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 balustrade 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 passed 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 passed them, but he did not touch them; their purpose was served. Tonight he must seek something further.
The twelve black boats waited by the shore 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 ashore 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, eac
h 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 passed 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 passed 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 glassy 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 brass 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.