She looked thoughtfully out across the countryside and started slowly walking again. I strolled beside her. “I know he doesn’t,” she said after a minute. “It’s not surprising-at seventeen, he only thinks of me as his mother, not as a woman. He’s had a happy youth in Yurt, and he distrusts anything that might interfere with that. But there will be many changes, most of them good, once he comes of age, so my marriage will seem less threatening. And after our whirlwind wooing, we may want to wait a few months to marry!”
A suspicious thought flashed through my mind, that Vincent had no intention of marrying the queen, that he had wooed her only because, as a welcome visitor to Yurt, he now had the opportunity to carry out some nefarious plan of his own. I found this thought so appealing that I wished I could believe it.
“So I hope that Paul will become reconciled to the idea,” the queen continued. “I wouldn’t want to marry in the face of his opposition. But,” looking up with a smile, “don’t you think he may already be changing his mind?”
“The roan stallion seems certainly to have been well thought out as a means to reconcile him to Vincent.”
She laughed. “You make it sound like some sort of conspiracy. I’d had no idea Vincent was going to give him that horse, although it was no secret that that’s what Paul wanted-I had been hoping to find him a suitable stallion myself for his birthday. I think it shows a real sweetness on Vincent’s part!”
I actually agreed, but I wasn’t about to say so. “In fact I’m rather worried about Paul’s reaction to that horse. He not only likes it, he loves, he adores it. I think at the moment it means more to him than any of us do, or even the kingdom of Yurt.”
She laughed again. “It’s the novelty. You sound as though you thought this attitude would continue. I’m not worried.”
I looked at her profile as we continued walking. She had very faint lines at the corners of her mouth, the result of years of smiling. The air around us was fragrant with mown grass and moist earth.
For nineteen years I had known the queen, and I had been in love with her since the first moment I saw her, but in some way I felt I hardly understood her. If I did know her, I thought, or if she really knew me, I would be able to explain better my concern about Paul.
But then I wasn’t entirely sure myself what was worrying me. She was right, of course; a boy could become quickly and entirely enthralled with the horse of his dreams without losing track of all else in his life.
Paul was not my principal concern and never had been. “My lady, I don’t want you to marry Vincent either.”
She stopped and turned toward me. Her emerald eyes danced with amusement-I wondered suddenly what Vincent had told her of his mock attack on me. “If you were still worrying that a king’s youngest son is not worthy of a queen, or whatever you were trying to tell me, I hope that seeing him here has cleared up your concerns.”
“It’s not that,” I said, amazed at my own audacity. “I couldn’t bear to see you married to someone else.”
“Someone other than King Haimeric?” she asked, looking at me with a faint, puzzled frown.
Now that I had started I couldn’t stop. “Someone other than me.”
All the laughter went out of her face. For a horrible moment I feared she would recoil in disgust, but her only expression was one of distress. She slowly started walking again, looking not at where she was going but at me. Her eyes went over my face as though she had never seen it before.
“I thought wizards never married,” she said as though from a considerable distance.
“They don’t. I don’t care. I’d give up wizardry for you.”
“But you’re a very good wizard.”
I was about to protest, to tell her that I hadn’t even known how to make myself completely invisible until this morning, then realized that she was trying to shift the conversation. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. I’ve loved you since the first day I met you. I loved the old king as well, and as long as I could serve you both, and as long as you were caught up in his memory, I could say nothing. But now I find you are ready to love again and I have to speak.”
Her foot caught on a tussock of grass, and she stumbled and almost fell. I caught her by the elbow and steadied her just in time. Once I touched her I couldn’t pull my hand back again. Her eyes were turned away, but the curve of her cheekbone was only inches from my face. I moved my hands to her shoulders, drawing her toward me. I could feel her shoulder blades, her rib cage through her clothes. Someone’s heart was pounding terribly loudly; it might have been mine.
She kept her face down so I couldn’t find her lips. But I could hear her voice, faint against my shoulder. “Don’t. Please don’t.”
I let go of her as though she were made of fire. I turned abruptly away, feeling my face go scarlet. It was growing dark at last; the sun hesitated on the horizon but would be gone in a moment. “Forgive me, my lady,” I managed to gasp. “I’m sorry, I’m terribly sorry. Please don’t think too ill of me. I would never have forced you.”
She did not reply. Her breathing was broken, and in a moment I made myself turn toward her again. She had her hands over her face, and I thought I could see tears running between her fingers. I stifled the impulse to take her in my arms and comfort her and instead sat down in the damp grass.
In a minute she sat down too, a few feet away. I looked away. “I shall leave Yurt, of course,” I said to the darkening sky. “I think they’d like to have me stay permanently at the wizards’ school as an assistant. It would be a good position, and I could make sure that you and Paul got a competent new Royal Wizard.” I noticed with detachment that the swallows had all gone for the night.
“I never knew!” the queen burst out suddenly, as though she had not heard me. “I’ve lived beside you, what is it, close to twenty years, since before Paul was born, and I never knew! And all the time I thought I understood you. Maybe I don’t understand anyone in Yurt.”
“Maybe no one fully understands anyone else-we may not even understand ourselves.”
Fortunately she also did not seem to hear this highly inadequate platitude. “I think I thought of you as I did the chaplain,” she went on, her voice somewhat steadier, “someone serving a function, someone I liked and appreciated, but never someone I thought of as a man. I must have been so cruel to you, and I never even knew it! Do you think you could ever forgive me?”
“There is nothing to forgive,” I said stiffly, looking out across the twilight landscape. “The fault is entirely on my side, for presuming where I had no right to presume. Unless-” I had thought I had frightened her with the impetuosity of my embrace, but she was now sitting next to me with no suggestion of fear. For two seconds I allowed myself to hope that she had been frightened not of me but of herself, that she had been about to give way to passion. “Unless you could love me instead of Vincent.”
When she did not answer, I turned slowly to look toward her. She shook her head hard, her hands over her face again.
“Do you truly love him, my lady?” I asked gently.
This time she nodded.
“And he loves you?”
“I know he does.”
“Then why are you crying?”
She wiped the tears from her cheek with an almost angry gesture. “Because I am terribly sorry to have hurt you!”
I had imagined so many times over the years telling the queen I loved her that our conversation seemed almost unreal. But I knew I was not imagining this. If I had been, it wouldn’t have been going this badly.
Neither of us spoke for several minutes. Then she struggled to her feet. I stood up as well. Her face now seemed composed but the smile that almost always lurked near her lips was gone. It did not seem worth asking her again if she might change her mind.
She turned toward me and slowly reached out both hands, first to touch my beard and then to cup my face. It was rapidly becoming dark, but her emerald eyes seemed to glow at me. With one finger I delicately traced the line of her jaw.