Deerskin Read online

  The uneasiness of the ministers became a little more general, but the uneasiness had yet to take definite shape or name. It began to occur to the court that they had seen very little of the princess for the whole of the seventeen years of her existence, and was that not very odd, for a princess, and an only child of so grand a personage as their king, as well? It was true that she had been a little more visible the last two years, but she rarely spoke, and seemed to prefer the company of her dog; there were rumors of a dirty, uncouth old woman, some herb-hag, that the princess was mysteriously attached to; no one knew why.

  Was it not possible therefore that there was … something amiss about the princess?

  The smiles began to fade off the faces of the courtiers. She looked, as they thought about it, haggard. Did she have a wasting illness? (What had, finally, her mother died of? The doctors never said.) Suddenly the king’s over-jovial words struck on them harshly. Could he not see that there was something wrong with her? Although perhaps he could not. She was his daughter and his only child, and he could not look at her but with eyes of love. But … they did not want to think it, but they did … perhaps there was a sinister reason for her habitual absence from her father’s court, for her reluctance to take up her birthright, her royalty—why did she shrink from the eyes of her people?

  The court shook itself, and decided to be impatient with the princess, impatient so that they need think no worse.

  But the king—did he not speak a little wildly? Was it completely … proper … even in a king, to praise his daughter so extravagantly? Some of the courtiers remembered his madness upon the queen’s death, and the long months he had remained locked up in his rooms during her decline, seeing almost no one, state affairs attended to by a featureless collection of ministers with ponderous voices. Those had been bad times for the country.

  But that was all over … so everyone had hoped. He had been fit and capable again now for over a year—surely there was nothing really wrong now (with him or with the princess)—it would be a good thing when the princess was married and gone—he would settle down again then. He praised her extremely because she so obviously did not deserve it; with a father’s love he wished her shortcomings to be overlooked; which meant that he was aware of her shortcomings.

  It was really not surprising that any man should be a little over-anxious, over-thoughtful of his only daughter, particularly when that daughter was also his only child. And this girl has grown up so distractingly like and yet unlike her mother—it is not to be wondered at, that the king does not know quite how to behave toward her.

  He still misses his wife, of course, for he has not remarried. That is probably the girl’s doing. Every girl wants her father to herself. Look at her now, pretending to be so bashful, so shy that she cannot open her eyes, as if she did not like being the center of attention. Look at her, half-swooning, making sure by her weakness that her father will stand close, will hold her, protect her, not take his eyes off her. She probably has a hundred little petting, luring ways with him when they’re alone together. And he, poor man, thinks the sun rises and sets in her. Just see the way he looks at her.

  It will be better when she is married and gone.

  “The princess, as I say, is to be married!” And the king gave a high-pitched giggle as he said it; and then all the court truly was uneasy. “It is high time she was married, for she is a woman grown!” And he stroked her arm in a way that made many members of the court look away, although they would not have admitted why, even to themselves.

  “The princess, furthermore, is to be married very soon; the sooner the better.” The king’s voice, too loud, boomed out over the heads of his people. The candles flickered, as if in response; people’s gazes flickered, the expressions on their faces flickered. “I have set a great machinery in motion today, this morning, to have all this great land in readiness for the most magnificent celebration any of us has ever seen! I decided upon this thing last night, at the ball, as I beheld the princess for what seemed to be the first time; and I realized there was no time to waste. And so I set about the work this morning before dawn.”

  A sense of dread had settled on the company no less profound than that which lay upon the princess, who still stood silent, facing her father’s people, suffering his hand upon her arm.

  “For in the princess’s face I have seen a thing more glorious than any I have looked on before in the long years of my life: I have seen my youth returned to me, something no man ever thinks to behold, something no man—ere now—has ever been granted. In three days’ time we shall celebrate the wedding of our beautiful, beloved princess, Lissla Lissar—but it is not only your princess’s wedding you shall celebrate, but your king’s as well—for I shall be her bridegroom!”

  Lissar fainted. She swam back toward the light again, fleeing from the roaring of invisible monsters who seemed to press close around her. She thought briefly that one of them had seized her right arm—the arm her father had held—which ached fiercely. But as she opened her eyes she realized that it was only that she had fallen on that side, and bent the arm painfully under her; and she noticed further that her shoulder ached, as if wrenched, and she guessed that her father had not wanted to let her go.

  For a moment she could not move. It seemed her trapped arm held the rest of her captive; she was twisted in such a way that for a moment there seemed no way to begin the untwisting. She lay, blinking, her mind, still confused by the roaring of the monsters, failing to make sense of what she saw; the rippling of hems and the strange, abrupt, unconnected motions of shoes and boots bewildered her.

  Very near her eyes was a narrow dark shape with a slightly irregular outline, like a table-leg, perhaps; she had the sense of something suspended over her, something not too high or far away, and of the presence of more legs similar to the first. But they could not be table-legs after all, for the one directly in the line of her slowly clearing sight was … hairy. And then the rest of her consciousness returned to her in a rush, and she perceived, at the same moment as she understood that it was a living leg braced in front of her face, that it was Ash’s leg, and Ash who was standing over her, that she was lying on the floor of the dais, and that the roaring in her ears was not of invisible monsters any longer, but her father’s shouting voice:

  “Kill the damned dog! Where are the archers? Kill it! Oh, my darling, my darling! And I not wearing a sword!”

  Beneath his voice, another sound, much nearer her ear: the sound of Ash’s growl, echoing through the deep fleethound chest.

  She sat up at once and grabbed Ash around the neck; no one would dare harm her with the princess clinging to her—said a tiny voice in the back of her head, but it did not sound certain. Or perhaps the archers will come, and will dare to shoot, and perhaps their arrow-points will fall away just the width of a thread, just at the moment of release.…

  And then her father’s voice drowned out the tiny voice. “I will not have a dog about me that behaves so! Kill it! I care not for what you say! I am the king!”

  “No!” Lissar climbed shakily to her feet, leaning on Ash, who had stopped growling. Almost. But her ears were still pinned back, and her usual gentle expression was replaced by an intent, almost longing look that every hunter in the room might have recognized; and perhaps everyone but Lissar recalled that the prince Ossin’s hounds were renowned for their hunting prowess—and for their loyalty to the person they accept as their master.

  “Ash is my best friend! You will not take her away from me!”

  The court was startled again, in this morning full of shocks, by the strength of the princess’s voice, that little weak creature who could barely stand on her feet, saying such words, and about a dog.… They noticed too that for the moment she was not pale either; her cheeks were flushed and her hazel eyes flashed.

  The king, blustering, reached out to lay possessive hold upon his daughter again, but Lissar shied away from his touch, and the tall dog moved not a whit, nor shifted her stea
dy, baleful regard, and the king’s hands dropped to his sides again, empty.

  “You have three days to say good-bye to your childhood pet, then,” said he at last, and there was no love nor gentleness in his voice. “For you shall have it no longer, after the wedding—after our wedding!” He cried the last words like a herald declaring a victory, and struck himself on the chest with a blow so fierce it must have hurt.

  “For with the wedding, you shall set aside all childish things and enter into your womanhood, and the devotion you have learnt—and I do not say it was ill learnt—shall now be centered upon me. Upon only me!” And again he smote himself on the chest.

  “No,” whispered Lissar, and the color drained away from her face again. The roaring returned to her ears, and she staggered a little, but her watchful dog was as still and steady as a marble dog might be. The tall slim fleethound with ankles more slender than the princess’s own wrists, and a chest barely more than the princess’s hand’s-breadth wide, stood as unshakeably as a round stone tower, and Lissar clutched at her, and stood, and did not lose consciousness again.

  Beleaguered as she was, Lissar was slow to comprehend the reaction of the court to the events that overwhelmed her. What finally attracted her attention was the lack of archers nocking arrows to strings, should the king change his mind once more and reject a foolish leniency. He had been shouting for archers when she came out of her faint, and the king’s commands were acted upon immediately.

  Kneeling beside her, she leaned across Ash’s silken shoulders as she looked, that she might dispose herself best for her dog’s protection. The king had changed his mind; but he had called for archers, and archers should have appeared, if only to be dismissed. But no archers had come. Even his body-guardsmen had failed to draw their swords.

  She drew a sharp breath and risked a more complete look around her, turning her head away from her father for the first time, but warily, as if in certain knowledge that she did a foolish thing, that her father was the sort of enemy to attack if watchfulness failed. But because she was herself again now, she recognized what she was seeing: the court was paralyzed in horror. Their faces were blank with shock; but as her eyes sought to catch theirs, their eyes slid away, and horror began to separate itself from indeterminate shock. She saw them begin to decide what to think, and she did not dare to watch any longer; for she feared their decision.

  She turned her eyes back to her father in time to hear him say, “Do you understand me, Lissla Lissar? Three days. On the morning of our wedding, the dog goes into the kennel with the other hounds—where she should have been all along. I have been lax. If there are any complaints of her before or after—then I will have her shot after all. You should not be distracted by a dog on the eve of the most important day of your life.”

  “No,” said Lissar. It was hard to talk at all; harder still to bring out this one word—this word that acknowledged, in the saying, that it needed to be said, that what was happening was not mere nightmare, when a word spoken aloud by the dreamer into the dark will awaken her to her real life. “No. F-father, you cannot mean to do this. You cannot mean to m-marry me.”

  With these words from Lissar, the court stirred at last. “Marry! The princess marry her own father! It will be the death of the country. The country must rot, go to ruin and decay under such a coupling. The princess marry her father! What spell is this! We have thought her so weak and timid! We cannot understand it! He has been so fit and well; his justice and judgements have been faultless. What has she done to him, this witch-daughter, that he should desire to devastate his country and his people this way? The other kings will know that he has gone mad; we shall be invaded before the year is out. How can this have happened to us? Oh, that her mother should have lived! Then this could not have happened.”

  “Mean to?” thundered the king. “Of course I mean to marry you. I have proclaimed it—you have heard me proclaim it—” He flung his arms out to either side, as if he would embrace the entire court; the court which was shrinking away from the man and woman standing on the dais, with the dog standing between, and the painting blazing impotently over their heads. “I will marry you, three days hence, in the great courtyard, and everyone shall attend upon us!

  “It will be a glorious day—and a glorious night,” and as he said this the pupils of his eyes suddenly expanded, so that they looked like bottomless black pools, like the lightless, lifeless place she had found herself drowning in when she fainted; and these pools seemed all of his face, and his face was no longer human. She threw up a hand as if to ward off a blow.

  “It is terrible!” muttered the court. “Do you believe it? Hear what he says. It is terrible. How evil the girl must be, to have brought her own father to this pass; how can we never have noticed? She has always been such a quiet little thing. What can we do? There is nothing we can do; it is too late. We can only hope the fit passes, and our good king returns to us unharmed. Three days! There is no hope for the marriage; we will have to play this vile thing to its close. Perhaps we can prevent news of this—wedding—from leaving the kingdom. Perhaps there will be a way to spirit the girl away after a little while, send her far away, where she can be no further trouble, and our king’s own will may return to him, and he become himself again. What a terrible thing this is!”

  “Go now,” said the king to his daughter. “Go, and begin your preparations; and remember that in three days we shall be wed, with all rejoicing. Remember!” In his mouth, remember was a word that had nothing to do with joy.

  Lissar stumbled down from the dais, still leaning on her dog, who pressed against her side; pressed against her as the people pressed away. Once she raised her eyes, despairingly, pleadingly, seeking any eyes that might meet hers; but none did. And so she made her slow way to the door, her dog placing one steady foot after the other, that her person might walk safely; and when the princess went through the doors of the receiving-hall the doorkeeper shied away from her as from a curse, or contamination by disease; and as soon as she was fairly through, he hastened to the other side of the doors, and slammed them shut behind her.

  The sound reverberated through the hall, through Lissar’s body and the soles of her feet; she shuddered. The receiving-hall doors were never closed; it was the purpose of the king’s attendance in that room, that by making himself thus available, anyone who wished to address the king might approach through the open door, and lay the matter before him. Even when he was not there, the doors remained open, and a secretary awaited any who might come with a message. The doors were never closed.

  Ash took a step forward, suggesting that they go on; Lissar had stopped when the doors were closed, and stood staring at them as if at the end of her world, as if at the appearance of a fabulous beast, something out of a storybook. Lissar felt Ash’s movement, and a bolt of courage or despair shot through her, and she picked up her skirts and fled, Ash bounding at her side.

  They ran till they reached the princess’s rooms, and through all the great, solemn, over-furnished chambers, to the little round rose-colored room that Lissar felt was the one room that was truly hers; and she buried her face in her pillow, tearing her fingernails with the strength of her grasp upon the bedframe; and she moaned. The horror was too deep for tears or cries; even to think of it—to try to think of it—only made her numb, made her feel as if some portion of herself were being split off from the rest, some portion of herself must move to some distance away from the rest even to contemplate something so alien, so abominable, as marriage to her father.

  It could not be so. It was the worst, utterly the worst, of all nightmares; the nightmare that had lived with her, hiding in the shadows, since that day the heralds had brought her a puppy from a kind young prince from far away, and she had looked up, her arms full of Ash, and met her father’s eyes. She had feared him since then, without naming her fear; and last night, last night at the ball, when he would not yield her to any of the lordly suitors who had attended the ball for her sake, the nigh
tmare had begun to take shape, but a shape then still made of shadow.…

  Had there been a ball last night, or was that a part of this nightmare?

  Had she a father?

  Who was she?

  She moved slightly, raised her head. She knew who she was, for there was Ash, and she knew who Ash was, Ash was her dog and her best friend.

  It occurred to her to notice that there was no one else around, and that this was odd. There were always the waiting-women, the latest court ladies, murmuring and rustling in the outer rooms, occasionally breaching the princess’s small sanctum, speaking of ribbons and satin, pearls and lace, and of balls, and lovers, and … weddings.

  But word of the king’s announcement had penetrated the entire palace as if instantly, as his voice had penetrated the ears of the audience in the receiving-hall, and the court ladies had responded as everyone else had responded.

  Lissar guessed this, dully, without putting it to words; dully she wondered if she would ever see Viaka again; and if she did not, if Viaka had been kept away, or had stayed away voluntarily. Dully she wondered who would be assigned to see to her wedding-dress. She thought that the king’s people would not dare defy him openly; shun her they might—and would—but if he declared that she was to be adorned for her wedding, then adorned, bedecked and bedighted, she would be.

  Ash was sitting by the side of the bed, looking at her gravely. Her person did not lie on the bed in the middle of the day; whatever was wrong, whatever she had tried to protect her from just now, was going on being wrong.… She leaned toward Lissar, and licked her face. Lissar began to weep then, the stunned, uncomprehending tears of hopelessness: of a truth too appalling to be contained by nightmare breaking into reality, that the body one inhabits is about to be used in a way one would rather die than undergo.