Free The Very Large Princess by Sheela Word Page B

course,” said
John. “I shall take to the saddle at once.”
    “Wait,” said Drusilla. “You must not
go alone. Father, by your leave, I shall ride with John. Margery, I
know, will gladly return with me. Mayhap, we shall all be here to
dine with you tomorrow, and this matter put behind us. But you must
write a letter to the Duc, that he may receive us
hospitably.”
    King Piers required much persuasion,
but at length he agreed that Drusilla’s plan was best.
    Drusilla and John prepared quickly for
their journey, yet the sun was already high in the sky when they
set out. They were on horseback, and a carriage, laden with
clothes, food, and costly gifts for the Duc, followed some distance
behind.
    Although the day was bright and the
road good, Drusilla seemed blind to all they passed. Her companion
glanced at her from time to time, making remark when he saw a
hedgehog scaling a stile, a donkey braying at a kitten, or a raven
tugging at a tassel of wheat. Yet he could not win her to a
smile.
    Drusilla thought of Aubrey’s laughing
face, all that he had meant to her, and all that he had said. “How
can it be that he does not love me?” she wondered again and again,
stroking the neck of her mount, a chestnut stallion that was her
father’s favorite and her own. Her head drooped as she remembered
the delicate grasp of Margery’s slim fingers on the reins of the
little gray mare she favored, a beast as gentle in spirit as
Margery herself.
    “Ho!” cried John, interrupting
Drusilla’s reverie. They had turned off the main road and passed
through Middle Cross. John pulled up his horse, and prepared to
alight.
    “Hath your mount thrown a shoe?” asked
Drusilla, pulling on her own reins.
    “Nay, but he’s a fool,” said John,
leaping to the ground, and pulling a small knife from the soldier’s
pouch he wore about his waist.
    Drusilla stared, as John rapidly
strode back ten paces to confront a large, unseemly rose bush that
thrust its thorny arms at passersby.
    “This is the beauty I did see,” he
said, returning with a full-blown blossom. “A bloom as crimson as
wine. Yet the fool of a beast plodded on with nary a glance.” After
deftly trimming its stem, he held up the rose that Drusilla might
take it; and she tucked it into her girdle, smiling at his
absurdity.
    Now, as they rode, Drusilla’s heart
felt lighter. To pass the time, she asked her companion how long he
had been in the Prince’s service.
    “Little more than two
years,” he said. “In my 18 th summer, weary of the
sameness of fields and forests, I longed to see a bit o’ the world.
So I joined the King’s army. And it was a fine life until the
Battle of Glenmoore, when one of the other dragoons, a friendly lad
with a handsome face and easy ways, loosed an arrow that went
astray. The sight of goose feathers poking out of my doublet so
affrighted me that I gave up soldiering then and there.”
    “Aubrey fought at the Battle of
Glenmoore!” Drusilla interrupted. “He hath often said
so.”
    “Aye, and my shoulder yet bears the
mark of his valor.”
    Drusilla laughed.
    “To give the lad his due, he speedily
fetched the surgeon, and stood by until my strength returned. And
then he brought me to court, where his good father saw fit to grant
me the office I now hold. But I shall not hold it many more days.
Of that I am resolved.”
    Drusilla began to ask what John meant
to do next, but he suddenly pulled his horse to a stop, and
dismounted. “What folly hath the beast committed now?” she asked,
halting her own mount.
    “I spied a bit of vellum,” he said,
collecting a scrap of parchment from the ground, and turning it
this way and that. “It appears to be in the Prince’s
hand.”
    “What doth it say?” demanded
Drusilla.
    “Indeed, I cannot make it out. It
speaks of a lady ‘pale and fair,’ and then there is a blot, and
then ‘Tara tara.’ And then ‘old hair,’ it seems to say, though what
that means, I know not.”
    “John,