And now this game of queenship, which had buoyed me up and kept me busy ever since I woke that morning, failed me utterly. We had made all our preparations for the combat. There was the rest of the day, and the whole of the next, to wait; and hanging over it, this new desolation, that if I lived I might have to live without the Fox.
I went out into the gardens. I would not go up to that plot behind the pear trees; that was where he, and Psyche, and I had often been happiest. I wandered, miserably, out on the other side, on the west of the apple orchard, till the cold drove me in; it was a bitter, black frost that day, with no sun. I am both ashamed and afraid to revive, by writing of them, the thoughts I had. In my ignorance I could not understand the strength of the desire which must be drawing my old master to his own land. I had lived in one place all my life; everything in Glome was to me stale, common, and taken for granted, even filled with memories of dread, sorrow, and humiliation. I had no notion how the remembered home looks to an exile. It embittered me that the Fox should even desire to leave me. He had been the central pillar of my whole life, something (I thought) as sure and established, and indeed as little thanked, as sunrise and the mere earth. In my folly I had thought I was to him as he was to me. “Fool!” said I to myself. “Have you not yet learned that you are that to no one? What are you to Bardia? as much perhaps as the old King was. His heart lies at home with his wife and her brats. If you mattered to him he’d never have let you fight. What are you to the Fox? His heart was always in the Greeklands. You were, maybe, the solace of his captivity. They say a prisoner will tame a rat. He comes to love the rat; after a fashion. But throw the door open, strike off his fetters, and how much’ll he care for the rat then?” And yet, how could he leave us, after so much love? I saw him again with Psyche on his knees. “Prettier than Aphrodite,” he had said. “Yes, but that was Psyche,” said my heart. “If she were still with us, he would stay. It was Psyche he loved. Never me.” I knew while I said it that it was false, yet I would not, or could not, put it out of my head.
But the Fox sought me out before I slept; his face very grey, and his manner very quiet. But that he did not limp, you would have thought he had been in the hands of the torturers. “Wish me well, daughter,” he said. “For I have won a battle. What’s best for his fellows must be best for a man. I am but a limb of the whole and must work in the socket where I’m put. I’ll stay, and——”
“Oh, Grandfather!” said I, and wept.
“Peace, peace,” he said, embracing me. “What would I have done in Greece? My father is dead. My sons have, no doubt, forgotten me. My daughter … should I not be only a trouble—a dream strayed into daylight as the verse says? Anyhow, it’s a long journey and beset with dangers. I might never have reached the sea.”
And so he went on, making little of his deed, as if he feared I would dissuade him from it. But I, with my face on his breast, felt only the joy.
I went to look at my father many times that day, but could see no change in him.
That night I slept ill. It was not fear of the combat, but a restlessness that came from the manifold changes which the gods were sending upon me. The old Priest’s death, by itself, would have been matter for a week’s thought. I had hoped it before (and then, if he had died, it might have saved Psyche) but never really reckoned to see him go more than to wake one morning and find the Grey Mountain gone. The freeing of the Fox, though I had done it myself, felt to me like another impossible change. It was as if my father’s sickness had drawn away some prop and the whole world—all the world I knew—had fallen to pieces. I was journeying into a strange, new land. It was so new and strange that I could not, that night, even feel my great sorrow. This astonished me. One part of me made to snatch that sorrow back; it said, “Orual dies if she ceases to love Psyche.” But the other said, “Let Orual die. She would never have made a queen.”
The last day, the eve of the battle, shows like a dream. Every hour made it more unbelievable. The noise and fame of my combat had got abroad (it was no part of our policy to be secret) and there were crowds of the common people at the palace gates. Though I valued their favour no more than it deserved—I remembered how they had turned against Psyche—yet, willy–nilly, their cheering quickened my pulse and sent a kind of madness into my brain. Some of the better sort, lords and elders, came to wait upon me. They all accepted me for Queen, and I spoke little but, I think, well—Bardia and the Fox praised it—and watched their eyes staring at my veil and manifestly wondering what it hid. Then I went to Prince Trunia in the tower room and told him we had found a champion (I did not say whom) to fight for him and how he would be brought in honourable custody to see the fight. Though this must have been uneasy news for him, he was too just a man not to see that we were using him as well as our weakness would bear. Then I called for wine that we might drink together. But when the door opened—this angered me for the moment—instead of my father’s butler it was Redival who came in bearing the flagon and the cup. I was a fool not to have foreseen it. I knew her well enough to guess that once there was a strange man in the house she’d eat her way through stone walls in order to be seen. Yet even I was astonished to see what a meek, shy, modest, dutiful younger sister (perhaps even a somewhat downtrodden and spirit–broken sister) she could make of herself carrying that wine; with her downcast eyes (which missed nothing from Trunia’s bandaged foot to the hair of his head) and her child’s gravity.
“Who’s that beauty?” said Trunia as soon as she was gone.
“That’s my sister, the Princess Redival,” said I.
“Glome is a rose garden; even in winter,” said he. “But why, cruel Queen, do you hide your own face?”
“If you become better known to my sister, she’ll doubtless tell you,” said I; more sharply than I had intended.
“Why, that might be,” said the Prince. “If your champion wins tomorrow; otherwise death’s my wife. But if I live, Queen, I wouldn’t let this friendship between our houses die away. Why should I not marry into your line? Perhaps yourself, Queen?”
“There’s no room for two on my throne, Prince.”
“Your sister then?”
It was of course an offer to be seized. Yet for a moment, saying yes to it irked me; most likely because I thought this prince twenty times too good for her.
“For all I can see,” said I, “this marriage can be made. I must speak to my wise men first. For my own part, I like it well.”
The day ended more strangely than it began. Bardia had had me into the quarters for my last practice. “There’s that old fault of yours, Queen,” he said, “in the feint reverse. I think we’ve conquered it; but I must see you perfect.” We went it for half an hour and when we stopped to breathe he said, “That’s as perfect as skill can go. It’s my belief that if you and I were to fight with sharps you’d kill me. But there are two things more to say. This first. If it should happen, Queen—and most likely it won’t happen to you, because of your divine blood—but if it should happen that when your cloak’s off and the crowd’s hushed and you’re walking out into the empty space to meet your man—if you should then feel fear, never heed it. We’ve all felt it at our first fight. I feel it myself before every fight. And the second’s this. That hauberk you’ve been wearing is excellent for weight and fit. But it’s a poor thing to look at. A trace of gilding would suit a queen and a champion better. Let’s see what the Bedchamber has.”