“Sometimes at night I dream of her killing me,” I said. “Slashing me open very slowly. In the dream, I am never frightened. I always think as I watch her, ‘I have never loved her more’. And when I wake up…I see her sleeping beside me, and I want her more than ever, but I can never bring myself to disturb her slumber. It’s the only time she’s free of me, and whatever you say, I think she must need that.” I had never even told her about that dream, but just now it slipped out of me and I thought he knew what I meant.
“Yes, I can see that too,” Axel said.
“It’s strange.”
“Of course it’s not about wanting her to kill you,” Axel said.
“What is it about?”
“Well, I would guess, from everything you’ve said, that in the dream she sets you free. It sounds like she is tender even as she kills you.”
“It sounds reasonable when you put it that way.”
“We elves put plenty of stock in dreaming,” Axel said. “That’s when the veil between all the truth in the universe is thinnest.”
“What do you want, Axel? If I lifted your curse, would you go home tomorrow?”
Axel gave me a faint, rather charming grin. “I live to serve,” he said. “In all honesty. This wasn’t how I imagined it, but I joined the military when I was fifteen. I wanted something to protect. I’m content right here.”
“Good. Very good.” I shut my eyes.
“Good night, Your Majesty.”
Chapter Twenty
Rose
Countess Noria held a grudge against me from the moment I appointed Louisa to be my superintendent of the household. I thought she would get over it before long. I suppose I hadn’t learned as much from the Madame du Bariel incident as one hoped.
Countess Noria came from a very old family and so she had many friends among the other old families of court. My own friends provided little defense; Julia was considered an upstart with tainted blood, while Louisa came from good stock but was such a gentle soul, without a husband or lover to back her up.
It wasn’t as if I shunned other women in the court. I was aware of my responsibility as the queen and tried to set a good tone. As much as I hated Necker for criticizing every last copper piece I spent, when his daughter Germaine was presented at court and tore her gown leaping down from the carriage, I took her back to my rooms and sewed the tear myself. One should treat others as one wished to be treated, I thought, but what can you do when they dislike you from the beginning?
In the cities of Ellurine, most especially Luminé, satirical pamphlets were printed in private and passed around among the citizens so they could laugh at the goings on of the court. They were often quite mean but attempts to censor them only seemed to fan the flames. Some of them always made their way back to the Palace of the Sun itself.
Increasingly, they were starting to be about me.
One day I found the “Osterich” cartoon sitting on my desk, depicting me as an ostrich with a ladies’ head wearing a cap like an Osterian matron. I knew one of the Noria set must have left it there to upset me. I threw it in the fire before Augustus could see it, but the sight of it left me rattled, just the way it must have been intended.
I kept fretting over it all day. Who would make such a cartoon and why? I thought the people liked us. I thought we were doing a good job. It must be because I haven’t produced an heir.
But the next pamphlet to come along was much worse. It had an obscene picture of me with Julia and Louisa, one kissing me while the other fondled a breast. None of them really looked like us, so I wasn’t sure who was who, but the intent was all too clear. Maybe that one game where Julia had kissed me caught the wrong person’s notice, I thought. But eventually it would become clear to me that queens were not meant to have best friends.
Best friends meant that I spent all my time with a dear few, rather than spreading my attention to whoever deserved it according to rank, title or their benefit to me.
The court was a more painful place to be these days. I knew I should save money, but it gave me such a sense of happiness and control to plan my outfits, and the gambling…oh dear. It was just part of the social set, but it was also another escape. Augustus complained about it but he didn’t actually stop me. As people passed through my rooms to watch me dress and eat every day, I felt a certain resentment beyond the usual.
Do they hate me? Are they just here to stare at me and then go home and laugh at those pictures of me?
A hail storm damaged the wheat that summer, meaning more bread shortages, but it was all just words on a paper to me until we went to the opera in the city and a little girl ran up to our carriage with her hands out.
She looked so thin and hungry. Some guards immediately urged her back, but I threw the window open. “Stop, stop!” I cried. “Let me give her a coin.”
The carriage jolted to a halt. The little girl’s eyes grew wide and her face broke into a brilliant smile when she saw me step out in a gown of pale green with white plumes in my hair and little kumquats decorating the skirt. (The Orangery gown, Madame Bertin called it.)
“Your Majesty!” she said. She didn’t look like she hated me. She looked like any other little girl in awe of seeing a fine lady.
I put several coins in her hand. “How many people in your—household?” I stammered, as I was about to say “family” and then realized she might have none.
“My mama and four sisters,” she said.
I tore six of the kumquats off my dress and gave them to her. “They are somewhat sour.”
“Oh, thank you, thank you!”
I got back in the carriage with Augustus. He looked at me and I expected him to tell me that I shouldn’t give coins to poor children personally or they would all want one; it was better to give to charities. My mother used to say that. But then he just smiled out the window.
“Is it that bad, then?” I asked after a moment. “Are children really going hungry?”
“There is a bread shortage, so someone must be,” he said.
“I’ve never seen anything like that before…”
“That’s why I’m trying to do what I can,” he said.
I felt an instant pang of guilt because even now I had just ordered the construction of a pavilion overlooking the lake at the Lady’s Treat, as well as a working dairy where the girls and I could keep more animals and make fresh cheese. I should go home and cancel that, I thought. I’m so spoiled.
But then we reached the opera and I received many compliments on my dress, and I gave many compliments on other ladies’ dresses, and none of them seemed concerned about children going hungry. I wondered how we could all have so much fun if the people were suffering, but then there seemed no solution and no one seemed to like it if I tried to bring the incident up in conversation. There was no royal family on earth who didn’t go to opera and balls and wear fine dresses.
“Anyway, it’s not that simple,” Louisa pointed out later. “When you buy a dress from Madame Bertin she has to pay all of the girls at her shop, and all the dyers and tanners and hunters and shoemakers and gardeners who grow flowers and foragers who find things in the forest, and couriers to transport it, and so on, providing wages for hundreds of people. Look at what happened in Osteria when spindles were banned!”
She made me feel much better, because of course I didn’t really want to give up my gowns. I was starting to become rather famous for wearing Madame Bertin’s naturalist creations. Soon my mother was writing chiding letters.
I was sent a fashion plate of you recently and I thought it was of an actress in some faery play! Imagine my horror to realize it was you in that ridiculous creation. You really must try to express dignity in your dress.
Well, I would never want to be like my mother, in mourning all the time. I would have plenty of time to be dignified when I was old! For now I was young and beautiful and I had two men who adored me, even if Axel could only have me in the Lady’s Treat.
I never wanted to leave
my private realm. In the palace, I was always tense, always put through paces of ritual, display, shame, and the competition to prove oneself; to always be composed and beautiful and mannered and witty and dance well and show my submission to Augustus. But even he seemed to be slacking his demands in the palace. Sometimes days would go by without him ever demanding anything of me in the garden or a private corridor, and more days would slip by without him demanding my release in public. Although a part of me missed the forbidden excitement of it all, my heart was much lighter when I no longer feared any public shame. We both preferred to take our pleasure in the privacy of the little manor where we could let down our guard. One day we stayed up all night and went out to watch the sunrise.
I knew there were jealous whispers about what went on there, but I didn’t really care. The only way I would survive a lifetime in this palace, I thought, was to have this place of my own.
Even there, of course, I was still the Queen Who Bowed. It was now part of the game to roll the dice every time we spent the night there, and every time Augustus won the game. We made a joke of it. Augustus always took control of the evening until I started to wonder if I had dreamed that afternoon when he asked me to tie him down.
But whatever happened in private, the public soon started to grow angry that they were denied the spectacle of the King of the Sun and the Queen Who Bowed, an anger both of us were to underestimate.
Chapter Twenty-One
Interlude
“Tea?” Jeanne started pouring anyway, into both cups, and then she dropped a few sugar cubes in her own, picking them up with her fingers.
Countess Noria shuddered visibly. My gods, she thought, with a horror most people reserved for things like highway robbers or finding a snake wrapped around the chamberpot, why are there no tongs in this sugar bowl?
When Jeanne was the King’s Favorite, Countess Noria still gave her the respect she was due as an extension of His Royal Person. Noria never did and never would consider the hypocrisy of respecting the last king’s choices more than the present king. Now Jeanne was useful as the lackey of the Witch, so she held her tongue and drank the tea without any sugar at all.
“I am thirsty enough from trying to find you,” Noria said.
“Well, we have to hide from the guards. So,” Jeanne said. “No babies yet?”
“No. Not even a miscarriage. That little Osterian girl menstruates like clockwork. Perhaps her human body just can’t take the faery seed.”
“She is a little thing, eh?” Jeanne said, with a private chuckle. “So will you send her back where she came from and find a better breeder?”
“Oh, would that I could.”
“Are you sure Augustus isn’t giving her something to prevent it?” Jeanne said. “Since he won’t take a mistress, maybe he doesn’t want anything to keep him from his toys.”
Noria frowned again. Jeanne’s speech was so crude as well. “I do believe he has a mistress…or a master. The king and queen are inseparable when it comes to Count Farren of Aveborg.”
“Yes. The pretty one.” Jeanne chuckled to herself. “Do tell.”
“Of course, it is the king’s prerogative to demand anything of the queen,” Noria said with a sniff. “But it is very curious, and to my mind, disconcerting, how much he seems to enjoy pushing her into the arms of another man. But I think he fancies Count Farren as much as the queen does. He was always somewhat of a pansy as a child, as I’m sure you know. I wouldn’t be surprised if—you know—he prefers men.”
Jeanne spat out some laughter now. “You say it like it’s a bad thing. I’ve known men like that who are far superior to anyone at that whole court.”
“But Augustus is the king. Well, you remember those stories from a few years back, when they were first married.”
“The two of them admitted it right to the witch’s face,” Jeanne agreed. “He said he’d rather be at Rose’s mercy.”
“One of the stable boys told me that before they went hunting she used to punish his cock,” Countess Noria said. “I’ve heard that when they’re in the Lady’s Treat, the queen and Axel claim the king in turns while he is mounted to the wall. Of course, it’s all rumor,” she added, to cover her soul against the faery gods of truth. “It isn’t as if I’ve ever seen the place.”
“It’s no wonder she hasn’t had children, isn’t it?” Jeanne said, sitting back on the sofa with smug satisfaction. “Well, you know the witch has the ear of half the population of Luminé. We’ll make sure it’s known why the queen has no children.”
Countess Noria was all too happy to feed Jeanne every detail she could think of. Yes, it certainly seemed true that the Duchess of Poligari was one of the queen’s lovers as well, and it was surely why the Princess Lambala had never married again either. They said the king never fucked the queen anywhere but the Lady’s Treat anymore; they said he liked to be beaten with her shoes; they said he had already granted Axel the powers of the Sword of the King.
Although most of it was utter lies, the last rumor would soon prove true, lending an additional whiff of truth to everything else.
If Countess Noria ever felt a pang of remorse for delivering the very worst of the castle rumors directly to the Cobblestone Witch’s doorstep, she showed none of it that afternoon, although the lack of tongs in the sugar cubes continued to haunt her into the night.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Rose
One day at dinner I caught muted laughter as I came to the table, with a particular edge.
I was very sensitive to all the different looks and murmurs at the palace. So I just knew right away that something had happened, some particularly bad bit of gossip, and that I was the target.
I sat down calmly and picked up a fork for the salad course, but inside my stomach was sinking. If only I could produce an heir. If only I wasn’t a failure at that most important duty of queens…it would be easier to shrug it all off.
Josef passed the papers to Augustus after the meal.
When I saw the pamphlet, I thought I might be sick.
The King Who Bowed, it was called. Or, Why our Queen Madame Deficit has no children.
Inside, it skewered us both in nasty poems and cartoons. I spent all the crown’s money on ridiculous clothes, driving the palace coffers into ruin, while the king was given the face of one of my dogs, walked on a leash. My best friends were harpies sucking at my breasts. Axel and I had the king tied up while Axel claimed his ass and I sucked his cock. The pamphlet said I had personally purchased a spell binding Axel to me so he could find no satisfaction with anyone else.
It was, by far, the worst of the slander. “Osterich” was merely playful compared to this. I knew the Witch herself must have a hand in it, because who else would accuse me of the spell she herself had cast upon Axel? As the pages turned and it got worse and worse, such a sense of rage and despair filled me that I started to struggle for breath.
Next thing I knew, I was waking up in bed with Louisa waving smelling salts under my nose.
“Oh no!” I cried, shoving her hand away. “Oh no, it wasn’t a dream! They hate me… The people hate me…” I started crying and buried myself in the pillows, ignoring Augustus’ hand on my arm. “I don’t know what else I can do!”
“I told you, it doesn’t matter!” Augustus said.
“It does matter,” I shouted. “It matters to them—they wouldn’t say these things if I— Where is that stupid paper? I want to rip it to pieces!“
“Already thrown in the fire,” Augustus said. “But you must calm yourself. We can’t let anyone hear you shouting about it. Every king and queen has to deal with some satire, but we have to be above it.”
“How can this be? I thought faeries couldn’t lie.”
“We don’t lie, but stretching the truth to deceive is another matter…”
I felt inconsolable, and after years of nearly perfect control, the fact that I wasn’t allowed to be inconsolable only made it worse. “I want to go to our house…”
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“We can’t,” he said. “Not now. Maybe not for a little while, until this blows over.”
In days to come, I was so distracted that all I could do was go through the motions and it hit me more fiercely than ever that my life was not my own. I was just a prisoner to the court. Desire drained out of me. Axel had to keep a little more distance from us both.
“Tighten my bonds,” I whispered at night. “I don’t want you to be gentle with me. I want you to fuck me hard. Either give me a child or punish me for my failures!”
Augustus paused as he unbuttoned his shirt. “No,” he said shortly.
“Please…I want to feel an ache in my limbs. I want to feel pain like I’m feeling inside.”
“I have no wish to cause you pain tonight.”
“But…I want…” I turned my head against the pillow, morose.
He stayed frozen for a moment, and then he spun on one foot to the bedpost and pulled the silken cords tight, spreading my feet. “Did you ever consider this might be my fault?”
“How would it be your fault?”
“Perhaps I’m the one who can’t produce a child.”
“It’s always the woman’s fault; that’s what I was told. Maybe my mind isn’t calm enough. Maybe I don’t eat the right foods.”
“Perhaps I’m the one whose mind isn’t calm enough. It does take two…and perhaps I’m the one who can’t bear…” He looked toward the windows.
“You don’t want a child?”
“I don’t want a Crown Prince of the Sun Palace.” He winced and shook his head. “What have I said? I hope they didn’t hear me.” We were speaking very softly. “The point is, I don’t care whose fault it is. I wish you wouldn’t take it so much to heart.”
“But this is why the alliance was made! This is why all marriages occur! To make heirs…”
“I already told you, that isn’t why our marriage occurred. Maybe it’s why my grandfather agreed to it. But…he’s gone. This is our kingdom, our marriage…” Augustus slid into bed beside me without tightening the bonds at my wrists, although even so I could only lower my hands as far as my neck. He lowered his head between my legs and pleasured me with long sensual strokes of his tongue.
The Surrender of Sleeping Beauty Page 25