Deerskin

  The other ladies were dismissed, somewhat abruptly, but since the princess would not play the game with them of what a lovely ball it had been, how beautiful she (and they) had looked, and how splendid her father was, they were not all that unwilling to go, and talk among themselves about how unsatisfactory a princess Lissar was, even on an occasion like this one. They had thought that her very own ball would have had an effect, even on her.

  Lissar and Viaka and Ash went to sit in the cold garden; Lissar loaned Viaka another dressing-gown, so that she would not harm her own ball-gown.

  After Ash’s initial transports, including suitable but absent-minded grovellings when she was scolded, were over, followed by racing around the perimeter of the garden at a speed that made her only a vague fawn-grey blur in the starlight, she came and wrapped as much of her long leggy self as would fit around and over Lissar’s lap. Autumn was passing and winter would be there soon; the three of them huddled together for warmth. Viaka kept looking into her friend’s face, a narrow line of worry between her own brows; but for once she had nothing to say, and they sat in silence, Lissar combing her released hair through her fingers as if reassuring herself it was her own.

  Rinnol’s niece came out in a little while to tell Lissar that the bath she had ordered was ready. Even in Fichit’s voice was some consternation that Lissar should wish instantly to divest herself by washing of so delicious an event as the evening’s ball. But Lissar at once disentangled herself from Ash’s legs and tail and came indoors. Viaka, who was happy to keep her fancy clothes on a little longer, for the only shadow cast on her evening was by watching her friend, came indoors too. She carefully took the protective dressing-gown off, so that she might float around the little round room, humming gently to herself, pretending still to be in the arms of young Rantnir, son of her parents’ friends. She was anxious about Lissar, but willing to set that anxiety aside; being a princess, she thought, was doubtless a difficult business in ways she had no guess of.

  She recollected herself enough from the sweet dream of Rantnir’s eyes, when Fichit emerged from the bath-room to ask if Viaka had any orders for her, to ask if Lissar had ordered dinner; and upon the negative, commanded some herself. She had eaten with Rantnir, but she could guess that Lissar had eaten nothing, and perhaps after her bath she would be relaxed enough to be ravenous—which Viaka felt that by rights she should be. Viaka herself, who did not chase a fleethound around a garden on a daily basis, nor go for long plant-gathering walks with the indefatigable Rinnol, was often astonished at the amount of food Lissar could eat.

  One of the other maids was still creeping about the round edges of the tower room in search of escaped feathers.

  Lissar rubbed herself all over with the soap, and washed her hair vigorously. Over and over again she scrubbed at her cheek, as if her father’s kiss had left an indelible mark. The bath was so hot as almost to be scalding, for she had added even more hot water from the ewer after Fichit had left; and yet beneath the soap and the hot water she still smelled warm velvet.… She stayed in the water till it cooled, and when she came out, rubbing at her hair, she found Viaka asleep in a chair by the fire, her face in her hand, smiling happily in her sleep, with a tray of covered dishes next to her on the round table.

  Lissar tucked a blanket around her and climbed into bed herself, with no inclination to discover what was under the dish-covers, her wet hair still wrapped in towels. Her last waking memory was of Ash’s long length stretching out beside her.

  EIGHT

  LISSAR AWOKE LATE, AND MUZZY-HEADED, WITH A HEAVY, DRAGging sense of dread, but without at first remembering any cause. She recalled vague oppressive dreams; remembered one in which someone was shouting at her, though she could not remember the words spoken, nor if they were uttered in joy or wrath. In another, a distant figure waved at her, in a gesture like a farmer scaring crows from cropland. His sleeves gleamed: blue velvet.

  Even after she recalled the evening before she felt confused; the ball was over with, the new morning wanted to tell her. She had disliked the night before very much, but … her thoughts tailed away, and morning became an evanescent thing, with no comfort to give. It wasn’t over with. Last night, the ball, had been a beginning, not an ending.

  There had been many lords present; she had known they were there, though she had been introduced to few of them, by their heraldry. She had seen them conferring with her father’s ministers, as her gaze wheeled through the room and her father drew her through the long dances. She sought out the ministers to focus on, to keep her feet when the ground seemed too uncertain; to eliminate the possibility of accidentally meeting the eyes of her mother’s sovereign portrait. Only her mother and the ministers, in all the huge ball-room, were not dancing; even the servants seemed almost to dance, as they made their ways through the guests; even the musicians moved and swayed as they bent over their instruments. Only her mother, and the ministers, were quiet enough that she could look at them without making herself dizzy; and looking at her mother made her more than dizzy.

  The lords danced with other ladies; but some of the lords stood a while and spoke to the ministers, and when they did this she saw how often their eyes looked toward her. What if one of them bid for her? What if the fat duke were to offer his best price for her?

  Why did these thoughts seem less horrible than others that remained wordless?

  She sat up suddenly, dislodging Ash, who muttered to herself and burrowed farther under the bedclothes without ever opening her eyes. What if—? She could not bear the what ifs. She would not let herself think of them.

  Viaka had gone; but someone had come in and quietly made up the fire while she slept, and taken away the supper she had not touched. There was water that had been hot but was still warm in a basin with fresh towels laid out beside her tooth-brush; and a fresh dressing-gown lay over the back of a chair. She stood up slowly, feeling old, as old as Hurra, as old as Viaka’s tiny bent grandmother, who was carried from her bed to her chair by the hearth every day, and back again every night; as old as the stones in her round tower room.

  She picked up the dressing-gown, gratefully inhaling its ordinary, quilted-cotton-with-a-whiff-of-laundry-soap aroma, ignoring the creaking of her joints. There was nothing of balle perfume … velvet … about the dressing-gown. She put it on and opened the door to the garden.

  After the warmth of the bed, and of Ash, who radiated heat like a hairy, long-legged stove, the autumn wind cut through her, cut through her skin, and tugged, as if it were peeling back a layer of … what? … left by the ball: of a gummy film deposited by the touch of all those eyes, of warm blue velvet, that her bath the night before had not dissolved. She went outdoors, feeling the wind on her face, blasting through the seams of her nightgown and up the sleeves of the dressing-gown; she paused, shivering, at the mint patch, not yet frost-killed, and pulled up several stems. She bruised them in her hands and put her face down among the sharp-smelling leaves, breathing thankfully in—till she coughed from the sting at the back of her throat.

  She looked up, at the blue sky; it was a beautiful day. She would take Ash for a long walk—they would go to see Rinnol—and after that she would feel much better. Absently she put a few mint leaves in her mouth and dropped the rest in the pocket of her robe. She rubbed her mint-sticky hands through her hair, banishing the last whiff of perfume. It was a beautiful day, and it was going to be all right. She would think no further than this fragile splendid morning, and the wind on her face.

  She went back indoors to drag Ash out of bed, where she would stay, so far as Lissar could tell, till her bladder burst, if no one disturbed her. Once or twice Lissar had been a little late, and Ash had left a small yellow trail in her wake, just the few steps from the bed to the garden’s threshold. Lissar was careful that no rugs were laid at that edge of the cold stone floor, and she cleaned up herself, and soaked the towel afterwards in her bath when she was done with it.

  “Ash,” she said. Nothing. “Ash,” s
he repeated. Faint rustling, then silence. She walked to the bed and ripped the bedclothes off. Ash opened one eye, every graceful line of her body expressing outrage and indignation. “It’s time to go out,” said Lissar. “You will go, or I will pull you out of bed by your tail.”

  Ash yawned hugely, displaying several ells of pink tongue, daintily stepped out of bed and stretched elaborately (this absorbed most of the floor space of the small round room; Lissar retreated to the doorway) and then bounded for the open door. After she relieved herself Lissar chased her around for a few minutes—or Ash let her think she was chasing her—and when they came back in again they were both in quite a good humor and ready for breakfast.

  Lissar brushed her dark hair, separating by hand the strands that the mint-sap had matted, relishing still the smell of it, glad that she need not have her hair imprisoned in a headdress or herself in a ball on this day. She banished the knowledge that last night was a beginning, not an ending, from her mind; she concentrated on thoughts of breakfast, and on what Rinnol was likely to be looking for, this late in the season. Fichit should be here soon, to see if she was awake yet, to see if she wanted anything. She had missed dinner last night; she was very hungry. She would make an excellent breakfast. Lissar hummed to herself while Ash chewed on her current favorite stick, leaving wet, gooey wood fragments on the carpet.

  Fichit came in almost immediately with the breakfast, but Lissar’s eyes had barely rested on the well-burdened tray when she noticed that on Fichit’s heels came Lady Gorginvala. Lissar could not remember her ever having penetrated so far as to the little room before; the receiving-room with the statue was much more her usual habitat. She was a friend, insofar as such ladies had friends, of Lady Undgersim. Gorginvala was wearing a gown so elaborate that only someone who had seen her in a ball-dress could imagine it as ordinary day wear; she had some trouble getting through the door. Lissar paused, hairbrush still in her hand.

  Lady Gorginvala cleared her throat and said, as if announcing to a multitude, “Your father wishes you to attend him in the receiving-hall, as soon as you are …” She paused, and her eyes travelled briefly over Lissar, still in her nightdress, its hem muddy from running through the garden. “… Ready.” She turned, stately as a docking ship, and went back up the few low stairs as if they were the steps to a throne, and disappeared. The odor of her perfume lingered, an almost visible cloud. Ash sneezed.

  Lissar laid down her hairbrush and felt the weight of the evening before shut down over her again. She forgot that it was a beautiful blue day with a wide bright sky, a perfect day for visiting Rinnol and petitioning for another lesson in plantlore. She felt trapped, squeezed; she felt.… She took a deep breath. She tapped her fingers against the back of her hairbrush, shook her hair back over her shoulders. She was imagining things. She didn’t even know what the things she was imagining were. But when she picked the hairbrush up again, her hand trembled.

  There was no reason for her to have hated the ball as much as she did.… The word hated just slipped into her thoughts; she had not meant to use it. How could she have hated her seventeenth-birthday ball? No reason, no reason. No reason to hate and fear her father. No reason.

  Ash ate Lissar’s breakfast for her, licking the jam-jar clean and leaving the porridge. Lissar dressed herself as if she were still going for a walk in the woods: a plain shirt, with a green tunic and long dark skirt over it, and plain dark boots. She wore no jewellery, and tied her hair with a green ribbon not quite the shade of the tunic. She did not look like a princess. Her hair was pulled severely away from her face; she fastened the shirt closed up to her throat, and the sleeves came down nearly over her hands. The heavy skirt gave no hint to the curve of hip and leg beneath it, and the boots hid her ankles.

  The upper footman who was doorkeeper to the receiving-hall that day looked at the princess’s clothing with something like alarm, but he knew his place, and made no comment. He stepped past the doors and announced, Her young greatness, the princess Lissla Lissar.

  Lissar, her hand on Ash’s back, stepped forward. The receiving-hall was alight with lamps and candelabra and the flashing of jewels; there were windows in the room, but they seemed very small and distant, muffled by the heavy grand curtains that framed them. Daylight did not seem to enter the room gladly, as it did most rooms, but hesitated at the sills, kept at bay by the gaudier glare of the royal court. Lissar thought it looked as if everyone from the ball had simply stayed up through the night and into the morning, and now had moved from the ballroom into the smaller receiving-hall and throne room, bringing the night-time with them. In the smaller room there were too many bodies, and too many shadows, tossed and flung and set against each other by the tyranny of too many candleflames, too many gestures by too many jewelled hands.

  Involuntarily Lissar’s eyes went to the place where her mother’s portrait usually hung, expecting to see bare wall; to her dismay the portrait had already been returned to its place, and the painted eyes caught at hers like claws. Lissar blinked, and in tearing her gaze loose again two tears, hot as blood, fell from under her eyelids.

  Why were so many people present? She knew that her father’s court had grown over the last year, and as she avoided its occupations as much as possible, perhaps she did not know if this was an unusual gathering or not. But there was a quality of expectancy about these people that she did not like, too eager an inquiry as they turned to look at her. She had nothing for them, nothing to do with them. Nothing! This thought wanted to burst out of her, she wanted to shout Nothing aloud, and let the sound of it push the peering faces away. But she knew that the word was not true, nor had it any charm to save her.

  Last night was a beginning, not an ending.

  But she still did not exactly know, beginning of what; she did not want to have to know yet. She wanted to go for a walk in the woods with her dog. She wanted not to return. Her hand on Ash’s back quivered, and the tall dog turned her head to gaze up at her person’s face. Whatever it is, I’m here too, her eyes said.

  “My daughter!” said her father, and swept regally toward her, his handsome face shining and his tunic perfectly fitted to his wide shoulders and slim hips. Lissar registered that he was not wearing the glittering costume of the ball the night before; then his hand seized hers, and her mind went blank.

  The three moved down the length of the room slowly. The princess looked dazed, as if she was having difficulty setting one foot after the other. (It is just like last night, she thought. No, it is not just like last night; Ash is here.) She seemed to cling more to her dog than to her father’s hand. What an odd creature she was! And she was dressed so plainly; had she not sufficient warning that she was to wait upon her father and her father’s court? But why would a princess ever dress as plainly as this? What matter to be a princess? She looked like a woodcutter’s daughter, not a king’s.

  Many people remembered how blank and bewitched she had looked the night before, and frowned; could she not remember what was due her rank, due her father; her father who was royal in all things, all ways, as her mother had been, whom she resembled so much in face and figure? How could this daughter do nothing but stumble, this daughter of such a king, such a queen, how could she refuse to meet the eyes of her own people?

  But the king was resplendent enough for them both, and the people’s eyes left the unsatisfactory princess and returned to linger upon the king. More than one of the older courtiers murmured to their neighbors that they had not seen him look so strong and happy since the first days of his marriage; one would never know that he was thirty years older than the young woman at his side; he looked young enough to be her lover.

  Murmured the older courtiers’ neighbors: the princess’s physical resemblance to her mother is astonishing to us all, and makes us recall how it was when we had both a king and a queen, and how happiness radiated from them like heat from a sun, and warmed the entire country. Briefly their eyes touched the unsatisfactory princess again: how pale she was; ther
e was no heat there, to warm her people’s hearts.

  What a thousand pities that the princess has not more presence!

  When the king reached the dais where his throne now stood alone, he swung the princess around, or he would have, had she not moved so stiffly, like a wooden doll with too few joints. The tall dog at her side was more graceful. Princess Lissla Lissar looked down at the dog, who looked up at her, and the court saw her lips move briefly; the dog sat, and curled its long tail around its feet, like a cat.

  “I have an announcement!” cried the king; and all the court smiled and were happy to see him so joyful. It will be about the princess’s marriage, they said wisely to each other; the king of Smisily must have made the offer after all; or perhaps our duke Mendaline fell so in love with her last night.…

  “I have an announcement!” the king repeated, gleefully, as if keeping them in suspense for another few minutes brought as much pleasure to him as the announcement itself.

  “The princess Lissla Lissar is of an age, now, to marry.” He turned to look at her, moving to arm’s length, as if to display her to best advantage to his audience, perhaps to the future husband, while he admired her with a connoisseur’s vision. One or two of the ministers—the ones who had tried the hardest the night before to present the princess to different dancing-partners—looked faintly uneasy. The pale princess closed her eyes.

  “Is she not beautiful? Look at her, my friends, my lords and ladies, my vassals, servants, bondsfolk, ministers, and all of my court. Is she not the loveliest thing your eyes have ever beheld?”

  The two or three ministers who were feeling vaguely uneasy exchanged even more vaguely uneasy glances.

  In fact the princess was not the most beautiful thing the court of the king who had been married to the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms had ever beheld, and had they any moment of doubt they need only raise their eyes to the portrait of that queen which hung behind the very dais where the king stood and spoke of his princess. The painting seemed to be presiding over the magnificent room, the drama being enacted at its feet. Never had the painted face seemed fiercer or more compelling, or more alive; certainly it seemed more alive than the drooping princess, dangling from her father’s hand, leaning upon her dog. She swayed a little, and looked ill.