The Night Visitor

Just one more night. Just one more night in which to visit my special place, because tomorrow will be too late. Tomorrow things will change for ever and there will be no going back. 

Dinner was early, and even now preparations are being made for tomorrow. Everyone is busy, rushing here, hurrying there, all too busy to notice me for whose benefit all this busyness exists. But as they are busy preparing for me, I myself am overlooked. Tomorrow I will be the centre of attention, but tonight I can move around unnoticed. I am left in my room, to think over the meaning of the following day, to contemplate my role in the celebrations. But I must visit my place one more time. For the last time.

I change quickly, taking off my grand finery, donning instead simple clothes that belong to one of my ladies, a simple dress, a covering cloak. I slip unseen through a side door – do they think I don’t know all the old ways in this castle? From there I hurry down corridors, past guards, around servants, trying to look as if I too am busy on some task or other. I dart through the kitchens with purpose, ignoring all that are ignoring me as they work tirelessly. 

I slip outside if not unseen at least unnoticed. I move along the edges of the palace, then through the grounds and to the secret door at the side which leads to the world beyond. We’re still in my father’s kingdom, but in the outer unprotected lands, the fields where the farmers work to produce our food, the forest that provides sport for the hunters.

It is to this forest that I now go, not to hunt in the depths of the forest, but to visit one moonlit glade that has been my peaceful place for as long as I can remember. It is a magical place, a clearing in the trees, where I have been able to come whenever I wanted to feel like a normal person rather than a princess. It is my haven.

I arrive and drink in the view before me, the clearing, the quiet dark pool, the great oak. This is the clearing where I watch for butterflies, where sometimes I will see a doe and her fawn as they come down to drink from the pool. There are no butterflies tonight. There is no doe, no fawn. This is the quiet dark pool where dragonflies hover busily, where I dangle my feet on hot summer days. There are no dragonflies tonight. It is not hot enough for me to want to wet my feet. This is the oak that the birds sing in, that shades me from the hot sun. There are no birds tonight and the sun is setting.

But the grand old tree can still support my back, so I sit and remember all the good times I have spent in this spot, as I think of what is to come. For tomorrow I will fulfil my destiny. Tomorrow I will be married to a man I have never met. Tomorrow I will be expected to lie with a man I do not know. If today I had so much as spoken to such a man, a man other than my father or my brother, it would have been scandalous. But tomorrow I must do, whether I want it or not, what I must not do today, however much I might want it. Whatever it is, for no-one will tell me.

Even now he is here, he is waiting for me. Even now he is sleeping up in the palace. He too with his court will have feasted at my father’s expense. And tomorrow, again at my father’s expense, we will meet and be joined as man and wife, and I will be his.

I do not know his name. I do not know his country. I do not know his reputation. All I know is that tomorrow we will be wed so that our nations will be joined. I know as I have always known that my father would decide my fate, but that doesn’t leave me any less fearful.

What will he be like, this man, this husband? How old will he be? Will he be as old as my father? My grandfather even? There’s no way of knowing just yet. My mother tells me it is a good match, and smiles to herself as she says it, but she will not say more than this any more than she will tell me exactly what to expect. My ladies have been giggling and beaming among themselves. Does that mean he is handsome and they want him for themselves? Or does it mean that he is old and ugly so they are grateful that they are ladies and not princesses?

As I sit, I hear a nightingale in the tree above me and it calms me. If there could be larks in the daytime and a nightingale after the sun had gone down, then perhaps I could find a spot in my new home that would be my new place of peace, for when I need to escape court life.

There is movement over the other side of the clearing, the place where I have seen the doe and her fawn. Surely they aren’t here now? But no, it is not them. This creature is a horse. I wonder at whose it might be, who has left it to wander. Perhaps it belongs to someone from that foreign court. At first glance it certainly appears to be a magnificent beast.

The horse moves, it’s beautiful white flanks shining in the moonlight, tossing its silver mane. And as it tosses its mane, I realise what it is. Not a horse. Something so much more beautiful and rare than that. I see the spiral horn. 

I cannot breathe as the creature moves round the pool, threading its way carefully through the grass until it is almost level with the tree. Why would I see this creature now? Why have I never seen this before in all the times I have visited this place?

The unicorn goes slowly towards the water’s edge where it bends its head and lips quivering, drinks from the dark pool. I hold my breath as it does so, careful not to scare it away. Finally, sated, it lifts its head, and in the moonlight I can see water dripping from the hairs on its chin.

It turns and comes towards me. Slowly I hold out my hand towards it. It snorts and I can feel its hot breath on my hand, droplets of water from the pool. I hesitantly touch the velvet soft lips while the other hand carefully moves to stroke the long equine nose, admiring but careful not to touch that beautiful but dangerous horn. But the creature moves closer. It snorts again, nudging my shoulder with it’s head so that the horn rests against my face. I’m careful not to make any sudden movements, I try to make what I think might be soothing noises, stroking the side of its neck with one hand, its face with the other. For a while we are content, but then, both too soon and yet again not soon enough, the unicorn begins to move away.

Slowly it moves as if I did not exist and I let it go as I must let my old life, my innocence go. It moves round the other side of the pool and disappears from wherever it came from. I know I will never see it or its’ like again.

As it leaves, as I begin to breathe again, the nightingale resumes its song above and I smile. Whatever happens tomorrow, whoever this stranger from a foreign land is, no-one can take this night, this moment away from me. I will face tomorrow with the sound of the nightingale and the vision of the unicorn in my heart.