The Door in the Hedge: And Other Stories Read online

  So, after he married her, he set out not really to woo her, which he thought would be cheating when affairs of state had almost forced them to get married in the first place, but to be as unflaggingly nice to her as he thought he could get away with. Their delight in each other after they became the sort of lovers that minstrels make ballads about (although it was certainly unpoetic of them to be married to each other) was so apparent that it spilled over into their dealings with their people; and the court became a more joyful place than it had been for many a long royal generation. And minstrels did make ballads about them, even though they were married to each other.

  It was the tradition in this country that when the King and Queen reached a certain age—nobody knew precisely when that age was, but the country was lucky in its monarchs as it was lucky in so much else, and somehow they always had enough sense to know when they had reached it—they retired, and the next King and Queen took over. The older ones always went off to live somewhere as far away and as obscure as possible so they would not be tempted to meddle; and the new pair could settle in and start off without the grief of their parents’ death hanging over them—or the feeling, on the other hand, that the parents were just in the next room, grumbling about the muddle those youngsters were making.

  But usually the old King and Queen did not step down until the young ones had a child or two, and it half-raised and at least potentially capable of looking after itself to some extent. But Alora bore no children. And at last her parents shrugged and said that they had waited long enough. The Queen dreamed every night about that little cottage in the woods, with the brook beside it, and a flower garden that she could keep with her own hands—sometimes she dreamed of it two or three times in a night. Children weren’t strictly necessary, even for monarchs; there was always somebody available to pass a crown to. And so at last came a day full of boxes and wagons and shouts, and last-minute directions on ruling (“Don’t forget that the Duke of Murn expects to be served fresh aradel at every dinner he’s invited to: I don’t care what season it is, he will make your life miserable with hunting stories if you don’t”). It all ended eventually with “Well, don’t worry, you won’t make too big a mess of it; we have faith in you; and come and visit us sometimes when the garden is blooming—and, well, goodbye.”

  While the people lined the roads and cheered, the new Queen Alora and King Gilvan stood silently on their balcony, the Royal Balcony of Public Appearances and Addresses, and watched the wagons roll away.

  When the wagons were quite out of sight, and only a dusty blur on the horizon remained, hanging over the road they took and greying the trees that lined it, the pair on their balcony turned and went down into the palace, into their private rooms.

  Gilvan was the first to break the silence; he sighed and said: “I wish my parents would take it upon themselves to retire. There’re more than enough rising generations to take over for them—in fact you’d think the pressure from below would rise up and sweep them away … but dukes and duchesses never seem to feel the compulsion to be reasonable that kings and queens do.” Gilvan had felt rather than seen the unhappy look Alora had given him when he spoke of rising generations, and he knew what she was thinking before she opened her mouth. “Don’t worry about it,” he said simply. “You needn’t.”

  “But—”

  “I alone have half a dozen brothers and sisters, and they’re all married and all have half a dozen children apiece. As your father said—”

  “He didn’t exactly say it,” said Alora hastily.

  “No; his range of hems is wide and most expressive. But the crown won’t go begging; that’s all.” Gilvan paused and looked thoughtful. “There’s rather a glut on the market in royal offspring in our day, really. We don’t have to add to it. In fact, it may be wiser that we don’t. There isn’t all that much for all of us to do. There are too many local festivals and celebrations of this and that already, and even more dukes and earls to do the presiding.”

  Alora almost laughed. “Yes, but as King and Queen we really ought to have an heir. Of our own.”

  Gilvan shrugged. “Noisy little beasts, children—or at any rate our family’s are all tiresomely loud—we can do without them. There are too many that have to visit us already. And if you mean that direct-line stuff, well, the crown has done more dancing around over the last several hundred years than a cat on a hot stove. A small leap to a nephew—is it Antin that’s the oldest? We aren’t due for Queen What’s-her-name, are we?”

  “No, Antin, fortunately. Lirrah is the next oldest.”

  “And hasn’t a brain in her pretty head.” Gilvan looked relieved. “I thought it was Antin—as long as he doesn’t break his neck out hunting someday. Anyway, a small leap to a nephew won’t discomfit it any. And you know I don’t mind.”

  Alora looked at him and nodded: he was only speaking the truth. He didn’t mind; but she did not know how much that decision had cost him, and she couldn’t help wondering. And she did mind, somehow; and she rather thought that their people, even if only wistfully, did too. Antin was a nice boy (and let nothing happen to him! One could only hope Lirrah’s parents could find someone with sense enough for two to marry her), but … she didn’t mean to think of Ellian, but still she often did; and she knew the rumor that was whispered about her, Queen Alora: that she bore her husband and her kingdom no children because she had never quite recovered from the loss of her sister years ago. She wasn’t sure that this wasn’t correct.

  But then, shortly after she became Queen, and after a dozen quiet years of marriage, Alora began to have dizzy spells in the mornings when she first stepped out of bed. She didn’t like being sick, so she ignored them, assuming that if they didn’t get any attention they would go away; and every day they did, but most mornings they came back. Then other things happened, and she knew for sure: but she was afraid to tell anyone, because perhaps it still wasn’t true, maybe she read the signs wrong because she wanted so much that it be true. And then one day Gilvan went looking for his wife and couldn’t find her anywhere that he thought she should be; and at last when he was beginning to feel a little worried, he ran her to earth in their big bedroom. The bed itself was a monster, up three velvet-carpeted steps to a dais almost as large as the dais that held the royal table in the banqueting hall. The four carved bedposts stood eight feet above the mattress, broad as masts, and were almost black in color, yielding only a very little brown warmth if the sun shone full upon them; the bed-curtains were as elaborate as a hundred of the finest needlewomen could make them, working all day for six months before the royal wedding, a dozen years ago.

  Alora looked very small, sitting at the great bed’s foot, her arms around one of the posts, her face pressed against the curtains. She sat very still, as if she were afraid she might overflow if she moved; but with joy or sorrow he could not tell.

  “What is it?” he said, and realized his heart was thumping much louder than it ought to be.

  She opened her eyes and saw him, and a smile overflowed her quietness. She let go the bedpost and held out her arms to him. “Our heir,” she said. “Six months more, I think, if I have been keeping proper count. I’ve been afraid to tell you before, but it’s true, after all these years.…”

  Gilvan, who had never cared before, discovered suddenly and shatteringly that he was about to care very much indeed.

  Alora had been keeping proper count; five months and twenty-seven days later she gave birth to a daughter, while Gilvan paced up and down a long stone corridor somewhere in the palace—later, he was never quite sure where it was—and thought about all sorts of things, not a one of which he could remember afterward. They named her Linadel, and her christening party was the most magnificent occasion anyone could remember. The young sprigs and dandies of the court—even the best-regulated court has a few of them who are above having a good time—had a good time; the great-grandmothers who spent all their time complaining how much handsomer and finer and generally superior things
had been when they were young unbent enough to smile and admit that this was really a rather nice party, now they came to think of it. And the old King and Queen dusted themselves off, and left their precious flower garden long enough to return to the capital, and meet their new granddaughter, and borrow some fancy dress, and go to the party; and they even thought their granddaughter was worth it.

  Linadel herself was rosy and smiling throughout, and didn’t seem to mind being kept awake so long and passed from one set of strange arms to another, and breathed on by all sorts (all the better sorts, at least) of strange people. She continued to smile and to make small gurgles and squeaks, and to look fresh and contented. It was her parents who wore out first and called an end to the festivities.

  Linadel grew up, as princesses are expected to do, more beautiful every day; and with charms of mind and manner that kept pace. She didn’t speak at all till she was three years old, and then on her third birthday she astonished everyone by saying, quite distinctly, as she sat surrounded by gifts and fancy sweets, and godmothers and godfathers (she had almost two dozen of them), and specially favored subjects and servants, “This is a very nice party. Thank you very much.” Everyone thought this was a very auspicious beginning; and they were right. Linadel never lisped her r’s or took refuge in smiling and looking as pretty as a picture (which she could have done easily) when she tackled a comment too large for her. On her fourth birthday she presented everyone with what amounted to a small speech. “And a better one than some I’ve heard her granddaddy give,” said a godfather out of the corner of his mouth to a godmother, who giggled.

  She never looked back, whatever she did. In any other kingdom her parents and friends—and everyone was her friend—would have said that the faeries had blessed her. Here, they said only, “Isn’t she wonderful, isn’t she beautiful, isn’t it splendid that she’s ours?”

  She was beautiful. Her hair was dark, velvet brown by candlelight and almost chestnut in the sun; and it fell in long slow curls past her shoulders. When she was thoughtful, she would wind a loose curl—her thick hair invariably escaped from its ribbons—around one hand and pull gently till it slid through her fingers and sprang back to its place. This habit, as she grew older, made young men breathe hard.

  Her eyes were grey. Or at least mostly grey. They had lights and glimmers in them that some people thought were blue, or green, or perhaps gold; but for everyday purposes (and even a princess has need for a few everyday facts) they were grey. Her skin was pale and pure, with three or four coppery freckles across her small nose to keep her from being perfect. Her hands were long and slim and quiet, and a touch from them would still a barking dog or soothe a fever.

  But the strongest thing about her, and perhaps the finest too, was her will. It was her will that prevented her from being hopelessly spoiled, when without it—in spite of the intelligence and cheerfulness that were as much a part of her as her dark hair and pale eyes—it would have been inevitable. Her will told her that she was a princess and would someday become a queen, and had responsibilities (many of them tiresome) therefore; but beyond that she was an ordinary human being like any other. It was her position as a princess which explained the extravagant respect and praise she received from everyone (except her parents, whom she could talk to as two other ordinary human beings caught in the same trap); and it was this belief in her essential ordinariness that prevented her head from being turned by the other. She did very well this way; and the strength of this willful innocence meant that she did not realize that the respect and admiration was by it that much increased.

  It is all very well to say that all princesses are good and beautiful and charming; but this is usually a determined optimism on everybody’s part rather than the truth. After all, if a girl is a princess, she is undeniably a princess, and the best must be made of it; and how much pleasanter it would be if she were good and beautiful. There’s always the hope that if enough people behave as though she is, a little of it will rub off.

  But Linadel really was good and beautiful and charming, and kind and thoughtful and wise, and while at the very end you must add “and wonderfully obstinate,” well, for a girl in her position to support all her other virtues, she had to be.

  But how to find such a paragon a suitable husband? When she was fifteen her parents began reluctantly to discuss the necessity of finding her a husband. They should have done this long ago, but had put it off again and again. The obvious choice was Antin, who was a nice boy, and who, if Linadel had not been born, would have worn the crown anyway; and the thought that he would not disgrace it had comforted Gilvan and Alora through their childless years. But that comfort was fifteen years old now, and Antin was a man grown—and still, really, a rather nice boy. It was not that he was lazy, for as a duke, and one still in line for the throne although now once removed, he had duties to perform and dignity to maintain, and he performed and maintained suitably. He was also a splendid horseman (a king needs to look good on horseback for the morale of his people) and no physical coward. It wasn’t even that he was stupid—although he did have a slight tendency toward royal corpulence. But—somehow—there was something a little bit missing. This was perhaps most visible in the fact that he, while very polite about the honor of it, et cetera, wasn’t the least enthusiastic himself about marrying his young and beautiful cousin. Both Alora and Gilvan, trying to see behind his eyes, felt that his attitude toward kingship was one of well-suppressed dislike.

  The rumor was that he was in love with a mere viscount’s daughter, who was pretty enough and nice enough, but not anything in particular herself, and that the only enthusiasm Antin did feel on the subject of Linadel’s marriage was that it should happen soon and to someone else; so that he would be free to marry his little Colly. Gilvan and Alora became aware of the rumor, and by that time they were inclined to hope it was true, as the best for everybody concerned.

  But it was delicate ground nonetheless, and if Antin were to be discarded as an eligible king, a better reason than his indifference to the post must be found. This proved more difficult than it looked. It was managed finally, after a lot of hemming and hawing on all sides, with an agreement that since everybody in Gilvan’s and Alora’s families was already related to everybody else, usually in several different degrees, to add further to the confusion by marrying Linadel to Antin was beyond the point of sense.

  Everyone involved breathed a sigh of relief. It can be assumed that this included Colly, although no one asked her.

  It was true that the royal family of this kingdom, like those of many other kingdoms, had mostly the same blood running through all of its veins; but if Antin himself had not been a specific problem, the subject probably would not have come up. As it was, it meant that Linadel’s husband could not be any other member of the family either. It was a relief to have found a way to reject Antin without losing too much face (and the people talked about it anyway: the true purpose of a royal family, as Gilvan rather often observed, is to be a topic of gossip common to all, and thus engender in its subjects a feeling of unity and shared interests); but one still was left to play by the rules one had made, however inconvenient those rules were.

  And, as Gilvan and Alora understood in advance and soon proved in fact, the last mortal kingdom before Faerieland had some difficulty in luring an outsider of suitable rank, parts, and heritage to be its king; even with Linadel as bait—or perhaps partly because of it. The ones who were willing were willing because they were fascinated by the thought of all that stealthy and inscrutable magic, sending out who knew what impalpable influences across its borders which lay so near although no one could say precisely where—an attitude which Alora and Gilvan and their people didn’t like at all. Such candidates as there were were almost automatically poets or prophets or madmen, or all three combined; and the first were foolish, the second strident, and the third disconcerting; and none of them would have made a good king.

  The rest were afraid, afraid to come any nearer tha
n they already were—which, if they were near enough to receive state visits from that last kingdom, was probably too near.

  “I’ll marry her to a commoner first!” said Gilvan violently after a particularly unfortunate interview with the fifth son of a petty kingdom who fancied his artistic temperament.

  “I’ve only just noticed something,” Alora said wearily; “the only immigrants we ever get—the ones that stay, and seem to love it here as we do—they’re never aristocrats. We haven’t had any new blue blood in generations. I’d never thought of it before. I wonder if it means anything.”

  “That aristocratic blood runs thinner than the usual sort,” said Gilvan shortly. He drummed his fingers on his purple velvet knee. “Besides, there’s no room for them. Why should they come? We have more earls per square foot than any other country I’ve ever heard of.…”

  “And we’re related to every last one of them,” said Alora, and sighed.

  It was a problem, and it remained a problem, and two years passed without any promise of solution. Linadel didn’t mind because she had never been in love; the idea of a husband was a rational curiosity only, like how to get through state occasions without treading on one’s great heavy robes—and how, in those same robes, heavy and cumbersome as full armor, one could hold one’s arms out straight and steady for the Royal Blessing of the People, which took forever, because there were always lots of special mentions by personal request of a subject to his sovereign. She had asked Alora, whose arms never trembled, and Alora had smiled grimly and said, “Practice.”

  So Linadel practiced being a princess—it wouldn’t occur to her that it came to her naturally—and became wiser and more beautiful, and even more loving and lovable; and she wasn’t perfect, but she wasn’t ordinary either.