The Prince in Waiting by John Christopher Page B

smiled on me less—her tongue had always had a roughish edge and her face did not seem to have been made for smiling—but I sensed resentment, anger, in small looks she gave me. I was not surprised by this. Peter meant everything to her, and had since my father divorced her. Peter was my father’s eldest son, born in wedlock, and his natural heir. What the Spirits said meant nothing to her; she would have defied all the Spirits in the universe for Peter’s sake.
    I thought that her disappointment and bitterness would lessen with time and for a week or two carried on with my visits as though nothing had happened. Then one day I went to her house following heavy rain. I cleaned my muddy boots on the scraper outside her door but did not do it well enough, and there were dirty footprints on the polished boards of her little hall.
    She saw them and tongue-lashed me. It was a thing she had done before, but again I found a difference in the scolding, a note of hatred almost. And she said:
    â€œEven if you are to be Prince of Princes, you can still wipe your boots before you enter this house. Or do you already think we should all be servants, to do your bidding?”
    The jibe stung and I felt myself flushing. She finished:
    â€œTake your boots off, wash your hands, and come to the table.”
    Gerda the polymuf had heard her, and I was the Prince’s son and heir. I looked at her, my own anger sharp:
    â€œNo, thank you. I will eat at the palace.”
    And I turned, saying no more, and left her house. I have wondered since whether things might not have fallen out differently if I had contained my rage, accepted the rebuke, and eaten my dinner with her that day. Or if I had done as I intended next morning and gone to make amends. But I thought that when I went she would scold me further and my pride would not bear it. Two days later I saw her in the street. We approached from opposite directions, saw each other but did not show it, and I was torn between the desire to go to her and the fear that she would treat my overture with scorn. We were near the Buttercross and there were boys I knew sitting on the steps there: they would see and probably hear all that happened. So I passed her in silence with the smallest of nods to which she made no acknowledgment.
    After that it was, of course, even more difficult to put things right, and with the passage of time, impossible. I missed her, but there were so many things to do that I forgot about her most of the time. For her, though, there were no such distractions. She had never had much to do with her neighbors. When I stopped going to her house—and a little later my father and Peter rode away on the campaign against Alton—she must have been lonely there with no company except the two polymuf maids and her cat. I did not think of that then, though I did later.
    If my father’s triumph had turned sour for Aunt Mary, my mother reveled in the change. She had always been a sunny person but was happier than ever in being the Prince’s Lady. She had new dresses made, a dozen at least, in bright silks and satins and brocades, and a polymuf woman whose entire concern was to arrange her hair each day. There were no housewifely duties anymore—a butler saw to everything—and all she need do was look beautiful. She had always had beauty, but as a precious stone is made ten times more splendid by its setting, so hers was enhanced by the things my father lavished on her. She adorned herself to delight him, and he showed his joy in her. He said once when she told him (not seriously, I fancy) that he spent too much on her that it was for this reason only that he had become Prince.
    Although there were things to do in which he could not accompany me I still spent a lot of time with Martin. With him I could forget about being the son of the Prince and there were times when, however much I enjoyed my new life, I was glad of this. We rode together—I