Lady Gorginvala cleared her throat and said, as if announcing to a multitude,
"Your father wishes you to attend him in the receiving-hall, as soon as you are . . ."
She paused, and her eyes travelled briefly over Lissar, still in her nightdress, its hem muddy from running through the garden. ". . . Ready." She turned, stately as a docking ship, and went back up the few low stairs as if they were tile steps to a throne, and disappeared. The odor of her perfume lingered, an almost visible cloud.
Ash sneezed.
Lissar laid down her hairbrush and felt the weight of the evening before shut down over her again. She forgot that it was a beautiful blue day with a wide bright sky, a perfect day for visiting Rinnol and petitioning for another lesson in plantlore. She felt trapped, squeezed; she felt.... She took a deep breath. She tapped her fingers against the back of her hairbrush, shook her hair back over her shoulders. She was imagining things. She didn't even know what the things she was imagining were. But when she picked the hairbrush up again, her hand trembled.
There was no reason for her to have hated the ball as much as she did.... The word hated just slipped into her thoughts; she had not meant to use it. How could she have hated her seventeenth-birthday ball? No reason, no reason. No reason to hate and fear her father. No reason.
Ash ate Lissar's breakfast for her, licking the jam jar clean and leaving the porridge. Lissar dressed herself as if she were still going for a walk in the woods: a plain shirt, with a green tunic and long dark skirt over it, and plain dark boots. She wore no jewellery, and tied her hair with a green ribbon not quite the shade of the tunic. She did not look like a princess. Her hair was pulled severely away from her face; she fastened the shirt closed up to her throat, and the sleeves came down nearly over her hands. The heavy skirt gave no hint to the curve of hip and leg beneath it, and the boots hid her ankles.
The upper footman who was doorkeeper to the receiving-hall that day looked at the princess's clothing with something like alarm, but he knew his place, and made no comment. He stepped past the doors and announced, Her young greatness, the princess Lissla Lissar.
Lissar, her hand on Ash's back, stepped forward. The receiving hall was alight with lamps and candelabra and the flashing of jewels; there were windows in the room, but they seemed very small and distant, muffled by the heavy grand curtains that framed them. Daylight did not seem to enter the room gladly, as it did most rooms, but hesitated at the sills, kept at bay by the gaudier glare of the royal court.
Lissar thought it looked as if everyone from the ball had simply stayed up through the night and into the morning, and now had moved from the ballroom into the smaller receiving-hall and throne room, bringing the night-time with them. In the smaller room there were too many bodies, and too many shadows, tossed and flung and set against each other by the tyranny of too many candleflames, too many gestures by too many jewelled hands.
Involuntarily Lissar's eyes went to the place where her mother's portrait usually hung, expecting to see bare wall; to her dismay the portrait had already been returned to its place, and the painted eyes caught at hers like claws. Lissar blinked, and in tearing her gaze loose again two tears, hot as blood, fell from under her eyelids.
Why were so many people present? She knew that her father's court had grown over the last year, and as she avoided its occupations as much as possible, perhaps she did not know if this was an unusual gathering or not. But there was a quality of expectancy about these people that she did not like, too eager an inquiry as they turned to look at her. She had nothing for them, nothing to do with them. Nothing!
This thought wanted to burst out of her, she wanted to shout Nothing aloud, and let the sound of it push the peering faces away. But she knew that the word was not true, nor had it any charm to save her.
Last night was a beginning, not an ending.
But she still did not exactly know, beginning of what; she did not want to have to know yet. She wanted to go for a walk in the woods with her dog. She wanted not to return. Her hand on Ash's back quivered, and the tall dog turned her head to gaze up at her person's face. Whatever it is, I'm here too, her eyes said.
"My daughter!" said her father, and swept regally toward her, his handsome face shining and his tunic perfectly fitted to his wide shoulders and slim hips. Lissar registered that he was not wearing the glittering costume of the ball the night before; then his hand seized hers, and her mind went blank.
The three moved down the length of the room slowly. The princess looked dazed, as if she was having difficulty setting one foot after the other. (It is just like last night, she thought. No, it is not just like last night; Ash is here.) She seemed to cling more to her dog than to her father's hand. What an odd creature she was! And she was dressed so plainly; had she not sufficient warning that she was to wait upon her father and her father's court? But why would a princess ever dress as plainly as this? What matter be a princess? She looked like a woodcutter's daughter, not a king's.
Many people remembered how blank and bewitched she had looked she night before, and frowned; could she not remember what was due her rank, due her father; her father who was royal in all things, all ways, as her mother had been, whom she resembled so much in face and figure? How could this daughter do nothing but stumble, this daughter of such a king, such a queen, how could she refuse to meet the eyes of her own people?
But the king was resplendent enough for them both, and the people's eyes left thc unsatisfactory princess and returned to linger upon the king. More than one of the older courtiers murmured to their neighbors that they had not seen him look so strong and happy since the first days of his marriage; one would never know that he was thirty years older than the young woman at his side; he looked young enough to be her lover.
Murmured the older courtiers' neighbors: the princess's physical resemblance to her mother is astonishing to us all, and makes us recall how it was when we had both a king and a queen, and how happiness radiated from them like heat from a sun, and warmed the entire country. Briefly their eyes touched the unsatisfactory princess again: how pale she was; there was no heat there, to warm her people's hearts.
What a thousand pities that the princess has not more presence!
When the king reached the dais where his throne now stood alone, he swung the princess around, or he would have, had she not moved so stiffly, like a wooden doll with too few joints. The tall dog at her side was more graceful. Princess Lissla Lissar looked down at the dog, who looked up at her, and the court saw her lips move briefly; the dog sat, and curled its long tail around its feet, like a cat.
"I have an announcement!" cried the king; and all the court smiled and were happy to see him so joyful. It will be about the princess's marriage, they said wisely to each other; the king of Smisily must have made the offer after all; or perhaps our duke Mendaline fell so in love with her last night....
"I have an announcement!" the king repeated, gleefully, as if keeping them in suspense for another few minutes brought as much pleasure to him as the announcement itself.