When the last Princess was gone, the King turned to his guest, and the soldier read the helpless, hopeless question in the father’s eyes. But the soldier remembered sitting on a pier, leaning against a post, and watching a dance in a hall so grand as to make this castle look a cotter’s hut; and the soldier’s eyes dropped. Another man in the King’s place might have sighed, have touched his face with his hand, have made some sign. But the King did not. When the soldier glanced up at him again he saw a face so still that it might have been a statue’s, cold and perfect and lifeless, and the soldier looked at the straight brow, the long nose, and the wide mouth; a mouth that had once known well how to smile and laugh, but had now nearly forgotten; and the lines of laughter in that face hurt the heart of any who recognized them for what they were. And the soldier thought again of the ostler’s tale.
Then the King’s eyes blinked, and were no longer staring at something the soldier would not see even if he turned around and looked into the bright shadowless corner the King had looked into; and he began to breathe again, lightly, easily, and the soldier realized that the King had drawn no breath since the soldier had first dropped his eyes before the King’s unanswered question.
The King turned and led the way from the Hall, and they went up the stairs to the grim hall off which the Gallery opened through one thick ungraceful door. The two of them, weary King and weary soldier, leaned their elbows on the balustrade and stared into the night; this evening the sky glittered with stars as bright as hope. A single servant stood at the head of the stairs, who had followed the King softly when he first left the dining hall; and the servant held a candelabrum of only three candles. Their light brushed hesitantly at the darkness of the corridor.
The King turned at last and took the iron key on its chain from around his neck, and pulled open the door to the Long Gallery. The soldier entered and stood, his eyes upon the toes of his boots; and this night as he stood he heard with the twelve listening Princesses the sound of the door swung shut behind him, a tiny pause, and then the snick of the lock run home.
The evening passed much as had the evening before. The soldier, his eyes still lowered, made his way down the long chamber, past twelve silent white-gowned Princesses, to his dark narrow cot behind the screen. There he sat, thinking of nothing, staring at the unlit lamp, the cloak of shadows beneath his hand and another handsome cloak, this one of deep blue, over his shoulders. The eldest Princess came to him again, and offered him wine to drink; and they exchanged words, but the words left no mark upon the soldier’s memory. He poured the hot wine, gently and carefully, into the folds of his handsome blue cloak; and even the heavy spiced steam of the drink seemed to make his eyelids droop, his head nod. And he was sharply aware of the Princess’s glance, and kept his mouth firmly closed, as if he were afraid that his hand, under her look, might somehow stray and bring the wine to his lips against his will. And he wondered at what it might be that directed her hand when she drugged the wine, what peered through her eyes as she gave it to the mortal watcher waiting behind the screen. He handed the empty goblet to the tall waiting figure, and she left him silently.
He lay down and began to snore, but with pauses between the snores, that he might hear the sound of the heavy door being opened, the door that led to the underground kingdom. He snored still as he rose, and tossed the black cloak around him, in place of the wine-heavy blue one that lay in its turn on the floor beside the cot; and then he stopped snoring, and slipped around the edge of his screen, and saw the twelfth Princess watching the tail of the eleventh’s dress gliding through the hatch. Then she too descended, and the soldier cautiously followed.
Nothing marred their descent this night; for the soldier knew what he would find, and he made no mistakes. He looked at the jeweled trees as he passed them, but he did not touch them; their purpose was served. Tonight he must seek something further.
The twelve black boats waited by the shore of the black lake; the water’s edge, clawing at the pebbles, seemed almost to speak to him; but he dared not listen too long. Tonight the oarsman in the twelfth boat must have put more strength in his labor, for despite the soldier’s invisible presence athwartships, staring toward the glittering island he knew would be there, the last boat kept near the others, and docked with them. The soldier set his jaw, and leaped ashore behind the Princess, as the black captain held the boat delicately touching the pier; and he watched as the captains of all the twelve boats whirled out of their long black cloaks and wide-brimmed hats and stood at the princesses’ sides, as fearfully handsome as the Princesses were beautiful. But the soldier clutched his black cloak to him all the closer, and was curiously grateful for the way it clutched back. And as the gleaming pairs of dancers swept from dockside into the arms of the music that reached out from the castle’s opened gates, the soldier followed after them, walking slowly but without hesitation.
There were many others within the broad ballrooms of that castle besides the Princesses and their partners; he had not realized, the night before, even as he was dazzled and bewildered by the bright colors they wore and the intricate dance steps they pursued, just how many others were present. The music thrummed in the soldier’s ears and beat against his invisible skin till he felt that anyone looking at him must see the outline that the melodies and counterpoints drew around him.
But none appeared to suspect his presence, and he walked boldly through the high rooms, and blinked at the light and the glitter. The rooms seemed as intensely lit as the banqueting hall of the Princesses’ father, and he found the glare here no less disquieting to his mind, and much more so to his eyes, which were dazzled by twelves upon twelves upon twelves upon twelves of dancing figures, all glorying in gold and silver and gems, not only in headdresses and necklaces, rings, brooches and bracelets, but wrought into their clothing; even fingernails and eyelids in this enchanted place gleamed like diamonds; and none was ever still. He found he could think of the unnatural stillness of the Princesses in their father’s home as restful, soothing, something to remember with pleasure and relief rather than bewilderment.
The soldier had no sense of time. He wove through the crowds and stared around him; he felt confused by the light and the brilliant music; he remembered his thoughts of the night before, huddled against a dockside post, and he shivered, and his cloak pressed tighter around his throat. But he reached out to steady himself, one hand upon the gorgeous scrolls of an ivory-inlaid doorframe; and for a moment, with that touch, his mind seemed clear and calm, suspended behind his eyes where it might watch and consider what went on around him, without feeling the fears that thundered unintelligibly at him. And he saw, then, something beyond the scintillation of gems and precious things beyond counting, beyond the elegance, the grace and sheer overwhelming beauty of the scene before him. He saw that the faces of the throng were blank and changeless, the lightness of step, of gesture, the perfections of automatons. None spoke; the splendor of the constant music did but disguise the unnatural silence of the many guests; again the soldier thought of the King’s musicians playing gallantly to hide the silence of their master and his daughters. Yet there one listened to the music because one could hear the sorrow behind it that it sought to conceal, even to soften. Here, to listen carefully to what lay behind the music was to court madness, for what lay beyond it was the emptiness of the void. The soldier thought of his own shabby clumsiness, but now suddenly he had some respect for it, because it was human.