by Tanith Lee
The portion of poetry quoted at the beginning is from the book Rossya by Michael Pennington, Oleander Press, Cambridge 1978.
LA REINE BLANCHE
I wrote this story after a — for me, then — longish block of several months, when so-called real life had drastically intervened in the writing process.
It seemed to me I was working very tentatively, and that language could be as heavy to shift as slabs of stones. I think, and hope, this is not apparent. As usual, the story itself knew exactly what it wanted, and drew itself out of me, finally, with a wonderful sense of renewal and blessing.
The white queen lived in a pale tower, high in a shadowy garden. She had been shut in there three days after the death of her husband, the king. Such a fate was traditional for certain of the royal widows. All about, between the dark verdures of the dark garden, there stared up similar pale towers in which similar white queens had, for centuries, been immured. Most of the prisoners were by now deceased. Occasionally, travellers on the road beneath claimed to have glimpsed — or to have thought that they glimpsed — a dim skeletal shape or two, in senile disarray, peering blindly from the tall narrow windows, which were all the windows these towers possessed, over the heads of the trees, towards the distant spires of the city.
The latest white queen, however, was young. She was just twenty on the day she wed the king, who was one hundred and two years of age. He had been expected to thrive at least for a further decade, and he had left off marrying until absolutely necessary. But he had gone livid merely on seeing her. Then, on the night of the nuptial, stumbling on his wife’s pearl-sewn slippers lying discarded in the boudoir — symbol of joys to come — the king was overwhelmed. He expired an hour later, not even at the nude feet of his wife, only at the foot of the bridal bed. Virgin, wife, and widow, the young queen was adorned in a gown whiter than milk, and on her head, milk-white-coiffed like that of a nun, was placed the Alabaster Crown of mourning. With a long-stemmed white rose in her hand, she was permitted to follow her husband’s bier to the mausoleum. Afterwards, she was taken by torchlight to the shadowy garden beyond the city, and conducted into a vacant tower. It contained a suite of rooms, unmistakably regal, but nevertheless bare. She was to commune with no one, and would be served invisibly. Such things as she might need — food and wine, fuel, clean linen — were to be brought by hidden ways and left for her in caskets and baskets that a pulley device would raise and lower at a touch of her fingers.
Here then, and in this way, she would now live until she died.
A year passed. It might have been fifty. Spring and summer and autumn eschewed the garden, scarcely dusting it with their colours. The shadow trees did not change. The only cold stone blossoms the garden had ever put forth were the towers themselves. When winter began, not even then did the trees alter. But eventually the snow came. Finding the unaltered garden, the snow at last covered it and made it as white as the gown of the young queen.
She stood in her window, watching the snow. Nothing else was to be seen, save the low mauvened sky. Then a black snow-flake fell out of the sky. It came down in the embrasure of the window. A raven looked at the young queen through the glass of her casement. He was blacker than midnight, so vividly different that he startled her and she took half a step away.
‘Gentle Blanche,’ said the raven, ‘have pity, and let me come in.’
The white queen closed her eyes.
‘How is it you can speak?’ she cried.
‘How is it,’ said the raven, ‘you can understand what I say?’
The white queen opened her eyes. She went back to the narrow window-pane.
‘The winter is my enemy,’ said the raven. ‘He pursues me like death or old age, a murderer with a sword. Fair Blanche, shelter me.’
Half afraid, half unable to help herself, the white queen undid the window-catch and the terrible cold thrust through and breathed on the room. Then the raven flew in, and the window was shut.
The raven seated himself before the hearth like a fire-dog of jet.
‘My thanks,’ he said.
The white queen brought him a dish of wine and some cold meat left on the bone.
‘My thanks again,’ said the raven. He ate and drank tidily.
The white queen, seated in her chair, watched him in awe and in silence.
When the raven had finished his meal, he arranged his feathers. His eyes were black, and his beak like a black dagger. He was altogether so black the white queen imagined he must be as black inside as out, even his bones and blood of ebony and ink.
‘And now,’ said the raven, ‘tell me, if you will, about yourself.’
So the white queen — she had no one else to talk to — told the raven how she came to be there, of her wedding, and her husband one hundred and two years old, and of following his cadaver with her white rose, and the torchlit journey here by night, and how it was since the torches went away. It had been so long. Fifty years, or one interminable year, unending.
‘As I supposed,’ said the raven, ‘your story is sad, sinister, and interesting. Shall I tell you, in turn, what I know of the city?’
The white queen nodded slowly, trembling.
The raven said, ‘There is still a king in the palace. He has had the walls dyed and the turrets carved with dragons and gryphons and swans. He loves music, dancing, and all beautiful things. He himself is young and handsome. He has been many months looking for a wife. Portraits and descriptions were brought from neighbouring kingdoms. None will do. The girls are too plump or too thin, too tall, too short, not serious enough, too serious. He sends back slighting messages and breaks hearts. There have been suicides among the rejects. He himself painted an image of the girl he wants. Slender and pale, with a mouth made to smile and eyes that have held sorrow in them like rain in the cups of two cool flowers. I have seen this portrait,’ said the raven. ‘It is yourself.’
The queen laughed. She tossed a pinch of incense on the fire to make the room sweet, and so console herself.
‘How cruel you are,’ she said, ‘when I have tried to be kind.’
‘Not at all. In seven hours it will be midnight. Do you not guess I am the cousin of midnight? It can therefore sometimes be made to do things for me. And you, as you say, have been kind. I am warmed and fed. May I sleep now by your hearth, fair Blanche?’
The white queen sighed her assent.
Beyond the casement the snow-dusk deepened, and on the hearth the fire turned dense and gave off great heat. The raven seemed to melt into a shadow there. Soon his hostess thought she had dreamed it all, though the empty dishes still stood, dull-shining in the twilight.
At midnight she woke, perhaps from sleep, and she was no longer in the tower. For a year of years it had contained her, all the world she knew. Now she was free — but how?
She walked over the snow but did not feel the cold through her slim thin shoes. A moon, the condemned white widow-queen of heaven, blazed in the west, and lit the way beyond the walls of the garden, on to the straight road that led to the city. Although the gates were obscured, Blanche passed directly through the mortared stones of the wall. So she knew. ‘This is only a dream.’ And bitterly, wistfully, she laughed again. ‘All things are possible to a dreamer. If this is the raven’s gift, let me be glad of it.’
Even at these words, she made out a vehicle on the road, which seemed waiting — and for whom but herself? As she stepped closer, she saw it was a beautiful charrette, draped with white satin, and with silver crests on the sides that were like lilies or maybe curved plumes or feathers. White horses in gilded comparison with bells and tassels drew the carriage, but there was no man to drive or escort it.
Nevertheless, the white queen entered and sat down. At once the carriage started off.
Presently, shyly, she glanced at herself. Her mourning garments were gone. The white silk of her gown was figured and fringed by palest rose and sapphire. Her slippers were sewn with pearls. Her hair flowed about her, maiden’s hair
, heavy, curled, and perfumed with musk and oleander. A chaplet of pastel orchids replaced the Alabaster Crown of widowhood and living death.
‘And there are moonstones at my throat, silver bands on my fingers. And how the bells ring and sing in the cold night air.’
They came into the city, through the gates, unchallenged, through dark slight streets, and broad boulevards where torches flashed and lamps hung like golden fruit from wide windows and bird-cage balconies.
Along the same route Blanche had been driven to her marriage. They had warned her from the beginning the king was old, and not easy, but even that had not put out her pride or pleasure. Until she met him on the mountainous stair and gave up her hand to his of gnarled wood and dry paper. He had glared at her in terrified lust, fumbling at his throat to breathe. But now she wished to forget and she forgot. Everything was novel, and fresh.
In the courtyard, the charrette stopped still. Blanche left the carriage. She looked and saw the wonderful gryphons and swans and dragons new-made on the turrets where the banners of the king floated out like soft ribbons. Every window was bright, an orchard of windows, peach and cherry and mulberry.
The guards on the stair blinked but did not check or salute her as she went up between them. Some gasped, some gazed, some did not see her. And some crossed themselves.
The doors glanced open without a sound. Or else she thought that they did. She came across several lamplit rooms into a moon-tinctured walk where only glow-worms and fountains flickered, and nightingales made music like the notes of the stars. At the end of the walk, Blanche the white queen saw a golden salon where candle flames burned low. She had known the way.
As she entered, she found the young king of whom the raven had told her. He was dark as she was pale, his own hair black as the branch of a tree against the snow. He was handsome, too. And she felt a pang of love, and another of dismay, though not surprise.
He caught sight of her at once, and started to his feet.
‘Are you real?’ he said. His voice was musical and tensed between delight and anger.
‘No,’ said Blanche. ‘I am a dream. Mine, or yours.’
‘You are a painting come to life.’
Blanche smiled. The raven, who surely was to be her tormentor, had spoken the truth to her. Or else, for now, it was the truth.
‘I would,’ he said, ‘have waited all my life for you. And since you may not be real, I may have to wait, still. Having seen you, I can hardly do otherwise. Unless you consent to stay.’
‘I think I may be permitted to stay until sunrise. It seems to me I am in league with darkness. Until dawn, then.’
‘Because you are a ghost.’
Blanche went to him across the golden gloom and put her hand in his outstretched hand.
‘You are living flesh,’ said the king. He leaned forward and kissed her lips, quietly. ‘Warm and douce and live. Even though a dream.’
For an hour, they talked together. Musicians were summoned, and if they saw or feared her, or whatever they thought, they played, and the young queen and the young king danced over the chequered floor. And they drank wine, and walked among roses and sculptures and clocks and mysteries, and so came eventually to a private place, a beautiful bedroom. And here they lay down and were lovers together, splendidly and fiercely and in rapture, and in regret, for it was a dream, however sweet, however true.
‘Will you return to me?’ he said.
‘My heart would wish it. I do not think I shall return, to you.’
‘I will nevertheless wait for you. In case it chances you put on mortal shape. For this is too lovely to believe in.’
‘Do not,’ said Blanche, ‘wait long. Waiting is a prison.’ But she knew these words were futile.
Just then a bird sang far away across the palace gardens. It was not a nightingale.
‘Let me go now, my beloved,’ said Blanche. ‘I must leave instantly. I am partly afraid of what the sun may do to me before your eyes.’
‘Alas,’ he said.
He did not hinder her.
Blanche quickly drew on her garments, even the chaplet of orchids which showed no sign of withering. She clasped her jewels about her throat. A frosty sheen lay on the window-panes that the stars and the sinking moon had not put there. ‘Adieu,’ she said. ‘Live well. Do not, do not remember me.’
Blanche fled from the chamber and away through the palace, the rooms all darkling now, the silent fountain walk, the outer salons, the stair. In the courtyard the charrette and its horses remained, but it was half transparent. This time, none of the guards had seen her pass. As she hastened on she realised that she had after all forgotten her pearl-sewn slippers. She felt only smooth cobblestones under her feet — there was no snow, and now it came to her that there had been none, in any corner of the city or the palace that she had visited.
The carriage started off. It flew like the wind, or a bell-hung bird, into the face of the dawn. And when the dawn smote through, the carriage fell apart like silver ashes. The sun’s lilting blade pierced her heart. And she woke alone, seated in her chair before the cold hearth, in the pale tower, in the shadowy garden. As she had known she would.
‘Cruel raven,’ said the white queen, as she sprinkled crumbs of meat and bread along the embrasure of her window. She was full of pain and stiffness, and even to do so much made her anxious. Nor did she think he would come back. The winter day had passed, or had it been the whole of the winter which was gone? The snow faded between the shadow trees. The white queen looked from her narrow window and pulled her breath into her body without ease. ‘Spring will come,’ she said. ‘But not any spring for me.’
She turned and went back to her chair. Within the white coif, under the Alabaster Crown, her face was like a carved bone, the eyes sunk deep, the cheeks and lips. As she sat, her limbs creaked and crackled, hurting her. Tears welled in the sunken pools of her eyes. They were no longer two flowers holding rain.
‘I am old,’ said the white queen. ‘In one night, I grew to be so. Or were they fifty nights, or a hundred nights, that seemed only one?’ She recalled the young king, and his hair black as a raven. She wept a little, where once she would have laughed at the bitter joke. ‘He would despise me. No magic now and no demoiselle of dream. I should revolt him now. He would wish me dead, to be free of me.’ She closed her eyes. ‘As I wished my own aged husband dead, for I thought even this pale tower could be no worse than marriage to such a creature.’
When the white queen opened her eyes, the raven stood in the opened window like a blot of ink.
‘Gentle Blanche,’ said the raven, ‘let me come in.’
‘You are in,’ she said. ‘My heart is full of you, you evil magician. I gave you food and drink and shelter and you did harm to me, and perhaps to another. Of course you did.’
‘Also you, my lady, told me a story. Now I,’ said the raven, ‘will tell one to you.’
‘Long ago,’ said the raven, ‘there was a maiden of high birth. Her name was Blanche. She might have made a good marriage among several of the great houses, to young men who were her peers. But it was told to her that she might also make a marriage with the king and rule the whole kingdom. He was old, decaying, and foolish, she was warned of this. But Blanche did not care. Let me agree; he will die soon, thought Blanche. Then I will be regent to any who come after, and still I will rule the land.’
‘Oh,’ said the white queen, ‘I remember.’
‘However,’ said the raven, sitting on the hearth like a gargoyle of black coal, ‘when Blanche was given to the king and saw and touched him, her courage failed her. By then it was too late. They were lighted to their bed and priests blessed it. As he had come from his disrobing, the king had stumbled on Blanche’s discarded slippers, and called out, and fallen. As he was revived by his servitors, the aged monarch muttered. He had dreamed of a girl like Blanche eighty years before. Or else it was a spirit who visited him. The girl of his dreams had been his wife for one night, and he had w
orshipped her ever since, refusing to marry, looking only for his lover to return to him. In his youth he had been mad, ten whole years, following the uncanny visitation, wandering the earth in search of his ghost-bride. He had even unearthed tombs and dug up embalmed corpses, to see if any of them might be she. All his life, even when the madness left him, he waited. And it seemed that Blanche, whom he had now wedded, was the image of the ghost-bride and, like her, had left her pearl-sewn slippers lying behind her.’
‘Yes,’ said the white queen, ‘I recall.’ She leaned her head on her hand, on her sore wrist thin as a stick.
‘However,’ said the raven again, ‘Blanche barely listened to these ramblings of her senile husband. She lay in the silk covers shrinking and in horror. She thought, he is decrepit and weak and easily distressed, and so easily destroyed. When the servants and the priests were gone, she kneeled upon the bridal couch and taunted her old husband and railed at him. Her tongue was sharp with ambition and loathing. She broke his heart. He died at the foot of the bed.’
‘I called at once for help,’ said Blanche. ‘I thought they would judge me blameless. But it seems someone had stayed to listen and had overheard. For a certain kind of murder, the murder of a king by his queen without the brewing of a draught, the striking of a blow, this is the punishment. Confined alive until death in a tower in a cemetery garden. A white queen, a murderess. I am punished. Why,’ said the old white queen, ‘is fate so malicious, and are you fate? If I had met him as he was that night, young and strong, handsome and wise, how could I not have loved him? Yet I was sent back eighty years to harm him, as I would harm him eighty years in the future. And as he has harmed me.’
‘You were his punishment,’ said the raven. ‘His pride and his own malign tongue had broken hearts, as his would break. He would brook only perfection, a single sort of perfection, and was intolerant of all others. So this perfection came to him and was lost to him. He might have relinquished the dream still, and would not. He waited until he was a hundred and two years of age to claim a girl of twenty, such, even then, was his overbearing blind pride. It cost him dear.’