Their own black-robed king was in his receiving-hall that day, for his ministers had determined that it would be good for him to go through the motions of governing, even though each motion had to be prompted by the ministers themselves. He could not even be trusted to feed himself, these days, but someone must sit next to him and tell him to put food in his mouth for every bite. But he was docile now, unlike the first weeks of the queen's illness; and the harassed ministers wished to believe this an improvement. And so it was the king who welcomed the heralds from the sixth king, or, more accurately, it was his ministers who welcomed them and, when prodded, not very subtly, the king who nodded slowly in an acknowledgement he did not feel.
The heralds noticed that his eyes were steady, if dazed, and they thought that if the rumors heard in their kingdom of his madness had been true, they were true no longer; for here was a man made weak and simple by his grief. So they made the correct obeyances, and were graciously granted leave (by the ministers) to demonstrate what gifts they had brought; and so they opened their baskets, displaying sparkling jars of preserves that the queen and her ladies had put up themselves; and some meltingly supple leather from a deer that the king and his huntsmen had themselves shot, dressed out, skinned and tanned, and dyed a flawless black. And, last, there was a small woven basket-pannier, and the herald who handled it touched it with particular gentleness, and when he set it down, and knelt beside it to lift the loop from the pin that held it closed, it seemed to move of itself, to stir where it sat.
When he opened it he reached in to lift something out: and there was a small silver-fawn-colored fleethound puppy who trembled, and struggled to be set down, and as soon as the herald had done so tried to climb into his kneeling lap, and hide her small slender face under his arm.
"The prince's favorite bitch whelped two months ago," said the herald, while the fleethound presented her rear parts to the court and dug her head farther under his arm. "When he heard of your loss, he begged his parents to let him send the princess one of the puppies."
It was the first time anyone of the court had thought of the princess since the queen fell ill.
Her nursemaid had seen to it that they watched the long days in and out of the queen's long decline; and the nursemaid sank deeper and deeper into her grief, and the girl herself grew more and more silent and withdrawn, for her nursemaid had been her only lasting companion for as long as she could remember. And when the queen died, the nursemaid saw to it that the princess had a black dress to wear to her mother's funeral, and a black scarf to tie up her dark soft hair, and black boots for her feet, black stockings for her legs, and black gloves for her hands; and a black cap, gloves, and overskirt for herself. For even in her grief she knew what was required, just as she had seen to it that both she and the princess bathed every day, and had enough to eat, and proper clothing as the season changed. But it did not seem to her strange that the court forgot the princess in its preoccupation with the queen, for she would have forgotten the princess herself, had it not been her job to take care of her. There was no hauteur in her when she made sure of the necessities for herself and the princess.
The two of them had gone to the funeral, quietly, like any other mourners from the vast royal household; and if any recognized them as perhaps having a special place in the affair, no mention was made nor notice taken. The king and queen had absorbed all their people's attention for as long as they had been king and queen; there had never been anything left for the princess. That there might be something odd about this, even wrong, occurred to no one; their king, their queen, were too glorious, too luminous, too superb, for there to be anything wrong with them. That they forgot their child themselves, and distracted their people into forgetting her also, was merely a natural result of their perfections, as was the fact that the princess had no place and no purpose. No one of their people could imagine the country without this king and this queen. The idea that this child of theirs was their heir was incomprehensible; as if someone had suggested that a tadpole might inherit the sea upon the death of water. At the queen's funeral no one was capable of thinking beyond the fact that this was the end of their world.
The nursemaid and the princess stood with the two housemaids who most often attended to their simple needs, and who had helped in making up the princess's mourning clothes. The princess looked around quietly into the faces of her parents' people, last of all looking in her nursemaid's face, who was as dazed as anyone else in the kingdom-as the king himself. She had worshipped the queen with every breath she took, and had sought the position of caring for her daughter because she was her daughter.
The princess was in a daze also, but her confusion had more to do with perplexity than with sorrow. For what she realized was that her mother's death had no effect on her, but only on those around her. But this was so amazing to her that her amazement looked like grief, had there been anyone to notice.
She had grown up understanding that almost all those around her, chiefly her nursemaid but also the maids and the occasional courtier or minister who thought it politic to visit her, and certainly her parents, on those rare occasions that she was summoned into their presence, desired her to be biddable. For the most part she had acquiesced in this. She knew no other children, and never guessed the noisy games that most children play; and she learned very young that when she cried or was cross she was likely to be left alone; and as she had so little companionship she was unwilling to risk the little. She could not remember her babyhood; her first memories were of her nursemaid telling her stories, stories about her mother and father in the years before she was born; her second memories were of asking for those stories to be retold.
Her first rebellion, although she did not know it, was in learning to read. She learned rather easily, which was remarkable, for the nursemaid was an even worse teacher than she was a scholar. With the curious stark comprehension of children, she knew that her nursemaid's reluctance to read stories from books was because she was not good at it, and that it would be as well not to tell her that it was otherwise with herself. But the princess had seized on this thing not commanded of her, unlike dancing and riding and deportment, and soon came to treasure it; for books were companionable.
Somehow the occasional ladies who wished to pet her-either for her own sake, or for the sake, as they hoped, of their husbands' careers-rarely came to see her more than a few times. The queen, the nursemaid told the princess reprovingly, when she showed signs of missing a very young and playful lady who had contrived to visit her nearly a dozen times before being banished as mysteriously as the rest, was very strict about who might be permitted to cultivate her only child. The young and playful lady had not only taught the princess games that involved running and shouting, but had brought her fresh new storybooks, and helped her to hide them from the nursemaid; and although the princess noticed that this seemed to make the lady unhappy, she refused to fell the little girl why. But the princess had let herself be consoled for this loss, for she was still very young, when the nursemaid look her on her lap and told again their favorite story.