Red as Blood and White as Bone

by Theodora Goss

  “Next time, remind him that he could be put in prison for criticizing the crown prince. Things will be different in this country when I am king, Vadek. That I can tell you.”

  Klara heard appreciative laughter.

  “And what will you do with the pelt? It’s a particularly fine one, now it’s tanned.”

  “It will go on the floor of my study, on one side of my desk. Now I need another, for the other side. Yes, let’s go after the other wolf—if it exists, as you say.”

  The princess pulled me away.

  I did not like this prince, who joked about killing the black wolves. I was a child of the Karhegy, and had grown up on stories of the wolves, as black as night, that lived nowhere else in Europe. The nuns had told me they belonged to the Devil, who would come after any man who harmed them. But my friend the poet had told me they were an ancient breed, and had lived on the mountain long before the Romans had come or Morek had driven them out, leading his tribesmen on their small, fierce ponies and claiming Sylvania for his own.

  Why would my princess want to marry him? But that was the logic of fairy tales: The princess married the prince. Perhaps I should not question it, any more than I would question the will of God.

  She led me back down the halls—evidently, she had learned the way better than I knew it myself. I followed her into the kitchen, hoping Greta would still be asleep—but no, there she stood, having gotten up early to prepare a particularly fine breakfast for the future baroness. She was holding a rolling pin in her hand.

  “Where in the world have you been, Klara?” she said, frowning. “And who gave you permission to wander away? Look, the potatoes are not yet peeled. I need them to make pancakes, and they still need to be boiled and mashed. And who the devil is this with you?”

  I looked over at my princess, frightened and uncertain what to say. But as neatly as you please, she curtsied and said, “I’ve come from the village, ma’am. Father Ilvan told me you need help in the kitchen, to prepare for the ball.”

  Greta looked at her skeptically. I could tell what she was thinking—this small woman with her long dark hair and accented voice. Was she a Slav? A gypsy? The village priest was known equally for his piety and propensity to trust the most inappropriate people. He was generous to peddlers and thieves alike.

  But she nodded and said, “All right, then. Two hands are faster than one. Get those potatoes peeled.”

  That morning we peeled and boiled and mashed potatoes, and whisked eggs until our arms were sore, and blanched almonds. While Greta was busy with Frau Hoffman and Agneta was gossiping with Josef, I asked my princess about her country. Where had she come from? What was it like? She said it was not far, and as beautiful as Sylvania, and yes, they spoke a different language there.

  “It is difficult for me to speak your language, little one,” she said. We were pounding the almonds for marzipan.

  “Do you tell stories there?” I asked her.

  “Of course,” she said. “Stories are everywhere, and everyone tells them. But our stories may be different from yours. About the Old Woman of the Forest, who grants your heart’s desire if you ask her right, and the Fair Ladies who live in trees, and the White Stag, who can lead you astray or lead you home…”

  I wanted to hear these stories, but then Agneta came in, and we could not talk again about the things that interested me without her or Greta overhearing. By the time our work was done, long after supper, I was so tired that I simply fell into bed with my clothes on. Trying to stay awake although my eyes kept trying to close, I watched my princess draw the bundle she had brought with her out from the corner where I had put it. She untied it, and down came spilling a long black … was it a dress? Yes, a dress as black as night, floor-length, obviously a ball gown. It had been tied with its own sleeves. Something that glittered and sparkled fell out of it, onto the floor. I sat up, awake now, wanting to see more clearly.

  She turned and showed me what had fallen—a necklace of red beads, each faceted and reflecting the light from the single bare bulb in my room.

  “Do you like it?” she asked.

  “They are … what are they?” I had never seen such jewels, although I had read about fabulous gems in my fairy tale book. The beads were each the size of a hummingbird’s egg, and as red as blood. Each looked as though it had a star at its center. She laid the dress on my bed—I reached over and felt it, surreptitiously. It was the softest velvet imaginable. Then she clasped the necklace around her neck. It looked incongruous against the patched dress she was wearing—my second best one.

  “Wait, where is…” She looked at the floor where the necklace had fallen, then got down on her knees and looked under the bed, then searched again frantically in the folds of the dress. “Ah, there! It was caught in a buttonhole.” She held up a large comb, the kind women used to put their hair up in the last century.

  “Will you dress my hair, Klara?” she asked. I nodded. While she sat on the edge of my bed, I put her hair up, a little clumsily but the way I had seen the baroness dress her hair, which was also long, not bobbed or shingled. Finally, I put in the comb—it was as white as bone, indeed probably made of bone, ornately carved and with long teeth to catch the hair securely.

  “There,” I said. “Would you like to look in a mirror?” I held up a discarded shaving glass I had found one morning on the trash heap at the bottom of the garden. I used it sometimes to search my face for any signs of beauty, but I had found none yet. I was always disappointed to find myself an ordinary girl.

  She looked at herself from one side, then the other. “Such a strange face,” she said. “I cannot get used to it.”

  “You’re very beautiful,” I said. And she was, despite the patched dress. Princesses are, even in disguise. That’s how you know.

  “Thank you, little one. I hope I am beautiful enough,” she said, and smiled.

  That night, she once again slept curled around me, with her chin on my shoulder. I dreamed that I was wandering through the forest, in the darkness under the trees. I crossed a stream over mossy stones, felt the ferns brushing against my shins and wetting my socks with dew. I found the little red mushrooms that are poisonous to eat, saw the shy, wild deer of the Karhegy, with their spotted fawns. When I woke, my princess was already up and dressed.

  “Potatoes,” she said. “Your life is an endless field of potatoes, Klara.” I nodded and laughed, because it was true.

  That day, we helped prepare for the ball. We were joined by Marta, the daughter of the village baker, and Anna, the groom’s wife, who had been taking odd jobs since her husband was kicked by one of the baron’s horses. He was bedridden until his leg was fully healed, and on half-salary. We candied orange and lemon peels, and pulled pastry until it was as thin as a bedsheet, then folded it so that it lay in leaves, like a book. We soaked cherries in rum, and glazed almonds and walnuts with honey. I licked some off my fingers. Marta showed us how to boil fondant. Even I was permitted to pipe a single icing rose.

  And all the while, we washed dishes and swept the floor, which quickly became covered with flour. My princess never complained, not once, even though she was obviously not used to such work. She was clumsier at it than I was, and if we had not needed the help, I think Greta would have dismissed her. As it was, she looked at her several times, suspiciously. How could any woman not know how to pull pastry? Unless she was a gypsy and spent her life telling fortunes, traveling in a caravan …

  There was no time to talk that day, so I could not ask how she would get to the ball. And that night, I fell asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow.

  The next day, the day of the ball, we were joined by the two upstairs maids: Katrina, who was from Karberg like Agneta, and her cousin, whose name I have forgotten. They were most superior young women, and would not have set foot in the kitchen except for such a grand occasion. What a bustle there was that day in the normally quiet kitchen! Greta barking orders and Agneta barking them after her, and the chatter of women w
orking, although my princess did not chatter, of course, but did her work in silence. We made everything that could not have been made ahead of time, whisking the béchamel, poaching fish, and roasting the pig that would preside in state over the supper room, with a clove-studded orange in its mouth. We sieved broth until it was perfectly clear, molded liver dumplings into various shapes, and blanched asparagus.

  Nightfall found us prepared but exhausted. Greta, who had been meeting one last time with Frau Hoffman, scurried in to tell us that the motorcars had started to arrive. I caught a glimpse of them when I went out to ask Josef for some sprigs of mint. Such motorcars! Large and black and growling like dragons as they circled around the stone courtyard, dropping off guests. The men in black tails or military uniforms, the women in evening dresses, glittering, iridescent. How would my princess look among them, in her simple black dress?

  At last, all the food on the long kitchen table—the aspics and clear soup, the whole trout poached with lemons, the asparagus with its accompanying hollandaise—was borne up to the supper room by footmen. It took two of them to carry the suckling pig. Later we would send up the cakes and pastries, the chocolates and candied fruit.

  “Klara, I need your help,” the princess whispered to me. No one was paying attention—Katrina and her cousin had already gone upstairs to help the female guests with their wraps. Marta, Anna, and Agneta were laughing and gossiping among themselves. Greta was off doing something important with Frau Hoffman. “I need to wash and dress,” she said. And, indeed, she had a smear of buttery flour across one cheek. She looked as much like a kitchen maid as a princess can look, when she has a pale, serious face and eyes as deep as forest pools, and long black hair that kept escaping the braid into which she had put it.

  “Of course,” I said. “There is a bathroom down the hall, beyond the water closet. No one will be using it tonight.”

  No one noticed as we slipped out of the kitchen. My princess fetched her dress, and then I showed her the way to the ancient bathroom shared by the female servants, with its metal tub.

  “I have no way of heating the water,” I said. “Usually Agneta boils a kettle, and I take my bath after her.”

  “That’s all right,” she said, smiling. “I have never taken a bath in hot water all my life.”

  What a strict regimen princesses followed! Never to have taken a bath in hot water … not that I had either, strictly speaking. But after Agneta had finished with it, the bathwater was usually still lukewarm.

  I gave her one of the thin towels kept in the cupboard, then sat on a stool with my back to the tub, to give her as much privacy as I could while she splashed and bathed.

  “I’m finished,” she said finally. “How do I look, little one?”

  I turned around. She was wearing the black dress, as black as night, out of which her shoulders and neck rose as though she were the moon emerging from a cloud. Her black hair hung down to her waist.

  “I’ll put it up for you,” I said. She sat on the stool, and I recreated the intricate arrangement of the other night, with the white comb to hold it together. She clasped the necklace of red beads around her neck and stood.

  There was my princess, as I had always imagined her: as graceful and elegant as a black swan. Suddenly, tears came to my eyes.

  “Why are you crying, Klara?” she asked, brushing a tear from my cheek with her thumb.

  “Because it’s all true,” I said.

  She kissed me on the forehead, solemnly, as though performing a ritual. Then she smiled and said, “Come, let us go to the ballroom.”

  “I can’t go,” I said. “I’m just the second kitchen maid, remember? You go … you’re supposed to go.”

  She smiled, touched my cheek again, and nodded. I watched as she walked away from me, down the long hallway that led to other parts of the castle, the parts I was not supposed to enter. The white comb gleamed against her black hair.

  And then there was washing-up to do.

  It was not until several hours later that I could go to my room, lie on my bed exhausted, and think about my princess, dancing with Prince Radomir. I wished I could see her … and then I thought, Wait, what about the gallery? From the upstairs gallery one could look down through a series of five roundels into the ballroom. I could get up to the second floor using the back stairs. But then I would have to walk down several hallways, where I might meet guests of the baron. I might be caught. I might be sent back to the nuns—in disgrace.

  But I wanted to see her dancing with the prince. To see the culmination of the fairy tale in which I had participated.

  Before I could take too long to think about it, I sneaked through the kitchen and along the back hallway to the staircase. Luckily, the second-floor hallways were empty. All the guests seemed to be down below—as I scurried along the gallery, keeping to the walls, I could hear the music and their chatter floating upward. On one side of the gallery were portraits of the Kalmans not important enough to hang in the main rooms. They looked at me as though wondering what in the world I was doing there. Halfway down the other side were the roundels, circular windows through which light shone on the portraits. I looked through the first one. Yes, there she was—easy to pick out, a spot of black in the middle of the room, like the center of a Queen Anne’s lace. She was dancing with a man in a military uniform. Was he … I would be able to see better from the second window. Yes, the prince, for all the other dancers were giving them space. My princess was dancing with the prince—a waltz, judging by the music. Even I recognized that three-four time. They were turning round and round, with her hand on his shoulder and her red necklace flashing in the light of the chandeliers.

  Were those footsteps I heard? I looked down the hall, but they passed—they were headed elsewhere. I put my hand to my heart, which was beating too fast, and took a long breath in relief. I looked back through the window.

  My princess and Prince Radomir were gone. The Queen Anne’s lace had lost its center.

  Perhaps they had gone into the supper room? I waited, but they did not return. And for the first time, I worried about my princess. How would her story end? Surely she would get her happily ever after. I wanted, so much, for the stories to be true.

  I waited a little longer, but finally I trudged back down the gallery, tired and despondent. It was nearing midnight, and I had been up since dawn. I was so tired that I must have taken a wrong turn, because suddenly I did not know where I was. I kept walking, knowing that if I just kept walking long enough down the castle hallways, I would eventually end up somewhere familiar. Then I heard her voice. A door was open—the same door, I suddenly realized, where we had listened two days ago.

  She was in that room—why? The door was open several inches. I looked in, carefully. She stood next to the fireplace. Beside her, holding one of her hands, was the prince. She was turned toward him, the red necklace muted in the dim light of a single lamp.

  “Closer, and farther, than you can guess,” she said, looking at him, with her chin raised proudly.

  “Budapest? Perhaps you come from Budapest. Or Prague? Do you come from Prague? Tell me your name. If you tell me your name, I’ll wager you I can guess where you come from in three tries. If I do, will I get a kiss?”

  “And if you don’t?”

  “Then you’ll get a kiss. That’s fair, isn’t it?”

  He drew her to him, circling her waist with his arm. She put her arm around his neck, so that they stood clasped together; he still held one of her hands. It was a private moment, and I felt that I should go—but I could not. In my short life, I had never been to a play, but I felt as audience members feel, having come to a climactic moment. I held my breath.

  “My name is meaningless in your language,” she said. He laughed, then leaned down and kissed her on the lips. They stood there by the fireplace, his lips on hers, and I thought, Yes, this is how a fairy tale should end.

  I sighed, although without making a noise that might disturb them. Then, with the a
rm that had been around his neck, she reached back and took the intricately carved comb out of her hair, so that it tumbled down like nightfall. With a swift motion, she thrust the sharp teeth of the comb into the side of his neck.

  The prince threw back his head and screamed, like an animal in the forest. He stumbled back, limbs flailing. There was blood down his uniform, almost black against the red of his jacket. I was so startled that for a moment I did nothing, but then I screamed as well, and those screams—his maddened with pain, mine with fear, echoed down the halls.

  In a moment, a footman came running. “Shut up, you,” he said when he saw me. But as soon as he looked into the room, his face grew pale, and he began shouting. Soon there were more footmen, and the baron, and the general, and then Father Ilvan. Through it all, my princess stood perfectly still by the fireplace, with the bloody comb in her hand.

  When they brought the prince out on a stretcher, I crouched by the wall, but no one was paying attention to me. His head was turned toward me, and I saw his eyes, pale blue. Father Ilvan had not yet closed them.

  They led her out, one footman on each side, holding her by the upper arms. She was clutching something. It looked like part of her dress, just as black, but bulkier. She did not look at me, but she was close enough that I could see how calm she was. Like a forest pool—deep and mysterious.

  Slowly, I walked back to the kitchen. In my room, I drew up my knees and hugged them, then put my chin on them. The images played in my head, over and over, like a broken reel at the cinema: him bending down to kiss her, her hand drawing the comb out of her hair, the sharp, quick thrust. I had no way of understanding them. I had no stories to explain what had happened.