The queen tapped her crystal water glass with a silver knife to order quiet. She had not understood much of what had just occurred. "Next?" she called.
The thin bald man in black stood up slowly. "I am Percival," he said, "Prince of Pustula." He picked up a butter knife, held it in front of his face, and examined what he saw. No mustache. No hair. He felt destroyed.
"I brought a gift," he announced. "But it is useless now."
He reached into his back pocket, removed the small silver box, and tossed it toward the place where the princess sat. "Here," he said contemptuously. "Do what you want with it. I'm so out of here."
Then he stalked from the room and they could all hear his footsteps as he descended the staircase.
Curiously the princess reached for the container. She opened its lid, looked in, chuckled, and removed the gift. It was a pair of mirrored glasses, the frames encrusted with diamonds. She reached across the table and handed them to the orphan. "Try them on," she suggested. "They might be fun."
Liz unfolded the glasses and balanced them over her ears and nose. She giggled. "Everyfink's dark!" she said. "But I can see you!" she added, turning to the duke.
He looked at her, saw himself reflected, and burst into tears again.
"You stop that right now!" Liz said. "You just get used to it! Becuz I'm goin' to put these spectacles on every day and you can see your teef gettin' better and better iffen you start brushing regular!"
"Every day? But I'm going back to my own domain—"
"And you be takin' me wiv you! 'Cuz I'm a norphan and got no home!"
"You'd go with an ugly thing like me?" he asked in surprise.
"Iffen you let me bring a kitten," Liz replied with a grin.
The queen tapped again on the crystal glass. "This is all going on much too long," she announced. "There is still dancing planned. Can we have the final suitor at once?"
But amazingly, the conjoint counts refused to come forward. They were in the corner with the triplets, quietly practicing harmonies, planning new five-part songs.
Hmmmm.
Hmmmm.
Hmmmm.
Hmmmm.
Hmmmm.
"Counts?" the queen called. "We're ready for your presentation now!"
Count Cuthbert looked over. "We're busy," he replied.
***
"Father? Mother? Villagers?"
The princess, who had been seated and silent, rose from her chair. Everyone turned toward her end of the table. Liz put on her new spectacles and looked up at the princess with a grin. "Not now, Liz," the princess admonished her with a smile.
From her perch on the pulley tray, Tess leaned forward. Soon, she knew, she would be lowered. But she wanted to hear this moment, to know whom the princess would choose.
"It is the moment for the choice," the princess said to the waiting gathering.
"Eh?" The queen could not hear her daughter. "What did she say?" she asked the king.
"The choice. She's making the choice." The king was preoccupied with his own plans. If he could get out to the meadow, and if that Charaxes acraeoides had lingered there ... Well, there was a chance...
"I know it is required," the princess went on, and for a moment her voice faltered. "It is the Law of the Domain. Isn't that right, Father?"
The king nodded. He looked at his watch and yearned for the evening to end. "Law of the Domain."
"And only you can change that?" The princess felt this was her only hope: convincing her father, even at this last moment, that he must change the Law of the Domain. "You being king, I mean?"
The king was startled. His daughter was correct. But the procedure for changing the Law of the Domain was complex and lengthy and very, very time-consuming. "Yes," he acknowledged. "Only I. Being king. Very time-consuming. Minimum, seven years."
The princess's heart sank. Seven years? She'd be old by then! She didn't want to wait seven years!
"Well," she said, frantically searching in her mind for another solution, "am I correct, also, that the princess—that's me, of course." Here she laughed nervously. "Ah, the princess has to choose a husband, and he must be nobility?"
"Nobility. Correct. Prince. Duke. Count. Whatever." The king groaned inwardly, suffering for his daughter. The hideous duke was slobbering in his seat and being comforted by a waif. The repulsive prince had fled, stopping only briefly to squat and look at himself in a highly polished doorknob, and a footman had whispered to the king that he was now being pursued around the castle grounds by bees. The counts, one of them with toilet paper stuck in wads all over his face, were singing madrigals in a far corner with the serving maids.
The princess took a deep breath. "All right, then, I'm ready. I will make the choice."
The room fell absolutely silent.
The princess remembered, in that instant, what the schoolmaster had said to her once: You are tall and slender as a young willow tree, supple and lovely. She drew herself up and stood very straight.
"I choose to marry Herr Gutmann," she said.
19. The Happy Ending
"What did she say? What did my daughter say? I demand to know what the princess said!" The queen turned to her husband.
"She said something that makes no sense," he explained to her, enunciating clearly. "She said she wants to marry someone named Herr Gutmann!"
"The footman? Impossible!" the queen gasped.
"No, not the footman! Herr Gutmann is what she said!"
Around the table, all of the villagers were murmuring the same word. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible.
"It isn't impossible!" the princess, near tears, insisted. "My chambermaid told me about Herr Gutmann! He's nobility! He just likes to pretend to peasanthood! But he's truly noble, and qualifies!"
From her hiding place in the pulley passage, Tess listened, and her eyes grew wide. The princess had chosen the schoolmaster? That stern, bearded man who had taught her to read and sometimes rapped her knuckles with a ruler? He was old! But still, perhaps it was better than the horrible suitors!
A tall peasant woman, wringing and twisting her hands in nervousness on her skirt, stood. "Please, Your Majesties? Please, Princess? I can explain why it's impossible."