by John Gardner
Meekly, the justices began to make guesses. “Is the defendant somewhere else?” asked the one on the left.
Queen Louisa pursed her lips and thought. “You’re warm,” she said at last. She exchanged winks with the chambermaid.
“Somewhere outside the castle?” asked the one on the right.
“Warmer!” said the queen, and squeezed her hands together.
“He’s having his coffee!” the chief justice cried.
“Cold,” snapped the queen.
“Poor devil!” they moaned. They had no real understanding of trials, she saw, or else they weren’t really trying.
“In my opinion,” the chambermaid whispered, “this Court’s getting nowhere.”
“Trials are like that, my dear,” said Queen Louisa. “But if you insist, I’ll give their honors a hint.”
“Would you?” begged the girl.
Queen Louisa rose and extended her long-sleeved arms for silence. “My lord justices,” she said, “let me give you a hint.”
They accepted eagerly, all three of them waiting with their pencils poised.
“Our business, I think you’ll agree,” said the queen, “is justice.”
The justices furtively glanced at each other, as self-conscious and timid as newts. For no clear reason, she was suddenly filled with a profound sadness. Still the justices waited, hoping for something more and scratching their foreheads with their chewed-down eraser ends. (“Justice,” the chief justice kept mumbling, picking at his lip. He wrote down: “Just Ice?”)
Queen Louisa continued, watching them carefully for a sign they’d got it: “You’ve perhaps heard that our hermits have been frightened from the mountain by an alleged witch.” She paused, startled, rather pleased that she’d thought to say alleged. It was the first real clue. The witch was perhaps in fact not a witch, in which case, of course, the whole trial… She glanced suspiciously at the chambermaid, then remembered, in confusion, that the child was her daughter. The child glanced suspiciously back at her. But still the judges’ faces were blank. Queen Louisa sighed and worried that she might be spoiling everything by revealing too much. She continued, however: “Since the king and his knights are all away, it seems to me our bounden duty to investigate this matter. I therefore suggest that we ride to the mountain and investigate.”
“Hear, hear!” the judges cried wildly, all three of them at once, and glanced at each other.
That must have been the answer (though Queen Louisa had to admit she’d gotten lost somewhere), because the poor little chambermaid was trembling all over and clapping her hands and weeping.
3
There was some difficulty with the queen’s horse. In the end, they all rode in the royal carriage. The chambermaid huddled in the shadow of the queen, contributing nothing to the conversation, no doubt partly because, sitting with the queen, she was wedged in tight.
“I was born of simple, honest stock,” the queen narrated. The chambermaid looked up at her eagerly, from the seat beside her. Outside, the landscape was glittering white. On the castle wall, now far in the distance, the gored knights from the infirmary were all waving colored banners and shouting. The three old sheep sat leaning far forward, for Queen Louisa was speaking very softly, harkening back. All three had their thin hooves folded on their knees and their bowlers in their laps, for the ceiling of the carriage was strangely low. She was reminded, and spoke of, the ceiling of the cottage at the edge of the forest where her parents lived. (She sat with her knees pulled tightly together, despite cramp and discomfort, but even so she could give no more room to the chambermaid. As she spoke, Queen Louisa kept her hands carefully in front of her great green wattles, merely as a kindness to the others. Personally, she rather enjoyed her appearance. “A queen with a difference,” she liked to say, winking coyly.)
“It was a marriage no one believed would work. Mother was Irish, and Father was a dragon. Except for a very few dear friends, they were cut off by both communities. But the cruelty of people who had supposedly loved them served only to intensify their love and deep respect for one another. I was the youngest of the children, of whom there were sometimes seven and sometimes four, depending.”
“Depending on what?” the chief justice broke in, not at all urgently—in fact tears were streaming from his large, pink eyes.
“Depending on our parents,” Queen Louisa explained, and realized now for perhaps the first time how profoundly true that was. “We were poor but extremely proud, you see.—Of course it was difficult for Father to get work.” She remembered with a pang how he’d sit by the fireplace pretending to read the evening paper, though in fact, as everyone in the family knew, it was a paper from last year. A tear ran down the side of Queen Louisa’s nose. “It was difficult,” she said once more—merely to find her place again—”for Father to get work.”
“It would be, yes,” said the sheep on the left, “being married to a Catholic.”
Queen Louisa brightened. “But poor as we were, we had each other!”
“Perhaps that’s why sometimes there were only four,” the chief justice said.
She had a curious feeling, which she couldn’t in the least explain to herself, that the conversation was losing direction. She decided to leap forward. “When I was nine, there was a fire in the old wooden church in the nearby village. Naturally, Father was blamed for it.” She paused, frowning, though she was secretly flattered. “Excuse me,” she said to the chief justice, “are you writing all this down?”
He looked up, startled, still weeping profusely, then immediately blushed. He held the paper toward her, on which he’d been writing, in large block letters, with the greatest imaginable concentration. The paper said: JUSTICE ST. JUICE CUTE JEST [crossed off] SUITE SITE TIE IS US USE
Queen Louisa mused, the chambermaid peeking around past her elbow. “IST!” Queen Louisa said suddenly in German.
“Tu ES,” cried the chambermaid in French.
“JE SUIS,” cried the sheep on the left.
They merely looked at him.
Queen Louisa sighed. “Well,” she said, “they took Father away. I remember his parting words to us. He was a poet at heart, I’ve always felt. It was a wintry morning very like this one.” She gazed sadly out the window. “He gazed sadly out the window, a policeman standing at each side of him—he had only his old singed overcoat on, and I remember the tears were coursing down his cheeks—and he said:
“ ‘My loves, do not blame the authorities for this. Who can swear
that his own apprehension of reality is valid? There are
certain insects—
I forget which ones—that have no apparatus for determining
that other insects of their own same kind exist. Such is
our lot. Have faith! Love even those who bring sorrow to you!’ ”
“Hexameters—loosely,” the chief justice said.
She looked at him with new respect.
There, unfortunately, she was forced to discontinue her narrative. They’d arrived at their destination.
4
The monastery gates were open wide. Queen Louisa discovered, descending from the carriage and keeping the chambermaid’s hand in hers to give the poor child courage, that in the monastery yard there was no one at all, not even a footprint in the snow to suggest that possibly someone had been there, or at least someone’s shoe. She tiptoed softly to the monastery door, leading the child, and the three old sheep came audiculously behind her, huddled close together and holding their bowlers on with both hands, as people would do in a windstorm. There was, of course, not a breath of wind, but logic was not their strong point (she thought fondly) and, also, the bowlers were new. The inside of the monastery was also empty. She tried the back door.
“I’m frightened,” said the chambermaid.
“Call me Mother, if you like,” Queen Louisa said.
The chambermaid looked at her, then looked away, sucked in her lower lip, and seemed to think about it.
Queen Louisa laughed gently. “You young people!” she said.
In the snowy back garden they encountered a truly amazing sight.
The garden’s stone walls were encased in ice, as was every tree and shrub and leftover flower stalk. But in the center of the garden there was a glorious rosebush in triumphant bloom, such bloom as would hardly be natural on even the warmest summer day. And beside the bush there was a horrible ugly old witchlike person who was trying to cut down the rosebush with an axe. With every swipe she took, the trunk of the bush grew wider and stronger, and the roses bloomed more brightly. At the feet of the ugly witchlike person, an old red hound lay whimpering and whining.
Queen Louisa stared in astonishment, believing for an instant that her whole life had been a terrible mistake. But somehow or other she collected her wits and called out in a stern and commanding voice, “Stop!”—for she was capable of such things, if driven too far.
At once both the witchlike person and the dog looked up at her. For an instant the witchlike person was thrown, but only for an instant. “Never!” she cried, her lean lips trembling and her eyes so ferociously green with evil that Queen Louisa was fearful that the chambermaid might faint. Immediately the witchlike person began swinging the axe like someone in a drunken rage, and the old dog whimpered and whined in such awful and unspeakable misery that even the Royal Court was moved to tears. The rosebush, of course, grew stronger by leaps and bounds.
“Stop her! Do something!” the chambermaid hissed, clinging to Queen Louisa with trembling hands.
But Queen Louisa thoughtfully narrowed her eyes, pursed her lips, and calmed the chambermaid by patting her hand. “Be quiet, Muriel,” she said very softly. “I don’t think we’ve quite understood this situation.”
“Muriel?” said the chambermaid.
“My dear,” said Queen Louisa in a stern but not unfriendly voice, signifying by a look that she was addressing the person swinging the axe, “every stroke you strike makes the rosebush stronger.”
“Good point!” said the judges, frantically searching through their trouser pockets for their notebooks.
“Get away! Be gone!” said the witchlike person.
Queen Louisa smiled. She said, “Dog, come here.”
With an awful groan, the old red hound got up and came timidly toward her. It settled at her feet and closed its eyes like a creature enormously embarrassed.
“Muriel,” Queen Louisa said out of the side of her mouth, “meet your ridiculous father.”
The chambermaid looked at the dog, touching her chin with three fingers. “How do you do,” she said at last.
The witchlike person was perspiring now. Her black robe clung to her armpits and back, and her nose and chin (which were as blue and as pointed as icicles) dripped. She stopped swinging and leaned on her axe, panting. “I’m not beaten,” she whispered.
Immediately, as if at a signal, a hundred wolves in the robes of pious monks came bounding over the garden wall and crouched, growling, with their ghastly fangs bared, in a semicircle around Queen Louisa and her friends.
The witchlike person laughed. “You see, my ancient enemy,” she cried, “your whole life has been a terrible mistake! The forces of evil do exist! Ha ha!” Words cannot describe the unearthly horror of that final “Ha ha!” She raised the axe in one hand and brandished it. “We’re cosmic accidents!” cried the witchlike person. “Life is gratuitous, it has no meaning till we make one up by our intensity. That is why these gentle monks have joined me in seeking to wreak havoc on the kingdom. Not for personal gain. Ha ha! Ha ha! But to end the boredom! To end all those mornings of waking up vaguely irritable! Ha ha!” She sidled toward the queen. “I have seduced your husband. What do you think of that? I have filled him with the feeling that life is meaningful, if only because it can be thrown away. I have—”
Suddenly Queen Louisa heard, behind her in the formerly empty monastery, a thrilling crashing and clanking of armor. The witchlike person went pale with fear. “Strike now!” she exclaimed to the wolves. “Strike now, and quickly, before it’s too late!”
But the wolves stood trembling and wringing their paws, too terrified to move an inch. And before you could say Jack Robinson, the door behind Queen Louisa opened and a thousand gory wounded knights came out, pushing into every available space in the garden, saying “Excuse me” as they passed Queen Louisa and her friends, and they raised their swords to execute the wolves.
“Stop!” cried Queen Louisa.
Everybody stopped.
Queen Louisa walked with great dignity and calm to the miraculous rosebush, her webbed hands gracefully crossed across her wattles.
“You’ve all misunderstood everything,” she said. “Or else I have. But no matter, since I’m the queen.” She could have explained, if she wanted to, how sorry she felt for the wicked of this world, who couldn’t even cut a rosebush down. Though she’d admit, in all fairness, that perhaps the rosebush was cut down, since she was insane and could never know anything for sure, and perhaps the whole story was taking place in a hotel in Philadelphia.
“Watch!” said Queen Louisa. She closed her large and luminous eyes and concentrated. A gasp went through the monastery garden, for behold, Queen Louisa had changed from an enormous toad to a magnificently beautiful redheaded woman with a pale, freckled nose. Her white, white arms were so delicately dimpled at the elbows that neither knight nor wolf could refrain from licking his lips with desire. “Mother!” cried the chambermaid. “My beloved!” cried the king— changed that same instant from the dog he was before. The witchlike person was reduced in a flash to the lady-in-waiting. She sat weeping and groaning at her monstrous betrayal of everybody, and especially her husband. The leader of the wolves said, “Let us pray.” The rosebush, being of no further use, withered to an ice-clad stick.
Queen Louisa extended her soft white arm to the chambermaid. “My sweet,” she said, “it’s natural that youth should be rebellious. I was rebellious myself. But I want you to know that if you want to come home, your father and I agree, you’re welcome.”
Neither demanding nor expecting that the others would follow her, lovely Queen Louisa turned, with a gentle bow, and went back into the monastery and through it to the yard and on to the carriage. She got in and, with a thoughtful frown, turned back into a toad. Immediately the three sheep got in, and after them Queen Louisa’s daughter, Muriel, and then His Majesty the King and Her Majesty’s lady-in-waiting. The wounded knights lined up behind the carriage to follow it home. With two extra people beside them now, the three sheep were so crowded they could hardly breathe. Yet they smiled like madmen in their joy at the king’s proxsimity.
Queen Louisa said—the child looked up at her with admiration like a gasp—”Don’t blame yourself, my sweet. It’s true, of course, that your dramatic leaving gave your father ideas. The poor old fool was in his forties then, and, I’m sorry to say, all people in their thirties and early forties have this awful lust—this ridiculous hunger for experience, so to speak. And the pretty way you mocked him, of course, and flirted with him—”
“I did all this?” the chambermaid said.
Queen Louisa smiled sadly at the look of dismay and bafflement in little Muriel’s eyes. Then, with the carriage gently swaying and the snow falling softly from the pitchdark sky, Mad Queen Louisa told her beautiful newfound daughter the story of her life.
The boy beside the coachman said: “Isn’t this a marvelous tale to be in?”
The coachman, who was silver-haired and wise, gave his nephew a wink. “You barely made it, laddie!”
KING GREGOR AND THE FOOL
1
Another thing that can be said about King Gregor is that he dearly loved his work, and he was good at it. That was why he spent too much time at it, as the Fool kept pointing out, and tended to neglect his family. No doubt it was true that it was because of his neglect that Mad Queen Louisa spent more and more of her time these days as an enormous toad, though in her natu
ral shape she was the most beautiful queen in the world. And presumably it was why his daughter—if it was true that, as Queen Louisa insisted, he had a daughter—had run away from home and only recently returned, having gotten herself into trouble and having no one to turn to.
King Gregor nodded, his dark brow deeply furrowed. “Yes, true, all true,” he muttered to himself, stroking his long black beard.
Which, however, did not resign him for one instant to the Fool, or to the whole institution of Foolery. The man wouldn’t give him a moment’s rest, carping and carping, prating and prating, often in spontaneous rhyme so terrible it set King Gregor’s ears on edge. “Surely,” King Gregor thought, pressing the back of his hand to his forehead, “an exception should be made in my case! Isn’t it enough that I’m married to an insane queen? Do I have to put up with a Fool besides?” No one knew how he suffered. No one understood. Queen Louisa, of course, was the life of the party, the one everyone adored. Bold King Gregor (as he liked to call himself and as he’d tentatively suggested from time to time that he might not unfittingly be called, but it had never caught on)—Bold King Gregor was always the straight man, cruelly upstaged by the magnificent Louisa. He loved her, yes, of course. It can safely be said that no king who ever lived was more devoted to his queen than was Gregor to Louisa. But it was not easy, being the ruler of an important kingdom and the husband of a madwoman, everlastingly rolling the same old rock up the same old hill, like Sisyphus of old, straining to introduce into the kingdom, in his own small way, some trifling note of sense. Did the Fool understand this, criticizing, criticizing?
No the Fool did not.
King Gregor glanced back at the battle on the plain below and saw that his men were getting too far to the left, where they could easily be surrounded, if the enemy thought of it. He reached over to his trumpeter and poked him in the arm with one finger. “Trumpeter,” he said, “blow ‘Advance to the Right.’ ”
