Chapter Three
Crown Prince Reginald, sole heir to the Kingdom of Corvinia, rode into the Royal Woods of Bellemontagne singing a joyous, manly chorus with a lot of tirra-lirras and fa-la-las in it. Prince Reginald disliked the song, and manly choruses in general; but he knew that if he were not to sing, his valet, riding close behind him, would start singing himself, or find some other way to remind Reginald that knights-errant—worse, princes-errant—always sang joyous choruses while in quest of adventure. Speaking personally, Reginald desired adventure about as much as he desired a third nostril, and he knew that the valet, who was called Mortmain, was aware of this. Unfortunately, he also knew that Mortmain was under strict and specific orders from Reginald’s father, King Krije, to observe every aspect of Reginald’s behavior on their travels, and report it all faithfully when they returned. So he sang—for the record, as it were. The Prince and Mortmain were as friendly as their relative positions allowed, but one of them could be whipped for his failure, and the other couldn’t; though King Krije had more than once been heard to growl that he wished it were the other way around.
“What in God’s name is the matter with him?” the King would bellow at anyone who met his son. “Looks like a man—rides like a man—struts around like a man—but there’s nothing in there! Just a warm smile with a body wrapped round it. And I’m supposed to leave my kingdom to that? My kingdom, which I waded through blood to win, left to an idiot who faints if he cuts himself shaving? I swear I don’t understand how anyone so tall can’t fill my shoes.”
The King suspected a curse was involved, and had some reason to think so. But he had never shared the details with Mortmain, and the valet—one of the very few people who sympathized at all with the terrible old man—was forbidden by position from asking.
Prince Reginald, for his part, was simply glad to be away from his father’s loud disappointment. That was the one good thing about unspecified questing: getting out of the house. At least away from home he could indulge himself a little, even under Mortmain’s eye; and these outlying kingdoms were always so absolutely thrilled to host the Crown Prince of so large and powerful a country, they practically turned cartwheels for him at a blink. It was most gratifying. And it made Mortmain frown, which was more gratifying still.
When he first started out, the Prince had considered places to go, thought, Alphabetical or by proximity?, and settled on a whim-driven mix of the two, modified as needed to avoid encountering any serious challenge or knightly obligation. As a result he was undoubtedly the sole royal personage not bound for Castle Bellemontagne in quest of the hand of the Princess Cerise. In fact, he had no notion of her existence, and might well have given the entire kingdom a wide berth if he had. Reginald liked women, certainly, but not to the point of disrupting a perfectly tranquil life—or what could be a perfectly tranquil life if his father and Mortmain would only leave him alone with it.
Still, even with all the bloody singing, the day was a pretty one, and the sun was warm. He wondered what the ale and usquebaugh were like at Castle Bellemontagne.
When the path through the Royal Woods briefly widened, Mortmain urged his horse up beside his master’s to murmur deferentially, “Lord, our mounts need watering. If I might suggest—”
“Heavens, yes, Mortmain, suggest away, by all means.”
“I can hear a stream, Highness—not all that distant, to judge by the sound. We would only have to turn off the path a little way—”
Reginald cocked his handsome head. “Right… right, I can hear it myself. Well, then, absolutely, let’s divert to it.” His usual enchanting smile appeared a bit twisted. “Divert—there’s a good military word. My father would like it.”
Once off the path, the undergrowth slowed them considerably, punishing their faces and entangling the horses’ legs. But they pushed on until they reached the stream and dismounted to let the horses drink. Mortmain stayed with them, while Reginald, noticing wildflowers growing in profusion all along the bank, gradually wandered off upstream, plucking them with the cheerfulness of a child. “Just gathering a bunch for this local Queen,” he explained over his shoulder to the valet. “Good to be ready. Women like flowers.”
So it was that Cerise, grimly immersed in her struggle with the difference between “aweful” and “awful” and “offal,” never heard Reginald’s approach until he missed his footing and wet his boots in the stream up to the calf. The sudden splash, and the prince’s yelp of annoyance, sent her springing to her feet with her back pressed against the old sycamore. She relaxed somewhat on realizing that he was plainly a gentleman, more on noticing the bunch of wildflowers in his hand; and altogether too much once she got a good look at him. In fact, she reacted to Reginald as most men reacted to their first sight of her. Her knees turned predictably shaky; she flushed and paled by turns, and her heart began pounding hard enough to echo along all her bones. Certain that this beautiful stranger must be royalty, wet boots or no, she faltered her way through a curtsy, whispering, “Majesty…”
To her surprise, the young man looked mildly chagrined at the word. “No, that’s my father. I’m just the Crown Prince. Reginald of Corvinia, pleased to make your acquaintance. And you are?”
“Oh, I’m… I’m…” Cerise was unmoored; the familiar word Corvinia chimed in her heart like a bell, and for the first time in her life, she felt inferior. The ironic novelty of this moment was lost on her; the confusion, meanwhile, was all too real. She was startled to realize that she simply could not speak her name, not to this stranger whose casual riding clothes were more sumptuous than the very best in her wardrobe, not when just looking at him left her shy and humble as a servant girl. She stammered again. “I… I live here. Near here, I mean. Not really here, you see, but—”
“Ah. Yes.” The beautiful young man scratched his head. “Look, maybe you can tell me—would there be any kind of shortcut to the castle? Because we—my man and I, that is—we’ve been in the saddle all day, and I don’t mind telling you, it’s a bit wearing on a fellow. You do understand, girl?”
“Oh yes, sir, I do indeed, sir,” Cerise assured him, relieved to speak of anything but herself. She gave him very precise directions, which he repeated carefully several times. “Got no head for these things, maps and plans and such,” he told her. “In one ear, out the other, you know?” To Cerise, used to princely braggadocio, such modesty—she assumed it to be modesty—was overwhelming.
He watched in mild curiosity as she gathered up the waxen block, the stylus, and the manuscript from which she had been copying, and wrapped them up again. “Doing a bit of scribbling in the peaceful al fresco, hey? Charming, absolutely.” He beamed upon her, and had it not been for the support of the sycamore, she would have fallen down.
“The flowers,” she managed to say, trying to change the subject. “Your flowers… they’re pretty. Very, very pretty. Very.”
“What?” Reginald looked down at the blooms in his hand as though he had completely forgotten about them, which to some extent he had. “Oh, these. Here, m’dear, you take them.” He thrust them at her. “Meant them for the Queen, but they’ll likely be all wilted, time we get there, so you might as well have them.” Another smile. Cerise felt such of her bones as had not already melted start to follow the rest. “You be good now, girl, hey?”
“Good. Yes. Yes, thank you. Good. Thank you.” Cerise clutched both her bundle and Reginald’s flowers to her breast, ducked her head in another clumsy curtsy, and hurried off into the woods. She dropped a daisy and stopped to pick it up; then bobbed again and bustled on.
The Prince looked after her with what for him counted like thoughtfulness. “What an odd girl,” he said aloud. Mortmain called to him from downstream, and he turned to answer, “Right there, old chap!” But he did look over his shoulder once as he started back toward the horses and his valet.
The moment she judged herself out of the beautiful stranger’s line of sight, Cerise put down the bundle and the flowers, lifted her skirts in both hands, and ran. She did not stop running until she had reached the castle, flown up the stairs, and burst into the Royal Privy Chamber.
She intended to shout, Send them all home! I’ve found him, I’ve met him, his name’s Reginald, he’s on his way here! Being totally winded, however, she tripped over the s in send, and all that followed was a hissing, strangled gurgle.
King Antoine, dozing peacefully on his second-best (but favorite) throne, wearing his third-best (but favorite) dressing gown, with both feet in a bucket of hot water, blinked awake and rumbled, “What?” Queen Hélène looked up from her tapestry loom to remark severely, “Dear, go straight back out and knock this time—and don’t come in until you’re rid of whatever you’re chewing. I’ve told you before.”
The Princess dutifully left the privy chamber and leaned, panting, against the doorframe. Inside the room she could hear her father repeating, “What? What happened?” She smoothed her dress and her hair, forcing herself to think only of cauliflower, broccoli, and her old etiquette mistress, all of which she loathed. When she was finally composed and breathing evenly, she knocked softly on the chamber door, entering at her mother’s bidding.
Her parents waited quietly for her to begin, her father amused—he’d put the hot water away—her mother considerably less so.
Entirely unbidden, Cerise’s mind abandoned vegetables. As if it were happening this very instant, she could see Reginald entering with her—arm in strong arm!—to be introduced to her parents as her betrothed. With that vision her banging, somersaulting heart immediately shoved her lungs off to one side, and she could barely summon breath enough to blurt out, “His name is Prince Reginald of Corvinia—Crown Prince Reginald—and he’s the most magnificent man I’ve ever seen! He’s coming here today, and I’ll marry him tomorrow if he’ll—”
She broke off with a shriek of horror, pointing toward the wall behind her father’s throne. A tiny dragonlet lurked there, no bigger than the shoe the Princess stooped to hurl at it. The beast dodged into a barely noticeable crack in the plaster, stuck its green-and-black head out to hiss at her, and vanished.
“Oh, gods,” Cerise moaned. “It’s all got to be cleaned up—all of it, everything, and right now!”
The King and Queen stared at each other, for once similarly and simultaneously bewildered. The King ventured, “Child, Cerise, I can have the plasterer in tomorrow, if it’s that important—”
“It has to be today! And it’s not just the plaster, it’s everything in this castle!”
She kicked off her other shoe and gripped her father’s arms, pulling him off his throne and out of the room, all the way to the head of the extravagantly named Grand Stair. She didn’t let go until she saw that both of her parents would follow on their own. “Look!” she said, pointing: the marble stair had clearly not been polished in some time and was showing a distinctly sticky accretion on the balustrade. Cerise swept down the stairs and on through the castle, waving vaguely at each offense to her senses, from the guano-splattered Great Hall to the many sins of the Royal Library, with its worn carpets and ancient shelves bowed hopelessly under the weight of dusty tomes, not to mention a few morose ravens. “Hopeless!” she kept keening. “Just hopeless, the lot! It’s all got to be cleaned up, redone, renovated—all of it!”
“This afternoon?” the King asked reasonably. “The next fifteen minutes?”
“I am having a dress fitted,” the Queen announced firmly. “And my palm read.” Cerise—who, it must be said at this point, had never before displayed such behavior, even as a little girl—thumped herself down on the slightly warped library floor and started to wail in earnest. Her parents, after failing to persuade her to rise, sat beside her: pale terror and stone warrior for once united in purpose. The King said gently, “Cerise, sweetheart… Cerise, you know that’s not possible. No matter who’s coming to visit.”
“It would take months,” the Queen added. “For everything you’re asking—years. And probably cost enough to—why, to buy another castle.”
“Then let’s do that!” Cerise wept. “Let’s buy another castle right now, and just move in, all of us, bag and baggage.” A sudden flash of hope checked her tears for a moment. “We could tell him we’re in transition or… or something.”
“But we like this one.” King Antoine put his arm, a bit hesitantly, around his daughter’s shoulders. “Of course it’s a bit… perhaps a bit unsystematic, a bit disorderly even, no denying that—”
“But it’s ours, darling.” Queen Hélène’s voice was surprisingly sympathetic. “We know it’s a muddle and a clutter, but it’s our clutter, do you see? We’ve lived here since long before you were born, and we’ll still be here when you’ve married your prince and gone away to live with him in his castle. Now we’ll tidy up here the best way we can—”
A raven cronked overhead, and all three of them ducked instinctively. The Princess Cerise attempted to wipe her eyes on a fold of her dress. “The walls,” she said, her tone shaky but uncompromising. “The walls and the paintings in the Great Hall—they have to be cleaned.”
“I’ll have someone in first thing tomorrow,” the King promised. “After all, it’s not as though he’ll just be popping by to say cheer-ho. I’m sure he’ll stay on for a few days. And I know this isn’t Corvinia, nothing like…” He stopped suddenly, focusing on the name for the first time. “Ah—you did say Corvinia, love? Yes? Well. We’ll put on a good show, I promise you—”
At that moment two dragonlets—black and scarlet, the one chasing the other—jumped right over the royal family and scuttled to ground beneath the nearest bookcase. Both were larger than the one in the Privy Chamber, and the black almost failed to squeeze into sanctuary before Cerise could swat at it. She whirled back toward her parents, weeping hopelessly again. “Those! Those nasty little things, running around everywhere—they’re everywhere in this place! You have to get rid of them, Father! If nothing else, those!”
“I’ll have the chamberlain fetch the exterminator—” the King began.
“Now!” the Princess demanded. “Not tomorrow! Now!”
It was then they all heard the singing outside. Still not to the main gate yet, but getting closer—a rich, forceful baritone carried on the breeze. The words were yet indistinct, but the song had a manly-sounding chorus, with plenty of tirra-lirras in it.
“Oh no!” cried Cerise, running out of the room faster than the two dragons had whisked under the bookcase.
“Go find the exterminator yourself,” Queen Hélène ordered her husband. “I’ll entertain our guest. What’s his name again?”
“Reginald,” King Antoine said quietly. “Old Krije’s boy.”
The Queen, who had already started for the castle door, stood very still for just a moment before she went on.