by Louise Hawes
***
That night it was I who took to my bed. Pleading illness, I bid my wife good night at the door to our chamber and went to sleep again in my father's old rooms at the end of the hall. I was hardly guilty of deception, since the minute I lay down I was swept by trembling and nausea. I closed my eyes and, sweating mightily, let the waves of sickness wash over me. Their rhythm was somehow reassuring: the pain and then the brief reprieve, the quiet, hopeless space into which I could fit one or two breaths, succeeded by the harsh, grinding pain. Absorbed in this pattern, surrendering to its awful symmetry, I fell at last into a dreamless sleep.
It was next day I met Lynette, a dairy maid in the palace stables. Of course, I had seen her before, plump and charming and careless. She laughed too loud, slapped her thighs, and was forever picking straw from her hair. It was not hard to guess how it had gotten there. All the stable boys and several of the kitchen crew found endless excuses to tarry in the milking barn.
I could not blame them. As my own days grew emptier and my nights more hounded by guilt, I began to spend hours at a time lulled by her guileless chatter and her generous impulses. "If you like the milk of cows," Lynette took to telling me, winking naughtily and cupping her mountainous breasts, "you shall find much sweeter here."
Day after day, I was drawn back to her like the rest. The queen and my princess never missed me, so there was nothing to prevent my trips to the barn. Besides, there was something cleansing about the sweet breath of the cows and the steady rhythm of the buckets filling as Lynette milked. At first she took no special notice of my presence, but soon she must have sensed my need, my desperate case. She sent the others away and saved all her jokes and sly teasing for me.
In the beginning, these meetings were merely a way to fill idle hours, but now the scamp affords me pleasures as rich as any I fancied at that long-ago ball. My dairy maid is no princess, nor does she wish to be. But she lifts her skirts and wraps her dimpled thighs around me with a will. And I tarry longer and longer with her in the loft. As each afternoon fades into dusk, I rise reluctantly from our bed of hay. I push her from me, laughing. "Stop, Lady Lynette," I protest, bidding her cover herself and cease our play. "If I am any happier it must show upon my face. And for the sweet Lord's sake, help me brush this straw from my clothes."
Though in truth there is no need to hide, to proffer proof of my fidelity to Cinderella. She requires no troth, no lust, no love. She asks merely for the same tired recitation each night. As we lie in our silken bed, three times the size of the loft that I prefer, it is only the story she begs for, the same words over and over. And because it frees me in so many ways, I am not loath to tell the tale again. "The palace was bedecked with torches," I begin, "and young women from across the kingdom had come to the ball to meet their prince."
"And then?" she asks, her voice hoarse with longing.
"And then," I tell her, "a lovely stranger stepped out of a silver coach and into the prince's heart. She was more beautiful than any woman he had ever seen, more dazzling than a fairy queen."
Cinderella listens and nods, prompting me if I forget any part of the tired tale. She sighs and smiles, even as her eyes close and the story sends her off to sleep.
Evelyn's Song
Now that witches are rarer than fish wings, most people don't know the first thing about magic. And the first thing about magic is that it hurts. When my aunt sent for the crone who lived at the edge of town, she meant only to scare me. So far as we villagers could tell, that foolish hag had never done more harm than give our night watchman a potion that made him mad for the weaver's widow. The object of his affections weighed at least twice as much as the poor man himself, yet their match was no stranger than many made without benefit of incantations or philters.
The marriage my aunt intended for me, I assure you, was far more ill advised and much more laughable. Yet she would have me wed Lord Brevington, a man forty years my elder. And she would have me curtsy sweetly before him, speak my little Latin, and play the harp. I, of course, would have none of it, and that is when the witch was sent for.
"You have humiliated me for the last time, my girl," Aunt Hazel scolded. "Nor will I permit you to demean the honest proposal of our dear guest." She nodded at this, toward Lord Brevington, who seemed less demeaned than sleepy. He sat over the remains of Aunt's tea and scones, his head sinking lower and lower on his hollow chest.
But I sat with the harp beside me unplucked, reluctant to play the song she had bade me sing for His Lordship. It was "The Turtle Dove's Lament," a ballad that had found favor first with the court and then with all the unwed ladies in our town. The tale of a young woman abandoned by her love, it told of her standing above the sea on a towering cliff. She searched for her lost sweetheart's ship, clasped her pale hands across her breast, and leapt into the waves. The chorus, repeated three times, began with the words "Your wild love has won me, now claim your prize."
I could not, you see, sing that refrain to the grizzled gentleman on our settle. I dared not, for fear I would burst into laughter as I played. Indeed, one look at the poor old soul, his withered legs crossed under orange garters, had nearly undone me. "May I not play Your Lordship a sprightlier tune?" I asked. "'Derry Down, Derry Down,' say?"
My ardent suitor, who seemed to be snoozing, made no reply. So I begged my aunt instead. "Oh, please, Auntie Dearest, let me choose a song less passionate, more in keeping with the—er, age and state of our visitor."
I could not keep from smiling as I pointed at the napping noble, and my aunt was in a rage straightway. She scolded me so loudly, I was certain Lord Brevington would wake, but I need not have worried. It turned out that the good man had gone to a deeper sleep than the two of us guessed, for when we tried to rouse him, we found that he was dead.
"Now see what you have done!" As if it were I who had caused the old man's soul to leave his body, Aunt Hazel grew angrier still. "All our prospects, all our high hopes—dashed by a willful girl's stubbornness." She paced our small parlor like a trapped animal, sighing and calling on my dead mother to witness her daughter's perfidy. At last, she summoned Lord Brevington's footman from the kitchen. And then she called the witch.
I was not afraid of Dame Meredith; I had grown up used to the sight of her bent form hobbling through the crowd at market, the sound of her nanny goat's bell when it wandered, as it often did, into our yard. So, after our noble visitor had been dispatched to his castle and Dame Meredith had arranged her musty skirts across the same settle from which Lord Brevington had taken leave of the world only moments before, I felt no alarm. Even when Aunt Hazel demanded an enchantment of the highest order, one that would ensure I learned my place, I never dreamt homespun magic could prove any more potent than the scolding I had just endured.
It required only a pinch of time, a trifling minute, to change my life. As soon as the dame had raised her arm and begun her chant, I felt the stiffness invade my limbs. "Ye shall not rule the roost, ye shall not call the tune." As she recited the words, the old woman spread her knobby fingers like a cap across my head. " But shall serve your master with nary a boon."
It happened so quickly that even as I smiled at such nonsense, my legs went numb and I closed my eyes against a sharp pain that filled my chest. "With a lively will, though it be not your own, ye shall do my bidding and make no moan." No sooner had the pain stopped than my aunt screamed and I opened my eyes. I found that, indeed, my chest had been ripped open and that a shining bone erupted from between my breasts. I suppose it is a testament to the crone's witchery that I now felt no discomfort. I was dismayed only that my dress was ruined and my flesh turned the color of the coins my aunt had fished from Lord Brevington's doublet as he lay beyond the cares of earth.
Stranger, or should I say more horrible still, I saw that from the golden mote which pierced my chest, in a formation I knew only too well from hours and hours of practice, hung twenty harp strings. And where were these strings fastened? Why, all along my body, which, as I have said, h
ad turned to burnished gold. I wanted to scream just as my aunt had when I saw, at the place where each string pierced my shining flesh, tiny blood drops lined like buttons up and down my chest and belly and thighs. But I could no more scream than speak or make the slightest movement to free myself from the spell that held me fast.
"What have you done, you foul fiend?" Aunt Hazel was crying now, beating the old woman about her venerable head. "Bring her back this instant, bring her back!" When her tormentor stopped to wipe her eyes, the hag rushed for the front door, but Aunt yanked her by the apron strings and forced her to stand before me.
Dame Meredith, squirming like a pig in my aunt's grasp, seemed as surprised as anyone at her handiwork. "'Tis only a minding spell," she protested, staring at my strings, my golden limbs. "'Twill make dogs obey and keep horses from leaping the fence."
"My niece is no dog, beldame." Despite my peril, I was moved by Aunt's tears and would have comforted her if I could. "You have pierced her through and turned her still as stone."
"I meant no harm, mistress." Meredith reached out to touch me, then pulled her hand back as if she had felt fire. "No harm at all, I swear."
"Undo your spell, witch," Aunt Hazel commanded. "And be quick."
"I cannot." The fear in the dame's eyes made it all too clear she spoke the truth. "I do not know how." She explained to Aunt that no one had ever asked her to reverse the spell; every one preferred dogs that minded and horses that stayed where they were put.
But Aunt Hazel would not rest till the witch had tried to un-spell me. And tried. And tried. Finally, exhausted and hopeless, the old woman threw her apron over her head and wept as if her heart would break. "'Tis no use, my lady," she sobbed. "The child will not wake. She lives only to obey."
"Obey?" My aunt, nearly as tired as the witch, gathered the strength to shake our neighbor by the shoulders. "What do you mean?" she asked.
"Whatever you last wanted her to do, madam," Meredith told her, "is what she will do forever."
"I wanted her to play." Aunt Hazel looked at me now, her voice as small as a child's. "I wanted her to play a song."
"Then you have only to ask it," the witch told her, drying her eyes and making for the door. "Perhaps it is not so bad, after all." She sniffled as she lifted the latch, ducked her head at me. "You need not feed her, from the looks of it, and 'tis certain that way ward child has learned to obey."
Aunt Hazel, I suppose, had neither the strength nor the will to chase after the old woman. For she sat where she was, long after the hag had left, staring vacantly at the fire and only sometimes at me. "It was just one song," she said at last. "Not so much to ask." She shook her head and tears collected in the ridges under her eyes. "Not so much to give."
That was when she stood and faced me, holding up one hand as the horse trainers do at Tinley Faire. "Play," she ordered, and lowered her hand again.
I tried to run from the feeling that rose in me as she uttered her command. I found, however, that I was frozen into a crouch, my folded legs held fast by the longer strings of the fiendish harp. So there was no escaping the rush of song that filled my chest and wanted to force itself from my throat. I had seen wrens and doves trembling in the throes of their songs, their tiny bodies convulsed in the effort to set them free. And now here was I, equally in thrall to a melody I must release or die.
My mouth opened and the song poured out. My golden arms rose, without my willing it, to pluck the strings attached to my own breast. The pain and the joy I felt as the music echoed in my chest made me remember the smile on Our Crucified Savior in the church at Warwick's Ford. I marveled at the exquisite torture I was inflicting on myself, and would not have stopped it for all the world.
As I plucked and sang the very tune she had been unable to make me play a few hours before, my aunt stared at me in horror. Her mouth open, her eyes wide, she listened, as still as a statue, to "The Turtle Dove's Lament." When the last note had ceased shaking my poor bones, she woke as if from a trance.
"It is a beautiful tune," she said, staring into my unblinking eyes. "But I would rather die than hear it again!" Poor Aunt sank to her knees before me then, begging a forgiveness my frozen lips could never speak. "This is not what I intended," she cried, rending her dress and pulling her hair out in great fistfuls. "This is not what I meant at all!"
It was only a week before my aunt succumbed to the shock my transformation had caused her already tender constitution. Unable to help, I watched in horror as she grew ever weaker and finally, whimpering like a starving animal, let death put an end to her suffering. Nor could I call out to those who buried her and sold all her possessions to the scrap dealer. Except for the harp, the great golden harp in the shape of a kneeling girl.
None of the greedy folk who bought me (each paid a handsome sum, and then recouped it by selling me for even more to someone else) could make me play the way my aunt had done. It was only a monster, a murderer and thief, who was able at last to put the magic to work. I suppose he was accustomed to giving orders, to treating others like dogs, for once he had stolen me from my owner and climbed the mountain to his palace, he did not sit beside me and try to pluck my strings as the others had. Instead, he pointed his terrible finger at me and thundered, "Play!"
That was the first concert I sang for the giant, but hardly the last. Just as all the tales say, he loved to listen to his magic harp. In fact, it became a ritual for him each evening after supper. No sooner had the dishes, with their mess of gnawed bones and rejected bits of gristle, been cleared from the table than the huge fellow would count the money he had made off with that day, call for his magic pullet to lay a golden egg, and at last demand of his wife, "Where is my golden harp?"
I often wondered if the little russet hen were under an enchantment, too. Perhaps she was a young girl like me, or even a good dame who had offended some magician or spell-weaver. Perhaps it cost her the same pain and gave her the same throbbing joy to lay her eggs as I experienced when I sang my songs? Often, when the giant lifted the bird from her nest and commanded, "Lay!" I felt the same loosening in my throat, the same heat in my veins that accompanied my songs as they rushed, like air from a bellows, out of my chest.
The giant never went to church, and I doubt that he was acquainted with the Bible or with Our Sweet Lord. But I think he knew something of beauty and of holy sorrow. For when I sang for him, his dreadful face became composed, his eyes closed, and he acquired the devoted, worshipful expression of the parishioners back home. He never needed to tell me which songs to play, for as a result of my enchantment, I knew without words what melody he wanted to hear.
The giant loved most the plaints of waifs and wanderers. Perhaps because he was an outcast himself, feared and scorned by the folk he terrorized, he wept each time I sang of loneliness. "Ay, ay," he would say, nodding his frightful head. "That is the way of the world, is it not? The sorry way of our sorry world." Then, a tear as big as a pillow on his mighty cheek, he would close his eyes and soon be snoring.
You may be surprised when I tell you my life with the giant was not a bad one. It is true I could not move or speak, except to sing, and that at someone else's bidding. Yet though my songs were not my own, the way they sounded first in my chest and then in my master's heart made them almost like hymns. It was as if I had been born to bring this savage creature peace, to soothe that massive furrowed brow, and to put all to sleep in that perilous place, where our castle clung to the rocky cliffs above a patchwork of little towns.
In between songs, I suffered not at all, feeling neither hunger
nor thirst. Sometimes I watched the giant's wife mend her husband's endless leggings or listened to the pair chat over their supper. But most days I slept away the time, waking only to sing and then slip back into dreams of dancing and talking and running just as I had before my enchantment. Some wise men say our time on earth is but a dream; if so, my life had changed little. I woke from sleep to serenade my master, to settle his heart and his house, then
slipped back into the past, where I could still speak my mind and my own two feet still took me where I wished to go.
I cannot say exactly when the boy first came to us, when he sneaked in to change the regular rhythm of our days. I know only that even after we discovered he had stolen some of the giant's gold, no one was much disturbed. The giant's wife blamed herself. The young man had looked so lean and meatless, she explained: no good for one of her husband's hearty stews, no good for much except fattening up. So she had fed him and hidden him, hoping to surprise the old man with a treat one day. But the boy had betrayed her kindness and run off before he could be cooked, run off with a bag of yellow coins.
"Do not trouble yourself, Wife," the giant told her. "The littie gnat took nothing of value, nothing I cannot get back twofold from his village below."
And it was true. So long as the hen was untouched and I played for him each night, the giant was content and life went on as it had before the stealthy boy's visit. The great man would stumble home each afternoon with more gold, more jewels and trinkets. His wife and he would place them in bags in a store-room, where they remained untouched. There was, after all, nothing for them to spend the coins on; the giant had long ago frightened away all the merchants and tradesmen in his domain. On rare evenings he would ask for a bag and run his fingers through the shining coins, but the pleasure he got from that was nothing beside the way his spirits lifted when the hen ruffled and squawked and lay, like a miracle, a perfect golden egg.
But when the boy stole the hen, everything changed. The giant's wife must have guessed how angry her mate would be, for at first she lied. She told him the hen had wandered away and must have fallen off the cliff beyond the castle walls. But her husband, whose large nose was more sensitive than ten smaller ones put together, knew the boy had returned. "I smell him," he bellowed. "I smell that pesky troublemaker. Where be he, wife?" He began to stomp around the rooms downstairs, the stones jumping in their places with his every footfall. He tore the tapestries from the walls, peered under the tables and benches, and opened the chests and drawers. "Be he live or dead, I'll grind his bones to make my bread."