The soldier replied: “I walk as I must, for I bear the wounds of too many battles, and I speak as I must, for I am a farmer’s son who learned young to shout at oxen till they moved in the direction one wished; and the nobles’ sons do not seem to be following this hopeless quest with a marked degree of success.” The cloak of shadows stirred in his knapsack. “I thank you for your offer, for I see your heart in it, but I have had enough of soldiering, and a bad master has ruined me for a good one.” But he offered the captain of the guard his hand, and the man took it. “Go then as you will. This road travels straight to the door of the front Hall of the castle, and there, if you will, tell the doorman as you answered the guards’ hail; and he will take you to the King. And the King shall receive you with all honor.”
“Have there been many recently who walk where I go now?” inquired the soldier.
“No,” said the captain of the guard. “There have not been many.” And he stepped back into the shadows without saying any more.
The soldier went on up the wide white avenue. Here he heard no birdsong, but the trees seemed to murmur together, high overhead; but perhaps that was only the coming of the night.
At the door of the castle a tall man in a long white robe with a silver belt asked him his business; and the soldier answered as he had answered the guards. And the man bowed to him, which the old soldier found unnerving in a way totally new to him, who was accustomed to awaiting an order to charge the enemy over the next hill, if he hasn’t crept round behind while you waited.
The man in white led him inside, into the Great Hall, as the captain of the guard had told him; and the soldier blinked, and realized how dark it had grown outside by the blaze of light that greeted him. A long table ran down the center of the room; and the table was on a dais, and at the end farthest from the soldier was a chair he could recognize as a throne, though he had never seen such a thing before. The man in the white robe bowed to him again, by which he assumed the man meant him to stand where he was; so he waited while the man in white went to the King, and bowed low—much lower than he had to the soldier, as the soldier noted with relief—and spoke to him. And the King himself stood up and came to where the soldier waited, and it took all the soldier’s battlefield courage to stand still and not back away as the King, whose health he had toasted and in whose name he had fought many and many a time, strode up to him and looked him in the face.
They were very nearly of a height; the soldier may have had the advantage, or perhaps it was the heavy soles of his boots over the royal slippers. The soldier looked back at the King as the King looked at him; for a moment he wondered if he should bow, but the King’s look seemed to wish to forestall him. The soldier saw a face for whom he would be willing to carry colors into battle once more, and the memory of his colonel seemed to fail and fade nearly to oblivion. But it was also a face all those healths drunk and glasses smashed after, to do him honor, had not touched. The sadness of the King’s eyes was so deep that it was opaque; nor could the soldier see any small gleam stirring in the depths. The soldier smiled, for pity or for sympathy or for recognition; and did not know he smiled till the King smiled in return; and the King’s smile reminded the soldier of something, though he could not quite remember what, and the soldier’s smile, for a moment, warmed the King’s heart as nothing had done for a very long time. And with the smile suddenly the soldier wondered what the King saw in his face as they looked at one another; but the King did not say, and his smile was only a smile, although it was the smile of a king.
The King said: “Come and eat with us.” And he led the way to the high table; and the soldier followed, with his bundle still over his shoulder, and in it he felt the cloak move, like the skin of a horse when a fly touches it. Space was made at the King’s right hand, and another chair was brought; and the King sat down in the great chair, and the soldier sat down beside him, and felt his tired bones creak and sigh; and he placed his bundle carefully between his feet, where it curled itself and sat like a cat. And he looked around him as his place was set before him, and counted the other places set; and there were twelve, and twelve chairs before them. Then the white-robed men all stood back, and the Princesses entered.
The soldier would not have been sure that there were twelve of them, had he not counted their chairs before they entered. For each one was more beautiful than the last, in whichever way one counted; and the soldier, who could see an assassin hidden in a tree when the tree was behind him, or notice fear in a new private’s face before the private felt it himself, was dazzled by the enchanted Princesses, and nothing he had seen or done or imagined in his life could help him.
The soldier could not remember later if there was any conversation. He remembered that the Princesses moved too slowly for girls as young as they were; even the youngest hovered on the edge of her chair like a chrysalis before the butterfly emerges; barely could the soldier see her eyelashes flicker as she blinked; and her slow fingers only occasionally raised some morsel to her lips. He sat next to the eldest daughter, and he remembered the well woman’s words of her, and turned toward her to try to speak, or at least to see something that might guide him; but somehow her face was always turned from him, and he saw only the heavy smoky braids of her hair wound at the nape of her neck; and even if he caught a glimpse of cheekbone or chin, it seemed shadowed, although he could not see where any shadow might fall from: and he thought abruptly that the relentless blaze of light from the many-tiered chandeliers seemed wary, uncertain, as if light was merely the nearest approximation to what actually was sought. The Hall was not lit up for the light, but for the keeping out of the darkness.
The soldier looked across the table to another Princess: she had hair the color of the glossy flanks of the fawn he had seen earlier, and was speckled as it had been too, for she had woven white flowers around her face, and through the delicate crystal crown she wore above her forehead. He caught her eye for a moment, with a trick of the hunter’s eye that had seen the fawn: and he saw her eyes widen for a moment as she realized she was caught. He thought she might struggle, as a wild thing would, and he prepared to look away, at a vase, a plate of sweetmeats, because he did not want to see a Princess rearing up like a cornered deer—or worse, cowering away. But to his surprise she met his gaze firmly after that first flicker, and then the tiniest and most wistful of smiles touched her lips and was gone. He looked then at the vase and the sweetmeats but did not see them.