He led her through a dizzying array of alleys, around dark buildings, and over wooden fences. Soon she had no idea where they were. He paused in a darkened corner, holding a finger to his scarf-covered lips. They waited briefly, then moved on. The wind picked up, carrying an odor of fish, and Arista heard the sound of surf. Ahead she could see the naked masts of ships bobbing at anchor along the wharf. When he reached a particularly dilapidated building, he led her up a back stair into a small room and closed the door behind them.
She stood rigid near the door, watching him as he started a fire in an iron stove. Seeing his hands, his arms, and the tilt of his head—something was so familiar. With the fire stoked, he turned and took a step toward her. Arista shrank until her back was against the door. He hesitated and then nodded. She recognized something in his eyes.
Reaching up, he drew back his hood and unwrapped the scarf. The face before her was painful to look at. Deformed and horribly scarred, it appeared to have melted into a patchwork of red blotches. One ear was missing, along with his eyebrows and much of his hair. His mouth lacked the pale pink of lips. His appearance was both horrid and so welcome she could find no words to express herself. She broke into tears of joy and threw her arms around him, hugging as tightly as her strength allowed.
“I hope this will teach you not to run off without me, Your Highness,” Hilfred told her.
She continued to cry and squeeze, her head buried in his chest. Slowly his arms crept up, returning her embrace. She looked up and he brushed strands of tear-soaked hair from her face. In more than a decade as her protector, he had never touched her so intimately. As if realizing this, Hilfred straightened up and gently escorted her to a chair before reaching for his scarf.
“You’re not going back out?” she asked fearfully.
“No,” he replied, his voice dropped a tone. “The city will be filled with guards. It won’t be safe for either of us to venture in public for some time. We’ll be all right here. There are no occupied buildings around, and I rented this flat from a blind man.”
“Then why are you covering up?”
He paused a moment, looking at the scarf. “The sight of my face—it makes people … uncomfortable, and it’s important that you feel safe and at ease. That’s my job, remember?”
“And you do it very well, but your face doesn’t make me uncomfortable.”
“You don’t find me … unpleasant to look at?”
Arista smiled warmly. “Hilfred, your face is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
The flat Hilfred stayed in was very small, just a single room and a closet. The floor and walls were rough pine planks weathered gray and scuffed smooth from wear. There were a rickety table, three chairs, and a ship’s hammock. The single window was hazy from the buildup of ocean salt, admitting only a muted gray light. Hilfred refused to burn a single candle after dark, for fear of attracting attention. The small stove kept the drafty shack tolerably warm at night, but before dawn it was extinguished to avoid the chance of someone seeing the smoke.
For two days they stayed in the shack, listening to the wind buffet the roof shingles and howl over the stovepipe. Hilfred made soup from clams and fish he bought from the old blind man. Other than that, neither of them left the little room. Arista slept a lot. It seemed like years since she had felt safe, and her body surrendered to exhaustion.
Hilfred kept her covered and crept around the flat, cursing to himself whenever he made a noise. On the night of the second day, she woke when he dropped a spoon. He looked at her sheepishly and cringed at the sight of her open eyes.
“Sorry, I was just warming up some soup. I thought you might be hungry.”
“Thank you,” she told him.
“Thank you?”
“Yes, isn’t that what you say when someone does something for you?”
He raised what would have been his eyebrows. “I’ve been your servant for more than ten years, and you’ve never once said thank you.”
It was the truth, and it hurt to hear it. What a monster she had been. “Well overdue, then, don’t you think? Let me check your bandage.”
“After you eat, Your Highness.”
She looked at him and smiled. “I’ve missed you so,” she said. Surprise crossed his face. “You know, there were times growing up that I hated you. Mostly after the fire—for not saving my mother—but later I hated the way you always followed me. I knew you reported my every move. It’s a terrible thing for a teenage girl to have an older boy silently following her every step, watching her eat, watching her sleep, knowing her most intimate secrets. You were always silent, always watchful. Did you know I had a crush on you when I was fourteen?”
“No,” he said curtly.
“You were, what, a dashing seventeen? I tried everything to make you jealous. I chased after all the squires at court, pretending they wanted me, but none of them did. And you … you were such the loathingly perfect gentleman. You stood by stoically, and it infuriated me. I would go to bed humiliated, knowing that you were standing just outside the door.
“When I was older, I treated you like furniture—still, you treated me as you always had. During the trial—” She noticed Hilfred flinch and decided not to finish the thought. “And afterward, I thought you believed what they said and hated me.”
Hilfred put down the spoon and sighed.