The Fairytale Keeper: Avenging the Queen

by Andrea Cefalo

  “Out with it,” Father orders.

  I give him a confused look.

  “You keep opening your mouth to speak, so speak.”

  Galadriel dips small ends of her bread into her stew and nibbles delicately, while Father lifts the bowl to his lips to drink up the rest of the broth.

  “I thought we could have our own funeral for Mother,” I finally say.

  “That is a wonderful idea,” Galadriel says. “Don’t you agree, Ansel?”

  Galadriel’s agreement pleases me at first. But the way she coaxes Father is too much like the way a wife would coax a husband, and suddenly my suspicion of her tastes like poison. She turns her back to look for Father’s expression as he rises to fill his bowl with more stew. My eyes narrow and I shake the assumption from my head.

  Father digs the spoon into his bowl and begins to eat. I am unable to see his eyes, to read his thoughts. My question hangs in the air and I almost want to take it back. I have upset him for sure. Perhaps, the burial had gone very wrong. My stomach twists and I have to swallow the broth hard for the lump in my throat has swollen again.

  “Friday morning,” Father says. It is all he says.

  Galadriel offers to give me my bed that night, but I refuse out of fear she shall sleep in my parents’ bed and ruin Mother’s side. I fear that somehow she and Father might share the bed. I should know my father better than that. It is a wicked thought, but the more I try to ban it from my mind, the more present it is.

  So she offers to share my bed with me and I agree. Perhaps Father shall return to his own bed tonight if he knows I shall not be in it.

  14 March, 1247

  The poor girl thought, "I can no longer stay here. I will go and look for my brothers."

  And when night came she ran away and went straight into the woods. She walked the whole night long without stopping, and the next day as well, until she was too tired to walk anymore.

  The sun was about to go down when she heard a rushing sound and saw six swans fly in…. The swans blew on one another, and blew all their feathers off. Then their swan-skins came off just like shirts. The girl looked at them and recognized her brothers. She was happy ….The brothers were no less happy to see their little sister, but their happiness did not last long.

  "You cannot stay here," they said to her.

  "Can’t you protect me?" asked the little sister.

  "No," they answered. "We can take off our swan-skins for only a quarter hour each evening. Only during that time do we have our human forms. After that we are again transformed into swans."

  Crying, the little sister said, "Can you not be redeemed?"

  "Alas, no," they answered. "The conditions are too difficult. You would not be allowed to speak or to laugh for six years, and in that time you would have to sew together six little shirts from asters for us. And if a single word were to come from your mouth, all your work would be lost."

  After the brothers had said this, the quarter hour was over, and they flew out the window again as swans.

  Nevertheless, the girl firmly resolved to redeem her brothers, even if it should cost her her life.

  -The Six Swans

  ***

  Galadriel rises, but is still half asleep. My neck is strained from sharing the bed and I can sleep no more. I convince her to sleep longer and promise we’ll go to the market when she rises.

  I make the porridge and take a bowl to Father, who is still awake in his workshop. The Aducht shoes are all finished. The shoes are finely crafted and he had even added gold and silver embroidery to each of the ladies’ shoes and lined the seams of Wilthelm’s shoes with the same threading. I’m sure the only man with nicer shoes in Cologne would be the Archbishop himself.

  Father leaves for the Aducht’s to deliver their shoes and collect the rest of his payment. I quickly lace the last few unfinished shoes that he shall sell at the market.

  The market is busiest in the morning. Waiting for Father to return would cost us a few coins and being gone from the market for nearly a week has surely cost us many. Thank God the Aduchts had placed such a large order to see us through without relying on Father’s now meager savings.

  I suppose I could just take his cart and set up the stand myself, but it is nine o’clock now. The streets shall be busy. Vagabonds could easily overwhelm me and steal our wares, disappearing into the crowds before any one of the thieves could be caught. Such things have happened before, even though the people of Cologne do not take kindly to thieves. Still, it is better to miss a few sales than to have all of our shoes stolen.

  Galadriel wakes shortly after me, dresses, and breaks her fast as we wait for Father to return.

  After helping Father set up his booth at the market, I take Galadriel for her tour. It is busy, but I have seen mornings with crowds packed shoulder-to-shoulder like herded sheep. We reach the potters first and an elderly woman with rheumatism begs by their stands. Galadriel drops a pfennig in the old woman’s palm before I can warn her and not a moment passes before we are surround by beggars. Galadriel gives them each a pfennig and they are quickly on their way. An embarrassed blush rises to my cheeks. Giving a pfennig away at the market was a foreigner’s error. It is a good thing we don’t care to make purchases from the potters, for they would take us for fools and charge us triple the fair price.

  “Well, I don’t think I shall do that again!” she cries.

  “The beggars shall tell their friends of your generosity and thieves will think it easy to take your purse. You may want to pull up your hood so you’re not recognized and clench your purse so it’s not taken,” I say. She blushes from embarrassment and takes my advice.

  The blacksmiths and carpenters sell a myriad of tools, many of which I have no clue how to use. We pass the armorers quickly, for neither of us has a chance at knighthood. A flute player dances around the fabric sellers’ and tailors’ stands, following one burgher wife after another in hopes of pocketing a groschen or a guilder.

  Galadriel stops to look at the gowns, but the tailor pays her no mind for he is unaware of her wealth and status. After a few moments, we receive dirty glances and continue through the market. The fruit and vegetable stands are filled with jams, jellies, and all manner of pickled items. The vendors’ shouts ring over the hum of the crowd. Some boast that their kraut has cured many sufferers of the great fever. A few desperate people toss coins to these merchants and rush back through the crowd with their pickles, probably returning to dying loved ones. I am sad for them and angry at the vendors who make a dirty pfennig off the desperate.

  “May he catch the fever himself,” I mumble.

  “Hmm?” Galadriel replies, examining some currant preserves.

  “That man over there selling each jar of pickles for two pfennigs, claiming it to be the cure to the great fever!”

  “Appalling,” Galadriel says. “Are you sure it does not work?”

  “He has been selling his pickles for years. I am sure if they were a cure, every man in Cologne would sing the praises of his precious pickles! The man sells false hope and tasteless pickles,” I spit.

  A crowd has formed between the spice stands and the meat market. The typical chatter is broken by “oohs” and ruddy applause. Galadriel pushes her way through, pulling me along behind her. One brightly-colored jongleur is doing a handstand on the shoulders of a burly black-skinned man. I have never seen a man with such dark skin before and am sure the audience is just as much there to see the man as they are to see the show. His muscles bulge beneath his skin like meat from a sausage casing.

  The black-skinned man tosses balls up to his slender friend who juggles them up and down using only his feet. The man below holds out his hands, encouraging applause. For a moment, the man on top falters and it appears he shall fall. Cries ring out but as soon as the panic rises it is tempered with the jongleur’s recovery. He flips his way down, bowing to the crowd on one knee. Applause roars through the market. The sky seems to be raining pfennigs, which both men race
to collect. A few burgher children run toward the dark-skinned man now that the show is over to stare at him in awe. The man bends down and entertains them with a few coin tricks. The mothers move in to scoop up their curious young and put on their own show by giving the jongleurs a groschen each.

  “It has been so long since I have seen such curiosities,” Galadriel smiles. “I like this market of yours.”

  We pass the meat stands without a look, but Galadriel stops at one of the cheese stands, buying a slice for each of us and a pound for later. I smell the sweet fresh bread, cakes, and other confections from the bakers’ stands. I love confections and am still hungry so I purchase a yeast cake for each of us. Next, we pass the grain stands holding flour, oats, barley, and rye. The fish market approaches and though many consider fish to be smelly and slimy creatures, I like the taste and prefer it over meat. Galadriel covers her nose as we pass so I doubt she has a similar hankering for sea fare.

  We walk past St. Martin’s church and the cathedral, all the way to the flower market. A crowd of children surround a poorly-crafted stick cage.

  “Shoo! If ya haven’ paid ya pfennig, ya don’ getta look! Go on with ya!” A man shouts, shaking his large stick at the filthy little urchins who scatter and disappear into the crowd. Their giggles ring through the hum. I raise my head to see what the fuss is about. A bear perhaps? I had seen one once before at the market, but such a shoddy cage could never hold a bear. We approach and a young man no older than nineteen paces back and forth in the cage speaking nonsense.

  “A pfennig! A pfennig! See a demon in the flesh! Only a pfennig! A man possessed by the devil himself!”

  Galadriel grabs my sleeve and drags me toward the cage. I look to her face wondering why on God’s earth she would pay for such a thing. Her eyes narrow in hatred and her cheeks are red.

  “This man is no more possessed by the devil than you or I!” she spits. The man looks her up and down for a moment, ogling her, which only seems to upset her more.

  “Aye, Frau, he is! See for yaself. Only a pfennig.” A younger man approaches with a large stick, standing between us and the man in the cage.

  “How would you like to be locked in a cage? Even a pig has a larger pen. This man belongs in an asylum,” she says.

  “Aye, Frau, perhaps with ya help we could pay his, my son’s, way in’a bedlam.” The man feigns sadness.

  “You take me for a fool! Did he spring forth from your loins at ten? You are thirty winters at the oldest and your ‘son’ only ten years your junior! You should be ashamed of yourself, exploiting a sick man for coins.”

  A crowd begins to form around us and the young man with the stick grabs Galadriel by the arm. “He’s our man an’ we’ll do what we wan’ with him! Pay the pfennig or piss off!”

  Galadriel’s mouth drops. A countess would not be accustomed to his roughness.

  “How much for him?” Galadriel whispers. The young man laughs.

  “I said piss off.” He shoves her and she stumbles backward.

  “I’ll give you a guilder for him,” Galadriel offers in whisper.

  “Three,” he counters.

  “Two and you shall take him to…” she looks to me for the name of the nearest asylum.

  “St. Pantaleon’s.”

  “Make what you shall off him today, but by three this afternoon you shall deliver him safely to me at St. Pantaleon’s. I shall be there with two more guilders to ensure his arrival.”

  The man nods and Galadriel hands him a guilder.

  I want to ask why she does this. It is one thing to give a pfennig to a beggar or two, but to part with three guilders for a single man? That is unheard of. I hadn’t even thought of what St. Pantaleon’s would expect for a donation from her. Curiosity gets the better of me.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “It is a long story that I do not wish to tell here.”

  I nod and though I wish to pry, I hold my tongue.

  Galadriel’s cheeks redden with emotion.

  “I have one purchase left to make and we shall return home,” I say.

  We walk through the carts and stands of the many flower vendors. I see an old woman with rheumatism of the hands with a few buckets surrounding her as she sits on the ground. I purchase a blend of her buttery daffodils and crisp white tulips. Galadriel and I meander back through the performers, beggars, burgher’s wives, servants, and vendors, but not before a short stop at the meat market where Galadriel purchases sweetmeats for supper. At the lumber market, I purchase two leftover cuts of wood, before we turn back toward Filzengraben and home. It is a silent walk.

  ***

  I should be working on shoes, but I find myself working on something else. I fashion a cross using the pieces of wood from the lumber market and tie it tight with the wax-covered flax thread, but the mismatched planks are knotted and chipped. I wonder how to improve upon this unsightly memorial as I unwind the thread and bite my lip. I dig through the scraps of leather and settle on dark green, her favorite color. I quickly stitch her name using the gilded thread and upholster each section of the wood with the dark leather, fashioning the cross again using the flax thread. Her Christian name is on the left side and her surname on the right in gold. I place the tulips and daffodils in a mug and set them by the window. Tomorrow we shall have a beautiful funeral for her, such a beautiful funeral perhaps I shall someday forget about the former.

  I walk upstairs to fill the mug with water so the daffodils and tulips shall keep until the morning next. Galadriel sits at the table, staring distantly.

  “Are you alright?” I ask.

  She looks at me and a tear runs down her cheek. I do not know what I should do so I sit across from her in case she wants someone to listen.

  “I… I had a sister once, but I barely remember her now,” she says through a thick voice. “My mother had a husband before my father, but he died and so she remarried. My sister, Elizabeth, was twelve winters my elder.”

  I don’t know what to say so I say nothing. She sniffles and continues.

  “She was… different to most people, but she wasn’t bad. She wasn’t a witch!” she cries.

  “Even when I was little, I knew she was different. In the winter, there was no raising her from bed. When she wasn’t crying or angry, her face was a dark void like there was no soul to her at all. But spring would come and her spirits would rise. She would become too busy to be still and she was happy at first, but as I grew older it was the summers that became dangerous to her. She stopped sleeping and she would ask us if we heard or saw things that were not there. When fall arrived she would calm down and return to her bed for the winter for her time of woe. Each summer was worse than the last. She not only heard voices, she started to speak to them. By the end of the summer, she was crying, screaming, begging for them to leave her alone. We had to hide her in the house and tell our neighbors she suffered a fever in order to keep her secret. She stopped eating and sleeping. Her already slight frame withered. I don’t know how she survived.”

  “Is that why you saved that man today?” I ask and she nods.

  “She could not help it. She was a good girl, you know. She really was,” Galadriel says and I nod in agreement.

  “Anyway, fall came and we knew her sadness would come with it. She calmed down and stopped talking to the voices that plagued her so. We let her help the tailor as she had done for many springs and summers, but we did not know that the voices had returned. She spent less and less time with the tailor and roamed around town telling the most ridiculous stories. It was the end of October before Mother found out, when she heard rumors of witchcraft being spread throughout the town.

  “I went in search of Elizabeth and found her by the pond, feeding six swans and sewing together six small shirts.

  “‘That witch has turned them into swans,’ she’d say. She thought my mother was a witch and that we had six brothers who Mother had turned into swans so Father wouldn’t be able to see them anymore. She said Mothe
r had sewn those cursed shirts and that she planned to kill us next.

  “She was mad. I know it. She thought if she could make them shirts of aster she could break the spell and turn the swans back into her brothers. But we’d never had any brothers. I know it hurt my mother that Elizabeth thought her a witch, but she took it so gracefully. She had nothing but pity for her stepdaughter, God bless her.

  “‘I tried to get Elizabeth to come home. I even pretended to believe her stories and told her to tell our Father of the spell, but she refused, believing Mother would kill her.

  “The story got wilder and wilder. She said that the swans told her she couldn’t laugh or smile for six years so Elizabeth stopped talking altogether. It broke my heart to watch. Mother tried to come to her, to convince Elizabeth to come home, but she looked at her with such fear. I begged Mother and Father to find an asylum where she could be cared for, but they refused.

  “They said Elizabeth was harmless and that she wasn’t a bother to anyone. Elizabeth never spoke to us again. She whispered only to her swans. She sat at the pond all day, sewing the little shirts for the six swans. Every day Mother had me take her lunch and ensure she wore her cloak on cold days, but it didn’t take long before people whispered about Elizabeth and her strange behavior.

  “She really was harmless. Sometimes little children would come to the pond and help her feed the swans. As the children grew, Elizabeth lost her whimsical appeal to them, and the same children that had helped her began to laugh and call her names. I doubt Elizabeth ever noticed it for she never looked hurt. It hurt me though and I reprimanded the malicious little imps, but I couldn’t watch Elizabeth all day and they teased her more and more for sport.