The King’s Daughter. Christie Dickason

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

      He set his hand on his sword.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      ‘I won’t come,’ I said.

      ‘You must.’

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

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

      He drew his sword and stepped closer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      ‘I’m damned,’ he whispered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      I had to tempt him to rewrite this story. I felt certain that he wanted to. ‘It doesn’t have to be too late,’ I said. ‘I don’t know who you are, or what you truly intend. If you go now, I won’t raise an alarm.’

      He shook his head.

      ‘You don’t believe me? Don’t you see why I can’t raise an alarm? Why I must not even admit that you exist?’

      I might be just a slip of a girl, but even I could see why no one must ever connect СКАЧАТЬ