Westley awoke chained in a giant cage. His shoulder was beginning to fester from the gnawing and digging that the R.O.U.S.s had done into his flesh. He ignored his discomfort, momentarily, to try and adjust to his surroundings.
He was certainly underground. It was not the lack of windows that made that sure; more the dankness. From somewhere above him now, he could hear animal sounds: an occasional lion roar, the yelp of the cheetah.
Shortly after his return to consciousness, the albino appeared, bloodless, with skin as pale as dying birch. The candlelight that served to illuminate the cage made the albino seem totally like a creature who had never seen the sun. The albino held a tray which carried many things, bandages and food, healing powders and brandy.
“Where are we?” from Westley.
A shrug from the albino.
“Who are you?”
Shrug.
That was almost the entire extent of the fellow’s conversation. Westley asked question after question while the albino tended and redressed his wound, then fed him food that was warm and surprisingly good and plentiful.
Shrug.
Shrug.
“Who knows I’m here?”
Shrug.
“Lie, but tell me something—give an answer. Who knows I’m here?”
Whispered: “I know. They know.”
“They?”
Shrug.
“The Prince and the Count, you mean?”
Nod.
“And that is all?”
Nod.
“When I was brought in I was half conscious. The Count was giving the orders, but three soldiers were carrying me. They know too.”
Shake. Whispered: “Knew.”
“They’re dead, that’s what you’re saying?”
Shrug.
“Am I to die then?”
Shrug.
Westley lay back on the floor of the giant underground cage watching as the albino silently reloaded the tray, glided from sight. If the soldiers were dead, surely it was not unreasonable to assume that he would eventually follow. But if they wanted his erasure, surely it was also not unreasonable to assume that they had not the least intention of doing it immediately, else why tend his wounds, why return his strength with good warm food? No, his death would be a while yet. But in the meantime, considering the personalities of his captors, it was finally not unreasonable to assume that they would do their best to make him suffer.
Greatly.
Westley closed his eyes. There was pain coming and he had to be ready for it. He had to prepare his brain, he had to get his mind controlled and safe from their efforts, so that they could not break him. He would not let them break him. He would hold together against anything and all. If only they gave him sufficient time to make ready, he knew he could defeat pain. It turned out they gave him sufficient time (it was months before the Machine was ready).
But they broke him anyway.
At the end of the thirtieth day of festivities, with sixty days more of partying to enjoy, Buttercup was genuinely concerned that she might lack the strength to endure. Smile, smile, hold hands, bow and thank, over and over. She was simply exhausted from one month; how was she to survive twice that?
It turned out, because of the King’s health, to be both easy and sad. For with fifty-five days to go, Lotharon began to weaken terribly.
Prince Humperdinck ordered new doctors brought in. (There was still the last miracle man alive, Max, but since they had fired him long before, bringing him back on the case now was simply not deemed wise; if he was incompetent then, when Lotharon was only desperately ill, how could he suddenly be a cure-all now, with Lotharon dying?) The new doctors all agreed on various tried-and-true medications, and within forty-eight hours of their coming on the case, the King was dead.
The wedding date of course, was unchanged—it wasn’t every day a country had a five hundredth anniversary—but all the festivities were either curtailed entirely or vastly cut down. And Prince Humperdinck became, forty-five days before the wedding, King of Florin, and that changed everything, because, before, he had taken nothing but his hunting seriously, and now he had to learn, learneverything , learn to run a country, and he buried himself in books and wise men and how did you tax this and when should you tax that and foreign entanglements and who could be trusted and how far and with what? And before her lovely eyes, Humperdinck changed from a man of fear and action to one of frenzied wisdom, because he had to get it all straightnow before any other country dared interfere with the future of Florin, so the wedding, when it actually took place, was a tiny thing and brief, sandwiched in between a ministers’ meeting and a treasury crisis, and Buttercup spent her first afternoon as queen wandering around the castle not knowing what in the world to do with herself. It wasn’t until King Humperdinck walked out on the balcony with her to greet the gigantic throng that had spent the day in patient waiting that she realized ithad happened, shewas the queen, her life, for whatever it was worth, belonged now to the people.
They stood together on the castle balcony, accepting the cheers, the cries, the endless thunderous “hip hips,” until Buttercup said, “Please, may I walk once more among them?” and the King said with a nod that she might and down she went again, as on the day of the wedding announcement, radiant and alone, and again the people swept apart to let her pass, weeping and cheering and bowing and—
—and then one person booed.
On the balcony watching it all Humperdinck reacted instantly, gesturing soldiers into the area where the sound had come from, dispatching more troops quickly down to surround the Queen, and like clockwork Buttercup was safe, the booer apprehended and led away.
“Hold a moment,” Buttercup said, still shaken by the unexpectedness of what had happened. The soldier who held the booer stopped. “Bring her to me,” Buttercup said, and in a moment the booer was right there, eye to eye.
It was an ancient woman, withered and bent, and Buttercup thought of all the faces that had gone by in her lifetime, but this one she could not remember. “Have we met?” the Queen asked.
The old one shook her head.
“Then why? Why on this day? Why do you insult the Queen?”
“Because you are not worthy of cheers,” the old woman said, and suddenly she was yelling.”You had love in your hands and you gave it up for gold!” She turned to the crowd.”It is true what I tell you—there was love alongside her in the Fire Swamp and she dropped it from her fingers like garbage, and that is what she is, the Queen of Garbage.”
“I had given my word to the Prince—” Buttercup began, but the old woman would not be quieted.
“Ask her how she got through the Fire Swamp? Ask her if she did it alone? She threw love away to be the Queen of Grime, the Queen of Muck—I am old and life means nothing to me, so I am the only person in all this crowd to dare to tell truth, and truth says bow to the Queen of Feculence if you want to, but not I. Cheer the Queen of Slime and Ordure if you want to, but not I. Rave over the beauty of the Queen of Cesspools, but not I. Not I!”She was advancing on Buttercup now.
“Take her away,” Buttercup ordered.
But the soldiers could not stop her, and the old woman kept coming on, her voice getting louder and louder and Louder! and LOUDER! and LOUDER and LOUDER! and—
Buttercup woke up screaming.
She was in her bed. Alone. Safe. The wedding was still sixty days away.
But her nightmares had begun.
The next night she dreamed of giving birth to their first child and