to placate a powerful rival, to bear royal heirs. They are, in the old stories, gifts and rewards, handed over by their loving fathers to heroes and adventurers who must undergo trials, or save people. It would appear, Fiammarosa had thought as a young girl, reading both histories and wonder tales, that princesses are commodities. But also, in the same histories and tales, it can be seen that this is not so. Princesses are captious and clever choosers. They tempt and test their suitors, they sit like spiders inside walls adorned with the skulls of the unsuccessful, they require superhuman feats of strength and cunning from their suitors, and are not above helping out, or weeping over, those who appeal to their hearts. They follow their chosen lovers through rough deserts, and ocean tempests, they ride on the wings of the north wind and enlist the help of ants and eagles, trout and mice, hares and ducks, to rescue these suddenly helpless husbands from the clutches of scheming witches, or ogre-kings. They do have, in real life, the power to reject and some power to choose. They are wooed. She had considered her own cold heart in this context and had thought that she would do better, ideally, to remain unmarried. She was too happy alone to make a good bride. She could not think out a course of action entirely but had vaguely decided upon a course of prevarication and intimidation, if suitors presented themselves. For their own sakes, as much as for her own. She was sorry, in the abstract – she thought a great deal in the abstract, it suited her – for anyone who should love her, or think it a good idea to love her. She did not believe she was truly lovable. Beside her parents, and her brothers, whose love was automatic and unseeing, the only person who truly loved her was Hugh. And her cold eye, and her cold mind, had measured the gulf between what Hugh felt for her and what she felt for him. She tried never to let it show; she was grateful, his company was comfortable to her. But both he and she were intelligent beings, and both knew how things stood.
The King had his own ideas, which he believed were wise and subtle, about all this. He believed his daughter needed to marry more than most women. He believed she needed to be softened and opened to the world, that she had inherited from the unsatisfactory icewoman a dangerous, brittle edge which would hurt her more than anyone else. He believed it would be good for his daughter to be melted smooth, though he did not, in his thinking, push this metaphor too far. He had a mental image of an icicle running with water, not of an absent icicle and a warm, formless pool. He thought the sensible thing would be to marry this cold creature to a prince from the icelands from which the original Fror had been snatched by King Beriman, and he sent letters to Prince Boris, beyond the mountains, with a sample of his daughter’s weaving, and a painting of her white beauty, her fine bones, blue eyes and cool gold hair. He was a great believer in protocol, and protocol had always, at these times, meant that the picture and the invitation must go to many princes, and not only one. There must be a feast, and something of a competition. What happened customarily was that the Princess’s portrait would go simultaneously (allowing for the vagaries of horses and camels, galleons and mule trains) to many eligible princes. The princes, in turn, on receiving the portrait, would return gifts, sumptuous gifts, striking gifts, to the king, to be given to the Princess. And if she found them acceptable (or if her father did), then the princes would make the journey in person, and the Princess, in person, would make her choice. In this way, the King offended none of his proud neighbours, leaving the choice to the whim, or the aesthetic inclination, of the young woman herself. Of course, if there were any pressing reason why one alliance was more desirable than another, most fathers would enlighten their daughters, and some would exhort or threaten. In the case of Fiammarosa none of this applied. Her father wished