For all his long years in the Army the soldier had depended on his ability to awaken instantly, to leap in the right direction if need be to save his life, before his eyelids were quite risen, before his waking mind was called upon to consider and decide. In the moment that it took for the soldier to feel the sharp points of the gem-tree at his breast, to recognize the blind stone wall before his eyes, he lay chill with a horror that was infinite, lying as still as a deer in its bed of brush, not knowing where the hunter stood but sure that he was there, waiting. When memory swept back to him he breathed once, twice, deeply and deliberately, and slowly sat up; and he thought: “I left the regiment just in time. I am too old indeed to live as a hunted thing, hunted and hunter.” He looked down at the cloak of shadows that lay curled over the pillow, and a second thought walked hard on the heels of the first: “But what adventure is this that I have exchanged for my own peace?” For suddenly it appeared to him that his life in the regiment had at least been one of simple things, and things that permitted hope; and the path he walked now was dark and unknowable.
The Long Gallery was empty and the heavy door the King had locked the night before stood open. The soldier paused to wrap the jeweled branch in a blanket from his cot; then he threw the wine-stained cloak over his shoulder in a manner such that one could not see the bundle he carried under his arm; and he walked swiftly out. Suddenly he wanted no more than to stand outside the haunted castle with its haunted chamber, and look upon the world of trees that bore green leaves and blue sky, and hear the birds sing. He remembered that birds did sing in the deep forests around the King’s castle; and he thought perhaps this was a thing he could take hope from.
He made his way as quickly as he might down the stairs to the great front doors of the castle, and through them he went without pausing. He saw no one, nor did any challenge him, as he walked through the King’s house and into his lands as if he had the right to use them so.
The day was high, clear and cloudless, and the world was wide as he stood looking around him. He could taste the air in his mouth, and the memory of the night before was washed away like brittle ashes from a hearth when a bucket of clean water is tossed over it. He walked on, the bundle still held close under his arm: and his steps took him at last, without his meaning them to, to the guardhouse; and there the captain was the man the soldier had spoken to the evening before; and the captain came out of the guardhouse as the soldier neared, but he said no word.
“I have come to ask a favor,” said the soldier, for he had thought, as he saw the captain’s face again, of the favor that this man might do him.
“Name it,” said the captain. “We are comrades after all, for each of us walks at the edge of a dangerous border, and makes believe that he is the guardian of it.”
The soldier bowed his head and brought out the blanket-wrapped bundle. “Can you keep this safe for me? Safe from any man’s eyes, or anyone’s knowledge?”
The captain’s eyes flickered at anyone. “I will keep it as safe as mortal man may,” he replied. “I have the way of no more.”
A bit of a smile twisted one corner of the soldier’s mouth. “Nor have I,” said the soldier. “As one mortal man to another, I thank you.”
Another wandering piece of a smile curled around the captain’s mouth, and the soldier held the bundle out to him, and the captain took it. “Good hunting to you, comrade,” he said.
“Thank you,” said the soldier, but the smile had disappeared. He turned away and off the path, and walked into the forest.
He walked a long time, breathing the air and rubbing leaves between his fingers that he might catch the sharp fresh scent of them; and he went so quietly, or they were so tame, that he saw deer, does and bucks and spotted fawns, and rabbits brown and grey, a fox, and a marten which clung to the branch of a tree and looked down at him with black inscrutable eyes. Birds there were, many of them: those that croaked or rasped a warning of his coming or going, those that darted across clearings or from bush to bush before him; those that sat high in the branches of the trees and sang for or despite him; and those that wheeled silently overhead.
In the late afternoon he sat on the bank of the river and watched the sun go down and reluctantly admitted to himself that he was hungry, for he had had nothing to eat that day but the fruit he had pulled from the trees of the King’s orchard. But it was with a heavy foot nonetheless that he took the first step back to the castle.
A servant stood by the door at his entrance, and he was escorted directly upstairs to the bath-room, where the deep steaming pool again awaited him, and fresh clothes were laid out in the dressing-room. He washed and dressed, and then he picked up the wine-stained cloak of the night before and looked at it thoughtfully. He carried it back into the bath-room and looked around. A ewer of fresh water stood near the massive bathtub, and the soldier dropped the cloak into it. He dropped to his knees beside it—like any washerwoman, he thought wryly—and swished the cloak clumsily around in the water. He could smell, faint but clear, the odor of the wine lifting out of the ewer. He brought soap from the bath, and scrubbed and wrung and scrubbed the cloak till his knuckles were sore and his opinion of washerwomen had risen considerably; and then he rinsed the draggled cloak in another water urn, and hung the sodden mass over the edge of the tub where it might drip without harming the deep carpet that lay in front of the door to the dressing-room. “I’ve ruined it, no doubt,” he thought. “Well, let them wonder.” And he picked up the fresh cloak that was laid out with his other new clothes, and turned and went downstairs to the banquet.
The banquet was as it had been the evening before: magnificent with its food and the beauty of the Princesses and the splendor of their clothes—and he observed this evening with interest that the clothes they wore were of ordinary, if rich, hues; their rainbow gowns did not appear in their father’s hall—and oppressive with a silence that hung in the ear like a threat, and was not muffled by the music of the King’s elegant musicians. The soldier ate, for he was hungry; but he barely recognized his own hand, the wrist and forearm draped in a sleeve too gaudy to be that of an old soldier too weary for war, and the food in his mouth was as tasteless as wood chips. And the blaze of the candelabra hurt his eyes.
He dreaded the night ahead; but for all that, he was relieved when the banquet that was no banquet was finished; and he stood at the King’s side as the Princesses went their way from the hall, one after another, heads high, their jewels shining, their eyes shadowed. The soldier stared at the eldest as she walked toward the door at the end of the procession; and she turned her face a little away from him as if she were aware of his look. “No,” he thought. “If she turns from anyone’s gaze, it is from her father’s.”