Sir Apropos Of Nothing Part 14

"So he said I should accompany you."

I considered those words a moment, then slung my pack over my shoulder. "Good day to you, then."

"Where do you think you're going?"

I laughed bitterly. "Anywhere but here." I headed for the door.

Umbrage grabbed my wrist in a grip that was nigh unto iron and swung me around. Instinctively I s.h.i.+elded my nose, but he made no effort to strike me. I was relieved, but only slightly.

"You," he said tersely, "whether you like it or not, are my squire. As such, your actions reflect on me. To be perceived as a doddering, less-than-effectual knight is one thing. To be dishonored by mentoring a squire who would flee rather than face a quest given him by the king himself . . . that I will not tolerate."

"And am I supposed to tolerate risking my life just because of a misplaced sense of duty?"

"Yes, Apropos. That is exactly what you are supposed to do." He smiled wanly. "You are the one who set these wheels into motion, squire. You've no one to blame but yourself, and I will be d.a.m.ned if I allow you to slip away and leave me behind to face the dishonor that you leave in your wake. I could have allowed Morningstar and his cronies to smash you to stew. I still might, if the mood suits me. For that matter, I may yet. Now . . . our king is expecting us in his chambers in ten minutes. We will both be there, or by G.o.d, it will go the worse for you. Do you understand me, squire?"

Once again it struck me that, for someone as unpopular as I, it seemed an amazing number of people were intent on keeping me around. It would have been nice if any of them had been motivated by goodwill rather than wanting me to suffer.

I dropped my pack to the floor, and Sir Umbrage nodded approvingly. All I could do was shake my head and say, "This is a fool's errand and it will probably be the death of me."

"Well, my lad," said Umbrage with disgusting cheerfulness, and he patted me on the shoulder. "Better you than me, that's what I always say."

Unsurprisingly, it brought me little comfort.

We proceeded to the king's private audience chamber, as we were expected to do. The king, after all, did not conduct all of his business while seated upon a throne; that was for more stately affairs than the relatively simple task of sending a reluctant squire on some d.a.m.ned-fool mission that would likely get him killed. For something as trivial as sending me off to my death, nothing more was required but something relatively small and intimate. Of course, that is all relative; even the king's smallest chamber was still three times as big as any other quarters in the place.

There was a guard standing outside, but he was largely for show. We were, after all, in the heart of the castle proper. He nodded slightly to Umbrage and me, and we returned the gesture. We carried no sword or daggers, even the ceremonial type. It was against palace policy for weapons to be kept in private audience with the king and queen. No one expected trouble, of course . . . but antic.i.p.ating trouble and expecting it were two different things.

The guard, maintaining the proper form at all times, rapped on the door without turning his back to us. Antic.i.p.ation, as I said, although I have to say there were few people in the castle who were less of a threat than us. In point of fact, I couldn't readily think of any. From within, a voice called crisply, "Enter, please."

We did so, Umbrage prodding me lightly in the back to make certain that I stood up straight. Inside we saw a chamber elaborately furnished with gorgeously carved furniture and thick, purple curtains hanging draped over the windows. There was a work area, and also what was clearly a sitting area for entertaining company, with several comfortable-looking chairs, an equally plush bench, and a table in the middle. Seated in one of the chairs was Queen Beatrice, and she was pouring out tea. Three cups had been set out, and obviously two were intended for Umbrage and myself. "Please, gentlemen . . . sit." She gestured toward the couch adjacent to her.

I couldn't help but glance around as we obeyed, and she caught the look. "No. The king isn't here, if that's what you're wondering." She smiled. She was as exceedingly pleasant and unaffected as she had been that day when I had awakened to my "new life." There was something about her that commanded respect, not out of any sense of fear as was often the case with royalty, but instead just a pure decency that she seemed to exude.

"Your presence is more than enough to honor us, Your Highness," I said.

She laughed lightly. "Sir Umbrage . . . your mentor takes after you in the art of flattery, at the very least."

"Thank you, Highness," Umbrage said. "Teaching him that technique was the least that I could do. And I always endeavor to do the least that I can do."

Her brow knit slightly as she considered that sentiment as she poured out tea for us. "I made it myself."

"Really? We're honored."

"So much honor, squire. You must set great store by it."

I shrugged noncommittally.

"Well . . . to business, then. You have been polite enough not to inquire why I am attending to this rather than the king. The reason is that this is a matter of a somewhat personal nature. 'Woman's work,' one might say."

"You require us to do . . . woman's work?" asked Umbrage. I couldn't tell what he was thinking at the moment. It might very well have been relief. How much trouble could one get into doing woman's work? "I was under the impression that the king had some great quest in mind."

"There are all sorts of quests," said Queen Beatrice. "This is more of an . . . emotional quest, I suppose. Which is why the matter has fallen to me."

"I will serve Her Highness however I can," I said. "What would you have of me?"

She looked into her tea gla.s.s for a moment as if endeavoring to read her fortune in the leaves. I took a sip of it. It wasn't bad at all, actually. Then she said, "Entipy has come of age."

The phrase meant absolutely nothing to me. I looked questioningly at Umbrage, who said, "Entipy? The princess?"

"That's her name? Princess Entipy? What sort of name is Entipy?" I asked.

Umbrage fired me a rather dire look, but the queen only smiled, taking no offense. "A fabricated one, good squire. There was a family dispute over the name. Family disputes at our level can lead to somewhat lethal consequences unless all are mollified. Her true name, to satisfy several different highly placed individuals, is Natalia Thomasina Penelope."

"N . . . T . . . P," I said, and my smile mirrored the queen's. "An excellent compromise, Highness. Not that it's for me to judge."

"I will take it as a compliment rather than a judgment, squire."

"If I may ask . . . where is the princess? In all the time that I've been here, I don't recall seeing her."

"She has not resided here for several years," the queen said with a heavy sigh. "I've missed her terribly. But she was quite . . ." Her hands fidgeted. She looked quite uncomfortable. " . . . wild . . . is the only term I can use that adequately describes her. Her behavior was rather unseemly, particularly during state functions. Her father and I love her dearly, but I freely admit that we were somewhat at our wit's end. For the past years, she has been in the care of the Faith Women at the Holy Retreat. Someday . . . Entipy will be queen. She is our only child, the heir, but before one can be the best ruler possible, one must be the best person possible. Her father and I felt that removing her from an environment where she was pampered and pandered to would be the best thing for her. The Faith Women are a severe, strict, but loving order, and very knowledgeable in the ways of the world. We felt they would give her the grounding she needed. But now Entipy is of age, and she will have duties here in which she will be schooled."

"Have you seen her in all that time?"

That seemed to be the toughest question of all for the queen to field. "The . . . Faith Women felt it would be best if we did not. They are good, knowledgeable women, the Faith Women are, and their wisdom in such matters is second to none. I wanted the best for my daughter. No woman wants any less."

There was silence for a time, and then Umbrage said tentatively, "Highness . . . I am still unclear as to the nature of our mission."

"Ah. Of course. How foolish of me." She took another sip of tea and put the cup down. "Now that my daughter has reached maturity under the care of the Faith Women, she will be coming home. We are sending a group of knights to serve as her escort from there to here. You, squire, along with your mentor, will be among that group. But you will serve a different purpose than the others."

"I will?"

"Yes. I want you . . . to be the princess's friend."

I stared at her, then looked to Umbrage, whose face was a complete blank. I was certainly accustomed to such a look from him, since he had spent many years cultivating a stare of perpetual vacancy. But this time, I sensed, it was not manufactured. He seemed as much at a loss as I.

"Her . . . friend?"

"Yes. Technically, you will be a.s.signed as her personal bodyguard. But more than that . . . I want you to be her friend. The princess had no one her own age with whom she could a.s.sociate while she was here. I want you to make an effort to ingratiate yourself with her. Be friendly to her. Be pleasant. That may not be easy; she can be quite . . . a handful. She has fire within her, and I doubt that the Faith Women were entirely able to extinguish it. Nor should they, for she will need that inner fire if she is to rule. But I want you to let her know that it is not necessary to burn everyone who comes near. Be attentive. Listen to her. Accommodate her whenever possible, but don't be afraid to stand up to her. No harm will come to you as a consequence of your saying no to the princess, you have my personal a.s.surance of that."

"Highness, I . . ." I looked to Umbrage and back to her. "I'm not certain . . . if I'm the right person for this job. I do not pretend to be a student of the human psyche. Perhaps she'd do better with another woman . . ."

"Another woman," the queen said, "will become more a coconspirator than a friend. Or a servant, bowing to her whim. That is not what she needs, squire."

"I bow to your wisdom in that regard, Highness . . . but surely you must see that I may not be what she needs either."

"Are you refusing my request, squire?"

My lips suddenly felt rather dry. I wasn't sure what to say.

"Because if you are . . . no offense will be taken, I a.s.sure you."

I let out a sigh of relief. "That is . . . very generous of you, Your Highness." I saw from the corner of my eye that Umbrage likewise looked relieved.

"Oh, no, no offense at all. It's . . . a pity, I admit. I had a feeling that you and Entipy would get on famously. A fiery young wench, quick-witted and the equal of any man. I thought you and she would take to each other . . . but, if nothing else, I wouldn't want to force something upon you that you feel isn't worthy of you."

"It's not so much a matter of worthiness, Highness . . ."

She continued as if I hadn't spoken. "I mean, granted, this was a royal a.s.signment, but that's of no matter. There are other royal a.s.signments, squire, to which I would be more than happy to attach you."

I felt my hair starting to p.r.i.c.kle on the nape of my neck. "There . . . are?"

"Yes." She rose, gently setting her teacup down and then walking over to the work area. She whistled softly as she rummaged through some papers. "Ah. Here we are. The Screaming Gorge of Eternal Madness." She said it with an air of antic.i.p.ation.

"The what?"

"There is said to be," the queen told us with clearly growing excitement, "a creature which lurks within the Screaming Gorge of Eternal Madness . . . a creature whose gizzard contains a fortune in diamonds. The royal treasury has taken something of a dip since the entire taxation fiasco in Pell. You could go to the Screaming Gorge of Eternal Madness, brave the creature, slay it, cut it open, and remove the diamonds. Granted, one hundred and seventeen . . . I'm sorry, eighteen," she made an adjustment, scratching with a pen, "have made the attempt over the past several centuries. Only a handful have returned, and they were in varying states of insanity. One poor devil tore his own eyes out, another swallowed his tongue . . ." She shuddered. "In any event, the rest have not been heard from again, although it is said their screams can still be heard emanating from the gorge to this day. But perhaps you will be the fortunate pair. It could be the creature has mellowed with age."

She smiled sweetly.

I rose then and said, "It would be my honor to make the princess's acquaintance."

"I thought you would say that," Queen Bea said. "Finish your tea before it gets cold. It's good for you."

I finished it . . . because if there was one thing I knew, it was what was good for me.

No one knew anything about her.

I couldn't understand it. Not only did Umbrage know nothing of the princess, aside from her name, but everyone I asked about her greeted me with shakes of the head, shrugs of the shoulder, and unvarnished ignorance of the subject at hand. It seemed most puzzling to me. How could it possibly be that the princess of the realm, the heir to the throne, was an enigma to all concerned?

As near as my inquiries were able to determine, the princess had been kept apart from everyone else at the castle, starting at quite a young age. A special suite of rooms had been set aside for her, and there she had resided. There was speculation about her. Some opined that she was so ghastly to look upon that no one could stand to do so. That she had some sort of considerable deformity, or that she was an imbecile and in all ways an embarra.s.sment. But no one knew for sure. They couldn't even lay claim to having seen her even once.

I had been endeavoring to acquire information so that I would have some inkling of what to expect, but I found the dearth of knowledge about her to be almost alluring in its way. Apparently we had a genuine mystery girl on our hands. There were few enough things in my life that could fall under the heading of "intriguing," but this was definitely one of them. The only thing I could ascertain for sure was that she had tended to pa.s.s tutors in the same way that others pa.s.s water or gas. During the time that she resided in her private quarters, teachers would come and go. No one lasted terribly long, and there was a widening gap of time in finding a new teacher every time that an old one resigned . . . usually looking several years older and considerably more wan and wasted than when they had first arrived. Then one day the parade of teachers ceased, and a casual query to the king had revealed the fact that Princess Entipy had been shunted off to join the Faith Women at the Holy Retreat. "It will do her good" was all the king said. He was not forthcoming with any further information, and that more or less ended the matter, since, really, one cannot exactly start grilling a monarch for information, particularly about such a sensitive subject.

The night before we were to depart, however, I was busy brus.h.i.+ng down t.i.tan and preparing him for the journey, when I heard a soft laugh from behind me. I turned to see Mace Morningstar there, leaning against the doorframe, his arms folded. Instinctively I reached for my staff, which was leaning against a post, but Mace made a dismissive gesture to indicate that such defensive tactics were not necessary. "I'm just here to wish you goodspeed on your journey, Apropos," he said. "Will you have a mount of your own?"

"A small steed is being brought in, so I'm told," I said cautiously. I still didn't trust him.

"Well, that's good. That's good." Morningstar's insufferable grin didn't diminish one bit, and he said with a snicker, "Well, good evening to you then, squire."

"Wait." It occurred to me that I had not asked Morningstar if he knew anything of the princess. Obviously I endeavored to avoid Mace whenever possible, but he was the one who had approached me this evening. What had I to lose? "Do you know anything of the princess?"

"I? What would I know of her?" But he said it in such a way as to practically shout at me that he was indeed cognizant of some information.

Naturally, given the situation and my knowledge of the way such buffoons as Morningstar thought, I said the only reasonable and logical thing: "Nothing. You'd know nothing of her. It was foolishness of me to inquire. My pardon, Mace." I bowed slightly and returned to grooming the horse.

It worked like a charm, of course. Oh, Mace didn't come out with it immediately, of course. He picked up a strand of straw and began to chew on it idly, clutching it between his teeth. Then he sauntered over to me, leaning against the wall, his arms folded across his chest. I barely afforded him a glance as I asked, "Oh, are you still here?"

"She's beautiful," Mace said.

"Really. When did you see her?"

"On a dare, some years back, on my first visit to the court. It was before I became a squire. Some other boys challenged me to climb up the side of the castle after I'd boasted that I could scale any surface."

"And you did it, of course."

"Of course," Mace said matter-of-factly. "I climbed halfway up the side of the castle. Heights didn't bother me; nothing did, or does, really."

"I'm happy for you."

"Anyway," continued Mace as if I hadn't spoken, "I found myself at eye level with a window. Naturally I peered through it."

"Hoping to catch a female undressing?"

"That's right," Mace said, unabashed. I think he was incapable of feeling any sort of shame. Granted, so was I, but at least that was a conscious decision on my part. I think he was just too stupid. "What I saw instead was this young woman-hair the color of an early autum, eyes like a raging sea, and when she spoke, a voice like a southbound breeze . . ."

"Is she a person or a weather report?" I asked.

"She was speaking with a tutor, a fairly heavyset woman with a brutish accent and a mole on her chin that had hair growing from it. She asked a question of the woman, and when the tutor turned to a particular reference volume to check the answer . . ."

"Yes?"

"She stabbed her."

My eyes widened. "What? Who stabbed who?"

"The princess stabbed the tutor. Oh, nothing lethal, mind you. She used a quill pen that was to her right. She just took the thing and drove it into the top of the woman's hand which had been resting on the table."

"Good lord," I murmured. Then I said suspiciously, "Wait a minute . . . if you're making this up . . ."

"On the life of my father, I swear it so," said Morningstar with enough sincerity that I couldn't help but believe him. "Jammed the thing straight down. I have to admit, I wasn't aware that one could drive a quill that far down into someone. A good inch or so it penetrated. Tutor started screaming like a stuck hog, and a string of invective in her native tongue poured from her throat, and in ran the queen all in a dither, asking what's happened, and the tutor who, by this point is in agony, pointed helplessly at Entipy. And there was our royal princess, as cool and calm as you please, and she looked up from her text and said, 'She's clumsy, mother. What can I say?' "

"And you saw it all happen. With your own eyes."

"With these very two hawk-eyed orbs you see before you. Her mother and the tutor left in a lather, and then I began to climb down. Just as I started to go, I thought I saw Entipy glance in my direction. But I was already starting down, and so figured that I was in the clear. So what happens? I'm halfway down the wall, and suddenly an inkwell dropped-nay, hurled-from overhead caromed off my skull. It knocked me clean off the wall and I fell the rest of the way. Broke my leg from the fall. Took six months to heal properly, and even now I still have a barely noticeable limp. That minor impediment is why I feel some slight sympathy for you, Apropos, believe it or not."

"I don't believe it, thank you, considering you tried to beat me to a pulp after the jousts."

"That was simply a matter of pride. It was nothing personal. If I did not feel for you, Apropos . . . why would I be telling you what I know of Entipy?"

"I don't know."

"Yes, you do, for I've explained it to you. Look." He pushed back a hank of his sandy hair. I could see the trace of a scar, shaped in a small semicircle. "That's what's left of the place where the ink bottle struck me. It was my very first combat scar. One would have hoped for something more impressive, I should think."

"Indeed." I paused and then said, "If I am to believe you . . . I shall need more of a reason that you have shared this with me besides the notion that you are doing so out of the goodness of your heart."

"It is of no consequence to me whether you believe or not," he said with a shrug.

We stared at each other for a short time, and then he genuinely smiled at me. It was the smile that I found most disconcerting of the entire encounter.