliant music; he remembered his thoughts of the night before, huddled against a dockside post, and he shivered, and his cloak pressed tighter around his throat. But he reached out to steady himself, one hand upon the gorgeous scrolls of an ivory-inlaid doorframe; and for a moment, with that touch, his mind seemed clear and calm, suspended behind his eyes where it might watch and consider what went on around him, without feeling the fears that thundered unintelligibly at him. And he saw, then, something beyond the scintillation of gems and precious things beyond counting, beyond the elegance, the grace and sheer overwhelming beauty of the scene before him. He saw that the faces of the throng were blank and changeless, the lightness of step, of gesture, the perfections of automatons. None spoke; the splendor of the constant music did but disguise the unnatural silence of the many guests; again the soldier thought of the King's musicians playing gallantly to hide the silence of their master and his daughters. Yet there one listened to the music because one could hear the sorrow behind it that it sought to conceal, even to soften. Here, to listen carefully to what lay behind the music was to court madness, for what lay beyond it was the emptiness of the void. The soldier thought of his own shabby clumsiness, but now suddenly he had some respect for it, because it was human.

And as he thought these things, clear, each of them, as such a sky as he had seen over the surface of his beloved earth only yesterday afternoon, he saw the eldest Princess stepping toward him, one white hand laid quietly on the arm of her tall black-haired escort. The two of them together made such a beautiful sight his heart ached within him for all his new sunlit wisdom; but he looked at them straight, staring the longest at the Princess. He felt then that to stare at her, to memorize each line of her face, each hollow and shadow and curve, would be a comfort and a relief to him; and if the woman at the well was correct-and tonight the hope had returned that she might be-the Princess would not begrudge it him.

And so he looked at her, and as he looked the ache in his heart changed: for he saw that her chin was raised just a little too high, and she placed each slim foot just a little too carefully. The expressionlessness on her face was as flawless as her beauty, but he thought he knew, now, what it was costing her. The two of them walked by him, unknowing; he turned his head to watch them go. They left the great halls of the palace; he saw them fade into the shadows of blackness beyond the courtyard till the blaze of the torches at the portals blinded him and he could not tell them from the gems on the Princess's gown.

And so the second night wore to its end, and the soldier followed the Princesses home to the Long Gallery, and heard the stone hatch sigh closed. He lay on his bed and snored; and rose the next morning and looked around him, and remembered the night before, and the night before that one. And so he recalled that tonight was his third and last night to share the Princesses' chamber, and discover their secret if he would, as so many had tried before. And he knew that as he sat this morning blinking at his boots, so tomorrow morning would a messenger await him at the iron-bound door to the Princesses'

Gallery, to lead him before them, and before the King, and to account for the boon the King had granted him.

So on the third night the soldier looked around him with the eyes of one who seeks some exact thing when he strode into the palace of haunted dreams at the heart of the black lake. Tonight he seemed to hear only the thunderous silence, for somehow the music had lost him; or perhaps he had lost it, in that quiet moment inside his own heart of the night before; and the silence held no danger for him. This third night yet he was afraid again, for all his boldness; but it was not the cowering miserable fear of the first night, but the steady and knowledgeable fear of an old soldier who dares face an enemy too strong for him.

In his younger days the soldier had slipped into hostile camps when his colonel ordered him to, with but a few of his fellows, when the enemy was asleep or unguarded, to do what they could and then slip away again. It was because of one of these raids, not so successful as it might have been, that the soldier ever since was forewarned of a change in the weather by the slow pain in his right shoulder. He might be glad that the dagger had caught him in the shoulder and not in the leg, for he had still been able to run, trying by the pressure of his left hand to hold the blood from pumping out, the mist still rising inexorably before his eyes. He found himself with his legs braced and his hands clenched at his sides, staring at circling dancers, and that same mist before his eyes. He shook his head to clear it. He thought of scorning the fact that that particular memory chose to disturb him on this particular night; but he had not lived so long by ignoring such warnings as his instinct might give him. He was glad that this third night was to be his last; he felt as though the cloak of invisibility would not be a sufficient bar to all that he felt lurked here, beyond the lights, for very much longer. Some sort of dawn would come to betray him, shining through his shadow cloak, as a simpler sort of dawn had betrayed his nighttime stealth years ago.

And he listened again to what was not there behind the sorcerous music of this place, and thought that that dawn might be of his own making; there were some things that could not bear to be known, and he was walking too near to them.

He stood beside the great gates that led outside the castle to the night blackness beyond the ballroom light, and to the black water creeping around the docks. He saw the Princesses dancing in the graceful arms of their swains. The youngest danced past him, very near; so near he could see the transparent wisp of fair hair that had escaped the fine woven net and fallen across her eyes; and as she went past him he thought he saw her shudder, ever so slightly. Her eyes turned toward him, and he stopped breathing, thinking she might see some movement in the air. Her eyes searched the shadows where he stood wrapped in his cloak of shadows, as if she were certain that she would find something that she was looking for; and behind the fine veil of hair he saw fear sunk deep in her wide eyes. But her gaze pa.s.sed over him and through him and back again without recognition; and then her tall partner whirled her into a figure of the dance that took her away from his dark corner, and he saw her no more.

He stayed where he was, thinking, watching; and he saw the eldest Princess walking again with her hand on the arm of her black captain; she pa.s.sed through a high arch from the ballroom to the courtyard where he stood, a little way from him; and in her free hand she carried a jeweled goblet. The two of them paused just beyond the threshold, and the Princess glanced to one side. A low marble bench stood beside her. She lowered her hand with a swift gesture and left the cup upon it; and then walked away as her escort turned and led her, almost as if she wished him not to see what she had done. The soldier, without understanding what he did, went at once to that bench and lifted up the goblet. He peered inside, tilting it to the light so that he might see its bottom. It was empty. Some inlaid patterns glinted at him, but he could not see it clearly. He thought: "This will do also to show the King." And he hid the cup under his cloak.

That night too came to its end; and perhaps it was his own eagerness to be gone, but it seemed to him that the Princesses' step was slower tonight as they turned toward the boats, though from reluctance or weariness he could not say. But he walked so closely upon the youngest Princess's heels as she stepped into the last boat that nearly he trod upon her gown for a second time, and he caught himself back only just at the last.

As they disembarked on the far side of the lake the soldier stooped suddenly and dipped his goblet into the black water, raising it full to the brim; drops ran down its sides and across his hand like small crawling things with many legs, and his hand trembled, but he held the heavy cup grimly. He turned, the unpleasant touch of the black water still fresh on his skin, and watched the black hulls slide away like beetles across the lake's smooth surface. When he turned back again, the Princesses were already climbing the long stair, and he had to hurry to catch them up and lie back on his cot before they should look for him.

He was careful, for all his haste, that he spilled no further drop of the goblet's contents. He set it down beyond the head of his cot, and tossed his shadow cloak over it. When the eldest Princess came to look at him, he lay on his back, snorting a little in his sleep, as an old soldier who has drunk drugged wine might be expected to snort; but he watched her from under his lashes. She gave no sigh; and after a moment she went away.

He did not remember sleeping, that night. He heard the soft whisper of the elegant rainbow gowns being swept into chests and wardrobes; the heavy gla.s.sy clink of jewels into boxes; and a soft tired sound he thought might be of worn-out dancing slippers pushed gently under beds. Then there were the quiet subsiding sounds of mattresses and pillows, and the brittle swish of fresh sheets, the blowing out of candles and the sharp smell of the black wicks. And silence. The soldier lay on his back, his eyes wide open now in the darkness, and thought of all the things he had to think about, past and present; he dared not think of the future. But he put his memory in order as he was used to put his kit in order, with the bra.s.s and the buckles shining, the leather soaped and waxed, the tunic set perfectly.

He did not feel tired. And then at last some thin pale light came to touch his feet, and creep farther round the screen's edge to climb to his knees, and then leap over the screen's top to fall on his face. He watched the light, not liking it, for it should be the sweet wholesome light of dawn; but there was no window in the Long Gallery since the Princesses had slept here. And so he understood by its approach that the eldest Princess woke first, and lit her candle; and her first sister then awoke and lit hers; and so till the twelfth Princess felt the waxen light on her face and awoke in her turn, whose bed lay nearest the screen in the far corner.

The Princesses did not speak. Their morning toilette was completed quickly; and then there was a waiting sort of pause, and then he heard the sound of the King's key in the lock of the door to the Long Gallery that led into the castle, into the upper world. The door opened; and the sound of many skirts and petticoats told him the Princesses were leaving, although he heard no sound of footfall. Then the silence returned. The soldier sat up. His mind was alert, quiet but steady; but his body was stiff, especially the right shoulder.

He sat, waiting, wondering what would come to him. He creaked the mattress a little, wondering if they waited at the Gallery door already. They did. Two servants approached and set down a little table, and put a basin of water on it, and hung a towel over it. Then they folded the screen and set it to one side, and put the little table with the untouched lamp against the wall next to the screen. The soldier looked down the long row of twelve white beds, made up perfectly smooth so that one would think they never had been slept in; they might even have been carven from chalk or molded of the finest porcelain and polished with a silken cloth. He looked down and saw the tips of a pair of dancing shoes showing from beneath the bed nearest him. The fragile stuff they were made of sagged sadly down, and he did not need to see if there were holes in the bottoms.

He stood up, feeling as if his creaking bones might be heard by the waiting servants as the creaking mattress had been. He splashed his face with the water, then rubbed face and hands briskly with the towel. He pushed his s.h.a.ggy hair back, knowing there was little else to be done with it. He looked up then, and the servants jerked their eyes away from the two heaps at the head of his cot and stared straight ahead of them. He wondered if these two men always waited on the third mornings of the Princesses' champions; and if so, what they had seen before.

He leaned down to pick up the heavy goblet; the cloak of shadows, nothing but a bit of black cloth to the eye, held round its stem, and clutched his wrist as if for rea.s.surance. The wine-sodden cloak he left lying as it was.

He turned to the waiting servants, and they led the way to the door of the Long Gallery, down the stairs, and along the hall to the high chamber the soldier had sat in for three cheerless feasts at the King's right hand. Now the King sat in a tall chair at the end of this chamber; and his daughters stood on either hand. And around them, filling the hall till only a narrow way remained from the door to the feet of the King, were men and women who had heard of the new challenger come to try to learn how the Princesses danced holes in their shoes each night, locked in the Long Gallery by their father, who held the only key to that great mysterious door. And now they were come to hear what that hero had found.

The two servants that escorted him paused at the door to the great room, and made their bows; and the soldier went in alone. The subdued murmur of voices stopped at once upon his entrance. The hope and hopelessness that hung in the air were almost tangible; he could almost feel hands clutching at him, pleading with him. But he went on, much heartened; for the voices were real human voices, and he knew about hope and despair.

As he strode forward, one hand held to his breast with a thin shred of black dangling from the wrist and hand and what it held only a blur of shadows, someone stepped out of the crowd and stood before him. It was the captain of the guard, the man he called friend, however few the words they had actually exchanged; and in his hands he carried a bundle. This bundle he held out to the soldier, and the soldier took it; and he looked into his friend's eyes and smiled. The captain smiled back, anxiously, searching his face, and stepped back then; and the soldier went on to where the King sat. There he knelt, and on the first step of the dais he set two shrouded things from his two hands.

Then he stood, and looked at the King, who, sitting in the high throne, looked down at him.

"Well," said the King. He did not raise his voice, but the King's voice was such of its own that it might reach every corner with each word, as the King chose. This "Well" now would ring in the ears of the man or woman farthest from him in this crowded room. "You have spent now three nights in the Long Gallery, guarding the sleep of my daughters, while for three more nights they have danced holes in their new shoes. Can you tell us how it is that every night, although they may not stir from their chamber, these new dancing slippers are worn quite through, and each morning beneath each bed is not a pair of shoes, but a few worn tatters of cloth?"

"Yes," said the soldier. "I can." His voice was no less clear than the King's own; and a hush ran round the room that was louder than words. "And I will." He bent and picked up the bundle that the captain had given him; and was surprised at the suppleness of his body, now that the waiting was finished.

"At the foot of the eldest Princess's bed is a door of stone that rises from the floor. Each night the Princesses descend through that door, and down a long stairway cut in the rock there. At first these stairs are dark, the ceiling low and dank; but then the way opens on a cliff-face that the stairs walk still down; and this open way is lined to the cliff's foot with jeweled trees. On the first night as I followed the Princesses I broke a branch of one of these jeweled trees." And he opened the first bundle and held the branch aloft, and the wicked gems in the smooth white bole glittered and leaped like fire; and a sigh wove through the crowd. The soldier had faced the King as he spoke, although he fixed his eyes on the King's hands as they lay serenely in his lap; now he saw them clench suddenly together and he raised his eyes to look at the King's face and saw there a sudden joy he could not quell for all his kingdom leap out of his eyes, not as a king but a father. The soldier noticed also that while the line of Princesses was now motionless, the hand of the youngest had risen and covered her face.

He drew his gaze back up the row to the eldest, but she stood quietly, her hands clasped before her and her eyes cast down.

"At the foot of the cliff," said the soldier, "there is a dark sh.o.r.e that edges a lake; and the waters of this lake are black, and-" there was a pause just long enough to be heard as a pause, and the soldier continued: "-and the waters of that lake do not sound as the waters of our lakes sound as they lap upon the sh.o.r.e."

He stooped and laid the jeweled branch on the second step of the dais, this but one step below the one on which the King's feet rested. It flickered at him as if its gems were winking eyes. As he straightened he found he had turned himself a little, facing more nearly toward where the eldest Princess stood than her father's throne; but he did not change his position again.

"At the edge of that lake are twelve boatmen, sculling their twelve lean black boats. The twelve captains wear black, and the oars are as black as the hulls. The twelve Princesses embark upon these boats, and are carried far-I know not how far, for what pa.s.ses for sky in this underground place is dim and green, and soon darkens to the color of the lake itself as the boats pa.s.s over the water. Then a great palace looms up upon what is perhaps an island, or perhaps a promontory of some dark land on the far side of that lake; I only can tell you that the boats dock near the courtyard of this great palace, and the courtyard is ablaze with lights, as are the magnificent rooms within; but if one pa.s.ses through those vast chambers to look upon the far side of the castle, for all the brilliance of the light, the shadows creep in close, and are absolute no farther than a strong arm's stone's throw from the palace gates. Nothing like moon or star shines overhead.

"In these dazzling rooms your Princesses dance through the earth's night, partnered by the black ferrymen: but these have thrown off their black cloaks for the dancing, and are as dazzling in their beauty as the rooms that contain them-near as dazzling perhaps as the Princesses themselves." The soldier spoke these words with no sense of paying a compliment, but merely as a man speaks the truth; and a few of the oldest members of the. audience forgot for a moment the wonder of the story he told, and looked at him sharply, and then smiled.

"There is a splendid throng in those great ballrooms; one does not know where to look, and wherever one's eyes rest, the magnificence is bewildering, as is the grace of the dancers. There is always music during those long hours that the Princesses dance their slippers to pieces; the music reaches out to greet those who touch the pier after the journey across the water; nearly it lifts one off one's feet, whatever the will may say against it. But behind the music is silence, and something more than silence; something unnameable, and better so. And I heard no one of those dancers within those halls and that music ever address a word to another.

"Three nights I followed the Princesses to this place, walking down the stairs behind them, standing in the bottom of the twelfth black boat with a Princess before me and a captain behind; three nights I followed them again back to the castle of their father, and ran ahead of them at the last, to be lying snoring on my bed when they returned." But he spoke no word, yet, of how this was accomplished without any knowing.

"On the third night at the palace I brought something away with me." He bent again, and picked up the shapeless blur of shadows. He peeled the whispering rag away, and let it fall to his feet, where it lay motionless; but he was not unaware of its touch, and he wondered at its uncommon stillness. He held the goblet up as he had held the branch, and those whose eyes followed it in the first moments thought it was as if the unshielded sun shone in the room, and before their eyes colors shifted and swam, and they could not see their neighbors, but seemed for that moment to be in a castle beyond imagining grander than their King's proud castle, surrounded by a crowd of people unnaturally beautiful.

But the vision cleared and the soldier spoke again, and those who had seen something they had not understood in the sudden brilliance of the thing he had held up to them listened uneasily, but knowing that what he said was true. "This goblet is from the shadow-held palace underground, where the Princesses dance holes in their shoes." He lowered the goblet, and looked into it. The black water shifted as his hand trembled, and the surface glittered like the facets of polished stone. The noise of the water as it touched the sides was like the distant cries of the imprisoned. "In it I dipped up some of the; water of that lake I crossed six times."

As he said this, the cries seemed suddenly to have words in them, as once he had heard the water talking secrets to the sh.o.r.e; but this time, in earth's broad daylight, he was horribly afraid of the words he might hear, that they might somehow harm his world, taint the sky and the sunlight. And he held the cup abruptly away from him, as far as his arm would reach. The water rose up to the brim and spilled over, with a nasty thin shriek like victory; and it fell to the floor with a hiss. Where it fell there rose a shadow, and the shadow seemed dreadfully to take shape; and the people who stood watching moaned. The soldier stood stricken with the knowledge of what he had done; the King made no sign.

The shadow moved; it ebbed and rose again, bulking larger in the light; and a leg of it, if it was a leg, thrust back, feeling its way. It touched the discarded cloak crouched at the soldier's feet.

And the shadow was gone as if it had never been. Most of those who had seen it were never sure of what they saw; some, who knew about the nightmares where an unseen Thing pursues without reason or mercy, believed in this waking Thing more easily; but in later years remembered only that once they had had a nightmare more terrible than the rest, and there was no memory of what had happened the day that the twelve dancing Princesses' enchantment was broken. But about the soldier's tale all remembered his description of the underground land the Princesses had been bound to for so many nights with a deep-felt fear that could not entirely be accounted for in the words the soldier used.

But then too there was little time for thought, for what was certain was that the ground underfoot suddenly rose up to strike at those who had so long taken its imperturbability for granted. It rose up, and sank away again, and quivered alarmingly, and several people cried out, though none was hurt; a few stumbled and fell to their knees. A dull but thunderous roar was heard at some distance they could not guess at. A servant came in during the stunned silence following the half-believed shadow and the unknown roar, and explained, so far as he could; and bowed shakily, and went away again. The floor of the walled-in Long Gallery had collapsed, burying forever the entrance to the underground lake.

No one knew what the Princesses thought, and no one inquired. When any dared stop feeling themselves to be sure they were there, and not home in bed, and looking surrept.i.tiously at those who stood around them, who were looking surrept.i.tiously back, and free to raise their eyes and look at the royal daughters again, the Princesses' faces were calm, their eyes downcast, as before. But those who stood nearest the soldier and the King and the twelve Princesses thought that the King and his daughters were whiter than they were wont to be. And yet at the same time there was something like the joy the soldier had seen pulling at the King's face pulling as well at his daughters' eyes and mouths and hands.

The soldier knew what had happened, and believed; he knew about nightmares. But he knew also that there were nightmares that happened when one was awake, which was a knowledge denied most of the quiet farmer folk and city merchants present around him. And he was appalled at this shadow he had freed. He looked down at his feet. A wisp of black, gossamer thin, delicate as a lady's veil, lay before him. He knelt to pick it up, and it stirred gently against his palm; and he heard as he knelt the King's voice speaking to him.

"Can you tell us how you succeeded in this thing? How none tried to prevent you from going where you would?"

The soldier straightened up once more, holding the terrible goblet, empty now, chaste and still, in one hand, and the little bit of black in the other. "An old woman gave me a cloak," he said slowly. "A black cloak, to make me invisible; for I told her where I was bound, and why; and though I had done her but a small service that any might have done in my place, she wished to give me this gift." He looked up, met the King's eyes. "And she warned me not to drink the wine the Princesses would offer me when I lay down in my corner of the Long Gallery; and warned me too that not to drink might be more difficult than it seems to tell it."

"This cloak," said the King. "Where is it now?"

"I do not know," said the soldier, and the hand not holding the cup closed gently around the shred of black rag that was a cloak no longer.

The King stood up from his throne then and stepped down till he stood on the floor next to the soldier; and in his eyes was the gladness the soldier had seen flare up when first he began his story; but there was no attempt to moderate or conceal it now, and it struck the soldier full in the face. And something like that joy-for a poor and weary soldier has little knowledge of joy-rose up in the soldier's heart. And he thought as he had thought three nights before: "This is the commander that I fought for, although I did not know it; I am glad that I have been permitted to meet him." But as he looked upon the King's face now, he thought that the drinking of their sovereign's health was not a wasted tradition at all. Years fell away from the soldier as he stood smiling at his commander, and certain memories he had never been able to shut out of his dreams went quietly to sleep themselves. The goblet dropped from his hand without his knowing. It fell to the floor with a dull and heavy clang; and not one eye followed it, for all were looking at the King and the man who had returned him his happiness. The goblet was forgotten; and much later, the servants who came to set the room to rights did not find it, although several of them knew it should be there to be found.

Then the King said so that all the people might hear: "You know the reward for the breaking of this spell: you shall marry one of my daughters, and she shall be Queen and you King after me, and the eldest of your children shall sit on the throne after you."

The soldier found that he was looking over the King's shoulder, and his eyes, without his asking them to, found the down-turned face of the eldest Princess. As her father finished speaking she looked up, and met the soldier's gaze; and then he knew that the odd stirring beneath his breast bone that he had felt in the face of the King's happiness was joy indeed, for it welled up so strongly it could not be mistaken.

"Give me the eldest," he heard his voice say, "for I am no longer young." And the eldest Princess stepped forward before her father had the chance to say yea or nay, and walked to him, and held out her hand to him; but he did not realize till her fingers closed around his that he had reached out his hand to her.

The people cheered; the soldier heard it, but did not notice when it first began. The Princess's eyes, that looked into his now so clearly and peacefully, were an unusual color, a sweet lavender that was almost blue; and in them he read a wisdom that comforted him, for it held a sense of youth that had nothing to do with years.

He did not know what it was the Princess saw as she looked at him that made her smile so wonderfully; but he thought he might learn, and so he smiled back.

Epilogue.

THE WEDDING was celebrated but a fortnight later; time enough only to invite everyone, not only those who lived in the city or nearby, but those who lived far up in the mountains, those even who lived beyond the kingdom's borders who would reach out to grasp the hand of friendship thus offered, and come and dance at the wedding. There was barely time enough for all the barrels of wine and of flour and sugar, and haunches of beef and venison, and all the fruits that the city and the ships at its docks might furnish, to be brought to the castle and dealt with magnificently by the royal cooks. And all the time that the cooks were baking and stewing and roasting and arranging, all the seamstresses and tailors were sewing new gowns and tunics, and the jesters studied new tricks, and the theatrical troupes went over new sketches, and the musicians unearthed all the dancing music they had once played with such delight, and learned it all over again, but even better than before. It was the grandest wedding that all the people in a country all working together might bring about; and there was help from neighboring countries and their kings too, whether they could attend or not, for many were glad to see their old friend restored to happiness. And there were a number of n.o.ble sons thoughtfully dispatched to look over the eleven other Princesses. And the gaiety was such that people felt quite free to compliment all the Princesses on how beautifully they danced; and if perhaps the eldest danced the best of all, seven of her sisters were nonetheless betrothed by the end of the week's celebration, and the other four by the time she and her new husband returned from their bridal trip.

The youngest Princess married the captain of the guard. Once this might have been thought too lowly a match for a royal Princess; but her fiance had been seen to be the right-hand man of the new Crown Prince.

And an ostler who had once told a restless soldier the story of the twelve dancing Princesses came to the wedding by special invitation, which included a horse from the royal stables to ride on; and this ostler later admired all the King's stable and stud so intelligently that room was found for him there. And by the time he had taught thirty-two young Princes and forty-seven young Princesses how to ride and drive and take proper care of their horses, he was Master of the Stable and ready to retire.

On their bridal trip the Crown Prince and his Princess rode up the road that had first brought the Prince to the city; and the Prince recognized much of what he had seen on his journey. But they found no small cottage near a well where such should be, nor any old woman like the one he still remembered.

They went so far as to ask some of the folk who lived along the road to the King's city if they knew of her; but none did.

About the Author...

Jennifer Carolyn Robin McKinley was born in her mother's home town of Warren, Ohio, and grew up in various places all over the world because her father was in the Navy. She read Andrew Lang's Blue Fairy Book for the first time in California; The Chronicles of Narnia for the first time in New York; The Lord of the Rings for the first time in j.a.pan; The Once and Future King for the first time in Maine. She is still inclined to keep track of her life by recalling what books she was reading at a given time. Other than books she counts as her major preoccupations grand opera and long walks, both of which she claims keep the blood flowing and the imagination limber. At present she lives on a horse farm not far from Boston, Ma.s.sachusetts, with a baby grand piano, two thousand books, six library cards, and an electric typewriter.

Her first novel, Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast, was published in the fall of '78. The Door in the Hedge is her second book. Her third, The Blue Sword-the first book of a trilogy-will be published in the fall of '82.

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