A Tale of Two Castles(66)

The guard dropped his hand from my mouth.

What would she do now?

“Father, are you ill again?” She began to untie his cap, a daughterly gesture.

He turned frightened eyes to Sir Misyur. “Look in her shoes.” The inside of his mouth was bright red.

She jumped off the bed and stood.

“Your Highness,” Sir Misyur said, “take off your shoes.”

She stamped. “I will not.”

Sir Misyur nodded to a guard, who approached her.

“You see . . .” She laughed awkwardly. “There is a darn in the heel of my hose. I would not have you see it.”

“Beg pardon, Your Highness.” The guard knelt at her feet. He lifted her right foot by the ankle.

A pouch was in the toe of the right shoe.

“Let me have it.” Goodwife Celeste took the pouch and sniffed inside. “Eastern wasp powder.” She looked at Sir Maydsin. “Deadly.” She rushed out of the chamber, crying, “I have a remedy. I’ll fetch it.”


“La!” Her Highness pulled herself to her full height. Her voice achieved extraordinary heights as well. “I was kind enough. . . . I was kind. . . . I am kind. . . .” Her eyes swam, and her nose reddened. She buried her face in her long sleeve. “Alack!”

Sir Misyur told the guards to take the princess to the tower where I had been kept.

“If the guards there ate my food, they’ve been poisoned, too.”

“Send them here,” Sir Misyur said.

The princess was escorted out, bent over, sobbing.

“Pardon . . . may I leave to find my masteress?”

Sir Misyur nodded.

A Lepai finch flew in the window and landed between Sir Misyur and me. It fluttered its yellow feathers, then began to vibrate—and grow.

I saw Sir Misyur’s smiling face and his tears. I wept and smiled, too.

What brought him back now? Where had he been? What had he been?

Sir Misyur removed his cloak and draped it around the ogre as he became himself again. “Welcome home, Your Lordship.”

I heard distant barking. Nesspa had sensed his master’s return.

“Thank you. Elodie, your masteress wants you.”

“Is IT injured?”

“The animal physician is with IT.”

I ran out of the room and pelted down the tower steps. The day was ending, and the rain had resumed. With my feet squelching in mud, I raced across the inner ward, between the inner gatehouses and the outer, across the drawbridge, along the moat, around the outer northeast tower. And there IT lay sprawled, ITs belly and legs on a mound of hay, ITs head and neck extending across the ryegrass.

Master Dess sat on the hay mound, dabbing ITs belly with linen.

“Elodie!” IT lifted ITs head. White smoke rose in spirals. “You escaped! I congratulate you.”

“Master Dess, is my masteress badly hurt?”

IT began to rise, stopped, and asked Master Dess if IT might.

“Yes, honey, honey. Elodie, I wish all my patients would pull their arrows out with their teeth and then eat them. I stopped the bleeding. Took just a moment.”

IT sat up, looking pleased with ITself. “Pine arrows and quartz arrowheads. Quite tasty.”

I marched straight to IT and hugged ITs front thigh. Leaning my face into ITs belly, I inhaled sulfur. Lambs and calves, IT stank! Heavenly.

“Mmm,” IT said. “Mmm, Lodie. If you must. Mmm.”

Finally I stood back. “Her Highness signaled the cats and poisoned the king and mauled the ox and tried to poison me.”

“Honey!”

“The whited sepulcher,” IT said. “The poison was secreted on her person?”

“In her shoe.”

Of course I bathed before entering the lair. IT toasted skewers for me and then insisted I sleep, despite my protests that I wasn’t tired and had much to tell and much to ask.

In the morning IT declared a holiday. After breakfast I sat on a pillow on the floor, and IT reclined on ITs side before me, ITs right arm bent at the elbow, ITs big head resting on ITs right claw—a feminine pose, I thought.

“Did you put out your cap to call me? I hoped to approach close enough to see and then fly off again if all was well.”

I nodded. “I was watching when you were struck. I thought . . . I couldn’t tell. . . .” If IT had been slain.

“Elodie, I told you to stay out of the window.” IT touched my shoulder gently with the flat of ITs left claw. “Princess Renn must have suspected I would come to you. Hence the archers.”

In a shaky voice I said, “They would have been considerate if they’d shot straight into your mouth.”

Enh enh enh.

“I wonder why His Lordship arrived at the castle when he did.”

“There is nothing to wonder at. I found him.” ITs smoke curled in a lazy spiral. “Logic took you to the menagerie, Elodie. Logic took me there as well. My first two visits bore no fruit, but two failures did not rule out future success, and indeed His Lordship arrived there last night. I discovered him as an additional monkey and brought him here, where he became himself again. Do you know that he had been poisoned, too?”

“I thought he might have been.”

“I didn’t know. May I enter?” His Lordship stood in the doorway, carrying a large basket, Nesspa at his side.