Goose Chase (11 page)

"For the past six months the King has been courting you, Goose Girl, and I don't believe he is widely admired by his subjects. I know that I never much cared for him. He is an usurper, you know. He is not the rightful King."

"Is that so, my lord?" I asked absently, not much interested in the doings of the King of Gilboa, so long as he remained far distant. "But now tell me, Prince—"

"I, of course, am much beloved by my people.
Much
beloved."

"O, in certes, sire."

"One might almost say I am adored."

"No doubt. But—"

"You ought to have seen that cook, Goose Girl. She couldn't show me enough attention. 'Twas almost embarrassing."

"I have no difficulty imagining it, my lord," I sighed. "Indeed, your subjects love you well."

"
You
are one of my subjects, Goose Girl." The Prince looked slyly at me out of the corner of his eye. "Dost thou love thy prince and lord?"

"Of a surety, sire," I said, not at all caring for the trend of this conversation. "As your subject, of course. We have settled to our own satisfaction that no other relationship between us is possible."

"Hmmm ... true," said the Prince, and he was silent.

"But you have not told me, sire," I said, "how 'twas that you found me. You came upon the Ogresses' valley in less than a fortnight, and I cannot think how you managed it."

"O, that was the easiest thing in the world," the Prince said negligently. "I take no credit for it."

"But how was it
done
?" I demanded, grinding my teeth only a little.

"Why, your Geese showed me the way, of course, how else?"

"My—my Geese? What can you mean?"

Patiently, as though speaking to a child, the Prince said, "Your Geese led me to you, I tell you. They found me in a lonely wood, quite despairing. Some walked before me and
some walked after, never allowing me to stray from the path which they had ordained." The Prince rubbed his hindmost portions reminiscently. "They can be quite severe when they choose to be, your Geese."

C
HILDREN AND FOOLS CANNOT LIE.

—J
OHN
H
EYWOOD,
P
ROVERBS

"Sssso!" I hissed at Ernestina the moment I could do so without drawing the Prince's attention. "This is how you protect me and keep me from want, as my mother promised. You saddle me with worthless Princes. What! Did you think that I needed the Prince's help to escape from the Ogresses?"

Actually 'twas true that the Prince
had
been rather helpful in some ways, but did my Geese really imagine that I could not have managed to get free without his aid?

Ernestina rolled her eyes. Enraged, I pinched her. Alberta waddled over, protesting. I pinched her too. The Geese all became agitated and milled about, hissing and shaking their bills.

"Hunh, hunh hunh!" they cried in indignation.

"Er," said the Prince diffidently, "I am sorry to interrupt your consultation with your friends, Goose Girl, but there bills. seems to be a rather large group of soldiers approaching us through the trees."

"What? O Hades!"

The Geese immediately all launched themselves into the air in a body, passing low over the soldiers' heads and distracting them while the Prince and I fled.

I heard the soldiers shooting at my gallant Geese and could not help turning around to watch anxiously as we ran. The Prince at length grasped my hand in his and pulled me along.

The soldiers, I was pleased to see, were inexperienced in handling their muskets. I was a better shot than any of them. The soldiers' technique seemed to be to point, shoot, and then immediately fall over backwards onto the ground. This did not improve their aim. As all of them tried in turn to bring down a Goose, their company rather gave the impression of a great number of jack-in-the-boxes popping up and down between the trees. To the best of my observation, not one of my Geese was hit.

Their bravery was all for naught. One soldier, more alert than his fellows, espied us running away and alarmed the others.

"We must climb a tree," gasped the Prince. "Tis our only hope."

Twas not much of a hope. My Princess gown, though torn in scrambling out of the tower and partly ripped up for bandages, still retained its rich coloring, and my cursed hair shone bright as a whole treasure house of gold. The Prince's
white satin tunic was soiled and spotted with dirt and grass stains, but yet gleamed moony white in the shadow of the trees.

The Prince chose a mighty oak with a convenient low-hanging branch. He scrambled up right smartly.

I whispered, "O, do be careful of Little Echo!"

He nodded, reached out an arm, and dragged me up after him. I will own that I appreciated his help. A Princess gown is not the best attire for climbing trees.

Once ensconced in the tree, we sat in silence and watched the soldiers running toward us. A thought struck me.

"Do not the uniforms of those soldiers look very much like those of the King of Gilboa's?" I whispered.

"That is because they are the King of Gilboa's soldiers," explained the Prince.

"But that cannot be! We must be many miles away from Gilboa."

"Nay, Goose Girl. You have never left Gilboa since you departed the tower and flew over the border."

"But—!"

The Prince silenced me by placing his forefinger on my lips. The soldiers had drawn very near. 'Twas evident by their behavior that they knew we were close by and were searching for us amongst the trees.

Biting my lips as I watched them, I reflected that I would never have guessed that Gilboa was so very large a country. 'Twas sad, really, to think that so much land should be under the rule of a man like the King.

They did not find us at once, and for a time I hoped they would not at all. Indeed I began to think that unless we set the tree afire they would never notice us in it. Twice the Prince sneezed while a soldier stood below, and once a foraging squirrel discerned us and set to scolding us for invading a favorite nutting tree.

I blush to say that 'twas an act of mine that brought discovery down on us. Something—I cannot say what, but some small insect—bit my leg quite painfully and it twitched uncontrollably. Off flew my little glass slipper and struck a soldier violently on the head. He caught it as it rebounded and regarded it quizzically.

'"Od's bodkin!" he muttered, scratching his pate. "Shoes from the sky. Now there's a wonder for you! Pretty little thing, too, all made o' glass. I expect," he said, his eyes widening as the explanation came to him, "it belongs to an angel. She'd be flyin' by, ye see," he explained to a nonexistent companion, "an' givin' a little flirt o' her wings and a kick o' her heels, it mighta fallen off, accidental-like." He rubbed his hand over his mouth, and his face lit up with sudden cunning. "I wonder now," he asked his invisible friend, "just how much money do ye reckon a thing like this might bring in at the market fair in Clove City? A gen-yoo-wine certified angel shoe like this here one?" He answered himself with considerable satisfaction, "A pretty penny, that's what. A pretty penny."

I reached out a hand and gripped the Prince's in mine, holding my breath. Could it be that even now, after the
disaster of the slipper, we should be saved? The soldier, overcome with greed, was about to hide the "angel's" shoe in his tunic, when his superior officer appeared and spotted it.

"What, pray, is that, Smeatt?"

"O nowt, nowt at all, sir."

"Where, Smeatt, did you get that woman's shoe?"

"Tis not a woman's shoe, sir, but footgear belonging to a member of the Heavenly Host, and not for your delectation, sir, nor mine."

"Give me that shoe, Smeatt."

"O, sir!"

"How came you by this shoe, Smeatt?" demanded the officer, taking my slipper in his hand.

"It fell from the sky, sir, it did. From the heel of an angel, sir. 'Tis holy, like."

The officer looked up into the tree at us.

"There is your angel, Smeatt."

Smeatt looked up and his jaw dropped.

"Why, so she is, sir. And I'm sure I'll be a better man from now on, knowing what it is I have to look forward to, iffen I behave meself in this world."

"Yes, well, while we are awaiting that event, why don't you help the lady down out of the tree, and the gentleman as well?" And the officer aimed his musket at the Prince's heart.

Given this troop of soldiers' known lack of ability with gunpowder, you might think we were fools to come down,
but we were sitting targets, and where, after all, was there for us to go?

We came down.

"Identify yourselves," demanded the officer crisply.

"O sir," I said, endeavoring to look helpless and innocent and devastatingly beautiful, all at once, "we are but poor Gooseherders, whose flock has gone astray. Mayhap you saw them, as you were coming through the wood?"

The Prince jabbed me with his elbow. I jabbed him right back. Had he any other ideas? Finding the King's missing bride as well as the King's rival for her hand, wandering far from home on the King's own land, would be a prodigious feather in this man's cap.

"We saw them," said the officer, but he did not offer to let us go after pointing out the direction they had taken. Instead he turned to Smeatt, who had been fluttering his eyelashes soulfully in my direction.

'Arrest them," he said briefly, and turned away.

"Sir!" Smeatt cried out as though he had been struck. "O my Gawd, sir!" he pleaded. "Say y'don't mean it, sir!"

"I do mean it, Smeatt. If that young woman is a Goose Girl, why then I am the Empress of China."

Smeatt appeared nearly overcome at this wholly unexpected possibility.

"O sir!"

"She is no more a Goose Girl than she is an angel. And even supposing her to be telling the truth, then how did she
come by that crown she is wearing? And this glass slipper? And the gown she wears, tattered though it is? The only possible answer is: dishonestly."

Smeatt appeared to be struck by this reasoning. "That crown, sir. I do believe..."

"Believe what, man? Speak up."

Smeatt shook his head. "Nowt, sir. I said nowt concerning the crown."

The officer examined him for a moment, but as Smeatt assumed a particularly wooden expression, he went on.

"And as for the man," he said, warming to his theme, "come now, Smeatt. Do you think that men tend geese while all tricked out in white satin and metal breastplates? Who they are I cannot say, but who they say they are is assuredly not who they are."

Smeatt's eyes nearly popped out of his head with the difficulty of following this.

His commanding officer eyed him severely. "I shall send you some reinforcements to make certain you have every assistance you require."

"But—but what shall I do with 'em, sir?" asked Smeatt piteously.

"Escort the noble fowl tenders to the castle of the Baroness of Breakabeen. I am sure her ladyship would be pleased to entertain them until the King has leisure to inspect them."

My heart sank clear down to the ground.

The Prince cleared his throat.

"How goes the peasant revolt?" he asked. My heart rebounded suddenly. I had forgot the peasant revolt entirely. Mayhap things were not so bad after all.

The officer's eyebrows shot up.

"What do you say? Peasant revolt? What peasant revolt?"

"The peasant revolt here in Gilboa. Why, I heard it from—" The Prince checked himself. "That is, I pray your mercy, sir. 'Tis obvious I am in error."

"From whom did you receive this information?" demanded the officer sharply.

"O, from nobody in particular," said the Prince feebly. '"Twas only in the air, so to speak."

"I see, Sir Swineherd, or whatever you call yourself. 'Tis clear to me that I have caught myself a very pretty pair indeed. There is no peasant revolt in Gilboa, no, nor any other sort of revolt. Our King has little patience with that sort of thing. He will be most interested to hear what you have to say, no doubt." He handed me my slipper, bowed very low, and walked away.

I closed my eyes. 'Twould not be the tower this time, with little caged singing birds and golden goblets, but rather the King's dungeons for me, and perchance the scaffold for the Prince. I swayed a little as I stood, and the Prince gripped my arm to prevent me from falling.

"Excuse me, miss," said Smeatt. I opened my eyes and saw him standing there with a bit of twine in his hands. "I mean Yer Holiness, that is. Begging your pardon, but I got to tie yer hands together. I know it's a dretful liberty and I'm
most humbly sorry, but I got to do what the Major tells me to do, ye see, or I'm finished. "Tis a hard life in this here army and that's the truth."

I looked wildly around. I saw the Prince do the same. There were two of us to one of him, and that one a fool. Of course, one of our number was a fool as well, but still—a wild dash for the forest and then...

Five more soldiers appeared, aiming their muskets at us.

"Tell me that you will forgive me, ma'am," begged Smeatt.

"I forgive you, Smeatt," I said sadly, and held out my wrists.

"By all the saints!" gasped Smeatt in terror. "What did I tell ye?" He appealed to his invisible companion. "Now how did she know my name?"

"O, Smeatt," I sighed. Verily, my Prince was beginning to take on the appearance of a wise and rational human being in comparison with this Smeatt.

When once we were tied to Smeatt's satisfaction, we began walking, surrounded by soldiers.

"I do not understand it," muttered the Prince under his breath. "Why would the King have told me there was a peasants' revolt if there was nothing of the sort?"

"Perchance the officer is in ignorance of it?" I suggested, though in the event of a revolt, surely the army would be the first to be informed.

"Smeatt!" the Prince said loudly.

Smeatt made a gesture to avert the evil eye. "Him too!" he wailed. "That one knows my name too!"

"Smeatt," said the Prince, "what was this troop of men doing when you found us? Where were you going?"