And she said: “My secrets are his.”
Then Ramon Alonzo felt that his judgment had not been trusted, and that Mirandola, his sister, should have doubted that he had good grounds for his request troubled the lad to the heart. And when she made no motion to draw apart with him alone he blurted out in his pique every word of his father’s letter, though the Duke was standing beside him, petulantly bent on showing how right he had been to ask her to hear him alone. And then he told her mournfully how he was engaged to wed a maiden whom he had rescued from the magician, and who was fairer than the earliest flowers on bright March mornings in Spain.
When the Duke heard this he smiled.
“And she is of no noble house?” he said.
“Aye, there it is,” said Ramon Alonzo.
“Where is she?” asked Mirandola in her quiet kind voice, whose very tones seemed to know her brother’s heart, as the echoes of chimes know belfries.
“There in the forest,” he said.
Mirandola looked at the Duke.
“Let us see her,” he said.
So Ramon Alonzo turned and led the way, and the betrothed pair followed together. He strode on as though all alone in the wood with his sorrows, disappointed at having had no talk with Mirandola alone, for he had had much hope from her wisdom if he could have talked with her thus, as so often he had talked when they were younger, smoothing the difficulties of tinier troubles. So he walked downcast and moody, though once he fancied that he heard behind him the sound of soft laughter.
When Ramon Alonzo came where Anemone waited with Peter he was silent yet, extending an arm towards her where she stood smiling, fair, as indeed he had said, as any flower looking up at the morning through dews of the earliest Spring. The Duke doffed his hat and bowed, and Mirandola went up and kissed Anemone. “So I must wed illustriously,” said Ramon Alonzo in bitterness.
During one of those brief moments that Destiny uses often to perfect an event with which she will shape the years, none of them spoke. Then Anemone slowly turned towards Aragona, towards her own people that rejected her.
“Hold,” said the Duke, “I will write to the Just Monarch. Bless his heart, he will do this for us.”
None knew till the letter was written quite what would be asked, nor what the Just and Glorious Monarch would do; yet suddenly all seemed decided.
Back then they went to the Tower; Mirandola, the Duke, and Ramon Alonzo. But not Anemone, for Ramon Alonzo knew not yet what to say of her to his father, though the Duke had suddenly lit his hopes again and they shone down vistas of years. So with one swift thought, that long pondering would not have bettered, he remembered Father Joseph, and commanded Peter to lead her to the good man’s little house. This Peter did, and there she was lodged awhile and honourably tended; and, had her memory held any more than hints of those dark ages in the sinister house in the wood, Father Joseph would have been, as he nearly was, surprised; and this, so well knew he man and his pitiful story, he had not been since long and long ago when he was first a curate and all the world was new to him. In the Tower, while his parents were greeting Ramon Alonzo and hearing halting fragments of his story whose whole theme he must hide awhile, the Duke of Shadow Valley with toil and discomfort, yet still with his own hand, inscribed a letter to the Victorious King. Therein he told his comrade in many a merriment the glad news of his happiness, then added a humble request concerning Anemone, and closed with a renewal of the devotion that his house ever felt towards that illustrious line. And now with meagre spoils his bowmen were coming in, for he had bidden them hunt rabbits; and to one of these he gave at once this letter, bidding him haste to its splendid destination. And the bowman hastened as he had been commanded, and travelled for all the remainder of that day and through most of the night, so that he saw the next sunset glint on the spires of that palace that was the glory and joy of the Golden Age. And there the most high king, the Victorious Monarch, sat on a throne of velvet and wood and gold; and lights had been brought but lately, and two men stood by the throne holding strange torches that the King might see to do any new thing; but the King had naught to do but to ponder the old cares over, for he had wide dominion. Then into the hall came the bowman.
When the King read he rejoiced. Then he rose and gave a command, commanding preparations. And these preparations were for his own presence at the wedding of the Duke and Mirandola. But amongst his rejoicings, and those august preparations, and the grave cares he inherited, he forgot not his friend’s petition and the humble affair of Anemone. So again he commanded, bidding his pen be brought. So one bore the pen down the hall on a cushion of scarlet and yellow, which are the colours of Spain. And the Victorious King took up the pen and wrote upon parchment, writing out with his own hand the humble name of Anemone. And in that illustrious hall, the pride of the Golden Age, he wrote an ample
