“No!” Leonard said sharply. He took Una’s hands and pulled them away from her face. “M’lady,” he said, “look at me. Please. I’m not a Fool.”
She turned her face away and spoke to the wall. “I don’t know what else you call a commoner who insults a royal guest and gets himself – ”
“No, Una,” Leonard said. He squeezed her hands in his. “I am not a Fool, not a jester. I am Prince Lionheart of Southlands.”
14
"What?”
“Please look at me, Una,” said the jester. “I said I am Prince Lionheart of Southlands.”
Una blinked. Then she pushed away his hands and stepped back. “You . . . you’re a dragon-eaten Fool.”
“No, I’m not.” He paused, then added, “Well, yes, maybe I am. But that’s beside the point. I have been Leonard the Jester for a good five years now, but my real name is Lionheart, and I am – ”
“Prince of Southlands.” She backed up until she hit the far wall. “A likely story.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“No.”
He set his jaw, puffing out an angry breath. “I know. You’re used to the sight of me scrubbing your floors and windows. Not a very princely posture, eh? So what must I do to prove myself? Cut my arm and show you how blue my blood is?”
“You could explain either why you are lying to me now or why you lied to me earlier. That would make an excellent beginning.”
He removed his bell-covered hat and rubbed his hand through his hair so that it stood up like tufts of grass. “That’s a bit of a story,” he said and indicated the floor. “Will you sit?”
“I will not.”
“This may take time.”
“Then you’d better get started before I lose what’s left of my interest.”
His eyes narrowed and his hands gripped his jester hat as though he would like to pull it in two. “I’ll try to keep it brief. I am the crown prince of Southlands – ”
“We covered that.”
“Shush! Let me speak.” But it took him several moments of considering his words before he could begin again. At last he spoke in a low voice without looking at Una, still pulling at his hat.
“It came from nowhere. I remember the day, the exact moment, I saw the fire drop from the sky. We’d had no warning. That is . . . well, how can you be warned against something like that? Of course you hear stories of dragons, but you never expect you’ll see one. They belong to the ancient history of Southlands, back before we traded with the Continent, back before we knew better than to worship and revere such monsters. Hundreds of years ago.
“But it came one fine spring day, dropped from the sky like a blazing meteor. In no time it laid waste to the surrounding countryside, set fire to the barracks that housed my father’s guard, trapped my parents and eighteen other nobles inside the Eldest’s House, holding them for ransom to their own people. The Dragon demanded it be brought a prime beef cow every day and instant obedience to whatever other orders it might give.” The jester-prince shuddered at the memory. “It crawled about the castle grounds, destroying the gardens, burning the walls. I don’t know how many people it killed with its poison breath alone. The air was thick, more putrid than you can imagine.”
A memory came to Una as she listened. A memory, she knew not from where. She saw a great castle and a ruined garden, and a sky heavy with smoke and fumes. “Where were you at the time?” she asked in a whisper.
“I had gone out riding with a friend that day and was not at the castle when the Dragon descended. We’d ridden all the way to the Swan Bridge on the far south end of my father’s grounds, but we saw the fire fall from there and rode back as fast as we could. When we approached, my friend was terrified by the sounds and smells and begged me to ride back to her father’s estate with her rather than face that fire – ”
“Her?” The word slipped out unbidden, and Una blushed.
The jester-prince smiled. “A friend, I assure you. But I refused to listen and rode out to face the monster armed only with a knife. It didn’t matter. The mightiest sword ever forged by man would not pierce the hide of that great beast.”
“What did it do when it saw you?”
He shook his head ruefully. “It laughed. It opened its vast mouth and roared with laughter, flames in its teeth.
“ ‘Prince Lionheart!’ it said. ‘Welcome. You wish to try your mettle on me?’
“The fumes of its breath choked me so that I could hardly breathe, and my horse, in a terror, threw me and galloped away. I was left alone, gasping and helpless. The Dragon crawled toward me, and I could not move for the burning pain in my lungs. It gazed down at me with its red eyes. It seemed like an eternity that it stared at me, its gaze burning my skin. I thought I would die; I hoped I would.”
Una reached out and touched his hand. He grasped hers tightly in both of his.