Chapter Two
The Great Hall of Bellemontagne was full of princes.
It wasn’t that difficult to fill the Great Hall with princes, because it wasn’t that big of a Great Hall. People had generally been smaller when it was first built, a good four centuries before; and besides, the Castle of Bellemontagne, while it had undoubtedly seen better days, couldn’t remember them. The fireplace, open on both sides, was so remarkably constructed that it could roast an ox without throwing the least bit of heat to those huddling as close as they dared. The roof—easily high enough for a cathedral, if considerably narrower, and not nearly so gracefully curved—had over the years been home to thousands of transient birds and half again as many bats, as the cracked and begrimed portraits of royal ancestors along the walls bore mute testimony. Every sort of nameless vermin squeaked and creaked and rustled along the walls, or else inside them; and the princes crowded closely together on their seats, for comfort and reassurance as well as body heat. Somebody was heard to growl, “Stop kicking!” but for the most part the gathering was a quiet one, with most conversations going on under fiercely hissed breaths. Each prince had his own axe to grind, sometimes literally, and everyone else’s ox to gore.
“No, you cannot borrow my hauberk—get your own! What do you need a hauberk for, anyway?”
“Battle? You’re going to tell her you were in a battle? You’ve never been in any damned battle!”
“You might as well go on home—you’re way too short for her. I despise—I mean,she despises short men.”
Princes, as a rule, are not raised to be paragons of patience. Stuffed four to the bench and desperately uncertain of their pecking order, they did not show well. Indeed, most had started to wilt within minutes of their arrival, and some, having been waiting there for days, despaired of ever making themselves presentable again. The most depressed of the lot positively drooped; there was simply no other word for it.
“Who’s that chap? The tall one, with the cheekbones—I don’t care for the look of him, not at all….”
“You slept in the servants’ quarters last night? They gave me the pantry, practically to myself—”
“But I had a bed! All right, a bench…”
Good manners inevitably decay under siege, especially when an aggressor wakes to the fact that the walls being breached are his own. Even an eldest son can take umbrage then, doubting the value of royal purpose and the preordained blessings of his fate.
“I don’t know how they get to call this a kingdom. We’ve got backcountry baronies bigger than this place—”
“We’ve got bigger backyards—”
“So does the Princess, if she’s anything like the one I was courting in Malbrouck last week… oh. Oh my!”
“Oh MY!”
The Princess Cerise had just swept into the hall, deigning at last to grant this month’s batch of princes the gift of her presence. She was accompanied only by the castle’s chamberlain, a small, portly man who always looked more put-upon than he felt, and knew how to use that to his advantage. He carried with him a block of stretched parchment and a charcoal stylus.
The waiting princes came to their feet as one creature, smiling eagerly in Cerise’s direction while hurriedly straightening each ribbon, button, medallion, decoration, ornament, epaulet, and feather in sight. One tried to snug up his father’s best formal oyster-pearl garters from where they’d slipped, without being noticed, but he was too late; and another clearly didn’t realize that his capotain no longer covered his bald spot.
None of them spoke. The rules of polite behavior in this circumstance were absolute, and only the Princess could break the silence, however long it might go on. But inside their heads, in diverse languages, the princes hummed like a plucked lute with variations of a single thought: Goed/God/Gott/Mon Dieu/Good heavens, she’s bloody breathtaking! Unfortunately for them, she knew it well, and considered it more trouble than it was worth.
Cerise seated herself in the Great Hall’s one comfortable chair, which was on a dais elevated just high enough to let her see all her suitors clearly. The chamberlain took post, standing, at her side, parchment and stylus at the ready.
After a perfectly calculated pause, to let the moment sink in, Cerise spoke. Her voice was low and warm, clear, and—she had been well-coached—not too amused as she sang out, “Good morning, gentlemen. I do hope everyone’s taken a number?”
Everyone had, but even so there was a good deal of muttering and trampling on feet as they sorted things out. Cerise waited patiently until order had been more or less restored, and the princes lined up for review. First was the young man with the cheekbones, second son of King Denisov of Landoak.
His name was Lucan. He was tall, handsome, sincere, broad-shouldered, slim-waisted, well turned out, and possessed of precisely the brains of a rutabaga; sadly, his cheekbones were the sharpest thing about him. Not two questions into his interview—the easy starter questions that Cerise always used to begin these sessions, like “Have you a horse? And “Oh, what’s its name?”—he had gone all sideways and tongue-tied on her. Which was no more than she had expected, but she heard him out courteously just the same, before smiling sadly and banishing him to the rear of the assembly with a polished wave of her hand. In desperation he finally found his voice, crying out, “Princess, I have slain the manticore of the Gharial Mountains, all to do honor to your name. It is being stuffed and mounted at present, but if you wait, I will have it shipped directly—”
The Great Hall filled with derisive catcalls. “Oooh, you liar!” “You never did!” “Stuffed manticores, twelvepence the bunch!” “What did you do—bore it to death?” Prince Lucan exited in shame and confusion, and was never seen in Bellemontagne again.
The chamberlain, vaguely nodding as the Prince’s only farewell, put stylus to parchment and crossed off his name.
And so it went, one by one by one. Cerise endured the monthly audience as graciously as always, never giving way to the impulse to let this or that wooer know what she actually thought of single-handed triumphs over a dozen mysteriously trained assassins—or a pack of wolves—or a hundred armed mercenary troops; and the same for their reports of laden treasure vaults and vast landholdings, or juggling tricks, or attempts to demonstrate prowess on the dance floor (which, being based on turns unfamiliar to the court’s musicians, were typically disasters from the first or second step). No. She managed the levee with practiced proficiency, smiling until her enchanting mouth hurt, silently reciting her favorite poems to herself by way of distraction… right up to the moment when her mother and father entered the room.
The chamberlain stiffened.
“Attendez! Their Royal Majesties Antoine and Hélène, King and Queen of Bellemontagne!”
King Antoine was a striking, commanding figure, with a full head of storm-gray hair and features that might have been carved from a weathered cliffside. His wife the Queen, on the other hand, was thin and pallid, and of a meek appearance that suggested she had never enjoyed a full meal in her life, nor a good night’s sleep, nor a single day free from every sort of abuse. Not even the résumés of Cerise’s suitors could have been further from the truth: Queen Hélène ate like an alligator, slept like a drunken coachman, and personally handled any abusing likely to be perpetrated within the walls of the castle, and the outbuildings as well. She did have nice eyes, though.
“Well, well,” Cerise’s father boomed jovially. “How goes the fox hunt, daughter? Start one up yet?”
“That young man on the left,” the Queen said. “The one in stripes and slashes. I know him. He’s the nephew of the Countess of Dortenverrucht. Call on him next, Cerise. By report, he knows any number of interesting songs.”
“Mother, please, they’ve all got numbers.” Cerise looked to the chamberlain for help, but he glanced away, knowing far better than to get involved. “Father”—in a lower tone—“I’m handling things perfectly well. I always do.” Her unspoken Can’t you get her out of here? was answered by a slight twitch of the King’s thick gray eyebrows. You know your mother—what do you expect me to do? The Princess sighed and nodded just as slightly.
At that, she would most likely have gotten through the remainder of the morning without a hitch—there were only a few candidates left to consider—but for the Queen’s further interruption while she was interviewing a shy, awkward, but likable young prince from a kingdom whose name even he had difficulty pronouncing. The Prince was telling her earnestly about his favorite book, and Cerise was listening with genuine interest, when her mother’s sharp voice shattered the moment: “Cerise. Darling. Exactly what is the point of bothering with all this childish drivel? Finish with him, and get on to the Countess’s nephew, for goodness’ sake.”
Cerise rose from the chair, her shoulders thrust back like wings. Her beautiful face was flushed with angry embarrassment, but her voice had turned cold and taut and expressionless. She looked down at the remaining suitors and said, “I’m sorry, but this audience is at an end.” Then she stalked off the dais and out of the Great Hall without once glancing at her parents. A door slammed a moment later, and the dusty portrait of her oldest ancestor fell off the wall.
Cerise never looked back. She rushed from the castle and straight across the Royal Lawns (rather bare, thanks to a long struggle with dropfiddle), past the Royal Croquet Grounds (King Antoine had a passion for competitive sports, of a sort), past the Royal Gazebo, the Royal Grotto, and the Royal Folly; and so on into the Royal Woods, which stopped being Royal at a certain tangly place that the Princess knew well. It was miles from the castle, and well-shielded from view. There she sank down, amid the rustle of her several elaborate skirts, by a quiet, clear-running stream, and leaned back against a sycamore tree whose worn and battered trunk had never in its life refused to receive her. Cerise patted it gently, saying only, “Hello.”
She sat quite still for some while; then looked quickly around her and began to dig with her hands in the soft earth behind a nearby boulder, humming very softly to herself. A few minutes’ work uncovered an oilskin-wrapped bundle, inside of which were a flat block of hard wax, a pointed stylus, and a manuscript written on a roll of dingy vellum. Cerise held the manuscript up to the light, clearly trying to locate a certain passage; having succeeded, she began to recite the words to herself, moving her lips silently. When she came to a word or a phrase she could not comprehend—and there were many of those—she copied it down on the wax block. Often she would copy it over and over, each time staring as hard at the letters as though she had never seen them before. She bit her lips, now and again mumbling a very un-princess-like word. Once she even threw the stylus away into the long grass by the river, but she was on her feet immediately, scrabbling frantically to find it again. And no matter how angry or frustrated she became, she never stopped working. The Princess Cerise was going to teach herself to read if it was the last thing she ever did.
That silly boy with his wonderful book,she thought sadly. He has no idea how lucky he is.