The King's Daughter (2 page)

Something struck my hair lightly and slid down my chest – a yellow oak leaf, so bright and smooth that it seemed precious and mysteriously purposeful. I picked it off my bodice and held it up to the sun. It was so perfect that it made me want to cry. I tucked it, smooth and cool, into my bodice to press later in a book.

The voices and laughter of my attendants arrived only faintly on the wind from the far side of the river. I picked up a piece of fallen branch and threw it as far as I could. I listened to the satisfying crash. I wanted to shout with joy.

Unwatched, unattended. A miracle of freedom.

I spread my legs wide. Happily, I emptied my bladder like a mare under the cone of my skirts, felt the steamy warmth and smelled the friendly barnyard odour from my own body.

Ever since my family came south, I had lived in a cage of eyes. Scotland had been far more free. In Edinburgh, while we waited to travel down to London, I rode almost every day with my older brother Henry, one of his hawks on his wrist. Accompanied only by a single groom and my greyhounds, Trey, Deuce, Quattro and Quince, we escaped together up onto the crags above the city under a sky of bright luminous grey. There, we stood side-by-side looking down on Edinburgh from the Cat Nick, a rocky point higher than the castle where our father had been born, higher even than the gulls. In the waters of the Firth beyond us, an island crouched low and dark in the water like a dragon waiting to spring on Fife. We would watch the mists blow in from the sea to cover it before we rode back. On the last day before we left Scotland, I took a small piece of sharp granite from the crags and hid it in my writing chest. I hold it in my hand now when I can’t fall asleep.

I paused again in a little glade pitted with rabbit holes. The only sound was a leafy whispering. Trey had stopped barking. I stood so still that five rabbits popped out from under the roots of an old oak and began to forage on the forest floor.

I imagined that I became a rabbit. My nose twitched. I hopped forward to nibble a fresh tuft of grass, then pulled my hindquarters up after me, as if I had almost forgotten and left them behind.

One of the rabbits lifted its head. In an explosion of movement, they all disappeared into the ground.

I turned.

A handsome young man stood on the track watching me. Coins of sunlight danced on his shoulders and fair hair, which was almost the colour of the oak leaf.

I felt a thump of startled interest and grew a little breathless. He had materialised silently in the forest glade as if by magic. I knew that I had just stepped out of my everyday life into something far more interesting.

As we stood regarding each other in silence, I grew more and more certain that he was one of the magical creatures from my nurse’s bedtime stories, who lived in forests andlochs and under stones. Always in our world but invisible unless they choose to show themselves.

I tried to think how to speak to him. He might have been anything, a tree-soul or a magic stag like those that roamed the Highlands, which had taken the shape of a man.

I wanted to reach out and pick the coins from his broad shoulders and put them into my purse, knowing that they would turn into real gold.

I was not afraid. His handsome face, though pale, was gentle and seemed made for cheerfulness. In any case, I was protected by the fairy shot, an ancient flint arrowhead, which my nurse, Mrs Hay, had sewn into my petticoat.

I smiled in greeting. When he did not smile back, I nodded encouragement.

He did not respond. We stood in silence.

‘Are you a spirit of the forest?’ I asked at last.

He opened his mouth as if he wished to speak but still remained silent.

I thought I understood then. I looked at his hands, clasped tightly in front of him. ‘You’re under a spell so that you can’t speak? Must I set you free?’

‘You must come with me.’ His voice cracked a little, as if I had indeed just lifted a spell and his words were still rusty.

‘Why?’ I told myself that this adventure was exactly what I had secretly hoped for when I set off down the mysterious, twisting path. All the same, I suddenly wished that Trey were there. ‘Where do you want me to go?’

He held out his hand to me.

I considered the urgency in his voice and gesture. But he was not threatening me. On the contrary, his words and reaching hand were a plea, not an order.

‘Are you an enchanted prince?’ I knew from Mrs Hay how the story went. He needed a kiss from me to set him free from a curse, but if he explained beforehand, he would stay cursed forever.

I looked at his mouth. I had never kissed a man, only my dogs and monkey and horses. Until this moment, I had not thought I would ever want to. To my surprise, I could imagine kissing him. My chest felt thick and full, making it hard to breathe.

I closed my eyes. It would be impossible to kiss a man while looking at him.

‘Please come, your grace!’

I opened my eyes. With his uncertain eyes and fierce words, he now reminded me of Baby Charles playing at being a soldier, though he was taller and far more handsome than my puny five-year-old brother.

I saw now that his hand shook. Now I detected the reek of ordinary human fear, stronger than the sharp tang of leaf mould and comfortable smells of dog and horse on my own clothes. Unease stirred.

He wasn’t doing it right. This no longer felt like the story I’d been imagining. With a thud, I dropped back into my everyday self. He was not an enchanted prince, and I was far too old to believe such things. A flush of shame began to creep up past the top of my bodice.

I smiled coolly, as I had learned from watching my present guardian’s wife, Lady Harington. He was most likely nothing more than an importuning courtier. Even at my age, when the tender pebbles on my chest were just beginning to swell into breasts, petitioners pursued me, imagining that I might at least put in a good word for them with my father or mother, or older brother, even when I was locked away here at Combe.

The young man did not smile back.

But then, people were often too overwhelmed to smile back at royalty, even young female royalty.

I eyed the silver buttons on his doublet and the fine Brussels lace edging his collar. In truth, he didn’t look like one of the usual awe-struck. More like one of those well-born Englishmen who sniggered behind their hands at my father and the ‘barbarian Scots'. A gentleman, in any case, importuning or not.

‘I beg you!’ he said.

‘Are you a footpad?’ I asked, to punish him because I had imagined foolish things, and thought of kissing him. ‘My purse is empty, but my amethyst buttons might be worth taking.’

He looked so startled and indignant that I almost smiled at him again.

The lace on his collar was vibrating against his coat.

But then, many people trembled before my father. Some even trembled before me, young as I was and only a girl. But such people were not often gentleman like this one.

Suddenly, I heard my father’s voice in my head, ‘Trust
nae
man.’ Then with that little flick of cruel disdain,
‘Nae
woman neither.’

Beyond the beech saplings and arching bramble framing the young man, the forest track was deserted. Suddenly, I felt very young and alone. I had gone too far. My screams would not carry back against the wind to my attendants on the riverbank.

‘Where must I go with you?’ I asked.

‘Please trust me, your grace. I take you to some true friends.’

‘What do you and these friends want with me?’

He shook his head.

‘I won’t come unless you give me a good reason.’

We stared at each other again.

‘You must be queen,’ he said desperately.

I did not like that ‘must'. ‘Very likely, in time,’ I agreed cautiously. That had always been my eventual fate. ‘But of which country?’

He looked away. A branch creaked in the silence.

‘Where am I to be queen?’ I repeated. My voice sounded reedy and caught in my throat.

‘England.’ He spoke so quietly that I almost couldn’t hear.

‘Queen of England?’ My heart lurched into a gallop like a startled deer. A giant foot seemed to step on my ribcage. ‘England already has a king! And a queen!’ I took a step back. ‘My father is king! My brother Henry will be king after him!’

He set his hand on his sword.

I was alone in the forest… the king’s oldest daughter… alone in the forest with an armed, unknown man, who wanted to … I wasn’t yet sure what he intended, but it was not good… fool! Fool! Should have seen the danger at once… not magic deer or enchanted princes.

I took another step back. I could not believe how this scene had turned. Mrs Hay had also told me tales of politics and treason, and they were true. Those who laughed at my father’s fears were fools. Demons pursued our family everywhere. This young man, with his urgent voice and smell of fear was one of the demons.

I looked around, as if someone might come to my rescue. No ladies, no grooms, no guardian. No instructions what to do next. Not even Trey!

‘When am I to become queen? What do you mean to do?’

Henry! I could never become queen while my father and older brother Henry were alive! This young man spoke treason and meant to harm my brother, Henry.

Treason. A word with a huge sharp beak that bit off people’s heads. It had bitten off my grandmother’s head. It could bite off my head.

I might die, I suddenly thought. For the very first time, I understood that my life could end. I would die. Now… one day… or very soon.

My wits scattered. My eyes blurred. I had never before in my life felt such fear. A dark, cold hollowness at my centre grew larger and larger until the thin shell of my being seemed about to crack. I wanted to sit down on the track. To imagine this scene away and make it back into a story.

But he stood there waiting, reaching out to take me. And there was no one to help me but myself.

‘I won’t come,’ I said.

‘You must.’

I slid my hand down to my dirk, hanging at my belt. But, though sharp enough, it was only a short-bladed, jewelled woman’s toy.

‘Don’t make me call the others,’ he begged. ‘I swear I won’t harm you.’

He drew his sword and stepped closer.

I wanted to scream at him. ‘You may have killed me already.’ I kept my voice steady. ‘… killed me without touching me!’ Did he think I didn’t know my own family’s history?

I knew I could not outrun him but my body would no longer stand still. I turned and ran.

My skirts jounced up and down, swayed out of control, knocked into my legs. Though dressed for riding in a soft-hooped farthingale, I was still too wide, too heavy, too ornamented, too stiffened and pinned together.

I snagged on bushes, tore free. I heard his breathing close behind. A weight hauled at my skirt. I yanked free of his grasp. Felt a fumble at my sleeve. Then his hand clamped tightly around my upper arm.

His face was distorted, no longer handsome nor amiable. No going back for him now, not after laying hands on me. Not after those words. No going back for me, neither. With my free hand, I tried to hit him, to claw at his face, lost my balance. We fell together into a tangle of scrub.

Treason! I thought, now as desperate as he. As I fell, I clutched at leaves that tore away in my hands. I landed on the side of my ankle, lay wedged, half-toppled, my skirts caught in the thicket, my bodice twisted tightly around my ribs so that I could not breathe.

Our fall broke his grip on my arm. I snatched a tiny breathwith the top of my chest, pushed myself out of the scrub and hit him hard in the face. He stepped back.

‘My grandmother had friends…’ I yanked at my bodice, tried to breathe and run again. ‘… like you! She died on the block because of… friends… like you!’ I could already feel the axe falling towards my bared neck.

Even the loyal Mrs Hay was willing to whisper how the Scottish king had been happy to take the English crown from the same hand that had signed the warrant for his own mother’s death.

The young man picked up his sword, dropped in our struggle. ‘I can’t let you go.’

He must know as I did that he was almost certainly a dead man now, sooner or later, no matter what happened to me.

And I could no longer scream for help, even if I could be heard. Not now that I knew what he intended.

I shifted my weight onto my hurt ankle as slowly as a cat stalking a bird. The ankle felt cold and watery with pain but held, just. I tried to read him as I would a new dog or horse. ‘I also see that you don’t want to do this. I think you’d rather let me go.’

Startled eyes met mine. I hopped my good foot back beside the other. ‘I think you’re a good man and something has gone wrong.’

‘If you knew…!’ he agreed fervently. ‘But I have no choice now.’

Our panting seemed to fill the low vault of arching trees. In his face, I could still see a last gleam of my enchanted prince. ‘I thought at first you were under a curse,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t entirely wrong, after all.’

And in a different story, we might have been friends. I hopped another step.

‘I’m damned,’ he whispered.

I begged my courage rise up to fill that cold hollow space inside me. ‘I trusted you when I first saw you,’ I said.

‘That’s why Robin…’ He caught himself. ‘… why I was sent alone. For fear that you would take fright at a group of armed men.’

I straightened my back to give my courage room to rise. Please, I begged. At first it felt as fluid as water, flowing into my limbs, rising through my belly and chest. Slowly, another stronger creature, that was both me and something else far greater than I was forced its way up through the tight column of my throat until it reached my eyes.

I burned my attacker with a wolf’s fierce gaze. ‘Is my father already dead?’ Even stiffened by courage, I didn’t dare ask about Henry.

‘I don’t know. But it makes no difference now. It’s too late to turn back!’ He looked at me, his mouth slightly open. ‘I beg you, forgive me, your grace, I never meant…’

‘I think you should run,’ said the young she-wolf steadily. ‘As fast as you can.’

He closed his eyes. ‘Holy Mother, protect me…!’ His sword shook in his hand.