Crystal shoes

And a mare to ride on,

A milk white mare,

And silver woven in my hair.

 

 

Chapter One

HE
night wind blew down from the rocky hills and swept the cobbled streets clean.
It brushed the dust of the high road as smooth as velvet, as if no dogcart or
carriage had ever traveled it; but now in the gray dawn the velvet dust was
freshly marked with hoofprints. Wandering, aimless hoofprints that began at the
inn behind the village and ended at the edge of the cobbles.

Following the hoofprints came a barefoot girl, her
eyes still heavy with sleep. She might have been sixteen, but her hair was down
like a child's, and her childish dress far too smallas if someone did not
allow her to put on the airs of a grown woman. Her wrists and ankles protruded,
and were goose-pimply in the cold.

She had ragtaggle hair the color of new hay, and her
eyes were the blue of batchelor buttons. (Her stepsister Druscilla said blue
eyes were ugly as dung.) She had a tip-tilted nose (Delilah scoffed at such a
nose) and the curves beneath her dress were supple and fine. (Though the two
stepsisters called her a baby, scrawny as a new-hatched chicken.) Her skimpy
dress was faded and mended; and her feet were streaked with cinders from the
hearth, for she had been stirring up the fire when she glanced out the kitchen
window, saw the gate open, and knew the mare was gone.

The sun had not yet risen, nor the village stirred.
Two geese hunkered after snails, and a chicken scratched in the cobbled gutter.

Thursey paused in the center of the village, shivered
once with the chill, and felt the smooth cobbles with her toes. The predawn stillness
quite pleased her.

It was a small, shabby village. The tinker's shop was
cramped, the smithy's roof was badly in need of thatching, and the weaver's
shop was no more than a drafty lean-to that sheltered the elbowing loom. Even
the church was small and wanted paint. A drake sat atop the brewer's shutter,
eyeing a row of ale kegs that stood outside the door.

The cobbles felt smooth and hard; she curled her toes
around them as she walked and stared into the dark alleys that ran between the
shops. It would do no good to call the mare, willful old thing! It seemed to
Thursey that half her life was spent searching for the mare (the other half was
spent scrubbing the hearth, cleaning the stable, cooking the meals for
travelers though she didn't begrudge thatand cleaning up the kitchen
afterward), and she wondered why the old mare was always so tricky and
obstinate. But I suppose, Thursey thought, if she always minded me I would not
love her at all, for then she wouldn't be herself, now would she? The sun was
beginning to send a bit of rosy glimmer over the hills when she spied the old
mare's rump blocking the far end of the alley between the weaver's and the
bakery shop; the mare was leaning over the weaver's fence stealing hay from the
sheep. The sheep began to bleat up a terrible fuss, standing on their hind legs
against the fence. The mare's wide rump filled the alley, and she had her tail
tucked down stubbornly. At the other end of her, her ears were tight back, for
she had seen Thurseythe old hoyden saw as well behind as in frontand was set
to resist the pulls and coaxings she knew were coming.

The alley was so narrow Thursey had to squeeze flat
and hold her breath to get between the wall and the mare's fat side. The
culvert in the alley stank of night soil where the chamber pots had been
dumped, and the bakery smelled of dough rising in the cool dark.

The mare smelled of sweat. The marks of yesterday's
harness were still on her dirty white sides, for Thursey had not had time to
wash her. Thursey slipped a bit of rope around the mare's neck, then leaned
against the bony chest and pushed until the graceless animal began to back out
reluctantly, showing her long yellow teeth in anger.

When they were free of the alley, Thursey hoisted her
skirts and tucked them round, pulled herself up by the mare's mane, threw a leg
over, and was astride. The mare shook her head menacingly and Thursey laughed
at her. (If Druscilla and Delilah could see her, they would shriek with horror;
girls and women did not ride astride and certainly did not show their legs!)
Thursey grinned and kicked the old mare in the ribs, pushing her forward into a
canter to avoid the jerky trot.

The mare galloped clumsily down the cobbles and onto
the soft lane. Then, not wanting to go home, she drew to a walk and Thursey let
her, for the morning was sweet with the smell of wet grass and turned earth. A
cold freshness came from the hills, and the smell of watercress and mint blew
up to them from the little stream. They went down to it and Thursey let the
mare dredge up mouthfuls of watercress; it would give her hiccups, but she
loved it so.

Thursey slipped off the mare and pulled her dress over
her head. (If Druscilla and Delilah saw that, they would faint dead
away. Her stepmother, Augusta, would beat her and call her a harlot.) She
jumped into the cold stream, and the icy water shocked her to her toes. She
bathed until she tingled, then she dressed and lay in the dewy grass and
thought about the traveler who was staying at the inn overnight, and about the
tale he had told. He was a fat little man, a merchant, and the story he told
was wonderful, of a maid called Aschenputtel. Thursey, with no one to hear,
began to make a song about it. She sang it to the mare, though the old white
head never stopped pushing after watercress, and the mare's jaws never stopped
chewing.

 



 

"Hazel tree, O see my plight,

Hazel tree, O will you bring,

Golden dress and crystal shoes,

A mare to ride on, a milk white mare,

And silver woven in my hair ..."

Suddenly she remembered the porridge. She leaped up in
alarm, scrambled onto the mare's back, and kicked her so hard the mare galloped
for home like the devil was after her.

The kitchen smelled of burning. Druscilla was fanning
an apron at the smoke and swearing loudly. Delilah waved the scorched kettle
helplessly. "Where have you been, you lazy baggage, look what a mess
you've made!"

"The whole place smells of burning,"
screamed Druscilla.

Thursey said nothing. She began a second kettle of
porridge and laid slabs of bacon on the grate. The stepsisters flounced out,
bearing the bread and hot ale. "When you've dished up a proper
breakfast," Druscilla flung over her shoulder, "see to the
gentleman's horse!"

Thursey made a face at the door and whispered,
"Fish eye!"

It was true, Druscilla had eyes like the eyes of a
fish that had been fried with its head on: bulging. The name Druscilla meant
soft-eyed, and Druscilla never forgot it. She believed herself to be beautiful
and would stare at a young man (or any man) with what she thought was a warm
and seductive gaze until he grew so uneasy, he would fidget and turn away from
her. Then she would say to Delilah, "He's so shy of me, he cannot
bear my beauty."

Thursey heated more ale and stirred the porridge.

Delilah's name meant temptress, and Thursey thought,
She couldn't tempt a billy goat in rut. But Delilah, fat as a young stoat, wore
the dresses of a temptress anyway, and if the men stared at such a quantity of
bare skin it was only out of shockor to avoid having to look higher, at
Delilah's face. (Her face resembled a pig, certainly it did.) Where Delilah's
face was fat, Druscilla's was as thin as a saw blade and just as
fearsome, with the two fishy eyes staring out. And both had sat simpering at
the traveler last night in the hall until Thursey, who was watching from the
shadows, thought he might run screaming into the night. Poor little man, pudgy
and bearded and harmless looking. Those two would go after anything that wore
trousers, she thought indignantly. But there was another reason the stepsisters
were so friendly to him. He had arrived in a fine carriage laden with wonders
to trade, embroidered purses from Italy and jewelry from Spain, silver ladles
and pewter trays, bracelets and pearl-encrusted girdles and ribbons of all the
colors one could imagine. He carried cotton from Egypt and cloth of silk from
Venice, dainties to intrigue any woman; he carried spices and scents and ermine
tails, and the sisters, beside themselves with greed, nearly came to blows over
him.

Thursey smiled. The merchant had paid little heed to
the stepsisters; and he had given them no gift. The only gift he made was the
one he gave to Thursey and didn't know he gave. For as she had crouched in the
shadows of the hall after supper and watched her stepmother, Augusta, and the
two stepsisters simper and preen, the merchant had begun his story. And
Thursey, curled in her dark corner, had listened with pleasure.

Thursey was not encouraged in the hall: the sisters
said she was too common, that she would afront the travelers. But when a
traveler looked as if he might sing a ballad or tell a tale, she would slip
into the shadows after the platters were washed up, settle herself beside a
friendly spider web, warm in the rushes, and wait.

The inn was small and had seen better days, but it was
the only inn for a day's ride that would offer bed to the commoners on the high
road. This wealthy merchant would have been welcome at the palace that gleamed
atop the rocky hills to the west, but the king's entourage had not yet arrived
from the southern villa where the king spent his winters, and the palace was
closed and unwelcoming. When the king's party did come, it would come upon the
high road in a bustling caravan. Everyone who traveled across the small country
of Gies used the high road, from king's messengers to peddlers, from friars to
jugglers to gleemen; and the robbers who preyed on them traveled in the shadow
of the woods.

Travelers came to the village from all over Gies
itself, and beyond, and they were the only source of news. They brought
messages and gossip, ballads of wars, and best of all the stories. From Wales
and Ireland and France and from countries so small one had never heard of them,
came stories of the kind Thursey loved best. Tales of girls who, their feet
grimed from the hearth, were banished to the kitchen and stables and treated
cruelly by their elders. Each story was different from the next, each told with
the flavor of its own country's ways. But in each there was a girl Thursey
could not help but weep for, Cendrillon or Rushencoatie, Vasilisa or Hajnalka
or Cari Woodencoat. She wept for Cinderella and for the Snow White Maid, for
Tattercoats and Cap-O-Rushes, for the King's Daughter in the Mound, and now she
wept for Aschenputtel. She had crouched in the rushes and listened to the tale,
and she might have been twelve again and her father telling her stories before
the fire at night.

The stepsisters would scoff and call her childish to
be occupied with such frippery-they listened not with interest, but for a
night's entertainment. It could have been a list of supplies and accounts as
long as it was a man's voice ringing through the hall. But the stories freed
Thursey from her stepmother and stepsisters in a manner she could not explain;
it hurt no one, the strength she took from them.

She turned the bacon and put some bread on the grate
to toast; the fireplace was so big she stood inside when she moved the kettles,
her cheeks flushed from the heat. Red cheeks made Druscilla and Delilah cross
with envy; and Thursey took a perverse pleasure in that.

The kitchen was a plain room, with hewn timbers, a
floor of rushes, and a plank for a table. Thursey kept the table scrubbed; the
jars and ale jugs and crocks and platters shone from her care. The kitchen was
the best room in the inn, though Delilah and Druscilla called it ugly. They
thought the stable ugly, too; they never went there, except to the mounting
block where they would step into their high black carriage behind
Magniloquence, their bad-tempered black mare. Off they would go, the two
overdressed sisters and the black robed, sour stepmother, to mass of a Sunday.
The stepmother, Augusta, was as lumpish and square as a dung cart, great
boxlike creature dressed in rusty black dresses that smelled of mildew and were
stained with the drippings of ale and gravy-she loved her ale, Augusta, but
would let the sisters have none. She said it would spoil their complexions. As
for Thursey, ale was too good for the likes of her. Off to mass the three would
go, behind the mettlesome Magniloquence, while Thursey stayed at home with the
old white mare for company.

There had been a time in the stepmother's younger days
when she had ridden out in some style on the sidesaddle that now gathered dust
in the harness room. That had been when Thursey's father was alive, and Augusta
was not so haughty and set in her ungiving ways.

Occasionally even now in a strange fit of nostalgia,
Augusta would bid Thursey bring the sidesaddle and bridle and polish them, and
put them on the black mare though Magniloquence would throw a tantrum until
they were removed again.

And the white mare, of course, was considered far too
common to carry such a saddle, certainly too common to carry Augusta. Poor ugly
mare. She had great oversized joints, her knees and hocks were swollen and
lumpy, and her ragged, splayed hooves were never shod. Her dirty white coat was
so sprinkled with black hairs that she looked as if she'd been rolling in the pepper,
and now, in the early spring, she was shedding her winter coat in ragged hanks
so she looked altogether moth-eaten. "Tattercoats," Thursey
whispered. "You are Tattercoats." But it was only an endearment, the
old mare had no name. Thursey preferred it that way. If she called her by a
name, the sisters would take note of it, take note of the mare, and discover
that Thursey loved her.

The mare had loppy ears, one with a notch out as if
someone had taken a bite from it (as indeed an ardent stallion had when she was
a young filly), and she was kept only to haul fodder and dung. There were
stalls in the stables for Magniloquence, and for the travelers' horses and
donkeys, for it took a poor man, indeed, to travel the high road without some
kind of mount. But the old mare was not allowed a stall; she slept in the
stable yard winter and summer and got only the leavings of hay (or so she was
supposed to do; Thursey saw that she got better than that).

It was to the old mare that Thursey went when she was
lonely or hurt, or smarting from the insults Delilah and Druscilla gave or the
tongue-lashings Augusta was so skilled at. Thursey could dream away the mare's
misshapen legs and boney Roman nose, could dream her into a milk-white steed as
delicate and fine as any lady's palfrey that came down the high road. A
pristine mount with skin as pink as the magical roses that were said to grow in
the swamp and legs as thin and smooth as Thursey's own ankles. And a silver
saddle hung with white satin, and Thursey in a frock of scarlet like the cloth
she had seen in the merchant's cart, and her hair braided in a great coil, with
strands of silver woven in. Beside her would ride a prince, young and comely;
she would be truly a woman grown, and beautiful.

She brought herself back from daydreaming with a quick
shake of her head and rescued the bacon from burning. When she had served the
meal, she went to the stable yard and fed and watered the fussing Magniloquence
and the merchant's sturdy bay gelding. Then she curried them both, the gelding
standing patiently and wrinkling his skin with pleasure at the feel of the
brush, blowing his warm breath on her neck, then Magniloquence, as fidgety and
bad tempered as if she had a bee under her tail. She would have swung around
and kicked Thursey if Thursey had not kept her tied short. When both horses
were groomed, Thursey took up the currycomb and combed out her own tangled
hair, peering at her reflection in the water trough. The sun glanced off the
fresh straw around her feet and made it shine like silver. She picked up a
strand and when she turned it a certain way it did, indeed, look like silver.
She held it to her hair and gazed down at her reflection. The straw sparkled up
at her. The darkness of the water made her face look older, look almost mysterious.
Deftly she wove the straw into her hair, wove another and another until a net
of silver shone around her face.

"Imbecile!" a voice shouted. Thursey froze,
then looked up to see Delilah, her broad shadow cast across the water trough.
"Can't you even come out to curry the horses without playing like a child!
You look like you fell in the hay. Get that mess out of your hair."

Thursey began to pull out the straws.

"Why you've put them in on purpose!" Delilah
peered closer. "You put them in on purpose," she repeated and began
to laugh. She guffawed, roared with laughter, slapped her side and brayed.
"You've woven your hair with straw with straw! What'd you think
it was, precious stones and gold?"

Thursey blanched, then turned red.

Delilah stared at her. "Oh, wait 'til I tell Ma!
Oh, oh," and she fell into further paroxysms of laughter. She could have
been heard clear to the castle if there had been anyone there to hear her.

Thursey glared. The sisters had never dared act so cruel
before her father went away. He would have set Delilah straight. But now if she
mentioned him, Delilah would only scoff and say, "That coward! Your father
died a coward running from the Balkskakian hordes." She'd heard that more
times than she could count. Would her father come home one day? Things
hadn't been right since he left. She turned away from Delilah now with angry
tears.

I could go away, she thought. But if I did, and he is
alive, he wouldn't find me here. And the inn is rightfully his; it's not their
inn at all.

"I should turn the likes of you out,"
Augusta would threaten often. But that wasn't likely. Who would scrub and cook
and mind the stable? No one, not for free anyway. "Your father's dead. We
could turn you out."

I don't know
that he's dead, Thursey thought. No one knows what happened to him in the
battles with Balkskak.

Chapter Two

HURSEY'S
bed was a cupboard in the kitchen wall. Under it were shelves where the pots
and pans were kept, and flanking it were the great fireplace on one side and
the broom closet on the other. The bed itself had doors that could be shut and
locked, though it had been a long time since Augusta had locked Thursey into
itwhen she was a good deal smaller. At the back of the cupboard were narrow
shelves for Thursey's other dress, her night dress, and her few meager
possessions.

Late at night, with the noises of the inn stilled and
the sisters upstairs in their beds, with the hoot of an owl coming through the
open window and the smoldering fire throwing shadows on the walls, Thursey
could imagine any exciting thing. This night the moon was full, sending its
light into the kitchen. Thursey drew her quilt around her and watched moonlight
and firelight mingle to cast strange shapes across the room, as if a shadowy
play were being enacted there. She thought of the story the merchant had told,
and how the dear father had said, "What shall I bring you from the
fair?" One stepdaughter had replied, "Bring me a cloak of pearls and
jewels and bring me a fan of silver," and the other had cried, "Bring
me a mirror that I can see my beauty; bring me an emerald comb for my raven
hair." Thursey watched the light play across the black stewpot and
skillets, and they seemed to be figures moving. "And what will I bring
you?" The father asked Aschenputtel. "Bring me, O Father, the first
twig that strikes your hat as you leave the fair."

Thursey wriggled her cold feet and pictured
Aschenputtel planting the hazel twig her father brought her, placing it in the
earth upon her mother's grave. Each day Aschenputtel wept upon it, and soon the
twig sprouted leaves and grew into a hazel tree. Each day that Aschenputtel
wept over it, it grew larger. And each time she prayed over it, a white bird came
to sit on a branch and speak to her.

When Aschenputtel was forbidden by her stepmother to
go to the king's festival, the white bird said, "You must go."
Aschenputtel replied, "But I have no dress to wear." And the bird
said, "Do as I say, and you shall have." Thursey pictured
Aschenputtel kneeling before the hazel tree and repeating the words as the bird
instructed, "Little tree, little tree, shake over me, that silver and gold
may come down and cover me." And at once she was wearing a dress of silver
and slippers made of gold. And the next night the dress and slippers were
finer, and the night after, finer still; and the mounts that stood before her
of a beauty beyond belief. Thursey could see it plainly. She lit a candle and
reached under her straw mattress.

She pulled away a bit of wood and drew from the hole a
bit of sacking. From this she took paints and precious paper. Then she closed
the cupboard doors, wishing she could latch them from inside.

She painted long into the night, page after page that
would become a book telling Aschenputtel's tale. She made the pictures around
the edges of each page and wrote the story in the middle. She painted the two
ugly sisters, the twig, the tree, the white bird, the gold and silver dresses.



It had been an old monk passing on the high road who
had taught her to write and to paint. A monk dressed in a dusty brown habit and
riding a donkey so small Thursey wondered it could carry the rotund old man, an
old monk with paper and colors and quills. He had stayed at the inn healing
from an ailment, paying for his board with prayers (which the sisters had
little use for) and handiwork (which they used in plenty). He took Thursey into
the wood and taught her the herbs to pick so she could have color: saffron and
blueberry and madder, indigo and sumac and oak. He gave her paper and made her
a brush from the soft hair that she pulled from the old mare's currycomb. Then
he taught her letters, a secret she must surely keep to herself, for in those days
few could read, and those of a low caste who could do so might be suspected of
enchantments.

They had done it all on the sly, the monk saying that
he begged Thursey's help in gathering herbs for his fever, and for his good
works. The sisters, afraid of some higher wrath if they refused, gave her over
reluctantly. Augusta had scowled, remarking that her duties were in the
kitchen, not the fields. Anwin had paid them no attention. "Keep your
secrets, child. Those three biddies would have your head if they didn't need
you in the kitchen. Someday, you'll see, a great enchantment will come to you
just as in the stories. Don't laugh, it will surely happen." He had winked
at Thursey and at the old mare. The mare had snorted back at him, and Thursey
had grinned at them both.

She drew a border of hazel leaves for the cover of
"Aschenputtel" and painted the white bird in the center. Tomorrow she
would sew the pages together.

The books satisfied something in Thursey, and she
guarded her secret fiercely; though once, late at night, Druscilla had slipped
in unheard and seen the candlelight beneath the closed doors of Thursey's bed.
Thursey, hearing a rustle, had pushed the pages and paints beneath her quilt
and sat trembling, her hands pressed together as if she were praying, as
Druscilla jerked the doors open and stood glaring in at her.

"Praying! Praying in the night! What would you
pray for? And who would hear if you did! And why would you need a candle to
pray!" But she had gone away at last, leaving Thursey furious but the
truth undiscovered.

Anwin had taught Thursey to cure and grind the colors,
and she continued to do it in secret. Dear fat Anwin, where was he wandering
now? It must be hard, a monk's life of wandering and begging. Thursey never
could believe that he was begging, for truly Anwin worked for his keep, mending
the pots as well as a tinker, cobbling the sister's shoes and laying new thatch
on the roof. "I must have been up and down this country a hundred times or
more, but always and ever there are new souls and new faces. And new joys and
new sadnesses." Winter and summer he traveled, just Anwin and his donkey.
"One need not be ashamed of dreaming, child. So many are sad because they
have ceased to dream. The wonders you know as a child are not meant to die just
because you are growing up."

Only once had Anwin interfered when Augusta berated
Thursey. "Brat of a coward. Like father like child, and worthless,"
Augusta had screamed.

"He wasn't a coward. My father wasn't a coward or
worthless!"

"Everyone knows it. How could a man as clumsy as
he was, who lost two fingers just working in the mill, ever expect to amount to
anything or stand up to an enemy?" Augusta taunted.

"Who do you think ran this inn! And he kept you
decent tempered, which is more than you are now!" Thursey flared.
"Anyone can have an accident."

"Any clumsy one. Anyone afraid of the very mill
wheel."

"Died a coward," Delilah cut in. "I
heard he ran from Balkskak's troops when the queen and prince were captured."

Anwin, having listened from the kitchen, had come into
the hall and stared so hard at the three that their gazes dropped in confusion,
and Druscilla's face turned red. Anwin said no word, but his furious glare
drove the three of them from the hall in silence.

"Pay no attention, child. You can't allow
yourself to believe such foolish things."

"I know, Anwin," she mumbled through her
tears. "But I don't even know if he's alive or dead. That's what makes me
cry."

It had happened so long ago, yet she never stopped
hoping her father would come home. Anwin had shaken his head sadly; he would
not give her false hope. "Hundreds of men died at Balkskak, child."
But when he had gone away, Thursey knew if there were any word of her father,
Anwin would seek it out in his travels.

It had been a long desperate battle with Balkskak.
When the king's winter palace was attacked, and the queen and the
twelve-year-old prince captured, there followed more than three years of
warring before the captives were safe again. All the men of the village had
been called out at once in a first terrible effort, Thursey's father among
them. But the battles raged ceaselessly during the next years, and only
occasional news of them reached the village. Thursey had been but a child when
her father went away. Three years later when the warring was over, he did not
come home again. Nor was there word of him. The returning men did not remember
when he was last seen in the confusion of the war. The known dead were mourned
over, but those others who were missing seemed to be forgotten. The town, in
its delirium over knowing the wounded prince and queen were safe, could talk
only of the health of the royal family. For both queen and prince had been
dangerously ill with a foreign fever during the whole of their imprisonment and
were said to be pale and weak still. The king's attacks had again and again
been drawn back with the threat of their imminent deaths. After the battle they
were taken to the far isle of Carthemas, where it was said they might be cured
by healers. Now, more than five years after the first battle of Balkskak, it
was said the prince was still wasted and suffering, for he had been wounded as
well as enervated by the fever.

IT was some days after Thursey sewed the pages of the book
of Aschenputtel that she heard the news: the king's party had already left the
winter palace and this year they were bringing with them the young prince and
the queen. They were expected to arrive well before Easter. The news was
carried by a traveling herbalist. He came in the evening riding upon a roan
gelding so swaybacked that Thursey stood staring in amazement before she ran to
take the man's stirrup and see to his wants. He dismounted like a spider
unwinding, so tall and thin he was, and stood looking down at Thursey with a
sour expression.

The sisters, peeping through the windows, would
perhaps make little of him for he looked poor indeed. Still he was male, and
Delilah came simpering out to welcome him. "See to the horse, child, are
you dumb? Heat the ale then, get the gentleman's belongingsbe off with
you!" As the herbalist turned away from Delilah, Thursey saw a bit of a
smile on his thin long face, and she grinned boldly back at him. Geddebeuf, his
name was, and when he was fed and rested, he took his wares to the center of
the village. Sitting on the roan gelding and calling out his wares in a voice
like hinges creaking, Geddebeuf drew a crowd around him. "My friends, I am
not one of those meager herbalists who stand in front of churches; I am a
healer, true and good, and I carry with me medicinals to cure your ills and
humors. I bring you wonders from the distant lands, from Apulia and Calabria
and Burgundy, from the Forest of Ardennes where wild beasts have been
slaughtered that you might benefit from the ointments extracted from them to
cure your ills, to cure fevers and coughs and humors and worms, to cure
faintness and dispeptics and fallen hair . . ." Thursey listened,
enchanted, as his voice rambled on like a creaky trumpet.

Only when the crowd's interest began to wane did
Geddebeuf commence to tell of the king's imminent return to the castle. Then
the crowd drew close as he spoke of the king's party traveling even now on the
high road and of the wonderful Easter ball that was planned.

After supper as Geddebeuf settled his feet on a padded
stool and leaned back before the fireplace in the hall, he spoke in even more
detail of the coming return of the king, and of the ball the king planned. A
ball for the queen and for the young prince, who despite his illness must soon
take up his duties as a man. "Ah, they will make a merry time of it, be
sure. The king brings with him the finest of poets and minstrels in the land,
he brings gleemen and singers and jugglers to cheer the queen, and storytellers
with tales of war and love, ribald tales and quaint. He brings musicians who
play upon the tambourine and harp, the lute and the rota and the bagpipes, upon
the syrinx, the clarion, and the rebec, the psaltery and the sackbut, the
gittern, the shalm, and"

"And the health of the prince is improved?"
cut in Augusta with irritation.

"Indeed! The cure is a secret known only to a few
of us, and I would have tended the young prince and the queen myself had I not
been engaged in other matters."

Delilah laughed scoffingly. "What is the cure,
then, herb man?"

"Ah, 'tis made from the milk of a rare kind of
goat found only on one island in the whole of the known world, the Isle of
Carthemas, and those goats have been brought back in ships by the king. The
milk is so rich and wondrous that it, mixed with secret herbs, has made the
queen quite rosy, and soon the prince, despite his slow-healing wounds, will be
the same. The goats travel with the king's own party and will be stabled right
in the castle."

Though the news was interesting, Thursey would have
preferred a story. The approaching entourage would throw Delilah and Druscilla
into a fit of primping, for many hangers-on would stay at the inn. And, too,
the idea of the ailing prince seemed to make the two sisters quite giddy.
Druscilla whispered to Delilah, "The dear prince, he will be so weak and
pale," and Delilah, sighing, answered, "Oh, the tender care I could
give him."

"And the king searches still for the wielder of
the sword of Balkskak," Geddebeuf was saying, "for the gallant man
who purloined the Balkskakian king's own sword and used it to defend the
wounded prince until the king's forward guard found him standing off seven
Balkskakian warriors in the palace wine keep where the prince and queen lay bitterly
ill . . ." Thursey thought the tale could be told with less pomp; all Gies
knew it anyway. But the telling of it seemed to please Geddebeuf and the
stepsisters. She thought of the king's party with interest and annoyance mixed.
There would be tubs of porridge to boil, loaves to knead so her arms ached
thinking of it, troughs of meat and barrels of ale to deal with. And Delilah
and Druscilla, busy with demands and bad tempers and very little help, would
occupy themselves flirting and getting under foot. Thursey sat silently
wondering if she ought to go away. But go away where? And if her father ever
returned, he must not find her gone.

She was almost asleep when the herbalist began a
story, and Thursey imagined the prince in this story as pale as their own prince
must be. Geddebeuf folded lankily over his stool and seemed to gather her in
and weave a spell around her so she was lost at once to the tale.

"A king, while hunting in the enchanted swamp,
followed a stag, which vanished into a garden in the center of the dark place.
The king opened a door into the garden and found himself among trees upon which
hung leaves of gold; and there were plants that bloomed diamond flowers. As he
picked a rose, a long thread spun out from it and wound around him until he could
not move. Then suddenly a dragon appeared, roaring and blowing fire, and it
said it would free him only if he promised to bring one of his daughters to be
his wife.

"The king returned home sorrowfully, and when his
children asked him what the matter was, he told them. The two elder daughters
were angry and refused to go to the dragon, saying their father should have
stayed captive. But the youngest daughter quickly said that she would go, and
the king took her to the dragon as he had promised.

"The dragon met them on the road clad in gold and
splendor and escorted them to the palace; and the wedding was very grand
indeed. After the wedding the king returned home laden with many gifts.

"Now every day the dragon left the palace, after
instructing his wife never to enter a particular room. But one day she did
enter it, and there she found a pit, and a young prince at the bottom of it,
groaning with pain. She knew she must rescue him, and when she had thrown him a
rope and helped him out, she tended to his wounds. In three weeks' time the
prince's health was regained. Then she sent him forth from the palace before
the dragon should discover him missing from the pit. She begged him to find and
bring to her a large gold chest that could be opened from inside. She could
hide in it, and the dragon, thinking her lost, would sell the chest so he would
not be reminded of her. ..."



Thursey was lost in the princess's adventures after
the chest was brought, and she sighed with relief when the princess was at last
united with the young prince. I wish, Thursey thought, I wish real life could
be so sweet.

That night in bed she did not paint pages for the
story of "The Dragon," she wrote it down so she could think about it
first. Then she took out the thirteen books from beneath her mattress and
spread them in front of her. She took up "Tattercoats." She had made
the cover out of tiny scraps of cloth to form a true coat of tatters. The
background was blue for the sea, the sky, and for the grandfather's tears; the
blue ran through every page like a theme of music. White geese marched in
the blue borders, and the gooseherd's clothes were blue, his skin as brown
as his wooden flute.

"Tattercoats, Tattercoats," the servants
chanted. They laughed at her rags and dirt, they laughed at her bare feet and
made her run away. They made her hide in the brambles and cry.

No one cared [or her, she had no parents, only a
grandfather, and he sat all day in the tower and cried rivers of tears. For
when Tattercoats was born her mother died, and the grandfather shut himself
away and would not see Tattercoats. His white beard grew long and hung out the
stone windows like flags waving, and his tears made a salty pool on the floor.

Only the gooseherd was her friend. He played a merry
tune for her, he danced for her, he made her laugh and sing.

The little flute appeared on many pages, for it was
with the flute that the gooseherd performed his enchantment that helped her
marry the prince. In one picture Tattercoats and the prince faced each other on
the meadows as the gooseherd played his flute for them. That the gooseherd
disappeared after the wedding always made Thursey unaccountably sad.

"Tattercoats, Tattercoats, your grandfather
weeps." She replied, "He has chosen to do so."
"Tattercoats, Tattercoats, the gooseherd is gone." "The
gooseherd, too, has chosen. The sky is blue, the sea is bluer. The sun is warm and I am a princess. For I
have married my own true love, and I have found my fortune."

If it occurred to Thursey that there was really no
relationship between marrying your own true love and having a fortune showered
upon you, she didn't bother about that. In a story you might as well have both,
it was make-believe anyway.

But if I had to choose, she thought. If I had to
choose . . . she stared at her ragged dress hanging from its hook, and her
ragged mended sandals on the shelf, then put the books away. How would I ever
have such a choice, except in a made-up story?

Chapter Three

RUMPETS
blared. The sharp rhythm of hoofbeats echoed through the village, and the
villagers and crofters stood before the shops holding their hats in their
hands, their children pushing between their feet. Then they all began to cheer.

First came the archers mounted on bay geldings, then
the foreign marshal on a mare the color of storm skies, then the inner marshal,
the fat chamberlain, the king's steward, then the chancellor and the clerks,
all beautifully mounted. Then the king himself, riding a steed so golden and
fine that the sun on him quite dazzled the eye. What a handsome king he was,
dark of hair and tall; how straight he sat his stallion.

Behind the king came the carriage of the queen drawn
by six gray horses harnessed in a row. A postillion dressed in red livery was
mounted on the second horse, holding the reins and brandishing a whip. The
wheels of the carriage were carved, the archway of its roof was carved and
painted with flowers in gilt and red and blue, and inside one could see
tapestries and embroidered pillows. The windows were hung with cloth of blue
silk, and the queen herself, her fair hair piled into a high coiffure, smiled
and waved and looked in the best of health.

"Though she is still pale," someone said.
"Not very. Look at her smile, like joy itself." "The loveliest
smile in the world." And the people knelt as the queen passed.

"The prince is in there with her, I can see him
reclining against the pillows."

"The prince, long live our prince." "A
lookone wavelet him speak to us!" A figure detached itself from the
cushions opposite the queen and a pale, wan face peered out, smiled just
barely, and retired.

"He is weak, it has been a long trip."
"But he's the prince, we must see the prince." "At the ball . .
. they say he will lead the ball, that the cure will be complete by
Easter." But the crowd's disappointment was great, an ailing prince could
not be taken lightly. One day he would be king.

Thursey stared at the pale cheek and felt a twist of
pity for the prince, and thought of the tale of the prince in the pit, and the
golden box. Then suddenly all such thoughts were driven from her head as she
stared at the end of the procession.

Behind the queen's carriage came her ladies, each
borne in a low litter, a horse in front and a horse behind carrying it between
them, and each litter brightly painted. There were twelve of these, and behind
them rode fifty knights dressed in silver mail. But it was not these that made
Thursey stare. Nor the clerks that followed, nor the valets nor the grooms.

It was the goats that came last in the procession and
the goatherd.

Those goats were as white as snow. Their curling coats
seemed spun of the finest silk; and the billy, in the lead, had horns so long
and twisting they might have been the horns of some magical animal. The nannys'
smooth faces were the faces of angels. Their unfathomable eyes shone golden and
their tiny hooves seemed hardly to touch the ground. One billy and eleven
nannys, and one young man to herd them. He was dressed in clean rags and
carried a willow staff.

He was a comely young man, and when he passed Thursey
her heart tilted and she gave him a quick, bold smilepartly out of devilment,
but mostly because she couldn't help herself. He looked so friendly and nice.
His cheeks were tanned and his stride long and easy as if he had spent his life
in open places and cared little for false manners. She stared at him and liked
him, and she smiled.

And if Thursey's smile came across to the goatherd as
the sun rising and the morning dew all glinting gold, no one else seemed to
notice. His smile back at her quite dazzled her, and he stopped his goats
before her.

"Can you tell me where I can stable my goats? The
palace stables will all be full this night, and it is too cold for them on the
hills yet; they are not used to it."

"You can stable them at the inn," she said.
"I will show you." She turned to lead the way, trying not to think
that her stepsisters would have a fit, and that the stalls would all be
occupied by the travelers' horses, knowing only that she could not turn him
away.

What a dither there had been since the arrival of the
Celtic herbalist who had announced the coming of the king's party. Thursey had
put fresh straw in all the stalls, cleaned the harness room, turned out all the
beds, and baked puddings and cakes and pastries until she felt boiled whole
herself with the heat of it and aching in every bone from lifting crocks and barrels
and jugs and from the shrill haranguing of Delilah and Druscilla and the
stepmother.

But oh, what a heavenly smell had risen and grown in
the raftered kitchen, the smell of honey and sugars and cloves, of saffron and
sweet wine, and now of great joints roasting on the hearth. The scent, even
from the stable yard, was wonderful. Thursey saw the goatherd sniff
appreciatively and glance, as if he couldn't help himself, toward the kitchen.
He must be hungry, she thought, after such a long journey.

She helped the goatherd----his name was Gillie and his
eyes were very blue indeedbed the goats, turning out a jongleur's mule into
the stable yard with the old mare. Then she brought ale and new bread piled
with slices of the roasting haunch, and bid Gillie eat behind the stable where
Augusta would not see him. Thursey thought that when Augusta and the
stepsisters returned from watching the king's company pass, they would have
twenty fits at finding goats in the stable. But she did not consider sufficiently
that these were the king's own goats.

For, while Gillie might be a common herdboy, the goats
were accepted at once by the stepsisters and Augusta as royal creatures.
"They're near magical," Delilah cried. "They cured the
prince-and the queen, too, of course." And the spoiled Magniloquence was
pushed out of her stall to make more room for them.

"You will tend these goats carefully while they
are in my care," Augusta told Gillie. "If anything should
happen to the king's goats while they're in my stable . . ." Then,
to the stepdaughters, "He looks none too clean or responsible." She
glanced around as if she expected the chamberlain to be listening, then shot
Thursey a commanding glance. "Get them barley and bran mash, girl. Be
quick about it. And some vegetables from the table. These are the king's goats
you are tending. What are you waiting for?"

Thursey stared and tried to keep from laughing.
Ordinarily Augusta would scream that goats stank and chase them out of her
yard. She saw Gillie grinning, too, before she turned away.

Late in the night when the crowded inn tables had been
filled and filled again, and the platters and mugs and bowls washed several
times over, Thursey dried the last dish, turned down the oil lamp, and set a
plate of meat and bread before Gillie at the kitchen table. Bawdy songs rang
from the dining hall, and she could hear the stepsisters' high laughter. Like
cows in clover, Thursey thought, with all those men in there. She stared at
Gillie and wished the words of the songs didn't come so plainly into the
kitchen.

It didn't seem necessary to talk to Gillie while he
ate, the silence was comfortable, if only the singing would cease. There was
one song about a Bristol maid that was so bad Thursey rose from her chair and
began wiping up the grill, though she had already scoured it thoroughly.
"You needn't mind those songs," the goatherd said, "though it is
fine of you to blush. I like to see it."

This made Thursey blush all the more, then made her
laugh and that made Gillie grin; soon they were laughing so hard they could not
even hear the singing.

When they had settled themselves on either side of the
fireplace, she poured out ale for him and he told her of Flanders and Bruges,
through which they had brought the goats, and of the villages along the high
road. He told her how he and the goats had been protected from robbers by the
king's own knights, and how, in the early spring when the nannys bore their
kids, the kids had been left in the care of the shepherd at the king's southern
villa, for they were too young to travel.

Gillie was a gentle lad for all his strapping good
looks, and. his words were laid down with such care that Thursey could see
vividly the hills and the valleys he had traveled, the sudden spring storms,
and how, when the rain was over, the fields lay glinting as if a million
diamonds had fallen upon them.

"And will you tell me a tale?" she asked
boldly. "A story like 'Cendrillon,' like 'Aschenputtel'have you heard
such tales in your travels?"

' La Belle Caterina,' " he said at once, his eyes
lighting, "from a mummer of Italy. He told it just night before
last." He studied her for a long time as if he would ask why she wanted
that kind of story. He seemed most intent on the question. But he did not ask.
Instead, as a log settled and the fire flared, he commenced the account of a
young girl who was sent by her stepmother into the dark swamp woods, "To
find a sieve among the wood spirits so she could sift flour to make bread. She
was terrified of the evil place, and when she came upon a messenger of the
devil, more terrified still." He told how Caterina met next an ogre, and
then at last an old man who was kind to her. "The old man helped her to
find the cave of the wood spirits, and the spirits led her into a room with
cats spinning and weaving and cooking. Pitying the animals, she began to help
them in their work, and at last, the cats, upon learning her plight, broke the
spirits' spell over her." Gillie told the tale slowly while the embers
burned down and the shadows deepened in the corners of the kitchen.

They were so engrossed in each other that neither
heard the door open behind them.

Delilah's sharp cry made them turn. She stood in the
doorway filling it, surveying the goatherd and the empty plates on the table.
She scowled at the ale mug Gillie held; she glowered at the nearly empty honey
cake platter (there had been two dozen). "What is the meaning of this!
What is this herder doing here! What do you mean by letting this filth
in my kitchen, it would have been bad enough to give him plate scrapings at the
back door! You'll go without your supper for a fortnight, girl, to pay for
these takings'" She stormed toward them, her face flaming. "Get out!
Get out, out beggar! Catchpenny beggar!" And she shoved at Gillie
furiously.

But Gillie stood smiling down at her. Delilah's face
turned from red to purple with rage, and Thursey began to giggle. Delilah's
eyes grew small with fury, and she drew back her hand to hit ThurseyThursey
could feel the slap before it came.

But it never came.

Gillie caught Delilah's hand before it struck, and held
it firmly in his own. He stared at her for a long time, but said nothing. Then
at last he spoke softly, "Don't you hurt her. Not ever. If you ever hurt
her I will come back and witch you, old trollop, and you will wish you had
never been born." His words were so soft, so measured, and so filled with
meaning that a shiver went through the room.

Delilah looked shocked, incredulous, then at last
utterly shaken with fury. But she did not speak at all. She seemed unable to.
At last she turned and left them, quivering with rage.

"Come on," Thursey said, pulling at him.
"Before she ... I don't know. Before all three of them come back."
Though she knew inside herself it wouldn't make any difference, that they could
not best Gillie. Not when he stood smiling quietly back at them in that
infuriating way.

When they were in the stable yard with the cold night
air around them Thursey said, "Could you really do that? Witch her?"

"Wish I could!" He grinned at
her, scratched his elbow, looked up at the moon, then in at the sleeping
animals. When he looked back at Thursey, his eyes were dark and serious.
"Well, but the old trollop doesn't know what I can do and what I can't.
Maybe she'll have bad dreams."

"SHE'S been sneaking food out of the kitchen!''
Druscilla screamed.

"The pots are dirty and the beds aren't changed
and the horses aren't curried!" Delilah bellowed.

"That's not true!" cried Thursey, referring
only to the last accusations, for she had taken food out of the kitchen,
and she intended to take more.

"And that mare is getting hay!" cried
Delilah.

"She has to eat," Thursey screamed back.
"She can't haul the dung cart, and all the fodder and food, too, if she
doesn't eat!"

"Shut up!" cried Augusta. "Take her to
the fields and let her get her food free, you lazy baggage! Tie her in the
fields! Now get to your work and let me hear no more!'

Well, the beds were changed, and all the sheets
hanging on the line. The pots were scrubbed, and all of the horses as
clean as freshly washed babies, and the noon meal cooked besides. Druscilla and
Delilah could do the serving of it if they wanted any. Thursey turned away in a
flurry of anger, and when they had gone she snatched up a basket and began to
pack it with new bread and cheese. Defiantly she slipped in a crock of ale.
Then she got a rope on the old mare, climbed astride her, not caring a whit
that her skirts were hiked up, and set her heels to the mare so hard the mare
plunged ahead with surprise. They galloped across the fields, the mare acting
almost coltish she was so delighted to be out on such a day. So was Thursey;
they breathed the spring air and set their faces into the wind and neither
would have paused from racing over the heavily grassed hills, except they
finally got to the place they were headed for.

"Blahhh," said the nannys. They crowded around the mare, giving her friendly
nudges and rubbing against her knobby legs. "Bahh, bahh," said
the billy, and butted Thursey insistantly when she slid off the mare. The
nannys thrust their noses under Thursey's hands and begged to be scratched
behind their ears.

Gillie grinned at her and dusted a place for her on
the rocks. She tied the mare on a long rope and set the basket down. The breeze
came lightly along the hills, and from where they sat they could see the
village below them, then on the far hills, the castle rising white. The fields
that dropped down below their feet were washed by the wind so the grass went
flat in long waves. "The castle always looks so mysterious," she
said, awed. "Is it wonderful, living there?"

"It isn't so mysterious when you're there. I'd
rather look at it from the hills. It's justfull of people, at least the
servants' parts are, crowded and ordinary. Things should be mysterious, but
there's nothing mysterious in the palace."

"Should things
be mysterious?"

"There's mystery in the hills and in the wind on
the grass. And in the stories you like. Isn't life mysterious?"

"My stepmother says life is a weight on our
shoulders that we must rise above."

"Old baggage!"

"Gillie!"

"Well isn't she?"

"Yes! Druscilla says life is like a horn of
plenty, it won't give anything if you don't squeeze it."

They looked at each other and burst out laughing.

 



"They think I'm grazing the mare," Thursey
said as she served out the bread and cheese.

"Well you are." He watched the mare, amused,
as she reached as far as she could after grass, ignoring that under her feet.
"What did you tell them yesterday?"

"Nothing. I just disappeared. They were all
angry, but I don't care. It's too pretty to stay inside."

"Is that the only reason?"

She blushed, then said defiantly, "I could have
taken the mare to the pastures on the other side of the village."

"That would have made me sad."

"Yes. You would have missed your dinner."

"I would have missed you," he said, ignoring
her teasing. "I could have my dinner from the cooks at the palace now that
I can stable the goats there. The queen herself has given orders that I be fed.
But I prefer your cooking."

"And prefer me to steal for you."

His face turned pink at that. "Would you rather
not, then?"

"If I would rather not, then I wouldn't,"
she said tartly. "I do it because I like to."

He broke the last piece of bread and poured the ale
out equally. "Tomorrow I will ask the cook for a dinner, and you shall be
my guest."

"What will we have? Roasted quails and ducklings?
Salmon eggs and jellied trout and truffle in wine? Currant cakes and China tea
and cream?"

"You shall have," Gillie said, "the
king's bread and goat milk."

"The magical goat milk?"

"The same."

"Will it make me beautiful?"

"It cannot. You are already that."

She looked down, flushed, then hurried away to fix the
mare's halter.

She would never tell Gillie, but in the night she had
dreamed of him; for the three nights since Gillie had come walking down the
high road, she had not dreamed of Cinderella stories nor princes, not silks nor
silver saddles. She had dreamed of Gillie, of the windy hills and Gillies warm
hand on her own.

He settled back against the hillside and grinned, and
began to entertain her with stories of the nobles of the palace, of their
foibles and foolishnesses. His sleeves were rolled back and his strong brown
arms showed a scar and his hands the roughness of hard work. His eyes, when he
did not look at Thursey, looked far down the valley and across at the palace as
if he were seeing many things. He made her laugh with his stories, and shocked
her sometimes, for she had never thought the nobles of the king's palace could
be so foolish.

"How do you know so much about the palace and
what goes on in it?"

"Because the servants tell me. Servants take
their greatest pleasure in gossip. It's an art and a balm for their own
miseries."

"Was it like that when you herded the goats on
the Isle of Carthemas?"

"It was after the king's company came. Before
that there was only me and my family and the healers. I liked it better that
way."

"Then why did you come with the goats clear to
Gies castle?"

"Because the king needed mehe is my king after
all, in spite of the isolation we lived in. And the prince the prince needed
the goat milk very much."

"Will he be well for the ball? How can anyone be
sure?"

"He is mending fast," Gillie said. "The
prince will dance at the ball."

"It would be nice for him. He has been away a
long time, the people of Gies are anxious to see him."

"Why should they be?"

"Why, he's the prince, Gillie! He'll be king
someday!" She was shocked at Gillie. "He was only a boy when the
summer palace was attacked and he and the queen were captured, and he nearly
died. He was just barely twelve. They wouldn't even recognize him now. They
want to see what he is likemaybe what kind of king he'll be."

Gillie gave her a strange penetrating look.
"Perhaps the prince should see what the village is like . . . and if he
wants the job."

Gillie was very outspoken. She wondered if he talked
so boldly in the castle. Maybe his forwardness came from living too long on
Carthemas, removed from the rest of the kingdom. "Why wouldn't he want to
rule Gies?"

"I don't know. Would you?"

"I wouldn't know how, I don't think."

"Maybe the prince doesn't either. Or maybe he
regrets the loss of his freedom."

"But who is more free than a king?"

"A good king is beholden to his subjects. Only a
bad king makes free to do as he pleases." Then he grinned at her.
"There was a ballad last night. They let the servants stand at the door to
the great hall and listen. It was the kind of story you are fond ofyou are
like her, Thursey. Like Catskin. You have the stepsisters, and a stepmother as
grisly as any of those . . ."

Did he see so plainly, then, that she felt one with
those others sometimes? "And my father, too, has gone away," she said
quietly. "Though in the stories those girls know where their fathers
are."

"Was it the war, then? The battles of
Balkskak?"

"Yes. He went with the rest of the village, but
he didn't come back. No one seemed to have seen him when the last battle was
over, all they could talk about was the prince and queen being saved and the
sword of Balkskak. I can understand that butbut you'd think someone would know
if he died oror where he is."

"No one could tell you anything?" There was
a strong line along Gillie's jaw that hardened when he was concerned.

"No one except my stepmother. She said she heard
I don't believe itthat he died a coward and didn't fight for the king. That he
had run off and that was why no one had seen him."

"Why would she say such a thing?"

"She says he was clumsy and a coward because he
was crippled working in the mill, but I don't . . ."

"Anyone can be injured," Gillie said softly.
"She's an old bear anyway. Crippled how?"

"He lost two fingers in the mill. She said that
happened because he was afraid, and not bold in the way he handled the grinding
wheel, but ..." She stopped talking, for Gillie looked so strange.

He seemed almost not to see her for a few moments;
then his look changed, and he grinned. "Will you hear the tale now? The
story of Catskin that the Irish minstrel sang? Though I won't sing it as he
did."

"Oh yes," she said and settled down to
listen, watching Gillie with curiosity.

He told her of the magic filly who watched over
Catskin, and of the three enchanted gowns the filly gave her, that could be
hidden in walnut shells. . . . "Catskin wandered alone in the dark forest
until she came to a palace where she was taken in as a serving maid. ..."
As the tale unfolded, Thursey could see the prince clearly, for he looked like
Gillie. "And when Catskin shook the walnut shell over herself, the dress
of silver and silk fitted to her at once. ..." Thursey looked down at her
own dress, patched and faded, and felt her hair all tangled from the wind. Look
at me, she thought, distressed. What must Gillie think!

For Gillie was so handsome, his brown hair curling
close to his forehead and his cheeks tanned from the sun, his calloused hands
strong and yet so gentle with the goats. How can he even look at me, she
thought. And all of a sudden she knew she wanted very much for Gillie to like
looking at her.

She was afraid he might guess how she felt, and more
afraid he might notterrified that he could never feel the same.

When the story was finished, he gave her a solemn
glance. "And just as Catskin went to the ball, and Cendrillon, and
Aschenputtel, so must you. The ball that will be given soon in the palace; I've
heard talk of it in the kitchens. The servants say one is held each year. Have
you never gone?"

She shook her head.

"Then you must go this year dressed in a fine
gown as it is done in the stories."

She sat staring at him. "Me, Gillie? I don't
belong at the ball."

"As much as Cinderella did."

"But they are only stories; they're not things
that can happen." She studied him for a long time. He did not seem to be
making a joke.

"It's what you dream, Thursey. You should do what
you dream of doing, else where is the good in dreaming?" A nanny nuzzled
against him, and he stroked her absently. "Every year your sisters go,
I'll wager. And every year they make you stay at home, isn't that so?"

She colored, for it was true.

"Then this year you must go, too."

"I can't go, I have no dress to wear. They would
stop me anyway." Couldn't he see that the ball didn't matter any more? Now
that she knew Gillie, dreaming of princes had no meaning.

"We will get you a dress with magic, just as in
the stories," he said seriously.

"But they're only stories, Gillie. Magic isn't real."

"We will make it real."

She could only stare, perplexed.

THURSEY went home slowly, with the old mare taking her
time, for she liked coming out better than going back, and she was full to
bursting with sweet grass and would have preferred a nap in the field. Thursey
put her head down on the old mare's neck as they walked, but the mare, stopping
suddenly and on purpose, almost dumped her over her head. She looked around at
Thursey with an evil gleam in her eye, then went on, walking faster now and
nodding her head knowingly. "If you're so smart,'' Thursey growled at her,
"why don't you tell me what he was talking about! What kind of
magic? And why does he want me to go? What if I married the prince! That
would serve him right, stupid Gillie!"

The mare stumbled on a stone and nearly spilled
Thursey again, and when Thursey pulled her up and kicked her, she broke into a
fast gallop, switching her tail as if she might buck. She raced for home with
glee (though she was well beyond the years for that sort of foolishness) and
stopped only when she reached her own gate.

Thursey slid off and turned the mare into the yard.
"Old hoyden! You've no more dignity than a trollop in a street fight! And
you've not answered my question. Why would he . . ." The mare had
turned and was looking right at Thursey, and a thought occurred to Thursey so
suddenly that she stood staring back, speechless, while she examined it.
"Maybe ..." Thursey said, "Oh, maybe he . . . maybe he isn't
thinking of himself! Maybe he's just thinking about me, maybe he just wants me
to be happy!"

Chapter Four

HREE
figures came riding down from the palace, their coats red against the hills and
their trumpets blaring. The villagers stopped cobbling and weaving and tinkering
and gossiping and crowded into the square.

The two trumpeters' horses pawed at the cobbles.

The herald stood up in his stirrups and held up a document
to read, and the villagers were quiet.

"By royal order of his most revered highness, the
King of Gies, hear ye this announcement:

Upon the Sunday of Easter, on the day of our Lord, the
doors of the palace will open, the musicians will play, and the King will
welcome you, each one, peasant and freeman, serf, crofter, villein, lord,
steward, seneschel, bailiff, and reeve, and all of your ladies, to the King's annual ball, the spring ball to ensure good
crops and good harvest and prosperity upon the land. This most important ball
since the battles of Balkskak, the ball to welcome the queen and prince home to
Gies castle."

The villagers cheered and Thursey thrilled at the fine
sound of the words. The trumpets blared again, and the herald dismounted and
pulled out another parchment and began to make the lists.

Every year it was the same, the names of all those who
would attend were given to the herald and set upon the parchment. And every
year it was the same, Augusta stumped forward in her black habit, gave her own
name first, then that of Druscilla, then Delilah. But never Thursey.

Only this year it was not the same.

Augusta stumped forward and gave her own name. Then
Druscilla. Then Delilah. Then she turned to go.

"Is that all?" asked the herald.

"All!" said Augusta over her shoulder.

"Not all!" said a voice from the crowd.

Thursey stood on her toes to look. Stepping out from
behind a tiny donkey was a monk as round and cheery as one could imagine. His
brown robe was dusty and wrinkled and his tonsure seemed grayer, but Anwin's
smile was just as merry as ever.

 



"Not all, lady," repeated Anwin. "You
have one more daughter who is old enough to dance at the ball."

Augusta had stopped dead, and now she turned upon
Anwin with fury in her eyes.

The herald frowned at her. "Is this so, woman?
The King wants every girl, particularly this year."

"She was too young before," Augusta said
glibly. "I was just about to give her name when ..." she glared at
Anwin.

"What is it then, woman?" The herald did not
seem enchanted with Augusta.

"It is Thursey!" Augusta spat defiantly, and
now her glare had settled on Thursey herself with such hatred that Thursey
trembled. Oh, what good would it do to have her name on the lists? Augusta
would think of some way to keep her home and would be all the more cruel
because of it. Still it was kind of Anwin to try, to stand up for her so. And
how good it was to see him. She grinned and stepped forward, but Anwin was
addressing Augusta.

"Have you lodging, mistress?"

Augusta gave him a black look. "Yes,
lodging," she said shortly and hatefully, and turned away from him. She
had not the courage to refuse the monk, though she would make his stay as
miserable as she dared.

"STABLE the donkey then," Augusta told
Thursey when they were home, "but feed it straw! And see that that monk
mends the pots for his keep, the lazy good-for-nothing, and puts new thatch on
the roof. I can't run a charity for every beggar and catchpenny in the
country!"

Thursey put the little donkey in a clean stall and
gave him such a pile of hay she could hardly see him on the other side of it.
And when her work was done, she raced out to the hills and found Anwin
pottering about among some tansy, picking bits here and there and humming to
himself and to the bees that accompanied him.

He took her hands and stood staring at her, and it
occurred to Thursey with a shock that she no longer had to look up to meet
Anwin's eyes. She was taller than Anwin by several inches. "You've
grown," he said, smiling. "You've grown into a young lady."

"I . . . maybe not quite a lady, Anwin. Augusta
says I'm not. Have you news for me of my father?"

"Yes, child," he said softly. "But I
was hoping you wouldn't ask me right off. It does not pleasure me to bring
it."

She stared at him and could say nothing.

He remained silent, looking so unhappy.

When at last she found her voice, it was no more than
a croak. "He is dead, then, Anwin? Is my father dead?"

"Yes, child, he is dead. But he died, I am sure
from the information I have, among the king's troops that stormed into Balkskak
castle."

She turned away from Anwin and stood looking out over
the windy fields. She thought she felt her father close to her.

Died among the king's troops as they stormed into
Balkskak castle. Died and would never come home again. Died ... he would not
come home, not ever. How much she had counted on that, on seeing her father
again. She turned at last to Anwin, and he put his arms around her and held her
for a long time.

My father died storming Balkskak castle, she thought
over and over and tried not to think: He will not come home to Gies ever.

When at last she had calmed herself, Anwin said
softly, "There was a goatherd here. He spoke of you and has your dinner
for you. He said there was plenty for three, but I . . ."

"Oh," she said, pulling her thoughts back
from the blackness, "Oh, do come Anwin. You'll like him." It would do
no good to pine by herself. She took Anwin's hand and began to lead him up over
the hills.

Gillie was settled in the lee of some boulders where
the sun hit warm. He spread out currant cakes and lamb pie, blackberries and
tea with heavy cream, China cakes and trifle.

"How did you ever get it all?" Thursey said
in amazement, trying to put the sadness away from her for the sake of the other
two.

"I made a friend of the cook."

"Is she young and beautiful?" Thursey said,
grinning.

"She's old and wrinkled and kind."

Thursey sat down on the grass with her feet tucked
under her, and the monk settled more slowly, to recline against the warming
stone, his boots stuck out comfortably from under his brown habit. And in spite
of the quantity of food he consumed, he began adroitly to winnow out the story
of the goats and how the prince and queen had come to the Isle of Carthemas to
be cured, and how Gillie was set to tend the flock.

"The king brought the queen and prince, himself,
with only a few trusted servants, long before the royal party came,"
Gillie said quietly. "And the queen and prince were taken to the hills
where the sun is strong, to rest in its warmth and be treated by the healers
with our goat's milk and cheeses and herbs. It is a wild, bonny place,
Carthemas, and the air is clear and pure."

"The prince must have been badly wounded when he
was made captive," Anwin said. "A wound that took so long to
heal."

"An ugly wound, and the sickness and fever seemed
to prevent it from healing. An ugly battle too, it is told," Gillie said
easily.

Anwin leaned back sleepily against the boulders.
"And where were you during the war with Balkskak, young Gillie? On the
Isle of Carthemas all that time?"

"Carthemas didn't even know there was a war until
long after Gies's summer palace was freed, and the prince and queen brought half
dead across the sea to rest there."

"They say he is very weak still," Anwin
said. "That he hardly showed his face when the king's party entered the
village."

"I saw him wave," Thursey said. "A
thin, pale boy inside the curtains."

"The prince is a man grown," Gillie said
shortly.

"Yes, but thin all the same."

"Wait until the night of the ball; the prince has
vowed to dance until dawn. I think," Gillie said, studying Thursey,
"that he will find you a winsome partner. Maybe he will dance with no
other."

Her face turned warm with embarrassment.

"What will you wear?" Anwin asked softly.
"For Gillie's right, child, you'll be the loveliest lass at the
ball."

"Oh, Anwin, I can't go. They will never let
me."

"I saw the herald ride down," Gillie said.
"Was he announcing the ball?"

"Yes, and Anwin made Augusta give my name for the
lists."

"Then you must go. They say the king commands
that all on the lists must attend."

"If Augusta has to let me, then she'll dress me
in something horrid." She stroked the silken white coat of the nanny
beside her. "Besides I I truly don't want to go." Why couldn't
Gillie understand that to dance with a prince was not what she wanted at all.

"Yes, you do," Gillie said heartlessly. "I
can see it in your eyes. I told you I would help you with a bit of magic, and I
will. Just you wait and see." And he winked at Anwin.

"YOU should get a beating," fumed Augusta,
"but there isn't time. Get those chests in the hall open, we must have the
silks out for suitable gowns. Hurry!" "But I thought" "The
chests!" screamed Augusta.

"BUT I THOUGHT THEY HAD GOWNS," Thursey screamed
back. "I made them just after Christmas, their gowns for the King's
ball!"

"Wrong color," Augusta said shortly.
"Delilah hates green, and lavender makes Druscilla look bilious. You
haven't any taste; you made a botch of it, and now it is to do over and not a
minute to spare! Get those chests
open!"

"But I didn't pick out the colors, they
did!" Thursey didn't expect an answer to that. She flounced into the
hall and began banging open the heavy oaken chests that lined one wall. If she
were going to get a tongue-lashing, then she might as well be nasty enough to
earn it. Besides, Augusta couldn't do much to her, or there would be no one to
sew the new dresses. She began lifting the laces and the satins, the voiles,
the silks of amethyst and scarlet and melon, the taffetas of cerise and amber,
out of the heavy chests and laying them across the great trestle tables.

Then she brought a looking glass, and the sisters
tried one fabric and another, making Thursey hold each piece to each of them
while they preened and studied themselves from all angles.

Nothing seemed to suit. "Bring that one"
Delilah ordered. "No, that oneI can't stand that. Why can't
you find anything really lovely, all of these are rags!"

Finally Druscilla settled on a cloth of gold that made
her skin look quite yellow, and Delilah chose a bolt of bright red satin that
Thursey thought singularly unflattering. Augusta chose black silk, as Thursey
knew she would, and she wondered why Augusta's old black silk wouldn't do. But
of course. They were going to keep her so busy she would have no time to make a
dress for herself.

"And what will I wear to the ball?" she
asked as innocently as she could manage.

"Wear?" cried Augusta. "You? You won't
have time to make yourself a dress; you'll have to wear something of
Delilah's!" She turned on her heel and left the hall, Druscilla directly
behind her and Delilah behind her. Thursey began to fold the yards and yards of
silk and put them in the chests.

"TRY them on," said Delilah, flinging down
half a dozen worn gowns before Thursey. Thursey had been fitting the red satin
dress to Delilah and the cloth of gold dress to Druscilla. (Sewing for the two
of them was like making a sword sheath and a mattress cover, but with more
difficulties.)

Thursey tried on the dresses one by one, while
Druscilla and Delilah and Augusta sat about on the beds and made comments.

Delilah's clothes were like tents on Thursey, tents
equipped with ruffles. The shoulders drooped down to her elbows, and the
bodices draped in lumpy layers down her front. "You could take that one in
a little and it would be quite charming," said Augusta of a bile green creation.
"The color is very good." It was a terrible color. It made the
shadows under Thursey's eyes (she had sewn all night) go purple.

Druscilla and Delilah agreed that it was the very
dress. "It makes you look quite sophisticated," said Druscilla.

"The men always gazed at me in that dress,"
Delilah said.

When Thursey looked at herself in the mirror, the
reflection made her gag.

"The very thing," said Augusta with finality
and sent Thursey off to get on with her sewing.

Thursey flung the bile green dress into the broom
cupboard and began to sew the hem of the black silk, jabbing and jabbing her
needle as if she were jabbing it into her stepmother. But soon enough her
temper cooled, for Anwin came to sit in the kitchen, and she made tea for them
and cut a little cake. "The roof's all thatched," said Anwin.
"How is the sewing coming?"

"I worked all night," said Thursey bitterly.
"It's not much fun to sew for those three."

"Like the silk purse and the sow's ear,"
observed Anwin. "And have you begun a ball gown for yourself, child?"

"You should see what they gave me to wear!"
She opened the broom closet and held the bile green dress up to herself.

"Oh my," said Anwin. He studied it a long
time. "Oh, how very dreadful." Then he began to laugh. Soon they were
both laughing.

"But what will you wear?" he asked
finally, pouring out more tea.

"I don't know, Anwin. Gillie saidhe said he
would bring magic to make a dress, but I "

"If he said it," Anwin interrupted,
"then surely he will do it, child."

But Thursey didn't know how he could. And the thought
of the ball, and of the bile green dress, and Gillie's impossible promise of
magic quite saddened her somehow. Late at night when her eyes were red from
sewing, she crawled into bed and, instead of falling asleep at once, took out
the painted books.

Their colors, and the hope in the stories, lifted her
spirit, and she sat reading for a long time by candlelight, until she fell
asleep at last with the books scattered on the quilt and the candle burnt to
nothing.

IT was a week later, and very early in the morning
that she woke to a light tapping on the back door. "Who is it?"
Thursey whispered, having come awake at once.

"It's Gillie. May I come in?"

She arose quickly and opened the door to see dawn
streaking the dark sky and Gillie carrying a package.

"What is it?" she asked, taking the
outthrust bundle.

"Can I come in?"

She backed away to let him in and blushed faintly,
because in the dream from which she had just awakened he had been kissing her.
"I'll make some tea," she whispered, stirring up the ashes and
putting on some wood. "But what is in the package?" She began to
slice the bread.

"Come and open it."

The wrapping was of purest linen tied with silver
cord. When she had untied the cord and folded the wrapping back, she could not
believe what shone up at her.

It was silver cloth embroidered with flowers in shades
of blue and red and the petals and stems of gold. It was like a spring day,
that cloth, like the sun on a delicate garden.

Thursey held it up, and Gillie looked at her with
admiration, then brought the mirror.

"Oh Gillie!"

The bits of turquoise and azure in the flowers caught
the color of her eyes and made them bluer. (If they could be any bluer,
thought Gillie.) And the flowers of tangerine and rose, the silver and gold,
glowed richly. "Oh Gillie! Wherever did you get it? What kind of magic
could you have used? You haven't stolen it from the palace?"

"I haven't stolen it," he said. "But do
you like it?"

"It's the most beautiful thing I ever saw. I'll
be afraid to touch it with the scissors."

"You will make a lovely dress of it. You'll be
the sensation of the ball." And then he took her hand and kissed her
gently.

Thursey cut the beautiful cloth late at night, laying
it out on the kitchen table. She trembled with fear that she would ruin it or
that her stepmother would come in. But before she ever laid scissors to it she
made herself a model, cut out of the rough cotton from which she made her
underclothes and nightgowns, and stitched hastily to see that the fit would be
right. Only then did she begin on Gillie's gift. And as she sewed, she paused
again and again to hold a bit of the cloth up to herself before the looking
glass. She sewed by candlelight each night until dawn began to come, then she
would fold the dress carefully and lay it under her mattress.

And in the daytime she worked on the other three
dresses. Though, like a canny fox, she took her time over the sisters' gowns,
for she knew very well that if she finished too soon, they would find something
else to prevent her from working on a dress of her own. (The chests in the hall
had been mysteriously locked after the sisters had chosen their fabric.) How
they must have snickered at the thought of Thursey trying to alter Delilah's
bile green satin.

"I HEARD," Druscilla said, "from a
carter who heard it from a page in the palace, that the Sword of Balkskak will
lie on display in the great hall the night of the ball."

"What for? Why would they put a sword in the
ballroom!" Her stepmother scoffed.

"Because it saved the prince! Because it's a
symbol of the prince's safety and return home," she said in a manner that
implied she knew more than anyone, including Augusta.

"You'd better watch your tongue" Augusta
began.

"Oh, how romantic," Delilah interrupted.
"The very sword, there in the ballroom for all of us to see and touch,
just as we'll see the prince. I heard," she whispered conspiratorially,
"that maybe they've found the man who wielded it. ..."

At once Augusta's expression turned scheming. "If
the prince is too pale and weak to wed one of you, perhaps such a man ..."

"Would make a good husband," Druscilla
finished. "Oh yes, I could love such a man as that . . ."

Sickened at the three of them, Thursey turned away to
finish laying the tables. She tried to hide a yawn, but sharp-eyed Druscilla
saw her. "What are you yawning for? You look quite done for sleeplook at
her! What are you doing at night that you don't get your sleep, not praying,
surely! Slipping out with that dirty herdboy, likely."

"Sewing!" Thursey said defiantly. Well, she
had been sewing, but on her own gown in the wee hours. "Your gowns take a
long time, with my other work in the day."

"And with slipping off to the hills to
who-knows-what kind of behavior!" Delilah put in. "And that monk . .
."

Thursey turned deliberately and pushed through the
door to the kitchen. She was afraid she would lose her temper if she stayed.
Dead for sleep, and irritable, she was in no mood for the sisters' haranguing.
Alone in the kitchen, she sighed and wondered if she could finish all
four gowns in time for the ball.

But on the morning of the ball, she sewed the last
stitch in her own gown, and the other three hung nearly ready for the
stepsisters and Augusta. She was heavy-eyed and dull when dawn streaked the
sky, but she laid her needle aside, stripped off her night dress, and lifted
the beautiful garment over her head.

She stood before the mirror and gazed at herself. The
skirt of the gown made a wide arc, hanging in lovely folds and nipping in at
her waist delightfully. The bodice was low and showed her curves just enough,
but not wantonly. The little sleeves were no more than whispers. The colors of the
fabric shone in the candlelight as if the fabric was lit from within: a tender
glowing brightness. Thursey sighed with wonder at the reflection that looked
back at her. How she wished that Gillie would come tapping now.

After breakfast she washed Delilah's hair in rainwater
and was curling it up on bits of cloth when Druscilla began screaming
frantically from the hall below. Thursey thought she had found the gown tucked
beneath her mattress, and she raced down in panic, Delilah and Augusta pushing
at her heels.

They found Druscilla standing in the middle of the
hall, her head raised, screaming at the top of her lungs. When Augusta started
toward her, she stopped screaming, stuck out her hands, and cried, "Stop!
You'll mash them!"

Augusta came charging on, took one step where the
rushes were thin, and fell flat on her backside.

All around Augusta's sprawling form, strewn among the
rushes, were little glints of light.

It was Druscilla's pearls. She had broken her string
of pearls.

"Seventy-two," said Augusta, getting slowly
up and rubbing her bruises. "Seventy-two exactly. And the string cannot be
restrung without every one of them." She turned toward Thursey and
scowled. "What are you waiting for?"

Thursey got down on her hands and knees and began
searching out the pearls from among the rushes. When she had found twenty-four,
she could see no others, and she began picking up the rushes themselves to
clear the floor. I'm like Aschenputtel, she thought. For Aschenputtel's
stepmother, just before the ball, threw a dish of lentils into the ashes and
made Aschenputtel pick up every one. But, Thursey thought, the white bird came
to help her. There's no white bird for me.

"All seventy-two," repeated Augusta and
turned on her heel to leave.

"But . . . but . . . but . . ." sobbed
Druscilla, pointing to the corner of the hall.

"What now!" bellowed Augusta.
"What are you pointing at?"

"Down that mousehole," cried Druscilla.
"One went down that mousehole!"

When Augusta had departed, ranting, Druscilla
dissolved in another pool of tears, and Delilah sat down on a chair while
Thursey continued to crawl about on her hands and knees seeking pearls among
the rushes.

Soon she had found forty-nine.

"Look harder," grumbled Delilah.

Then fifty-six.

"Keep looking," sobbed Druscilla.

Then sixty-seven.

"Move more rushes," advised Delilah.

And finally she had seventy-one pearls safely in her
apron.

"Now the mousehole," said Delilah. "Put
your hand in."

She tried, but it wouldn't fit.

"You're not trying hard enough," sobbed
Druscilla.

"You will find that pearl," said Augusta
stalking in again, "or you will not go to the ball."

Finally Thursey, failing to dig the pearl out or even
to see it with her eye to the mousehole, went to sit sadly in the stables with
Anwin. "I can't go to the ball, then," she said. "I'll never
wear Gillie's dress. Augusta says the string can't be finished without it, and
Druscilla can't go without the pearls, and I can't go if she can't!"

"In a mousehole," Anwin mused. "I have
heard talk involving magic and a mouse."

"Oh, Anwin," Thursey said with disgust.
"Don't talk like Gillie! Magic can't help me now."

"Magic got your dress, didn't it?"

"Gillie brought the material."

"But how do you know he didn't get it by magic?
And even if magic won't help you, maybe the mouse can help."

"What do you mean?"

"Think about the hole," said Anwin.
"Think about it like a mouse would, think about what it is like to be in
there."

"All right," she said hopelessly. She
thought about the little mouse going down into the hole, dark and warm,
climbing down and down until he reachedwhat? A warm dark tunnel? A little cave
with a soft bed made of lint and feathers? It must be below the floor then, his
bed.

And below the floor waswhat? What would his walls be
made of?

Thursey scrambled up, grabbed a trowel and ran round
the outside of the inn to the corner of the hall.

There she began to dig. And pretty soon, when she had
dug the dirt away from under the corner of the hall floor, the trowel pushed
suddenly into an opening and she looked in to see a nest of lint and thread,
and, lying to one side, Druscilla's pearl.

"Now child," said Anwin when Thursey had
returned the pearl and restrung all seventy-two onto a linen thread, "Put
on your ball gown for me, for I will not be here to see you dressed in it
tonight."

"But Anwin, you have to stay for the ball. And
it's Easter, you won't travel on Easter."

Anwin shook his head. "I'll be on the high road
among the silence and the hills on Easter day, child. I don't take to
all the pomp and fuss of the king's ball especially at Easter when I would
rather be alone with my own prayers."

She dressed in the gown for him and pinned up her
hair, and Anwin took from his pocket a pair of silver shoes that fitted her
exactly. "And how will you ride to the ball? In the carriage with your
stepsisters?"

 



"I'll ride the old mare, I guess."

"With your skirts hiked up?"

"I will. I don't trust what Augusta and those two
would think of to do to me between here and the castle, Anwin."

He laughed, thinking she was right. "You could
perhaps slip off on Augusta's old sidesaddle, though. I've seen it in the
harness room."

"I'd feel a fool, Anwin. I only know how to ride
like a boy."

The old man grinned broadly, thinking of her riding
with her skirts hiked up, to the castle. "Well you are too beautiful for
it to matter. And wearing that gown, no one will notice how you got there. Now
let me see the books you have done while I've been away."

She brought them out, and while she stitched on the
hem of Druscilla's gold dress, he examined each one attentively. "Child,
oh, child," he said at last, "How lovely. They're beyond my wildest
imaginings."

"Which do you like best?"

"It's hard for me to say. One of these two, but
I'm not sure which." He held up the story of the gooseherd, and
"Liisa and the Prince." "Gillie is like the goose-herd. He, too,
has made magic so you can go to the ball."

"Ohoh, no, Anwin! Not Gillie!"

And then he saw what he had done, for the goose-herd
had gone away forever. He put his arm around her. "But Gillie won't
disappear, he's far too real for that, child. Here now, here now. . . ."

When she had quieted, he continued examining the
books. The boldest, "Liisa and the Prince," he looked at again and
again. There was red for the fire that Liisa carried in the skull and for the
burning pit. And black for the dark forest and for the ogress, black for the
lamb that strayed. White for the linen dress Liisa put on, white for the
spilled milk she must pick up. Anwin read some of the pages aloud, quite
engrossed. "The ogress spat in the face of Liisa's mother, and said, 'My
body to you, yours to me,' and they were changed about. But only Liisa
knew." He smiled and examined the pages, then read the last lines,
"The prince built a pit of burning tar and the ogress and her daughter
fell into it, into the fire, and that was the end of them. And Liisa heard the
spirit of her mother whisper, 'Now I shall rest for I know you are happy at
last.'

"Lovely," Anwin said. "Lovely. Has
Gillie seen your books?"

"Oh no, he would think them childish."
"Are you sure?"

"II don't know, Anwin. Wouldn't he?" But
Anwin only smiled.

Chapter Five

HEARD
it in the brewer's," Augusta said. "The king has placed the
Sword of Balkskak on a dais in the ballroom."

"I heard," Delilah simpered among clouds of
dusting powder and perfume, "I heard they know who wielded
it at Balkskak!"

"Why would they wait until now?" Augusta
said with disdain.

"For drama!" Druscilla said haughtily.
"So it can be announced at the ball. I wonder who ..." Her bulging
eyes lit with selfish interest.

"It must be someone in the king's own
company," Delilah ventured. "If it was a village lad, we'd have heard
. . ."

"Knights have been riding in all week for the
ball," Augusta reminded them. "Maybe they did just find out,"
she said in a rare fit of reasonableness. "Though," she added,
"it's probably just a trumped-up story done for show, to make the ball
more interesting. Get on with your dressing. Do you want to be late?"

Late? Thursey thought. They've been at the unguents
and facials and footbaths ever since Easter services this morning. She finished
the ironing, took up the comb, and began on Delilah's curls. Delilah's red
satin stretched tightly, as she would have it, over her bulges, and the flesh
that emerged from her low neckline was startling. At the other dressing table,
Druscilla fastened on her pearls. Her hair, which she had done herself, was
piled in an arrangement that resembled nothing Thursey could think of.

"And now," said Delilah as Thursey combed
out the last curl, "now the red slippers, and that will top it all
off."

But when Thursey had brought the slippers, Delilah
screamed with rage, "There's a hole in the toe of one, and there's a hole
in the heel of the other! A mouse!" she bellowed. "A mouse has been
at my slippers!"

That mouse! thought Thursey. Some kind of magic that
mouse is!

"Get another pair," commanded Augusta,
bearing down on Thursey. "Get another pair at once!"

"But where?"

"The cobbler, stupid! Be off!"

"But it's Easter, his shop will be closed. He
couldn't make shoes before the ball anyway, there isn't time."

"He must! Tell him he must. Now be
off." Thursey pelted down the stairs, and Augusta's shout followed her,
"Tell him by order of the King!"

Thursey nearly choked on that as she fled across the
yard.

Delilah poked her head out the window, "No
shoes," she yelled, "you little baggage, and there'll be no ball for
you!" Thursey tore down the village street with her anger rising like a
tide, to pound on the cobbler's door.

But when the cobbler came shuffling to unlock for her
and had heard what she wanted, he only looked at her irritably. "I
can't," he said, observing the chewed slippers. "I can't possibly,
there simply isn't time."

"But what am I to do?"

"What about the monk at the inn? That old fellow
can cobblebut no one can make a pair of slippers before the ball
tonight."

"Could you make one slipper?"

"Well I guess ... he began hesitantly.

"Then if I could find Anwinhe left today, but a
little donkey can't go so farif I can find Anwin he could make the other! Oh, could
you try?"

"I'll try," said the cobbler, and took up
Delilah's old slipper for a pattern.

Off she went, round the cobbler's and down the street
and round again on the dirt path kicking up streamers of dust and onto the old
mare's back, hardly taking time to tie the halter round her head properly. Then
out the gate and down the high road following the little donkey footprints (no
other donkey in the kingdom had such tiny feet). Running full tilt, the old
mare turned her head around twice to stare at Thursey, as surprised as you
please.

When she saw Gillie on a knoll, she could only wave at
him, though all the goats bleated, and Gillie shouted, "Thursey, Thursey,
wait . . ." But she was gone, the wind catching at her hair.

On they went with the hoofprints always ahead of them.
Oh, how far he had gone. The mare clattered through a dry stream and over a
little hill and there was not a soul about. Thursey began to wonder about
robbers. They pelted past the dark marsh and Thursey thought she caught the
scent of roses once; then at last she saw Anwin beside a brook eating the bread
and cheese she had packed for him earlier. She handed him the shoe and told him
the story in one breath.

Anwin said nothing. He dug into his bag, pulled out
his cobbler's tools, found a bit of red leather, and set to work.

"Oh Anwin," she whispered, "you
can."

"I can try," he said. "I can only
try."

By the time Thursey reached the village once more,
dusk was falling, and she had met the first carriages on the road, the horses
shining and the ladies glittering in their ball gowns. The old mare was done,
sweating and blowing. Thursey jumped off her in front of the cobbler's shop and
found him just finishing the slipper. She sped away with it, turned the mare
into the stable yard, and pounded up the stairs with the slippers in her hand,
then down again to rub the sweat from the mare and harness Magniloquence.
"And be sure you polish the harness," Druscilla flung after her. She
had received no thanks for the slippers. The three had only glared at her and
wondered what took her so long. "You'll have to hurry to get the carriage
ready," called Delilah.

"You'd better put some supper on," shouted
Augusta. "And heat the ale."

"They won't serve any food at the palace until
midnight," complained Delilah. "These slippers are awfully tight,
they hurt my toes."

When the carriage was ready and the old mare had been
rubbed down so she wouldn't take cold, Thursey went into the kitchen thinking,
Cold lamb and bread should be enough. And ale.

And there they were, Delilah's fat figure in red,
Druscilla's thin one in gold, and Augusta a square black box. The doors to
Thursey's bed had been flung open and they were crowded around it. The mattress
was turned back, and the beautiful gown lay across it.

"Where did she get it?" screamed Delilah.

"You can't let her wear it!" cried
Druscilla.

Their three glares of hatred turned full upon Thursey.

"No matter where she got it," said Augusta,
picking up the dress, "she will never wear it." She held it up before
her so the colors glowed, smiled for a long moment, and then she ripped it in
two down the middle.

Then she ripped out the little sleeves.

Then she tore each of the pieces in half, and in half
again, and the threads, as they parted, snagged and pulled across the clothit
seemed Augusta's passion would leave nothing at all, not a remnant. When she
had spent herself at last, she flung the tangle onto the floor and took herself
out, her daughters marching haughtily behind her.

They mounted into the carriage behind Magniloquence,
forgetting their supper in their wrath, and trotted down the lane to the high
road, heads erect and uncompromising, and up the high road toward the palace.

Thursey went out finally to the old mare, her eyes
swollen from weeping. The poor dress was beyond repair, and she could only go
to the mare for comfort. For spirit comfort and for creature comfort, for
someone gentle to be alone with, this loneliest of nights.

But the mare was gone.

Her stepsisters had left the gate open. Oh, how cruel
and horrible they were! Thursey would have dissolved into weeping again, but
this turn of events made her so mad that she pounded the fence with her fist,
then started out after the mare.

She had left the torn dress on her bed, closing the
doors across it and unable to look again. She felt so bad for Gillie. She
didn't know what she would say to him, it was as if she had betrayed a sacred
trust that he had put in her. He had given her a gift that must have cost him
something very dear, and she had let it be destroyed.

She searched and searched among the hoofprints on the
high road, but so many horses had gone along it that she had to walk a long
way, first in one direction, then in the other, before she could locate the
familiar broken-hooved trail. Then she hurried along it, alone, up the high
road.

As she followed the mare's hoofprints, the dark began
to come down so she thought she must lose the trail soon. She studied the
darkening hills for a white form. But even if she saw one, it could be Gillie's
goats and not the mare at all.

But Gillie would not have them out so late. He would
be at the palace watching the ball from some dark place where the servants were
allowed to peek out. What would he think when he did not see her dancing in the
gown he had given her?

Once she saw a bit of white and ran over the hills to
it, but it was only a rock. Soon it was so dark she could no longer find the
hoofprints.

Then the moon began to send up its light before
itself, a pale gleam behind the hills, that grew slowly. It threw shadows
across the hills, then made their round faces grow lighter. Now she could see
the mare's trail a little, and she hurried faster.

Then the moon itself came, a sliver. Then it was more
than a sliver, and the hoofprints were etched sharply upon the whitened road.
Then the moon pulled itself up on top the last hill, tore away and hung
suspended, and the hills themselves were bathed in its icy light. Thursey searched
the landscape, but she was entirely alone.

Now on her left was a copse of dark trees, and she
thought of robbers. She tried to think, instead, how the carriages would look
arriving at the ball. They would be lined along the drive, and from each would
step down gentlemen with lace at their cuffs and swords hanging at their sides
and ladies in lovely gowns. Were there footmen to take the horses' heads? But
of course there would be. A shadow on her left seemed to have moved. Now it was
still, though, and she went on, listening. Nothing stirred behind her. On her
right was the swamp now, the moon caught the shallow water and the mud flats
into a silver lake. What was that, far out on the swamp path? It was white, and
surely it was moving. Thursey turned onto the narrow path and called to the
mare. Her voice sounded strange. What would hear her besides the mare in this
eerie place? The white shape seemed to grow smaller.

She hurried faster and the shape moved away from her.
It must be the mare. "Oh, wait for me!" Thursey cried. But the mare
moved on annoyingly. The water around Thursey was like liquid metal, the moon
reflected in it.

The swamp path wound and lost itself among copses of
stunted trees, and always just ahead the white shape moved away. Only once did
Thursey get a little closer, and then her directions were confused entirelybut
surely it was the mare.

Then the shape left the swamp path and plunged into
the swamp itself and Thursey, thoroughly frightened, plunged after it, running.

The mud was icy cold, and slimy round her ankles. She
called to the mare, and her voice did not seem so lost now because the noise of
her splashing accompanied it. The shape ahead took no notice of her. Then by a
lonely tree the mare looked back and threw her head in stubborn defiance.
Thursey could see her plainly now. She sighed with relief. "Come on, old
mare," she cried. "Can't you wait for me?"



The mare flicked her tail and went on.

"Oh please, I need you so," Thursey cried.
She was almost in tears.

The mare stopped.

She was knee deep in mud when Thursey got to her and
looking very pleased with herself. She drew back her old lips, showed her huge
yellow teeth, and nipped Thursey on the arm.

"Oh!" Thursey cried and put the rope on her.
"Oh, how horrid you can be!" And then she collapsed against the mare,
crying in spite of herself. She told the mare about the dress and about how
cruelly the sisters had acted. She cried and cried against the mare's warm
neck, and the mare stood patiently in the mud and did not nip again. Clouds
covered the moon so the swamp darkened, and the water grew colder around their
feet. But it didn't matter, they were together.

When the mare started back of her own accord toward
the swamp path, Thursey was so exhausted she could only follow dumbly, hanging
onto the halter. The mare seemed in some haste now to be out of the mud, and
soon it was all Thursey could do to trot beside her in the knee-deep muck and
to climb up the slick bank toward the swamp path. From slimy water they
squelched onto clinging mudthen suddenly ahead of them a second white shape
loomed. If the mare had not been beside her, Thursey would surely have followed
it. She trembled so her heart seemed to stop and tried to force the mare in
another direction, but the stubborn old creature kept on, looking with little
interest at the pale shape.

Thursey jerked the halter but it did little good. It's
nothing! she thought. It's nothing but a tree. But she wasn't sure.

Then she caught the scent of roses.

"It's roses," she said aloud, wondering.
"It's the enchanted rosebush. But it can't be, there's no such thing as
enchantment. It's just a plain rosebush. There's no such thing as haunts
either," she added sharply and approached the bush straight on.

When she reached it, she was trembling, perhaps with
fear, perhaps from anticipation. And overcome with curiosity. How could such a
bush grow in these quantities of mud? She stared at the heavily budded branches
the bush was a tall as she wasthen leaned against the mare's warm side,
thinking. The mare, bored, began to nose among the runners for grass.

An ordinary rosebush. Healthy and rank with growth and
crowded with tiny pink blooms. They were clustered, small and perfect, along
each supple branch. Thursey took a runner in her hands and not a thorn was
there to scratch her. She pulled it free of the bush and held it up in the
moonlight. The little roses were scented delicately and finely made as lace.

I might, she thought. Could I? She stared at the roses
and felt excitement take her.

Soon she had pulled away an armload of long creepers
and laid them across the mare's back. Elated, she gathered more until the pile
towered, sweet and heavy. The mare stood head down, nibbling disinterestedly.

Thursey scrambled up behind her burden, trying not to
crush a single rose, and dug in her heels. The mare was tired now and
unwilling, but Thursey, stubborn too, kept at her. She dared not think about
what she intended to do. She dared not wonder if she could do it. She
crouched over the scented bundle numb with cold as the mare splashed through
the mud toward the road, then started home.

And when they came at last through their own gate,
there was Anwin's little donkey standing in the stable yard.

Thursey piled off the mare with her burden almost
toppling her and was about to fly into the kitchen to greet Anwin when the
little monk stepped out of the shadows by the water trough and took the mare's
halter. He eyed the roses but said nothing, though he looked perplexed.
Gathering roses in the middle of the night? This night?

"I saw the torn dress," he said at last.
"I came back thinking ..." He looked at the roses again, then at
Thursey. Then slowly something began to dawn on him. He began to smile. Then he
grinned. Then he laughed out loud. "Well hurry up, child, the night is
getting on! I'll see to this old mare."

She flew to the kitchen wondering if Anwin really had
guessed what she was about. She could not even look at the poor torn dress. She
dumped the roses on the table, opened the cupboard, and from behind some crocks
drew out the hastily sewn cotton model she had made.

She stirred up the fire and put the iron to heat, then
drew the kettle from the hob, poured out some lukewarm water, and began to wash
the mud and grime from herself, scrubbing until she was pink. Next she ironed
the rough cotton model, found her needle and thread, and commenced to put
proper stitching into the basted seams.

It seemed hours that Thursey stitched, hurrying as
fast as she could, and all the time thinking, I'll never be done. And even if I
am, no one can go to the king's ball dressed practically in her nightdress.
It's not even bound around the sleeves and neck. Why am I sewing like this in
the middle of the night?

But still she sewed faster and could not seem to help
herself. All the stubborness in Thursey had risen like a tide, and she would
not give in even to good sense.

When Anwin came in to help her, they both sewed as
fast as they could, the seams, and then the rose tendrils, twining them around
the skirt. Through the open doorway Thursey could see the moon beginning to
drop a little, and she could hear the midnight trumpets from the castle, so her
heart dropped too nearly to her toes.

"You don't want to make an entrance while they're
at supper, child. Wait until the dancing begins again these things go on until
dawn. There will be no pumpkin to call you back, Thursey, once you are at the
palace."

Thursey stared at Anwin. And suddenly all the
uncertainty she had fought came flooding out. She lay her needle down and sat
looking at her hands. What made her thinkwhat had ever made her thinkthat
she could go to the king's ball dressed in common muslin sewn with swamp vines?
Everyone would laugh. Her stepsisters would roar; she could almost hear
Delilah.

And GillieGillie would be shocked.

"Oh Anwin . . ."

Anwin smiled, patted her hand, sewed his last stitch,
and put down his needle. He held the full skirt out wide so the rows and rows
of twined roses shone in the candlelight. Then he stood, lifted Thursey to her
feet and unbuttoned her old dress so it slid to the floor. He dropped the
rose-covered dress over Thursey's head and fastened it. Then he rummaged in the
cupboards until he found the silver cord with which Gillie's package had been
tied, and, with surprising skill for a man, he began to brush and bind up
Thursey's hair.

When at last she looked into the mirror the old monk
brought, she could not believe it. Her hair, piled high in a coronet and woven
with silver, was a wonder. Her cheeks were pink with excitement. And the dress
oh, the rose-covered dress looked beautiful. She stared, turned, pirouetted.
Then she flung her arms around Anwin.

But the old man held her away, and wiped her tears,
and said gruffly, "Come, child, the night is getting on." He led her
out to the stable yard and handed her up the mounting block just like a real
lady, and then he brought the mare.

Oh, the mare had been polished until she shone. Anwin
had bathed her, and her hooves were trimmed and blackened. Across her back was
a red silk saddle cloth, and atop it shone Augusta's sidesaddle, polished and
fine, and the mare was wearing Augusta's riding bridle!

Thursey, torn between shock and hilarity at borrowing
Augusta's prized possessions, could only stand grinning at Anwin. The hair in
the mare's ears had been trimmed smooth, as had her muzzle and her fetlocks.
And her mane was worked carefully with red ribbons into a thick French braid
that ran the length of her neck. Her tail was braided the same, and the old
creature was arching her neck and thrusting her ears forward comically.

Thursey mounted and seated herself for the first time
in a real lady's sidesaddle and took up the reins. "Oh Anwin, do I look a
fool?"

"You look . . . like the loveliest princess ever
to grace the land. Like a true princess. I told you one day you would know
enchantment, and this is the night, Cendrillon. Now off with you. I don't want
to see you til dawn."

Thursey, never having ridden sidesaddle, felt for an
instant as if she were going over backward; but the mare moved with a strange
new grace, as if perhaps the old hoyden's pride had been restored, and soon
enough they were cantering effortlessly through the moonlight, the mare placing
her feet exactly right among the rocks and bouldersthough her ears twisted
around occasionally with curiosity.

Thursey, her gown spread carefully around her, gave
the mare her head gladly and gazed up at the palace. I'm going to the king's
ball. I really am going. She heard Anwin's voice again, "... like
the loveliest princess in the land. I told you one day you would know
enchantmentlike a princess . . ." She lifted the reins and nudged the
mare into a faster canter.

But then between village and castle, just at the
beginning of the long drive with the lights shining down from all the windows
above her and the music so gay, she was suddenly uncertain again. She pulled
the mare in and sat still as stone, staring up the hill at the whirl of dancing
figures through the windows.

Rows of torches flamed along the walks and drive and
among the gardens. A glow of light fell over the arbors and across the
sculptured hedges and the balconies; the windows were brilliant. Torchlight
shone on the coachmen who were rubbing down the waiting carriage horses. The
mare took a few tentative steps as Thursey sat staring, and Thursey could see
the footmen at the top of the marble stairs that led up to the ballroom. She
could see a bit of the chandelier inside, and the dancers; the mare pulled
suddenly at the bit and began to walk up the drive. The grooms stopped their
work and watched. A strange old mare, a strangely clad girl riding up to the
palace alone on a night meant for escorts and carriages and laughing parties. A
lone girl with swamp roses sewn on her dress. In a panic Thursey pulled the
mare round.

I can't. Oh I can't. Not in muslin and swamp roses!

They'll all be wearing satin and velvet and Belgium
lace and ermineI can't go up there. Whatever made me think I could? She leaned
over the mare and dug her heels in hard.

But the old mare, mesmerized by the light and glitter
and the music, swung stubbornly to face the palace. And somewhere inside
Thursey, then, a similar stubbornness burst forth, and made her want to go on.

What had she sewn half the night for if she was going
to run away? What would Anwin say if she came home? She grasped at her shredded
courage, gave the mare her head, and rode straight for the marble stairs.

A footman took the mare's bridle and did not laugh,
and another handed Thursey down as carefully as any lady.

Thursey gazed above her, up the stairs.

The marble flight rose like a mountain. At the very
top, the liveried footmen stared straight ahead of them. And though the music
was bright, a hush held the night suspendeda hush within herself, as if her
own heart had ceased to beat. If she had come early in a group, with her
sistersshe quailed, almost turned, then with determination she lifted the hem
of her skirt as a real lady would and began to ascend the stairs. Her heart pounded
but she made herself go on; her feet seemed very heavy, even in Anwin's silver
slippers. She stared down at them and tried to think of Anwin's kindness as she
mounted one step, then the next.

Could I really have looked the way I thought in the
mirror? Could I have looked beautiful, as Anwin said? Or was it only what I
wanted to see? The music swept around her and she could hear laughter and happy
voices. One step, another. Do I look all right? Will everyone laugh at
me? Her skirts rustled reassuringly, and billowed out around her with the
stiffness the roses gave them. Halfway to the top she paused, and glanced
upward at the landing.

The footmen still stared straight ahead, as immobile
as the marble columns that supported the overhanging roof. But now there was
another figure standing above her just at the head of the stairs. A tall young
man dressed in dark velvet and gathered linen and white gloves. He was looking
down at her, not quite smiling. He was waiting for her, his hand held out to
her. She couldn't believe what she saw. She stood staring and forgot her own
uncertainties as she looked and looked. Gillie! It was Gillie!

How elegant he was. How could he be dressed
like that? How could he be here on the ballroom steps? She felt giddy inside
herself, as if the steps were rocking. Gillie had never told her he'd be
at the ball.

But of course the king had said all the people; he
must have meant the servants, too. Though Gillie didn't look like any servant,
not dressed like that. Nor like a goatherd either. He looked quite wonderful;
and his blue eyes were steady on hers. She took one tentative step and tried to
speak, but only a small croak came out. Was he laughing underneath that serious
look? He held his finger to his lips, and she thought, He's playing a game!
That's it. The liverymen have dressed Gillie up for the ball.

But these weren't livery clothes. These were far
richer, far finer. She climbed the stairs toward him, her heart pounding.
Gillie did not move, but his eyes urged her on: she felt as if her whole life
depended on this moment.

When she reached the top at last, Gillie took her hand
and drew her to him so she went giddy indeed; she was in his arms, was being
swept through the great doors close to Gillie, was on the polished ballroom
floor, whirling, lifted by the music, close to Gillie. . . .

The light from a thousand candles set in crystal
chandeliers shimmered over them, catching the flash of instruments where the
orchestra played on a raised gallery; the colors of the dancers flashed and
changed as Gillie whirled hershe hadn't known she could dance like this, like
flying . . . surely she was dreaming, but she didn't care, she willed herself
never to wake. She could feel the music in her blood like something alive,
could feel the brush of other dancers as they circled, could feel her skirt
whirl and dip, and smell the faint scent of crushed roses where she was pressed
tight against Gillieif this was a dream, this enchantment, she would not let
it end. But Gillie, so close, Gillie was too real for any dream. The faces
around them were happy, smiling, were watching them sometimes. She felt as
elegant as any woman there, and she felt cherished and lovedand then suddenly
she saw Augusta scowling from the sidelines, her dress dark against the
brightness, her venom directed at Thursey, and she felt a stab of fear.

But what could Augusta do? Not run onto the dance
floor and jerk her away! The vision of that, the dark square figure running
among the dancers, was so funny that Thursey buried her face against Gillie's
shoulder in a sudden fit of mirth.

Oh, if this was a dream, this heady nearness to
Gillie, she would not let it end.

But then Druscilla whirled close, dancing with the fishmongera
comical sightand Thursey wondered what the stepsisters would do to her after
the ball when she was home again. "Oh Gillie," she blurted, suddenly
coming to earth.

"Shhh. They can't touch you."

Not now, she thought. After the ball they will. Oh
well, maybe there isn't any later, maybe I'll never wake up. I won't think
about it. Gillie swung her in front of one of the long ballroom mirrors, and
the reflection of the two of them spun and paused; she could hardly believe it
was herself and Gillie she saw. Surely Gillie was the handsomest man in the
ballroom. And her own reflectionoh, yes, her own reflection pleased her now,
for she looked as if she belonged in Gillie's arms . . . his lips brushed her
hair as he bent to whisper. . . .

Later, at a pause in the music, he held her away.
"You look beautiful; it's the most sensational dress in the ballroom, all
the women are staring with envy. But? . . ."

Thursey looked at him with chagrin. "She tore it
into pieces," she whispered miserably. "Your beautiful dress,
Gillie." She felt again the pain of that moment. "At the very last
minute they found it, and Augusta into pieces and pieces "

"Shh . . . it's all right, it's all right. You did handsomely in spite of
it," he said admiringly. The music lifted into a strong waltz, and they
were carried on it as on a tide so her feet hardly touched the floor. "But
where did you find the roses? I don't remember roses in the village, not like these."

"The swamp roses, Gillie. It was the mare found
them. Sheif she hadn't run offit was almost as if she meant me to see
them."

"Are you saying? . . ."

"I don't know what I'm saying. Yes," she
cried, a gay silliness taking her. Drunk with the music and the dancing, drunk
with his closeness, she laughed up at him. "It was just as in the stories,
a kind of magic just like . . ." and then she stared at him, confounded.

"Just like what?"

"But in the stories . . ."

"In the stories . . . what?"

"In the stories . . ."

"In the stories there's a prince," Gillie
answered quietly. He held her away then. "So the story has come
true."

She stared at him and stumbled and wanted to stop
dancing. She felt dazed, then frightened. She had known it from the moment she
looked up and saw him at the head of the stairs, but she had not admitted it.

She had not really known she knew. Gillie. Gillie,
with whom she had sat among the hills. Gillie . . . and she saw the truth of it
coldly and clearly: Gillie was not the same now, was not the Gillie she knew.
That Gillie was lost to her forever. Nothing could be the same now. They would
not walk on the hills again and take their lunch from a basket. They were
different now, she and Gillie.

But Gillie was grinning without a care, teasing.
"Do you know you've shown yourself to a prince in your nightdress? And
ridden with your skirts hiked up in front of him like any hoyden girl?"

She tried to smile but she could not. You can love a
goatherd and feel there is some hope. But to love a prince. . . .

He would dance with her this one night, and then and
thenshe saw he was still smiling, but her own heart was like lead. "Oh
Gillie, not the prince," she said in spite of herself. She could not help
the tear that came.

He stared at her, puzzled. Then he swept her from the
ballroom and out a side door onto the terrace. There they stood facing each
other silently in the shadow of a portico.

She wiped the tear and fought the further tears that threatened.
She hadn't meant to cry. Oh, how could she spoil this beautiful evening. She
bit her lip and made herself smile. "I'm sorry, Gillie'it's justit's the
surprise of it, I guess." She didn't know how to tell him what she felt.
She could not.

"Thursey, IThursey ..." He seemed almost
shy suddenly, not like the Gillie she knew. He was feeling sorry for her, that
was it. He was trying to think how to tell her he would never see her again.
"Thursey, I want ..." But they were interrupted.

"... herefind them here." Oh, it was
Augusta!

"... had her nerve, and where did she get that
dress, I thought . . ."

"There! There they are, in the shadows!"

Thursey turned, the last joy of the night stifled, and
watched the three storm across the terrace, Augusta in full steam and the other
two directly in her wake. Druscilla was squinting, the better to see Thursey's
features; and Delilah was leaning forward as if the added few inches would help
her make out what it was she was not sure about.

Thursey, resigned, stepped out of the shadows to face
them.

But Gillie was quicker. He stood between Thursey and
Augusta, as the stepmother reached for her.

Augusta scowled at him. "Get out of my way! We
thought you were the prince, you charlatan. Then we saw you were not. You've deceived
them, you've deceived everyone at the ball! Where is the real prince? And
let me have her, she's my charge!" She reached for Thursey again. "She
belongs in the kitchen, and youyou belong in the stable yard with
your goats!"

Thursey's face flamed. She must get them out of here,
get them away at once.

"It's just like I said," Druscilla cried
loudly, reaching rudely to feel the cloth of Gillie's sleeve, the while staring
at him as if he were a servant. "It's like I said, they've dressed the
goatherd up because he looks healthy, they thought to make out the prince was
healed and•"

"I think . . ." Delilah interrupted.

But Gillie looked at them so coldly, all three were
silenced. His expression was truly fierce. Then a twitch of laughter twisted
the corner of his mouth; he tried to hide it, but he could not. He doubled over
suddenly with laughter, roaring.

The stepsisters and Augusta stared. After a long
moment, when Gillie kept laughing, they began to shout at him. "Stop
it!" Druscilla screamed, "You can't . . ."

"We won't tolerate . . ."

"Cease at once . . ."

Gillie roared the louder, and Thursey, infected,
nearly choked with laughter. Never in her life had she laughed in her
stepmother's face. Now she could not stop. She hid her face and shook with
laughter, nearly crying with it.

She looked up to see a page standing before Gillie,
glancing with surprise at the three shouting women. "Your highness . .
." the page began.

"Don't call
him 'your highness,' " Augusta shouted. "Don't you know an imposter
when you see one!''

The boy's gaze showed amazement at Augusta's behavior;
then he returned his attention to Gillie. "Your highness . . ." His
voice was more emphatic now. "The king bids ..."

Augusta stepped forward. "You, boy, stop that
muttering and call the king at once. Call the guard! This is an imposter; he's
not the prince at all! Can't you see! You must be an imbecile not to know your
own prince!" Her face had grown beet red.

The page looked at her, now, as if she were quite mad.
Then, deliberately, he turned his back on her. "Your highness," he
said patiently, "the king bids you bring your partner to be presented to
him and the queen. And he spoke of the sword ..."

Now Augusta flew into such a rage that both the page
and Gillie drew back, and Thursey stared in dismay. "You can't know thisthis
dung-pusher for the prince! You're lying, ignorant clod!"

But the young page's patience was exhausted. "I
know him!" he cried hotly, turning his full attention on Augusta. "I
have known Edward Gillian, Prince of Gies, all my life, madam! I served him
faithfully at Carthemas these two years past and hope to serve him 'til I
die!"

Gillie was grinning at the boy's indignant anger. He
put a hand on the page's shoulder and looked coldly at Augusta. "Do you
call my page a liar, old woman? And who are you to speak of this lady as your
charge? My page is no liar, just as Thursey is not your charge. Not in any way.
She is your landlord, for it is her inn you occupy. And it is to her you will
answer for its keeping. She is beholden to no one, unless it would be the
people of Gies in the same manner as I amfor she may be their princess soon.
If she is willing," he added gently.

Thursey stared at him, confounded. What was he saying?
"You didn't tell me, Gillie. You didn't tell me. . . ." Did he mean
he loved her?

"Didn't tell you I was the prince? But it would
have made a strangeness between us. I wanted you to love me as I was, as a
goatherd, not as the Prince of Gies." And then he added softly,
"Could you, Thursey? Could you love me as I am now?"

"Yes. Oh, yes, Gillie, I could!"

WHEN Thursey had mopped her tears, Gillie took her
hand, gave the stepsisters and Augusta a last, amused look, and spoke quietly
to the page. "Tell my father we will come now. Take the Sword of Balkskak
from its resting place and lay it by the king's hand."

He led Thursey to the gallery, where she knelt before
the seated king and queen. She dared not gaze up at them. But Gillie raised her
chin and made her look, and she saw the king was smiling. Across his knees lay
a sword, old and battered. The music in the ballroom was silenced as Gillie
turned to face the stilled dancers. He drew them forward with a look, with a
gesture. He was not a goatherd now, there was no question who he was. Thursey
felt she hardly knew him as he stood speaking to the assembled citizens of Gies
so softly, but with such authority.

AFTERWARD she felt so faint she thought she could not
walk from the ballroom. And when they sat alone in the garden she was shaken
still. Gillie brought her wine and some supper, but she sat staring at the
plate knowing she couldn't eat.

"Drink," Gillie said. "Eat a little,
Thursey. When did you eat last?"

"I don't know." She sipped the wine and
found it helped. "You knew all along, Gillie! You knew it was my father
who . . . that it was he who wielded the Sword of Balkskak." There in the
ballroom, as she had stood facing Gillie, she had been swept with a sadness and
longing for her father and with a joy for him, that she could hardly deal with.
There were no tears, but her eyes were as heavy and full as her heart as Gillie
placed the sword in her outstretched hands.

"I didn't know until you told me your father had
been hurt in the mill. Even then, not at first. I was nearly unconscious during
the battle. I was so weak I couldn't lift my head, let alone my hand to help
him. It was only when you mentioned the two missing fingers that the picture
came back to me, of a tall blond man fighting practically on top of me with his
maimed right hand flung back so he wielded the sword with his left. A maimed
hand with two fingers missing.



"My father has always vowed that the wielder of
the sword would be presented it in ceremony in the great hall. You are his only
kin, Thursey. Don't tell me you didn't enjoy the spectacle your stepmother
made, trying to claim the sword in your stead." He started to grin, then
pulled his face into a serious expression. "You mean you didn't like
seeing the king put her down?"

She bent over, shaken with sudden mirth. "Yes.
Oh, yes, Gillie, you . . ." But then she straightened up and stared at
him. "But you haven't told me everything. Why did you pose as a goatherd?
Why did you come back to your own country disguised? And who was looking out of
the carriage next to the queen? What"

He hushed her, then grinned again. "Did you never
guess who I was?"

"No. Nor did anyone else. How could I? I thought
you were very handsome. I thought Carthemas must be a special place to have a
goatherd like you, but . . ."

"Carthemas is a wonderful place. Listen, Thursey,
even when I was small I wasn't allowed my freedom among the hills and pastures
of Gies. I was always in the gardens of the palace, then later with a dozen or
more of the king's company or in a hunting party. And at the summer palace it
was the same, I was never on my own. Then we were attacked and I was wounded
right off, and there was the long journey, bound in a wagon with my mother, as
we were taken to Balkskak. And then the time of sickness and my leg paining me,
and my mother so illalways confinement. I never knew what it was to be on my
own. The prison cell was the first time I was ever really alone, and then there
were walls around me. When we were rescued and taken to CarthemasI think my
father believed we would both die, it was a desperate thing he did to journey
all the way with us secretly, in the night when we were taken there and I
began to mend and to be allowed to roam freely over the island, it was an
amazement to me. I was alone for the first time on the hills in the wind, and
you can't imagine the freedom I felt. I think that, as much as the goat milk,
helped to cure me. When it was time to return, I didn't want this old life
again so soon. I told my father I would not return at all unless I had it my
way. And my way was to become the goatherd, and get to know Gies and this
village in a way I never could have otherwise."

"But who was in the carriage?''

"A page with powdered face. The few trusted
servants and members of the court who knew were pledged to secrecy. I had not
been known well in the village, and I was less than twelve when I left it the
last time. You can't imagine the thrill of walking into the village that day as
if I were no one and having no attention paid to me, just to see it as it is
seen by everyone else and hear them shout for the prince, I could hardly keep
from laughing at that."

THEY were married on a fair summer day, when the sky
was washed with blue and the rock-strewn hills ablaze with the brilliant green
of new grass. They were not married by the bishop as was the custom, but by
Anwin in his plain brown habit, which contrasted mightily with the pomp of the
proceedings, with the fine regalia of the king and his queen and the court.

And Anwin said, "It turned out just as an
enchantment should."

"But Anwin, it wasn't an enchantment really, it
just"

"Yes, child, it was the greatest enchantment of
all." He winked at the prince. "Gillie understood all along what the
enchantment was."

And though there were wedding gifts that dazzled
Thursey's eyes, the gift that made her cry was from Anwin. It was a carved
hazelwood chest just large enough to hold her painted books, and all the books
were there inside, safe and bright. On the lid of the chest Anwin had carved
three words:

ENCHANTMENT IS FOREVER.

When they rode away on their honeymoon, the bride was
finely mounted on a liveried, silver-shod, beautifully groomed white mare who
glared rheumily at the prince's fiery stallion and showed her big teeth at him
in a fierce and friendly gesture of camaraderie.

The princess rode her proudly, and she would have no
other.

"Are you happy?" asked the prince.

"Oh, I am happy, Gillie."

And he kissed her as they rode away down the high
road, where pilgrims traveled, and gleemen, where the king's lords journeyed
amidst minstrels and knights and herbalists and gypsy caravans to all the
reaches of Gies and beyond, to Bruges and Apulia and Calabria and to countries
so small one had never heard of them.

The End

 








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