The Fairest of Them All

by Carolyn Turgeon

  She shook her head. “I knew it was here. A powerful sorcerer lived here once. Hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Back then, this kingdom was very great. Many hope that it might become that way again.”

  I looked down again, at the moving silver.

  “Who is the fairest of them all?” I asked again.

  “Rapunzel is fairest of all,” it said, and it was as if it were whispering in my ear.

  I laughed and looked up at her. She sat watching me, the doorway to the house dark and empty behind her.

  My last day with Mathena, I stared out of my tower at the forest surrounding me—at the slinking river, the massive garden, the trees on all sides, everything teeming with life and sound and scent. The chirping and whirring of insects and birds, the howling of wolves, the patter of squirrels and rabbits, the soft whoosh of deer running over the grass and soil. The smell of earth and growing things, breezes carrying the scent of river and rotting animals, the fear of travelers surprised on dark pathways.

  I took the cloth from my hair, let it stream down around me.

  I could sense the horses and carriages as they left the inn, as they entered the forest and wound their way to us. I watched from the tower as they appeared in flashes through the trees, closing in, and then I ran down to the garden, to her.

  “They’re coming!” I said.

  She was bent over the cabbages, which squatted heavy and blue-green, like creatures from under the sea. She looked up at me, lifting a dirt-covered hand and wiping it across her forehead. The sun shining down on her.

  And then they arrived, in a flash of horse and silver and more people than I’d ever seen all together at the same time, up close. A host of guards and servants came to get me. At my direction, they swept up the curving stairs to my tower. It was all movement and chaos but before I knew it, my life was packed up and stowed away in carriages and on horseback.

  “He has not come himself?” I asked one of the ladies who seemed to be in charge of the servants.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “The king is very busy. But he is waiting for you.”

  I tried not to feel disappointed that he hadn’t come. Of course he had better things to do, as the king, but now I would be all alone.

  I turned to Mathena, who stood by the garden watching everything, a curious look on her face.

  “What is it?” I asked, walking up to her. Brune stood on her shoulder.

  “I’m just remembering when I was young,” she said. “Young and full of dreams. Madly in love with a young magician.”

  I winced, but knew she was thinking only of the past, when she and Marcus had been lovers and everything had been possible.

  I leaned in and kissed her cheek, taking in her faint smell of spices. “You are still young, Mathena,” I said. “You can still dream.”

  “I dream all the time,” she said strangely, and just as I was about to respond, one of the soldiers stepped forward.

  “We are ready, my lady,” he said.

  And then it seemed as if I had had no time at all to say good-bye to her.

  I looked at her standing there by the garden, soil-covered yet as majestic as any member of royalty. She could change men into stags, make a garden burst with vegetables when everyone else’s crops failed. I looked at our little stone house built from ruins, the tower that reached into the sky, the garden. It was all so lovely—it had been the whole universe to me for so long, and now I was leaving. And I was aware, painfully so, that if and when I returned, it would not be the same to me. I would be a queen, accustomed to living in a palace. What would this all look like to me then?

  What a strange feeling, suddenly seeing everything from the future, as if I were able to travel through time and this were a moment buried deep in my memory. Like a jewel I could pull out of my pocket at any time and hold up to the light.

  “Thank you,” I said to her, “for all you’ve done for me.” I wrapped my arms around her, buried my face in her neck. I tried, one last time, to feel her through my hair, to feel her heart pulsing into my own, but it was as hidden from me as it had always been. All I wanted to know was that she’d be all right here alone, without me.

  She pulled back first. I let go of her and turned to the soldier, afraid to look at her any longer.

  He led me to the carriage and helped me step up into it. I was conscious, then, of the plain shift I was wearing—we’d long since used the last of Mathena’s old gowns to insulate and decorate the house—and could feel myself redden with shame. There were more people around me than I’d ever seen, and even the maidservants were better dressed than I. A few soldiers held my hair in their hands and carefully arranged it next to me, on the seat. Their thoughts flowed up to me: their wonder at the king’s choice of bride, their unease at the regal, beautiful witch who stood there, covered in dirt, and watched us go.

  As the guard closed the carriage door, I was grateful to be sitting alone, out of sight, with furs to wrap myself in. And then the horses began moving through the forest, and we pushed into the trees and brambles. Quickly, I muttered a protection spell, though I knew Mathena had already done so. Soldiers moved ahead of us with swords, slashing through so that the path was clear.

  I leaned back against the silk. There was a sense of unreality to everything—the way the forest looked like a place I’d never seen before, from such an extravagant seat, the way the light sifted down through the leaves and silk curtains, how it played across my face. The horses clomped on the packed forest floor. I pushed back the curtain and looked out at the trees and leaves, all soaked in summer sunlight, the patches of mushrooms scattered across the ground. I could smell the earth, the leaves overhead, and I felt like I was in a wonderful, fantastical dream as we moved through the forest, out into the kingdom, to him.

  It must seem strange, that I lived for so long in the forest and did not see the world at large until I was twenty-five years old, when I became queen. After all, we were a two-day horse ride away from the palace, a seven-day walk on foot.

  I would only understand later why Mathena had never taken me.

  We rode for hours that first day, until day passed into night and only the moon overhead guided our path. I slipped in and out of sleep, lulled by the beating of the horses’ hooves. Occasionally we stopped to relieve ourselves, servants leading me off the path and shielding me with their voluminous skirts and then doing the same for each other. We ate bread and cheese. They dipped chalices into streams and gave them to me to drink from. We did not stop to rest, however, until the next evening, after we left the forest and rode into the world outside. Even though I had anticipated it, I could not believe how vast that world was. To my memory, I had never stood under a blank sky without branches crisscrossing overhead, and when we finally stopped at an inn at the edge of the woods I could not help but feel like I was drowning. All that night sky, scattered with stars, pulled me in until I could barely breathe.

  On the one side, I could see the castle in the distance, its turrets reaching up into the sky. I looked to the other, for a glimpse of the tower, but the forest was a dark mass, and Mathena would have hidden it from outside eyes, anyway.

  At first I felt more comfortable inside the inn, where the best room was reserved for me. The innkeeper greeted me, his wife standing beside him and curtsying. I was surprised to recognize her from the forest—in a flash, I remembered her tears, her story of her husband’s endless infidelities. She met my eyes and then looked away quickly, her face reddening. I did not betray her, nor she me.

  They led me to my room. Again I was tended by soldiers, who walked in front of me and followed after me, carrying my hair up the stairs and arranging it in the room beside me. They were getting adept at this chore: when I turned around, I saw that they’d arranged my hair into a giant spiral.

  How strange, to have left one life behind but to not yet have entered the other. Suspended between worlds. Despite the exhaustion of travel, I was restless, ready for adventure. I examined the room—the p
lump bed, the chest, the tapestry on the wall, the shutters that opened and looked out at scattered houses and shops. I stood in the window and imagined what it would be like to live in one of those houses, what my life might have been if Mathena had not taken me away.

  There was a knock on the door and two servants brought in food and drink for me, setting up my supper on a little table, and then left me alone. Below, I could hear laughter and shouting, even stomping on the floor as music started up. For a while I listened. It was all so exciting, knowing that soon I, too, would laugh and dance.

  I thought of all the joy that had flowed into me from Josef’s body, and fell asleep feeling as if—almost, but not quite—it had been my own.

  It was the next day that I first saw, really saw in the daylight, the world outside the forest. Servants invaded my room early in the morning, dressing me and bringing me meat and bread and tea to dine on.

  I could hear the clinking of dishes downstairs, the men readying the horses.

  And then I stepped outside: in front of me was a seemingly endless landscape with houses and shops and animals, and there in the distance was the palace, which seemed more massive than I had ever imagined. Like the way my tower, when you stood under it, seemed as if it ended above the clouds. Again I felt that strange vertigo, as if I were standing at some great height or sinking in the deep water, with nothing to clutch onto. The sky massive, unending and unbroken, above me.

  “Here, my lady,” one of the soldiers said, as he led me to my carriage and helped me inside.

  Just as I sat down an old woman passed, glaring. She made a strange gesture and pointed two fingers. It took me a moment to realize she was pointing at me.

  I blinked, surprised. “What does that mean?” I asked the soldier, just as he was arranging the last bit of my hair on the seat next to me. “Did you see what that woman did?”

  “I did not, my lady,” he said. He refused to meet my eye, but I felt, through the strands of my hair, that he knew these people did not approve of me, of witches, though so many of them had left their homes in secret, rushing through the dangerous woods to seek our help.

  He stepped away. I looked around and caught a servant’s eye. She, too, looked quickly away.

  It was an unsettling thing, that gesture, the look the woman had given me, the reaction of the soldier and the servant. I sat back in the carriage as we moved through the kingdom, praying the rest of the journey would go quickly and without incident.

  We had not ridden more than an hour when I heard a loud thump on the side of the carriage, followed by a general commotion, voices and cries as the carriage came to an abrupt halt.

  “Witch!” I heard, through the ruckus.

  The word sliced through everything else, the sounds of the soldiers barking out commands, cries and screams from the crowd. I peeked out, through my hair, and saw faces contorted with anger, people gathered on a road lined with small houses.

  “Back!” the soldiers were yelling. I saw them push one man onto the ground. Others caught my eye and cried out, making that same sign the old woman had made before. Among the faces I recognized other women who’d come to see us, through the years.

  They could come to me in the forest, I realized, in secret, but they did not want me to be their queen.

  I shrank into my seat.

  The door to the carriage swung open, and a soldier slipped inside, pushed past my hair, and sat across from me. He was a young man with dark hair and a face like a girl, and shining green eyes with long lashes. He was dressed in the livery of the king: a red and black uniform, a sword at his side.

  “Do not worry,” he said.

  “What is happening?” I asked.

  “These people, they’re animals.” His voice dripped with disgust.

  I looked down and realized my hands were shaking.

  The soldier pulled the curtains down, and the carriage began moving again. We sat in the hushed dark.

  I closed my eyes and concentrated, trying to weave a quick protection spell around us.

  “How far are we from the palace?” I asked, after an hour or so.

  “It will not be so long now, my lady,” he said.

  I cracked open the curtain some time after that, and looked out on a row of cottages, nicer than the ones we’d seen before, where the crowds had been gathering. Faces peered out of windows, mothers with children in their arms stood in doorways as we passed.

  Did my parents live here? Were they still alive? I wondered if there was still a garden filled with rapunzel somewhere, still a woman staring out at it with longing and an inexpressible hunger.

  Later in the day, we passed through a great gate, and then there were crowds all around, and stalls of food and bread, and I even saw a man throwing balls in the air and catching them in the most marvelous way. I heard a song that seemed to press right into the carriage, come into the window to where I was sitting, and wrap around me like a quilt.

  “It’s the new queen!” I heard, and I swear I wondered where she was, this queen. I almost peered out to look for her before I remembered that it was me.

  The castle loomed in front of us. The spires reached up into the sky, thinner and taller than they’d seemed from the forest, and I craned my neck to see the way they shone in the sunlight.

  Everywhere people stood watching as we made our way to the lowering drawbridge. Merchants, entertainers, beggars. It was suffocating, having them all right there, so close I could have reached out and touched their faces.

  “Stay back,” the soldier across from me said, when I stuck my head out of the window and prompted a frenzied cheer from the crowd. “You must be careful.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said, as he pulled the curtain back to hide me. “What are you afraid will happen? Do you think they will try to attack us again?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Why do you think those people were so upset?”

  He hesitated. “The former queen has only recently passed,” he said after a moment, “and was beloved by the people.”

  “They do not want the king to remarry so quickly?”

  He averted his eyes. “Some may feel that way, yes.”

  “Do you?”

  He looked back at me. “I follow the will of my king, madame. I do not question his desires.”

  “Ah,” I said, assessing him. “Good.”

  It reassured me to know that Josef inspired such loyalty in those around him.

  The drama of our entrance distracted me slightly from my terrible nerves, which were increasing at an alarming rate as we neared the end of our journey. I had thought my proper place was here, in the palace, but as we rattled over the drawbridge and came to a stop, everything seemed foreign and imposing and not like home at all.

  A guard outside pulled the carriage door open and helped me down. My hair remained in the carriage, and gradually unraveled and trailed after me as I stepped forward. Looking around, I saw how luxurious the palace was, far more extravagant than I’d known anything could be. The ground was covered in marble and the doors to the castle were giant, with golden men on horseback flying across them as if they could leap off onto the stone of the palace exterior, or into the shining water of the moat surrounding us.

  A large group of ladies and servants stood inside, ready to greet me. I craned my neck, looking for Josef, but he was not there.

  I could feel the people’s eyes passing over me, examining me, and that sense of shame came back, more acutely now, that I didn’t have anything finer than the plain shift I was wearing. I forced myself to stand tall and meet their gazes, defiant. But they were not paying attention to my clothes, it seemed.

  I heard gasps and exclamations from all around.

  “Her hair!” “Beautiful . . . ” “Like pure gold . . . ”

  I stared at the group, in all their finery. Ladies curtsied, men bowed, and I smiled as I stepped into the palace.

  “My lady,” a woman said, stepping forward. “I am ordered
to take you to your chambers. My name is Yolande.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  She was lovely, with a cloud of rich brown hair about her face. I felt instantly comfortable with her, as she led me through the crowd of people and toward a grand stairway, her green and white dress full and swishing as she moved.

  My hair dragged behind me. I felt a strange energy, the presence of invisible spirits all around. Maybe it was a memory of my own past in this kingdom, maybe it was the portraits and sculptures all over, or maybe it was the generations of royalty who’d lived here, pressing in. But I could feel it.

  The other women rushed to follow, walking on either side behind me. I was not sure yet who they were, whether they were members of the royal family or servants, and was surprised that no one introduced themselves to me, though the men, I noted, all watched me with a combination of what seemed like admiration and suspicion, as we passed. Was it men like these who’d caused the tears I’d witnessed in the forest? I wondered. Were men the same everywhere?

  I was too stunned, though, to give too much thought to my reception and the possible foibles of those around me. After years of watching the palace from my tower window, dreaming of what was happening inside, I was here, and everywhere I looked was some new marvel.

  It was as if a mountain had opened and I’d walked into it, all marble and flashing stone. Gems studded the walls, glinting when the light hit them. We moved through hallways and long rectangular rooms with massive paintings and all manner of wild beasts hanging from the walls. Great hearths yawned open from each floor, alongside grand, richly colored furniture with intricate designs carved into it and over plush, sumptuous rugs. I wanted to run my fingers over each new thing.

  We walked past rooms where painters were at work on entire walls, where lords and ladies played instruments and hunched over games of chess, and across a great courtyard with a pond in the middle of it, at the center of the palace.

  A group of swans floated on the water. The sun shone down above us. I thought of Zeus and his swan, and thought that this place, this palace, was fit for the gods.