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33

And the inevitable result of this is that, among them, he is greatly loved.

When Oswald was younger, my father often offered to take him with him when he left the palace. Always an opportunity, never a command. One which Oswald always declined. When it became clear that he would always do so, that his allegiance was to the nobles, my father stopped asking. And that is the way that matters stood during that dinner when Oswald was eighteen and I was ten years old.

"Aurore?" my father prompted softly.

"It's hard to explain," I said. "I think because it's so simple, Papa. I just know I want to go outside. It seems the right and proper thing to do."

"Yes," my father said patiently. "But why?"

"Because it does!" I exclaimed, feeling my face begin to color.

This was becoming more dreadful by the moment. How did you explain a thing it had not occurred to you to question? A thing you just knew, clear through to your soul?

"The palace is wonderful and I love it," I said."But it isn't everything. I know that there is more. The outside world calls to me, Papa. I have to go. I think it's because ..."

I paused and took a deep breath. I'd said this much. Better just to get the rest of it over with quickly so Oswald could laugh and Papa could say no.

"Going outside is what I was born for. I can't explain it any better than that. I'm sorry, Papa."

During my ragged speech, my father had grown very still.

Indeed, it seemed to me that for the space of time it took me to explain, he did not breathe at all, but sat with his head bent and his eyes closed. When I had finished, he exhaled one long, slow breath, sat up straight, and opened his eyes.

"I believe that explanation will do just fine, Aurore. Very well, since going outside is what you wish, you may accompany me when I ride out tomorrow."

With that, he signaled for the majordomo to serve the carrot soup that was the first course of our meal, Maman have been plainly rendered incapable of doing so.

I could hardly believe my ears. "You mean it?" I cried.

34

"Are you questioning me?" asked Papa. A thing that was unheard of. For a moment I feared I had offended him, for his tone was serious. Then I caught the twinkle at the back of his eyes.

"Absolutely not," I said. "I don't know what came over me."

"Bien," he replied."That is much better. Now, eat your soup, Aurore. Carrots are good for you, and you will need all your strength in the world outside the walls."

For several moments, we all ate dutifully. No sound in the dining room other than the scrape of spoons against the bottoms and sides of bowls. But, little by little, I felt the air grow thick and heavy, as if, above our heads, it was filling up with storm clouds.

"There is one thing I would have you promise," Papa said, as the soup bowls were removed and a roast chicken was placed in front of him to carve. "Remember that to go into la Foret is forbidden. You must promise me never to go there, Aurore."

"Of course I promise," I said promptly. A thing that was easy, for, in truth, I'd forgotten all about la Foret until that moment. I'd have remembered it sooner or later, of course. Who wouldn't remember an enchanted forest? A thing Papa had obviously realized, for he knew me very well.

"I cannot help but wonder, Philippe," Maman said quietly, as if my fathers mention of the Forest had given her the opening for which she'd been hoping, "whether taking Aurore outside the palace is such a good idea after all. The world is a very big place.

There are many . . . unknowns."

"Mais oui,, bien sur," my father answered, as he calmly picked up the knife and began to carve. "Of course there are unknowns. And the sooner Aurore begins to meet them, the sooner they will cease to be unknown. That is the point. Besides

..."

He paused and set the knife down. I all but felt my ears prick up, the way the palace dogs' do when they hear an unfamiliar sound.

Something

important

is

coming,

I

thought.

Something Papa has been thinking over for a very long time.

"For many years now we have let the spells spoken over Aurore in her cradle tell us who she is. Now the time has come for her to tell us who she is, as well. For we must never forget that, even if the worst happens and she sleeps for a hundred 35

years, Aurore is a princess. She is royal, with a claim to the throne."

"But you have an heir," I said without thinking. "You have Oswald."

"That is so," my father replied, turning his eyes upon my cousin. "And I have been content to have him be so. But tonight you have done a thing Oswald has never done. You have shown a desire to know all those you might rule one day, not just those who are noble-born. More than that, you have told me this is a thing you must do. That it was for this that you were born. In this you have spoken like my true heir, for this is how I have felt, also."

By now the air in the room felt so thick, I was surprised I could still see through it. Across the table from me, Oswald clutched his fork so tightly his knuckles were white as mother-of-pearl buttons.

"You don't want me," he said, his voice tight. "You never have.

You want Aurore."

"It is not a matter of what I want," my father answered. "It is a matter of what is best for the kingdom, best for all.

Therefore..." He took a breath, and I knew in that moment we had come to the heart of what he wished to say. A thing that, since my christening day, he had been holding in his mind.

"Tomorrow, before Aurore and I set out, I will have you and your heirs proclaimed Aurore's stewards, Oswald. She will be my heir from tomorrow forth. It is Aurore who must succeed me, even if it takes a hundred years. Tonight, she has shown this must be so."

I heard Maman's swift intake of breath even as I felt my jaw drop open. It was a sign of her complete surprise that I managed to get it closed again before she could remind me that a lady never shows she has been taken unawares.

"For heaven's sake!" Oswald exclaimed. "All this simply because she wants to go outside the palace walls? She'll probably take two steps and fall into a mud puddle. Think what you are doing, Uncle!"

"What makes you think I have not?" my father replied. "If I had let my heart rule my head in this, I would have proclaimed Aurore as my heir the very day that she was born. But I did not.

I waited—to see who you both would become. You have been 36

content to see only what is before you. Aurore is not. That is all I need to know."

Papas words were making my head spin, and not just because this was about the longest speech I'd ever heard him utter all at once. He was saying he thought I was worthy to be his successor. Even more, that he wanted me to succeed him, a possibility that had never occurred to me before.

And in that moment, I realized there was a thing inside me I had never thought to notice, probably because it had been there all along. And it was, greater even than my desire to see the world, the desire to be worthy of my father's faith and trust.

"All those years," Oswald whispered, and now the devastation was plain in his voice. "All those times you asked me to go with you when you left the palace, but I said no. You never urged me to change my mind. Not once."

"But surely you can see that I could not," my father said. "You had to wish to go for yourself, as Aurore does. Because it was what you wanted, not I."

"You tricked me!" Oswald protested. "You played a game with me, but never told me its rules. You played me false, Uncle."

"No, Oswald," said my father. "And I am sorry that you think so. When you are calmer, I think you will realize I speak the truth. But I suppose it is too much to expect you to think so at this moment."

A thousand painful things seemed to chase themselves across my cousins face, each one hard upon the heels of the one before it. Then, as if he had seized a curtain and yanked it across a scene he had never intended to reveal, his face went blank, though his eyes continued to smolder. I was glad he did not turn them upon me, much as I wanted him to know that I was sorry for what was happening. I had not known what Papa intended any more than Oswald had. But I greatly feared that he would blame me for it.

"Madame," he said to my mother. He pushed back from the table, tossing his linen napkin onto his plate. "The dinner you provide is excellent, as always. But I fear I may have suddenly become unwell, for I find I have no appetite for it. You will excuse me, I hope?"

My mother cleared her throat before she spoke. "But of course,"she replied.

37

Oswald rose from the table, his back as hard and straight as iron. He bowed in turn to each of my parents, then gave me the lowest, most elaborate bow of all. He departed without another word, the heels of his boots striking so hard that sparks flew up from the flagstones.

"Well, that's that," my father said, when he had gone. "I suppose there was no way to avoid hurting him, but even so ..."

He broke off, shaking his head, then picked up the knife and began to carve the chicken once more.

"I hope you know what you're doing, Philippe," my mother said.

"Bien sur," my father answered simply."I am doing what must be done. It will be all right, Mathilde. You must trust me."

"I do. You know I do. But I hope to God you're right in this, Philippe," Maman replied. Her eyes stared at the door through which Oswald had departed."He has the nobles' love. He has made it his life's work."

"He is like his father in that," Papa replied."It may be enough for the son of a younger son. But not for one who will govern.

The one who will do that must see beyond the palace walls."

"He would make a dangerous enemy," my mother cautioned.

"Then we must take care that he does not become one,"

answered Papa. "He is angry now, but his anger will pass. He is too smart to hold on to it for long. Now, if it's all the same to everyone else, I'd like to finish the rest of my dinner in peace and quiet."

"As you wish, Philippe," Maman said. And she held out her plate for some chicken.

But I said."Merci, Papa."

At this, he smiled. "You are welcome, Aurore. But, I think it is I who should thank you."

"For what?" I asked in surprise.

But it was Maman who answered, and in a way which brought tears to my eyes.

"For growing up the way we hoped you might," she said.

After which none of us felt the need to say anything more.

38

And so the next six years of my life began, with a proclamation read aloud the next morning from high atop the palace walls. In it, all my fathers people learned that I would be his successor, no matter how long it took, rather than my cousin, no matter how great his charms, though naturally the proclamation itself was more diplomatic on these points.

The reactions to the announcement was predictable. Dead silence from the nobles inside the palace; wild cheering from the people outside the walls. For apparently the fact that my father loved me dearly and had cherished high hopes for my future was well known outside the palace. As well known there as it was little known inside. (Not because he had said this to anyone directly, I think, but because, to the people, this was the natural order of things. What should be so.)

When it was further announced that the king and his daughter would shortly be riding forth, the cheering from outside grew so loud as to be almost deafening, while the nobles simply faded back inside the palace like so many bugs crawling back into their holes.

If I had been wiser in the ways of the world, I might have been more concerned about this. But I wasn't. I was only ten years old. Besides, I already knew the nobles did not love me.

They had already given all the love they had to Oswald.

He stood just behind my father as the proclamation was being read, the counterbalance to the fact that I stood just in front of him. What my cousin was thinking, I could not tell. The curtain was still drawn across his face and now even across his eyes. If he was angry or hurt, dissatisfied in any way, he did not show it.

I hardly need tell you this day marked another change between us. I no longer went to him with things that interested me, questions to be answered, puzzles I needed help deciphering. For what else could they do but remind him of what he had lost? All the things he had not chosen? I caught him studying me from time to time, as, indeed, I sometimes studied him though I tried not to show it. Save for the times when functions of state required us to be together, we stayed apart. It was simpler all around if we avoided one another.

But I was not thinking of such things. Not on that first bright morning. For it was after the proclamation was read that my father gave the signal for the palace gates to be thrown open.

39

Then, seated before him on his great gray horse, he and I rode through them together and out into the world beyond the palace walls.