The Fairest of Them All (19 page)

“The falconer is there,” she said.

I nodded. “You know, I lost my mother, too,” I said.

“Isn’t the witch your mother?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “My mother lived in the kingdom, but she was not a good mother. It was the . . . It was Mathena who saved me, and took care of me.”

“She does not sound like a bad witch.”

“She’s not.”

“Someone said that you were the daughter of the witch and a stag.”

I stopped short. “Where do you hear such things?”

“Everyone is always talking,” she said. “People forget sometimes that I can understand them. I understand everything, you know.”

“I know,” I said, bending down until we were face-to-face. “People are wrong to forget it. I assure
you, I’m not the daughter of a stag. Look at these hands! Look at my face. Don’t you think I’d have fur, like a stag, if I were the daughter of one?”

She studied my face and then made a great show of looking over my hands. “That is true,” she said thoughtfully. “I’m wondering about my grandmother, though.”

“Oh? Why’s that?”

A devilish look came over her face as she answered. “She had a mustache!”

A
t dinner, she sat stiffly at the side of her nurse, occasionally stealing glances at me. I made funny faces at her to make her laugh, and when she did, I felt as if I’d accomplished a significant feat. Josef caught us at one point, and reached under the table to stroke my leg, my hair that was resting on it. His happiness streamed up into me.

That night, as would become
his habit, he came to my room but left in the early hours of the morning, leaving me to wake alone.

“Your daughter is lovely,” I said, as he slipped into bed beside me. Across the room, the mirror rippled.

He nodded. “I know. I’m glad you’ve taken to her. She needs someone like you, with your great heart.”

I was surprised by his words, flattered that he saw me that way. I did not have a great
heart, I knew this. And yet the child had moved me.

“She has changed much, since her mother died, yes?”

“Yes, but she’s always been a serious sort,” he said. “Even when her mother was alive. Always reading, keeping to herself. As an infant, even, she barely cried, just stared up at you with those blue, knowing eyes. It was a bit unnerving. She seemed like she could understand everything.”

“Doesn’t she have other children to play with?”

“Some. There are other children at the castle, but I’m told she has not taken to them. I’ve watched them in the garden at times, and she stands apart while the others play ball.”

I watched him, smiling. “You’re a good father,” I said. “Even with all your kingly duties and your great artistic commissions in every room of this palace.”

He laughed,
and I could not help but feel a stab of pain as I thought about the boy buried in the forest. Our son. What a good father Josef would have been to him. I thought, for a moment, of telling Josef what had happened. What a comfort it would be, to share that burden with him.

But I could feel him through my hair, his great relief, his
certainty that his daughter would be happier now that I was here,
and instead I pulled him to me, unlatched his robe, and pushed it off of him.

“I want to give you a son,” I said.

He moved his hands across my belly. They might have been made of fire.

T
he days passed, and with each hour I grew to love Josef and Snow White more, and I became more and
more accustomed to life in the palace. Josef’s joy became my joy, and I learned from him to immerse myself in extravagant pleasures. I learned to love spice-filled sauces, fine wines, and elaborate desserts full of fruit and cream and nuts. I learned to love damask and silk, the feel of diamonds and emeralds and rubies weighing down my ears and wrists. I learned about art, and music, and poetry.

I had dresses made by the palace seamstresses, and began bedecking myself in the most overstated, ridiculous manner. Beauty, at court, was paramount, with Josef as king. The Troubadour King, they called him, for his love of poetry, art, the kingdom’s glorious past, and, above everything else, beauty. And no one was more beautiful than I. Every day I asked my mirror the same question—who’s the
fairest of them all?—and every day I took comfort in the answer, as if my luck and happiness, my whole future, were bound up in it. Every day, my ladies worked to enhance that beauty. Even when I indulged too much in sweetmeats, they were able to lace me into corsets that shrank my waist to a startling diameter, and apply paint to my cheeks,
eyelids, and lips that worked more intensely than any
spell Mathena had taught me.

In the time I was without him, I took walks outside through the large castle gardens, which I began to learn in all their variety. Sometimes I walked with Snow White, and told her new stories of what each plant could do, as she told me details of her own studies. Other times, I walked with my ladies, or, on rare occasions, alone, with a guard or two trailing behind
me.

O
ne afternoon I was out wandering when I came across a building that reminded me, just slightly, of the cottage where Mathena and I’d lived. A twinge of nostalgia rushed over me. It was the same building I’d noticed before, I remembered, where Snow White said the falconer lived.

I walked up to the door, and realized with surprise that it was made of gold. It was an
odd mix of riches and rawness, like our cottage with the cut-up formal gowns hanging as curtains.

I pushed open the door and walked in. The light streamed down through the slats on the sides of the building, illuminating a number of strange shapes positioned throughout the room. The room was wooden, empty except for the posts on which the shapes were sitting. My hair was half in the grass, half
in this strange room, and suddenly I was assaulted with images of flight, branches, bodies being broken open.

They were hawks and falcons with chains around their legs. As my eyes adjusted to the light they came into relief. They were the finest birds I had ever seen: magnificent, massive, their
claws hooked over the platforms they stood on. Elegant hoods covered their heads, sprouting up from
the top, like helmets of great knights. I thought of Brune and her perch on the cottage mantel. These birds were so much more regal. The king’s falcons.

It was distressing, too, to see them this way, as if they were in some kind of dungeon. I thought of the bandits in the forest, and shivered.

“Who are you?” a voice said then, making me jump in surprise.

For a moment I thought a hawk had spoken,
and as I turned I faced a man standing in the doorway.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. His voice was deep and ragged.

I stared at him. How could he be asking me who I was?

The man was tall and broad, and had a pained look to his face. Like the building itself, something about him was vaguely familiar. He had a hooded bird on his wrist, its wings spread out, and was watching me intently.

I was not used to having to explain myself. I’d always been either Mathena’s helper or the queen. People had always known exactly who I was, and had always responded to my beauty—or notoriety—with a kind of awe that he did not seem to feel.

It unnerved me.

“I wanted to see what was here,” I said.

I focused all my energy on him, to try to charm him.

The bird on his wrist started flapping its
wings suddenly, crying out, and he soothed it, speaking softly and running a finger down its breast until it calmed.

“You’re scaring the birds,” he said.

“I want to hunt with one of these falcons,” I said. The words came out on their own, surprising me.

He laughed. “These are the king’s falcons, my lady. If you’d like a kestrel to fly, you might look elsewhere.”

His insolence infuriated me.
“The king,” I said proudly, “is my husband.”

I expected some kind of horror to pass over his face, a recognition and a shame, but he seemed unmoved. “Ah,” he said. “You are the witch.”

“I was raised a healer,” I said.

“It’s not an insult,” he said. “Despite what Father Martin says. Here, let’s go outside. The birds are getting restless.”

We walked back out into the afternoon light, which seemed
glaringly bright after the hushed darkness of the mews, though now the sun was hidden by clouds. The air smelled, suddenly, of approaching rain.

His foot landed on my hair, and he stepped back quickly, apologizing, but not before I took him into me: his love for beast and wood, his respect for all natural things, his distrust of the palace and all inside it.

Now that I could see him better,
I was struck by his features. His hair was black and thick, and his eyes were like ink. He was quite handsome, but in a coarse way, as if he’d been carved out of a boulder.

I realized I was staring and looked away. “I was raised with a falcon,” I said.

“I know.”

“You do?”

He nodded. “I knew Madame Gothel. Well, my father did. She was here when I was a child.”

“Your father?”

“He was the king’s
falconer before I was, just as my grandfather was before him. My father knew Mathena well. She spent a lot of time out here, in the mews.”

“She raised me,” I said.

“I know this. Everyone talks of it. Even I cannot avoid hearing about it.”

“And what do you hear?”

“That the king has gone mad and married a witch.”

I bristled. “Do you think he has gone mad?”

There was a small smile hovering
on his lips. “I do not judge the actions of my king, Your Grace. And I would never question my new queen.” He bowed, with a flourish.

I laughed, and then forced myself to sober. “That is comforting,” I said. “Tell me more about Mathena, what you remember. I know barely anything of her life here.” I hated the plaintiveness I could hear in my own voice.

“She was the queen’s favorite. The queen
could barely turn in her bed without consulting Mathena first. They often went hawking with the king. King Louis was an avid hawker.”

“So you were just a child when you knew her?”

He nodded. “But I’ll never forget her. My father admired her a great deal. Said he’d never seen a more able woman than her. She had a lot of power here at one time. She had the ear of the queen and, through her, the
king.”

“It is hard to imagine that now.”

“Things shifted at a certain point. It seemed like everything changed at once. That happens at court, people gaining power and losing it. Things have changed much since your husband took the throne, too.”

His tone suggested that he did not think it was for the better.

I gestured toward the birds in the mews. “Why do you keep them this way, chained up
and with hoods over their heads?”

“That’s how they’re trained to hunt, to work with a human hunter.”

“Brune, Mathena’s falcon, always flew free, with us.”

“I know. The queen gave Brune to Mathena, as a gift. Brune was trained in the same manner as the other birds. My father trained her, the same way I train these birds now. They’re ferocious hunters. It’s not in their nature to serve men.”

“I did not know that,” I said. “About Brune, that she’s so old.”