The Black Swan (50 page)

Siegfried's expression softened, and he nodded. “God alone may judge her,” he said, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Let her be buried with the honors of her rank and estate as queen regent; let the rest be as God wills, for we have no way of knowing her thoughts or her heart.”

It was as if a burden had been lifted from the hearts of the courtiers; their gloom fell away, and Odile wondered at the wisdom Odette had just shown. And Siegfried, too, in following her lead—

I should take the same advice. Let my father answer to God; I have a life to find.
It would be difficult advice to follow—but wouldn't it also mean that she wrested a little more of herself away from him?

That declaration set off a torrent of activity in which Odile found herself caught up with the rest. The weary courtiers surrounded all of the maidens, even Odile; before she knew what she was about, she found herself lifted up by one of the young knights to perch pillion-wise behind Benno on Benno's horse. Siegfried appropriated one of the led horses, and took his place at the head of the procession back to the palace, with Odette on the saddlebow before him.

By the time Odile thought to protest, they were underway, forcing her to hold onto Benno's waist to keep from falling off. No one had asked
her
if she wanted to go back with the rest!

“Wait—” she protested unsteadily. “I don't—”

“Don't you want to see Siegfried and Odette wed and crowned?” Benno asked, over his shoulder. “From all
I
understand, you've been rather helpful in all of this. I should think you deserve to take part in the celebrations.”

“Yes, but—”

“Have you anywhere else you need to go?” he continued, as if she had not answered.

That was a very good question, and she thought it over. “Not immediately,” she replied, still trying to get used to this entirely novel mode of transportation. She had never ridden a horse before—and being perched sideways on a pad behind the rider was a bit precarious, to say the least! “At least, I don't think I have anywhere I need to be.”

“Good.” Benno seemed to consider it all settled. “The others want to stay with Odette, why don't you do the same, at least until the celebrations are over?” He managed a charmingly crooked smile over his shoulder. “I think you'd enjoy it. Siegfried's people are very good at contriving entertainment. I can't imagine that the swans held very many fêtes, did they? It would be a bit difficult, I should think, and the menu likely to be limited. Water-weed, corn, and grass don't seem festive to me.”

She was both taken aback and rather amused by his flippant assessment of the situation. “No, you're right; there were no fêtes, if I recall correctly,” she responded, trying to sound dry and proper, and not certain she had succeeded.

“Good. Then stay a while, until you make up your mind about where you want to go. Odette wants you to stay. Siegfried does too. And—” he added, with a lift of his eyebrow, “—so do I. You're the most intriguing lady I've ever met. And—”

Was he blushing? Yes, he was! The back of his neck was a distinct scarlet!

“—I want you to teach me how to swim.”

I
T turned out to be a winter wedding, after all. I Siegfried was crowned immediately, in a sober ceremony attended only by a handful of the most important courtiers, the ones he had appointed as his Privy Council. Since the funeral of his mother had preceded it by no more than an hour, anything more elaborate seemed inappropriate.

And a proper royal wedding took a great deal of time to organize, as well. Siegfried was determined that his Odette have the finest celebration ever seen, and the swans were just as determined as he that this celebration be an occasion to be remembered for generations.

So the wedding took place on Twelfth Night, as a fitting conclusion to the festivities of Christmas. On a crisp, clear winter morning, with fresh snow lying like swansdown over everything, Siegfried made Odette his bride, and the Swan Queen in truth. The feasting began in mid-morning, with tables spread in the courtyard for anyone who cared to enter the palace gates, and every space in the Great and Lesser Halls taken. No less than four sets of musicians, six jugglers, two acrobats, and two real minstrels entertained. The dancing began when dinner was cleared away, and didn't end until dawn.

Odile had contributed her part as inconspicuously as possible. She'd helped with the rebuilding of the Great Hall; with careful and near-invisible use of magic. Claiming she knew something of glass making, she'd had the shards of the windows taken to a deserted workshop, then melded them back together with magic when no one was about. The stonemasons reset the panes, and no one seemed to notice that the quality of the glass was much higher than it had been—and no one noticed that it was now virtually unbreakable. She'd “assisted” with the lifting of the stones from a discreet distance, then made certain that the mortar set hard, and in half the usual time, once the stones were in place.

When repairs were completed, she joined the household in their frantic preparations for the wedding—and took a great deal of amusement from her invisible help. Bolts of ornate silks were “discovered” among the common woolens; trims, beads, ribbons, and the like appeared in the most unlikely places just when they were needed. At the Harvest Fair, when Odette and her ladies went shopping among the cloth merchants, their purses never seemed to have a bottom . . . every coin spent was replaced by a mate, until the Fair was over.

All of this wealth came from von Rothbart's manor, of course. The invisible servants, released by von Rothbart's death, were no longer there to keep it up, and Odile had decided that, whatever else befell, she was
not
going to reside there. There was a great deal of wealth in the place, however, and why should it go to waste? Why should gorgeous draperies, fine carpets, and luxurious furs gather dust, moths, and fall to pieces, when she could give them all new homes?

So silks and trims and ribbons made their way, a bit at a time, to the stores of Siegfried's castle, either taken from the stores of the manor, or plundered from the “linens” and furnishings. Von Rothbart slept on silk, but why waste perfectly good fabrics on beds and curtains no one would ever see again? Odile knew every inch of the manor—except for the master's tower—as intimately as any housemaid knew the palace. She took the gemstones and beads from the tapestries; the gold and silver threads became little coils of bullion for embroidery. Coin from her father's hoards ended in Odette's household purse. The fur bed coverings and rugs turned up in the queen's solar and other chambers. As she had brought food from the manor to feed her swans and herself, now she plundered the riches of the place to provide for Siegfried and Odette and the rest of the flock.

She thought, from the sly, conspiratorial glances Odette gave her from time to time, that the queen knew what was going on. And if Odette knew, so did Siegfried. At least once a day, one or both of them would go out of their way to give her quiet but nonspecific thanks, which was exactly what she felt most comfortable with.

Siegfried's people, with the exception of Benno, were uneasy around her—not that she was at all surprised by their reaction! She was a magician, a sorceress, and they all knew it. So until the wedding, she decided that her best course of action was to appear to be just like any of the other maidens. . . .

Almost
like any of the other maidens, anyway; to her chagrin, she discovered that she was the only one of them who didn't actually know how to perform the most basic of “female” tasks—how to sew! It was such a novelty to find that there was something that she couldn't do, once she got over her embarrassment, she took a great deal of amusement in acquiring that skill.

There were other things she didn't know how to do, as well. She couldn't ride, or hunt, and Benno took particular delight in teaching her to enjoy both. Like him, she preferred to hunt, not for the quarry, but for the pursuit. On clear winter days, a company of them would go out riding, and if she came home without actually shooting anything, no one commented.

Odile gradually made another change in herself; she stopped wearing black. With the rainbow of fabrics being worked with for the wedding, and a court full of ladies more than willing to advise her and help her, she finally escaped the last vestige of being her father's daughter.

It was the oddest thing, but once the flock ceased to be swans by day, they lost that pallid, transparent appearance. The change was greatest in Odette, whose hair had deepened in color to a true pale gold, and whose cheeks and lips now warranted the poetic descriptions of “roses and cherries.” Only Odile retained her transparently pale complexion, her spun-silver hair.

As a consequence, most of the colors that looked marvelous on others of the flock made her look like a corpse. Anything warm-colored, from red to gold, looked hideous, and pale tints only made her look bleached and faded. Brown was impossible. Black still suited her perfectly—but black was the last thing she wanted to wear.

Ah, but deep cool colors, emerald and sapphire,
did
look just as well; those were expensive colors to dye, but what good was being a sorceress of you couldn't manage a paltry color change in your wardrobe?

And so she shed the last mark that von Rothbart had put on her, and she found that a change in wardrobe had an oddly uplifting effect on her spirits as well.

When she met Siegfried's tutor Wolfgang, however, her real cup of pleasure overflowed. Here was exactly the sort of person she had dreamed about meeting—learned, scholarly, even witty at times—conversant in Latin and Greek, acquainted with the writings of the ancient scholars. As Siegfried became more and more occupied with the business of state and the concerns of his kingdom, it was Odile who joined Benno and Wolfgang in late-night conversations that ranged from philosophy to alchemy, from the poetry of the Greeks to the rhetoric of the Romans.

Wolfgang certainly knew what she was doing; how could he not, when new volumes appeared in the palace library every day or two? She plundered the manor library as ruthlessly as the rest of it, with the magical tomes going into her personal hoard, and the others into the shelves of the palace. Some of the books would not make the journey; she had come to recognize the “feel” of them from a distance, a kind of residue of her father that suggested the magics within were too contaminated to use safely. And, of course, she had no intention of taking
anything
from his tower. But the rest were useful, and Wolfgang was in transports of joy, having so rich a treasure trove suddenly spread at his feet.

But it was Ilse, one of the “little swans,” and not Odile, who made the real change in Wolfgang's life and status.

One night, not long after the wedding, when the guests were departed and only the king's household gathered about the fires in the Great Hall in the evening, a storm set in that brought everyone to the fire especially early. The winds howled around the walls of the palace and it seemed that winter would never end; with all of the entertainers gone, the evening bid fair to be tedious. Then Ilse suddenly jumped up out of her seat by the fire and skipped over to where Wolfgang sat. “Master Wolfgang,” she said, with an impish parody of officiousness, “we have all heard each other's stories so often we know them by heart.

You,
so they tell me, are a learned man—and
you
never help to entertain the rest of us. Tell us a story!”

The other three joined in her demands, as the older swans laughed, and the courtiers hid smiles. “Yes! Tell us a story! You must know
hundreds
that we haven't heard!”

Ilse sat down on a cushion at Wolfgang's feet, and looked up at him with a face full of mischief and expectation.

At first, Wolfgang was a little confused, then embarrassed, but at last he gave in to Ilse's pleading and cleared his throat self-consciously. “Well,” he said—and fortunately, he did
not
see the bored or incredulous expressions of the courtiers, only the eager ones of the four youngest maidens, “I have never told a tale before, so perhaps I should tell a short one.”

“And if we like it, you must tell us more!” Ilse demanded instantly.

Hesitantly at first, then warming to his subject, Wolfgang began to relate the story of the youth Narcissus. Odile was quite familiar with the tale, of course, but it was entirely new to most of the company, and Wolfgang proved to be astonishingly adept at storytelling.

Perhaps he learned more than just the stories themselves from all those years spent listening to others,
Odile thought, as she watched even the courtiers who had been the most bored begin to lean forward in their seats, the better to hear the old man.

When he was done, it wasn't just Ilse who demanded more, and within a few nights, Wolfgang had gathered the nerve to embark on a multi-evening recitation of the saga of Odysseus, beginning with the contest of the goddesses and the theft of Helen by Paris. With every night that passed, Wolfgang's status rose in the minds of Siegfried's court. It was apparent now that he was a great deal more than they had thought—and their new regard had an unexpectedly good effect on Wolfgang as well. He gradually ceased to drink; the intoxication he found in the faces of his listeners was much sweeter than that in the bottom of a bottle.

As spring neared, and courtiers actually began seeking the old scholar's advice (feeling that anyone who knew that much would at least have the wisdom of the ancients at his fingertips), Siegfried proposed that Wolfgang be added to his Privy Council. There were no dissenters, and Wolfgang took his place among the king's advisers in a ceremony that delighted all his friends.