The eldest Princess stepped forward, head high; and she took the outstretched hand of the steersman of the first boat, and stepped lightly into it. The soldier, watching, thought the rails did not dip with her weight, nor the small boat settle any deeper in the water. And he still listened to the small claws of the bow-waves walking on the shore. The second, then third Princesses mounted the second and third boats, and the soldier noticed that there were twelve of the black skiffs, and twelve men to pole them; and each man wore a black cape, and a black wide-brimmed hat with a curling feather; but the black-gloved hands held out to the princesses sparkled with jewels.
The soldier stood beside the youngest Princess, and stepped in as she did; and the boat dipped heavily. The Princess turned pale behind her bright-painted cheeks, but the soldier could not see the man’s face. He poled the boat around swiftly and with an ease that the soldier read as many nights’ experience of the Princesses’ mysterious dancing. There was no room for the soldier in the little boat; when the Princess had settled, gracefully if uneasily, in the bow, he stood amidships, his soft-soled boots pressed against the boat’s curving ribs. The small waves on the boat’s skin sounded with a thinner keen than they had on the shore.
“We go slowly tonight,” said the youngest Princess nervously, turning her head to look at the eleven other boats fanned out before them. The gap between them and the next-to-last boat was widening. The soldier had his back to the man, who after a moment replied: “I do not know how it is, but the boat goes heavily tonight.”
The Princess turned her head again and gazed straight at the soldier: it seemed she met his eyes. He stared back at her, unblinking, as if they were conspirators; but she took her eyes away without recognition. The soldier found he had to unclench his fists after she looked away. He breathed shallowly, and tried to time his breathing to the slow sweep of the pole, that if it were heard at all, it would sound only as part of the black water’s echo.
The man said: “Do not fear. There will still be enough dancing for you even if we arrive behind the others by a little.”
The Princess turned back to stare ahead, and did not speak again.
The soldier made out fitful gleams across the water: lights shining out against the dull toad-colored air. As they approached nearer, the soldier could make out the shore that was their destination; and it was blazing with lights, lanterns the size of a man’s body set on thick columns barely an arm’s length one from another. The soldier thought of the banqueting hall where he had dined but a few hours ago, but he stopped his thoughts there, and turned them to another road. He saw that it was not the opposite shore they approached, but a pier; and the eleven other boats were tied there already, and their passengers gone. The boats moved quietly together on the water, empty, as if they were holding a sly conversation. The soldier looked left and right, and saw the dark water stretching away from him, breaking up the chips of light from the lanterns into smaller chips, and tossing them from wave to wave, and swallowing them as quickly as they might, and greedily reaching for more. He wondered if the pier was on no shore at all, but built out from an island raised up out of the waters after some fashion no mortal could say. Then he looked forward again, beyond the lights, and saw the castle, and many graceful figures moving within it; and through its wide gates he could see eleven rainbow figures, a little apart from the rest still, turning and lightly turning, moving across the lights behind them, disappearing for a moment behind the pier lights that dazzled the soldier’s eyes, and as lightly reappearing: dancing. And each of them seemed to be dancing opposite a shadow, whose arms round their waists seemed like iron chains, breaking their slender radiance into two pieces.
Then the boat touched the pier, and the last Princess leaped out, as silent as a fawn, and the soldier followed slowly. The white castle reared up like a dream out of the darkness, hemmed around by the great lanterns that seemed to lift up their light to it like homage. The Princess stood as if standing still were the most difficult thing she had ever known; and then a man stood beside her. The soldier thought he must be the same man who had poled the boat; but he had thrown his cape and overshadowing hat aside, and the soldier, who had never had any particular thought of a man’s beauty, was shaken by the sight of this man’s face. He smiled upon the Princess a smile that she should have treasured for years; but she only looked back at him and held up her arms like a child who wishes to be picked up. The man closed his black-sleeved arms gently about her, and then they were dancing, dancing down the pier, and across the brilliantly lit courtyard and through the shining gates, till they joined the rest of the beautiful dancers, and the soldier could no longer tell one couple from the next. He could tell the walls of the castle, he felt, only because they stood still; for there was a grace and loveliness to them that seemed too warm for stone: warm enough for breath and life. And now as he looked back within the castle gates he realized he could pick out his twelve Princesses by the pale luminescence of their gowns against the black garb of their partners; but this time the soldier admired them longingly and humbly, for he saw the perfect pairs they made, like night and day. And the twelve couples wove in and out of a vividly dressed, dancing throng, brilliant with all colors.
He stood where he had first stepped out of the boat, and felt as he stood that his legs would snap if he moved them; then they began to tremble, and he sat heavily down, and leaned against one of the lantern pillars, and for the first time he wondered why he had come, why he should wish to break the enchantment that held the Princesses captive. Captive? The magnificence of this castle was far greater than the simple splendor that the Princesses’ father owned. He looked up from the foot of his pillar. He could not see the low green sky against the lanterns’ brilliance, and such was the power of this place he was now in that he almost wondered if he had imagined it; this palace could not exist beneath that sightless sky.
His eyes went back to the tall castle, smooth as opal, with the flashing figures passing before its wide doors, and the light flooding over all. He thought again of the unearthly beauty of the man who had danced with the youngest Princess, and knew without thinking that the other eleven were as handsome. He remembered the weary old woman at the well, the shabbiness of her hut and her gown—how could she know the truth of what she said? She could never have seen this place.
The soldier shut his eyes. Then for the first time he heard the music, as if hitherto his mind had been too dazzled by what his eyes saw; but now the music glided to him and around him, to tell him even more about the wonder of this island in a black lake. This music was as if the sweetest notes of the sweetest instruments ever played were gathered together for this one orchestra, for this single miraculous castle at the heart of an endless black sea.
He bowed his head to his knees and sighed; and the cloak of shadows loosened a little from his shoulders and crept over his arms and neck as if to comfort him. Then he felt an irregular hardness against his chest and remembered the branch of the jewel tree. He drew it out and gazed at it, turning it this way and that in the abundant white light; and it sparkled at him, but told him nothing. He put it away again and felt old, old.
“And if I do this thing,” he thought suddenly, “not only will they never see this castle of heart’s delight again, nor their handsome lovers; but—one of them must marry me.
“Not the youngest,” he thought. “At least not the youngest.”
He tried to remember seeing her in her father’s hall, to remember the feeling he had had then of an unnatural quietness in her, in her sisters: and he thought, indeed it was a hard thing to live by day on earth, when the mind is full of the splendors of this place; splendors only seen the night before and in the night to come. Soon, the old woman had said, soon the Princesses would open their father’s world to this one, and dwell freely in both, forever, with their bright-faced princes. Soon.
The soldier had no idea how long he sat thus, back against a lantern post, knees drawn up and head bowed. But he stirred a
t last, looked up, stood; faced the castle as if he would walk into it boldly. But as he looked through the gates, he saw several of the dancing pairs halt: not the ones wearing greens and blues and reds, but the ones brilliant in black and white, moonlight and darkness. Three of them; then four—six, seven, nine. Twelve. Other dancers whirled by, careless of any who must stop, and the music continued, eerie and marvelous, without pause or hesitation. But twelve couples slowly separated themselves from the crowd and made their way toward the pier where twelve black skiffs and a sad and weary soldier waited.
The soldier stepped into the last skiff with the youngest Princess as he had done before; and again he stood amidships and stared out over the bow. But his thoughts lay in the bottom of his mind without motion, and he saw little that his eyes rested on. Occasionally he touched the branch of the jewel tree with his fingers as if it were some charm, some reality in this land of green sky: the reality of a world whose trees budded gems.
The black boats grounded softly on the lake shore, their wakes scratching at the land. The soldier stepped out and followed the Princesses up the long stair. He did not turn back to catch any last glimpse of the black boats and their shadowed captains: nor did any of the Princesses. He saw instead, as he looked ahead of him, an occasional dainty foot beneath its skirt, leaving a step behind to reach a step above: and in a quick flash of delicate soles he could see the slippers were worn through, till the pink skin showed beneath.
The heavy trapdoor at the end of the stair still stood open, and a blaze of candles greeted them as they drew near, though the tall candles they had left were now near guttering. The soldier wondered that his breath slid in and out of his breast so easily, after bending and straightening his stiff legs up so many stairs: and thought perhaps it was but more of the enchantment of the land of green sky, of gemmed trees and black water, and a white castle upon an island.
The soldier slipped through the Princesses who stood around the hatch in the Long Gallery, gazing down for one last look at the land they lived in each night, before the eldest Princess knelt and closed it. The door fell shut like a coffin-lid, with the same rough whisper it spoke upon opening. The soldier made his way down the Long Gallery to his screen and his cot; and he pulled off the cloak of shadows, which sighed and then went limp in his hands as if it too were sad and exhausted. He lay down silently upon his cot, the cloak bundled beneath his ear, the jeweled branch protected by the breast of his tunic, and he turned his back to the Princesses’ Gallery and faced the blind wall, so that any that might choose to spy upon their spy could not notice the curious bulge it made.
And he felt, rather than saw, that the eldest Princess came and looked upon him. He could feel the shadow of her lying gracefully across his legs, and feel the silence of her face, the sweep of her glance. Then she went away, as straight and proud as he had seen her when she brought him the wine.
PART TWO
THE SOLDIER awoke late that morning as though he were climbing out of a pit, hand over hand. He was stiff, as with battle, but the stiffness was not so much that of the muscles as of the mind: the reluctance to rise and look upon yesterday’s battlefield, though you bore no mark yourself; to look upon the faces of those who had been your friends and had been killed, and upon those belonging to the other side, whom you and your friends had killed. And upon those of that other army who returned in the morning as you were doing, to bury their dead, their living faces as stiff as your own.
But the soldier, lying in his cot at the end of the Long Gallery, with his night cloak under his ear, awoke to a terrible sense of not knowing where he was. Having clambered up and out of the pit of sleep, he peered over the edge, blinking, and did not recognize what he saw.
For all his long years in the Army the soldier had depended on his ability to awaken instantly, to leap in the right direction if need be to save his life, before his eyelids were quite risen, before his waking mind was called upon to consider and decide. In the moment that it took for the soldier to feel the sharp points of the gem-tree at his breast, to recognize the blind stone wall before his eyes, he lay chill with a horror that was infinite, lying as still as a deer in its bed of brush, not knowing where the hunter stood but sure that he was there, waiting. When memory swept back to him he breathed once, twice, deeply and deliberately, and slowly sat up; and he thought: “I left the regiment just in time. I am too old indeed to live as a hunted thing, hunted and hunter.” He looked down at the cloak of shadows that lay curled over the pillow, and a second thought walked hard on the heels of the first: “But what adventure is this that I have exchanged for my own peace?” For suddenly it appeared to him that his life in the regiment had at least been one of simple things, and things that permitted hope; and the path he walked now was dark and unknowable.
The Long Gallery was empty and the heavy door the King had locked the night before stood open. The soldier paused to wrap the jeweled branch in a blanket from his cot; then he threw the wine-stained cloak over his shoulder in a manner such that one could not see the bundle he carried under his arm; and he walked swiftly out. Suddenly he wanted no more than to stand outside the haunted castle with its haunted chamber, and look upon the world of trees that bore green leaves and blue sky, and hear the birds sing. He remembered that birds did sing in the deep forests around the King’s castle; and he thought perhaps this was a thing he could take hope from.
He made his way as quickly as he might down the stairs to the great front doors of the castle, and through them he went without pausing. He saw no one, nor did any challenge him, as he walked through the King’s house and into his lands as if he had the right to use them so.
The day was high, clear and cloudless, and the world was wide as he stood looking around him. He could taste the air in his mouth, and the memory of the night before was washed away like brittle ashes from a hearth when a bucket of clean water is tossed over it. He walked on, the bundle still held close under his arm: and his steps took him at last, without his meaning them to, to the guardhouse; and there the captain was the man the soldier had spoken to the evening before; and the captain came out of the guardhouse as the soldier neared, but he said no word.
“I have come to ask a favor,” said the soldier, for he had thought, as he saw the captain’s face again, of the favor that this man might do him.
“Name it,” said the captain. “We are comrades after all, for each of us walks at the edge of a dangerous border, and makes believe that he is the guardian of it.”
The soldier bowed his head and brought out the blanket-wrapped bundle. “Can you keep this safe for me? Safe from any man’s eyes, or anyone’s knowledge?”
The captain’s eyes flickered at anyone. “I will keep it as safe as mortal man may,” he replied. “I have the way of no more.”
A bit of a smile twisted one corner of the soldier’s mouth. “Nor have I,” said the soldier. “As one mortal man to another, I thank you.”
Another wandering piece of a smile curled around the captain’s mouth, and the soldier held the bundle out to him, and the captain took it. “Good hunting to you, comrade,” he said.
“Thank you,” said the soldier, but the smile had disappeared. He turned away and off the path, and walked into the forest.
He walked a long time, breathing the air and rubbing leaves between his fingers that he might catch the sharp fresh scent of them; and he went so quietly, or they were so tame, that he saw deer, does and bucks and spotted fawns, and rabbits brown and grey, a fox, and a marten which clung to the branch of a tree and looked down at him with black inscrutable eyes. Birds there were, many of them: those that croaked or rasped a warning of his coming or going, those that darted across clearings or from bush to bush before him; those that sat high in the branches of the trees and sang for or despite him; and those that wheeled silently overhead.
In the late afternoon he sat on the bank of the river and watched the sun go down and reluctantly admitted to himself that he was hungry, for he had had n
othing to eat that day but the fruit he had pulled from the trees of the King’s orchard. But it was with a heavy foot nonetheless that he took the first step back to the castle.
A servant stood by the door at his entrance, and he was escorted directly upstairs to the bath-room, where the deep steaming pool again awaited him, and fresh clothes were laid out in the dressing-room. He washed and dressed, and then he picked up the wine-stained cloak of the night before and looked at it thoughtfully. He carried it back into the bath-room and looked around. A ewer of fresh water stood near the massive bathtub, and the soldier dropped the cloak into it. He dropped to his knees beside it—like any washerwoman, he thought wryly—and swished the cloak clumsily around in the water. He could smell, faint but clear, the odor of the wine lifting out of the ewer. He brought soap from the bath, and scrubbed and wrung and scrubbed the cloak till his knuckles were sore and his opinion of washerwomen had risen considerably; and then he rinsed the draggled cloak in another water urn, and hung the sodden mass over the edge of the tub where it might drip without harming the deep carpet that lay in front of the door to the dressing-room. “I’ve ruined it, no doubt,” he thought. “Well, let them wonder.” And he picked up the fresh cloak that was laid out with his other new clothes, and turned and went downstairs to the banquet.
The banquet was as it had been the evening before: magnificent with its food and the beauty of the Princesses and the splendor of their clothes—and he observed this evening with interest that the clothes they wore were of ordinary, if rich, hues; their rainbow gowns did not appear in their father’s hall—and oppressive with a silence that hung in the ear like a threat, and was not muffled by the music of the King’s elegant musicians. The soldier ate, for he was hungry; but he barely recognized his own hand, the wrist and forearm draped in a sleeve too gaudy to be that of an old soldier too weary for war, and the food in his mouth was as tasteless as wood chips. And the blaze of the candelabra hurt his eyes.