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

by Jonathon Keats

  For many months after that, the prince wasn’t seen except with his princess. They shared his throne, and together wielded his scepter, for their fingers were always entwined. The arrangement suited his subjects: Considering them no different from herself, the princess embraced their concerns with trusting fervor. They adored her openly, honoring her with garlands of fresh flowers each day—and every night, behind closed doors, she quenched her husband’s jealousy.

  And how he sated her! Every pleasure that old Meir had promised, that he’d urged her to yearn, her young husband provided, and desired in kind. In his hands, his wife softened. Her tawny skin warmed. Her sapphire eyes burned.

  Yet a golem, even a royal one, lacks human perception. Yod didn’t notice, less than a year into her marriage, the flicker in her husband’s gaze when he looked at courtiers’ newly adolescent daughters, nor did she discern meaning in their giggling when, for misbehavior that mystified her, he called them to the throne for a spanking.

  Then he decreed that, as an anniversary gift, his dear princess would spend a month at his country’s famed rejuvenating baths.

  — You need a rest.

  — I’m very happy in your bed.

  — You don’t want to lose your youth.

  — I’m not as fresh as I used to be?

  — You have wrinkles behind your knees.

  — Doesn’t everyone?

  — Don’t contradict me. Are you trying to be ugly?

  Yod shook her head. The prince patted her on the chin. But when she sought his mouth, he turned his shoulder.

  The dress she wore for her voyage, a whole garden of orchids woven together at the stem, was more glorious even than her wedding gown. Her hair was braided with ribbons of gold leaf, and her tiara was cut from a single slice of lapis. In her open carriage, traveling through the countryside with her ten-car entourage, she embodied the prince’s prestige—reminding the peasants of his palatial majesty—and the courtiers he sent to watch over her would have made much of the occasion had the princess not looked so sickly. The flowers wilted on her feverish body, and her crown weighed so heavily on her head that, when she stood, she had to be held up by two chambermaids. By the time Yod got to the sanatorium, she needed one.

  The baths could accommodate a hundred women and men, yet, to protect Her Majesty’s highborn modesty, the facility was given to her alone. Early each morning, she was packed in cool mud, which dried in the sun until noon. Then she was steeped in hot springs until dusk, and soaked in cold baths until she could count a thousand stars above. At last, to take in the air, she was put to bed on a hammock, so exhausted that her dreams were a blur. In those nightmares, she couldn’t distinguish between pain and pleasure, nor could she tell whether the man administering it was the prince or Meir.

  The thirty days and thirty nights passed, ripples in the ancient baths. On the final morning, the fields were filled with daisies, newly in blossom. Yod sent her maids to fetch as many as they could carry. With her own fingers, she tied them in a chain, and wrapped them around her body until she’d made a dress. The handful she had left, she linked together in a tiara.

  The courtiers, who scorned such common flowers, had other ideas about how she ought to be attired. They brought out strands of rubies and emeralds from treasure chests as large as wardrobes. They reminded her that, after all, she was a princess. Just so, she said, I’ll wear what I please.

  She sat high in her carriage, anticipating how her husband would embrace his bride in full bloom, never again letting her out of his sight. She passed through the palace gate. Trumpets sounded. Nobles gathered. Only nowhere in their midst did she see the prince.

  Before she could ask questions, she was ushered to a banquet to celebrate her return, seated at the end of a long table. All the way at the opposite end, past legions of gentry, His Majesty reclined, a young girl on each side. The princess recognized them, two sisters, twin daughters of his bursar, whose giggling naughtiness had merited them great fits of spanking by His Majesty in the weeks before the prince sent Yod away. She watched his gaze shift back and forth between them, identically plump and blond and hazel-eyed, and, while she could appreciate their need for discipline—they ate with their fingers from His Majesty’s plate, and whispered in his ears with their mouths full, wiping their greasy hands clean on his velveteen gown—she didn’t understand why their father never glanced in their direction, nor why personal responsibility for their supervision should fall to her husband. Yet whenever she sought to catch his attention, to remind him that she was home, one of the twins would tap on his shoulder or tug on his ear, and a matron sitting near Yod would inquire about her mud bath regimen.

  She was obliged to describe her days over and over again, and by the nineteenth time, the prince had slipped away. The hour was late. The table was cleared. And still the women held Yod in conversation. She yawned. She announced that she was going to bed. They asked if she planned evermore to sleep in a hammock. Never again, she declared, and wouldn’t be detained by their banter for a moment longer.

  Straight to her husband’s chambers Yod went. The door was shut. Behind it she heard a loud moan, and then another, much softer. Her hand fell on the latch. When it didn’t give, she broke it, and entered.

  The prince had both twins in bed with him. The one named Raina clutched his scepter. The one named Raisa wore his crown. And, in the light of a single white wax candle, both glistened with his semen.

  Without a word of explanation, His Majesty turned his back on Yod. The girls, though, climbed out of bed and, brash in their naked white flesh, strutted up to the princess. Raina plucked a petal from her daisy-chain dress and twittered, He loves me. Raisa yanked a petal and warbled, He loves me not. They started to giggle, and within a minute had her stripped of every petal—taunting loves me, loves me not—leaving only an uncomely tangle of stems on her murky skin.

  For a while, Yod did not move. She watched the twins slip back into bed with her husband, caressing him with each other’s breasts, and moaning in his ears, until he was moved to mount them again. She watched as all three forgot about her, and then she staggered out the door.

  Several of her maids were waiting there. As she fainted, they caught her, and carried her off to bed.

  Yod slept for a week. When she awoke, the prince was standing by her pillow. He informed her that she had to get dressed, for that evening there was a pageant to celebrate their anniversary. She tried to ask about the twins, unsure of what, in her delirium, she had seen.

  — You’re my princess. My subjects expect to see you with me.

  — And the bursar’s daughters?

  — Don’t you worry about them. They know their place. Concern yourself with yours.

  He left her to be bathed and gowned and coiffed and crowned. At dusk he took her hand at the palace gate, and walked her to the royal coach. Together they rode through the streets at the head of a noble procession. At every turn, folks called out to her, for she was still a most popular princess, beloved by all—except, so it seemed, her husband.

  For the length of their excursion, she wasn’t once able to speak to him, to make herself heard over the celebration of their first year of connubial bliss. And then it was done, carriage returned to the stables and husband hustled off by minions. She might have pursued him, had she not spied four hazel eyes glaring at her from the doorway of his chambers. She reyod treated, instead, to her own rooms, where she sidled into a corner and cried.

  After a while, she felt two hands gently ease the burden of her crown. Through falling tears, she saw her servant Chanah set aside the tiara. She asked the maid also to brush out her hair, and, while the girl stroked, Yod mused that Chanah would soon have two heads to tend.

  — Are you expecting, ma’am?

  — Expecting to be left for the bursar’s daughters.

  — You needn’t worry about that.

  — Why not? How would you know?

  — I’m their elder sister.

 
— But you’re a chambermaid, Chanah.

  — What else was there for me to do, ma’am? I was His Majesty’s mistress before he met you. Most of the palace servant girls were, child courtiers wooed and deserted, mocked publicly: a shame on their noble families. Father already acts as if the twins aren’t his daughters. He’ll disown them when your husband gets sick of them, and then they’ll be scrubbing floors.

  — Did you love the prince?

  — Forgive me, ma’am. I still do.

  Yod stared at Chanah. The glint of wet sapphire made the girl shudder. The princess embraced her. Then, in a soft voice, she vowed not to cry anymore, no matter what His Majesty did to her. She quietly declared that she’d no right to pity herself, with so many others so much more deserving of sympathy. And she silently reflected that they’d lost more, those poor servant girls, than she’d ever had—quickened mud less human than the coarsest criminal—while, to their disgrace, she’d been made a royal.

  As Chanah retired to the servants’ quarters, she left Yod with a feeling unfamiliar to her, neither pain nor pleasure, nor the mixed offspring of their union, the emotional siblings ha tred and love. Rather, it was like an orphan taken in, adopted. She didn’t know its name, but others called it compassion.

  Raisa grew pregnant. Raina didn’t. Each day, they had less in common than they’d had the day before. They started to bicker, intimately in the beginning, and, as the abyss widened, at a higher pitch. The whole palace heard their screeching. Each girl accused the other of trying to hoard all of His Majesty’s attention when, truth be told, he no longer cared for either of them.

  The prince was courting a new girl. Because she was his first cousin, he took the trouble to make the seduction clandestine. Only after he’d bedded her—a skittish little redhead foxed with freckles—did he dispense with subtlety, seating her on his lap at supper, and evicting the twins from his chambers.

  The girls sought out their father. Squinting nearsightedly at the mismatched pair, he no longer recognized them as his daughters, and said, in case they were seeking employment, that he already had adequate servants. They went to their friends, girls their age with whom they’d both played before they’d become adult entertainment, but those young ladies were busy assembling trousseaus, and had already been given suitable maids of their own. Raisa and Raina scoured the palace for a touch of kindness, groveling at every door.

  Of course none of this reached the princess, isolated in her chambers, until she asked Chanah what had happened to the twins since her husband had replaced them with his cousin.

  — They got their comeuppance, ma’am, just as I promised.

  — Their father won’t have them back? He must have seen Raisa’s condition.

  — They can’t even empty folks’ bedpans, they’re so besmirched. Give them another week, and they’ll be begging in the street.

  — I’ll take them in.

  — What do you mean?

  — You’re their sister. Go to them and say that they’ll serve me.

  The following morning, the twins stood in front of the princess, heads bowed, hands clenched. After just a week of living outdoors in the palace garden, they were as filthy as any forest urchin. Their silk gowns were stained from midnight raids on His Majesty’s blackberry patch, ripped where the brambles had clawed back. Their pale skin was soiled from sleeping in flower beds. Their blond hair was matted with fern, and tangled together where their heads met as they huddled close for warmth at night. Shoulder to shoulder in front of the princess, they were inseparable, and what bound them more even than the knots in their hair was their shared fear.

  Yod commanded them to look at her. They raised their hazel eyes. They took a deep breath. While she was dressed as simply as a farm girl—barefoot in a muslin frock, a braid of her own hair swept around her brow as a tiara—they saw that her poise, so recently toppled by them in the prince’s chambers, had since risen higher than the palace towers.

  They asked what she intended to do to them. She proposed that they bathe, offering her own tub, and that they rest, offering her own bed. She smiled at them, and left.

  As the bath warmed their blood, the twins began to squabble again. Raina said that if Raisa hadn’t gotten herself pregnant, the prince would still want them, to which Raisa responded that he would if only Raina weren’t barren. Since birth, they’d been doted on as a pair. Each was only half herself; duality was their identity. Now one of them had grown distinct from the other, broken their biological mirror, and lucklessly lost them their prince, their father, every friend they’d ever had. Who’d betrayed whom? Raisa saw the difference in Raina, Raina saw the difference in Raisa, and, the longer they looked, the less each felt like herself.

  Raisa grabbed Raina by the neck. Raina held Raisa’s head underwater. Raisa’s grasp slackened as she drowned. At the last moment, Raina released her, and Raisa came up for air, where she saw the princess standing above, watching over them both.

  Her Majesty was no longer draped in mere muslin, but wore a vestment of red so vivid that it seemed to breathe. When she knelt, they saw that her robe was in fact alive: a conclave of cardinals nestled together, huddled around her. She reached out a gloved hand to them. Gently, she touched each girl on the cheek.

  — Neither of you is to blame. He’s the one who changed.

  — But what if . . .

  — Hush. This is his way. It’s his misfortune. I was once like him. I know how it is not to feel.

  — We brought him such pleasure.

  — It empties right through him. The prince has no stomach for love, and passion without the capacity for devotion is appetite without the capacity for digestion.

  The princess rose to her feet, shimmering in her robe as the birds shuffled their wings. She excused herself, as that evening she had to attend her husband’s banquet honoring a foreign envoy. As she reached the door, the twins asked her how she could remain faithful to a man who’d jilted her.

  — I’m not faithful to the prince. I feel for him, and I’m faithful to my emotion.

  Over the next several years, Yod took in a dozen more of her husband’s spent lovers. The prince scornfully referred to his wife’s ever-more-crowded quarters as her harem, but, to those who deigned visit, her chambers looked more like an almshouse. With her personal allowance—the paltry sum annually disbursed from the royal coffers so that his majesty could keep his affairs separate from hers—she fed and clothed the girls. She also found them day jobs around the palace, while at night she taught them all that she’d learned about the world by living with demons. They were devoted to her, the girls, and, when they slept with her, shared pleasures that did not lapse with the hours.

  Yet no matter how intimate they were with Yod, none of the girls could discern where she’d come from. Had she been the demons’ queen before the prince tied her in wedlock? Did her royal line descend from a celestial throne, to which she’d eventually be restored, with them in angelic attendance? Since she never gave them the least little hint—she was as captive to her enigma amid servants as she’d been with the prince—they played guessing games while she was out at palace functions.

  They could not, after all, accompany her to banquets and balls. At public processions, however, taking their place among commoners, they watched her, standing beside the prince in His Majesty’s open coach. They watched, and what they’d seen as Yod’s pathetic submission while they’d been his lovers, they now perceived as preternatural forbearance.

  The grandest procession each year took place on the summer solstice, for His Majesty could not bear to be outshone by the sun. His guards roused the populace in darkness, and told them the route His Majesty’s procession would take, so that wherever the prince looked on his long ride through city streets and over country roads, he’d see adoring subjects. Because he viewed folks in aggregate rather than recognizing their individuality, he never noticed that, Potemkin villagers, they were creeping along with his carriage.

  His Majes
ty rose with the dawn. Leaving his mistress to sleep in, he went to his princess. She’d been up for many hours. Dark shadows of night lingered under her sapphire eyes. He didn’t look her in the face, but only observed that the gown he’d called for made her appear even more supernal than he’d hoped: Yod wore nothing but doves.

  The procession commenced, led by sentries polished in brass. Next in line were the nobles, mounted on horses, each bearing a coat of arms wrought in bronze, followed by courtiers carrying a fanfare on horn. Along the roadside, folks knelt. The royal carriage passed.

  Now it happened that a foreigner, a traveling scholar, had the previous evening taken lodging for himself and his nag at a hostel along the procession route. He’d said that he’d come searching for a golem. The proprietor had answered that enchanted beings were forbidden in this country—the prince shared his power with nobody—but because the foreigner looked so weary, the hostel keeper had insisted that the poor man spend the night.

  The scholar slept past dawn, nearly to noon, roused only by the rising cacophony outside. He unlatched his shutters, and saw hundreds of peasants scrambling from all directions toward the road below. He crawled under his bed in terror. He heard the crowd grow larger and louder, and then the sounding of a fanfare. Down on his knees, he crept back to the window. Like him, all the peasants were kneeling, as a dozen men, blowing brazen horns, passed on horseback, heralding their sovereign.

  As the royal carriage turned the bend, the scholar’s gaze fell on the princess. Three white doves crowned her head, her hair braided into a dark umber nest. The rest of the covey wove their wings around her body, breasts pressed to her tawny flesh. Each bird was ennobled with one of her gems, clasping in its beak an emerald or amethyst or, for her tiara, a star sapphire. Merely to be visible beside her, the prince had donned a full set of golden armor, and even then he looked like her lowly squire.

  The coach rolled by the hostel. Her regal gaze glossed over the scholar. He winced. He called out to her. His cry joined the roadside chorus of peasants serenading their princess. He lost track of his words. The louder he shouted, the less certain he was even of which voice was his. Who knows what he said? Who can say if Yod heard? Who knows if it was the crush of noise or the noonday heat that made the princess swoon and, in a flutter of doves, fall senseless on the street?