In Which More Than One Journey Begins

From the diary of Dulcie, Crown Princess of Bentlefay:

The capacity of life to surprise me is beginning to grow rather wearying, although I suppose if I were a more optimistic person I would find in it a source of interest. Winnie, for instance, has been with us since I was a tiny child and I thought that if there were a single person in the world outside my own family whom I knew inside and out, it would be her. Imagine my astonishment, then, when she told me yesterday with a straight face and a hint of a blush that she was going to marry Sir Bardolph the following morning, travel down with us as far as the Grange, and stay there with him for the rest of her life.

I’m afraid the news rendered me rather stupid for I gaped at her until she crossed her arms and gave me a look.

“I didn’t expect you to be pleased, but I wouldn’t mind some slight acknowledgement.”

I blinked. “I beg your pardon, Winnie, I thought for a moment that you said you were going to be married.”

She flapped her hands at me. “You heard me perfectly.”

“But married women are meant only to sleep with their husbands.”

“Yes, I picked that up through observation,” she said dryly.

“Well, it just seems very unlike you.”

Winnie sighed, and an expression of extreme beatitude spread over her face. I’ve seen the look on newly engaged people before, and prepared to have my stomach turned.

But all she said was “I don’t think I shall find it difficult, believe it or not,” and I immediately felt rather cheap.

“Oh, Winnie,” I cried, clasping her hands. “I am so, so pleased for you and I wish you every happiness, but I’m going to miss you so much.”

She gathered me into her arms just as she had when I was seven years old and having nightmares, and we sobbed comfortably together for a moment or two.

“I’ll miss you too, child,” she said at length. “I’ll miss all of you. But look at you – you’re presiding over the court; you’re taking part in councils and tactics; you’re going on diplomatic missions. You’re ready. You don’t need me anymore, and Dolph does. When you see him again he’ll look ten years younger and his gout will be gone; just you wait.”

In the face of losing her I felt that I would always need Winnie, and hated Sir Bardolph and his gout. But she has given as much of herself to the kingdom as anyone, and more than most. She deserves Sir Bardolph’s gout if that’s what she wants.

“Be happy,” I mumbled, and dried my eyes surreptitiously on her dress. “I don’t know anyone who deserves it more.”

So Winnie and Sir Bardolph were married this morning, and a most sentimental event it was, regardless of the early hour, the hurried ceremony and the fact that we were all wearing riding clothes except Mother and Father who were wearing dressing-gowns. Father performed the ceremony, and I was maid of honor, with Mother and Lynde for witnesses. Winnie gave the responses very surely, in a sweet carrying voice, but Sir Bardolph wept without stopping through the whole thing, and could barely choke out the responses at all. Of course that set Father off, and the two of them blubbered on until I heard Lynde begin to sniffle too, at which point Mother could no longer stifle a laugh, and I laughed too, and that worked.

As soon as the ceremony was over we started for Seaward, and as the dust of Bentlefay city fell away from our feet, my spirits rose. We have a full retinue of bodyguards and give quite the impression of steel and muscle, but there are no courtiers and no pageantry, and I am beginning to feel free for the first time since my debut. My feet are no longer mired to the ankles in silk trains, and my hands no longer fettered by the princesses’ misbegotten tapestry. I thought I knew how circumscribed my life had become – I complain about it all the time, after all – but this taste of freedom set it in granite.

Of course we don’t camp or anything like that, although I would love to try it; Mother says we will have quite enough of primitive conditions on shipboard, although the new vessel is said to be the best of its kind so I’m not sure what she means. We are with the Lord Mayor of Durrell tonight, and although he is so mellifluous in his diplomacy that I’m not even sure he knows what he’s saying, at least his guest rooms are large and bare and he went to his study after dinner and left us to ourselves.

Winnie and Sir Bardolph said good night a few minutes later, and when I exclaimed at the earliness of the hour, he turned a light puce. Lynde giggled, and Winnie shot me a look.

“My dear Dulcie, we got married this morning.”

“Oh,” I said, not grasping her point.

“That means,” she said with elaborate enunciation, as though I was a child or a foreigner, “that we are on our honeymoon.”

“Oh!” I realized, and no doubt turned puce myself. Sir Bardolph grinned abashedly at me.

“I have been waiting long enough for this,” he said, “and I hope your majesty will forgive me if I say that I’m damned if I’ll wait any longer.”

“My majesty is ashamed to make you wait this long,” I said. “Go with my blessing, you two.”

And they were gone almost before the words were out of my mouth.

Naturally I am as happy as I can be for Winnie. Of course I am. I have a little sour gray imp in my mind about losing her though. Still, it would have bothered me more if I hadn’t got Lynde, and Mother and Father are the best friends anyone could have. That seems to be the way with change – you get a new friend, and you lose an old one. I suppose that’s what they mean by equilibrium, but I find it very tiresome.