And so, when the Prince had locked himself away in his rooms and would see no one, the Princess’s gentle tap on his door brought him up from his chair to let her in. He told her that he would ride with the Hunt until he saw the Golden Hind; and her he would follow until he learned her secret. He repeated it as if it were a lesson got by heart; and the Princess had already heard the story from several members of the horrified court. She had not doubted it, for she knew the strength of the friendship that had caused her brother to break his promise to the King. Now she wished only to bear him company for a little while; and when she heard the words from his own lips, she only shook her head and said nothing. As she knew her brother, she knew that no argument would sway him.
“Take care of our father till I return,” said the Prince; it was the closest he would come to admitting that he might not return. “He loves you better than you know.”
The Princess smiled, but shook her head again, for this was one thing she knew better than her elder brother. “I will try.” And neither of them spoke of the further grief that made the King’s heart desperate at the knowledge of the Prince’s vow to follow the Golden Hind: the Prince, although he had passed his eight-and-twentieth birthday, had not yet married. If he died now he would leave no heir. The Princess did not count in the King’s thought, as she knew and the Prince did not; so when the Prince commended the King to her care, he thought that he truly left their father some comfort, and did not realize the impossible burden that he laid on his sister’s small shoulders.
He rode away with the Hunt the next morning, and returned with them in the evening when they came bearing a brown stag and several hares. He rode away with them on the second dawning, and again on the third; but on that third day, as the sun began to fall down the afternoon sky, the Hunt saw the Golden Hind; and the Prince, with a cry of wild gladness, rode after it. His horse that day was the same tall stallion that had fretted so ill months before, when the Prince had watched another man ride in pursuit of the elusive Hind and had remained behind.
The Hunt came home slowly, but the slinking hounds told their own tale, even if the Prince’s shining presence among them had not at once been missed.
The Princess had no sleep that night; nor had the King. But while the King had to rise from his sleepless bed and attend to his state and to his ministers, the Princess remained where she had been since the evening before, after she had run out to meet the Hunt and found her brother no longer with them. She had knelt on the windowseat of her bedroom all that night, her head leaning against the corner where the window met the wall; there she could stare out over the wide dark forest where her brother rode after his fate. By the time dawn began to chase the shadows out of the castle courtyard, her eyes were sore and her eyelids stiff with watching.
And so the next evening, late, after the Hunt had returned that day, sober and slow and with little to show for their long hours of search and chase, and after all had gone to bed whether they slept or not, the Princess saw from her window the figure on horseback that stumbled out of the great wood and turned toward the city walls. And there were others keeping watch, so she was not the first to run out and greet the Prince, for it was he, as he sat his staggering horse; but she was among the first to welcome him home. Her voice sounded strange in her ears, high-pitched with fear, but at the sound of it the Prince, who seemed to ride in a daze, turned toward her and said, “Little sister, is it you? Are you there?” She seized his hand joyfully and said, “It is I. You are returned to us safe.”
But when he looked down at her, his eyes did not seem to see her; and his eyes should have been blue, but seemed covered with a grey glaze. “Little sister, I have seen her,” he said, but he leaned too far over, and tumbled from his horse into her small young arms; and if several of the men had not been standing near and so caught her and him, they would have fallen to the ground.
The Prince was all but unconscious for the rest of the night; he rambled in his unknown dreams, and spoke snatches of them aloud, but the Princess could not understand, nor could the King, who sat motionless at his son’s bedside. With the dawn, some ease came to the Prince, and he did not toss so restlessly, and seemed to sleep. The sun was above the trees when he opened his eyes; and his eyes were blue again. But still he could not seem well to see those around him, and he repeated, “I have seen her at last,” again and again. “She is more beautiful than you can imagine,” he said, holding his sister’s hand in his feverish one. “She could make a man blind with one glimpse of her beauty; and he would count it a favor.”
The Prince was too weak to rise from his bed, and grew weaker as the days passed. He recognized his father and sister, and others who came to his bedside, and called them by name; but he could not or would not shake himself free of his dreams, of her whom he had seen, and his blue eyes remained cloudy, and focused only briefly and with evident effort on the faces around him. He slept little and ate less; and the doctors could do nothing for him.
Still the Hunt rode out, because they must; but all feared the sight of the Golden Hind as they might fear Death herself, and no one after the Prince ever sought her.
A month after the Prince rode home from his Hunting of the Hind he was declared to be dying.
The King rarely left his son’s room, and his cheeks were almost as pale as the Prince’s; the ministers might have run the country as they liked, for all the attention the King paid them; but perhaps almost against their wills they found they loved the bold young Prince too, and their political schemes held no savor.
It might have been that now the little Princess, hitherto neglected for her glamorous elder brother, would come into her own; but this did not happen. Everyone forgot about her completely, except as a small quiet presence forever at the Prince’s bedside. Everyone, perhaps, but the Prince himself; for when he asked for anyone, it was most often her name on his lips, and she was always there to answer his call; and she it was who could most often persuade him to take a little food, although even her success was infrequent and insufficient. Again and again he would seize her hand and say to her as he had done on the first night: “I have seen her. At last I have seen her.” And his cloudy eyes would be too wide and too brilliant with something she did not recognize and could not help but fear.
The day after the murmur of the Prince dying had passed through the castle and out into the city, the Princess quitted her brother’s bedside, where she spent her nights and dozed as she could, just at dawn. She went down to the stable and saddled her favorite horse with her own hands; and when the Hunt gathered, she rode out to join them on her long-legged chestnut mare.