“Princess Una.”
She turned and found Aethelbald standing in the sitting room doorway. Though she hoped he wouldn’t, he came toward her down the hall. “Princess, it is dark out here. Come in by the fire.”
Una did not move save for her eyes, which darted from the painting to Prince Aethelbald and back again. “What were you discussing with my father earlier?” she asked in a whisper.
He bowed his head, searching for the right words. Then he put out a hand and took one of hers. “Princess, please, will you allow me to – ”
She stepped around him, snatching her hand from his grasp, and hastened into the sitting room. Her father dozed in a comfortable chair, and Felix sat cross-legged before the fire, playing a complicated game of his own invention with sticks and marbles. He often asked Una to join him at the game, but since he had a tendency to change the rules to suit his convenience, Una rarely agreed. Monster, however, curled up by the prince’s side, his head turning to follow every click of marble and sticks, as alert as though he had eyes with which to see Felix’s game.
Monster chirped a greeting when Una entered, raising his pink nose. Una scooped him up and took him with her to sit in a chair opposite her father. Aethelbald followed her into the room, shutting the door softly, but remained back in the shadows. Una could feel his eyes watching her, but she refused to turn his way. Instead she gazed into the flames, stroking her cat’s head.
“I believe I have met him,” the jester had said of the white-faced sleeper in the painting.
Strangely enough, Una felt that she had as well. Where and when, she could not guess. The feeling preyed upon her. Monster purred, but the sound did not soothe.
The door opened and the jester slipped into the room.
“Ah, yes,” King Fidel said, coming out of his doze and nodding to Leonard. “I’d almost forgotten. I asked you to entertain us tonight, didn’t I?”
“Quite so, Your Majesty,” Leonard replied. He was clad still in the boldly striped yellow costume and somehow looked more ridiculous than ever in the context of the familiar sitting room. He carried a lute not unlike Prince Gervais’s.
Una, glad to quit the privacy of her thoughts, plopped Monster onto the floor and got up to greet Leonard. “I told you I’d get you a job, didn’t I?” she whispered, smiling.
“Don’t count unhatched chickens,” he whispered back. “Your father has declared little need for a full-time Fool, and I may yet find myself out on my ear.” He began tuning his instrument, which plunked sourly in his hands. “But I should not have this opportunity were it not for you. I hope I can properly repay your kindness. He would not have given me a chance but to please you.”
“It does please me,” Una said. “But make him laugh and you’ll be hired on your own merit.”
“I shall endeavor to oblige, m’lady.”
“Una,” King Fidel said around his pipe, “come sit by me and let the jester play.”
Una obeyed.
Leonard finished his tuning and struck a deep minor chord. “Hark!” he cried, assuming a sinister pose and strumming the same chord again. “Hark unto the tale I must relate. This is no tale for the faint of heart!”
Felix looked up from his game of sticks, trying and failing to seem uninterested.
“This is no tale for timid womenfolk, no tale for young children or babes in arms.”
He strummed again, a deep bloooome.
“This is a tale to make your blood race, your head spin, your eyes cross and recross.”
Blooome!
“This is a tale of darkest terror in the face of deepest inconsequentiality.”
“Huh?” said Felix.
Una giggled.
The jester continued to play and half sang, half told his story. His singing voice was deep and not beautiful. But he sang with spirit, and the point was the story not the melody.
“There was a lady of fairest face and vapid mind
Who one day sat a-knitting.
A-knitting, a-knitting, ho!
Who one day sat a-knitting.”
He told how a dark monster, a fiend of evil form, set upon this lady while she sat alone in her chambers one evening. He told of her horror as she faced the beast. He told of her attempts to flee, but the creature blocked her path. She tried to hide, but again and again the monster foiled her plans. Once she bravely took up a weapon to slay the beast, but to no avail, and found herself at the end of her means, standing upon a silken chair as her nemesis crawled toward her.
At the last possible moment, her hero came in the form of a portly maid, who squished the creature with a handkerchief and proceeded to revive her lady with smelling salts.