‘I cannot,’ I said.
‘Then you are not the Queen trying to trick me?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘my name is Coriander.’
I walked up to him. I could see the blue light reflected back at me. He had dark brown eyes. I felt a shock go through me as with great gentleness he touched my face, feeling my eyes, my nose, my mouth, my ears, as a blind man would see through his fingers.
I thought not to say this, for it embarrasses me to remember. But such tenderness had been gone from my life for so long that tears rolled down my face.
He took me over to the great white horse. ‘Do not be scared. He knew you were here long before I did.’
The horse raised his head and, trembling, I stroked his mane.
‘Where did you come from?’ the prince asked.
‘I do not rightly know,’ I said. ‘I was locked in a chest and I thought I was going to die.’
‘Medlar was sure you would come one day, when the time was right,’ said the prince, smiling. ‘It is good to meet you at last.’
‘What is your name?’ I asked.
‘Tycho,’ he said. ‘My name is Tycho.’
Behind us a branch snapped and his face darkened, as if a cloud were going over the sun.
‘Has anyone else seen you?’ he said.
‘No.’
‘Does the Queen know you are here?’
‘No.’
I did not want him to walk away. I felt safe when he was near me. ‘Why marry against your will?’ I asked him.
‘I have no choice. If I do not, Rosmore will cast a spell on me. I shall be changed into a fox and hunted down and killed.’
I felt worried by what he had said. Surely that could not be right.
‘My mother told me fairy stories where such enchantments happen, but I never thought -’
‘She told you stories of this world,’ he interrupted, ‘and here there are such spells.’
‘Why would the Queen want to be so cruel?’
He said nothing. Above us, the sky darkened and through the trees the raven, heavy with his inky black feathers, swooped down towards us. The horse reared. I drew back to hide in the undergrowth. The huge bird landed on a branch near Tycho.
‘What keeps you from the house?’ demanded Cronus.
‘Nothing. I am thinking of what lies ahead.’
‘All that fortune can bring,’ crowed the bird, his pearl black eyes glittering. He pointed with the tip of his wing to a tower that rose above the forest. ‘The Queen has been watching for you. She has sent huntsmen to escort you.’
I looked up to see giant riders approaching the bank. Their jackets were the colour of wet blood and their dogs barked and snarled, showing sets of teeth as sharp as knives. I felt pity for the horses. They were small, much too small for the riders, and their eyes were wild with fear, their ears pinned back as they stamped the ground.
Tycho walked over to his great white horse. It stood many hands taller than the huntsmen’s terrified beasts, and looked majestic in the golden light. Tycho looked straight at me, and for a moment I thought I must be visible and blushed to think what he would make of me with my ragged dress and ill-cut hair. He touched my arm and whispered, ‘I will not forget you. Do not forget me.’
I could see the raven looking in my direction and I knew that I must do something. I went close to Tycho and said as softly as I could, ‘Do not go through with this marriage. Follow what your heart tells you.’
Tycho looked towards me for a moment and then turned to follow Cronus.
I felt unbearable sadness come over me as I watched the huntsmen and the dogs accompany the bridegroom and his horse up to the house. I thought that he looked as if he were about to be hanged at Tyburn.
16
Embroidered Eyes
I knew that I could not stay in hiding. I would have to find Medlar. Maybe he would be able to stop this wedding and save Tycho from his fate.
It was getting late by the time I arrived back at the house. The big black dog of night with its belly full of stars had already rolled over on the day.
In the entrance hall, everyone was gathered in great excitement. They whispered like a flock of birds at eventide before being ushered into the long chamber with the mirrors and the spindly gold chairs. The doors closed behind us with a loud, mournful clang. It sounded like a bell tolling for a funeral.
I stood at the end of the chamber hoping to catch sight of Medlar, but he did not appear. Where could he be? I did not know what to do. Should I go back to the stables?
By now everyone was seated and silent. Then trumpets sounded and the great doors opened once more to reveal Queen Rosmore, standing tall and proud in a gown that trailed behind her. At her neck was a ruff of fur and on her hair a black head-dress made of feathers, flightless and heavy. Her gown was covered in a hundred embroidered eyes that moved, opening and closing, staring out, searching for something or someone.
King Nablus entered behind her. He looked shaky and weak and was leaning on a stick, his body twisted like an ancient walnut tree, his long white hair hanging over his shoulders. He stood out amongst the wedding guests, carrying the weight of time on his shoulders. He nodded to the crowd, and as he approached the men bowed their heads, the women curtsied.
I moved along the great hall, staying close to the walls, pleased to see my blue light reflected back, dancing with all the other lights in the room. The King and Queen made their way to a dais. The King was helped into his chair by attendants and sat there awkwardly, his face frozen as if in surprise.
Tiny bells began to chime, rose petals fell like snow and little lights twinkled across the room. It was the setting for a perfect fairy tale wedding. Yet I knew, as did the guests, that something was very wrong.
The raven flew in and landed on the Queen’s outstretched arm. She bent her head as he whispered something in her ear.
‘Is there a stranger amongst us?’ she asked suddenly.
The room was quiet. You could hear the rose petals falling, such was the silence.
I was sure I had been discovered. I felt a sound rise in my throat. My relief was enormous when I heard the guests cry with one voice, ‘No strangers here.’
‘Then let the wedding begin,’ said the Queen.
The trumpets sounded and the hall was filled with music as the bride and groom came in. The bride, older than the prince, looked as if she was accompanying a wayward nephew to a dance, not a bridegroom to a marriage.
I was taken aback when I saw her dress. It was just like the one in the painting of my mother. Flowers were woven into her hair, too. The difference was that my mother had been beautiful and had loved my father. This bride was no beauty and loved no one so much as herself.
The music stopped and a trembling man came up on to the dais. He seemed terrified and was given more to starting sentences than finishing them. It was only when the Queen brought her gloved hand down hard on the arm of her chair and Cronus had flapped his black wings that he found his tongue.
‘We are here today,’ he stuttered, ‘for the joining of a prince and princess in marriage. We are here to bear witness that this marriage takes place with a true heart and a free spirit -’
‘Enough! Marry them and have done with it,’ said the Queen.
The bridegroom stepped forward and addressed the Queen.
‘I cannot do this,’ said Tycho. The crowd gasped. ‘Forgive me,’ he went on, turning to the wedding guests. ‘I cannot marry without love. I do not love the princess and I never will.’
‘He is being foolish. He knows not what he is saying. Get on with it!’ shouted the Queen.
‘Get on with it,’ screeched Unwin, pulling and pushing at the trembling man so that he was unable to speak. ‘Say the word and then he is mine.’
Tycho left the dais and started to walk away from her down the long room.
‘Close the doors,’ ordered the Queen, and they slammed shut with a sound of finality.
Her face was ag
ain calm, her expression all softness.
‘Let us have no more of this childish behaviour. Tycho, come back and let the marriage continue.’
The King suddenly stood up and stumbled forward to the edge of the dais.
‘A marriage? Is it my darling daughter? Is that my beloved?’
His attendants rushed to him and led him back to his seat.
‘Let the King speak,’ said Tycho. ‘If you dare, let the King speak.’
The Queen looked wild with fury and the wedding guests hastily got up off their spindly gold chairs.
‘No!’ screamed the bride, her voice so high that the gilded mirrors shattered. ‘I will not have my wedding ruined.’
In that instant green lightning came from the Queen’s fingers and struck Tycho, who fell to the ground.
‘I will finish you off myself,’ she yelled. ‘What need have I for huntsmen or shadows? I will have my way.’
‘Do it then,’ said Tycho, getting to his feet. ‘Come on, do your worst.’
The Queen threw another bolt of green lightning and again he went down.
Gilt chairs fell to the floor. Men, women and children cowered in fright. Without thinking, I ran to where Tycho lay.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes,’ he whispered, picking himself up. ‘But you must get away from here. It is not safe.’
The Queen, seeing Tycho on his feet for the third time, said to the terrified guests, ‘Come, everyone be seated. The wedding will take place as arranged.’
‘There will be no wedding,’ said Tycho. His voice rang out loud and clear.
The magnificent doors flew open. There was the great white horse. Even the Queen backed away when she saw him, and all the eyes on her gown closed.
Tycho kissed my cheek, mounted and was gone. With his departure the guests ran from the long room. I stayed where I was, frozen to the spot.
The Queen was standing over her daughter who lay on the floor, banging her fists and kicking.
‘You promised,’ shouted Unwin, ‘you promised that nothing could go wrong. You said you would be all-powerful and everyone would have to obey you.’
‘What is happening?’ said the King. He stood up and, shaking pitifully, called again, ‘Is that my daughter? Is that my beloved?’
The Queen looked in my direction. All the eyes on her gown now opened wide. ‘Who is there?’ she cried.
I turned to flee.
‘I know who you are. I will find you. There is no hiding place. You will pay for this,’ she hissed.
I ran from the room. The hall was now deserted, the gravel drive empty. When I looked back over my shoulder, all I could see was the moon reflected in the many windows of the house.
I ran, oh how I ran. I did not know where I was going but I did not stop until I reached a barn, and here I curled up exhausted in the straw and fell fast asleep.
17
The Lost Land
I woke astonished to find my hair once more long and thick about my head. I was in a carved ebony bed, the daylight playing at the curtains so that rays of sunshine cut through the sleepy darkness. A shaft of sunlight hit upon a basin of steaming water. I sat bolt upright. How could this be? Last night I had gone to sleep in a barn. Who, I wondered, had seen fit to carry me to this bed? I thought it must have been Medlar, and a deep sense of relief came over me.
I got out of bed. There were my clothes laid out, washed and mended as if someone had just come into the room and, having made all ready for my morning, had quietly left.
I got dressed and opened the door, sure I would find Medlar waiting.
I went out into the corridor and realised that I was still in the summer palace.
No, this could not be. At any moment the Queen might appear and find me. I went back into the bedchamber and closed the door. At first, what I saw made no sense. In the space between the opening and the shutting of a door, the bedchamber as I remembered it had changed completely, as if a spell had been cast over it.
Everything in the room was covered in a layer of thick dust. The curtains that the sun had been badgering were now no more than a mass of spiders’ webs. The bedcovers were all torn and tattered, feathers spilt from the mattress, and the washbasin was cracked and broken as if long abandoned. It was a room of rags and feathers, nothing more.
My head ached as it does at the onset of a storm. I looked outside. The corridor too had been transformed. The fine Persian carpets that had lain on the polished floor were no more, replaced instead by dry leaves that rustled as I walked. The house groaned, its timbers creaking like a great galleon wrecked on the shore of neglect.
I stared up at the ceiling that when last I had looked had been painted with fairy tales. I could see a heavy, cold sky winking at me through a large hole in the rafters.
I listened, and hearing no human sound I decided to be brave and go downstairs to the room where the wedding was to have taken place.
The glass in the shattered mirrors had clouded over. The rain-soaked floor was strewn with faded petals and gilt chairs. I started as I heard a scraping noise and for one moment my hopes rose. Perhaps Medlar was here. I rushed up to the dais where two chairs still stood, now covered in moss. A spider crawled out from one of them. The great doors that had opened and closed on command hung swaying on their hinges like drunken men.
I went back into the hall. I no longer feared the Queen’s arrival. I knew that this place was too long deserted. It was as if I had been asleep for a hundred years.
I ventured into another room. It was dark, the windows boarded over. Here I found a mighty oak table. The end nearest to me had upon it a fresh white tablecloth, pressed in a perfect square. A bowl full of hot porridge was waiting for someone to eat it. Next to it was a jug of warm creamy milk, a loaf of freshly cut bread, butter, and honey. At the centre of the cloth was a candle, the wick already trimmed.
I sat down and ate as if I had not eaten for months, so great was my hunger. At last, more than full, I sat back and watched as a beetle slowly made its way along the table.
I stood up. The silence of the empty room seemed suddenly filled with menace and I remembered the stuffed alligator in my father’s study. How frightened I had been in that other time, in my other world.
With my heart thumping, I left the house as fast as I could. It was so cold outside that my teeth started to chatter, and it dawned on me as I looked around at the bare trees that not only had the house undergone a transformation but so had the season. In the space of a sleep, winter had sunk her frozen claws into the earth.
Snow started to fall as I made my way down the gravel drive, its uneven surface evidence of horses and carriages. I walked on towards the stables. They too were deserted.
‘Is anybody here? Medlar?’ I called.
My voice echoed round the empty yard, but only the wind and snow whispered their reply.
I sat on a step near the frozen horse trough and wondered what to do. My fingers were numb, my feet hurt with the cold, my breath left a ghostly imprint on the air.
‘Wondrous fair!’ said Medlar. ‘I have been looking for you.’
I looked up. I was so cold that I felt neither pleased nor sad to see him. Everything in me was frozen. Medlar wrapped his cloak round my shoulders and took me up into a room above the stables. Here a fire was lit. The floorboards were bare and the only furnishing was a table and two chairs. I sat down.
‘Where have you been?’ I said. ‘Why did you leave me?’
Medlar did not reply. Instead, he sat me by the fire and rubbed my hands together to get them warm.
‘I have to take you back,’ he said.
‘Take me back? Where?’ I asked.
‘Back to your home, back to London.’
‘No,’ I said, pulling my hands away from his. ‘If you do that it will be the end of me.’
‘I can assure you it will not.’ Medlar picked up a pan from the fire and poured out two glasses of a warm spicy drink that seemed to flow straight do
wn into my feet and fingers. He lit his lantern and the light bobbed there, a small moon in the smoky room.
‘Who are you?’ I asked.
He smiled at me. ‘Who am I?’ he repeated to himself, stroking his beard. ‘A good question, and one for which there must be an answer. I am many things. I am a traveller. I am the King’s magician. I am the searcher of shadows. I was your mother’s teacher, and many moons ago I met your father on the London road. I can answer only a fragment of your question but, alas, it will have to do.’
‘It was you,’ I said then, remembering my father’s story about meeting a man who had been robbed.
‘I liked your father,’ said Medlar. ‘He did not wish, like other mortals, for things to be better. He accepted his fate with grace, and still had the heart to care for others. It was I who brought your mother to the London road. I thought that love and fate would do the rest, and I was right.’
I must have been staring at him open-mouthed, for he said, ‘Drink up, and you will feel better.’
I sipped and felt warmth once more flood over me.
‘Why did you not help Tycho?’
‘If I had done so, Rosmore would have known I was there and all would have come to naught. You had the power to help, and you did,’ said Medlar.
‘But I am just a blue light,’ I said. ‘I have no power.’
‘There is much you do not understand,’ said Medlar. ‘I made sure you were a blue light, to protect you.’ He sighed. ‘Did your mother tell you anything of this world?’
‘Nothing but fairy stories,’ I said.
‘Surely she must have told you something of her childhood,’ said Medlar.
I shook my head. ‘No.’
I could see my reply disappointed him. ‘Ah well, there’s a thing,’ he said sadly, pulling at the knot in his beard.
I did not like the idea that I knew nothing of my mother’s past, so I said, ‘I did see her shadow.’
‘You did?’ said Medlar. ‘Oh, wondrous fair! When?’
‘A long time ago, just after she died. It was in an ebony casket in my father’s study.’