“Oh, your baby is sick!” she said. She laid her hands on the child, took it in her arms. I watched in wonder, surprised that she could even hold him, she was so small herself. The mother watched with her own kind of wonder, clearly believing that the touch of the princess might be enough to heal the child.
“Did you say that yarrow and mint will cure a fever?” she asked, turning to me. “Can we find some?”
“We can,” I said, taken aback. “We can bring some tomorrow.”
She nodded, and then looked up to the woman. “Do not worry,” she said. “We will bring you what you need.”
Snow White handed the child back, and then walked purposefully over to her horse to retrieve her basket. Carefully, she sprinkled the mixture over the woman’s garden, as tears streamed down the woman’s face.
“God bless you, Your Highness and Your Majesty,” she said, attempting to kneel down in front of me.
I rushed to take the infant myself, worried she might drop him in her supplication, despite her tight grip.
The baby melted into my chest, looked up at me with glazed eyes. He was burning with fever. I almost couldn’t bear it as I held him to my chest, how right it felt to hold that tiny body.
Snow White walked back, rubbing her hands to clean them. “We will take our leave now, and come back tomorrow.”
When I handed the child back, I almost felt as if a piece of my own body went with him.
We returned the next day, as she’d promised, and after that we began to do more and more in the villages and countryside. Along with our usual mixture, we brought a variety of plants and oils that could aid with any number of ailments, and we took a larger retinue of guards to carry our supplies. Gilles was often with us, quietly riding his horse and taking care of the hawks. The king trusted Gilles, and insisted he accompany me, especially out in the open countryside with his daughter, the heir to the kingdom. The hawks overhead comforted me, and Gilles did not seem to mind taking them out and training them in the open air. I’d wanted to go hawking myself, when I’d first met him in the mews, but this was more than enough: watching them overhead, these magnificent birds that reminded me so much of my life before. This gorgeous man and child pressing forward on either side of me, atop hooved, gleaming beasts. It satisfied me, that part of me I’d left behind.
One afternoon, after we returned our horses to the stable and said good-bye to Gilles, Snow White asked me to walk with her.
She was holding a bundle of wildflowers I hadn’t noticed her gathering. She took my hand and led me through one stretch of the garden to a small graveyard, still blooming with flowers despite the autumn chill in the air. I’d seen it before, but stayed away. The palace portraits were bad enough; I did not like so much unfamiliar death right in front of me, all the time.
The stones were scattered all around us, blackened and covered in moss. A guard stood off to the side, watching us. Other than that, we were alone.
“It’s beautiful here,” I said, to be kind.
“This is my . . . My mother is here,” she said. She stood there, her skirt flapping around her ankles, strands of her hair in her face. “I wanted you to meet her. She was a very good mother.”
Suddenly the late afternoon air seemed especially cold. A hawk screeched in the distance, from the mews.
Queen Teresa Chauvin, the stone read. Underneath was a quote in Latin.
I felt like I was going to be sick. I dropped to the ground, holding my stomach.
“Are you all right?” Snow White asked. She was concerned, innocent, as she reached out to touch me. I had killed her mother, yet here she was trying to comfort and steady me. The whole world spun around me. My teeth chattered from the cold.
I nodded, wincing up at her. “Yes,” I said. “I’m just tired from the ride.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” I positioned myself cross-legged on the wet grass, willing the sickness to pass. My skirts flounced into a circle around me. “Thank you for bringing me to meet your mother. That is very kind of you.”
Snow White’s face relaxed, and she sat beside me. I could see how important this was to her, and was determined to act as calmly as I could, despite my intense, overwhelming discomfort. She was right there. Her body, in the ground beneath us.
Snow White placed the flowers delicately over the stone. She leaned against me then, brushing her small body against my arm, a strand of my hair tangling down. I braced myself as her grief pummeled into me, laced with images of her mother’s arms wrapping around her, her mother lying sick in her bed, her face thin and pale, her eyes wild.
I breathed out, grabbing a flower from the ground and pinching it in my fingers, twisting the stem, watching the soft petals flaking off in my hands.
Her grief became my grief, and I mourned for her mother—for what I’d done to her—as well as my own. I’d been Snow White’s age when Mathena had rescued me, but the mother I’d lost hadn’t loved me the way Teresa had loved Snow White. Still, I could not help but wonder. Was my mother buried somewhere now, too? Was she still alive, perhaps living in one of the cottages we’d passed, that day or another? Were there other children now?
There were tears running down Snow White’s face, sparkling like little gems.
I glanced up. There was a woman standing there, at the edge of the graveyard. I started in surprise.
“What is it?” Snow White asked, alarmed.
I turned back and the woman was gone. But her black hair and her red lips seared into me.
“Nothing,” I said. Of course it was nothing. I smiled at her reassuringly.
“You saw her, didn’t you?”
“Saw who?” I asked. My heart was racing.
“My mother,” she said.
There was an intense expression on her face. Her brows furrowed, her eyes shining.
I didn’t know what to say. It was a trick of the light, I was sure of it. A trick of my own mind, riddled with guilt.
“I see her,” she said. “Father Martin says it is wrong to speak of such things. He says my mother is in heaven. But I see her. Do you believe me?”
So many feelings coursed through me. Guilt and love and despair and loss and a kind of terror I’d never felt before. I focused on that lovely, worried little face and tried to smile.
“Yes,” I said. “Of course I do.”
Over the next days, as autumn began to strip the trees, Snow White and I continued distributing herbs until we were too cold, even with heavy furs draped around us. I found it soothing to ride through the kingdom, my hair unspooling behind me, letting all thoughts of Teresa fade into the blur of the countryside, until I convinced myself that I’d imagined her standing there.
It did not take long for rumors to start up at court. In Mass, Father Martin spoke more adamantly about the sin of witchery, and I could feel the thoughts and suspicions swimming around the minds of everyone around me.
One evening the king himself asked me about it.
“It’s wonderful, to see my daughter flourishing,” he said, leaning over to speak in my ear, in the great hall. “But I’m worried about what I hear. There’s talk that the queen and princess are practicing magic openly in the kingdom.”
“She’s only helping me feed the people, my lord.”
“People?”
“Your royal subjects,” I said, “in the countryside and villages.”
He looked at me blankly.
“Have you not seen the failed crops?” I whispered.
“No.”
“The wheat is all blighted,” I said. “I fear that people will starve come winter, with no bread. Half the fields I pass are filled with dead plants. It’s all the rain.”
“What have you and Snow White to do with this?”
“We’ve made herb mixtures to help the soil, that’s all. Your daughter has a kind heart, you know. She wanted to help.”
He waved his hand, as if to dismiss any discussion of rain and soil. “There’s talk of unrest.�
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“In the villages? The people are grateful, my lord.”
“No,” he said. “In the East. Some estates near the border are threatening to rebel.”
“Oh, but that’s a different thing, is it not?”
“There are rumors of the sinfulness of this court,” he said. “That we practice magic here.”
“But that’s ridiculous,” I said, trying to sound convincing. Of course there would be such talk. Mathena had warned me about all of this.
“They’re looking for a reason to go to war with us,” he said. “Ever since Teresa died. They whisper that I killed her to marry you.”
“But you did no such thing!”
“This does not prevent them from saying it.”
“Will they start a war with us?” I was trying not to sound anxious, but had made my voice too loud. Lord Aubert was watching us closely. On the other side of the hall, a group of dancers entered, draped in diaphanous veils.
It would be my fault if we went to war. The thought came at me like a hand around the throat.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “But we should not want to give them more cause than they already have.”
“How can you be sure they won’t?”
“Because of Snow White,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“They hate us. They’ve always hated us. But they love Snow White, and they won’t start a war when she’s a child in my palace, the heir to the kingdom.” He softened, leaning in closer to me. “It’s why I had to marry Teresa. We might have gone to war then if I had not.”
It was a painful thing to hear, even with his sweet, handsome face right next to mine, his warm breath on my skin. Suddenly I was back in the tower, my heart sinking and the room going cold as he got up to leave.
I turned away from him, and stood abruptly.
“Rapunzel,” he said quietly. “These are old sorrows.”
“I’m not feeling so well, my lord,” I said, not meeting his eye. Around me, they were all watching—the king’s council, my ladies, all the members of the court, even the dancers who were doing handstands now in the center of the room.
I stepped down from the high table with the assistance of a guard and quickly moved past them all, my ever-present ladies and maidservants following behind as I swept through the halls to my own chambers.
Back in my room, Clareta took my hand and led me to bed while Yolande dipped a cloth in hot water and placed it on my forehead. As she did, her hand brushed my hair, and I could feel her thoughts entering me. Her disapproval of a queen and princess who distributed herbs to peasants, her affection for me despite it, her conviction that I would ruin the young princess with my teachings. I slapped her hand away, annoyed.
When they left, I took out the spell book Mathena had given me. I needed to look for new fertility spells, as well as for information on how to protect myself from ghosts.
I filled my days with pleasure, but it was during the nights that my own restlessness overtook me, making me go back and back to the image of Teresa standing in the graveyard, her body in the ground, the moment when Clareta had handed her a cup of steaming tea. The tears on Snow White’s face and those sad, sad eyes, the possibility of war—all so that I could be queen. I’d lie next to Josef, unable to sleep, watching the mirror pulse and ripple on the wall, listening to the leaves that rustled outside the window and whispered to me, through the howling wind. You don’t deserve any of this.
One night, when I managed to finally fall asleep in Josef’s arms, I dreamed that I was awake still, lying alone in my high bed, furs and satins strewn around me. My hair stretched out from me like a thousand snakes, spilling from the bed and onto the floor. It kept growing, streaming out, like a river rushing along the forest floor, pressing against the door and slipping through the open window and the whole time taking everything into itself, all the old secrets and heartbreaks, betrayals, longings, the old magic that spread through the palace like dew or fog, almost invisible, always there, and it was choking me now, my hair flowing out, all that feeling flowing back to me until I could barely breathe, until I was gagging for air, and then it was running out in every direction, falling to the ground outside, getting tangled in tree branches, wrapping itself around the palace, while inside it poured through every hallway, filling all the great rooms, stuffing itself into the breathing mouths of everyone who lay sleeping inside, including the king, including Snow White, and I tried to scream but I couldn’t make any sound anymore, it was all my fault, all of it, and then it was not just hair but vines and thorns and the palace was wrapped in them, thorns and brambles, the whole kingdom wiped out, every mouth filled with thorns and leaves.
I woke, gasping for air.
The room spun around me. It looked so beautiful and clear and wide open. I relaxed, as relief moved through me. It had just been a dream.
I wrapped my arms around Josef, and tried to go back to sleep. After a while, I gave up, pushed back the covers, and went to the mirror.
It rippled in front of me. “Mirror, mirror, on the wall,” I said, keeping my voice low.
I stared at my distorted reflection, my pale face. I could not bring myself to ask the usual question.
Behind me, there was a movement. A figure. I whirled around, but the room was the same as always. Josef lay sleeping calmly on the bed, the moon caressing his handsome features.
I turned back to the mirror, and it was there again, but closer now, a woman. Her eyes big and round, staring right into me.
I screamed.
“What is it?” Josef asked, sitting up in bed.
“There’s someone here,” I said, turning back to him. Again, the vision had disappeared. “A woman. I saw her in the mirror.” I rushed back to bed, into his arms.
“What woman?”
“I don’t know. I just got a glimpse of her, but then she was gone.”
“A spirit, you mean? That is what you saw?”
“Yes!”
He laughed, shaking his head. He reached out and ran his hand over my hair. I could feel what he was thinking: that I was as silly as his own mother had been, with her face always turned to the stars.
“Josef!” I said. “Do you not believe me?”
“I believe you,” he said. “My mother saw spirits all the time.”
“She did?”
“Yes. One in particular . . . ” He waved his hand dismissively.
“Who?”
He sighed. “My mother claimed that the spirit of the old prophetess inhabits the castle. She often attempted to speak with her.”
“Prophetess?”
“Yes. Her name was Serena. She lived here a very long time ago, back when this kingdom held its rightful place in the world. There was powerful magic at work here then. Most people have forgotten her, but my mother put great stock in Serena’s predictions.
“What did she predict?”
“Many things, over the years. She knew that priests were coming, and that the old ways would die. She knew there would be war between the West and East. She saw all of it. They used to say she was crazy when the visions came over her. She predicted the end of the Chauvin line. She said that the kingdom would fall when a . . . ” He stopped himself.
“When what?”
“It’s all madness, Rapunzel,” he said, shaking his head. “Serena was a young girl taken from her home and forced to give prophecies for the king and queen, almost a thousand years ago. The stories of her in the old epics are wonderful. But for a woman like my mother to sit in the dark and try to make her appear, to have so much faith in those old stories . . . it was madness.”
“But maybe I saw her,” I said.
He smiled. “Maybe you’re half dreaming. Maybe it’s the hour when dreams are more real than rocks or rivers.”
“Perhaps,” I said, pressing up against him, trying to feel safe.
That year, the snow and ice came quickly. One day the ground was covered in dead leaves, and the next we were s
ubmerged in snow, which piled up in great, gleaming mounds under a silver sky. Inside, everyone massed together. The great hall was constantly full of courtiers, who came in from their estates all over the kingdom to gather around the king and eat from his table. There was little else to do at the estates, when at court there was endless entertainment and wonderful gossip to pass the time. I knew I myself was a favorite subject, but I made sure to focus on Josef and Snow White, both of whom I loved more than I could have ever imagined loving anyone. I would not let petty talk and petty jealousies distract me from those pleasures, and kept my hair tightly wrapped.
I did appreciate being surrounded by all that life. I spent less time in my chambers and more time in the great hall or one of the galleries, playing chess or cards with Snow White, or Clareta or Yolande. It was the best way to soothe myself in a palace full of ghosts and secrets, reminders of my past wrongs.
Outside, the wind howled. Snow piled up so high I could barely see outside. I often asked the mirror to show Mathena to me, and watched as she sat every day in front of that fire with only Loup and Brune for company, and the occasional desperate soul. I was sorry for her, that her ambition for me had left her so alone.
My main focus that winter was on giving the king an heir. I’d been at the palace since the previous spring, and many had expected me to be pregnant by the time the first snow fell. I continued to study my spell book and use every spell I could find to help me conceive. I used every trick I could to seduce my husband, keeping him enchanted, and we spent whole nights and the occasional afternoon blissfully tangled up in each other’s arms. But as my belly stayed flat and my cycle kept returning, I began to despair, wondering if my magic was leaving me.
The painter, Monsieur Morel, finally finished the unicorn ceiling and we all admired it, danced under it, and the master was free to paint my portrait, which he did in the same room, the unicorn and hunters rushing overhead. I spent many hours that winter frozen in place in front of the small man as he captured me on his canvas. I wore my most elaborate silk damask gown with the Chauvin family crest woven into it, along with my crown and the heaviest and largest of the royal jewels, which hung from my ears and neck and wrists.
The Fairest of Them All Page 14