The Fairest of Them All

by Carolyn Turgeon

  I was not used to having to explain myself. I’d always been either Mathena’s helper or the queen. People had always known exactly who I was, and had always responded to my beauty—or notoriety—with a kind of awe that he did not seem to feel.

  It unnerved me.

  “I wanted to see what was here,” I said.

  I focused all my energy on him, to try to charm him.

  The bird on his wrist started flapping its wings suddenly, crying out, and he soothed it, speaking softly and running a finger down its breast until it calmed.

  “You’re scaring the birds,” he said.

  “I want to hunt with one of these falcons,” I said. The words came out on their own, surprising me.

  He laughed. “These are the king’s falcons, my lady. If you’d like a kestrel to fly, you might look elsewhere.”

  His insolence infuriated me. “The king,” I said proudly, “is my husband.”

  I expected some kind of horror to pass over his face, a recognition and a shame, but he seemed unmoved. “Ah,” he said. “You are the witch.”

  “I was raised a healer,” I said.

  “It’s not an insult,” he said. “Despite what Father Martin says. Here, let’s go outside. The birds are getting restless.”

  We walked back out into the afternoon light, which seemed glaringly bright after the hushed darkness of the mews, though now the sun was hidden by clouds. The air smelled, suddenly, of approaching rain.

  His foot landed on my hair, and he stepped back quickly, apologizing, but not before I took him into me: his love for beast and wood, his respect for all natural things, his distrust of the palace and all inside it.

  Now that I could see him better, I was struck by his features. His hair was black and thick, and his eyes were like ink. He was quite handsome, but in a coarse way, as if he’d been carved out of a boulder.

  I realized I was staring and looked away. “I was raised with a falcon,” I said.

  “I know.”

  “You do?”

  He nodded. “I knew Madame Gothel. Well, my father did. She was here when I was a child.”

  “Your father?”

  “He was the king’s falconer before I was, just as my grandfather was before him. My father knew Mathena well. She spent a lot of time out here, in the mews.”

  “She raised me,” I said.

  “I know this. Everyone talks of it. Even I cannot avoid hearing about it.”

  “And what do you hear?”

  “That the king has gone mad and married a witch.”

  I bristled. “Do you think he has gone mad?”

  There was a small smile hovering on his lips. “I do not judge the actions of my king, Your Grace. And I would never question my new queen.” He bowed, with a flourish.

  I laughed, and then forced myself to sober. “That is comforting,” I said. “Tell me more about Mathena, what you remember. I know barely anything of her life here.” I hated the plaintiveness I could hear in my own voice.

  “She was the queen’s favorite. The queen could barely turn in her bed without consulting Mathena first. They often went hawking with the king. King Louis was an avid hawker.”

  “So you were just a child when you knew her?”

  He nodded. “But I’ll never forget her. My father admired her a great deal. Said he’d never seen a more able woman than her. She had a lot of power here at one time. She had the ear of the queen and, through her, the king.”

  “It is hard to imagine that now.”

  “Things shifted at a certain point. It seemed like everything changed at once. That happens at court, people gaining power and losing it. Things have changed much since your husband took the throne, too.”

  His tone suggested that he did not think it was for the better.

  I gestured toward the birds in the mews. “Why do you keep them this way, chained up and with hoods over their heads?”

  “That’s how they’re trained to hunt, to work with a human hunter.”

  “Brune, Mathena’s falcon, always flew free, with us.”

  “I know. The queen gave Brune to Mathena, as a gift. Brune was trained in the same manner as the other birds. My father trained her, the same way I train these birds now. They’re ferocious hunters. It’s not in their nature to serve men.”

  “I did not know that,” I said. “About Brune, that she’s so old.”

  “I’m happy she’s been able to survive these many years. It’s not usual, but then she has a very unusual mistress.”

  “Indeed she does.”

  He watched me then, making no attempt to fill the space between us. A multitude of questions battered at me about Mathena’s past.

  Instead I repeated awkwardly, “I would like to go out with the hawks one day. Perhaps you might accompany the princess and me on horseback. I understand she is partial to horses.”

  “I’m at your service,” he said. “The king now has little use for me, though I keep the finest hawks any king could want. My name is Gilles.”

  “I will call for you.”

  Just then the sky opened and rain began pouring over the earth. I looked up, letting the rain stream down over my skin and dress.

  I had the odd feeling that Mathena herself had caused it, angry at me for trying to uncover her secrets.

  I shook the thought away, and went running for shelter from the wet afternoon.

  It rained nearly every day after that, but I didn’t mind, and sometimes preferred this wet world around me. Either way, I loved that unobstructed, treeless sky. I spent afternoons luring Snow White away from her studies and riding through the sodden countryside with her. There were whole swaths of the kingdom I’d never seen to the north of the palace, away from the forest where I’d grown up. The Dark Forest, as people called it in whispers, lay to the south. I came to learn that people not only spoke about the bandits and witches who lived in the forest, but about enchanted swans, mythical centaurs, and fire-breathing dragons. Sometimes, just for fun, I liked to mention my dragon friends and make my ladies shriek with horror.

  It was wonderful, riding through the meadows and farmland with Snow White next to me, and the guards following. It helped satisfy my craving for the woods, and made it easier for me to adjust to life at court, with all its formalities. I kept my hair loose and flying in the wind, creating a golden ribbon behind us. On occasion, when I summoned him, the falconer Gilles would join us with one or two of his hawks. His quiet, honest presence was calming, and I came to count on it. I loved looking over and seeing Snow White smiling, leaning into her horse, her hands stroking its sleek neck, her hair streaming out behind her. Above us, the birds would glide and dip and cry out, and I’d spur my horse to go faster, to try to keep up. To fly. Lush green rolled out on all sides of us, and we rode through villages and past sprawling farms and peasant cottages with gardens in front of them.

  It was on those rides that I first noticed the failing crops that plagued the kingdom. Though it was nearing harvest time, we passed wheat fields with dirty brown stalks, sticking out from pools of mud. Fields of scraggly, half-dead barley, gardens that were decimated or rotted over.

  “Do you see that?” I said to Snow White and Gilles, when they slowed down at my command and pulled up their horses beside mine.

  “It’s all the rain,” Gilles said.

  “What is?” Snow White asked.

  “The crops,” I said. “There’s no wheat.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said, looking around.

  “The crops are failing. These people can’t make bread, if there’s no wheat. See how the wheat is brown instead of gold? That field should be full of golden wheat, and men harvesting it.”

  “Will you show me?” she said. “I want to see.”

  The three of us dismounted, and walked across the wet grass. The field in front of us was empty. A few cows grazed on the grass nearby.

  I bent down and pulled up a piece of wet, moldy wheat plant. Where there should have been a b
right head of grain sparking from the top, there was nothing. Just a rotten stem.

  “Do you know what wheat should look like?” I asked, handing the stalk to her.

  Again she made that worried face, and I realized she did not. She was a child of book learning, in the palace of a king obsessed with art and words.

  “There should be grain here, all along the top. It should be alive, vibrant.”

  She stared at it intently, rubbing it through her fingers.

  I looked up at Gilles, who was watching me curiously.

  Snow White scrunched up her serious face. “Can we do anything for them? Can we make the wheat grow again?”

  I thought of all those years of gardening, and working with the earth. All those women whose hunger I felt vibrating through my locks. “We can’t make it stop raining,” I said, “but I think we might do something.”

  “Really?” Her face lit up as she turned to me, clutching the plant in her fist.

  “Perhaps you can help me gather herbs from the palace garden. We can make a mixture of them that might help these crops, that might help the wheat grow better next year.”

  “That is a good idea,” Gilles said. “A generous one.” He caught my eye and I looked down, embarrassed but pleased by his admiration.

  Snow White nodded vigorously. “I want to do that,” she said.

  “Then that is what we’ll do.”

  Over the next days, as Snow White and I—and other ladies of the court we gathered to help us—collected herbs from the garden, the castle was also beginning to prepare for the greatest event of the entire year, the harvest ball. It was the same ball I’d wanted to attend years before, the night Mathena locked me in the tower. All across the kingdom the richest subjects planned which of their daughters could afford to go and made clever uses of fabric to create suitable dresses for them, in hopes of attracting a nobleman for a son-in-law. At court, every servant was tasked with some type of elaborate preparation and the kitchen was busy for days as cooks created herb-scented breads, pastel-colored pastries, sugared-flower sculptures, and any number of other decadent treats.

  Father Martin warned the court at Mass about excess and overindulgence, but could not dampen enthusiasm for a ball that everyone loved, and had loved, for centuries.

  At Josef’s urging, I had seamstresses working night and day on a dress that would be more dazzling than anything anyone had ever seen before. Ten ladies sewed gems onto silk, so that when I moved the dress would gleam like the moon.

  “Soon you won’t fit into these gowns anymore, will you, Your Highness?” the seamstresses said. “We’ll have to make you a whole set of new ones.” And they clucked over my flat belly, managing to touch a few stray strands of my swept-up hair, enough that I could feel their longing for an infant prince.

  The pressure weighed on me, that I was not yet with child. But instead, I focused on my beauty, which was easier to control. I rarely ate, so that my waist would be more narrow. I used every spell I knew to make my skin smoother and my hair more lustrous, my eyes brighter. I had Clareta brush oils through my hair to make it shine.

  I was not unaware of the irony, that I was starving myself and surrounded by riches when people were going hungry because they had no other choice, outside the castle walls.

  But I was a queen.

  I helped Snow White, too, as she selected a rose-colored silk for her dress, and fur to line the neck and wrists and hem. It was a great pleasure for me, giving myself over to such decadence, having this little girl and all my ladies to do it with.

  I called Snow White to my chambers and stood her in front of my own mirror, lifting the silk to her chin. “Look at how pale your skin is, how red your lips.”

  She beamed with delight. I smoothed my palms over her hair, sprinkling in some rosemary oil to ease her worries. I could feel, through my own hair dangling down and brushing her arm, how much happier she was, but there was still a deep grief in her I wished I could erase completely. Knowing I was responsible for it broke my heart.

  The morning of the ball, I gathered Snow White and all my ladies and we spent the day preparing. The princess and I both took long baths in perfume, and Clareta washed my hair and sculpted it into an elaborate, towering pouf, weaving jewels and a large plume right in the center of it. I brushed Snow White’s hair myself, her luxurious black locks, as she squirmed with anticipation.

  Finally, I stepped into the dress, which seemed to hang from my body like water sliding over rock. I stepped in front of my looking glass. My skin and hair glowed, like rays of the sun. My body shimmered from every angle.

  I dismissed my ladies, who left my chambers in a flurry to get into their own dresses, pin up their own hair, leaving Snow White and me alone in the room.

  In her rose-colored dress, Snow White was the most beautiful child I’d ever seen, a miniature woman, the silk wrapping around her slender body, her black hair piled on her head. Clareta had even made her lips more red with paint, her skin more pale. I loved watching Snow White’s delight as she caught sight of herself in the glass.

  Outside, the sun dropped in the sky, and in the distance I could hear carriages, one after another, arriving at the palace.

  The ladies all gathered in my chambers. Yolande, in particular, looked wonderful in a dark-gold-and-red-striped gown that displayed her breasts and made a swishing sound as she moved. Paint exaggerated her already pretty features, and her eyes shone and glimmered like stars.

  “You might have to leave my service after tonight,” I said, “when a handsome nobleman claims you.”

  “That would be wonderful,” she said with a sigh. She, like most of the ladies surrounding me, was wholly dependent on the court, and could only prosper at the side of a high-ranked noble.

  On a whim, I grabbed a sachet of lavender and mint from my workroom. “For luck,” I said, handing it to her. She smiled gratefully.

  When we were all ready, we swept to the ballroom.

  Snow White walked next to me, her small hand in mine, her little heels clicking on the marble. I was brimming over with pride; I couldn’t wait for Josef to see her, for the whole court to see her. The sound of lutes and dulcimers greeted us, as we walked slowly through the hallways. The scents of bread and meat quickly followed. The whole palace was coming under the spell.

  When we walked into the ballroom, Josef made a great show of admiring us, presenting us to the court, the kingdom’s queen and heir.

  We basked in it.

  He pulled Snow White onto the dance floor, lifted her in his arms, and twirled her around, her black hair coming undone and flying around them. She was more truly happy than I’d ever seen her and I watched them, my eyes filling with tears, with happiness.

  “You will both dance with me!” he cried out.

  He pulled me to him, too, grabbing my hand, holding Snow White in one arm, and the three of us danced, ignoring the learned steps and jumping about like fools.

  Later, full of drink, after the nurse had led Snow White off to bed, Josef and I stumbled to my chambers. We collapsed onto my bed. He clawed my dress off of me, unclipped my hair, which wrapped around us, taking in all his joyfulness. I could feel some pain there, too, but it was too buried for me to understand and he himself was intent on ignoring it. The moon shone silver through the window as he moved in and out of me, one hand cupping my face and the other tightly clasping my hand. I couldn’t get close enough to him. I would have disappeared into him if I could have.

  After, we lay there together, in each other’s arms. I watched him sleep, his body warming me as the cool early autumn air swept in through the window.

  His discontent worried me, cutting through the haze of my own happiness.

  I placed my hands over my flat belly. For months now I’d been drinking catnip and mugwort and casting spells to make me more fertile, and yet I was not with child. Josef had not said anything, but I knew he would soon.

  As the hours passed and sleep evaded me, old anxieties bega
n to creep in, too. I wondered if I was unable to have a child, if somehow what had happened before had rendered my body unfit, like a stalk of wheat with no grain. I thought of my twisted son, buried in the forest.

  The old grief moved into me, and I threw off the covers and walked over to the mirror. My face loomed up in it, a white moon in the black night. I stepped back and looked at my naked body, my belly. My hair was like a storm raging on all sides of me.

  “Mirror, mirror, on the wall,” I whispered. “Who’s the fairest of them all?”

  “Rapunzel is the fairest,” it responded, in a whisper to match my own.

  “Will I have a child?” I asked. “Will I give birth to the king’s heir?”

  The mirror rippled. I thought I heard a voice, very faint, but it did not seem to be coming from the glass.

  I turned back to the bed. “Did you say something?” I asked.

  “Hmm?” He opened his eyes.

  “I thought you spoke to me. I’m sorry, go back to sleep.”

  “Come to bed,” he mumbled, but was instantly asleep again, his breath loud and heavy.

  I looked back at the mirror. For a moment I was sure my hair was wrapped around my throat, and I started with surprise.

  As the air grew colder, and the rain did not stop falling, Snow White and I rode out into the kingdom nearly every afternoon with baskets of herbs mixed with bones and leaves, throwing handfuls of the mixture onto the gardens and wheat fields. We’d dismount our horses and run through the wet fields, sprinkling the mixture onto the ground, stomping it into the earth with our feet. I kept my hair pinned up, though I longed to let it loose over the soil, let the vibration of earth move into me. But we had a great task before us, and I could not endure the distractions.

  It did not take long for the farmers and peasants to take note of our efforts, and they began watching and waiting, coming out of their houses to bow to us, running up to throw flowers or ask for alms.

  One day a woman holding a sick child ran out of a rickety cottage with a sparse garden in front of it. My instinct was to shield Snow White from them, but to my surprise the princess stepped around me and walked right up to the infant.