So I leave my chamber to follow the sound of Ariel’s song and find a young man staggering up the path toward the courtyard.
Even though I anticipated it, the sight is nonetheless a profound shock. Did I speak of strangers? He is a stranger in the veriest of truths, here on this isle where no mortal foot save mine, Papa’s, and Caliban’s has trod within my lifetime. I find myself dumbstruck, my tongue rooted to the floor of my mouth. The prince’s wet hair clings to his head and face in tendrils like seaweed; his eyes, as brown as acorns, are wide and wild and staring. His mouth is agape. His eyes widen further at the sight of me in my finery.
“Help!” he says, and the word is a croak in his throat. He holds out his empty hands in a pleading gesture. “My father … please!”
“You should go,” I whisper. “Leave this place!”
“My father…” The prince swallows, the apple of his throat rising up and down. “What is this place? How came I here?”
I do not know what to say, so I say nothing.
“There was a voice, I followed a voice … it sang a terrible song.” He looks around him. “Was it you?”
I shake my head. “No.”
He looks back at me. “The ship … it foundered on the rocks. I fear my father and all hands aboard it are lost. Are there no men here to help me search for survivors?” He swallows again. “Or at least seek to retrieve my father’s body? If I can do naught else, I would give him an honest burial on dry land.”
Do I dare tell him his father lives? It seems cruel to make him suffer in ignorance; oh, but I hesitate too long.
“Hail fortune!” Papa’s voice says behind me, fulsome with amazement. “Can it be that you’ve survived the wreck, lad? You must be a hardy soul indeed to weather such a tempest.”
“I was in the water, and then…” The prince’s voice trails off; he has no inkling of how he found himself ashore. “Oh, but you saw? Good sir, I pray you, were there others? What of my father?”
“As to that I cannot say, but you’ve endured a terrible hardship,” Papa says, and gestures toward the palace. “Come, warm yourself at our hearth and dry your clothing.”
The prince follows Papa obediently, his wet boots making squelching sounds on the paving stones of the courtyard. Despite the warmth of the day, he is shivering.
I follow behind him.
It is strange, so strange, to see him in our kitchen. He sits in a chair beside the hearth, steam rising from his sodden attire. He is young, younger than I expected. Above the beginnings of a beard, his mouth looks tender.
“My father—” he says.
“Hush.” Papa stirs the contents of a kettle hanging in the hearth with a ladle. “How are you called, lad?”
He laughs a dreadful laugh. “Called? Why, if my father is dead, I am called Naples.”
Papa glances at him. “Your father is the king of Naples?”
“Aye.” The prince buries his face in his hands, knuckles whitening as he clutches at his flesh. He lowers his hands and lifts his stricken face. “Good sir, I must go. Dead or alive, I must seek him.”
“Hush,” Papa says again. He ladles steaming liquid into a silver goblet. “First drink this tisane, and be restored.”
No.
No.
The word—a mere syllable—burgeons in my mouth, and I think I will utter it; I think I must utter it. I think I will rise from my own seat, dash the chalice from the prince’s tender lips.
Oh, but Papa looks at me, and his gaze is colder than the coldest days of winter; cold and hate-filled.
I am afraid.
I say nothing.
The prince drinks.
I watch the apple of his throat bob up and down as he swallows. He drinks deep, the prince does; deep and trusting.
Of course, it is no harmless tisane of herbs and bark he drinks, but a love potion wrought from my menstruum, the blood of my woman’s courses which Papa has collected, reduced, and refined by his arts.
The snare has been sprung. Behind my eyes, I see the image of Venus leering forth from the wall of Papa’s sanctum.
“Oh!” The prince lowers the goblet. A look of soft wonder settles over his features, smoothing away every trace of his grief and confusion. He gazes at me, sitting at our humble kitchen table, my hands clenched in my lap. “You…” he says, and I think he has quite forgotten his poor drowned father. “Oh, you! Fair one, fairest of the fair, tell me true, be you goddess or maiden?”
A wail of frustration rises to my throat and dies there. The thing is done, and I have done nothing to prevent it.
Papa smiles.
FORTY-EIGHT
CALIBAN
Oh, Setebos! The palace is so far away and the men are so slow!
The rocks are too steep for them to climb, so we must go down the shore to the gentle path that slopes down to the sea. At first anger and the sweet red claret burns hot in them, but the farther we do go, the slower and slower they do go.
The men are tired, I know; they did have to swim a long way to shore. I want to shout at them, to say, go, go, go like the voice that shouts inside my head, but I do not. I say oh, good masters, brave masters, only a little farther, masters.