The Kingdom of Little Wounds

by Susann Cokal

  Christian V invites the scholars to join him. And Nicolas.

  Stellarius, Candenzius, the King, the Secretary, all of them are dumbfounded. This hole in the black sieve of night, this unprecedented phenomenon, reorders a sky-scape that’s never altered in recorded history. Maps, predictions, zodiacs, and expectations must be reinvented. Stellarius and his assistants busy themselves immediately with charts and pencils. The others simply tilt their heads back and wonder. This is 1572.

  “A newborn star,” Christian declaims in a loud voice. “Stella Neonata.” It is as if he is Adam, naming all that surrounds him, helping in its creation. He lies on the cot, gazing upward, with Nicolas behind him. How much grander this manifestation is than a finger, even the finger of his most beloved daughter, pulled from the mud. This is the type of event that makes a man’s reign.

  Nicolas adjusts the pillow behind Christian’s head. Christian breathes deep. He thinks that despite the smoke from the brazier, he can smell his beloved’s perfume.

  The King says, “This is an occasion, is it not? For once, the bells should ring for happy news.”

  So church bells chime through the mists of Skyggehavn, informing those who do not already know that theirs is an age of miracles, and all should leave their homes to look. Footpaths and squares crowd with burghers in cloaks and shawls; the trolls who live beneath the bridges crawl out and join them. Even those who don’t know the constellations can see this star, for it is stronger and clearer than any other pinprick in the heavens, including the moon.

  Indeed, for a fortnight there will be many who swear they can see the star during the shortening hours of day. Stellarius will say so himself.

  “A great light,” he pronounces that first night, on the flat west tower. “Stella Magna. Stella . . . Lunediae?”

  Christian Magnus V merely grunts, considering. He orders all to fall quiet, that he might listen to the music of the spheres.

  If the historian were not sworn to record events rather than shape them, he would refine the astrologer’s Latin, if not the King’s.

  Some at the court are excited; some are afraid. The new French astrologer takes one look, decides he is in danger, and sails back to Bordeaux. Stellarius is pleased.

  “Stella Nova is a good omen,” he tells the King.

  The new star is a portent; everyone agrees on that. But of what? Here the scholars disagree. Candenzius calls it a sore in the heavens; he believes it will prove Krolik’s diagnosis of Morbus Lunediernus wrong.

  “Such an intense light is a concentration of celestial poisons,” he says. “You shall see, the children will sicken with its arrival.” He declares that he’ll find some way to lance and poultice a boil in the heavens. He orders the grinder of perspective glasses to make a device that might sweep among the astral gases and stir them to a new combination.

  Krolik, however, disagrees. “It can’t be any but a good sign,” he says. “The children are improving.”

  The two men bicker famously. The King orders them to be silent when he is up on the tower, giving himself the illusion that he is alone with his thoughts. He will eventually bestow upon the star an official name (Stella Supra? the courtiers suggest. Stella Christiani?), but he waits prudently for his scholars to settle on an interpretation.

  Even on a misty night or a rainy one, but not during a storm, the new star beams steadily down. Poets call it the most gorgeous sight in the heavens, the new jewel of the kingdom; they compose page after page of praises to it. Goldsmiths, glassblowers, and embroiderers try to reproduce it with their earthly materials. The people fall asleep looking at it, and their hands and feet suffer frostbite.

  That star is like a toddler romping overhead; there is no telling what it might do. But there is hope that it will grow into something wonderful.

  The new star has put all of us off balance. We’ve always expected things to change down below, in the canals, the streets, and so on, but the heavens have been constant in our memory. This star shines even in the daylight, as if to drive away the sun. It is so bright that it seems heavier than the rest; we have the impression that if we were to stand on tiptoes, we might touch it.

  In response, we ourselves change. We grow braver, more hopeful; reckless, with girls flopping down for boys who forget, for a moment, about the beauties of the heavens as they explore the pleasures of the flesh. Excitable, with great plans laid and ambitions encouraged.

  Every night now, Skyggehavn grows taller, as people add rooms onto their houses so they might view the star better. Sometimes entire buildings gather up their skirts and shift into a footpath or new street. The most fashionable item in town is a perspective glass, whether it’s a proper tube as made by my father or a simple glass sphere filled with water that magnifies the light in waves. Even bare-eyed, we love to stand among the stretcherous buildings and gaze.

  Not everyone views the star as a good thing. I’ve heard some of the maids worrying that it will launch to the ground and destroy us all. Others insist that it is Sophia, the Wraith Princess, burning with fury and waiting to strike. Still more think it a sign that the Perished Lily has become an angel.

  Nothing captures the fancy like a new arrangement in the heavens.

  I try to see the star as a sign of hope, but in my case it seems like an ill omen instead — yet another something pretty that brings nothing good after all. Like my position at the palace. Like my love affair with Arthur Grammaticus.

  At the very least, the star makes an excuse for a scholarly man to be absent from his rooms. Surely, I tell myself, the study of this star is what occupies Grammaticus now, and why I have not seen him in days. Over and over, I tap on the boards of his door, wait for him or an apprentice to open to me. No reply. It is as if he doesn’t exist — or I don’t. And I need him to reassure me.

  I peer through the keyhole and see only a corner of his table and a sheaf of grubby pages. I consider what I might say to him: What does it mean that you taught Midi Sorte to write? Now and forever, sure. Though I am certain I know.

  I can’t bear that my lover should have so many secrets. And that he should avoid me in this manner. And that he just might not be my lover alone, but Midi’s as well. He may have been hers for years. They might have kissed right before she fetched me from the stairs and brought me to him. I was most likely a brief distraction, a sort of dalliance. And no wonder she doesn’t like me either . . . She must have thought to marry him. Or at least be kept by him.

  You gave her expression in the fingers when she had none in the tongue — why?

  But this much is obvious. There is only one reason, really, a man ever wants a woman to express herself: to praise him.

  Why he pretended to want me, I do not know. To make Midi jealous? I have to see if I can rescue some good from it. I will do as I did with Count Nicolas. I will tell a tale that shames the subject — but the subject will be Nicolas himself, and when the King hears the report, he will banish his friend to the Lower Chambers. And then Arthur.

  I decide to wait at his room till he turns up. I sink to the floor outside his door and watch the shoes shuffling and striding by: leather, velvet, wood. I don’t care if the courtiers and their servants wonder about my presence here; I don’t care if they gossip. I hear maids giggling and don’t bother to listen for their remarks. I have been the subject of much worse, and I will never shake the shame.

  I wait an hour, then two, with an ear cocked for the bells that mark time. Still, Grammaticus does not return. Finally I give up; I have to set about my work. I go to the kitchen for a handful of coarse bread and a bucket.

  This is the reason I need Grammaticus now, an important one — I am no longer a maid of the nursery. With the new star, I have become a yet more lowly scrubber, one who cleans fireplaces and floor tiles throughout the Queen’s household. Doctor Krolik, as Master of the Nursery, gathered us all together and explained at some length that with fewer children in bed, there need be fewer girls to attend them. And so our duties have been re
configured according to our talents, and this is supposed to be mine. I am told it was Duchess Margrethe who recommended me personally for this task; she recalled how hard I scrubbed the night after Countess Elinor was arrested.

  Midi Sorte smirked when my new duties were announced. She, of course, remains in charge of Princess Gorma; she rocks a cradle while I slop a bucket and feel myself become invisible.

  I’ve discovered that picking up a bucket in this place is the same as putting on a cloak knit by elves. No one wants to see a scrub maid, so no one does. I am invisible; I could go virtually anywhere, as long as there was a dirty floor or fireplace in it.

  While the last children are asleep in their night beds, watched over by the night nurses, I scrub the black-and-white of their new dayroom with stinking lye. In the morning, when the children are settled into their fanciful beds, I clean their simpler night rooms the same way. These quarters were previously used by the Council Chancellor and his wife, who were not notable housekeepers. The drifts of lint and dead insects seem to regenerate nightly till I sweep and scrub them away.

  As I clean, I make up speeches I will deliver to Grammaticus. Damn you, I will say sternly. May Satan himself bury you in dung along with Count Nicolas. Or, Please love me after all.

  I do need him. I would use him.

  On a Sunday I receive permission to visit the house with the stone head. We — my father and his wife and I — sit in the smoky hall and make polite conversation. Sabine is unwell, tottering with her new bulk and uncomfortably windy; she craves marzipan and cumin, and she makes water more often than a porpoise.

  “It is difficult the first time,” Father confides to me when she is off using the pot. “Your mother was greatly inconvenienced by you, though she was a young woman in all her pregnancies. Sabine, alas, is no longer truly young.”

  In fact, Sabine (not unlike the Queen herself) is so old that the neighbors must be constantly surprised the baby hasn’t given up his grip and slipped away.

  I cross myself to ward off the evil thought. Somewhat to my surprise, I find I’m looking forward to this baby. And I want my father and his wife to be happy . . . Which is one reason I don’t tell him of my most recent crisis of fortune: I can’t bear to disappoint him. I resolve to free myself of scrubbing duties as soon as I can. Maybe he’ll never need to know.

  “How are you, my dear?” he asks, and one resolve holds firm; but then I offer all in a hopeful rush what I had earlier vowed not to say:

  “Father, a man highly placed said he loves me. He offered to marry me.”

  My father sits still a moment, letting silence speak for him. “Ava, my dear,” he says at last, “please have a care. Remember the dangers. And remember that it is not just your reputation at risk but that of your family.”

  He leans forward to poke at the fire, finding a new subject. “Several of the lords, and Doctor Candenzius himself, have commissioned perspective glasses. They want them ever longer and stronger than the King’s. But I” — chuckling indulgently —“I know not to do that.”

  I imagine the star snagged on an exceptionally long perspective device, dripping marzipan onto the King’s sleeping entourage. They might lick themselves like a pack of cats, and Grammaticus would write it all down for the annals. And Nicolas, perhaps.

  “I’m glad your business is prospering,” I say politely.

  “Beyond our dreams,” says my stepmother, squeezing herself through the doorway. “But one does miss the chance to appear at court.”

  To my knowledge, Sabine has never been to the palace. But, like everyone else who’s never visited, she thinks about it in a very real way. The splendors inside belong not only to the Lunedies but also to all of us, who take pride in our ruling family’s wealth and in the beauty of their surroundings.

  Gerda pours Sabine another cup of small ale and helps her settle into a chair.

  Sabine sips as if she’s a grand lady. “Ava, do tell us about the Queen.” Her cup is pewter with some complicated ornament. “Is her belly progressing well?”

  THE HEAVENS AND QUEEN ISABEL

  IN the lengthening nights of her incarceration, Isabel is more than usually troubled. She is wakeful and anxious. Sometimes she steps over the sleeping maids and opens her shutters and unsticks the window glass to crane her head out and look at the new star. Stella Maris, Stella Mariae. It is speaking to her; if only she knew how to hear it.

  Isabel would like to walk beneath the stars.

  Even more, she would like to visit her children again. Give them their medicine, reassure them that the new star means no harm, only good things for their family. She hears Princess Gorma is feeling nearly well; if reports can be believed, all three of the remaining little souls are improving. Isabel is glad, of course.

  But she also feels just the least bit hurt that her children might be healing without her. All those hours of care and worry, draughts and consultations and treatments . . . now rewritten entirely by that hideous Polish physician . . . who cannot, cannot, cannot be right about Isabel . . . unless somehow he is right, which would mean the unthinkable. That to which Elinor, wise Elinor, sweet friend, surprisingly confessed.

  The new star beams serenely down on the Lunedie Queen. The music of the celestial spheres rings inside her sensitive ears. Yes, she should see the children with her own eyes. They must need her, surely they must. She is only good.

  When she demands to visit the nursery, she is given wine to drink instead.

  “Is this Doctor Candenzius’s formula?” she asks before she drinks, and her ladies (new ladies) tell her, “Yes.” She drinks, and it makes her sleep through the day.

  So at night she wakes and gazes at her star. The sleeping maids don’t notice the cold air from the window, except to curl deeper into each other and their blankets.

  Sometimes Isabel tiptoes to a tall oak chest where she keeps silver boxes full of relics from the children who have left her. The locks of hair and milk teeth, a few fingernail cuttings, the precious miracle of Sophia’s half finger. The box rattles; there are also some bits of bone she’s found here and there.

  Isabel takes Sophia’s finger from the box and points it at Stella Mariae as a navigator points an astrolabe (she thinks) toward the North Star. Surely this star is somehow connected to the children. Surely it can do something for them. Draw them to her, alive or dead.

  When she looks toward the earth, she sees starlight wink along the surface of spreading mud in the witch’s hollow. It does not sink inside. It does, however, frighten some courtiers enough that Isabel sees them sneaking over to toss down their jewels, ribbons, golden braids: offerings to some old spirit residing between the slit in the earth and the eye in the heavens. They think their sacrifices might protect them. From what? From an evil they cannot name.

  “Fools.” Isabel runs Sophia’s finger over her belly. What would she sacrifice? Nothing, for she has already lost everything. Or almost. She clutches the finger tight, rattles the bones in their box just enough to reassure herself that they’re there, not enough to wake anyone.

  She imagines herself outdoors. She is leaning not over the witch’s hollow but over that quicksilver pool at her uncle’s castle: there, she experiences the heady feel of the moving reflection, distorting the face now this way, now that, according to the wind’s direction. The sweet, dizzy air above. It was no wonder that ladies bent down to kiss their own images, to fix their loveliness in one silver second.

  It is impossible to believe that something so beautiful, something that feels so good, would actually kill.

  Isabel shuts the reliquary box in its cabinet and locks the door. She keeps Sophia’s finger with her, though; she likes the shape of it in her fist. Sophia, her eldest, her darling.

  When she climbs into bed, she feels the weight of that extra finger in her hand, pulling her down. She is falling . . . falling . . . tumbling into a quicksilver pond as round as the moon and as bright as the new star.

  She lets herself sink deeply into it
— descending through the exquisitely shivering metal. It is cool and soft and exciting. She may never come back. She may never want to. Quicksilver mercury-maids, kindhearted reflections of the ladies above, take her by the hands. They embrace Isabel and tell her she is safe. They spit mercury into the air until the demons and witches are driven away.

  Isabel, dreaming, clutches Sophia’s finger and feels the small dead thing growing warm and soft. She presses it into her belly. Stay with me, she begs them, the finger and the belly. Save me.

  CROWN PRINCE CHRISTIAN LUNEDIE

  AND now, the Crown Prince dies.

  There can be no words to express his parents’ sorrow, for there is no sorrow like that of parents who have lost their only son. Their worst fears have been realized. Royal parents, royal son.

  The bells clang; the courtiers grieve. They weep, and the salt of their tears makes a hard white frost on the floors and walls of the palace.

  But all of this has happened already, it is always happening. Theirs is a kingdom of mourners. Out in the city, emotion does not run as high as it should. The people are tired of eating black bread; their black clothes are in tatters, reeking of sweat. They’ve made their throats sore with praying, and they have to cough new prayers out to comply with tradition.

  The King orders all the palace mirrors covered in crepe, all the portraits and paintings and other pretties. He would cover the night sky in black if he could, to muffle the star that he now feels has called down doom upon the Lunedies.

  The boy lies on view in the amber cathedral, decaying slowly in the chill almost-winter.

  In these terrible hours, Christian leans heavily on Count Nicolas. His Secretary is the one soul who seems to understand both what Christian is feeling and what must be done. In Christian’s cabinet, during his hours upon the stool, Nicolas is all sympathy and especially tender, resting a hand on Christian’s shoulder while he listens to the royal laments, brushing the hair beneath the wig, removing Christian’s pearl earring for bed as delicately as the King’s own nursemaid.