The Animal Kingdom, Part Four
“But what if someone finds out what you’ve done?,” Katerina asked. “You’ll be in terrible trouble.”
“Those people don’t know horses. But even if they did somehow realize what happened, what would they do? Accuse the King of cheating them? That’s the quickest route I can think of to the hangman’s noose.”
“The second quickest. If you’d been caught doing this, you’d have found that out for yourself.”
Anders looked down.
A horse – it sounded like the mare Brianna – whinnied from the back of the stable. Territorial dogs barked back and forth. The wind had picked up a little out of the east. It wheezed along the eaves of the old building.
Katerina stared at Anders for a long moment in the densely peopled silence of the yard.
“Thank you,” she said, finally. She touched his arm. They were standing out in the open now, on the flagstones in front of the stables –- if anyone witnessed such a gesture … But fear was the least of what he felt.
He mastered himself. “There is something else,” he told her. “At the inn where I was staying, I fell into conversation with an old herbalist. It turns out he had known my father briefly when they were young. We talked through the night for several nights running and eventually I wound up mentioning your … condition. I didn’t disclose your name and I spoke only in the most general terms. But he had a small quantity of a medicinal leaf, from the gryphillaria plant, which he gave me for you. He will be travelling over the next few months and he has promised to visit me here. If the gryphillaria helps you, he can find more. He says it grows copiously here.”
“If it works -- couldn’t we find more ourselves?”
“Unfortunately … no, princess. It is virtually identical to plant called pormelusia, which is deadly. Its juices kill very slowly, but once started the process cannot be reversed. There’s no cure and the pain is unendurable. It’s used as a particularly cruel method of execution in certain … Eastern countries. Or so the herbalist told me. Anyway – it takes a lifetime of study for the eye to distinguish any difference between the two plants. And one wouldn’t want to make a mistake.”
“No.”
“He gave me some gryphillaria for you to try, though. If it eases your sadness at all, there would be cause for hope.”
He pulled a folded tissue out of his pocket. When he opened it there were four small leaves, green and spotted with a darker green, inside. Wilf padded over to smell them. His nose wrinkled and his head flinched away from Anders’ palm. Katerina had never seen that reaction before. Wilf had a lively interest in the world of odor. No smell had ever troubled him like that. She glanced nervously at Anders.
“Do I eat them?,” she asked him.
“You chew them and swallow the juice. It will be bitter, the herbalist told me. He said he found that ‘charming.’ It’s one of God’s little ironies, that medicine so often tastes so terrible, as if it might actually hurt you. Whereas the things that taste best really do hurt us. Or so he says. He thinks God is a perverse sort of fellow, a prankster if you will, and the best way to secure a place in heaven is to let him know you get his jokes.”
“That sort of a God would make me nervous,” Katerina said. “I think I prefer the stern but fair old man with the white beard.”
“Maybe. But I think if you’re trying to hold a whole universe together every day, and answering all these crazy prayers, and sorting out all that divine retribution, a sense of humor would come in handy. You’d lose your mind otherwise. Just deciding on the weather every day, and doling out the luck and the diseases, who gets rain and who gets rich and who gets the plague. It’s a big job.”
The princess smiled. He liked the smile so much he decided to go on. He knew it was a kind of sacrilege, but even God would be pleased to see this young woman happy for a moment.
“Sometimes I think he’s in over his head. He’s overwhelmed. How else do you explain ingrown toe-nails and tooth decay and body odor? I’m not saying it’s his fault we smell so bad when we sweat. It just slipped past him, that’s all. He’s overworked. He had more important things to deal with on that day. Commandments to write. Angels to banish. I don’t know. It wasn’t a race – maybe he should have taken an extra day or two.”
She laughed and held out her hand with a mock imperious flourish. He went down on one knee.
“Here, my Lady,” he said, and handed her gryphillaria leaves.
She tasted them gingerly. He was right. The acrid flavor constricted her tongue and dried out her mouth. Her features bunched together comically as she tried to swallow; Anders fought back an unseemly smile. His face was serene and serious when he nodded encouragement into her questioning glance. She stared back at him for a long moment. Then she tore off half of one leaf and bit down hard.
“This better work,” she croaked.
At first the herb seemed to have no effect except to make her dizzy. She held onto Anders to steady herself. She closed her eyes and focused all her attention inside, hoping to feel the shift. But it was like listening for some impossibly faint sound, every ounce of her clenched into a self-defeating effort. Will became confusion -- the distant cry of greeting was only her own breath; the longed for rain, or even just a rustle of wind in the trees.
She needed distraction. “Talk to me,” she said. “Tell me about your trip.”
“All right,” Anders replied. He thought a moment. Then he brightened. “We were set upon by highwaymen,” he said. “But Lochinvar outran them! And he forced Samson to keep up. Sam wasn’t happy. He tried to bite me when I put him in his stall that night. And there was a carnival. With jugglers. And beggars everywhere. Vilny is a very busy place, Princess. It was market day when I arrived and everything was for sale in the streets. Every kind of food, fruits and vegetables, sides of meat, smoked fowl, wines and liquors, clothing and toys, pots and pans, even … “
“Even what?”
“Even women, princess. Beautiful women, offering their bodies to anyone with a few ducats.”
“It sounds quite overwhelming.”
“It was, princess.”
“Did you buy anything, Anders?”
There was a tiny squint of pleasure in her eyes; the innuendo of a smile. She was teasing him. It took him a moment to realize what was happening. She had never done such a thing before.
Perhaps he was mistaken; he answered her seriously. “No, princess,” he said. “I had only enough money for food and lodging.”
“Probably just as well.”
There was that little squint again. She really was teasing him.
That was the beginning. He could hear it in the tone of her voice. For the Princess it was different. The change for her was physical. It was as if she had lost weight. Her body felt lighter; at the same time the world seemed to settle back into its old dimensions. Everything had loomed so large to her for so long, hills and buildings and trees and people; and she had seemed to be shrinking – withering into a shrill, frightened speck. Now things looked normal again. The barn wasn’t some evil citadel. It didn’t dwarf her, it didn’t drown her in its deep shadow. It was just the barn, low and thatch-roofed and tilting slightly to the southwest, with its crumbling mortar and its sweet reek of wet timber, manure and hay.
She pulled Anders back inside where they couldn’t be seen and embraced him. He was in the middle of a sentence, something about how someone at the castle in Vilny had spilled a bottle of wine and ruined a damask tablecloth. But the hug squeezed the words out of him. He couldn’t speak and he had no idea what he’d been saying. Katerina was holding him tight.
“It’s working,” she said.
He whispered into her neck: “I’m glad.”
They embraced for a few seconds longer. Then she pulled away. Lochinvar was in the first stall now. He whinnied at her and she stroked his neck. “You’re a good boy,” she said. He whinnied again. It had been a long time since she had heard that sound. But for some reason he wasn’t speaking to her this evening.
“Is he all right?,” Anders asked. “He sounds strange.”
“He’s fine.” She turned away from the horse. “I have to go back. People will start to wonder what I’m doing out here.”
He nodded and pressed the leaves into her hand. “Take these with you. But use them sparingly. We won’t be able to get any more until I see the old man again. He told me he was travelling this way, but he’s on foot so it could take a month or more. And I have no idea how long the effects last.”
“Perhaps I’m cured already,” she said.
“That would be wonderful,” Anders said. But they both knew it wasn’t true.