The Beatryce Prophecy

The man knows Jack and Beatryce are in the tree because they smell like fear. Jack makes up a story about them having a message for the king, which the man doesn’t believe. Answelica doesn’t attack the man again, which Beatryce recognizes as a sign of trust. She climbs down from the tree, and though Jack doesn’t trust the man, he follows because somehow “where Beatryce went, he must go” (114).

Beatryce hates the sword because she can feel that it knows something about her past. The man no longer has a name, but he tells the children to call him Cannoc. Beatryce decides to trust him because she liked his song about Answelica and “because he laughed so well” (117). This makes her realize she trusts others in her life for strange reasons, such as Jack for his whistle and Answelica for her soft ear, and she doesn’t know how to feel about this.

At the monastery, the king’s soldiers question Edik, who admits to finding Beatryce. Long ago, Edik spoke the prophecy about a girl unseating a king and bringing about change, which he now knows to be about Beatryce. After gathering supplies, he goes to the village, where the innkeeper’s wife claims she knows nothing while pointing in the direction she saw the group enter the dark woods. Edik doesn’t know if he’ll find Beatryce, but he goes after her, thinking, “It mattered that he should look for her, that he should never give up searching for her” (124).

Cannoc leads the group to his home in the trunk of a tree, where Beatryce falls asleep holding Answelica’s ear. Jack tells Cannoc how the king wants to harm Beatryce, to which Cannoc says that kings “do not know what they want. Except for one thing, of course: they want to keep being kings” (126).

Beatryce dreams of the seahorse and remembers more details, including her tutor, her brothers, and the warm sunlight reflecting off of her auburn hair. Soldiers burst into the room, killing her tutor and brothers, and Beatryce pretends to be dead to save her life. The soldier announces that his task is complete, and Beatryce recognizes him as “the man in the dark room at the inn” (131). Someone shouts her name, and she wakes.

Beatryce starts to cry, sobbing so much that she feels “she would drown in her own tears” (133). She remembers everything about the attack, but she does not know what became of her mother. At the mention of her mother, she remembers her true identity, Beatryce of Abelard, and that the king wants her dead.

Cannoc reveals he was once king but left the castle one day and never went back. Ever since, he’s felt freer than he ever did with the crown on his head and all the power of the king’s station. When Jack asks if anyone searched for him, Cannoc says that no one looks for a king. Rather, those left behind “start to scheme and calculate about how to take the crown for themselves” (138). With her memory restored, Beatryce will bring the sword that killed her family back to the king and force him to account for his actions.

In the castle dungeon, the king’s counselor tells Beatryce’s mother about Beatryce’s prophecy to unseat the king and bring about change, adding that he used the king’s prophecy to benefit himself and muses, “[W]hy not bend another to my ends?” (143).

Edik wanders lost in the dark woods, his father’s voice an echo in his head that insults him for all his shortcomings. Suddenly, there is a man with a knife ahead of him, and Edik thinks to Beatryce that he’s sorry and that “[he] tried. [He] did try” (149).

Jack tries to talk Beatryce out of confronting the king, but Beatryce won’t relent. Beatryce remembers two tutors she had. The first was an oily man who wanted to suppress her curiosity and intellect. The second showed her amazing things in the world and sky. Beatryce thinks of how much learning opened her mind and again resolves to make the king account for his deeds: “But first, I will teach Jack Dory his letters” (153).

As promised, Beatryce teaches Jack the alphabet, and with every letter he learns, Jack feels as if “a door pushed open inside of him” (156).

Beatryce dreams of her castle home, where a strange bird tells her that someone has taken her mother. Before Beatryce can learn who, she wakes feeling cold. She wants her mother and Edik, and she concludes, “There are too many people to miss” (159).

In the dark woods, Edik realizes he is not afraid of the man with the knife. Edik thinks of Beatryce, Answelica, and the prophecy, “glad to have been a part of the story” (162). The man orders Edik to kneel and close his eyes. Edik does, and soon, he hears laughter. After a moment, the man with the knife is gone, and Cannoc arrives, laughing and asking Edik to come with him.

Cannoc and Edik arrive at Cannoc’s house, where Beatryce tells him what she’s learned about herself. In return, Edik tells her about her prophecy, and Beatryce feels “the wind from her dream—cold, powerful—blow through her” (167).

The group discusses the prophecy and the future. Cannoc wonders if the change will make Beatryce a queen, to which Beatryce says she doesn’t want to be a queen and wants “only to find my mother and to look the king in the eye and hear him say what he has done” (169). Jack and Edik remind her of the promises she made them (teaching Jack to read and writing the mermaid’s story for Edik).

As the others sleep, Beatryce lies awake thinking of everything she lost, the prophecy, and what she must do to make things right. Though she doesn’t like it, she needs to face the king first and fulfill her promises to Jack and Edik later if she has the opportunity. With Answelica at her side, she steps out into the starlit night, which she admires for a moment before “the stars disappeared, and the world became nothing but darkness” (174).

Answelica rushes back into the tree and wakes Jack, who grabs the soldier’s sword and hurries outside, only to find Beatryce gone. Edik and Cannoc join him, and there is a moment of despair before Jack looks into Answelica’s eyes and sees the truth: “There is no time to waste. We must go to the castle of the king” (177).

Wrapped in a foul-smelling cloth, Beatryce rides on a horse with her captor. In the past, there was always someone to help her through the dark times, but now, she only has herself, which reminds her of a storybook she read in which a king-turned-wolf could only become human again once he believed in who he was. With this, Beatryce realizes she is beloved by people and a goat and that they will come find her because “we shall all, in the end, be led to where we belong. We shall all, in the end, find our way home” (185).

Cannoc spends the rest of the night teaching Jack how to fight with the sword, and the group sets out after Beatryce at dawn. Armed with his new weapon and knowledge, Jack focuses on the robber who killed his parents and whoever took Beatryce, thinking that “Jack Dory and his sword would like to meet them all” (187).