She turned her face to Molly Grue, and her eyes were not the unicorn’s eyes. They were lovely still, but in a way that had a name, as a human woman is beautiful. Their depth could be sounded and learned, and their degree of darkness was quite describable. Molly saw fear and loss and bewilderment when she looked into them, and herself; and nothing more.
“Unicorns,” she said. “The Red Bull has driven them all away, all but you. You are the last unicorn. You came here to find the others, and to set them free. And so you will.”
Slowly the deep, secret sea returned to the Lady Amalthea’s eyes, filling them until they were as old and dark and unknowable and indescribable as the sea. Molly watched it happen, and was afraid, but she gripped the bowed shoulders even more tightly, as though her hands could draw despair like a lightning rod. And as she did so, there shivered in the scullery floor a sound she had heard before: a sound like great teeth—molars—grinding together. The Red Bull was turning in his sleep. I wonder if he dreams, Molly thought. The Lady Amalthea said, “I must go to him. There is no other way, and no time to spare. In this form or my own, I must face him again, even if all my people are dead and there is nothing to be saved. I must go to him, before I forget myself forever, but I do not know the way, and I am lonely.” The little cat switched his tail and made an odd sound that was neither a miaow nor a purr.
“I will go with you,” Molly said. “I don’t know the way down to the Bull either, but there must be one. Schmendrick will come too. He’ll make the way for us if we can’t find it.”
“I hope for no help from the magician,” the Lady Amalthea replied disdainfully. “I see him every day playing the fool for King Haggard, amusing him by his failures, by blundering at even the most trifling trick. He says that it is all he can do until his power speaks in him again. But it never will. He is no magician now, but the king’s clown.”
Molly’s face suddenly hurt her, and she turned away to inspect the soup again. Answering past a sharpness in her throat, she said, “He is doing it for you. While you brood and mope and become someone else, he jigs and jests for Haggard, diverting him so that you may have time to find your folk, if they are to be found. But it cannot be long before the king tires of him, as he tires of all things, and casts him down to his dungeons, or some place darker. You do wrong to mock him.”
Her voice was a child’s thin, sad mumble. She said, “But that will never happen to you. Everyone loves you.”
They had a moment to look at each other, the two women: the one fair and foreign in the cold, low room; the other appearing quite at home in such surroundings—an angry little beetle with her own kitchen beauty. Then they heard boots scraping, armor clicking, and the gusty voices of old men. King Haggard’s four men-at-arms came trooping into the scullery.
They were all at least seventy years old, gaunt and limping, fragile as crusted snow, but all clad from head to foot in King Haggard’s miserly mail and bearing his wry weapons. They entered hailing Molly Grue cheerfully and asking what she had made for their supper, but at the sight of the Lady Amalthea all four became very quiet and bowed deep bows that made them gasp.
“My lady,” said the oldest of the men, “command your servants. We are used men, spent men—but if you would see miracles, you have only to request the impossible of us. We will become young again if you wish it so.” His three comrades muttered their agreement.
But the Lady Amalthea whispered in answer, “No, no, you will never be young again.” Then she fled from them, with her wild, blinding hair hiding her face, and the satin gown hissing.
“How wise she is!” the oldest man-at-arms declared. “She understands that not even her beauty can do battle with time. It is a rare, sad wisdom for one so young. That soup smells delicious, Molly.”
“It smells too savory for this place,” a second man grumbled as they all sat down around the table. “Haggard hates good food. He says that no meal is good enough to justify all the money and effort wasted in preparing it. ‘It is an illusion,’ says he, ‘and an expense. Live as I do, undeceived.’ Brraaahh!” He shuddered and grimaced, and the others laughed.
“To live like Haggard,” said another man-at-arms as Molly spooned the steaming soup into his bowl. “That will be my fate in the next world, if I don’t behave myself in this one.”
“Why do you stay in his service, then?” Molly demanded. She sat down with them and rested her chin on her hands. “He pays you no wages,” she said, “and he feeds you as little as he dares. He sends you out in the worst weather to steal for him in Hagsgate, for he never spends a penny of the wealth in his strong room. He forbids everything, from lights to lutes, from fires to fairs and singing to sinning; from books and beer and talk of spring to games you play with bits of string. Why not leave him? What in the world is there to keep you here?”
The four old men looked nervously at one another, coughing and sighing. The first said, “It is our age. Where else could we go? We are too old to be wandering the roads, looking for work and shelter.”
“It is our age,” said the second man-at-arms. “When you are old, anything that does not disturb you is a comfort. Cold and darkness and boredom long ago lost their sharp edges for us, but warmth, singing, spring—no, they would all be disturbances. There are worse things than living like Haggard.”
The third man said, “Haggard is older than we are. In time Prince Lír will be king in this country, and I will not leave the world until I have seen that day. I have always been fond of the boy, since he was small.”
Molly found that she was not hungry. She looked around at the faces of the old men, and listened to the sounds their seamy lips and shrunken throats made as they drank her soup; and she was suddenly glad that King Haggard always had his meals alone. Molly inevitably came to care for anyone she fed.
Cautiously she asked them, “Have you ever heard a tale that Prince Lír is not Haggard’s adopted nephew at all?” The men-at-arms showed no surprise at the question.
“Ay,” the eldest replied, “we know that story. It may well be true, for the prince certainly bears no family resemblance to the king. But what of it? Better a stolen stranger ruled the land than a true son of King Haggard.”
“But if the prince was stolen from Hagsgate,” Molly cried, “then he is the man who will make the curse on this castle come true!” And she repeated the rhyme that the man Drinn had recited in the inn at Hagsgate.
Yet none but one of Hagsgate town
May bring the castle swirling down.
But the old men shook their heads, grinning with teeth as rusty as their casques and corselets. “Not Prince Lír,” the third man said. “The prince may slay a thousand dragons, but he will level no castles, overthrow no kings. It is not in his nature. He is a dutiful son who seeks—alas—only to be worthy of the man he calls his father. Not Prince Lír. The rhyme must speak of some other.”
“And even if Prince Lír were the one,” the second man added, “even if the curse had marked him for its messenger, still he would fail. For between King Haggard and any doom stands the Red Bull.”
A silence sprang into the room and stood there, darkening all faces with its savage shadow and chilling the good hot soup with its breath. The little autumn cat stopped purring on Molly’s lap, and the thin cooking fire cowered down. The cold scullery walls seemed to draw closer together.
The fourth man-at-arms, who had not spoken before, called across the dark to Molly Grue, “There is the true reason that we stay in Haggard’s employ. He does not wish us to leave, and what King Haggard wishes or does not wish is the only concern of the Red Bull. We are Haggard’s minions, but we are the Red Bull’s prisoners.”
Molly’s hand was steady as she stroked the cat, but her voice was pinched and dry when she spoke. “What is the Red Bull to King Haggard?”
It was the oldest man-at-arms who answered. “We do not know. The Bull has always been here. It serves Haggard as his army and his bulwark
; it is his strength and the source of his strength; and it must be his one companion as well, for I am sure he descends to its lair betimes, down some secret stair. But whether it obeys Haggard from choice or compulsion, and whether the Bull or the king is the master—that we have never known.”
The fourth man, who was the youngest, leaned toward Molly Grue, his pink, wet eyes suddenly eager. He said, “The Red Bull is a demon, and its reckoning for attending Haggard will one day be Haggard himself.” Another man interrupted him, insisting that the clearest evidence showed that the Bull was King Haggard’s enchanted slave, and would be until it broke the bewitchment that held it and destroyed its former lord. They began to shout and spill their soup.
But Molly asked, not loudly, but in a way that made them all be still, “Do you know what a unicorn is? Have you ever seen one?”
Of everything alive in the little room, only the cat and the silence seemed to look back at her with any understanding. The four men blinked and belched and rubbed their eyes. Deep, restless, the sleeping Bull stirred again.
The meal being over, the men-at-arms saluted Molly Grue and left the scullery, two for their beds, two to take up their night’s vigil in the rain. The oldest of the men waited until the others were gone before he said quietly to Molly, “Be careful of the Lady Amalthea. When she first came here, her beauty was such that even this accursed castle became beautiful too—like the moon, which is only a shining stone. But she has been here too long. Now she is as beautiful as ever, but the rooms and roofs that contain her are somehow meaner for her presence.”
He gave a long sigh, which frayed into a whine. “I am familiar with that kind of beauty,” he said, “but I had never seen that other sort before. Be careful of her. She should go away from here.”
Alone, Molly put her face in the little cat’s random fur. The cooking fire fluttered low, but she did not get up to feed it. Small, swift creatures scuttled across the room, making a sound like King Haggard’s voice; and the rain rumbled against the castle walls, sounding like the Red Bull. Then, as though in answer, she heard the Bull. His bellow shattered the stones under her feet, and she clutched desperately at the table to keep herself and the cat from plunging down to him. She cried out.
The cat said, “He is going out. He goes out every sundown to hunt for the strange white beast that escaped him. You know that perfectly well. Don’t be stupid.”
The hungering roar came again, farther away. Molly caught her breath and stared at the little cat. She was not as amazed as another might have been; these days she was harder to surprise than most women. “Could you always talk?” she asked the cat. “Or was it the sight of the Lady Amalthea that gave you speech?”
The cat licked a front paw reflectively. “It was the sight of her that made me feel like talking,” he said at length, “and let us leave it at that. So that is a unicorn. She is very beautiful.”
“How do you know she is a unicorn?” Molly demanded. “And why were you afraid to let her touch you? I saw you. You were afraid of her.”
“I doubt that I will feel like talking for very long,” the cat replied without rancor. “I would not waste time in foolishness if I were you. As to your first question, no cat out of its first fur can ever be deceived by appearances. Unlike human beings, who enjoy them. As for your second question—” Here he faltered, and suddenly became very interested in washing; nor would he speak until he had licked himself fluffy and then licked himself smooth again. Even then he would not look at Molly, but examined his claws.
“If she had touched me,” he said very softly, “I would have been hers and not my own, not ever again. I wanted her to touch me, but I could not let her. No cat will. We let human beings caress us because it is pleasant enough and calms them—but not her. The price is more than a cat can pay.”
Molly picked him up then, and he purred into her neck for such a long while that she began to fear that his moment of speech had passed. But presently he said, “You have very little time. Soon she will no longer remember who she is, or why she came to this place, and the Red Bull will no longer roar in the night for her. It may be that she will marry the good prince, who loves her.” The cat pushed his head hard into Molly’s suddenly still hand. “Do that,” he commanded. “The prince is very brave, to love a unicorn. A cat can appreciate valiant absurdity.”
“No,” Molly Grue said. “No, that cannot be. She is the last.”
“Well then, she must do what she came to do,” the cat replied. “She must take the king’s way down to the Bull.”
Molly held him so fiercely that he gave a mouselike squeak of protest. “Do you know the way?” she asked, as eagerly as Prince Lír had demanded of her. “Tell me the way, tell me where we must go.” She put the cat down on the table and took her hands off him.
The cat made no answer for a long time, but his eyes grew brighter and brighter: gold shivering down to cover the green. His crooked ear twitched, and the black tip of his tail, and nothing more.
“When the wine drinks itself,” he said, “when the skull speaks, when the clock strikes the right time—only then will you find the tunnel that leads to the Red Bull’s lair.” He tucked his paws under his chest and added, “There’s a trick to it, of course.”
“I’ll bet,” Molly said grimly. “There is a horrible, crumbly old skull stuck up high on a pillar in the great hall, but it hasn’t had anything to say for some time. The clock that stands nearby is mad, and strikes when it pleases—midnight every hour, seventeen o’clock at four, or perhaps not a sound for a week. And the wine—oh, cat, wouldn’t it be simpler just to show me the tunnel? You know where it is, don’t you?”
“Of course I know,” answered the cat, with a glinting, curling yawn. “Of course it would be simpler for me to show you. Save a lot of time and trouble.”
His voice was becoming a sleepy drawl, and Molly realized that, like King Haggard himself, he was losing interest. Quickly she asked him, “Tell me one thing, then. What became of the unicorns? Where are they?”
The cat yawned again. “Near and far, far and near,” he murmured. “They are within sight of your lady’s eyes, but almost out of reach of her memory. They are coming closer, and they are going away.” He closed his eyes.
Molly’s breath came like rope, fretting against her harsh throat. “Damn you, why won’t you help me?” she cried. “Why must you always speak in riddles?”
One eye opened slowly, green and gold as sunlight in the woods. The cat said, “I am what I am. I would tell you what you want to know if I could, for you have been kind to me. But I am a cat, and no cat anywhere ever gave anyone a straight answer.”
His last few words drowsed away into a deep, regular purr, and he was asleep with the one eye partly open. Molly held him on her lap and stroked him, and he purred in his sleep, but he did not speak again.
Chapter 11
Prince Lír came home three days after he set out to slay the maiden-fancying ogre, with the Great Axe of Duke Alban slung behind him and the ogre’s head bumping at his saddlebow. He offered neither prize to the Lady Amalthea, nor did he rush to find her with the monster’s blood still brown on his hands. He had made up his mind, as he explained to Molly Grue in the scullery that evening, nevermore to trouble the Lady Amalthea with his attentions, but to live quietly in the thought of her, serving her ardently until his lonely death, but seeking neither her company, her admiration, nor her love. “I will be as anonymous as the air she breathes,” he said, “as invisible as the force that holds her on the earth.” Thinking about it for a little, he added, “I may write a poem for her now and then, and slip it under her door, or just leave it somewhere for her to chance upon. But I won’t ever sign the poem.”
“It’s very noble,” Molly said. She felt relieved that the prince was giving up his courtship, and amused as well, and somewhat sad. “Girls like poems better than dead dragons and magic swords,” she offered. “I always did, anyway, when I was a gir
l. The reason I ran off with Cully—”
But Prince Lír interrupted her, saying firmly, “No, do not give me hope. I must learn to live without hope, as my father does, and perhaps we will understand each other at last.” He dug into his pockets, and Molly heard paper crackling. “Actually, I’ve already written a few poems about it—hope and her, and so on. You might look them over if you wanted to.”
“I’d be very pleased,” Molly said. “But will you never go out again, then, to fight with black knights and ride through rings of fire?” The words were meant teasingly, but she found as she spoke that she would have been a little sorry if it were so, for his adventures had made him much handsomer and taken off a lot of weight, and given him, besides, a hint of the musky fragrance of death that clings to all heroes. But the prince shook his head, looking almost embarrassed.
“Oh, I suppose I’ll keep my hand in,” he muttered. “But it wouldn’t be for the show of it, or for her to find out. It was like that at first, but you get into the habit of rescuing people, breaking enchantments, challenging the wicked duke in fair combat—it’s hard to give up being a hero, once you get used to it. Do you like the first poem?”
“It certainly has a lot of feeling,” she said. “Can you really rhyme ‘bloomed’ and ‘ruined’?”
“It needs a bit of smoothing out,” Prince Lír admitted. “‘Miracle’ is the word I’m worried about.”
“I was wondering about ‘grackle’ myself.”
“No, the spelling. Is it one r and two ls, or the other way round?”
“One r, anyway, I think,” Molly said. “Schmendrick”—for the magician had just stooped through the doorway—”how many rs in ‘miracle’?”
“Two,” he answered wearily. “It has the same root as ‘mirror.’” Molly ladled him out a bowl of broth, and he sat down at the table. His eyes were hard and cloudy as jade, and one of the lids was twitching.