“Add eighty more. I want a hundred men. Clear?”
“A hundred men it will be. Every Brute available.”
“Inside the castle I’m quite safe. I have my own supplies, food, stables, enough. As long as they cannot get at me, I will survive. These, then, are the new and final plans—jot them down. All five-hundredth-anniversary arrangements are canceled until after the wedding. The wedding is tomorrow sunset. My bride and I will ride my whites to Florin Channel surrounded by all your enforcers. There we will board a ship and begin our long-awaited honeymoon surrounded by every ship in the Florin Armada—”
“Every ship but four,” Buttercup corrected.
He blinked at her a moment in silence. Then he said, blowing her a kiss, but discreetly, so Yellin couldn’t see, “Yes, yes, how forgetful I am, every ship but four.” He turned back to Yellin.
But in his blink, in that following silence, Buttercup had seen it all.
“Those ships will stay with us until I deem it safe to release them. Of course, Guilder could attack then, but that is a chance we must risk. Let me think if there’s anything else.” The Prince loved giving orders, especially the kind he knew would never need carrying out. Also, Yellin was a slow jotter, and that only added to the fun. “Excused,” the Prince said finally.
With a bow, Yellin was gone.
“The four ships were never sent,” Buttercup said, when they were alone. “Don’t bother lying to me any more.”
“Whatever was done was done for your own good, sweet pudding.”
“Somehow, I do not think so.”
“You’re nervous, I’m nervous; we’re getting married tomorrow, we’ve got a right to be.”
“You couldn’t be more wrong, you know; I’m very calm.” And in truth, she did seem that way. “It doesn’t matter whether you sent the ships or not. Westley will come for me. There is a God; I know that. And there is love; I know that too; so Westley will save me.”
“You’re a silly girl, now go to your room.”
“Yes, I am a silly girl and, yes again, I will go to my room, and you are a coward with a heart filled with nothing but fear.”
The Prince had to laugh. “The greatest hunter in the world and you say I am a coward?”
“I do, I do indeed. I’m getting much smarter as I age. I say you are a coward and you are; I think you hunt only to reassure yourself that you are not what you are: the weakest thing to ever walk the Earth. He will come for me and then we will be gone, and you will be helpless for all your hunting, because Westley and I are joined by the bond of love and you cannot track that, not with a thousand bloodhounds, and you cannot break it, not with a thousand swords.”
Humperdinck screamed toward her then, ripping at her autumn hair, yanking her from her feet and down the long curving corridor to her room, where he tore that door open and threw her inside and locked her there and started running for the underground entrance to the Zoo of Death—
My father stopped reading. ‘Go on,’ I said.
‘Lost my place,’ he said and I waited there, still weak with pneumonia and wet with fear until he started reading again. ‘Inigo allowed Fezzik to open the door—’ ‘Hey,’ I said. ‘Hold it, that’s not right, you skipped,’ and then I quick caught my tongue because we’d just had that scene when I got all upset about Buttercup marrying Humperdinck when I’d accused him of skipping, and I didn’t want any repeat of that. ‘Daddy,’ I said, ‘I don’t mean anything or anything, but wasn’t the Prince sort of running toward the Zoo and then the next thing you said was about Inigo, and maybe, I mean, shouldn’t there be a page or like that in between?’