by Susann Cokal
As I work, I overhear rumors, strange gossip. They concern the man who is contracted to marry our Queen Apparent. Now that she occupies the throne, her marriage is of prime concern, and the arrangement has given rise to whispers.
Henri of France is improper.
Revolting . . .
Delicious!
A sinner whose sin has no name.
Henri is the brother of the French king who, with his mother (if reports are to be believed), killed thousands of Protestants this past August. No one mentions the family’s bloodthirst, however, all being more preoccupied with determining the nature of his sin. They guess:
Eats human flesh.
Does not like ladies.
Or what lies inside them.
Each concludes as if he is the first to think it: France must never marry the Lunedies again!
“Are the rumors true?” I ask Grammaticus as we lie together one early morning. “What do they mean?”
“Why, Ava,” he asks, “after all this time, are you really such a gossip?”
I leap up and gather my clothes.
Grammaticus says nothing until I’m repinning my apron. “Ava?” then, tentative.
I don’t reply — I want only to be gone as fast as I can. I don’t want to understand him; I don’t want to feel any gentle feeling at all at this moment.
“Ava, I don’t —” While I’m stuffing the braids into my cap. “Why are you angry? Why do you care about French Henri? Did someone tell you to ask me about him?”
This is worst of all, but I still hold my tongue. If Arthur likes a silent woman, he’ll get one in me — a woman who asks him nothing and tells him even less. Let him enjoy guessing my mood as I suppose he used to guess Midi’s. He’ll see I’m not such a gossip and that I’m not spying on his opinions.
“I didn’t mean to wound you,” he adds feebly as I reach the door.
As I cross the outer courtyard to the royal chambers again, I gaze beyond clouds into the winter sky and wonder how I ever found beauty in it. The darkness makes a rippling curtain whose points of light are the claw holes of an evil fate tearing its way through. It is another witch’s hollow, more terrifying because we are all wallowing in it.
I think that my father would understand this, down in the dungeons of the Lower Chambers.
SKYGGEHAVN
OUT in the city, the regular busyness moves forward. Landholders must be fined for misappropriating public space, fallen bridges rebuilt. A canal that has silted up must be closed, sounded, and dredged to allow boats to pass freely to the bay.
“Wait, wait!”
The dredgers of Krydder Kanal stop work. Hans Rasmussen, young son of the poorest among the workmen, has spotted something shiny in the roil stirred up by the sounding poles. Hans has hoped all winter, while he has helped his father, to find evidence of a mermaid.
And now, here, what is it? Before his father can stop him, he hops down into the silt to see. He sinks to his knees, then his waist — grabbing around himself in the mud.
The workmen curse. Hans’s father, Rasmus, takes hold of a pole, and the other men lower him carefully in to retrieve his son, who is nearly up to his neck now.
But little Hans is far too excited to care; anyway, the canal is several shades warmer than the air above it, where words break off in ice. When the men haul the two of them up (Rasmus holding tight to the scruff of the boy’s neck), Hans is clutching a shiny object.
“What is it?”
The little boy’s birdlike fist must be pried open; the fingers have already frozen shut.
“What is it?” Hans demands again. His teeth chatter; his lips are blue.
One dredger wraps a jacket around the boy’s shoulders. Another dries off the shiny thing, blows on and inspects it. Wrenches off one end.
“It’s full of needles and pins,” he says, holding it carefully — for good needles are worth money. The case is made of bright metal (too much for gold, probably brass) and brown stone; it must be worth something too.
Hans’s father gasps for breath, lying on the footpath beside the canal. His clothes are crackling into ice, and he will die of a cough before the month is out, leaving his family on parish charity.
“It must belong to a mermaid”: quite possibly the last words little Hans will ever say.
The boy’s uncle gives him a cuff across the jaw to punish him for his foolish jump; for his own certain doom and his father’s; for the greedy impulse that makes the uncle itch to keep the needle case for himself. He has a family too, after all.
ISABEL LUNEDIE AND HER DOCTORS
ON the first day of Christmas, the Queen lies on her back. This time two sheets must be hoisted above the bloated hull of her belly so that the physicians — her own physicians, handsome Candenzius again chief among them — may evaluate the scion inside her.
This is one of the joys of being Dowager and regent: Isabel can name her doctors again and receive them in the white-hung rooms. She finds them more reticent with her now, after the terrible accusations about mercury; but they bowed quite properly when they walked in, and promised her all appropriate care, and before Candenzius began the examination, he greased himself in tallow impregnated with some sort of new flower scent that makes Isabel charmingly dizzy.
Also as regent, she can squeeze the hands of the lady to either side of her as hard as she likes, if only to show that she can squeeze hard, that she is not weak. Thus she squeezes until, she imagines, the ladies turn as white as the fabric on the walls.
On the other side of the sheets, Candenzius presses here and there, feeling inside and out. He does have a large hand, but it doesn’t bother her now. The Prince — King — kicks halfheartedly at the intrusion; even he doesn’t mind when it’s Candenzius. Perhaps he’s drunk on the tallow’s perfume.
“Yes,” says the good doctor, pushing through curtains of fat to feel Isabel’s womb from outside as well as in, “all is progressing as it should.”
Health, thinks Isabel. Happiness. A new king inside her, Candenzius in attendance . . . She has what she’s wanted.
She squeezes particularly the hand of that dark nurse, her children’s favorite, who stands so strong and silent beside her. A hand so tough it doesn’t feel the press of Isabel’s fingers, so rough its calluses cut her skin. But for all that, the woman is a fine nurse, every bit the comfort Sophia always said she was. She acts before Isabel even knows she might have a need, and so she is favored to hold the royal hand when several noble ladies jostled for that purpose.
“The people are grateful to the Dowager for this service,” Candenzius said in his beautiful, raspy voice when he entered the room. “Count Nicolas particularly told me to tell you so.”
Service? Oh, yes, baby making. She is pleased to be the object of gratitude.
The physicians confer, discuss, ask the dark nurse for a beaker of Isabel’s urine. The callused hand is replaced with the soft, freckled fingers of Baroness Reventlow. Isabel squeezes all the harder. Soon after, the sheet is lowered, the Dowager Queen’s privacy covered. She feels bubbles of air seeping out where Candenzius’s hand was, tiny beats of a butterfly’s wings. The fetal King kicks until they stop.
Before the men go, Isabel asks to speak to Candenzius. “It must be in confidence.” She pushes her ladies’ hands away as if they’ve long been irritating her.
If the sound of Isabel’s voice is startling this time, it is insignificant in the general uneasiness of the room. The ladies gasp in relief, letting their hands go limp and shaking the blood back into the fingers. They retreat to a corner with the maids, assistant doctors, dark nurse, everyone else.
Isabel orders those others to sing songs in Latin. They begin, voices uncertain, humoring the mad Queen with a song to the Virgin.
Up close, Isabel whispers, “Candenzius, I must ask you a favor.”
Poor man, his face looks haggard after so many weeks in disgrace. How rude of her husband to confine these good physicians or to hamper them in any way.
“O Mother most serene,” sing the ladies.
“Anything, Your Highness,” he says.
“It requires discretion.”
He repeats, “Anything.”
“Mother of mercy, suffering souls . . .”
Isabel hoists her bulk to the left, trying to face Candenzius directly. She whispers, “You may have heard . . . the most horrible rumor.”
“I beg your pardon?” The physician acts as if he’s never heard a word spoken at court. In fact, his voice is so low he might almost not be speaking at all.
“Intercessor for us all!” The ladies sound like the monks of Saint Peter’s, who are known for high and honeyed songs.
“A rumor,” Isabel says, “about Morbus Lunediernus.”
She waits. He says nothing. The singers sing.
Isabel is forced to ask, “Where did it come from? The malady, I mean. Have you ever found its cause?”
Candenzius bends his handsome round head, coming as close to the Queen as is allowed during conversation. He peers at the skin on her cheek, near her ear, then gently brushes a lock of hair away to look closer. “Your Highness, you appear to have a rash.”
She wonders — in her madness — if she is supposed to take this as an answer, if it means more than a simple observation by a medical man. If it is a hint.
“Candenzius,” she says, scratching at the ear that he did not touch, “I want you . . . I want you to prove that Morbus Lunediernus is not . . . what people might be saying. That it is not — you understand — not Italian in nature.”
Candenzius parts his lips, thinks better of speaking aloud, closes his mouth, and bows so that his lips are almost at her ear. “Very well.” He sighs, soft as a kitten.
“You can prove it?” she whispers back.
“There might be a way.” He straightens as if he would like to leave her and get started.
The other physicians stand near the veiled paintings with faces creased, watching these two confer. Young Doctor Dé holds the beaker of Isabel’s urine saved from that morning.
“Blessed art thou, blessed be all women . . .”
Isabel gestures for Candenzius to come close again. She clutches his sleeve, forgetting to whisper. “Then, please. I beg you . . . for mercy . . . for my name . . . the Lunedies’ . . . my children . . .”
“Your Highness.” Candenzius gives a final bow, a sketchy one. “I’ll send you a salve for that broken skin.” Quickly, he leads the other physicians in departure.
Isabel lies leaking tallow and air while her ladies sing more praises to the Queen of Heaven. She expects to fall asleep but doesn’t, not until she orders everyone to be quiet. Then she calls silently to the silver mer-girls, and they draw her back into dreams.
MEDICINE
UNLIKE the other two disgraced physicians, young Doctor Dé has never had control of the nursery. He has never been chief physician, never commanded the use of beakers, interior examinations, drugs from foreign lands. But he, along with the others, is suffering for having followed the mad Queen’s prescription for her children.
The three doctors now share a chamber; Venslov and Dé even share a bed. They wait on the Queen, though not on her daughters, and are forbidden to venture beyond the palace gates. They fight over the right to use the chamber’s single table for the various studies and experiments with which they pass the time.
Does Doctor Dé (big-eared, short, suffering repeated infestations of worms) allow himself time for self-pity? Does he despair and lie abed? He does not, or not for long.
“The Queen would like to prove a suspicion wrong,” Candenzius has announced. “There will be a reward for demonstrating that the children’s affliction is not . . . Italian in nature.”
Dé is not aware that with these words Candenzius echoes the mad Queen; he does not recognize the madness of the appeal or of his own decision to volunteer. Even less does he think through the madness of the experiment that immediately springs to mind.
“I can do it,” he says.
Candenzius — relieved, keen to gain permission to gaze again at the stars and diagnose them — promises a generous share of the three physicians’ greatly reduced allowance. But all Dé needs is faith in God and medicine; that, and access to one of the little royal girls.
When he submits his request to Count Nicolas (discreetly, in the regent’s cabinet), the man appears amused by the suggestion. His thin face twists, then he grants permission: “For a moment only.”
“That’s all I require,” the young doctor assures him.
Maybe the expression on Count Nicolas’s face was one of curiosity, not amusement; the girls’ well-being is his concern now. He makes the arrangements. That very night, while the palace sleeps, the two men tiptoe through little Gorma’s night nursery. Her attendants sag on their benches, probably drugged — Dé does not inquire, and Nicolas does not inform.
When it comes to dealing with Gorma herself, the Count hangs back, a sliver of deep darkness in the amber shadows. He will not even hold the candle while Dé, working with one hand, draws the thin brown hair upward to expose Gorma’s neck. He unties the drawstring of her nightdress and pulls the fabric downward. He fails to find what he needs.
“She must be turned,” he whispers.
No answer comes; Count Nicolas has vanished.
Courage! Taking absence as further permission, Dé grasps the Princess’s shoulder and pushes — gently, just gently, for she is as light as a moth, even in her thick winter linens. He eases her onto her belly, head turned so she can breathe.
Gorma’s snores grow quieter. The attendants’ noises follow suit, though they do not wake.
Onward! Dé tugs the nightdress up; if Gorma were a grown woman, his action would be obscene. But this is how he finds what he needs.
“Diable — mon Dieu,” he whispers.
Near the cleft of her legs, on the inner roll of her skinny left thigh, Princess Gorma has a sore. Bright red at the edges, with a heart white and soft and oozing moisture.
Dé pulls the thigh to examine the little wound, its shape, its softest regions, where it might be deepest. Some force within Gorma expels another drop of nacre, and Dé congratulates himself. His experiment is perfectly designed.
Now Dé has need of one more item: that part of a man known to be most vulnerable to diseases of the Italian sort. In the best of cases, the membrum would be as yet untouched by woman (one’s own hand does not count, not in this context); but this is rare in a court. Dé has access to just one such article, a prick as virginal as those that dangle beneath the robes of any monk in Saint-Peter’s-on-the-Isle.
He parts his breeches.
If the nurses were to wake now, they would see the youngest court physician with his clothes open, his member in a soggy state shrinking from the knife poised above it. They would see Dé with the gapped smile of a zealot cutting a slit into his own most tender skin; then, finding it to be insufficiently deep, cutting again, oblivious to pain.
In another moment, the sleepers would see him wiping the blood onto his shirt. He dips a brush in Princess Gorma’s sore, then rubs the brush in his own wound. He does this again and again, until the sore is inflamed and its white sap has mixed with the blood of the membrum virile, drying to a pinkish plaster.
As the crust tightens over his skin, they would see his smile fading to an expression of mere satisfaction, then a wrinkle of fear, uncertainty, a weak reassurance to himself — and at last bravery, for he must have faith, must be sure that in this very simple experiment, he will find the proof that the Queen seeks. And by doing so, he will also please Count Nicolas, who will reward his ingenuity and his proof that the Princess is pure.
A fat nursemaid stirs in her sleep, venting a slow belch.
Thoroughly terrified, Doctor Dé flees the Princess’s bedchamber.
In the morning, Gorma wakes with a stiff neck and a deep chill, unsure how she managed to wriggle out of her nightdress as she slept. Maybe sleep turned her into an ee
l. Maybe in her sleep she moves freely, eel-ly, where she wishes to go, through the warm waters of gently steaming canals.
She resolves that from now on, she will try to remain awake during dreams, so she may feel this pleasure as fully as possible.
I am a gift again, and for the second time to Isabel. She asked for me particular. Christina-Beatte said yes, take her, the Queen Apparent be too grand to need a nursey any way. I hope at least that Gorma cry about this, some body ought to mourn my years beside the cradle.
It is ten days since the last King die and Isabel were locked again inside her chamber. The place be all white as a sugar-treat. The Queen be whited too, as if she made of snow that fall in this place, or of lime, or of mandrake.
Now she has me sleep upon her floor and clean between her legs and fetch her drinks and a pudding made of blood that she dictate the recipe to me. She do not think it strange that I can write, or that I add some herbs from what I learned with poison-auntie, or that I do not speak.
“A vow of silence,” explain Isabel to her ladies, may be to her self as well. “This dear woman is very holy. Which is why I will trust no one else to touch me in this private way.”
And so I touch her, every way she wishes it. Her bed be the new cradle that I rock, and she the baby with demands just some what more ornate than others’. I know she be not strong enough to order any torment, may be she cannot endure her own as the baby in her belly kicks the hurt in to her brain. I keep her out of pain so much I can.
One day she call me Elinor.
When she does, this all most cause no shock. I think may be she wishing, may be she simply more mad than before. No body know for certain how mad she is, she ’ve been most strange since the King die. She have asked for Countess Elinor so much, may be she convince her self that Elinor have come be cause she be wanted. Elinor with a vow of silence, Elinor all most a nun. That Countess of torment!