Metro Winds (20 page)

‘I will take her place,' I said at once.

Madam Torquemada laughed. ‘I have seen the passing of a thousand princesses and I have waited a thousand years for a worthy successor, though not always impatiently.' She gave a secretive and rather sensuous smile, and glanced at the empty setting. Then her expression became weary and I saw that the red in her hair was now a mere burnish of gold on silver. ‘I will not release your sister, for none has ever come so close to winning my place.'

‘What is the test?' asked the policeman.

The witch gave him her sharp-toothed smile. ‘She must make the queen's choice, and not the choice of a princess.'

5.

The tower lay three hills further on from the hut, which had become a palace from the inside out, so that we only saw its true magnificence when we were departing. Madame Torquemada's hair had reddened again, and she rode elegantly side-saddle on a beautiful horse, white as sugar, which had taken a liking to the policeman and kept nibbling his ear. Once, it nipped him, drawing blood, but he only mopped it with his handkerchief, saying the love of a horse was a terrible thing. The witch laughed a good deal at that, for some obscure reason. She had offered us horses to ride as well, but I had never ridden and the policeman said he needed to walk off his dinner of the previous night.

So we walked alongside the slow, high-stepping horse, the policeman keeping a light hold of my arm, though he no longer needed it.

‘I was wondering,' I said, when we stopped beside a stream to let the horse drink, ‘why Mama was so afraid to have me come here if you meant me no harm.'

‘There are two parts to the answer,' said the witch queen. ‘First, being a princess, Charledine did not ask herself what I meant to do with the child. She assumed the worst without even deciding what the worse would be. She was unable to imagine that I might have some less wicked purpose for the child than a mother who was prepared to give it up in order to ensure love at first sight. The second part to the answer is that of course I mean harm. Is not the bestowing of a world the greatest harm I could do to your sister? For I will be giving her pomp and ceremony and back-breaking, heart-wrenching, endless responsibility for all who dwell here, for all the princes and princesses who will see her as a witch just as they see me as a witch, and misjudge and malign and fear her. Indeed, you ought to wish she will fail her final test. It would be a kinder fate to be eaten by a dragon.' She glanced up at the sun and nodded. ‘Let us make haste now, for we must reach the tower before he does.'

‘He?' I echoed.

‘The prince,' said the witch.

Less than an hour later, we came to the green slope facing the tower. The witch dismounted and commanded Griselda, who was travelling with us in a little trap pulled by a doe-eyed donkey, to climb down. I stood looking at the tower, which was a narrow grey tube of stone rising high to a needle-point shingled roof. There was no door and only a single window under the eave of the roof. Looking at the window, I thought I saw a flash of gold.

‘Rose,' I murmured, and drew breath to shout, but the witch laid a hand on my arm.

‘She will not hear you,' said a deep scratchy voice. I turned to find the great shaggy black bear I had seen with the witch. Godred apologised for his failure to return the previous night, saying things had taken longer than expected. I would have been frightened, but Godred had such a mild eye and a gentle manner that it was impossible to fear him. Besides all else, there was a good deal of grey about his muzzle and ears that made me realise he was quite old.

Madame Torquemada came to stand beside the bear, shading her eyes to look at the tower window, now where I saw clearly a white hand on the sill, and a skein of golden hair. ‘The princess looks for her prince. And here he comes,' said the witch. She turned around. I turned too, and was stunned to see Silk hurrying across the hillside. His usual immaculate attire was shredded and his face scratched and bleeding. He carried a short sword in one hand and a mirror in the other, and, to my astonishment, my stepfather came stumbling along beside him, leaning on his arm.

‘Well, that is unexpected,' murmured the witch.

‘Silk is not a prince,' I said.

‘Not yet, but he has done better than any of the others, considering he came from the other world. And bringing the old man is very unexpected. Indeed, it makes me think he might even be worthy of her. Most young men can think only of possessing the princess. All of their sense and morality is contained within that quest, but not so this one. Of course he started out to rescue a child, but I made sure he learned she is no longer a child, for he must make his choices in the face of the knowledge that he is seeking a princess.'

‘What has happened to him?' I asked.

The witch gave me a sharp-toothed, knowing smile that seemed to sneer at the secret fantasies I had once had of Silk. ‘He looks a bit the worse for wear because of the tests. Godred said he did quite well. Just goes to show scholars are adaptable and intelligence serves as well as brawn,' said Madame Torquemada, looking with teasing fondness at the bear, who nodded sagely.

‘He passed the last test only because of the old man's blindness,' said Godred.

‘He sees her,' said the policeman as Silk ran past us, oblivious. His eyes were wild and passionate, but he stopped to help the older man when he stumbled. Then they were at the foot of the incline and he began to shout up to Rose.

‘They always do that,' sighed Madame Torquemada. ‘Why do they never imagine I might be close enough to hear and come gnashing my teeth to murder the pair of them?'

‘She must have told him to be quiet,' said the policeman, for now Silk had ceased shouting and was trying to climb the tower.

‘It's glass, of course,' murmured the witch.

Something was flung from the tower, a long golden rope of what looked like hair, that ran all the way down to Silk. He gave his sword to my stepfather and began to climb it.

‘But Rose does not have so much hair!' I cried.

‘Not when you saw her. She would have been, what? Eight or so then? But time here runs differently than in your world. After all, she would hardly have been a fitting prize for a prince if she was a little girl with no bosom to bury his face in. A bosom is essential to a prince. But that is the beauty of her coming to me bosomless, as it were, for it meant I had more time to train her and influence her. And of course to encourage her to grow her hair. I never spent so much time with the other princesses. Such is the sweetness of her nature that it was impossible not to love her and hope for her more than I hoped for all the others.' Madame Torquemada spoke without taking her eyes from the tower, riveted as the rest of us to Silk, slowly scaling the golden rope. ‘It is hair woven with silk thread. She always had a way with the enchanted silkworms, but I am afraid her skills at weaving are never going to be more than merely adequate. Still, you can't have everything. The main thing is that it will hold his weight. Such a disappointment if he plummets to his death now.'

Silk had managed to get himself halfway up the tower, and the rope was holding firm. I told myself that it would have given way by now if it was going to. But even if the rope held, Silk was clearly growing tired and I knew the rope must be burning and blistering his soft scholar's hands.

‘That is the worst bit,' murmured Godred, and I noticed Madame Torquemada rest a hand on his neck.

‘He's up,' said the policeman. ‘But he left his sword on the ground and you can bet he will regret that.'

Madame Torquemada gave him a wicked look. Then she turned into a raven. One minute she was a striking, red-haired woman, and the next she was a gleaming black bird with blood-red eyes, launching itself into the air. I closed my mouth with difficulty.

‘I always hate it when she does that,' grumbled Godred.

‘It is disconcerting,' said the policeman.

‘There she goes,' said Godred, as the raven swooped down through the window into the chamber.

‘What will happen?' I asked the bear.

‘It depends, but mostly it is about choices. And about sacrifice. And love, of course. Right now you can be sure that the young man can hardly think for drinking in the beauty of the princess, and she can hardly breathe for admiring his courage. It is all desperation and wonder.' Godred had been speaking more to himself than us and suddenly I had a revelation.

‘Godred . . . are you . . . were you a prince?' I asked.

‘Of course.' He gave a rumbling laugh. ‘I completed the three tasks that allowed me to reach the tower, and I climbed it, though I did not forget my sword. Still, you can manage without it, I think. I figured out later how it could be done. This one is clever and he might think of it. The important thing is that he remembered the mirror.'

‘The queen is being the witch now?' I guessed.

‘The wicked witch,' specified Godred, tiny black eyes twinkling.

‘But won't Rose recognise her as the one who trained her to be a princess?'

‘To be honest, the queen looked rather like Griselda when your sister lived with her. Except she had a hump and a squint. I thought she was overdoing it having both, but she always likes to see if a princess will be repelled by ugliness. Yet she was not training your sister to be a princess, you see, she was training Rose to be good and clever and wise and strong and compassionate and tricky. She was training her to be a queen, just in case she passed the tests.'

‘And she can't be a queen until she . . . what? Defeats the wicked witch?'

‘That is how it seems,' said Godred. ‘But the true test is what she will choose after the prince destroys the wicked witch. There is a final test for the prince too, of course.'

‘I wish we could see.'

‘We will. That is why we are waiting here. This is The Hill of True Love Declared.'

There was the sound of an explosion and we turned to see purple smoke puff from the tower, and several black feathers spiral down. A good deal of time passed suspensefully and then Silk was climbing down the golden rope and a young woman was climbing after him. I gaped, for it was clear that Rose was almost my age and no longer a little girl. As the couple reached the ground and embraced one another passionately, I saw that Rose had indeed inherited my mother's blazing, indomitable beauty.

‘She is very lovely,' murmured the policeman thoughtfully.

This gave me a pang, but now they were coming up the hill towards my stepfather, none of them showing any sign of seeing us. They pulled poor Ernst to his feet and Rose embraced him and he wept and kissed her and laughed aloud. Then they came further up the slope and I saw how Silk gazed over the older man's head at Rose in astonished wonder. At the top of the hill, where the rest of us stood unnoticed, they stopped to let the older man rest and Rose and Silk drew a little apart. I took a step towards them.

‘The strange thing is that I have been happy here,' said Rose. ‘I learned so much about the forest and the animals, and about magic and herbs from my mother.'

‘She was not your real mother,' said Silk.

Rose sighed. ‘My real mother. It was hard to know she never loved me, but she never treated me ill, and there was always Willow. But I did not know what it was to be loved by a mother until old Agathe took me in. I think, in truth, that mothering is a thing you do rather than a thing you are. A woman may have a child, but that does not make her a mother.'

‘You will be a true mother,' Silk said, and he gathered her into his arms and kissed her so passionately that my insides felt hot and molten. Then suddenly Silk fell back with a groan, and clutched his head. ‘I forgot. The curse!'

‘Perhaps it will not work,' said Rose.

‘Somehow I think it will turn out to be very efficient,' Silk said with a little of the cool sense of humour that had made me nervous of him.

But Rose embraced him impulsively, and they kissed again. This kiss went on for a long time and there was more longing in it than passion.

‘That's the best bit,' murmured Godred.

‘I don't really understand what is going on,' I whispered, though clearly they could no more hear us than see us.

‘The wicked witch cursed the princess to be a beast and the prince threw himself in the way. The curse is legendary and the only way to escape it is for him to go back where he came from,' Godred explained obligingly. ‘If he was from this land, the prince would have to go back to his own kingdom and never leave it. The princess can go with him, but in order to do so, she must give up all of her powers. But the princess knows that in defeating the witch queen, she is supposed to take her place, and she cannot do that if she goes back with the prince to his own land. To have her prince, she must abandon all the people and creatures who have helped her and have come to count on her.' I was about to protest that Rose didn't have any powers, but of course she had been here long enough to learn a great number of things.

The kiss ended and the lovers gazed at one another.

‘Here it comes,' said Godred, as the raven landed on his shoulder, unnoticed by the lovers.

Silk became a cat.

‘I knew it,' croaked the raven. ‘I knew there had to be cat in him, for him to have been so cool and clever.'

Rose was on her knees now, and weeping, and the cat was winding about her and butting its neat head against her forehead.

‘You saved my life,' said Silk the cat.

‘And you saved mine, but look what it has cost you. Oh Silk.'

‘We can go back. If we hurry, we can get there before the way closes. Then I will be myself again and we can be married.'

‘But . . .' Rose stopped, and I saw her realising all the things that Godred had said. ‘I . . . promised to rule in her place. To be wise and good and . . . to be queen here.'

‘You made the promise under duress,' said Silk. ‘You didn't mean it.'