It was dusk when they began their search blindly through all of Florin City. Dusk, a day before the wedding. Count Rugen was about to begin his nightly experiments at that dusk, gathering up his notebooks from his room, filled with all his jottings. Five levels underground, behind high castle walls, locked and chained and silent, Westley waited beside the Machine. In a way, he still looked like Westley, except, of course, that he had been broken. Twenty years of his life had been sucked away. Twenty were left. Pain was anticipation. Soon the Count would come again. Against any wishes he had left, Westley went on crying.
It was dusk when Buttercup went to see the Prince. She knocked loudly, waited, knocked again. She could hear him shouting inside, and if it had not been so important, she would never have knocked the third time, but she did, and the door was yanked open, and the look of anger on his face immediately changed to the sweetest smile. “Beloved,” he said. “Come in. A moment more is all I need.” And he turned back to Yellin. “Look at her, Yellin. My bride-to-be. Has any man ever been so blessed?”
Yellin shook his head.
“Am I wrong, do you think, to go to any lengths, then, to protect her?”
Yellin shook his head again. The Prince was driving him crazy with his stories of the Guilder infiltration. Yellin had every spy he’d ever used working day and night and not one of them had come up with anything about Guilder. And yet the Prince insisted. Inwardly, Yellin sighed. It was beyond him; he was simply an enforcer, not a prince. In fact, the only remotely disturbing news he’d heard since he’d closed the Thieves Quarter that morning was within the hour, when someone told him of a rumor that the ship of the Dread Pirate Roberts had perhaps been seen sailing all the way into Florin Channel itself. But such a thing, Yellin knew from long experience, was, simply, rumor.
“I’ll tell you, they are everywhere, these Guilders,” the Prince went on. “And since you seem unable to stop them, I wish to change some plans. All the gates have been sealed to my castle except the front one, yes?”
“Yes. And twenty men guard it.”
“Add eighty more. I want a hundred men. Clear?”
“A hundred men it will be. Every Brute available.”
“Inside the castle I’m quite safe. I have my own supplies, food, stables, enough. As long as they cannot get at me, I will survive. These, then, are the new and final plans—jot them down. All five-hundredth-anniversary arrangements are canceled until after the wedding. The wedding is tomorrow sunset. My bride and I will ride my whites to Florin Channel surrounded by all your enforcers. There we will board a ship and begin our long-awaited honeymoon surrounded by every ship in the Florin Armada—”
“Every ship but four,” Buttercup corrected.
He blinked at her a moment in silence. Then he said, blowing her a kiss, but discreetly, so Yellin couldn’t see, “Yes, yes, how forgetful I am, every ship but four.” He turned back to Yellin.
But in his blink, in that following silence, Buttercup had seen it all.
“Those ships will stay with us until I deem it safe to release them. Of course, Guilder could attack then, but that is a chance we must risk. Let me think if there’s anything else.” The Prince loved giving orders, especially the kind he knew would never need carrying out. Also, Yellin was a slow jotter, and that only added to the fun. “Excused,” the Prince said finally.
With a bow, Yellin was gone.
“The four ships were never sent,” Buttercup said, when they were alone. “Don’t bother lying to me any more.”
“Whatever was done was done for your own good, sweet pudding.”
“Somehow, I do not think so.”
“You’re nervous, I’m nervous; we’re getting married tomorrow, we’ve got a right to be.”
“You couldn’t be more wrong, you know; I’m very calm.” And in truth, she did seem that way. “It doesn’t matter whether you sent the ships or not. Westley will come for me. There is a God; I know that. And there is love; I know that too; so Westley will save me.”
“You’re a silly girl, now go to your room.”
“Yes, I am a silly girl and, yes again, I will go to my room, and you are a coward with a heart filled with nothing but fear.”
The Prince had to laugh. “The greatest hunter in the world and you say I am a coward?”
“I do, I do indeed. I’m getting much smarter as I age. I say you are a coward and you are; I think you hunt only to reassure yourself that you are not what you are: the weakest thing to ever walk the Earth. He will come for me and then we will be gone, and you will be helpless for all your hunting, because Westley and I are joined by the bond of love and you cannot track that, not with a thousand bloodhounds, and you cannot break it, not with a thousand swords.”
Humperdinck screamed toward her then, ripping at her autumn hair, yanking her from her feet and down the long curving corridor to her room, where he tore that door open and threw her inside and locked her there and started running for the underground entrance to the Zoo of Death—
My father stopped reading. ‘Go on,’ I said.
‘Lost my place,’ he said and I waited there, still weak with pneumonia and wet with fear until he started reading again. ‘Inigo allowed Fezzik to open the door—’ ‘Hey,’ I said. ‘Hold it, that’s not right, you skipped,’ and then I quick caught my tongue because we’d just had that scene when I got all upset about Buttercup marrying Humperdinck when I’d accused him of skipping, and I didn’t want any repeat of that. ‘Daddy,’ I said, ‘I don’t mean anything or anything, but wasn’t the Prince sort of running toward the Zoo and then the next thing you said was about Inigo, and maybe, I mean, shouldn’t there be a page or like that in between?’
My father started to close the book.
‘I’m not fighting; please, don’t close it.’
‘It is not for that,’ he said, and then he looked at me for a long time. ‘Billy,’ he said (he almost never called me that; I loved it when he did; anybody else I hated it, but when the barber did it, I don’t know, I just melted), ‘Billy, do you trust me?’
‘What is that? Of course I do.’
‘Billy, you got pneumonia; you’re taking this book very serious, I know, because we already fought once about it.’
‘I’m not fighting any more—’
‘Listen to me—I never lied to you yet, did I? Okay. Trust me. I don’t want to read you the rest of this chapter and I want you to say it’s all right.’
‘Why? What happens in the rest of this chapter?’
‘If Itellyou, I could accomplish the same by reading. Just say okay.’
I can’t say that until I know what happens.’
‘But—’
‘Tell me what happens and I’ll tell you if it’s okay and I promise if I don’t want to hear it, you can skip on to Inigo.’
‘But won’t do me this favor?’
I’ll sneak out of bed when you’re asleep; I don’t care where you hide the book, I’ll find it and I’ll read the rest of the chapter myself, so you might as well tell me.’
‘Billy, please?’
I gotcha; you might as well admit it.’
My father sighed this terrible sound.
I knew I had him beaten then.
‘Westley dies,’ my father said.
I said, ‘What do you mean, “Westley dies”? You mean dies?’
My father nodded. ‘Prince Humperdinck kills him.’
‘He’s only faking though, right?’
My father shook his head, closed the book all the way.
‘Aw shit,’ I said and I started to cry.
‘I’m sorry,’ my father said. I’ll leave you alone,’ and he left me.
‘Who gets Humperdinck?’I screamed after him.
He stopped in the hall. I don’t understand.’
‘Who kills Prince Humperdinck?At the end, somebody’s got to get him. Is it Fezzik? Who?’
‘Nobody kills him. He lives.’
‘You mean he wins, Daddy? Jesus, what did you read me this thing for?’ and I buried my head in my pillow and I never cried like that again, not once to this day. I could feel almost my heart emptying into my pillow. I guess the most amazing thing about crying though is that when you’re in it, you think it’ll go on forever but it never really lasts half what you think. Not in terms of real time. In terms of real emotions, it’s worse than you think, but not by the clock. When my father came back, it couldn’t have been even an hour later.
‘So,’ he said, ‘shall we go on tonight or not?’
‘Shoot,’ I told him. Eyes dry, no catch in throat, nothing. ‘Fire when ready.’
‘With Inigo?’
‘Let’s hear the murder,’ I said. I knew I wasn’t about to bawl again. Like Buttercup’s, my heart was now a secret garden and the walls were very high.
Humperdinck screamed toward her then, ripping at her autumn hair, yanking her from her feet and down the long curving corridor to her room, where he tore that door open and threw her inside and locked her there and started running for the underground entrance to the Zoo of Death and down he plunged, giant stride after giant stride, and when he threw the door of the fifth-level cage open, even Count Rugen was startled at the purity of whatever the emotion was that was reflected in the Prince’s eyes. The Prince moved to Westley. “She loves you,” the Prince cried. “She loves you still and you love her, so think of that—think of this too: in all this world, you might have been happy, genuinely happy. Not one couple in a century has that chance, not really, no matter what the storybooks say, but you could have had it, and so, I would think, no one will ever suffer a loss as great as you” and with that he grabbed the dial and pushed it all the way forward and the Count cried, “Not to twenty!” but by then it was too late; the death scream had started.