Puss's Boots - Chapter 6

Gwynnë was everything that the siblings thought it would be and more. The buildings themselves shined, and it seemed as though they were reaching up to scrap the clouds. The streets were filled with all new sights and sounds and smells. Merchants lined the gutters, crying out their wares and keeping a cautious eye out for thieves. Their carts were full of polished ornaments and sweet smelling, spicy treats. Perfumes and fabrics overflowed the tables and booths; jewellery, weapons, and various other trinkets caught the light and shone.

People of all shapes and sizes, both young and old, and of all colours imaginable, roamed the streets indiscriminately, laughing and talking with other familiar faces in the crowd. Fabrics of all sorts and colours were worn in thousands of styles and cuts. Flashes of jewels and metals shone brightly in the sunlight. Armoured soldiers and silk-clad nobles and courtiers, some even with bejewelled wrists and throats, rouged faces, and heavily perfumed bodies all mixed together to make a beautiful rainbow within the city. Animals, too, walked the streets; all kinds of cats, dogs, and even horses mingled around and with the humans.

The siblings drank in these sights with relish, and Caoimhe watched the siblings’ looks of awe with a fond smile. Before the siblings, she had never had such naivety or innocence in her – at turns – dangerous and dull Courtly life, and she was not alone. Puss also watched the sibling’s faces with a tender smile; it was rare to see the two as excited as they were today, free from all burdens and cares.

Still smiling, Caoimhe and Puss slowly led the siblings through the crowd and the booths, stopping occasionally when one or another of their group spied a trinket that they just had to see closer. Dione’s eye caught on the perfumes and beaded chains while her brother tended to admire the more colourful fabrics and shining gold amulets. Caoimhe’s eye flitted between her wife and brother-in-law and the swords and armour that the guards wore and the booths held. Puss admired the golden trinkets as well, but his eye was more drawn to the books and old men and women selling them than any other attraction.

The cat did, however, look up from a dusty, practically ancient encyclopaedia in enough time to stop both Dione and, a shock to them all, Caoimhe from purchasing items for nearly triple their practical value. After the nearly embarrassing situation had very barely been successfully averted, Puss promptly decided for the lot of them that lunch was in order. Nevertheless, he did promise the wives that he would find and ask both a reputable bead-maker and a tested smithy over to the house for selling; the perfume and cologne Dione was permitted to buy. And so they made their way to the sweet, spiced air by the food-laden carts. Not being familiar with the city food, Orlando and Dione wanted to try one of nearly all the different types of treats available in the market, but for rather obvious reasons – one such being their still delicate stomachs – the siblings decided, for today at least, to use Caoimhe’s good judgment on city food.

As they sat eating in the open courtyard in the centre of the city, Caoimhe regaled them with tales of Court and it’s rather colourful members, but no doubt, her favourite stories to tell were of the king and his son, the Crown Prince with whom she worked to keep the kingdom safe. Every so often a person walking by would stop and greet the lady, asking especially who her new friends were. When this question was inevitably asked, Heightmyer would smile her Master Detective smile and happily inform the stranger to wait until Court convened in two days’ time. Always the newcomer would complain and try to bargain, bribe, or beg for the information; each was desperate to have the best piece of gossip before his neighbour could learn of it, for such was the life of a member of Court. Each man Caoimhe turned down and gave the same message to: in two days’ time you shall know.

And two days it was; two wonder-filled days of explorations, fittings, and lessons. And finally, before noon on the second day, Caoimhe took her young wife, her brother, and their family cat into the grand palace that covered the second half of the great city. The very wing of the castle where Court was convened was the size of Heightmyer’s whole Winter Mansion, and the wing was full to bursting. Courtiers and their spouses and any of-age children packed the seats, servants who had heard about this great and mysterious announcement form one of the Favourites packed the secret halls, and the great King Alexander III himself sat on the Court room throne. This was a day like no other; some of the most powerful and influential people in the kingdom were present, and Orlando and his sister were more than a little nervous.

The night prior to the grand show today, Puss had shut them and Dione’s wife away in the library and admitted no other to his secret meeting. He warned them that the whole kingdom gathered to hear of one of the king’s Favourites and to meet her new wife and brother.

“And what, pray tell, love, does it mean when Puss speaks of you as a King’s Favourite?” Dione had asked, confused by the, until now, unheard term.

“My honoured Great-grandfather, Henry Hightmyer, was the first great Master Detective, who sought out the nature of and then broke the spell of the Evil Sorceress on King Alexander I, and we have followed tradition ever since. Our family is flavored with land and a great deal of money each year. The King himself blessed me at my naming.”

“Then we are to meet the king himself?” Orlando’s voice shook with surprise. He had never dreamed, not even in some of his wilder ones, that he would ever meet the king himself.

“Aye, you are to meet King Alexander himself tomorrow-noon, but fear not, my young master, fear not, mistress mine, have I not always watched for your best interests?”

“Yes, Puss, you have.” Dione agreed, “We will do as you say now too.”

“Then dress simply; you as well, Caoimhe. For tomorrow the simplest locket will outshine even the royal jewels. We are what the king has asked for, my young lord, not the peacocks that already surround him.”

And so today they knelt plainly before the king and country. Expensive fabrics cut into rather simple styles and the few truly important pieces of jewellery that they owned was all that adorned their bodies, and, true to Puss’s word, they shone brighter than any gem already in the room. Courtiers and their partners leaned over each other to get better looks at the plain dress the girl shone in, they laughed at the novelty of the talking, walking, and, currently bowing cat while simultaneously picking apart the rather unusual colouring of the sibling’s hair and skin.

Then the king spoke, and the room fell silent. “So, my noble Master Detective; Caoimhe, you have taken a wife at last.”

“My lord King,” Caoimhe spoke as she rose from her knees at his king’s unspoken command, “Lady Dione Heightmyer, formally the Lady Gloria of the Kingdom of the Juridans.” And Dione too rose and stood behind her wife. “And last is my Brother-by-the-Marriage-Law, Lord Orlando Gloria and Puss, the cat who brought to me my wife and brother.” The remaining two stood and faced the king, heads politely bowed, awaiting a kind word of accommodation when the charade that Puss had worked so hard to create was torn apart with six quite simple words.