“Princess Andrea. You have been getting in and out of the castle whenever you felt like it for the past ten years. Please don’t play the innocent with me now. Answer my question.”
I shook my head. “Really, Mother, I don’t know. We cannot climb the walls. I mean . . . Don Julián can’t.” Suddenly I stopped. I couldn’t tell Mother my secret escape route. If I did so, she would make sure I would be stuck in the castle forever. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Don Julián. Dressed as he was in soldier’s clothing—blue pants and a blue tunic with the white stripe of our kingdom—and a smile dancing on his lips at my blunder, he could have been one of us. One of us! That was it. I looked up. “Mother, we could leave through the front gates as Don Ramiro’s escorts.”
For a moment Mother stared at me, her eyes deep in thought. “It is a good idea,” she finally said. “I will give you a letter with the royal seal, granting you permission to leave the castle in case someone questions you. Now go to your room and get ready. Princess Margarida will bring you a soldier’s uniform.”
“Will you be careful, Andrea?” Margarida asked me later as she braided my hair.
“You know I’m always careful.”
Margarida didn’t laugh. “I mean it, Andrea. This is not a game. Don Julián . . .” Her fingers faltered for a moment before reprising the rhythm of the weaving. “Don Julián must meet with Father successfully or there will be war.”
I could hear the concern in her voice, but whether her fear was for me or Don Julián, I couldn’t tell. The taste of doubt was bitter in my mouth.
My muscles tense with anger, I got up. “Don Julián will be fine, don’t you worry. If need comes, I will protect him with my life.” Yanking the helmet from the table, I swirled around. “And now if you will excuse me, I must go.”
Her voice, an urgent whisper, reached me at the door. “Andrea, wait. You haven’t changed yet.”
I turned. Margarida, a startled look in her hazel eyes, was pointing at my clothes. I looked down, and when I saw my flimsy nightgown still clinging to my body, I started laughing. My sister smiled. “Really, Andrea, you’ll never change.” And then she was laughing, too.
But when, once dressed, I crossed the door into Don Julián’s room, the smile froze on my face.
In the flickering light of the candles, I could see Don Julián, his broad shoulders resting back against the chair, his dark eyes intent on Tío Ramiro who, one knee on the ground in the pleading pose of a vassal, was presenting a quill to him. And as I looked, rooted in place by the fear that I was witnessing the unraveling of my plan, Don Julián took the quill and, bending slightly forward, started drawing at the bottom of the paper.
I watched him, mesmerized, trying to collect my thoughts. What was he signing? But before I could ask, the rasping sound of the feather nib against paper stopped. Without a word, Tío Ramiro took the paper from the table, placing another one where the first had been. Again Don Julián signed. Tío Ramiro proceeded to seal the papers with dripping wax. Mother, who had been standing behind the king’s chair, moved to his side and, raising her hands to his shoulder, asked softly, “If I may, Sire?”
Don Julián nodded. “If you please, my lady.”
As soon as Mother had unbound the sling, Don Julián reached for the table and stamped the warm wax with the coat of arms of the House of Alvar engraved on the signet ring of the middle finger of his left hand.
Tío stepped forward and took the papers. Holding his left arm against his chest with his right hand, Don Julián leaned back against the chair and closed his eyes. Without a word, Mother wrapped the sling under the king’s arm and tied it over his shoulder.
Brushing past me, Margarida walked into the room and headed toward the bed, covered now with the white piles of bandages and the dark shapes of leather bags. Her touch broke the spell that had paralyzed me in the threshold.
“Why another letter, Mother? Have Don Julián’s requests to Father changed?”
Mother turned. “The letter, Princess, is no concern of yours.”
As she talked, Don Julián bent forward. Shadows dancing on his face, pale as wax against his dark hair, he stared at me with a mixture of frustration and amusement. “The letter, Princess, doesn’t change anything. It is just the written account of my conditions for peace that follow exactly on the lines of your proposal.”
“And the second one?”
Don Julián smiled, but his eyes were dark. “The second one, Princess, is for my people. It names my brother Don Alfonso as King of Suavia to avoid confrontations among my lords were I to die before reaching Don Andrés.”
Mother nodded to the king. Then, her eyes on mine, she stepped toward me. “Don Julián has done so at my request, and I am most grateful. As you know, Princess, we cannot risk writing a letter to Don Alfonso explaining the situation. It could fall into Don Andrés’s hands. So we just hope that a copy of Don Julián’s conditions for peace and his resignation will be enough to keep you and Don Ramiro safe. At least Don Alfonso will understand that Don Julián was alive on today’s date and willing to talk to Don Andrés. Don Andrés, on his part, will have to accept Don Alfonso as king and negotiate with him, if . . . necessary, because he is bound by his word to meet with the King of Suavia.”
And Margarida will marry Don Alfonso, I thought, and a wave of relief swept over my body. Mother, misreading my smile, dragged me to the window. “Princess Andrea, I know you don’t care for Don Julián, that for you he’s only the enemy. But you must understand that from now on, it is your obligation to keep him alive, and if you do anything to jeopardize his safety, I will never consider you my daughter again. Have I made myself clear?”
“Yes, Mother.”
Of course, I knew it was in my best interests to keep Don Julián alive, that if he died on the journey and his men were to find us with the body of their beloved king in our hands, they would probably kill us before we had time to explain. But the truth was, I did not believe for a moment that Don Julián’s life was at risk. I was going to tell Mother that I found her concern for our safety deeply exaggerated, when I heard the dull metallic sound of a latch against wood. I turned just in time to see Tío Ramiro leaving.
I frowned.
“He will bring the horses to the garden,” Mother answered my silent question. “We will meet him there.” Then she turned to my sister. “Princess Margarida, would you please precede us to make sure nobody is in the hall?”
Margarida grabbed the bags already packed on the bed. After handing me one of the packs, she curtsied to Mother and again to Don Julián and left. I was about to follow her when Mother called after me, “Princess Andrea, where do you think you are going?”
What had I done now? But as I was soon to realize, this time it was not what I had done, but what I had not done. I was supposed to help her bring the king to the garden.
Of course Don Julián insisted he did not need help, but Mother told him that if he did not cooperate, she would have to sedate him, and then it would be more difficult for us to drag him down the stairs. He finally gave in, and while Mother held him by the waist, he put his right arm over my shoulder and rose to his feet. His touch was surprisingly light, which confirmed my belief that Mother’s concern for him was exaggerated, until I realized Don Julián was leaning more heavily on her. That did not make any sense, because I was on his right side, and putting pressure on his left shoulder must have hurt him. And I knew then that he was avoiding me on purpose, and that my hard feelings for him were returned.
Thus we stole along the gloomy empty corridors and down the stairs of the eastern tower of the keep until we reached the door that led to the garden. Margarida sprang from the shadows as we reached the bottom and held the door open for us into the dark moonless night that precedes dawn in my world when Lua is waning.