by Gaiman, Neil
PRINCESS
Will father be there?
QUEEN
Yes. I’m sure he will …You are so hungry. Look at you devour that apple. What sharp little teeth you must have.
SFX// THE GIRL IS EATING THE APPLE.
QUEEN
Is it good?
PRINCESS
Nice apple.
QUEEN—INTIMATE
Up till that moment, I had been, I suppose, almost scared of the little princess, but looking down at her then I warmed to her and, with my fingers, gently, I stroked her cheek. She looked at me and smiled— she smiled but rarely—then she sank her teeth into the base of my thumb, the Mound of Venus, and she drew blood.
QUEEN
(She starts to scream)
QUEEN—INTIMATE
Then she looked at me and I fell silent.
(beat)
Her mouth fastened to my hand, where the blood ran, and she licked and sucked and drank.
PRINCESS
Thank you. Nice.
SFX. THE PRINCESSES FOOTSTEPS WALK AWAY. THE DOOR CLOSES.
QUEEN—INTIMATE
Beneath my gaze the cut that she had made began to close, to scab, and to heal. The next day it was an old scar: I might have cut my hand with a pocket-knife in my childhood.
SFX—THE YOUNG QUEEN BEGINS TO CRY … OVER IT:
QUEEN—INTIMATE
I had been frozen by her, owned and dominated. That scared me, more than the blood on which she had fed. After that night I locked my chamber door at dusk, barring it with an oaken pole, and I had the smith forge iron bars, which he placed across my windows.
SFX—THE THRONE ROOM.
A NUMBER OF COURTIERS IN THE BACKGROUND.
THE KING IS NOW ILL—A YOUNG MAN, BUT DYING AND HIS MIND IS GOING.
KING
So, what are you saying archbishop?
ARCHBISHOP
I am saying, your majesty, that if Edwin and Morcar continue in this heresy I shall have no recourse but to send an envoy to Rome and request their excommunication.
KING
I… yes, I… . You were… Edwin…
Yes. I’m afraid my mind wandered…
ARCHBISHOP
Edwin and Morcar, your majesty. The Northern secession. I was pointing out to your majesty that…
KING
You, boy. Come here.
WINEBEARER
Yes, your majesty.
KING
Wine. Most grateful. Yes.
We hear him drink a little, then the glass fall from his hand. It smashes noisily on the floor. Courtiers GASP in horror
KING (CONT’D) Most frightfully…
We hear his feet stumbling away, and the mutters of courtiers…
QUEEN—INTIMATE
My husband, my love, my king, sent for me less and less, and when I came to him he was dizzy, listless, confused. He could no longer make love as a man makes love; and he would not permit me to pleasure him with my mouth: the one time I tried, he started, violently, and began to weep. I pulled my mouth away and held him tightly, until the sobbing had stopped, and he slept, like a child.
I ran my fingers across his skin as he slept. It was covered in a multitude of ancient scars. But I could recall no scars from the days of our courtship, save one, on his side, where a boar had gored him when he was a youth. Soon he was just a shadow of the man I had met and loved by the bridge.
His bones showed, blue and white, beneath his skin.
INT. THE KING’S CHAMBER. DAY.
SFX: THE KING IS MUMBLING IN HIS SICK BED. THE QUEEN IS, WE CAN ASSUME ALTHOUGH I DON’T KNOW WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE, MOPPING HIS FEVERED BROW, MUTTERING ENDEARMENTS …
MAIDSERVANT
The Archbishop, your majesty.
QUEEN
Send him in.
SFX: THE ARCHBISHOP’S FOOTSTEPS.
QUEEN
I am pleased you came, Archbishop. His majesty will die soon. I need you to deliver the final sacraments.
ARCHBISHOP
I see. Do you know why he is dying, your majesty? Do you know what is killing him?
QUEEN
(A beat.)
I believe so.
ARCHBISHOP
Then you know as well as I why I cannot administer the last rites.
QUEEN
He is your king. How dare you —
ARCHBISHOP
I dare because this is a monstrous thing, your majesty.
KING
(delirious)
Daughter… no. Please, little one…
And he dies …
ARCHBISHOP
And he is nobody’s king, your majesty. Not anymore.
QUEEN
(coldly angry)
Get out of here.
SFX: FOOTSTEPS, AND A DOOR CLOSES.
QUEEN—INTIMATE
I sat there with my love’s dead body. His hands were cold as stone, his eyes milky-blue, his hair and beard faded and lustreless and limp
He weighed near to nothing.
SFX: OUTSIDE. SNOW BLOWS. A RAVEN CROWS. STONES FALL.
QUEEN—INTIMATE
The ground was frozen hard, and we could dig no grave for him, so we made a cairn of rocks and stones above his body, as a memorial only, for there was little enough of him left to protect from the hunger of the beasts and the birds.
So I was queen.
SFX: LUTE MUSIC STARTS …
QUEEN—INTIMATE
And I was foolish, and young, and I did not do what I would do, now.
If it were today, I would have her heart cut out, true. But then I would have her head and arms and legs cut off. I would have them disembowel her. And then I would watch, in the town square, as the hangman heated the fire to white-heat with bellows, watch unblinking as he consigned each part of her to the fire. I would have archers around the square, who would shoot any bird or animal who came close to the flames, any raven or dog or hawk or rat. And I would not close my eyes until the princess was ash, and a gentle wind could scatter her like snow.
SFX: THE LUTE MUSIC HAS FADED TO NOTHING MORE THAN FALLING SNOW AND DUST AND WIND.
QUEEN—INTIMATE
I did not do this thing, and we pay for our mistakes.
(beat)
They say I was fooled; that it was not her heart. That it was the heart of an animal—a stag, perhaps, or a boar. They say that, and they are wrong.
And some say (but it is her lie, not mine) that I was given the heart, and that I ate it. Lies and half-truths fall like snow, covering the things that I remember, the things I saw. A landscape, unrecognizable after a snowfall; that is what she has made of my life.
(beat)
There were scars on my love, her father’s thighs, and on his ballock-pouch, and on his male member, when he died. We took her in the day, while she slept and was at her weakest.
PRINCESS
(she wakes and yawns, sleepily)
Stepmother?
QUEEN
Tie her up.
HUNTSMAN
Yes, majesty.
SFX: WE HEAR A SCUFFLE … THE PRINCESS WAILS LIKE THE FRIGHTENED CHILD SHE MIGHT BE …
PRINCESS
No… please… No… Mother. Make them let me go.
QUEEN
I’m not your mother. Take her into the forest and kill her.
SFX: FOREST NOISES BEGIN: OVER THIS NARRATION WE HEAR THE PRINCESS BEING KILLED. A STAB AND A SCREAM, WHICH STOPS.
QUEEN—INTIMATE
They took her to the heart of the forest, and there they opened her blouse, and they cut out her heart, and they left her dead, in a gully, for the forest to swallow.
SFX: FOREST NOISES/FOREST THEME BEGINS.
QUEEN—INTIMATE
The forest is a dark place, the border to many kingdoms; no-one would be foolish enough to claim jurisdiction over it. Outlaws live in the forest. Robbers live in the forest, and so do wolves. You can ride through the forest for a dozen days and never see a soul; but there are eyes up
on you the entire time.
SFX: FOREST NOISES FADE.
SFX: PALACE ROOM. THE HUNTSMAN ENTERS:
QUEEN
Is it done?
HUNTSMAN
Yes, majesty.
QUEEN
You have it with you?
HUNTSMAN
She was only a child, your majesty.
QUEEN
I don’t know what she was. But she wasn’t a child. Give it to me.
SFX: THE HEART BEATS GENTLY IN THE BACKGROUND …
QUEEN (CONT’D)
Well done. That will be all.
HUNTSMAN
Majesty.
QUEEN—INTIMATE
They brought me her heart. I know it was hers—no sow’s heart or doe’s would have continued to beat and pulse after it had been cut out, as that one did.
SFX: THE HEARTBEATS GET LOUDER.
QUEEN—INTIMATE
I took it to my chamber.
I did not eat it: I hung it from the beams above my bed, placed it on a length of twine that I strung with rowan-berries, orange-red as a robin’s breast, and with bulbs of garlic.
(beat)
Outside, the snow fell, covering the footprints of my huntsmen, covering her tiny body in the forest where it lay.
SFX: GENTLE LUTE THEME. SNOW FALLING.
QUEEN—INTIMATE
I had the smith remove the iron bars from my windows, and I would spend some time in my room each afternoon through the short winter days, gazing out over the forest, until darkness fell.
SFX: THE HEARTBEATS FADED AWAY …
SFX: PASSAGE OF TIME MUSIC …
QUEEN—INTIMATE
As I said, there were people in the forest. They would come out, some of them, for the Spring Fair: a greedy, feral, dangerous people; some were stunted—dwarfs and midgets and hunchbacks; others had the huge teeth and vacant gazes of idiots; some had fingers like flippers or crab-claws. They would creep out of the forest each year for the Spring Fair, held when the snows had melted.
SFX: SLOWLY RAISING UP, THE NOISE OF THE SPRING FAIR. PEOPLE CRYING THEIR WARES. SOME MINSTRELS PLAYING.
QUEEN—INTIMATE
As a young lass I had worked at the Fair, and they had scared me then, the forest folk. I told fortunes for the Fairgoers, scrying futures in a pool of still water; and, later, when I was older, in a disc of polished glass, its back all silvered—a gift from a merchant whose straying horse I had seen in a pool of ink.
(beat)
The stallholders at the fair were afraid of the forest folk; they would nail their wares to the bare boards of their stalls—slabs of gingerbread or leather belts were nailed with great iron nails to the wood. If their wares were not nailed, they said, the forest folk would take them, and run away, chewing on the stolen gingerbread, flailing about them with the belts.
SFX: CRIES OF “HOY! COME BACK!” AND SCUFFLING, OVER THE MARKET NOISES.
QUEEN—INTIMATE
The forest folk had money, though: a coin here, another there, sometimes stained green by time or the earth, the face on the coin unknown to even the oldest of us. Also they had things to trade, and thus the fair continued, serving the outcasts and the dwarfs, serving the robbers (if they were circumspect) who preyed on the rare travellers from lands beyond the forest, or on gypsies, or on the deer.
(This was robbery in the eyes of the law. The deer were the queen’s.)
(pause)
SFX: THE FAIR NOISES ARE GONE. NOW ALL WE CAN HEAR IS THE GENTLE BEAT OF THE PRINCESS’S HEART.
QUEEN—INTIMATE
The years passed by slowly, and my people claimed that I ruled them with wisdom. The heart still hung above my bed, pulsing gently in the night. If there were any who mourned the child, I saw no evidence: she was a thing of terror, back then, and they believed themselves well rid of her.
SFX: MARKET MUSIC, GENTLE IN THE BACKGROUND, BUT NO MARKET SOUNDS—MAYBE ONE LONE CRIER CALLING HIS WARES. SLOWLY A LONELY WIND BEGINS.
QUEEN—INTIMATE
Spring Fair followed Spring Fair: five of them, each sadder, poorer, shoddier than the one before. Fewer of the forest folk came out of the forest to buy. Those who did seemed subdued and listless. The stallholders stopped nailing their wares to the boards of their stalls. And by the fifth year only a handful of folk came from the forest—a fearful huddle of little hairy men, and no-one else.
SFX: THE WIND HOWLS.
SFX: INT… FOOTSTEPS ON A WOODEN FLOOR.
MAIDSERVANT
Your majesty?
QUEEN
Hmm..? I’m sorry.
MAIDSERVANT
The Lord of the Fair is here, your majesty.
QUEEN
Show him in, Jenna.
SFX: A DOOR OPENS. FOOTSTEPS.
QUEEN
My Lord?
LORD OF THE FAIR
Your majesty
QUEEN
You asked to see me
LORD OF THE FAIR
Yes, majesty. (he plucks up his nerve)
I do not come to you as my queen.
QUEEN
No?
LORD OF THE FAIR (CONT’D)
No, majesty. I come to you because you are wise. When you were a child you found a strayed foal by staring into a pool of ink; when you were a maiden you found a lost infant who had wandered far from her mother, by staring into that mirror of yours. You know secrets and you can seek out things hidden. Something is taking the forest folk. Next year there will be no Spring Fair. The travellers from other kingdoms have grown scarce and few, the folk of the forest are almost gone. Another year like the last, and we shall all starve.
QUEEN
Jenna, bring me my looking glass. It is in the chest, in my chamber.
MAIDSERVANT
Yes, Majesty.
QUEEN—INTIMATE
It was a simple thing, a silver-backed glass disk, which I kept wrapped in a doe-skin, safe in the dark.
MAIDSERVANT
Here, majesty.
LORD OF THE FAIR
Is that the one we bought you?
QUEEN
The same. Sometimes I can see things in it.
Sometimes it tells me things. Now, quiet.
SFX: MIRROR MUSIC, DISTANT AND STRANGE.
QUEEN—INTIMATE
She was twelve and she was no longer a little child. Her skin was still pale, her eyes and hair coal-black, her lips blood-red. She wore the clothes she had worn when she left the castle for the last time—the blouse, the skirt—although they were much let-out, much mended.
Over them she wore a leather cloak, and instead of boots she had leather bags, tied with thongs, over her tiny feet.
SFX: FOREST NOISES BEGIN—RUSTLING AND NIGHT BIRDSONG … BUT TREATED, THROUGH THE MIRROR, WITH A LITTLE ECHO AND FLUX …
QUEEN—INTIMATE
She was standing in the forest, beside a tree. As I watched, in the eye of my mind, I saw her edge and step and flitter and pad from tree to tree, like an animal: a bat or a wolf. She was following someone. He was a monk. He wore sackcloth, and his feet were bare, and scabbed and hard. His beard and tonsure were of a length, overgrown, unshaven. She watched him from behind the trees. Eventually he paused for the night, and began to make a fire, laying twigs down, breaking up a robin’s nest as kindling. He had a tinder-box in his robe, and he knocked the flint against the steel until the sparks caught the tinder and the fire flamed. There had been two eggs in the nest he had found, and these he ate, raw. They cannot have been much of a meal for so big a man.