The Fairest of Them All

by Carolyn Turgeon

  He bowed, and I saw him through her eyes: this imposing man, roughly handsome, his eyes black and burning. He looked like he belonged in the forest, like he was already half wild.

  “I’m the king’s falconer, my lady,” he said. “I believe I knew you when I was a boy, when you were a great friend to my father.”

  She smiled with recognition and disbelief. “Yes!” To my surprise, she rushed over and threw her arms around him, genuinely moved.

  He folded her into his arms more gently than I would have expected, given his gruffness.

  “It’s an honor to see you again,” he said, as they broke apart. “My father spoke so highly of you. I remember you clearly.”

  “Your father was very loyal to me. He was the only one who was loyal to me, at the end.”

  “You didn’t deserve the treatment you were given.”

  I looked back and forth at the two of them, speechless.

  “Let’s go inside and get something to eat,” she said, “and then you can tell me why you’ve come.” She looked over to the three guards, who were caring for the horses discreetly. “Would you like to join us?”

  They seemed taken aback by her offer, and bowed awkwardly. “We are fine here, my lady,” one of them said.

  I knew they were thinking of bandits; they’d been keeping watch vigilantly ever since we entered the woods, not knowing that we were already protected.

  “Very well.”

  We stepped into the cottage and there was Loup, rubbing against my ankles, meowing up at me. I bent down and picked her up, carried her with me to the couch. Brune stood on the mantel, and looked away from me haughtily.

  “Brune!” Gilles said, striding over to the bird. “What a grand lady you’ve become. You have aged better than any of us, haven’t you?”

  Brune hopped on Gilles’ wrist, letting out a squawk of recognition.

  It was disorienting, seeing Gilles standing by the fire in this little house, as Mathena busied herself preparing tea and heating two bowls of stew for us. She served them to us with thick slices of brown bread. Brune stayed on Gilles’ shoulder, and occasionally he passed chunks of meat up to her. As I ate, I could feel my strength coming back to me. My heart starting to mend.

  She had always been a powerful witch.

  “This is where you grew up,” he said, shaking his head, sitting across from me now with his bowl in his lap. “And now you’re queen. Did you ever think such a thing would happen, when you were a girl?”

  “Oh, no,” I said, shaking my head. “But she did. She knew.”

  I gestured to Mathena, smiling, but she pretended not to have heard. Gilles watched her as she stood to refill our mugs.

  “Well, it is wonderful, anyway,” he said, turning back to me, “the way fate can twist and surprise you.”

  It was comforting, being with the two of them, and with Brune above us, and Loup, old and nearly blind now, curled next to Mathena on the couch. I had the sudden, fleeting thought that I could stay like that and never return to the palace at all.

  When night fell, I led Gilles and the guards to the tower, where they would sleep. It was strange, having men inside the house and tower, the only real sign that things had changed dramatically since the last time I’d been there.

  “I hope you’ll be comfortable here,” I said, turning to him. The guards were already laying out blankets on the stone floor.

  “I will,” he said. “I love this place you come from.”

  “You do?” I asked, breathing in.

  “Yes.”

  “You know, you can see the palace from up here. I used to stare at it, when I was a girl, imagining what it would be like to go there one day.”

  I pointed to the window. A faint twinkle was visible, spires lit by the moon.

  But he did not take his dark eyes off of me.

  “Well, good night, then,” I said.

  “Good night,” he said.

  I was careful, as I turned to go, to keep my hair from touching him. It would be too dangerous to look into his heart right then. Too dangerous to look into my own.

  Once I returned, Mathena sat me down on the couch, took my hands into her own.

  “What is it that troubles you?” she asked. “Is your life at the palace what you hoped it would be?”

  I took a deep breath. “I cannot conceive,” I said. “And the king is not pleased with me.”

  She nodded.

  “I need you to help me,” I said. “Give me something so I can have a child.”

  “What can I give you that you haven’t already tried yourself?”

  “You know so much more than I do, Mathena.”

  I thought of her with Clareta and all those women who came to see us, the way she’d take their hands in her own and cast spells to heal their gardens, their children, their hearts. Surely she could do the same for me now.

  A sadness crept into her face as she watched me. “Rapunzel,” she said, shaking her head. “You cannot have a child.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You cannot have a child. I am sorry.”

  “But . . . I had his child. I had a child.”

  She shook her head. “It has never been possible, for you.”

  I closed my eyes, remembering the teas and my ancient suspicions. “Did you . . . Was it the teas you gave me?”

  She sighed. “No. I told you. When you killed the stag, something changed. Your fate changed. I tried to protect you when you were with child, because I knew . . . it was not right.”

  “What do you mean? Was it . . . the flower we ate? Isn’t there something you can do to fix it? I must give him a child, Mathena.”

  She did not answer my question. Instead she said, “He has a child already. The princess Snow White.”

  “Yes,” I said, shocked at how casually she said it.

  “How is she?”

  “She’s a good girl. I didn’t expect to love her the way I do. But I do.”

  “Ahh.” She tilted her head, watching me as if she knew something I didn’t.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “I’m surprised that you love the child. When her mother took him away from you.”

  “That was not her fault,” I said. And then I looked at her directly, trying to read her. “Mathena, did you do something to me, to make me barren?”

  “No,” she said, and I was sure, in that moment, that she was lying. She smiled softly, and yet her eyes were hard as diamonds. “But it is true that you will never conceive.”

  I let the information sink into me, and with it, a whole new sense of the world and what was possible, a new grief that bit into my heart.

  “What about Gilles?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, blinking up at her.

  “He’s an extremely handsome man, don’t you think? You do realize he’s in love with you.”

  “Mathena!” I said incredulously, as if I had not had the same thought myself. “I’m married. I love Josef.”

  “Josef is a king. You can never be fully married to a man who has everything in the world.”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying,” I said.

  I turned away from her, not wanting to hear anything more.

  That night, as Mathena slept, I padded out into the moonlight to visit my son’s grave. Red, heart-shaped petals scattered the ground all around it. I focused, tried to send all my feeling down into him as if the ground were my hair in all its magic, as if my own heart—with all its love and grief, as fresh as if it’d just happened—could stream down to him, comfort him in the cold ground.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “that I could not give you life.”

  The next morning, I wandered through the garden with Gilles and Mathena, picking herbs that I thought might help me, the right magical combination that might defy fate and anything Mathena had done. Each plant, herb, and vegetable in Mathena’s garden was far superior to anything we grew at the palace. I gathered fresh dandelion,
mandrake, burdock root, yarrow, and lady’s mantle. For Snow White, I gathered valerian and poppies, and some of the fennel that lined the garden. It felt good, seeing the results of my own efforts over the years. Gilles watched, fascinated, asking us about the properties of certain plants.

  I plucked up a bit of caraway and shook some seeds into my hand. “Take these,” I said, smiling as I dropped them into his palm. “Carry them with you, and you’ll attract a lover.”

  I laughed out loud when he blushed in response.

  I wished I could stop time, but the sun rose bright above us and I knew the king was expecting us in two days’ time. When I said good-bye to Mathena, I could barely look at her.

  “Good-bye, Rapunzel,” she said, pulling me to her, letting her black curls brush against my cheek. “Godspeed.”

  As we rode back out of the woods, the two guards following behind us, Gilles turned to me.

  “Did you find what you wanted, Your Highness?” he asked.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Whatever it is you came to ask.”

  Around us, wings and leaves flickered in the air. “Yes,” I said, through the pain in my throat. “Though I did not receive the answer I wanted.”

  Over the next several years I was, for the most part, happy. King Josef continued to love me and to fill my life with delights, constantly—new delicacies, otherworldly art and poetry. I loved him and was faithful to him, I loved Snow White, and I grew closer to Gilles, my one great friend and confidant at court. My ladies continued to try to comfort and please me, though I spent more and more time away from them. Most often, I passed my days hawking or riding through the countryside or walking through the palace gardens. Snow White and I continued to ride the gardens and fields and to dispense help where we could, though our kingdom was thriving—thriving everywhere, that is, but in the king’s own chambers.

  I continued to try every spell I could find, every combination of plants, to conceive. I prayed to Artemis and Zeus and Hera, as well as to the god the priest spoke about. But as the months became years, no one believed that I would ever carry an heir. I became known, throughout the court and no doubt the kingdom, as deeply unlucky. I could feel it, through courtiers who brushed against stray strands of my hair, through Clareta and Josef, who never would have voiced the thoughts they carried inside them. That I was unlucky, a witch queen from the forest.

  One day Yolande came up behind me, her hand grazing my hair as she touched my shoulder, and I could feel the thought that was buried in her mind: that she would have made a better wife to Josef than me. Her blood was more royal, her womb more fertile. I wanted to turn and smack the insolence out of her, but there was no use. She was not the only one who had such thoughts.

  “Mirror, mirror, on the wall,” I began asking every morning, my own ritual, “who’s the fairest of them all?”

  The mirror comforted me, let me take refuge in my own beauty, though that beauty seemed more and more useless to me as time went by.

  Josef’s advisors urged him to take another wife, but he refused. Father Martin made clear that he thought God was punishing us. Everyone knew what he meant but was forbidden to say it openly: that God was punishing the kingdom for letting a witch sit on the throne.

  Even Snow White began pulling away from me as she grew older. It was only natural, I suppose, that she would become more interested in her peers than in her stepmother, but it stung me nonetheless. I watched her at feasts as she danced and laughed with her friends, the fine-boned children of nobles. It didn’t help that by the time she was fourteen, she looked even more like Teresa than she had before. More than once I caught a glimpse of her around a corner and was sure it was the dead queen’s ghost returning to me. Mocking me, and punishing me, for what I’d done.

  It became clear that Snow White was—and would remain—the sole heir to the kingdom. I tried to tamp down my darkest thoughts, but could not help feeling that it should have been my son. That somehow, she had wrested away what should have been his.

  That autumn, I found a new spell in Mathena’s book. One that was technically for husbandry but that I thought might work on me. I infused each herb with intent, and whispered over them before downing them all in a tea.

  The night of the harvest ball, Clareta prepared my hair and painted my face, and I wore a new dress, a shimmering pale blue, the color of a robin’s egg. I was pleased with my reflection, though I missed the laughter of my ladies and Snow White scurrying around me. Now Snow White prepared herself in her own chambers, surrounded by her ladies. My own ladies were silent, giving each other secret looks, and I could feel their disapproval as if it were rain.

  I stepped into the ballroom and stood framed by the golden doorway, as my ladies arranged my hair around me. I braced myself for their judgments and dark thoughts. Snow White was there already, sitting with a young nobleman and his sister, both from a prominent family. Her eyes flashed up as I entered, and then she quickly looked away. The king sat at our raised table, dressed in rich, jeweled robes. He was laughing, surrounded by lords and ladies.

  When he turned to face me, I could feel the blood rushing to my face, under his gaze. The rest of the court was silent now, watching me, but I cared only for what he thought.

  His face lit up when he saw me, as if a torch had been set ablaze within him. He smiled. “Rapunzel,” he called.

  As I approached the dais, one of the ladies gathered around him met my eye. She was red-haired, someone I’d never seen before, dressed in a pale pink dress that nipped in at the waist and exaggerated the span of her hips. She had hair stuck through with diamond pins and hanging down to her elbows. Her hand, I realized, was on my husband’s shoulder.

  I glared at her, whispered a quick spell, and she snatched her hand away as if she’d been burned.

  “My queen,” he said, as affectionately as he ever had.

  I forced myself to smile.

  He leapt from the table, came around, and swept me out to the marble floor. Everyone moved aside. I looked up, caught sight of the redhead watching us, envy animating all her perfect features.

  We moved around and around. I leaned into him, let him guide us both, as above us the chandeliers seemed to drip ice.

  “I love you,” I said, into his skin, over and over.

  That night, I waited for him to come to my room. I lay on my bed with my gown unlaced and pulled down over my shoulders, my hair unfurling to the floor. Around me, the torches flickered along the walls and through the diaphanous curtains that dropped around me. I could feel the magic working. Tonight, I hoped, we would finally make another child.

  My skin was warm, soft. I ran my palm down my thigh, pulled up the crisp fabric.

  I concentrated, reciting additional spells under my breath. For fertility, for love, to make him come to me.

  I rose from the bed and looked out of the window, up at the star-strewn sky. Surely he had left the ballroom and prepared himself for me by now.

  I went back to bed and struggled not to fall asleep, though the mattress felt so comfortable, the fire so warm, the wine had made me so relaxed . . .

  I wasn’t sure how much time had passed when I woke, but the night was quiet now. I listened, but did not hear even the faintest music from the ballroom, or any sound of carriages leaving from the front of the castle.

  I left my room and stepped into the outer chambers, where a guard stood staring into the fire. He turned quickly at my approach. “Your Highness?”

  “Has the king come to visit?” I asked, trying to keep the desperation out of my voice.

  “No, my lady,” he said, bowing to me. But he did not seem to want to meet my eye.

  “He has not sent for me, either?”

  “No, my lady. Not that I have been told.”

  “Do you need something, Your Highness?” another voice asked. I turned as Clareta entered the room.

  “Lace me,” I said. “I will go to see the king myself.”

  Her eyes darted to t
he guard and then back to me. Then she nodded, and moved quickly behind me to move my hair and lace me into the dress. I’d wanted him to see me lying half in it, with the flames reflecting off the stones, before I slipped out of it.

  As she touched me, I could feel her pity moving through me. She believed the king had rejected me. I was furious at him for letting someone like her think such a thing, and gritted my teeth until she finished.

  “Shall I accompany you, Your Highness?” the guard asked. “And announce you to the king?”

  “Yes,” I said, lifting my chin. I knew he would follow me, regardless.

  The palace seemed deserted, full of ghosts and secrets. As we passed the portrait of Queen Teresa, I did not look up, afraid to see her face staring down at me in the dark.

  Behind me, my hair made a rustling sound as it swept over the floor. A terrible premonition pulsed up through it, from the stone itself.

  Torches cast shadows, stretched my body into something monstrous and long on the floors and walls.

  “Your Highness!” a guard said, as I approached the king’s chambers.

  “I am here to see my husband,” I said.

  “I believe he is sleeping,” the guard replied, visibly uncomfortable. I studied him for a moment and then realized, in one sharp flash, that something was wrong.

  I walked straight to the door then, before he could stop me.

  “Wait!” he said, as I pushed into the king’s chambers and made my way to his room. I could hear the guard storming after me. In front of me, I heard muted sounds from the king’s bedroom. A cry, a laugh.

  I threw open the door.

  He looked up.

  He was spread out over his massive, fur-covered bed. On top of him the red-haired woman from dinner moved, her sweat-covered body glistening in the firelight, her neck stretched back, face turned to the ceiling. Even more shocking was the second woman—stretched out next to Josef, fully undressed, her hands sliding over his chest and her face buried in his neck. When she lifted her head and looked straight at me, I gasped out loud. It was Yolande.

  “Rapunzel!” he said, scrambling now to sit up, pushing the red-haired woman off of him. Yolande jumped up and began searching frantically for her clothes.