The King’s Daughter. Christie Dickason

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СКАЧАТЬ to spring on Fife. We would watch the mists blow in from the sea to cover it before we rode back. On the last day before we left Scotland, I took a small piece of sharp granite from the crags and hid it in my writing chest. I hold it in my hand now when I can’t fall asleep.

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

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

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

      I turned.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      He did not respond. We stood in silence.

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

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

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

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

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

      He held out his hand to me.

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

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

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

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

      ‘Please come, your grace!’

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

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

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

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

      The young man did not smile back.

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

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

      ‘I beg you!’ he said.

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

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

      The lace on his collar was vibrating against his coat.

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

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

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

      ‘Where must I go with you?’ I asked.

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

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

      He shook his head.

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

      We stared at each other again.

      ‘You must be queen,’ he said desperately.

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

      He looked away. A branch creaked in the silence.

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

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