On the princess's twelfth birthday there was a grand party just for her, and all the lords and ladies came, and one of the sons of the once-rival kings, who was thirteen, and stood almost invisible among the tall figures of his guardsmen. There were musicians, and dancing, and talk and laughter, and the banqueting tables were piled high with beautiful savory food, and she could not bear it, that so many eyes should think to turn upon her as the cause of all this magnificence, and she ran and hid in the nursery.
When her old nursemaid found her at last, and washed her face free of tear-stains, and pressed her crumpled dress, and tidied her dark hair, and took her downstairs again, the queen was sitting at the head of the table, in the chair the princess had fled. The king sat at her right hand, and they were feeding each other bits of cake and sweetmeats, looking into each other's face, utterly absorbed in these things. The thirteen-year-old prince sat near them, watching, his mouth hanging a little agape.
The princess slipped away from her nursemaid, who would have wished to make her present herself formally. But even a royal nursemaid's jurisdictions end at the ballroom door. The princess found a chair standing next to a curtain and shadowed by the column at its back, and set herself silently down.
When the princess's return was noticed, and the dancing started again, one or two young men approached the princess hopefully. But she disliked her dancing lessons, and disliked being touched and held so by strangers, and she drew back in her chair and shook her head emphatically at her would-be partners. They went away, and after a little time no more came. She curled up on her gilt chair and rested her head softly on one of its velvet arms, and watched her mother and father dancing, their footsteps as light and graceful as the dainty steps of the royal deer.
TWO
IT WAS TWO YEARS LATER THAT THE QUEEN FELL ILL, AND NO doctor could help her; and at first no one thought it was serious. Indeed, some went so far as to hint that nothing at all was wrong; that the queen merely needed taking out of herself-or perhaps putting back into herself, for she gave of her presence and her beauty too freely, and was wearied by the adoration of her people. At first it was only that she rose late and retired early; but the weeks passed, and she rose later and later, and was seen outside her rooms less and less; and then the news came that she no longer left her bed, and then that she could not leave her bed.
And then it was said that she was dying.
The doctors shook their heads, and murmured long words to each other. The people wept, and prayed to their gods, and told themselves and each other many stories, till the real story sounded no truer than the rest. The story that contained the most truth, although it was not the story that was listened to the most often, was that the queen might not die, except that her illness, the strange invisible illness with no name, had robbed her of the tiniest fraction of her beauty. Her brilliant hair was just a little dulled, her enormous eyes just a little shadowed; and when she guessed she might no longer be the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms she lost her will to live.
She had the window curtains drawn first, that the sun might not find her out; she did not care that he might miss her, even as her people did, or that his warmth might be less cruel than her own eyes in the mirror were. Nor would she listen to her doctors, that sunlight might mend her; for she heard behind their voices that they knew nothing of what was wrong with her and therefore nothing of what might heal. She sank deeper into her pillows, and had her bed-curtains drawn as well.
The king was frantic, for after a time she refused to see him either; but she was convinced to yield to her husband in this thing after all, for he grew so wild at her denial that his ministers feared he would do himself an injury. So the queen drew a scarf over her head and a veil across her face, and gloves upon her hands, and permitted one candle only to be lit in her dim chamber; and it was held at some distance from the queen's bed, and shaded by a waiting-woman's hand.
The king threw himself across the queen's bed in a paroxysm of weeping, and tore at the bedclothes with his finger-nails, and cried aloud; and the waiting-women all trembled, and the candle flickered in the hands that held it, for they all thought the king had gone mad. But it could be seen that, through the veil, the queen smiled; and one hand, in its lacy, fragile glove, reached out and stroked his shoulder. At this he looked up at her, with a great snarl of bedclothes in his big hands, pressing them to his face like a child.
"There is something I would have you do for me," she said in the whisper that was all her voice now.
"Anything," he said, and his voice was no stronger than hers. "I want you to commission a painter," she said, in her perfectly controlled whisper, "and he must be the finest painter in this or any other land. I want him to paint a portrait of me as I was, for you to remember me by."
"Remember you by!" screamed the king; and some time passed before even the queen could calm him. But in the end he agreed, because it was true that he would do anything for her, and she knew it.
Now every painter in the seven kingdoms considered long when the news of this commission came to them; although very few painters responded from the kingdom of the sixth king, who had married the girl with thick legs. It was said, scornfully, that this was because, in that kingdom, there was no beauty to inspire the painter's art. But very many other painters came from the other five kingdoms. Most of all, however, painters came from the queen's own country, from the towns where the king and queen had brought sunshine to harvests and celebrations. All brought drawings they had made over the years of the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms, for they all had found her an irresistible subject. The highest number of painters from the smallest area, however, came from her uncle's, now her brother's, little fiefdom, and they brought drawings of a raven-haired child and young girl who would obviously grow-up to be the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms.
It was originally assumed that the king would attend the interviews and make the decision, but this was swiftly proven false, for the king did nothing but crouch by the queen's bed, clinging to her hand, and wetting it with his tears, until, sometimes, the queen tired of him, and sent him away. When he first tried to stand after the long hours of his vigil, he could barely walk for his grief, and without aid would have crawled like a beast. The burdens of the queen's desire thus fell upon his ministers, and they shared among themselves, some staying near the king, some hearing the most pressing matters of statecraft, some leafing through portfolios and sending away the most conspicuously inept. The other artists were made to wait, day after weary unbroken day-while their work was shown to the queen herself. And she did not hurry to make her decision.