The Book of the Unknown: Tales of the Thirty-six

by Jonathon Keats

  Her first audience with His Majesty had taken place in his stables, amid the dust of her arrival from the countryside. He was a young king, and brash. (He’d banned music because the notes couldn’t be played all at once, and also dance, which he deemed needlessly circuitous.) In the midnight dark, he’d scarcely noticed Beit’s filthy freckled peasant face or her tattered burlap frock. He’d fixed his gaze on her turquoise eyes and demanded that she explain her gypsy tricks.

  — I was tending sheep. I fell asleep.

  — Then you’re a seer.

  — I like to dream.

  — From now on, your dreams are mine.

  She’d merely shrugged in reply, and, by the time she thought to ask the king a few questions of her own, His Majesty was gone.

  • • •

  In the morning, two maids bathed her, and, while they combed her hair, a seamstress fitted her in a white silk gown. The fabric was lighter, and cooler, than her own bare skin, and, after the servants left her, she had to keep glancing in the mirror to make sure she was not standing stark naked, as she’d heard happened to certain emperors.

  Her reflection delighted her. She’d never encountered a looking glass before, and had so little sense of her own appearance that it counted as a new friend. How much more entertaining it was than Beit’s peasant family: She and her reflection spun themselves dizzy, and exchanged more curtsies than she could count. Then luncheon was served, a feast for one, set on a cloth of fine linen, and it was late afternoon by the time she thought to leave her room. She slid on a pair of kidskin slippers. She set out to explore her realm.

  Beit had no recollection of the palace from the night before, its marbleized vastness and gilded splendor, and still less did she recognize, in crown of state and clutch of courtiers, the prickly little king she’d met in the stables. He beckoned her. He presented the peasant girl to his retinue. He bade her tell him the future.

  — The future?

  — I want to know your dreams.

  — I slept so well, Your Majesty. I think I didn’t have any.

  — Will you tonight?

  — How would I know?

  — You disappoint me, Beit. See that it doesn’t happen again.

  A sentry returned her to her room and locked the door behind her. She looked at her reflection in the mirror. No longer was it so much fun. She might even have missed her family, were it not for her new silk gown and the royal accommodations. Then came supper, a beef roast served with a carafe of wine, from which she drank until she felt giddy again: Most girls dreamed of being princesses, and here she practically was one.

  That night Beit took care not to sleep so soundly, to be sure she’d have visions for the king. She set aside all her quilts and pillows. Yet, even sprawled across bare mattress board, Beit passed the night in one blind stretch.

  While the maids made no comments about her odd nocturnal habits when they brought her breakfast, they couldn’t help but gasp the following morning, upon finding her asleep on the stone-cold floor. As they brushed Beit’s hair, the younger, who went by the name Leah, asked if she didn’t care for the amenities in His Majesty’s palace. Beit shook her head and then, before Leah could catch it, a tear dropped into the girl’s silken lap.

  — I don’t dream anymore.

  — Living like this, who’d need to, miss?

  — Me, if I don’t want to upset His Majesty.

  — In that case, why not pretend?

  — He’d know, because it wouldn’t come true.

  — Tell him he’ll eat pheasant for supper tonight.

  — How do you know?

  — My fiancé works in His Majesty’s pantry. He always tells me what scraps we’ll soon be eating.

  While Leah tied up Beit’s braids, the other maid, who was called Ruth, counseled the girl to be careful: Beit might be expelled if she admitted that her visions had left her, but Ruth had spent enough years in the king’s employ to witness the execution of a dozen seers who’d misperceived the future.

  His Majesty came to Beit’s room that afternoon. The sentry opened her door. She was sitting on the floor, absently toying with a bit of satin ribbon the maids had left there. She looked up. Behind the king stood a full complement of cour tiers, arranged, in colored livery, by degree of royal favor.

  The king snatched the ribbon from Beit’s fingers. He tied it in a noose.

  — Is this a new method of divination? Peasants are the strangest creatures. Come, my little girl. Won’t you tell us the future?

  Beit glanced at the noose in his hands. She touched her throat. And then she looked around the room, at the canopy bed as capacious as the hovel in which her whole family lived, and the marble table where were served, for her delectation alone, meals hearty enough to feed her entire town. She took in the mirror, its reflection of her dimpled round face, crowned in braids fancier than those worn by the local noble’s daughters, her plump body frocked in silk finer than the fabric in which the noble cloaked his wife. She met the king’s gaze with her turquoise eyes.

  — I dreamed of pheasants.

  — What about them?

  — There were many, maybe a hundred. They all landed, one at a time, in small round ponds, and nothing under the sun could make them rise again.

  — But, you fool, pheasants live on land.

  — I’m sure Your Majesty is right. I’m just a senseless peasant. Who can say what my visions mean?

  The king didn’t answer. He just laughed at her. He slipped the noose onto his pinky, and pulled on it until the ribbon snapped. After that, he left Beit.

  Just before the sentry shut the door, the last in His Majesty’s retinue picked up the bits of satin from the floor. Putting them in her hands, he whispered that he, at least, felt for her.

  — You believe in my dreams?

  — Those don’t matter.

  — They’re all I have.

  — Not necessarily.

  — Without dreams, I’m just a peasant. You were born a noble. You can’t understand.

  — My mother was a court seer. After her visions faltered, my father was noble enough to save me, but not her.

  — What do you feel for me, then?

  — I don’t feel alone.

  The king was still carrying on about the dumb shepherd girl, and how ignorant she was of birds, when supper was served. He sat at the head of a table so long that guests arrived on horseback, and messengers carried conversation, inscribed on slates of ivory, from chair to chair. He sank fork and knife into his meat. He took a bite.

  — What is this food?

  — Pheasant, Your Majesty.

  The king raised his eyes from his plate. He watched servants set down dishes in front of his ninety-nine guests. He dropped his silverware.

  — Small round ponds.

  — What did His Majesty say?

  — They all landed, one at a time, in small round ponds, and nothing under the sun could make them rise again.

  — Is His Majesty reciting poetry?

  The king stood. He ordered that Beit be sent to the dungeon, and served only gruel. Then he shut himself in his rooms.

  In her cold stone cell, Beit no longer had to worry about sleeping too deeply for dreams to reach her. She couldn’t even find a place to rest her head. She paced to keep away the rats, and periodically warmed her cheeks with tears.

  At around midnight, she heard footsteps on the staircase, met by the gendarme assigned to guard her. The visitor spoke to her jailer in a familiar voice, lower than the king’s, and softer. The soldier let the man pass, and Beit saw, approaching her rusty cage, one of His Majesty’s entourage: the courtier who’d felt for her. She’d scarcely noticed his visage when they’d last met, the sad dark face behind great fronds of mustache. Now he was all she had, a liveried aristocrat outside her cell, pressing against the grille, as if he were her prisoner.

  — You must be hungry. I’ve brought food from His Majesty’s table.

  — What is it?

&
nbsp; — Pheasant.

  — Then I was right. You’ve come to free me?

  — I would if I had a key. You made a fool of the king, Beit. Be grateful you’re not dead.

  — He wanted to know the future.

  — He never knows what he wants until he’s had it already. But I’ve spent nights down here. Everyone does, now and then. Eventually he’ll come around.

  — When?

  — He leaves tomorrow for a week. His moods improve with travel.

  — I can’t survive here that long.

  — You’re a peasant.

  — I was one. Where’s he going? Can’t it wait?

  — He’s riding to the mountains, to build a castle.

  — What’s wrong with this one? Aside from the dungeon.

  — Who knows, Beit? I have to go. If His Majesty finds me with you, he’ll hang us both on the same rope.

  — Please just tell me your name?

  — You can call me Chaim.

  Then he was gone. She shared her pheasant with the rats, on the condition that they stop harassing her, but, when the food was done, they pretended to have made no such bargain. She couldn’t lie down or even sit. Lazy Beit had never stood so long in her life as she did that night.

  The king came to her at dawn, before embarking on his trip. He was alone.

  — You tried to humiliate me, Beit. You know that’s a crime.

  — Your Majesty asked for a prediction. Perhaps you’d like another one?

  — I would not.

  — Last night I dreamed of a man who tried to lay the sky with stone.

  — And . . . what happened?

  — It tumbled down on him.

  — Could it have been a castle? Up on a mountain?

  — I don’t know, Your Majesty. I didn’t have a good view. It isn’t easy sleeping underground.

  Beit was given a suite of three rooms with a balcony overlooking the royal gardens, and, in place of a sentry, a pair of footmen. They brought her cheese and grapes, which she ate while Ruth and Leah tended to her braids, and Elke the seamstress took her orders for a whole silken wardrobe.

  Chaim found her there. (Every marble vault in the royal court reverberated with rumors of her restored fortunes, the king’s abandoned building plans.) She received the courtier with a lady’s grace, and offered him a bunch of purple grapes. She told him about the glorious gowns she’d have soon. Then she asked him, coy like a courtesan, where the king planned now to erect his new castle. Chaim had no answer. She took back her fruit, and suggested he find out. She turned to Elke. She asked when she could expect her couture. The seamstress told her that His Majesty immediately required a new doublet suitable for a fox hunt, but promised her a gown that would garner marriage vows in time for the upcoming pageant.

  Beit supped at the royal table that night, where the king toasted her talent as a seer, and asked what new visions she had to share. She frowned. She took a gulp of port. Then, fixing his gaze with her turquoise eyes, she told him of a fox who so admired the cut of a hunter’s silk jacket that it gave up its own fur coat.

  Before the courtiers could laugh at her, the king asked if the hunter was wearing a red doublet. She nodded sagely. Triumphant, he commanded his retinue never again to doubt Beit. He ordered them to venerate her.

  They obeyed. She’d no need of new gowns, so tightly did they cling to her. The gossipy patter of their flirtation gave her fodder for a thousand and one dreams with which to amuse His petulant Highness. For a man who has no time for history, an oracle is the ultimate entertainment, and it made no difference to the king whether Beit foretold the apocalypse or the names of that evening’s supper guests, as long as the prediction proved correct.

  Everyone adored Beit. Only Chaim was distraught by her behavior, the way she wallowed in courtly rumor, teasing it from men beneath an abundance of cleavage, letting them caress her wherever they pleased, as long as they whispered fresh intrigues in her ear. He was as impressed as anyone by her foresight, naturally, yet he wondered when, given all the revelry that consumed her night and day, she even had time to dream.

  Chaim had time aplenty, and, in his sleep, Beit was always with him alone, far from the courtiers he’d grown up with, or the palace where he’d been born. She was a shepherdess again, he a woodsman, and their whole wealth was in children, a veritable kingdom of them. The only trouble was that, unlike Beit’s charmed dreams, poor Chaim’s never came to pass.

  In fact, since Chaim had no talent for gossip, Beit barely noticed him anymore. His lowly social rank ensured that he was never seated near her at supper. Occasionally, he found her with other courtiers in the gardens—stumbled over a foursome of feet entangled in the hedgerow—but such circumstances proved unsuitable for conversation. If he wanted her attention again, much less to share his dreams with her, he’d need a miracle, or at least a good scandal.

  He attended more closely to the king. He lingered while His Majesty received ministers and soldiers and foreign emissaries. And not more than a week passed before he had his wish.

  He wished immediately that he hadn’t. For his miracle, the scandal, concerned Beit’s native land, where—whether by chance or design—the king had found a mountain suitable for his castle in the sky. Chaim watched as His Majesty summoned the local noble, and offered, by way of compensation for the land, the peasants of the region as serfs, to be property of his family in perpetuity. Ever since the flood, the noble had needed free labor more than pretty scenery. He agreed.

  Late that night, Chaim found Beit in her rooms, asleep atop a bed so high he had to climb a ladder. He drew back the lace canopy and gazed at her, softer and stiller than the litter of pillows surrounding her. He grasped her hand, sending a wisp of expectation across her lips. She opened her eyes. Wide.

  — Who invited you up here?

  — I have to talk to you.

  — Now?

  — It’s about the king.

  — I already know everything.

  — You know he’s selling your family into slavery?

  — I don’t have family here, silly. I’m practically royalty. Is this your idea of gossip?

  — Everyone in your village has been given to the local noble, in exchange for a mountain where His Majesty is going to build his alpine castle.

  — You’re boring me, Chaim. Please go away.

  Beit turned her head and shut her eyes. But the sleep that embraced her wasn’t gentle anymore. She was assaulted by nightmares. Folks she’d known before filed by in tattered work-clothes. She called to them, but they didn’t answer. She saw that they’d neither eyes nor ears. Then she heard what she was saying: Are you my family?

  When Leah woke her, Beit was sure that what Chaim had told her was true. She needed to see him immediately, not so much to ask him questions as to say that she felt what he did. But she couldn’t slip away. The maids had her by the braids and the seamstress was lacing her in a gown, for the day of the pageant had come.

  Revelers arrived from every town and village in the kingdom. Nobles and merchants and peasants shared the streets, and even exchanged greetings, all distinctions flattened in the shadow of His Majesty’s palace.

  The pageant was the monarch’s annual tribute to his own benevolence, funded by a nonproductivity tax he assessed against sleep. All day long, his subjects tirelessly ate mutton cooked on iron spits and drank wine by the bucket, while he addressed them from a pedestal up on his castle’s grand balcony.

  That year, after observing them awhile from the overhead perspective he found so agreeable, he decided to give them an unexpected treat. He had Beit brought to the balcony to relate, in front of everybody, her latest dream. Beit was legendary by then, the country’s first celebrity, and, while the king had to shout to get attention, her small voice silenced the whole city. She blinked her turquoise eyes. And found, effortlessly, Chaim’s gaze.

  — Are you sure Your Majesty wants to know what I’ve foreseen?

  — Of course I do. Why el
se would I call for you?

  — I dreamed . . .

  — Dreamed what?

  — Dreamed that Your Majesty secretly sold my whole village into slavery just to build another showy castle.

  — You don’t know what you’re talking about. You never have visions like that.

  — In my dream, you stole my family’s freedom, made them serfs of the local noble, and I have a premonition, Your Majesty, that you’ll do it to other people as well.

  — It’s a lie, Beit. Your dreams deceive you.

  — Everybody knows they always come true.

  — You’re a fool. Would you stake your life on this?

  — Yes.

  The king’s subjects no longer stood by idly, gnawing on His Majesty’s spit-fired offal. Peasants were shouting, as nobles shuffled behind castle walls for royal protection until the masses were oppressed again. The king could barely be heard over the din. He cursed Beit. He begged his subjects to trust him. He bade them see for themselves that she was wrong, demanded that the peasants send a delegation to her town. He offered them horses, the swifter to be done with this business, and sent Beit to the dungeon again, lest she try to run from the inevitable.

  Nobody visited her prison. Armed sentries blocked the stairs. When the rats came, she’d no food to share. She gave them her lace collar, with which they made a nest where they could leer at her in leisure. In timeless darkness, where hours loitered for weeks, she didn’t know how many days passed without sleep, and couldn’t recollect when she was overcome with delirium. She stared at her hands, the translucent blue skin—and then she saw nothing at all.

  A bag over her head . . . Men’s voices . . . Special commission . . . Thorough investigation . . . No truth to Beit’s prediction . . . Formal charges: treason . . . To the gallows . . . Beit the liar . . . ! Death to her . . . ! Death to her . . . !

  They marched Beit several miles, every step a stumble.

  They prodded her with sticks while she walked, and pelted her with rocks when she fell. They bloodied her like a martyr. And cursed her like the devil.