The thirteenth man was a dear friend of the Prince’s. They had known each other since boyhood, had learned to ride and to hunt together, and the man’s father had been one of the Prince’s father’s good friends: the sort of friend who could speak an unpopular opinion to the King, and be heard.
The Prince went to visit his old friend and found him pale and senseless; his black eyes roved without resting, and he saw nothing that was before him, and started at shadows that were not there.
The Prince saw that his family lacked for nothing that a full pocketbook could buy, and returned to his father with a heavy heart.
“Tomorrow I ride with the Hunt,” he told the King. “And I ride the day after, and the day after that, till I find what I seek: and that which I seek is the Golden Hind, and her I will pursue till I learn the mystery of her, and of the death and madness she causes; and I will stop these things if I can. Even if I cannot, try at least I will; my vow is taken.” For after he had looked into the eyes of his friend, that were his friend’s eyes no longer, he did not doubt that the two men who had not returned from the Hunting of the Hind had on that Hunt met their deaths. And so the Hind must not be permitted to range the kingdom, for the proven risk of her.
The King moved to stop him, for he would lose any number of his people before he would risk his son; but the Prince left before the King could speak, and no man saw him again till morning, when he rode out with the Hunt.
It was three days that the Prince rode before he saw what he sought; three days that he spoke to no man and locked himself in his rooms as soon as he dismounted and his horse was led away; three days that he refused to see his father, even when the King himself came and knocked on his son’s closed door.
No man saw him to speak to him: but a woman did; or perhaps more rightly, a girl.
The King had married in his youth a woman that he loved, and she loved him, and the country rang with their love; and at the end of several years of hopeful waiting she bore a son. The baby was strong and beautiful; but the Queen had been much weakened by the labor of bearing and birth, and when she bore a second child little more than a year later, it was too much for her unrecovered strength, and she died, and the baby died with her.
The King was shattered by his loss, and the only thing for many months after the Queen’s death that could make him smile was his little son, the Prince, who grew more and more like his mother every day; and between the father and son there grew a great love.
But after four years the King yielded to the pleas of his ministers and married again; not because he believed that any child but the beloved son of his first wife would rule after him, but because he could see the usefulness of other sons, to ride at the heads of his armies, and go in state to visit other kingdoms, and be loyal friends (for he could not imagine otherwise) to their eldest brother.
The second Queen was chosen for political compatibility rather than any personal inclination on the part of herself or her new husband. She was as small and dark as the first Queen and the son she had borne were tall and fair; and if this second lady had her own quiet and poignant beauty, few noticed it, for all including the King compared her always with her who had gone before.
But the second Queen carried her part with dignity and without complaint—so far as any knew; and hers was a pale still face at the beginning, so none would notice if it grew paler or stiller.
In one thing was she a disappointment that could be mentioned aloud: she bore no children. At last, in her seventh year as Queen, she became pregnant, and a certain subdued pleasure was visible in the King, who then treated her with a less conscious and more spontaneous kindness than had been his way since she became his wife.
But the child was a girl; and this second Queen too died in childbed, her strength unequal to the effort.
The little Princess grew up, cared for with vague kindness by those around her; the same vague kindness, if she had known it, that had characterized the King’s and his country’s attitude toward her mother. She, like her half-brother after his, took after her mother: small and quiet, neat in all her motions, and graceful with the unconscious air of a village girl who has never known the attentions of a court. And as she grew she bloomed with her mother’s quiet beauty, and perhaps something more that was peculiarly her own; and by the time she reached her seventeenth year, which was the second year since the Golden Hind had first been sighted in this kingdom, her father’s ministers, who had not dared mention marriage again to the King, began to think that the little-valued daughter of the second Queen would make a better political gamepiece than they had anticipated. And, all unconscious of the Hunt and the Hind, they smiled, and began to make plans.
But the Princess knew nothing of these plans. She enjoyed her freedom: That this freedom was the result of the indifference of those who had taken care of her since her mother died she did not notice, or chose not to. She loved her father dutifully, and was always well fed and well dressed, and as she got older, well taught; but there was an unexpected depth to her nature, and she might yet have felt her freedom as sorrow if she had not found someone to love: and the someone was her glorious elder brother.
The Prince was past his eleventh birthday when she was born, but he accepted her at once, and, unlike the rest of the court including his own dearly loved father, the young Prince’s acceptance of his little half-sister was sincere and whole-hearted. He called her pet names like “Sparrow” and “Fawn,” which suited her and, though she did not realize it, made her mind the less that she was not tall and blond as he himself was. And he not only permitted but encouraged her to follow him around with the unquestioning devotion that most elder brothers find awkward and embarrassing in their younger siblings.
When she grew older, he helped her with her lessons; older yet, and he made sure that her horses were as fine as his own, though lighter-boned to carry her slight weight.
She would have done anything for him; and he, while his love was less single-minded than her own for having more opportunities for loving, cared for her enough that he never took advantage of her; and when she was old enough to understand, he paid’ her perhaps the highest compliment of all, and made her his friend. The Court noted this, and were perhaps a little more deferential to the little half-sister than they might otherwise have been; and the Princess, by the time she was twelve, knew almost as much about the kingdom as the Prince did, and as much as he could tell her; and by the time she reached her seventeenth year, had a wisdom and discretion far beyond her years.