Beside her in the dust lay a piece of apple.
The mad young prince sat up, looked at my granddaughter with great satisfaction, then smiled. “Buy her for me,” he said again. “I want to marry her.”
I had slipped off my horse and then had been knocked down in all the confusion. Giles was busy picking me up and seeing that nothing was broken. Eskavaria was cuddling Snowdrop and crying. Vincent was remonstrating with the mad young prince. Persons of great self-importance arrived from across the road to see what all the fuss was about and succeeded in making an even larger one. Questions were shouted at me, which I was too confused to answer.
We are now camped at the edge of the forest, being waited upon by the servants of King Zot of Nadenada while the mad young prince and my granddaughter play at shuttlecocks in the road.
“Who is she?” King Zot himself asked me, having been introduced through Giles and Vincent.
His tone was peremptory. I didn’t like it.
“She is the daughter of the hereditary Prince of Marvella and his former wife, Elladine, who was the daughter of Lord Edward of Wellingford and granddaughter of the Duke of Monfort and Westfaire,” I said with chill hauteur.
“Oh well, that’s all right then,” he said, glancing at me out of the corner of his eye. “Related to you?”
“My granddaughter.”
“Ah,” he said, scratching his nose. His manner changed to one of respect. “How old would you say she is?”
“I would say she is …” And I paused, wondering for a moment how old she really is. She had been born quite some time ago. “I would say she is twelve or thirteen,” I said. “She spent some time under an enchantment, but she did not age during that time.”
“Virgin, is she?”
I snorted. “Of course.” Though I wouldn’t have put it past Esky or one of his brothers to have tried.
“Ah,” he said again, and then sat down, leaned forward, and began to tell me about his kingdom.
Nadenada, it seems, is a pocket realm just over the mountains toward France. It is larger than Marvella, but not by much. The mad young prince is a pocket prince, not the heir, but still a prince, and at fourteen it is time he was married. So said King Zot.
“Undoubtedly you will think of alliances when you consider a wife for him,” I said stiffly.
He stared gloomily at the dust between his feet, drawing circles in it with an ornamental dagger. “Not much of that kind of thing in Nadenada,” he said, summoning Vincent with one hand. He sent the young man for wine and settled himself more comfortably on the chair he had brought over from his camp. Then he drew more circles. “France wouldn’t care, far too big and far away. England wouldn’t care, they’ve enough to worry about warring with France. Navarre wouldn’t care, nor Aragon; everything is religion with them, and we’re not that observant in Nadenada. And the same applies to Castile, come to that.”
“Then you’re not concerned with alliances.”
“Not really, no.”
“Some affair of state, perhaps, which could be helped along by a judicious match?”
“Haven’t any affairs of state, either. There was the matter of the wool tax, but that’s been decided.” He gloomed into his linked fingers. “Shepherds said they’d go over the mountains into Spain, so we relieved them of it. Can’t have all one’s shepherds absconding to Spain.”
“It wouldn’t look well,” I agreed. “No other affairs of state?”
“None I can think of,” he said.
“The prince …” (I’d almost said “the mad prince,” catching myself just in time). “The prince will want a large dowry, undoubtedly.”
“Not … not really large,” the King murmured, giving me a straight look. “It’s not as though he were in the succession, you understand.”
“An elder brother?”
“Three elder brothers.”
“Things can happen,” I murmured.
“Yes,” he said in a plaintive voice. “They can. Put it, then, that he’s not likely to be in line for the throne.”
“So he wouldn’t need a very large dowry.”
“Not very large.”
I considered this. “Did you happen to notice the … ah … case that my granddaughter was traveling in? Before your son dumped her out into the road.”
“I had noticed that, yes. Brass, is it? And crystal?”
“Gold,” I said. “And gems.”
“Ah,” he said again. “One wouldn’t have known.”
I nodded in agreement. One really wouldn’t have known. If one hadn’t met Esky’s brothers, one wouldn’t even have thought it likely. I said, “Of course, your … fourth son is very young. Perhaps too young to think of marriage.”
The King scratched his head again and sweated gently into his beard. “Let me be frank,” he said. “Since the boy became a man, which happened just a year ago, he has been quite … quite …”
“Urgent?” I suggested.
“Urgent,” he agreed. “We are having some trouble keeping maidservants at the castle. His mother and I are agreed it is time he was married.”
We parted, each to think about that. Vincent came to summon the mad young prince to lunch. Snowdrop, thus deserted, came to sit by me in the shade.
“Have you been having fun?” I asked.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “It’s so nice.”
“What about the young man?”
“He’s so nice,” she replied with a happy expression. I offered her some cakes which the King had brought with him, and she took one, eating it greedily. I was reminded of her mother.
“Tell me, Snow,” I asked. “Why did you let the witch poison you with that apple when the little men had told you not to let her in?”
She gazed at me wonderingly, her little brow furrowing with the attempt at thought.
“Because I was hungry and it looked so nice.”
Her father, Prince Charming, was never long in the brains department, either.
ST. FRANCIS’S DAY, OCTOBER, YEAR OF OUR LORD 1417
Giles and I are here in Nadenada for the wedding. We are honored guests. Since the Death ravaged all of Europe, no one wonders if fathers and mothers aren’t present at weddings. A grandmother does quite well enough, even one so obviously old
