Katerina went to bed after waving away a flurry of concerned servants and reassuring her father that she had come to no harm. But she couldn’t sleep. She lay in her bed shaking, the despair crawling over her like insects. She was exiled from the clearing, now; she knew she wouldn’t be able to brave the dark woods again. She would throw herself off Lochinvar rather than face that ordeal.
Her only hope was that the herbalist Anders had mentioned would reach the castle soon. He was supposed to be on his way. If he was familiar with the gryphillaria, he must also know its urgency. Perhaps he was hurrying toward her at his very moment, pockets stuffed with the green speckled leaves.
She got her wish two days later, but it was -- as the man himself might have reminded her –- another one of God’s little pranks. He had nothing on his person, not even a few coins or a crucifix. And he was grievously injured. Highwaymen had attacked him as they had tried to attack Anders. But the herbalist had been on foot and unarmed –- easy pickings. Though they had left him for dead, he had managed somehow to make his way to the castle. He identified himself and asked for Anders. The two men spoke briefly; Anders made him up a pallet in the stable. Anders did what he could, but the man was beyond help and by the morning he was gone.
Anders knew he would have to tell the princess. He was hoping to delay the moment, he had no idea how to say what needed to be said, but she came to the stable early in the morning to see Lochinvar, with Wilf frolicking around her heels. And the words came easily as it turned out -- urgency composed them for him, as they had organized his hands and feet when a friend had led him onto the slope of a nearby quarry the previous spring. Anders had realized at a certain point that they would have to climb the vertical rock face; they had gone too far -- the slope was too high and steep to descend. But after a moment of panic, his hands and feet had taken over. They had reached the top of the cliff quickly. It was only afterward that the shaking began. It was the same now, with the words.
“I have bad news, princess,” he said quietly as she began currying Lochinvar. She wasn’t surprised; in her current state of mind she expected bad news. She almost relished it. The world would feel whole and complete if every optimistic thought could be torn out by the roots. They were like weeds, growing between the flagstones of the castle courtyard. A world of stone –- there was something strangely comforting in that image. So she actually had a small smile on her face when she turned to face Anders. Unlike her father and her fiancée, he understood that smile all too well. It daunted him and he almost left her.
But the words had to be spoken.
“The herbalist came here last night. He was badly hurt and … And he died a few hours ago. There was nothing he could explain to me about the gryphillaria. There’s no trick to identifying it, at least none that he could pass on to me. So … “
“So we’ll never be able to find it.”
Wilf whimpered and pawed at her leg. Lochinvar butted her head gently with his own. She knew that gesture and he knew her response; it was a catechism between them:
“Be happy.”
“I can’t.”
Nothing was spoken. She just stroked his withers and leaned back against him.
“I’m sorry, Princess,” Anders said finally. But his voice sounded puny, as if he was calling out to her from a distant hillside.
She thought things couldn’t get any worse, but as often happens when one is arrogant enough to think such thoughts, they did indeed get worse, almost immediately.
The next morning, Wilf was gone. At first Katerina thought he had just been chasing rabbits, or perhaps had followed one of the other horses in the stable when they were being exercised on the trails north of the town. But the horses all came back and Wilf didn’t. Katerina was sure he would turn up for his dinner – he had never missed a meal since she had adopted him. But that evening he was nowhere to be found.
Katerina spent hours walking the courtyard of the castle and then down into the town and the fields beyond, calling for him. By the time the full moon had risen, all the denizens of the castle and everyone in the village had heard her calling out to the dog, in an ever sadder and smaller voice. Most people recognized her, and many of them knew Wilf but there was nothing they could do to help. No one had seen the dog.
It was late at night when she finally returned to her chambers. She didn’t sleep until dawn and couldn’t be roused for her lessons. Prince Torvald, who was often at the castle consulting on matters relating to the upcoming nuptials with the King, listened with great interest as these difficulties were described to Katerina’s father by two distraught chamber maids and a Latin instructor.
Torvald had actually heard the Princess the night before, crying out to the dog, though he had felt no particular urge to join her. Dogs – domestic beasts in general – meant little to Torvald. They were meant only to be broken, harnessed and beaten until they were of no further use. After that, you ate their flesh, used their pelts for warmth and extracted their fat for heating oil. You wasted no part of them but it was foolish to waste your affections on them. They were insensate animal machinery, nothing more.
“Someone should talk to that girl,” he said when they were alone again.
“Excellent idea!,” the King roared. “This is your opportunity! Talk some sense to her! Be a man – take charge and show her what you’re made of. I’d talk to her myself but she needs a husband right now, not a father.”
“I’m not her husband, sire.”
“And you never will be if you don’t take some action! Now go. Be the thing you strive to become! Or you’ll never be anything but what you are.”
“And what is wrong with that?” Torvald was beginning to feel insulted. He was a proud young man.
The King patted his shoulder gently.
“We could all use some improvement,” he said.
Torvald found Katerina in her rooms a few minutes later. A distraught maid let him in, and stayed near the door to eavesdrop. She didn’t think any good could come of this meeting and she didn’t want to miss a single word. Gossip was currency in her world. She could barter a detailed recounting of this conversation for anything from new buttons for her dress to fresh lamb shanks for her dinner.
The Princess was staring out the window and she didn’t turn to greet him.
“Katerina,” he said. “This has to stop.”
She didn’t respond. Out in the fields beyond the town farmers were gathering hay.
“People are talking about you. I hear the servants whispering. They say you’ve gone mad. They say you care more for some useless mongrel dog than you do for your husband to be.”
“They are correct,” she said quietly.
“Well the dog is surely dead by now, eaten by wolves.”
She turned. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears.
“Don’t say that!”
“It’s true. The filthy mutt will never lie on your bed again – if the rumors are true that you allow such outrages.”
The Princess stared at him, tilting her head up a little to look him in the eye. She spoke slowly and clearly as she would speak to Rollo, the retarded boy who cleaned out the cisterns. “I would rather have that mutt beside me in bed than you – dirty paws and all. He has a bigger heart and a sweeter disposition. And he is far more pleasant to look at.”
“Was, Katerina. Was. I don’t expect you’d much enjoy looking at whatever the wolves have left of him now.”
That was when she slapped him. With he twist of her hips and the whole weight of her body behind the blow, the flat smack of flesh on flesh resounded like a plate shattering against flagstones. The maid on the other side of the door flinched back in shock and surprise. She fled in the nick of time -- Katerina was backing the startled Torvald out of the room with an upraised arm. He stumbled away from her like a frightened child.
“And for your information,” she said as she drove him across the floor. “I have never struck any animal and I never will. I have too much respect for the nobility of their souls.”
When he was gone, she slammed the door behind him and let the leaping sobs crash through her, like deer through a hedge. She never even made it to the bed. She just collapsed to the densely patterned carpet and let the galloping spasms trample her.
I'm very invested in this story.