She looked up to see a page standing before Gillie, glancing with surprise at the three shouting women. "Your highness . . ." the page began.
"Don't call him 'your highness,' " Augusta shouted. "Don't you know an imposter when you see one!''
The boy's gaze showed amazement at Augusta's behavior; then he returned his attention to Gillie. "Your highness . . ." His voice was more emphatic now. "The king bids ..."
Augusta stepped forward. "You, boy, stop that muttering and call the king at once. Call the guard! This is an imposter; he's not the prince at all! Can't you see! You must be an imbecile not to know your own prince!" Her face had grown beet red.
The page looked at her, now, as if she were quite mad. Then, deliberately, he turned his back on her. "Your highness," he said patiently, "the king bids you bring your partner to be presented to him and the queen. And he spoke of the sword ..."
Now Augusta flew into such a rage that both the page and Gillie drew back, and Thursey stared in dismay. "You can't know this—this dung-pusher for the prince! You're lying, ignorant clod!"
But the young page's patience was exhausted. "I know him!" he cried hotly, turning his full attention on Augusta. "I have known Edward Gillian, Prince of Gies, all my life, madam! I served him faithfully at Carthemas these two years past and hope to serve him 'til I die!"
Gillie was grinning at the boy's indignant anger. He put a hand on the page's shoulder and looked coldly at Augusta. "Do you call my page a liar, old woman? And who are you to speak of this lady as your charge? My page is no liar, just as Thursey is not your charge. Not in any way. She is your landlord, for it is her inn you occupy. And it is to her you will answer for its keeping. She is beholden to no one, unless it would be the people of Gies in the same manner as I am—for she may be their princess soon. If she is willing," he added gently.
Thursey stared at him, confounded. What was he saying? "You didn't tell me, Gillie. You didn't tell me. . . ." Did he mean he loved her?
"Didn't tell you I was the prince? But it would have made a strangeness between us. I wanted you to love me as I was, as a goatherd, not as the Prince of Gies." And then he added softly, "Could you, Thursey? Could you love me as I am now?"
"Yes. Oh, yes, Gillie, I could!"
WHEN Thursey had mopped her tears, Gillie took her hand, gave the stepsisters and Augusta a last, amused look, and spoke quietly to the page. "Tell my father we will come now. Take the Sword of Balkskak from its resting place and lay it by the king's hand."
He led Thursey to the gallery, where she knelt before the seated king and queen. She dared not gaze up at them. But Gillie raised her chin and made her look, and she saw the king was smiling. Across his knees lay a sword, old and battered. The music in the ballroom was silenced as Gillie turned to face the stilled dancers. He drew them forward with a look, with a gesture. He was not a goatherd now, there was no question who he was. Thursey felt she hardly knew him as he stood speaking to the assembled citizens of Gies so softly, but with such authority.
AFTERWARD she felt so faint she thought she could not walk from the ballroom. And when they sat alone in the garden she was shaken still. Gillie brought her wine and some supper, but she sat staring at the plate knowing she couldn't eat.
"Drink," Gillie said. "Eat a little, Thursey. When did you eat last?"
"I don't know." She sipped the wine and found it helped. "You knew all along, Gillie! You knew it was my father who . . . that it was he who wielded the Sword of Balkskak." There in the ballroom, as she had stood facing Gillie, she had been swept with a sadness and longing for her father and with a joy for him, that she could hardly deal with. There were no tears, but her eyes were as heavy and full as her heart as Gillie placed the sword in her outstretched hands.
"I didn't know until you told me your father had been hurt in the mill. Even then, not at first. I was nearly unconscious during the battle. I was so weak I couldn't lift my head, let alone my hand to help him. It was only when you mentioned the two missing fingers that the picture came back to me, of a tall blond man fighting practically on top of me with his maimed right hand flung back so he wielded the sword with his left. A maimed hand with two fingers missing.
"My father has always vowed that the wielder of the sword would be presented it in ceremony in the great hall. You are his only kin, Thursey. Don't tell me you didn't enjoy the spectacle your stepmother made, trying to claim the sword in your stead." He started to grin, then pulled his face into a serious expression. "You mean you didn't like seeing the king put her down?"
She bent over, shaken with sudden mirth. "Yes. Oh, yes, Gillie, you . . ." But then she straightened up and stared at him. "But you haven't told me everything. Why did you pose as a goatherd? Why did you come back to your own country disguised? And who was looking out of the carriage next to the queen? What—"
He hushed her, then grinned again. "Did you never guess who I was?"
"No. Nor did anyone else. How could I? I thought you were very handsome. I thought Carthemas must be a special place to have a goatherd like you, but . . ."
"Carthemas is a wonderful place. Listen, Thursey, even when I was small I wasn't allowed my freedom among the hills and pastures of Gies. I was always in the gardens of the palace, then later with a dozen or more of the king's company or in a hunting party. And at the summer palace it was the same, I was never on my own. Then we were attacked and I was wounded right off, and there was the long journey, bound in a wagon with my mother, as we were taken to Balkskak. And then the time of sickness and my leg paining me, and my mother so ill—always confinement. I never knew what it was to be on my own. The prison cell was the first time I was ever really alone, and then there were walls around me. When we were rescued and taken to Carthemas—I think my father believed we would both die, it was a desperate thing he did to journey all the way with us secretly, in the night— when we were taken there and I began to mend and to be allowed to roam freely over the island, it was an amazement to me. I was alone for the first time on the hills in the wind, and you can't imagine the freedom I felt. I think that, as much as the goat milk, helped to cure me. When it was time to return, I didn't want this old life again so soon. I told my father I would not return at all unless I had it my way. And my way was to become the goatherd, and get to know Gies and this village in a way I never could have otherwise."
"But who was in the carriage?''
"A page with powdered face. The few trusted servants and members of the court who knew were pledged to secrecy. I had not been known well in the village, and I was less than twelve when I left it the last time. You can't imagine the thrill of walking into the village that day as if I were no one and having no attention paid to me, just to see it as it is seen by everyone else— and hear them shout for the prince, I could hardly keep from laughing at that."
THEY were married on a fair summer day, when the sky was washed with blue and the rock-strewn hills ablaze with the brilliant green of new grass. They were not married by the bishop as was the custom, but by Anwin in his plain brown habit, which contrasted mightily with the pomp of the proceedings, with the fine regalia of the king and his queen and the court.
And Anwin said, "It turned out just as an enchantment should."
"But Anwin, it wasn't an enchantment really, it just—"
"Yes, child, it was the greatest enchantment of all." He winked at the prince. "Gillie understood all along what the enchantment was."
And though there were wedding gifts that dazzled Thursey's eyes, the gift that made her cry was from Anwin. It was a carved hazelwood chest just large enough to hold her painted books, and all the books were there inside, safe and bright. On the lid of the chest Anwin had carved three words: