“I know, but …”

“And I wouldn’t go if it were only a quest for the blue rose. If your uncle is captured or lost, I may be the only one who can save him. Who else, after all, is there for your aunt to ask?”

The queen caught her breath in what just escaped being a sob. But her voice was steady. “You’re right, as always. If even the wizards can’t help her, we’re her best chance to find him.”

“Good,” said the king. “I wouldn’t have gone if you could not have borne it. But I shall tell the court this evening that I’m going.”

“I shall miss you, Haimeric,” the queen said again. She slipped out of her own chair and slid in next to the king on the throne. “I know, I really know, that you’ll be safe and will come back. But people are changed by travel-they gain new perspectives, new ideas. I don’t want to be left behind when you think new thoughts. I love you just as you are.”

There was no chance now that either one would notice me. I rose and tiptoed quietly away.

III

Before the king could tell the court that evening that he was going on a quest, we heard a loud clatter of horses’ hooves in the courtyard. The constable jumped up from the supper table and hurried out to see who could be arriving at this hour. When he returned a few minutes later, it was with the duchess and her tall husband.

I should have known. Duchess Diana had a way of turning up unexpectedly. We hadn’t seen her in months; she had in fact not even been in the kingdom over Christmas, being instead with her husband in his principality two hundred miles away. I had the odd feeling that she had somehow known the king was about to announce his quest.

The duchess and Prince Ascelin pulled off their travel cloaks by the fire and stamped the snow from their boots. After they had bowed formally to the king and queen, the constable seated them at the main table; the rest of us moved our chairs to make them room, and the cook hurried in with extra plates.