He lies to you.”
“What says he then to you, my lord?”
Christian looked up. A pair of gulls wheeled overhead. One of them cried out, an inconsolable sound.
“What says he? Bernardo repeats the lies he tells you. He looks me in the eye and tells me of my heroism.”
“A man like Bernardo would know heroism when he sees it, my lord.”
“You are a fool. You ever see a hero in the wrong man. I abandoned the field at Copenhagen. I was not brave.”
“My lord, pray you stand.” I offered Christian my hands. He reached out to me and I helped him to his feet. “If you are no hero, what means Bernardo’s story? I think you are mistaken. Perhaps, my lord, the battle was confused and we ought to take the witness of other men’s eyes?”
“It is you who is mistaken.” Christian took my face between his hands. His eyes were squeezed half shut and his skin flushed red. I made to pull away but he held me by the hair.
“I am a coward! A coward! Before my father’s very eyes I fled! Craven son of the brave king! My father, Soren, will forever think me unmanly. He will wonder who is this girl masquerading all these years as a prince. It shall go hard for me, most hard. I do not know how I can look the king in his eye again.”
My scalp burned where the prince held my hair. I tried not to move my head.
“My lord, perhaps you fear too much your father’s wrath.”
“Of all people, you should know the lie of that.”
“My lord?”
Christian released me and stumbled away, down the beach. He waved an arm at the ruins of the paper mill above us on the hillside.
“You know too well the wrath a father may feel toward his own son.”
“It is cold, my lord. Your boots are wet. Let us go back to the castle.”
“Nay, I will not be distracted from this argument. You do not wish to speak of your father. You pretend there is no poison in that history, but in your portrait do I see the mirror of myself.”
“You are mistaken, my lord.” I began to walk up the path leading from the beach.
“Hold, sirrah. You will hear me out. You deny my father’s rage in order to deny your own father’s. I see it now.”
“My lord, why do you abuse me thus? Pray say no more on this, not here.”
“Not here?” Christian looked up at the mill again. “What better place? Is it not fitting that we eulogize your father at the scene of his death?”
“To what purpose? All is ended between that father and his son.”
Christian scrambled up the hillside and took me by the arm.
“I do not believe you. I know your history.”
“Many tales we hear are not true, my lord. The day is very cold. I beg your leave to return to Uraniborg.”
“Nay, you will stay and hear me out. I know how you disappointed your father. He intended you for the priesthood, but you disobeyed his will. Is this not true?”
It was true. It cost money to send a boy to Latin school, and my father’s purse was not heavy enough to afford it. He promised me to the Church, that the diocese would pay my tuition. Even later when my father’s purse grew fat, he was resolved to give me to God and so save himself the cost of my education. At sixteen I defied him; I refused to go to Italy and take holy orders. My father was enraged but found he could not force me into the clergy, even after beating me soundly. He put me out of his house, saying I was dead to him. I found my way to Wittenberg, and I stayed in Saxony five years. There I earned my bread as a Latin tutor, and I also earned degrees in Philosophy and Law.
“My lord,” I said. “I would have made a miserable priest. But you must not conflate my father with the king.”
“No, I must not.” Christian waded out into the snow and dug until he found the rapier he had cast aside.
“I shall give you one last scene,” he said.
“I pray you, no more today.”
Christian stretched out his right arm and pointed the tip of his rapier at my heart.
“You must face your shame, just as I must face mine.”
“I have no shame. You mistake me.”
“I will set you up a mirror, and you will see that I speak the truth.”
“My