Straw Into Gold (19 page)

"Stay down," said the queen. "We have taken the lance out, but we have to stop the blood."

"Innes."

"I'm here." He was kneeling by me too.

"You know, of course..." I gasped as the queen began wrapping something around me. "You know that this is much worse than a tiny arrow in the shoulder."

He laughed, a laugh of relief. "You have beaten me squarely. Shall we say that this competition is over?"

Then it was the king at my side."I shall lift you now, boy. No, miller, this is for me to do. If you put your arm about my neck, just so, yes, just like that..."

I gasped again as he lifted me. He stepped around something sprawled on the cobblestones, then carried me up onto the parapet. The queen and Innes came behind, and at the very top the king stopped and turned to the people of Wolverham. "This day," he cried, "this gladdest day of the world, this boy has brought back to me my queen and my son. This day..." and then he could not go on.

But he did not need to. As the four of us grouped on the parapet, the people of Wolverham cried out as if they had never cried out before, and they kept crying out long after we turned and went into the palace, long after we had come to the king's own rooms. I could hear them calling even as he laid me down gently, gently in a bed, and stood by while the queen tightened the bandage.

"The rooms have changed since I was last in them," she said quietly to the king, still tightening. "There is nothing gold about them."

He smiled and once more reached out his hand to take hers.

In the days that followed, the power of the Great Lords drained away in the heat of the spring sun. With Lord Beryn dead, struck down by the king's own hand, they scattered to the countryside. There was no one to rally them. They never recovered from their pelting, and wherever they appeared, people who had once feared them held wicked turnips high into the air. They had been made ridiculous, and people do not fear what is ridiculous.

First one, then all of them came back to Wolverham, where they bowed the knee to the king and queen, pledging their lands, their loyalty, their own selves. The king accepted that loyalty, and the queen lifted them from their knees and took their hands in hers.

It was an act of forgiveness worthy of a monarch.

The king and queen spent much time alone together, and they were often both bleared with the tears of many years. Together they rode through the streets of Wolverham and in the fields beyond, and often the queen would dismount, the king following, and she would introduce him to those she knew from her earlier life. Sometimes they rode as far as a small village on the way to Saint Eynsham, where they visited the sexton and the nurse in a cottage scented with herbs and bread—and love.

One day the king came home with his hands bleeding and scratched. He had helped to rebuild the mill that had been burned down and had spent the day learning the art of masonry. The queen herself wrapped them, and when he winced at the blisters and she clucked her tongue at him, he laughed.

It is no small thing for a monarch to learn to laugh at himself.

With Innes too they spent much time. The king set Innes in front of him upon his own horse."He's quite gentle," the king said. And he was. They spoke little together at first; betrayal is not so easy to overcome. But as the king began to find the words to describe what he was seeing to his son, he began to see things for what they were and not for what they were worth. The wonder of it caught at his breath, and when his son took his hand, the king marveled that there had ever been a time when he had not known the answer to the riddle.

When Innes or the queen were not with the king, they sat by my bedside. I told the queen that I had seen Da in the delirium of the wound, but she did not think it was a delirium. She nodded her head at the story as if she had known it all along."To believe that there is only chance," she said quietly, "I have known it. I had almost come to believe it myself." Then she looked at me, and it was all I could do not to envy Innes.

When Innes came from riding with the king, he almost always stood with his legs bowed out. "There is," he said, "much to grow accustomed to." He made me laugh until my wound pained, and when he found he could do that, he made me laugh all the harder. "It's something I can hardly help," he explained, holding his hands out."And if it was me lying there, and you here..."

"Then I would do it to you," I said, and laughed all the harder.

Often he would come with the two young girls by his side. They were, he explained, orphans now just like himself ... or like he had once been. They were shy at first and stood behind him, but soon they came to climb up on the bed and jump up and down and up and down, all the while the wound paining me. But I did not care; there was such a pleasure in them. And when the queen came and saw the hectic jumping, she held her hands over her mouth and laughed herself. "Does it bother, Tousle?" she asked.

"Never," I answered, and then I would throw a pillow at them, and the girls would squeal.

"He's throwing pillows at you, is he?"Innes asked."Then you're as safe as safe can be."

And so the days went by, then the weeks, then the months, and it was high summer, where sunlight gilded the fields the livelong day. I was up now and working on the mill with Innes and his father. Our hands had grown as rough as the stones themselves, and at night our shoulders ached from the weight of the beams we had raised. But there was a pleasure to the good sweat of the work, and it told me that my shoulder was healed.

And one hot day we cheered the first turnings of the wheel. Then there was laughter and quiet talk. The miller's wife carried out trays of bread sweetened with golden honey—the king had never tasted it before—and we sat by the water and threw the crumbs to mallards.

Afterward the king and Innes rode into the woods, and I rode back to the castle, back to rooms that seemed suddenly lonely and still. For Innes the intricacies of his design had laced themselves into a whole. But for me, with my shoulder healed and the mill built, the next curl of the design was hidden. I would always have rooms here; the king and queen had smiled when they told me that, and Innes had looked puzzled, as if he could not have imagined anything else.

But my design was still not laced together.

One afternoon when Innes and the king returned from the woods, their heady calls came up even into my rooms, and when I looked out, Innes had just turned his face to cry up at me."Tousle, Tousle," he called, "we've seen your da." He jumped down from his horse and patted her sides. "Tousle!" he called again.

I met him coming through the kitchen, where the queen was just bringing the last of her loaves out from the ovens. She sniffed the air that rose from them, and the warmth flushed her cheeks.

"We met the most curious little man, my dear," the king said.

"Tousle's da," said Innes."It must be."

"So curious," repeated the king. "He walked out with the most curious gait from a tiny cottage and started dancing around a fire."

"And did he say anything?" I asked.
Innes shook his head."Only a song.

'I brew my beer, I bake my loaves,
And soon my own dear son I'll see.
So Rumpelstiltskin bakes his loaves,
And soon my own dear son I'll see.'"
"Is there any more than that?"
"No," said Innes."But if it was your da..."

"It was indeed," came Da's voice, and there he was. He sat close by the fireplace, his pipe just out of his mouth, and tried to hold back the smile that would creep up his cheeks.

"Da!" I cried, and then we were together, him a full head and more shorter than me. My throat closed and I could not speak. We stood there a long time, the smell of his pipe close around us, until finally he stepped back and turned his wet face to the queen.

"Mistress Queen, I never meant—"

"You meant to save my son," she said quietly; and with slow grace she curtsied to him, as noble in that kitchen as any queen might hope to be. "And now may I make my third guess?"

"You may, dear heart."
And the queen took her son's hands in hers and sang:

"I brew my beer, I bake my loaves,
And soon my own dear son I'll see.
So Rumpelstiltskin bakes his loaves,
And soon my own dear son I'll see."

With the gentlest smile, Da bowed to her, and she again to him.

Then the queen turned to me. "And is the design finished now, Tousle?"

"No, no, no," cried Da. "Not finished. Just one tiny part curled into itself." He turned back to me. "And now it is for him to decide the path of the next curl."

"The next curl?"

He held out open hands."If it were not for me, his father and his mother, they would not have died. No, no, he must not deny it."

"I do not deny it." I looked at Innes, then back to Da. "I have forgiven it."

Da paused, then bowed once more, this time to me. "He has the whole world before him," he said quietly."The whole world. He has only to step out into it."

The queen came and held my shoulders. "And you may always, always, step out into it with us," she said.

I looked ahead at the days as they placed themselves on the wheel and spun out their design. I knew that I would often be at the castle, and that I would stand by Innes one day when he himself would be crowned.

I knew that I would carry the queen's gentle touch on my shoulders always.

I knew that one day I would step out into the wide world. The design was so very open. So thrillingly open.

But the day to curl it again had not come yet. Not yet.

I filled Da's hand with mine, and he looked up into me.

"Da," I said,"are the Dapple and the Gray saddled?"

A long silence, and then such a cry of weeping joy as this old world has not heard in many a long year. Many, many a long year.

So we rode home together that day. When we passed the mill, the wheel was turning smartly; beyond, the wheat in the fields that we had seen barren so long ago was now close to harvest. The trees ahead bowed and parted as we reached them, and as we passed into the pines, they swayed back and forth.

They did not close again when we reached home. They stood open against the sky that the setting sun had washed to a quiet gold.