twice.”
“That’s good,” I said, sounding surly even in my own ears. Since I was irritated with Joachim for being a priest, and irritated with Evrard for being a young wizard, maybe I should be irritated with myself for being me.
“Even aside from his binding spells,” Evrard continued, “I’m certain the old wizard could stop Dominic. ‘A competent wizard should always be victorious against an armed knight.’ They taught us that in thaumaturgy class.”
“And would
Evrard leaned forward and dropped his voice, though there was no one to overhear us. “Don’t tell the duchess, but I was never very good at those spells. But I’m working on them!”
I tried to decide if I was good at the spells to stop armed knights. I had never had occasion to try. But Evrard was certainly right in one respect: a wizard who could grow thirty feet tall in the middle of a whirlwind would not find Dominic a problem.
PART FOUR — THE WOOD NYMPH
I
Since I had told Evrard I really would turn him into a frog if he brought up the old wizard and his monster again, I expected dinner to be more quiet than lunch. Once again, Dominic seated Diana next to him, and I ended up next to Nimrod.
The more I thought about it, the more I was sure that she must have known the huntsman earlier. For that matter, from his polished language and behavior he himself must be other than what he at first seemed. It might explain a lot, even her surprising lack of ease when they first met, if she had last met him, say, in a very different context. I tried again to question him when dinner was almost over.
“So I understand the duchess is enjoying catching horned rabbits,” I said casually. “Tell me, have you tried to track them down in the valley of Saint Eusebius? The valley seems to have strong powers of attraction for creatures of magic. I’m planning to go there tomorrow, to explore its magical properties more thoroughly, and I was wondering …”
But I never got a chance to say more. At that point, Dominic rose to his feet. He looked pale, unusual in someone usually rather ruddy, and highly determined. He started to speak, got as far as “My lords and ladies-” and his voice cracked. Evrard smiled, but no one else dared.
Dominic tried again. “My lords and ladies of Yurt! I would like your attention. I have a special announcement to make. As you know, I have served King Haimeric of Yurt, my uncle, for most of my life, at present as his regent. But recently I have been thinking of doing something rather different.”
There was a murmur of surprise. Dominic was as much a fixture of the castle as the king’s rose garden.
“In fact, once the king and queen return and release me from my regency, I think I shall leave Yurt. I have not yet decided where I shall go.”
My first startled thought-the thought of a city merchant’s son-was to wonder what he would live on. He had all a prince could want as long as he was in Yurt, but his wealth was based on the revenues from the castle’s own lands-really nothing more than a glorified allowance from the king.
The silence was broken by Hugo, the youth who had been training in knighthood under Dominic’s direction. “You can come back to the City with me at the end of the summer if you like,” he said. “Mother and Father won’t mind.”
Dominic smiled, almost affectionately. “I’ll consider it,” he said, then became determined again. “Before I go, there is something very important I want to settle.”
He turned toward the duchess, on whom a horrible realization seemed to be dawning, and went down on one knee before her on the flagstones.
If I had determined to propose marriage to a woman I had already decided six years ago I didn’t want to marry, then I would have done it in private. But that apparently wouldn’t do for the royal regent.
He took a ring out of his pocket. From where I was sitting I could see the firelight glint on the diamond. It was an enormous stone. We had in the castle treasury the jewelry that had once belonged to Dominic’s mother, and this must be from the collection.
Diana looked, for once in her life, completely nonplussed. I had the sickening feeling one sometimes has when seeing a bad accident about to happen, that everything is taking place very slowly but one is too paralyzed to do anything about it.
“My lady, I offer you this ring as a token,” said the regent gravely. “A token of my love for you, which I dare to hope you may return. A token of my wish that you and I should become man and wife.”
This had gone far beyond paying court to a woman to keep her from making a spectacle of herself with somebody else. Dominic, I thought, had simply lost his mind.
Diana took a deep breath. “Prince Dominic,” she said in a high, clear voice, “you have set my maidenly heart aflutter.” She did not take the ring held out to her.
I glanced toward Nimrod beside me and found his face stiff with tension.
“While I fully appreciate your sentiments,” the duchess continued, “your proposal is so sudden that I will need at least a week to give you my answer.” She gave a sudden, saucy smile. “After all, I’ve been single nearly as long as you have-that is, all my life-and it’s hard to contemplate such a complete change so suddenly.”
“Of course,” said Dominic, watching her face as though searching for a hidden meaning.
I caught the chaplain’s eye across the table. If he said, “I told you so,” I would deserve it.
Diana rose to her feet with a swirl of the skirt she had put on for dinner. “Right now, I still need to concentrate on catching the last of those great horned rabbits. If you don’t mind, Prince, I shall go to my room and plan tomorrow’s hunt.” Dominic nodded shortly.
As the duchess moved toward the door, she stopped as though she had just thought of something and turned back. “Since I’m planning a hunt, I need my chief huntsman. Nimrod, could you join me?”
Nimrod smiled like the sun coming up and jumped to his feet so suddenly that his chair crashed over. He strode across the hall, and he and the duchess left together. The rest of us retreated rapidly, almost in panic, not daring to look at the regent.
“We’d better stay out of Dominic’s way for a while,” I told Evrard that evening. “And it sounds as though the duchess won’t want your help hunting the horned rabbits. Tomorrow I’ll take you to the Holy Grove of Saint Eusebius so you can meet the wood nymph.”
The next morning, I sent Evrard to the stables to supervise the saddling of our mares while I went to find the regent. If I could sort out the magical problems associated with the Holy Grove in the next day or two, and if the duchess would just start behaving herself, then I could turn my full attention to the old wizard and his creature. Maybe by then I’d even have some ideas.
I would have liked to leave the castle without telling Dominic we were going, but he was, after all, regent. I squared my shoulders and hoped that by now he would be calm enough that I could talk to him coherently.
I expected to find the royal nephew in his chambers having breakfast, or already seated on the throne in the great hall. But I could not find him. When I returned to the stables, wondering uneasily where he could be, I noticed a number of horses were missing.
“That’s right,” said the stable boy I asked. “It seems like everyone has already gone somewhere this morning. The chaplain, Prince Dominic, a lot of the knights, the duchess and her new huntsman, they’ve all left.”
“So what do you think?” asked Evrard, who seemed to find the situation hilarious. “Have the duchess and Nimrod eloped, and Dominic gone after them?”
As we rode out across the drawbridge, the clear sky promised another day of perfect weather. I asked myself how normally rational adults could act like this. And where could Joachim have possibly gone? I had enough to do solving magical problems in the kingdom without being responsible for everyone’s emotional crises. For Dominic
