The Princess and the Hound (9 page)

F
INALLY, IT WAS TIME
for George to offer his gifts to King Helm and to Princess Beatrice.

George had the gifts brought in, then went to each box and presented them in the order that he and Sir Stephen had agreed upon.

King Helm accepted the delicately fashioned gold star and the precious gems. He sent the bottles of wine immediately to the castle kitchen, to be stored in the basement with his already outstanding collection. It was only the knife that he seemed to appreciate personally. He took it out of its sheath and admired the shine in the dimming light of the hall, then brought the blade down against one hand and sliced through the upper layer of skin so expertly that no drop of blood was drawn.

“A fine blade, that is,” he said, looking at George with approval.

Then the knife was put away, and it was time for Beatrice’s gifts.

George bowed before Beatrice as King Helm drummed his hands on the armrests of his throne in impatience. The beads came out, and Beatrice accepted them with a small murmur of thanks. She did not look at George.

Just as she did not look at her father.

She could not think him like her father, though!

But George realized in that moment he had given her a gift for a woman, a bauble that would mean nothing to her. A pretty thing, to be sure, but one to be worn with gowns of blue that were only a burden to her.

But how to make her see him true?

To show himself true.

It was that simple. And that difficult.

The headache throbbed behind George’s eyes, and he felt a tremor of heat down his arm. But he forced his hand to feel inside his jacket for the leather pouch tied around his neck. With one swift movement, he broke the tie, then held out the pouch to Beatrice.

“For you, Princess Beatrice,” George said with a bow. His hands were shaking, and he thought of the other things he could have bought her. Jewels. Fur.

But no, he could not. It was not what he was.

Beatrice’s hands came up in a cupping shape. She showed no curiosity as she opened the leather pouch and put her hand inside. At last she pulled out the tiny,
delicate object within.

“A glass hound,” she said in such a muted tone that George still had no idea what she thought of it.

Then Marit danced to get a look, and Beatrice held it lower. Marit sniffed at the glass image, and her eyes went to George.

“Hold it up to the light,” George said, his voice hoarse.

Beatrice did as he asked, and suddenly the hall swam in colors, in glints that turned and shook as Beatrice’s own hand did. The glass hound not only had come alive but made the whole hall breathe with it.

“A glass hound that moves in its own way, with beauty to match a real hound’s grace,” said George. He stared at Beatrice, hoping for some sign of—what? She seemed so used to covering her emotions that George was not sure he could tell if she was pleased or not.

“Thank you,” she said, and put the hound away. Her hands moved rapidly, and she did not meet George’s eyes afterward.

Did she like it? Did she hate it?

It was Marit that answered his unspoken question, however. The hound came close to George to wrap herself around his leg once more, this time without pushing but with a simple comforting touch.

And George had to be content with that. At least it showed that someone knew he was not a man like Beatrice’s father.

King Helm clapped his hands, and a minstrel came in then to sing ballads. At home in his father’s court, George excused himself from such displays. But he could not do it here. He had to listen.

The minstrel began with the tale of a Sarrey maid who fell into the sea and then fell deeper still, to the court of the sea monster. She married the sea monster and gave him many children, but they all were sea creatures, none human like her. And so she pined for her world above the water, until at last she dared escape. She was found dead on the shore of her own kingdom the next day, a smile wide across her face.

Not a particularly encouraging story with which to begin a marriage,
George thought.

The next tale had a happier ending, about two brothers who lived on the very edges of two different kingdoms. When war between the kingdoms was announced, both brothers laid down their plows and took up swords in defense of their lands. They were fortunate for many years, never facing each other directly across a battlefield. Then came the day the brothers had always dreaded, when they stood on the same field, on different sides of two armies. But the two could not even bring their swords to bear, and finally, when the battle was over, they alone were left alive. They returned to their fields, and when the story was known, the kingdoms swore that they would be as close as the two brothers were and never fight again.

George thought King Helm must have encouraged this story to be told, as a reminder of the real purpose of the marriage between George and Beatrice: to ensure that no war such as that one would ever be fought again.

The third tale, to George’s surprise, was that of King Richon and the wild man, which the minstrel sang as George had always heard it, with one exception. In the end the wild man promised King Richon he would one day find a woman who would love him as he was, and then all that he had lost would be restored.

George thought the minstrel must have added this himself, but when he asked the man privately, he insisted it was the way the tale was always told in Sarrey. He was so vehement, in fact, that George believed him and wondered how this same story was told in other kingdoms. And what the differences might mean.

At last it was time to retire. George kept himself upright with great difficulty as he made his way back to the stuffy and ornately decorated bedchamber, then let himself slide onto his oversoft bed with a sigh. The headache raged worse than ever. He was exhausted, but he did not know if he would be able to sleep. He longed to sneak out again but doubted his ability to get outside without being seen, in a castle he was so unfamiliar with, fighting both the headache and fatigue.

No, he would have to wait for the hunt tomorrow.

Closing his eyes, he fell in and out of dreams until he
found himself in one that was like both his dream of the bear from childhood and the dream of the wolfish hound from the night before. It felt as real as his waking life, yet he knew it was a dream because he was nowhere in the dream himself.

He could see Princess Beatrice in what must be her own bedchamber. “He is not diseased,” he heard the princess say, with a strange approbation, “and he does not seem unkind.”

After a long silence she added, “How can I believe he chose the gift himself? It was an adviser, I think, who chose everything. That man I would like to know. He knows animals as few do. He sees us as living, thinking beings, not beasts to be killed in a hunt. He must, or he would not have chosen a gift like that one, so wild and free.”

George felt a strange satisfaction in this, but it did not last long.

For the princess went on, brutally practical. “But what does it matter? A marriage is a marriage, and I do not care who it is with, not now. If it were you he were to have, I would be more cautious. I would look inside his jaw to see what his teeth have to say about him. And then I would smell him.”

She turned and looked directly at George, who tried to wake from the dream, to get away from the determination there. But he could not move, not yet.

“You have smelled him. What does he smell of to
you? Might he be a man we could trust? Someday?”

And then George woke up, his head ringing, but not with the force of the night before. It was early morning yet, just barely dawn, and all hope of sleep had fled. He could go down to the kitchen to ask for food, but the headache had killed his appetite. Also, he did not relish the strained and curious company of the castle servants. Instead, he dressed himself and sat before the embers of the fire, wondering what the princess considered entrusting him with. He did not for a moment doubt that the dream was true, only whether or not he could tell his own truth in turn.

S
OMEHOW
G
EORGE STILL
managed to be late to the hunt. He stopped to grab a half loaf of bread and some apples in the kitchen and was slowed by the sight of a tomcat chasing a mouse. He wanted desperately to do something to help. He heard the mouse’s calls for help and saw the mouse’s eyes turn on him just before the end.

“My children,” she said with her dying breath.

George could not help trying to track them down.

He searched in every corner he could find, whispering in mouse language for “children, hungry children.” He found two nests that seemed to be full of babies and empty of a mother. He gave them a portion of the bread he had and hoped he’d done enough. Then, with only a couple of bites of bread in his stomach, he went out to where he thought the stables were, to find he’d gone in entirely the wrong direction and had to run back
through the castle at a very undignified pace.

By the time he arrived at the proper place, his pounding headache had made his eyes twitch and water so he could hardly see. Luckily, Henry had a horse waiting for him, already saddled. The horse was an extremely gentle mare, more evidence of King Helm’s opinion of him. In another situation he might have been glad of it; as it was, this gentle mare would make it much more difficult for anyone to believe a story of his losing control of his horse.

“Your Highness,” said Henry. He pointed back toward the castle gate.

George turned and saw Beatrice and Marit standing together, as if to see them off on the hunt. George waved, and after a moment Beatrice nodded to him.

“There is something odd about that hound,” said Henry under his breath.

George dared not agree, so he pretended not to have heard at all. Henry did not repeat himself.

The other hunters, perhaps twenty of them, were already mounted, including King Helm, who was not the only one to express aloud a few choice words about the man who had made them wait.

For a moment George moved past his irritation at the man’s treatment of his daughter to an appreciation of how well he ruled this rough kingdom. With a decisive nod King Helm indicated it was time to leave. The two young boys in page’s uniforms ahead of him lifted their
horns and blew the long, low sound of the beginning of the hunt. George scarcely had time to right himself before his horse moved forward with the rest.

Sarrey was a kingdom of few hills, with rivers and streams everywhere, crisscrossing fields and forests alike. It was lush with green this spring, the colors dazzling George’s senses. He was sure that in colder, higher Kendel, some of those shades of green had never been seen at all.

It was a clear day, and the wind in George’s face felt bracing. It seemed as though the chase would go on for a very long time, for the land itself stretched out toward the horizon forever.

At last the hunting hounds that had been released at the sound of the horns began to bark at the scent of certain prey. Wild boar, George guessed. He battled his headache, holding his face close to the horse’s neck and searching for a place to escape. He was not assisted by Henry at all, who kept strict control over his spirited animal, holding directly behind George.

As they continued on, George was surprised to see no distinct woods here as he had expected, but rather bits of trees here and there, then open space, then more patches of trees. George could hear animal sounds now and then that were familiar to him and his headache decreased somewhat, but he knew he must wait for full relief until he had found some kind of shelter.

There: a larger group of trees, at least.

King Helm and the hounds rushed toward them. The hounds grew frantic in their barking, and George could see Henry taking more effort than before to keep his horse back.

Over a stream the whole group went. It was darker here, cooler. George pulled back on the reins of his horse, and suddenly Henry seemed to shoot ahead.

“Your High…ness,” Henry shouted as George pulled back harder and brought his horse to a sharp standstill.

Some dozen riders stared back at George in mild surprise as their mounts led them ahead. George tried to put on an expression of exasperation, so that they would not think it their duty to come back after him. He was not injured, only a fool, or so he hoped they believed.

If Beatrice and her hound had been here with them, would George have been so eager to let himself be thought so?

Well, they were not.

He tossed his head angrily but regretted it as a new wave of pain and nausea struck him. He got off his horse. He thought a moment of keeping her with him but decided that would only make it more difficult for him to spend time with wilder creatures. And a horse alone would not do to stave off his fever. His mother had discovered that. No matter how often she visited the stables, she could postpone a visit to the woods for only so long.

What was it about the woods? The different animals
themselves? The many languages George would have the opportunity to speak? The smell? The very wildness of it? He did not know. It was part of the magic he did not understand and had never had a chance to ask about.

“Go on!” he said encouragingly to his horse, then patted her backside to get her started. It would not take her long to catch up to the others.

As for her, she did not even bother to give him a snort of disgust. Without a look back at him for confirmation, she cantered away, following her stablemates.

Allowing himself a long, low breath at the success of his hasty plan, George jogged away from the trail the hunt had been following and found a large hollow oak to rest against. This simple quiet of the forest was part of what he needed. At first he could hear only his own heart beating. Then slowly he came to an awareness of the other underlying sounds all around him. The life of the woods.

In what seemed mere moments, the headache had dimmed to a mere buzz.

Feeling stronger, George lifted his eyes to search the tree for signs of birds. There was a sparrow up above, circling her nest, and below that, a fox turning away as it realized that George was too big for its dinner. There were rabbits nearby that had frozen at the crash of horses but now came hopping out, one young one leaping directly over George’s knee.

George had avoided a friendship with rabbits for a
long time, but as he thought it over now, it seemed a childish thing. As if he were punishing both himself and all rabbits for one that had died long ago.

“Hello.” He greeted the small rabbit.

It was white, and it stared up at him with small black eyes. Its pink nose quivered, and the whiskers twitched as if it expected George to frighten it away again.

“Hello, friend,” George said again.

The rabbit hopped closer to George, then sniffed at his leg.

George put out his hand, offering a bit of the apple he had saved from breakfast. That was all the rabbit needed, it seemed, to become George’s trusting, eternal friend.

If only it were so easy with humans, George thought. But they were so self-interested, promoting their own purposes.

“My name is George.”

“I am Hop,” said the rabbit.

George smiled at this. All the rabbits he had met named themselves with a variation on some verb for their own movement. Hop, Jump, Lop, Bound, Leap, Skip—George had even met one ambitious rabbit who called itself Fly. Before it was killed by a boar, that is.

“Where do you live, Hop?” George asked.

The rabbit turned its nose in the direction the others had gone. “And you?”

George pointed south, to Kendel.

That was all the rabbit needed. It shivered. “Cold.”

Hop nibbled a bit more of the apple, then seemed to decide it was full. He hopped away from George’s side and toward his hole.

At last George stood up. How long until the hunting party missed him? Henry had seen him fall back, but even he would not be sure that George had dropped away entirely. George should have hours in here and could find the hunting party as they made their way back, after the quarry was killed.

Then: “Your Highness,” George heard.

What could George do now? Run away from his own man?

“Here,” said George, frustrated. He waved a hand.

Henry’s face, drawn and pale, flushed. “I thought you were hurt,” he said. “Your horse came back without you.”

“Yes,” said George. He could think of nothing to add.

“Didn’t you want to stay with the hunt?”

George didn’t answer, but Henry must have come to his own conclusion. He tilted his head to one side, then asked simply, “Why, Your Highness?”

Which was not something George dared explain, not today, or perhaps ever. He thought of two possible lies, telling Henry either that he had felt ill suddenly or that he had been insulted by King Helm’s choice of a horse for him.

But when he opened his mouth, he said the truth, at least part of it. “Sometimes I like to be alone.”

“Ah,” said Henry. And his eyes kept watch on his prince.

“Are you ever like that, Henry?” George asked, wondering what in the world he was doing. He had tried so long to keep from getting close to others, for his safety and theirs. Why change now?

“At times,” said Henry.

George waited for him to say more.

Then Hop came back to George, bringing a sister with a black patch over one eye. “Apple,” Hop said.

George’s shoulders twitched at the thought of what Henry might make of this interchange, but really, why should Henry think that the small sound a rabbit made meant more to George than to him?

George bent down and offered the remaining two pieces of apple to the rabbits, then stepped away from them.

Henry stared at George for a long while after that. Much too long.

“My mother loved rabbits,” said George.

“Yet most people think that you do not care for animals yourself. Any of them,” said Henry.

George shrugged.

“One can tell much of a man by his friends,” said Henry at last.