Snow Glass Apples: A Play For Voices (3 page)

QUEEN—INTIMATE

I had been frozen by her, owned and
dominated. That scared me, more than the blood on which she had
fed. After that night I locked my chamber door at dusk, barring it
with an oaken pole, and I had the smith forge iron bars, which he
placed across my windows.

SFX—THE THRONE ROOM.

A NUMBER OF COURTIERS IN THE BACKGROUND.

THE KING IS NOW ILL—A YOUNG MAN, BUT DYING
AND HIS MIND IS GOING.

KING

So, what are you saying archbishop?

ARCHBISHOP

I am saying, your majesty, that if Edwin and
Morcar continue in this heresy I shall have no recourse but to send
an envoy to Rome and request their excommunication.

KING

I… yes, I… . You were… Edwin…

Yes. I’m afraid my mind wandered…

ARCHBISHOP

Edwin and Morcar, your majesty. The Northern
secession. I was pointing out to your majesty that…

KING

You, boy. Come here.

WINEBEARER

Yes, your majesty.

KING

Wine. Most grateful. Yes.

We hear him drink a little, then the glass
fall from his hand. It smashes noisily on the floor. Courtiers GASP
in horror

KING (CONT’D) Most frightfully…

We hear his feet stumbling away, and the
mutters of courtiers…

QUEEN—INTIMATE

My husband, my love, my king, sent for me
less and less, and when I came to him he was dizzy, listless,
confused. He could no longer make love as a man makes love; and he
would not permit me to pleasure him with my mouth: the one time I
tried, he started, violently, and began to weep. I pulled my mouth
away and held him tightly, until the sobbing had stopped, and he
slept, like a child.

I ran my fingers across his skin as he
slept. It was covered in a multitude of ancient scars. But I could
recall no scars from the days of our courtship, save one, on his
side, where a boar had gored him when he was a youth. Soon he was
just a shadow of the man I had met and loved by the bridge.

His bones showed, blue and white, beneath
his skin.

INT. THE KING’S CHAMBER. DAY.

SFX: THE KING IS MUMBLING IN HIS SICK BED.
THE QUEEN IS, WE CAN ASSUME ALTHOUGH I DON’T KNOW WHAT IT SOUNDS
LIKE, MOPPING HIS FEVERED BROW, MUTTERING ENDEARMENTS …

MAIDSERVANT

The Archbishop, your majesty.

QUEEN

Send him in.

SFX: THE ARCHBISHOP’S FOOTSTEPS.

QUEEN

I am pleased you came, Archbishop. His
majesty will die soon. I need you to deliver the final
sacraments.

ARCHBISHOP

I see. Do you know why he is dying, your
majesty? Do you know what is killing him?

QUEEN

(A beat.)

I believe so.

ARCHBISHOP

Then you know as well as I why I cannot
administer the last rites.

QUEEN

He is your king. How dare you —

ARCHBISHOP

I dare because this is a monstrous thing,
your majesty.

KING

(delirious)

Daughter… no. Please, little one…

And he dies …

ARCHBISHOP

And he is nobody’s king, your majesty. Not
anymore.

QUEEN

(coldly angry)

Get out of here.

SFX: FOOTSTEPS, AND A DOOR CLOSES.

QUEEN—INTIMATE

I sat there with my love’s dead body. His
hands were cold as stone, his eyes milky-blue, his hair and beard
faded and lustreless and limp

He weighed near to nothing.

SFX: OUTSIDE. SNOW BLOWS. A RAVEN CROWS.
STONES FALL.

QUEEN—INTIMATE

The ground was frozen hard, and we could dig
no grave for him, so we made a cairn of rocks and stones above his
body, as a memorial only, for there was little enough of him left
to protect from the hunger of the beasts and the birds.

So I was queen.

SFX: LUTE MUSIC STARTS …

QUEEN—INTIMATE

And I was foolish, and young, and I did not
do what I would do, now.

If it were today, I would have her heart cut
out, true. But then I would have her head and arms and legs cut
off. I would have them disembowel her. And then I would watch, in
the town square, as the hangman heated the fire to white-heat with
bellows, watch unblinking as he consigned each part of her to the
fire. I would have archers around the square, who would shoot any
bird or animal who came close to the flames, any raven or dog or
hawk or rat. And I would not close my eyes until the princess was
ash, and a gentle wind could scatter her like snow.

SFX: THE LUTE MUSIC HAS FADED TO NOTHING MORE
THAN FALLING SNOW AND DUST AND WIND.

QUEEN—INTIMATE

I did not do this thing, and we pay for our
mistakes.

(beat)

They say I was fooled; that it was not her
heart. That it was the heart of an animal—a stag, perhaps, or a
boar. They say that, and they are wrong.

And some say (but it is her lie, not mine)
that I was given the heart, and that I ate it. Lies and half-truths
fall like snow, covering the things that I remember, the things I
saw. A landscape, unrecognizable after a snowfall; that is what she
has made of my life.

(beat)

There were scars on my love, her father’s
thighs, and on his ballock-pouch, and on his male member, when he
died. We took her in the day, while she slept and was at her
weakest.

PRINCESS

(she wakes and yawns, sleepily)

Stepmother?

QUEEN

Tie her up.

HUNTSMAN

Yes, majesty.

SFX: WE HEAR A SCUFFLE … THE PRINCESS WAILS
LIKE THE FRIGHTENED CHILD SHE MIGHT BE …

PRINCESS

No… please… No… Mother. Make them let me
go.

QUEEN

I’m not your mother. Take her into the forest
and kill her.

SFX: FOREST NOISES BEGIN: OVER THIS NARRATION
WE HEAR THE PRINCESS BEING KILLED. A STAB AND A SCREAM, WHICH
STOPS.

QUEEN—INTIMATE

They took her to the heart of the forest,
and there they opened her blouse, and they cut out her heart, and
they left her dead, in a gully, for the forest to swallow.

SFX: FOREST NOISES/FOREST THEME BEGINS.

QUEEN—INTIMATE

The forest is a dark place, the border to
many kingdoms; no-one would be foolish enough to claim jurisdiction
over it. Outlaws live in the forest. Robbers live in the forest,
and so do wolves. You can ride through the forest for a dozen days
and never see a soul; but there are eyes upon you the entire
time.

SFX: FOREST NOISES FADE.

SFX: PALACE ROOM. THE HUNTSMAN ENTERS:

QUEEN

Is it done?

HUNTSMAN

Yes, majesty.

QUEEN

You have it with you?

HUNTSMAN

She was only a child, your majesty.

QUEEN

I don’t know what she was. But she wasn’t a
child. Give it to me.

SFX: THE HEART BEATS GENTLY IN THE BACKGROUND
…

QUEEN (CONT’D)

Well done. That will be all.

HUNTSMAN

Majesty.

QUEEN—INTIMATE

They brought me her heart. I know it was
hers—no sow’s heart or doe’s would have continued to beat and pulse
after it had been cut out, as that one did.

SFX: THE HEARTBEATS GET LOUDER.

QUEEN—INTIMATE

I took it to my chamber.

I did not eat it: I hung it from the beams
above my bed, placed it on a length of twine that I strung with
rowan-berries, orange-red as a robin’s breast, and with bulbs of
garlic.

(beat)

Outside, the snow fell, covering the
footprints of my huntsmen, covering her tiny body in the forest
where it lay.

SFX: GENTLE LUTE THEME. SNOW FALLING.

QUEEN—INTIMATE

I had the smith remove the iron bars from my
windows, and I would spend some time in my room each afternoon
through the short winter days, gazing out over the forest, until
darkness fell.

SFX: THE HEARTBEATS FADED AWAY …

SFX: PASSAGE OF TIME MUSIC …

QUEEN—INTIMATE

As I said, there were people in the forest.
They would come out, some of them, for the Spring Fair: a greedy,
feral, dangerous people; some were stunted—dwarfs and midgets and
hunchbacks; others had the huge teeth and vacant gazes of idiots;
some had fingers like flippers or crab-claws. They would creep out
of the forest each year for the Spring Fair, held when the snows
had melted.

SFX: SLOWLY RAISING UP, THE NOISE OF THE
SPRING FAIR. PEOPLE CRYING THEIR WARES. SOME MINSTRELS PLAYING.

QUEEN—INTIMATE

As a young lass I had worked at the Fair,
and they had scared me then, the forest folk. I told fortunes for
the Fairgoers, scrying futures in a pool of still water; and,
later, when I was older, in a disc of polished glass, its back all
silvered—a gift from a merchant whose straying horse I had seen in
a pool of ink.

(beat)

The stallholders at the fair were afraid of
the forest folk; they would nail their wares to the bare boards of
their stalls—slabs of gingerbread or leather belts were nailed with
great iron nails to the wood. If their wares were not nailed, they
said, the forest folk would take them, and run away, chewing on the
stolen gingerbread, flailing about them with the belts.

SFX: CRIES OF “HOY! COME BACK!” AND
SCUFFLING, OVER THE MARKET NOISES.

QUEEN—INTIMATE

The forest folk had money, though: a coin
here, another there, sometimes stained green by time or the earth,
the face on the coin unknown to even the oldest of us. Also they
had things to trade, and thus the fair continued, serving the
outcasts and the dwarfs, serving the robbers (if they were
circumspect) who preyed on the rare travellers from lands beyond
the forest, or on gypsies, or on the deer.

(This was robbery in the eyes of the law.
The deer were the queen’s.)

(pause)

SFX: THE FAIR NOISES ARE GONE. NOW ALL WE CAN
HEAR IS THE GENTLE BEAT OF THE PRINCESS’S HEART.

QUEEN—INTIMATE

The years passed by slowly, and my people
claimed that I ruled them with wisdom. The heart still hung above
my bed, pulsing gently in the night. If there were any who mourned
the child, I saw no evidence: she was a thing of terror, back then,
and they believed themselves well rid of her.

SFX: MARKET MUSIC, GENTLE IN THE BACKGROUND,
BUT NO MARKET SOUNDS—MAYBE ONE LONE CRIER CALLING HIS WARES. SLOWLY
A LONELY WIND BEGINS.

QUEEN—INTIMATE

Spring Fair followed Spring Fair: five of
them, each sadder, poorer, shoddier than the one before. Fewer of
the forest folk came out of the forest to buy. Those who did seemed
subdued and listless. The stallholders stopped nailing their wares
to the boards of their stalls. And by the fifth year only a handful
of folk came from the forest—a fearful huddle of little hairy men,
and no-one else.

SFX: THE WIND HOWLS.

SFX: INT… FOOTSTEPS ON A WOODEN FLOOR.

MAIDSERVANT

Your majesty?

QUEEN

Hmm..? I’m sorry.

MAIDSERVANT

The Lord of the Fair is here, your
majesty.