He looked to his right: here the wall was pierced by a series of arched windows, their lower edges at waist level, where one might rest elbows and gaze out, if one ever wished to linger in this weary spot. “But perhaps the view from these windows is very fine by day,” thought the soldier. “You can see what is coming up the river at you,” thought the campaigner. But now the windows were muffled in the shadows of a cloudy night. No star glittered; the very air seemed grey beyond the casement glass. “And,” thought the soldier, “the air must always seem grey in this place from the shadow of the iron-barred door of the Long Gallery, which looms behind you on the brightest of summer mornings.”
One of the shadows now moved and became the King; and the soldier realized that he had expected him to be here before himself. Something dark hung against his breast: as he came into the candlelight that swooped to touch the end of the hall but left the clouded windows to themselves, the soldier saw that at the center of the royal silken robes hung a small iron key. Its very refusal to glitter or shine made it catch the eye.
The King lifted the thin chain from around his neck, and slowly fitted the key into the lock. The light-flake disappeared; and then with a gentle chunk the lock turned, the door began to open, and an edge of light appeared instead around its frame. The servant stepped back, the soldier’s instincts, rather than his eyes or ears, told him; then in the background the shadows moved, and as the door swung fully open, the man set the candelabrum back in its niche and retreated down the stairs.
The light seemed too white and pure for candlelight, as it flooded out and swept around the soldier and the King; but perhaps this was due to the snowiness of the linen it reflected. Twelve white-hung beds stood, their heads to the far wall, in a long line down the Gallery; and six Princesses in long white nightgowns with fragile lace at the wrists and throats sat on the counterpanes, or on stools, and had their hair brushed by their white-gowned sisters. No one spoke: the air was stirred only by the soft crackle of comb-teeth and fingers through long sleek hair. The soldier thought confusedly of barracks; and then he blushed like a boy at his first dance, and his feet would not cross the threshold. He could not do what he had come so far to try; it was not right, and what he had heard could not be. He looked at the warm gleam of their foreheads and checks, the gentle rise and fall of the white nightgowns as they breathed, and watched the murmur of the light in the waves of hair, and was certain that it was all the most terrible of mistakes. These girls were not haunted. They were too beautiful and too serene.
Too calm. He remembered the youngest Princess at the banquet none enjoyed; and then her father stepped around him till he could look in his eyes, and waved him across the doorsill. This time his feet agreed, if reluctantly, to take him forward. Perhaps he heard, or perhaps he imagined, the King whispering, “Godspeed”; and then he did hear the door close behind him. For a moment even the hands twisting the heavy falls of hair were still, so the closing of the door spoke in perfect silence. The soldier heard no sound at all of the turning of the key; but he was no less certain that the key had turned, bolting him and twelve Princesses into the Gallery for the night. His pulse pounded so it threatened to obscure his sight as well as his hearing. Perhaps the Princesses’ young ears caught a sound his cannon-hardened ones could not: for as he was thinking all this, and feeling his heart beating in his throat, twelve Princesses sighed and bowed their heads, and stared at white laps and white hands for a moment, and then took up again the movements the King and the soldier had interrupted so recently.
Several turned their eyes slowly toward the soldier; their faces were without expression as they gazed at him, but with an expressionlessness that he did not like. The eyes glittered like the eyes behind masks. If they had been men, he would be watching their hands, waiting for the quick hard appearance of hidden knives: and then he did look at the hands of the Princess nearest him, and saw them clenched in her lap. The pale purity of her skin was pulled taut and unhappy across the frail knuckles; and his own face softened. When he looked at their faces again, the expressionlessness now seemed that of a burden almost too heavy to bear, and the glitter in their eyes that of unshed tears.
Then the Princess he remembered, who had sat across from him at dinner, approached him; and he saw the same wistful smile hesitantly curl her lips and drop away again at once. He followed her to the end of the Gallery, listening to the slightest rustle of her long white skirts; and he noticed suddenly and with a shock he could not explain that her feet were bare.
There was a screen set up in the farthest corner, next to the windowless end of the long chamber. Behind it, next to the narrow wall, was a low cot, with blankets and pillows. The Princess gestured toward it, bowed her head to him briefly, and left him. He turned to catch a glimpse of her bare heels as she vanished beyond the screen.
He sat heavily down and stared at his feet in their fine boots. His bundle lay on the cot beside him and rested against his knee. He found himself thinking of his age, turning the years over, one by one, in his mind, like the leaves of a book. His eyes slowly focused on a lamp that stood by the screen on a little three-legged table, with a tinder-box beside it; but he made no move toward it.
He looked up to see the eldest Princess framed by the light that flowed around the edge of the screen. He could not see her face, but he was sure it was she, as he had recognized her as she sat beside him at dinner. He wondered if his silent understanding of these Princesses was true; and if it was, was it an omen for good or ill? The Princess held a goblet in her hand; her arm was held out in a graceful curve, and the white sleeve fell back to reveal her slim forearm. She held the goblet high, as if it were a victory chalice, and the soldier was reminded of old statues he had seen, of the goddess of war: thus she might carry the severed head of the conquered hero, beautifully and pitilessly. The Princess offered him the goblet, and he took it, and found it surprisingly heavy. “Drink, and be welcome,” she said, but there was no warmth or greeting in her voice.
He raised the goblet to his lips, but turned his head as he did, so she might see only his profile; and he poured the sweet-smelling wine gently down his back, and he felt the red cloak sag with it. “I thank thee, lady,” he said, “for wine and welcome.”
She bowed her head as her sister had done, but for the space of a minute or more; then she straightened herself abruptly, with a gesture he recognized from battlefields he and his fellows had won their weary way across, and left him without another word.