The Book of Kings Page 5

  “Artist,” Marc announced confidently.

  “Looks like,” Timmy agreed.

  “He’s letting that dog off its lead,” Warlon remarked, and Kent commented, “That’s a golden retriever, gentlest dogs you’ll ever meet. Not easy to train,” he continued, being the one of the four of them who knew something about dogs, “because they’re not too smart. But they’re fun. Much more fun than a hound, and better-natured than any terrier.”

  While the dog ran around the field in wide, excited circles, the young man folded his pad open and sat down in grass grown so tall that all you could see was his red beret.

  “Artist,” Marc repeated, this time with the satisfaction of being proved right.

  Warlon, the most cautious of the four on their watch, worried. “You can’t be sure, at a distance. He could be…”

  “Could be what?” Timmy laughed. At nineteen, he was the youngest of the guards. “Our King has no enemies, not in our own land and not abroad, either. It’s our elected officials who gather enemies to themselves, not our King. Probably because they’re the ones who hold the power now.”

  “Not all of it,” Marc argued. “It’s the King who deals with foreign countries, and he has to approve the appointment of any new judge.”

  “A king is also a symbol,” Warlon pointed out. “So to harm him would be to harm the country.”

  “It’s not as if we’re the only ones guarding him,” Timmy said. “We only watch the gate.”

  Warlon insisted, “His children, too. They could be taken and held for ransom, or they could be used as pawns by some…” He couldn’t think of the word, so he blustered, “…enemy.”

  “With all those nannies and nurses and tutors and governesses and maidservants and menservants always around, to watch over them?” was Kent’s question.

  Marc, who was the most sensible of them as well as the oldest, said, “If you’re worried, Warlon—and I’m not the man to say there’s no reason to worry—for how can I know?—you should go and talk to the fellow. Ask his name, ask where he lives, ask him his business.”

  “And leave my post?” Warlon demanded. “I know my duty.”

  “Then I’ll go,” Marc said. “Besides, my grandfather painted decorations on chests and wardrobes to beautify the homes in our village, so I’ll know if the fellow is really an artist or no. If no,” he told them, “if he is some…someone passing himself off as an artist for reasons of his own? You will see me raise my hat. He will think that I doff it in farewell, but you will know to join me and take him into custody. In that event, leave Warlon to guard the gates,” he ordered.

  “What about the dog?” Kent asked. “If he’s taken into custody, what will become of the dog?”

  “A dog can make its own way in the world,” Marc answered.

  “I’ll see to the dog, then,” said Kent, who preferred animals to people.

  “You two, keep your eyes on me,” Marc ordered. “Warlon, you watch the road.”

  In the event, no hat was raised, nobody had to dash down through the long grass, pistols out and shouting Halt! In fact, the dog followed Marc back to the sentry post, circling happily around his legs so that he had hard work not to stumble over her. Kent crouched down to pet her and learn her name, but nobody fed her. It was clear that she was not a well-trained, disciplined dog. If you gave a dog like this a treat, she might never leave you alone, so Kent only petted her, wished her well, and watched her bound off in pursuit of a stick he’d thrown, then get diverted by something moving in the grass—a mouse? a moth?—and chase after it.

  The artist, identified as such by Marc, looked across the road to the lake, paying no attention to either the dog or the guards.

  “Name’s Tancred, lives in the old city, he’s good enough that he must have studied some. I’ve never seen eyes like that,” Marc told his fellow soldiers, looking back thoughtfully at the figure bent over its sketch pad. “Almost the color of the inside of a gun barrel. Not that he’s dangerous. The opposite,” he laughed. “The fellow wouldn’t even swat an ant that crawled up on his paper. He took a leaf, coaxed it onto the leaf, and then set it down on the grass. An ant!” he laughed again, and they all laughed with him, at the way some people would literally not hurt a fly.

  —

  Max and Sunny returned to the meadow the next afternoon, to sketch (Max) and run about after butterflies, greet new friends, sniff along a stone wall, and nap (Sunny). By the end of the day, each of the guards, even Warlon, had taken a turn throwing sticks for the big, friendly dog, and Marc had paid Max a compliment on “the three-point perspective” of his drawing, which Max made a mental note to ask Joachim about, since he wasn’t sure what it meant about his picture of the gates and guardhouse and curving drive, with a thick bank of trees behind.

  At mid-afternoon, he had a bit of luck. The light sound of hoofbeats preceded the sight of a pony cart emerging from the band of woods to approach the gates. The driver was a boy of about eleven, and in the cart were two girls of about eight or nine, plus a middle-aged woman in a gray uniform. She wore a straw hat but the others were bareheaded. The children spoke in high, excited voices. The woman clutched at the wooden side of the cart as it jounced along while the two girls reached over the sides to grab at tall stalks of Queen Anne’s lace.

  “Look!” one of them shrieked as they came up to the gates and the guards. “A dog!”

  “Slow down, Your Highness!” the woman was yelling. “Slow this thing down! Immediately! I’m warning you,” she said sternly. Then she added, because he was a prince, “Please.”

  Max had already recognized Carlino, the Second Prince, and the royal twins, Marielle and Marguerite. He removed his beret and bowed his head, in case they noticed him. In fact, he hoped that they would notice him.

  But it was only Sunny they had eyes for. “Does the dog need a home?” he heard as he kept his eyes fixed on the long grass around his shoes. “Slowly, slowly on the turn, Your Highness,” one of the guards advised while the others greeted the children and their companion. “Afternoon, Your Highnesses, Mrs. Nanny. It’s a nice one, isn’t it?”

  Max raised his head to watch the Second Prince maneuver the pony cart in a wide circle just inside the gates. Sunny bounded through the meadow, barking, and Max heard himself identified for the woman as “an artist, the dog’s very friendly.”

  “She’s beautiful!” one of the Princesses cried. “Why can’t I have a dog like that?”

  Max risked a smile and a humble bow in the direction of the cart. The little girls waved while the Second Prince sat up straighter, prouder, on his wooden seat. He snapped the reins smartly, the cart pulled away, and Sunny did not follow it.

  Max would have liked Sunny to follow it so he could run after her. But she didn’t, so he couldn’t, and so as the hoofbeats faded away, he returned to his sketching of the curve of drive and the height of gates, and the line of leafy trees beyond.

  —

  He found Ari and Grammie together in her kitchen, reading aloud to one another from a Spanish newspaper, correcting one another’s pronunciation and discussing the meaning of what they’d read. “You should be working with us,” Grammie told Max.

  “First things first,” he answered, and she shook her head to let him know she thought he was making a big mistake. But Max couldn’t worry about that.

  “Any luck?” Ari asked.

  “I’m making progress,” Max reported. “Maybe.”

  “I’m not at all sure that I want you to succeed,” Ari admitted. “I have about as little desire to meet King Teodor as he does to meet me. What could I say to him? Other than apologize for how my family has behaved for the last hundred years, and more, about which I can change nothing. How could I make up for the kind of people I come from?”

  Max couldn’t worry about that, either. His job was to make contact with the King. He had less than three weeks before the Estrella sailed. If the painter-with-dog plan didn’t work, this masquerade of theirs became a lot mo
re dangerous for everybody, including not only the three of them but also the two people it was supposed to rescue.

  Max needed to succeed as painter-with-dog.

  —

  It was as if Nature herself were on Max’s side. The next day dawned windy, and bright with the kind of light that makes anybody want to pick up a paintbrush, or colored pencil, or pastel stick, or ordinary crayon, and put down on paper what they can see in that light. On the journey up the lake to Summer, the waves tossed the little ferry about and spray drenched the decks, so Sunny and Max were at the center of a crowd in the passenger cabin. Nobody paid any attention to Max, although Sunny came in for her usual caresses and compliments. That morning, there happened to be two small, yappy chows and a lively Jack Russell also riding in the cabin, so Sunny was praised for her calm and friendly nature and nobody minded the sweep of her tail.

  By this third day, a couple of the café waiters nodded at Max, recognizing the painter—or at least his dog—as he crossed the square. He made his way along the road to his usual spot on the meadow, gave a quick wave to the guards, then turned to his business. That morning he wanted to sketch the view back across the lake to the hills beyond, with the distant western mountains little more than a backdrop to the scene. By then, Max and Sunny had become such familiar figures that the four soldiers on guard only waved carelessly back.

  The wind pulled at the pages of Max’s sketch pad and ruffled the feathers on Sunny’s tail. It washed across the top of the tall grass, a wind strong enough to carry the sound of waves splashing against the shore. Max sketched, and wondered if he was changing, being changed by necessity, by what had happened to him and what he was doing about it, changed into something other than what he had always been before. He was accustomed to thinking of himself as a skyscapist who had no interest in scenery, artistically speaking. But he was enjoying this sketching of landscapes, and was already wondering which of his watercolor skills would be useful to him if he were to paint the scene. So that for long minutes at a time, his real purpose here slipped from his mind. So that he almost failed to see his opportunity when it happened. So that he almost missed the sight of Sunny leaping over the stone wall to chase something into the woods, barking happily.

  But Max didn’t miss it. He grabbed his sketch pad, jammed his pencil into a jacket pocket, and tore off in pursuit.

  He heard voices, which he knew belonged to the guards. His feet wanted to just run, and get there, but his brain was wiser. He stopped, turned, and waved at them, where they watched after him. By then, he was halfway across the field, and farther from them, so he didn’t have to pretend not to be able to hear their words, in the wind, at the distance. He lowered his arm to indicate the space where, if she had been at his side, Sunny’s head would have been. Then he pointed to the trees and spread his hands out, helplessly. What else can I do?

  They waved him off and he thought they were smiling, at the dog’s mischief and the artist’s embarrassment. That suited Max just fine.

  Once he had scrambled over the stone fence and was out of sight among the trees, Max had to move fast. The soldiers would give him what struck them as a reasonable amount of time to catch his dog and bring her back out, but after that time had passed they would come after him. He had no idea how much time would strike them as reasonable, and—he now realized—he had no plan for what he would do once he had broken through the barrier of trees that kept the promontory and its inhabitants private. But his feet didn’t need a plan. He raced through the trees, not even trying to call Sunny. He wanted to get to whatever lay beyond.

  Stumbling over roots and dodging around bushes, ducking under low branches or broken limbs hanging down from the thick canopy of leaves above him, Max ran. Not knowing how far it was made it feel like a good distance, and not knowing how much time he had made it feel like it took too long; but in fact it wasn’t all that far or all that long before he burst out of the woods onto a wide, sloping lawn, the grass mown short and glowing green. Sunny was dashing across it, toward three figures that were circling around under three kites that swept across the sky, dragging long, bright tails. Max heard the voices of children floating through the air.

  In the distance, the summer palace shone white and the sky shone blue behind it. Even with the little he now knew about landscapes, Max could see a painting: children flying brightly colored kites in the open sky and a dog romping up to them, while from the background the palace kept watch over the scene. He slowed to a brisk walk, panting for breath, his sketch pad clutched against his chest.

  Sunny lolloped up to the children and the kites swooped to the ground. It was then that Max noticed two men in green livery who stood close enough to oversee the children but not so close as to interfere in their play. He noticed the men because one of them raced forward to pick up the spindle the smallest child had dropped onto the ground in the excitement of Sunny’s approach. The other man moved forward to collect the other two spindles and rewind the long kite strings, while the same gray-uniformed woman from the day before rushed to head off the little boy, who ran toward the dog with his arms outstretched. The woman said something that the wind blew away and the little boy ignored her, but one of the girls caught him by one arm and bent down to say something into his ear.

  Max was close enough by then to recognize the Princesses, Marielle and Marguerite, twins but not identical, and so he knew that the littler boy must be Horatio, the youngest of King Teodor’s children. These three did not look like two princesses and a prince. The girls wore green cotton dresses under white pinafores, and Horatio had short green trousers with a white short-sleeved shirt. All of them had the bare feet and wild hair of any child on a summer morning.

  Max had no plan for what to say. He heard two pairs of booted feet slow to a marching pace as they came up behind him.

  He had hoped to find the King taking a morning stroll. That would have been a gigantic piece of luck, he knew, but it was what he had hoped for. Instead, he found himself surrounded by children and their guardians. Luck had failed him.

  Max walked even more slowly, ignoring the various adult voices that first demanded, “Just who are you?” and then called loudly, “There you are, Kent. Are you all asleep at your post?” and shouted at him to “Get back! These are the royal children.” One of the girls, the one with honey-colored braids, asked him, “Is she your dog? Does she bite?”

  This, Max responded to. “I’ve never known her to bite, Miss, Your Highness,” he said. He hadn’t even asked Grammie how you addressed royalty, that’s how unprepared he was. Luckily, Sunny had the sense not to jump up, and as usual she wagged her tail with enthusiasm at everybody and was especially interested in the creatures who were her size, and one even shorter.

  “Are you an artist?” the twin with nut-brown braids asked.

  Max had never played an artist on the stage. He hadn’t even ever seen a play that had an artist in it. He was only Max Starling, a boy with missing parents and a plan to rescue them. He hadn’t prepared the script for a scene in which royal children and their guards met up with an artist.

  “You’re wearing a beret,” the brown-braided girl explained, “and I think that’s a sketch pad you’re carrying.”

  “He’s an artist, Your Highness,” Kent said. “Name’s Tancred. We know him.”

  “The dog’s gentle, no need to worry about her, Mrs. Nanny,” Warlon told the woman. “She’s a sweetheart.”

  “Sweetheart,” Honey-Colored Braids crooned, and she wrapped her arms around Sunny’s neck. She laughed happily when the dog’s wet tongue swept down her cheek.

  “Marguerite!” exclaimed Mrs. Nanny.

  “Lick me, too! I want a lick!” cried Horatio, and he thrust his cheek up against Sunny’s muzzle.

  The dog obliged. The little boy dropped to the ground in a fit of giggles.

  “Do you offer lessons?” Marielle inquired, as if she were years older than her twin and her brother, as if she were a princess grown.

&
nbsp; “Your parents choose your instructors, Your Highness,” one of the liveried men said, but in a kind voice.

  “Of course!” she cried, and held out a hand to Max. “Come on, we’ll ask Mother if you can give me drawing lessons, because I don’t have an art teacher for the holidays.”

  “I don’t know…,” Max mumbled, looking from Kent and Warlon to Mrs. Nanny, and then to the men in livery, trying to show them by his voice and facial expression, by his humble lowering of the head, that he had no idea how to behave in this unexpected and overwhelming situation.

  Mrs. Nanny reminded the Princess, “Your mother has gone into Queensbridge this morning.”

  “For a big, big hat!” cried Horatio, who jumped to his feet so he could show Max how wide the brim on his mother’s hat would be. “With feathers, isn’t that right, Marielle? That’s what she said, and Melis, too. Melis wants one, too.” Then he heard his own words and laughed, repeating them to himself, “One, too, she wants one two three.”

  Max was trying to think about who the artist Tancred might be, what kind of person, and if he could—could he?—seem enough like a drawing teacher to be allowed into the summer palace. Max was trying to think and little quarrels were swirling around him and at the same time Marielle had him by the sleeve and was pulling him up the grassy slope.

  “Wait! Wait!” wailed Horatio, and then, “Carry me!”

  Marguerite hurried along beside Max and her sister. She held Sunny by the collar. “Poor dog, doesn’t she have a leash? I could buy her one, can I, Nanny Rose?”

  Max gave her Sunny’s green leash and decided he’d have a French last name, Dumas. Yes, Tancred Dumas, that was good. With a name, Max felt better, as if he knew who he was and what he was doing. With a name, he felt like the Solutioneer at work.

  King takes Pawn

  They trooped along together, the two footmen, the nanny, the three royal children, and Max. Sunny romped, sometimes at the rear, sometimes at the fore. Sometimes Marguerite held her leash, sometimes it was Max. At first, as they went up the long rise at the pace dictated by Horatio’s short legs, Max paid attention to learning as much as he could—the woman was Nanny Rose, the two footmen Will and Pierre, and all three had traveled with the family from the Capital to the promontory. After that he was free to worry about what to do once he was inside the palace. He wasn’t at all sure how to play the role of the artist he’d taken for his disguise. He thought of Joachim, who was a real artist; but he didn’t think grumpy and obsessed would set the right tone here.