Miranda and Caliban(84)

Prince Ferdinand gazes after Ariel as the spirit takes his leave, a slight frown creasing his brow. “What grave matter is it that your father does adjudicate this day?” he asks me.

How am I to answer?

Your father lives, I might say to him, though I fear mine might yet dispatch him for his sins.

What would he do?

What would I do?

I sit and bow my head, letting my hair curtain my face while my thoughts chase themselves fruitlessly. I touch one of the smallest figures on the game-board. Above the arbor, swallows dart and twitter on the wing.

“Forgive me, but I am not privy to my father’s business.” I glance up at the prince. “Do you know how to play this game, my lord?”

“Ferdinand.” He smiles at me. “Call me by my name, for I think it should never sound so sweet as it might upon your lips, my lady. Have you never played chess?”

I shake my head. “No, never.”

He sits opposite me. “Here, Miranda. Allow me the privilege of being your tutor.”

I watch the prince touch each figure on the board and name them, committing each to memory. I have an excellent memory, for the studies to which Papa set me demanded nothing less. The prince’s hands are strong, fair, and shapely. I listen to him describe the manner in which each piece is permitted to move, each player moving a piece in turns in accordance with his strategy. His voice is warm and pleasing.

You shall learn, in time, to love the prince.

Papa, I think, sees the entire world as a game-board; and all of us lesser beings merely pieces upon it.

Oh, how I wish Caliban were here.

But Caliban is elsewhere; and so I suffer the prince to teach me the rules of the game of chess, our heads bowed over the checkered board beneath the green shadows of the arbor.

I do not think about what is happening in the innermost courtyard.

I do not think about Caliban.

Only this moment; piece by piece, square by square. It is an orderly world, the world of this game-board. One might spend a lifetime mastering its intricacy, I think, but it holds no hidden secrets. I immerse myself in it, listening to the prince’s murmuring voice, the twittering swallows, the splashing fountain. I ignore the faint sound of footsteps on the paving stones.

“Behold,” Papa’s voice says softly, and I ignore it, too.

“Oh, my son!” another man’s voice cries, cracking under the weight of a hope too great to endure. “Ferdinand! Pray, tell me you’re flesh and blood, and not a vision!”

“Father?” The prince rises, his eyes bright and incredulous. “Can it be true? Oh, the good Lord God be praised!”

So Papa has chosen mercy, and I can no longer abide in the pleasant fiction that none of this is happening. The prince and his father the king embrace, both of them laughing and weeping in their joy.

I try to imagine Papa weeping for joy on my behalf, and cannot. He wears a look of solemn pride, as though he were not the very cause of so much grief allayed. There are three other men; one is weeping, too, and I think he must be that noble lord to whom Papa and I owe our survival.

So many strange men! I feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of them, and I should like to flee.

But now the king’s gaze falls upon me. “Who is this fair maiden?” he asks his son.

The prince comes and takes my hand, and I do not resist as he leads me to meet his father. “She is the good duke’s daughter, sir,” he says, “and by the grace of God, my own betrothed.”

I curtsy to the king. “I am Miranda, my lord.”

The king smiles at me through his tears. “Why then, I have gained a daughter as well as my son this day!”





FIFTY-TWO





CALIBAN


Toolatetoolatetoolate.

Words sound in my head with every footstep, thumpity-thump. Too late, Caliban; poor dumb monster.

Bad.

Badbadbad.

You did choose to do a bad thing; you did choose the wrong men to do it. You did everything wrong.

The men are angry there are no fountains of sweet red claret. They hear voices somewhere in the palace, other men’s voices, and they are angry.

You did say there was no one here but the magus and his daughter, they say to me. You lied to us, monster.

I say I did not know.

The men follow the voices; now I follow the men. Now it is my footsteps that drag through the halls of the palace. The voices are not angry and shouting; the voices are saying please and thank you to God. It seems that Master’s vengeance is not the thing I thought it would be.

Run.

Runrunrun!

The men go into the garden and I do not follow them. Thump; I hear a rock fall to the ground; thump, I hear a stick fall.

Oh, oh, my liege, the men say; oh, oh, my prince! Alive, all alive! Praise be to God! Forgive us, good duke! The monster did lie to us!

RUN.

I turn to run and there is Ariel, his eyes shining and terrible. “Fool!” he says to me. “I did warn thee.”





FIFTY-THREE





MIRANDA


On the heels of the king’s warm words, two of his courtiers stumble into the garden with crude weapons in their hands and a wild tale of deception on their lips, one that I pray is untrue.

Caliban. Oh, Caliban!

Papa’s face is grim. “Ariel, my brave spirit!” he calls, his hand closing around Caliban’s amulet. “Fetch forth the villain.”