We return to the palace. Act two of the performance begins in the throne room. Mariusz and I must hold hands and neither move nor blink while a photographist makes a daguerrotype of the happy couple. Then Mariusz is to sit on the throne and I must stand over him with one hand on his shoulder. The photographist cannot be satisfied with my posture and rearranges my hand and fingers by minute degrees. He mutters directions under his breath which Mariusz lazily translates for me.

"He wants soft hands. Kind hands."

"I don't what that means."

"Gentle, friendly."

"How can hands be friendly?"

Mariusz shrugs and dislodges my unfriendly hand.

The photographist gives up and instead makes me lean over the throne with my arms crossed on its back. I look down at the top of Mariusz's pondweedy blond head with what I hope passes for softness.

After that comes an interlude of preparation. Maidservants descend upon me to unpick the train from my dress and veil from my head. The royal chamberlain directs palace attendants to primp bowls of roses, adjust drapes by quarter-inches, and smooth invisible wrinkles in the long red carpet. Mariusz drifts idly around the room, nibbling at nuts, which he seems to have secreted in the pocket of his wedding suit. My own stomach grumbles. It is well into the afternoon and I did not eat breakfast. A valet enters the throne room, bearing a red silk cushion upon which rests a silver and black velvet crown. Mariusz appears not to notice him and ambles to the other side of the room. The valet hurries after him in small, mincing steps, careful not to jog the crown on its cushion. Mariusz turns on his heel, blind to all but the cracking of nuts, and drifts optimistically in the direction of a half-open window. The chamberlain darts to shut it, and the valet corners Mariusz against it. With a heavy sigh, Mariusz places the crown on his head.

When my train and veil are removed, I join Mariusz at the doors to the throne room, uniformed attendants at our side, and the longest scene of the entire performance begins.

Guests arrive. Hundreds of them. We shake hands and greet each in turn, starting with the highest of rank in foreign princes and ending with disgruntled gentlemen and their tired wives. It takes over three hours, and though I am supposed to smile at each person, I give up before the end of the first hour. Mariusz does not even try.

I have memorized a few key phrases of welcome in Selician, which I rotate endlessly through without understanding any replies in kind. Some of our guests kindly try my French, or offer some tentative, hopeful German, which I can understand if not speak. One misguided woman tries Russian, and when that fails gives me a pitying smile.

Mariusz, scowling next to me, is nonetheless much more successful. It seems he has a passing acquaintance with nearly every language spoken in the room. Even a dark-skinned diplomat receives a few stumbling words in his own tongue, though Mariusz's accent affords him much amusement.

It is late afternoon by the time we have greeted every last one of our thousand-odd guests. My feet are numb and I have long since ceased to be aware of hunger except as a dull weakness inside me. We lead our guests to the great hall for the wedding banquet. I and Mariusz and his family and my uncle sit at a small table at the front of the hall, with other, longer tables set perpendicular to us. It is a very formal banquet, interrupted by much bell ringing and many speeches. Everybody is now speaking Selician and I understand nothing. I eat and drink in a cacophony of chatter that might as well be silence. Only once I have fortified myself on champagne and roast duck and baked apples and pancakes with sweet cheese and cherry jam do I notice that Mariusz is silent too. He speaks not a word until the time comes for him to give his speech.

I tense as he stands, but there is no repeat of the first night's insult. He gives a sombre address that encourages nodding and solemn clapping from his audience. At the end of it, he bows low to me and kisses my hand.

After the meal, we all move to the ballroom. I have practiced with a dance master this past week, and the first waltz with Mariusz embarrasses neither of us. Once that is over, though, I am by tradition obliged not to refuse any man who asks me for a dance — and every man seeking a favour from King Edmund or Prince Mariusz is bound to. I step on toes and perspire and puff and pant and squeak my way through conversations in broken French with a never-ending parade of strange men. Those who seek favours go away disappointed in me and their object, but there are always more behind them, ready to take their chances on the duke's foreign wife.

I am granted a reprieve only when Mariusz interrupts a man about to ask me to dance and claims my hand for his own in a flutter of eloquent French. Before the music can begin, he runs his cold grey eyes calculatingly over my body.

"You are tired," he says in Rothalian.

"Yes, sir."

"So am I. Come. We shall find chairs and pretend to talk."

We find chairs in an alcove and Mariusz beckons over an attendant to supply us with two glasses and a bottle of champagne. When anyone ventures near, Mariusz leans close and says softly to bend my head and smile, and I do, and it is enough to make them wander away again. Apart from these moments, we talk not at all.

At ten o'clock, we return to the great hall for a supper. Everyone is tired now and there are no more speeches. Many of the guests have already left. I eat vast quantities of sweet pancakes and drink more champagne. The worst is over now. When the supper is finished, Mariusz and I stand on the front steps of the palace under a clouded night sky to bid our guests goodbye. The champagne has made me forget my stock of Selician phrases. In silence, I offer my hand to be shaken or kissed. Even Mariusz has very few words in any language.

The last disgruntled gentleman and his wife and daughters shake my hand and go down the stairs to their coach. The ceremony, the performance, is over.

Mariusz and I go back inside the palace. I think now we will go to bed — it is nearing midnight. Instead, he returns to the ballroom. I follow him. The musicians are still here, as are a scant fifty or sixty people lingering around the room in small groups. I recognize some of their faces: Mariusz's friends. His mother's friends. Some who must be cousins or relatives of the royal family. The ceremony is over. The party begins.

The musicians start up again. Mariusz downs a glass of champagne and calls one of his friends to dance. I sink down in a chair and drink glass after glass of champagne every time a footman comes near to offer one. At one point, King Edmund comes and sits down near me.

"You look unhappy," he observes.

"I'm tired." I look sourly at him. "You're not drunk."

"No." He raises his eyebrows.

"Everyone else is." Even Mariusz's prim mother is pink cheeked and loud voiced, in conversation with Lord Tarnuv the prime minister.

"Yes. They are." He looks pointedly at my champagne glass. "Can you hold your liquor?"

"Better than anybody else, I think."

On the dance floor, one of Mariusz's friends — the chubby one — removes his jacket and cravat and vest and collar, and continues to remove clothes until he is bare-chested. He begins to dance a sort of Selician war dance. He does not dance it well.

But I am very drunk, and I know it. The only reason I have not got up and walked away from my uncle is that I am quite sure I would stumble. So I stay sitting with him, drinking my champagne, until the last straggling guests, some three dozen of them now, begin to chant a Selician phrase over and over. My uncle does not translate it for me. He stands, bows, and walks away. As he passes through the doors, a crowd of women surround me and sweep me up from my seat. My feet tangle as I am pulled into a circle with the women, my hands tightly gripped on either side so I cannot escape. The women are ruddy-cheeked and laughing, swaying to the drink as much as the dance.

Into this circle, under a pair of linked arms, someone pushes Mariusz. He is wearing his chubby friend's cravat as a blindfold, but I am sure that is not the only reason his feet stumble. Outside our circle, the men stamp their feet and continue the chant while the women begin to dance slowly in a circle around the prince, laughing, but not speaking. I am pulled along with them, my feet slow and heavy, confused.

I get the point soon enough. Mariusz holds out his arms and stumbles forward until he catches the shoulders of a young woman. The circle slows to a stop and the men cease their stamping and chanting. Mariusz feels up and down the woman's shoulders questioningly and asks a question in Selician, which no one answers. He fumbles forward and kisses the woman, missing her mouth and getting her nose instead.

"Ne," he says, which I understand, and now I, too, understand this game.

Again we dance, and I am powerless to pull out of the circle. Mariusz feels his way blindly around the women, touching shoulders, breasts, faces and waists, with a questioning and appreciative hand. Occasionally he calls out, and the men stop stamping and the women stop dancing so he can kiss the woman he has found, but each time he is able to answer his own question with a resounding ne and the dance and stamping begin again.

No wonder King Edmund left the room. He knew what the chanting meant, and left so that he would not have to witness this deplorable game. I am powerless to stop it, for I know what it would look like if I do: the humourless, angry bride, the nag. I can only dance on drunken feet and hope Mariusz comes to me soon enough and recognizes me when he does.

But though his hands caress my figure and face several times, he never calls out for the circle to stop at me, and finally he must grow bored, for he comes to a swaying halt and calls out something in Selician. There is a brief argument then, between him and his friends, but Mariusz wins it. One of his friends ducks under a woman's arms into the circle and takes Mariusz's arm to guide him towards me. Even as he does so, the chubby friend, still shirtless, slips in between two women and takes their hands. With a wicked smile, Mariusz's other friend guides him towards the chubby man. Mariusz wastes no time feeling his shoulders and waist. He places his hands over his friend's cheeks and kisses him full on the lips.

Everybody bursts out laughing, except me. Above it all, Mariusz shouts, "Da!"

He removes his blindfold and stares in confusion at his chubby friend.

"Ne," he says sadly. Then bursts out laughing himself.

People swarm around him, and try to put his blindfold back on. It gives me the chance to break free of the circle and tear my hand from the woman next to me. She tries to pull me back and stammers some broken French:

"They play game, Your Highness. They play game."

Mariusz is resisting the blindfold. He tears away from the group and rips it from his face. Then he stops still and stares somewhere over my shoulder.

"Eleonora! Ljuba!"

I know what that means. I turn to follow his gaze, expecting a beautiful woman. Instead, a huge white goat peers through an open window, a mouthful of silk curtain in her jaw.

--

2024-04-09: The language they are speaking is Interslavic, the closest thing I can get to an imaginary Slavic language. Ne - no. Da - yes. Ljuba - sweetheart.