The villagers stared at him. How would they know, since she had been a newborn at the time?
“She was never seen again? No trace of her found? And now the king has given up looking for her?”
Of course the king had never given up on his daughter, but he had responsibilities to the kingdom.
“What if she were returned to him, this stolen princess? What would King George do then?” asked Hans.
Then the villagers looked at him more carefully, and realized that they did not know him, that they had never seen him before. They were suspicious.
“What do you know about the stolen princess?” they asked him.
When he would not answer, they threatened him with his life if he did not tell what he knew. One woman threw a rock at his head. A man kicked at him and then stood over him when he fell down.
The villagers eventually tied him up and four strong men carried him on their shoulders to the castle, as he struggled and begged to be released.
But he stopped when the castle came into view.
“He’s tired now,” said one of the men.
“Must be afraid of King George. His magic will make you speak,” said another.
But Hans was where he wanted to be. This was where he had to come, and if these circumstances were not precisely what he had imagined, still they would serve. He needed to see Lord Morlieb and he needed to see King George and his daughter, the peasant princess.
The villagers took him to the guardhouse, and he was given to a man with graying hair and a kind face that turned hard when the villagers’ suspicions were explained. The man was known as Captain Henry, though in truth everyone around him treated him as if he were the general of all the king’s army.
“Tell me,” said Captain Henry. “Tell me before I take you to the king.”
“You love the king, don’t you?” said Hans. It was obvious in every word, in every motion. He was protective of the king and admired him, as well.
“I love him as a brother,” said Captain Henry solemnly. “Which is why I spent two years of my life searching for his daughter, and borrowed all the money that I ever hoped to earn in paying spies when he does not know I do it, purely in hopes that one day I will see again the carefree look on his face that I saw the day of his daughter’s birth.”
“He has another daughter now. Perhaps he does not care about the first,” said Hans.
Captain Henry slapped his face. “Never say that about my king.” There were tears in the captain’s eyes. He looked away.
“Have you noticed that there is something wrong with the king?” asked Hans. “When Lord Morlieb is nearby, or has been nearby recently.”
“What do you mean?” asked Captain Henry.
He knew. Hans could see that he was already worried about this, but had said nothing of it, out of loyalty.
“He has magic.”
“Animal magic?” asked the captain. “Surely not. I would have noticed that. I may not have as much as the king does, and it may be failing me in my age, but I am not unaware of it.”
“Not animal magic. The old magic. He can speak to the heart with words that are not quite words. He can move animals and humans to do as he wishes. Have you not heard the whispers and grunts beneath his pretense at being human?”
“He has not bothered to speak to me,” said the captain thoughtfully. “But there is something about him that is hidden. I thought that it was his love for the princess, that he believed he could not be worthy of her. The way he looked at her, it was obvious that he desired her. I felt sorry for him. But then the king said they were to marry and I did not know what to say.”
Hans shook his head. “Your king is not himself. He is not making his own decisions.”
Captain Henry put his face in his hands and groaned. “I should have seen it. I am his friend. He depended on me, and I have failed him.”
“No time for that now,” said Hans. “We must help him. Which of the guards are you certain have never spoken to Lord Morlieb?” They could not trust anyone who had, no matter how long ago it had been.
“I—I cannot think.” The captain’s face went very pale. “None of them,” he said. “He has seen them all, in rotations. I kept myself away, for the king always treats me as a friend and I thought it was improper, in front of him, since he came to make a treaty from another kingdom. I thought it would make the king seem weaker than he is.”
“All of them? Every one of the guards?” said Hans. He had not expected this, but he should have. The Olde Wolf was as capable of cunning plans as any human, and he had worked on this one for a long time.
“Yes,” whispered the captain. He ran his fingers through his hair and pulled tufts of it out in his anguish.
“Then we cannot depend on them. We must assume they will all be on his side, when the time comes. What of the animals in the palace? How many of them are there?” asked Hans. He wanted nothing more than to run away from this fight. It seemed impossible to win now. He had hoped only to point the captain in the right direction, then to step back and see the battle against the Olde Wolf waged by others.
He could feel the fear inside his stomach like a hot iron, burning into his heart and lungs. He could not win. He would die a second time, and worse than before, for he was more afraid than he had been then. He knew better how small his chances were.
All he had was his hope that the Olde Wolf had some weakness which his daughter Golda might reveal.
“Is there anyone else in the castle who can be trusted? Servants who have not seen Lord Morlieb?”
“I don’t know,” said the captain. “Perhaps a few. Kitchen servants, who never met him face-to-face. But they might have passed him in the hall or heard him from a distance. How can I know?”
“The whole castle is tainted,” said Hans. He closed his eyes and could feel the darkness hovering inside of it. He had hoped it was divided, but now he was not so sure.
“We must save the king and queen, and the princess.” The captain’s face was still gray, but it hardened with purpose.
One word from the Olde Wolf, thought Hans, and he would be changed into a smiling, obedient servant. Just like I was.
“That is precisely what the Olde Wolf expects you to do. To rush inside, so that he will have you, as well,” said Hans.
“But—what can I do? I cannot simply walk away.”
“Tell me of the king’s daughter. The first daughter, who was taken,” said Hans. “If she were standing in front of you, how would you know that it was she? How could you prove it?”
The captain’s mouth fell open. “She was newly born. I never saw her,” he said. “And if I had, she would be much changed by now. It has been many years.”
Hans was not in a mood to show sympathy. He spoke brutally, and told himself that at least he spoke the truth, and not comforting words to turn the man to his side, as the Olde Wolf would have. “When did you give up on the search, then? In the first hour? The first day? You only pretended to look for her, isn’t that true?”
“No!” exclaimed Captain Henry. “I never stopped looking for her. In every village square I pass, I look for her. In every face, human or animal, I wonder if it is her.”
“But you say there would be no way to know for sure. If a girl came to you and claimed to be the princess, would you believe her? If she had a passing resemblance to her father or mother? If she had a little of the animal magic?”
“I—there was once a girl who claimed to be the princess.”
“Ah,” said Hans with a sigh. “And what did you do to prove her wrong?”
“I asked her what had happened to her. Where she had been taken and who had taken her. She said that she had been found in a basket and that her parents had always told her she was the princess. There was no more than that. Her parents were both dead by the time she came.”
“But you did not have a tiny bit of doubt that she could be telling the truth?”
“I investigated. I went to her village, and a
sked after her and her parents. The pattern of deceit was quite clear. There was no one in the village who had any regard for them.”
“And because she was not beloved as her father is, she was certainly not the princess?” Hans pressed.
The captain’s eyes went bright. “It was the smell of her,” he said, shaking a finger as if he had only just remembered it now.
“You could smell she was not the princess? Because of your own animal magic? You said it was waning.”
“Yes. I did not trust myself. I brought one of her scarves into the king. I laid it next to him, where he could not help but take in the scent of it. She had worn it for several days.
“But the king did not notice it a bit. He brushed against it and held it to give it back to me. Not once did he ask me whose it was or where it had come from. The smell of his own daughter—even if he were in his human form—I was sure that he would not be mistaken. When she was gone, he spent hours every day in her room, touching the bed clothes that had been wrapped around her, holding her tiny gowns to his face and rubbing them against his cheek.
“The smell of a child does not change, though all else does. That was when I knew that she was not his daughter. I had no doubt and sent her away without a coin. I threatened her that if she returned and tried to speak to him herself, I would send the king’s own bear after her to tear her to pieces.
“It would have been terrible if he had faced his doubts about her. If he had ever for one moment entertained the thought that he might be wrong—he would never have sent her away. And then what of the kingdom? And what of Princess Dagmar?”
Hans breathed deeply. Here it was. This was his chance. He could cease it, or let it go. There was a long moment of silence as he decided.
“Has she come to you, this same girl? If I remember, she had a round face and blue eyes, like the king. But little else that looked like him. Though I suppose she would have tried to change her appearance to avoid me now,” said Captain Henry.
“I have found her,” said Hans, his voice shaking though he tried to make it stop. His whole body was shaking, down to his nose. This was the moment when he would defeat the Olde Wolf, as no one else had. It was not at all what he thought it would be, a moment in battle in the forest, with death and blood all around him, and magic. It was simply a matter of the truth.
“Now? After all these years? How can you be sure?” Captain Henry looked as if he were disbelieving, but Hans could see the hope in his face. He wanted the lost princess to be found at last. “Does she say she is the princess? Does she say what happened to her and who took her?”
“It was Lord Morlieb,” said Hans.
Captain Henry let out a long breath of air. Then he swirled away from Hans and began to push through the swords hanging on the wall until he found the right one, the one that belonged at his side.
Hans touched his arm and the sword slid toward him before Captain Henry stopped it still.
“Do not try to save him now,” he said, his voice low and threatening, as if he had changed into the shape of an animal on the hunt though he still wore his human form.
“I do not wish to save him. But think of your king. What would he wish you to do? To kill the man who stole his daughter? Or to save her and bring her to him? And then punish the one who is guilty, after he has been forced to admit his crimes and tell the truth of all those missing years.”
The captain moved his hand from his sword, but he did not put it back on the wall. “Where is she?” he asked.
“She lives in the forest. As a wolf. But she takes her human form up with ease. I think she does not know who she is. She thinks of the Olde Wolf as her father.” It was Golda, Hans realized now. He should have seen it from the first, when he realized she did not know she was naturally a human, but it had come to him when Captain Henry had spoken about the girl who had pretended to be the princess and the smell of her scarf.
The smell of Golda was human, but more than that, it was the smell of this castle. The king’s smell. It was all through the castle, on every servant, the smell of his unique kind of great magic and animal magic. It was a smell that Golda would not have found in any other way but being born to it, for surely the Olde Wolf would have kept her as far from this castle and King George as he could.
“The Olde Wolf?” said Captain Henry.
“The one you know as Lord Morlieb.”
“And he took her and made her his,” said Captain Henry. His voice was a whisper.
“Yes.”
“But then she does not know herself who she is. How can she be convinced, if you are, in fact, telling the truth?” asked the captain.
He was ready to believe, thought Henry. He wanted the king to have his daughter back. Or perhaps there was something of Golda’s smell on Hans himself, and some part of the captain recognized it.
“We must bring something of her father’s for her to smell,” said Hans. “She would have the ability to scent him as he would scent her.” Or so Hans hoped. If she had no memory of him, would anything remain at all?
The thought that the Olde Wolf had taken King George’s daughter and changed her so that she could never return was a possibility he was not willing to entertain at the moment.
“Of course,” said the captain. “Of course.”
“And something from the queen, as well,” said Hans, thinking aloud. “I think there must be a part of her that knows that she does not belong with the Olde Wolf, but that is the only life she has ever known and so she clings to it.”
“I will go and bring back something from them both.” The captain moved to the door of the guardhouse.
“No,” said Hans. “You can’t go into the castle. The risk it too great.” Hans did not want to take the chance that the captain would be discovered by the Olde Wolf. Then Hans would be on his own again.
The captain sagged forward, but he did not argue. “What do I have here? What have the king and queen touched recently?” He looked through weapons and armor, and at last he came across a tiny sock. He flinched at the sight of it, and seemed to have to force himself to pick it up.
“The queen brought it to me. She said the king had been keeping it in his chest all these years, taking it out to look at now and again. But he gave it to her and told her that it was time to put it with the other things that she had given me long ago.
“I did not know how to tell her that I gave the other things to a village woman I knew who had a baby two years after the princess had left. It was just after the king had declared Dagmar his own daughter, and princess. I was angry, thinking it meant that he did not trust me to find her. And the woman needed clothing for her own daughter. I thought that the king would find out and punish me, send me away from the castle. It was what I wanted, in a way, then. I was so angry at myself.”
Hans felt his eyes stinging.
“Now all I have is the sock left. It has been months, but I kept it here, closed away. I think it will have retained some of the scent of the king.” He offered it to Hans.
Hans took it reluctantly and put it to his nose. He nodded. Yes, that was the smell of the castle itself, and the king at the heart of it. “We will see how she reacts to it,” he said.
“Yes, I think we will.” The captain and Hans walked out of the guardhouse in the twilight, headed toward the forest. “She will recognize you?”
“We have met once before,” said Hans. “When she was in human form.”
Chapter Sixteen: Golda
Golda was pacing by the stone edifice, in wolf form once more. She had not seen her father for days now. She was not sure that she wanted to see him. What would she say? What would she do? Who would she be? Wolf or human?
She had spent her whole life doing what her father had told her to do, following his plan. It was not easy to begin to think for herself or to find something that she could believe in again. But these humans were not what he said, of that much she was sure.
Then she heard footsteps nearby. Humans.
/> Her hackles rose and she lifted her head and bared her teeth to frighten them off.
But one of them was the human she recognized from the village, the one who had buried the animals and spoken to her with kindness. She hesitated.
“Golda,” he said, holding out his hands in peace.
How did he know that the wolf she was now was the human she had been then?
“I have come to tell you of your father.”
She tensed, but he told her of a different father, a human who lived in a castle, a king.
“You are a princess, Golda,” he said. “With a powerful magic that the Olde Wolf has been trying to keep from finding herself. He does not want you to fight against him, and that is why he has not told you the truth. He fears you most of all humans, because you know him too well.”
Golda let herself slide into her human form. Was this truly the more natural one? How could she be sure?
The other human, an older man with a paunch and a look of weariness on his wrinkled brow, stepped back. He looked more afraid of her now than he had when she was a wolf.
“Princess,” he said, in the language of hounds that was like enough to the language of wolves that Golda understood him. The word he used also meant “lead female,” and “huntress.” Then he knelt down in front of her.
Golda looked to the other human, Hans. “Is he a hound?” she asked. “Has he become trapped in human form and he hopes that I will change him back?” She lifted a hand and reached for his shoulder.
“No!” said Hans sharply. “No, he is a human. He wants to remain a human.”
“I do not understand.”
“He knows your father,” said Hans. “He is a friend of your father. He speaks as animals speak because his has a portion of your father’s magic.”
“I am his servant,” said the human, still in the language of hounds.
He said the final word incorrectly, but Golda gathered what he meant after a moment.
“This man can bring you to your true father, the one you were taken from at birth. And your mother, as well. They are the king and queen of this kingdom, Kendel. You are the princess,” said Hans.
The Princess and the Wolf (The Princess and the Hound) Page 14