Black Pearls

by Louise Hawes

  But the laughter stopped and the beautiful woman frowned. "Now look what the child has done! There is dirt all over my dress. Hannah! Hannah, come get him, quick."

  As I spun around the floor with this sweet stranger, the years fell away and it seemed a child, trembling with adoration, had laid a chain of flowers in my lap. I stared at the girl in my arms and wondered if love was this simple.

  "You cannot be a prince!" She laughed when I told her who I was. Her honeyed hair shook free from the combs that held it, and her hands, as if forgotten, rested in mine. "You are much too young and you do not scare me at all. Why, if you were not so important, we should be real friends!"

  I forgot the lessons my mother and all the powdered ladies of the court had taught me. I neglected to bow and lie in wait, to flatter and pretend. "We are already friends," I told her. When the music started up again, I whirled us into a shadowy alcove, away from prying eyes. "Now tell me your name, sweet friend."

  She stopped dancing and pulled me to a cluster of pillars at the edge of the hall. There she leaned against the sugared stone and whispered to me as if she were at confession. "I am afraid I no longer have a name of my own. After my father died, my step-mother called me nothing but Cinderella." She seemed as small and frightened as a bird I dared not flush. "I have not led an easy life."

  "Your mother must have been very beautiful." It was an old formula, but I said it with new sincerity. She clung to the pillar, though, as if I had set a snare for her.

  "I suppose she must," she said without affectation. "My father always said she was. But I cannot remember her face." And when she turned back to me at last, her eyes were filled with a strange and cloudy hunger I dreamed suddenly of feeding.

  "When I was little and had no one to run to if I fell and hurt myself, no one to share the games I played alone among the mops and kettles, I used to try to picture her. I cried and yearned and prayed, but I could never see her eyes, her hair, not so much as the tips of her fingers."

  She studied her own small hands in silence, then raised a face to which the light had rushed back. "So I have made up my own mother." She grinned like a clever child. "She is a fairy godmother, more radiant and powerful than anyone on earth. I cannot hold or kiss her, but she protects me with her spells."

  She spoke as if she were still in a nursery. I laughed now, enchanted, and bent to kiss her. When she turned away once more, I was not angry but patient and tender. "And why not have kisses as well as spells?" I asked. "Surely a woman's dreams embrace more than elves and fairies?"

  She did not leave the shelter of the pillar, only looked at me from its shadow. "Perhaps they do," she told me. "I used to see my godmother as clearly as I see you. She came to me in the daytime, real as the corn, bright as dawn on a stream. Now she visits only after dark, when there is no light to see how she wears her hair or the color of her dress." She squeezed my hand tightly, and her voice rose, colored with hope. "But last night was different. She came to me, really and truly. She promised me you."

  Though her face and manner held me in thrall, I could make little sense of her childish words. I took them for flattery and fell into the easy habit of flirtation. "Promises," I told her, bowing gallantly, "must not be broken." With that, I took her arm and whirled her deeper into the alcove we'd found under the arch of the marble stairs. We danced on, just the two of us, plotting like runaways, smuggling in morsels from the banquet table. We formed our own tiny kingdom there, like the make-believe land I used to inhabit when my mother and father fought.

  Before he died, the king had vanquished thousands of enemy troops but never won a single confrontation with his queen. As my mother's voice rose higher, spiraling toward outrage and anguish, the servants would shake their heads and Father would retreat to his chambers, apologizing, begging forgiveness all the way down the hall.

  While these battles royal raged, I would hide under these very same stairs, my hands against my ears. If I closed my eyes, I could travel far away from the yelling and from the dark, intricate oaths issuing from my father's rooms. But of course, such respites never last. Neither did my time with the fairy dancer, Cinderella.

  Too soon, I saw her grow restless, watched her count from our sanctuary the guests who had begun to drift in laughing clusters toward the door. Then, high in the castle tower, above the gods and goddesses painted on the ceiling, a bell began to ring midnight. Stricken, Cinderella looked up the marble stairs toward the guards at the door. "I must go!" She grabbed her train, darted back into the sea of silk and satin from which I had plucked her, and disappeared.

  "Wait!" Midnight tolled again, and my mother, determined but unhurried, moved toward me down the stairs. "You did not tell me your family's name!" I saw a small figure gliding like a skater across the field of gold and marble, then gave chase. "How will I know where to find you?"

  Too late, I pushed my way through the crowd, brushed past my mother, and reached the door. I raged at the watchmen who had let her climb into the silver coach that clattered out the gate as the last stroke of midnight hammered against the sky.

  One of the watchmen, a burly fellow big enough to break me in two if I had not been his prince, hung his head, ashamed, while the other two pointed to a lost star that lay glittering in the moonlight on the bottom step.

  The queen followed me down the stairs and leaned over the star burning my palm. "In order to wear that shoe, one would have to be a fairy or a child," she decided, straightening. "If she is the first, you will never see her again. But if you danced this night with a human, I swear we will ferret her out."

  They made a joke of the story. In the streets and markets, they laughed at the love-struck prince who sent soldiers to every town. Who had his hopes raised and dashed a thousand times before he finally found his commoner sweetheart in a merchant's kitchen beside the grate, her elbows sooty and her hair filled with ashes.

  Of course, the wags made much of the fact that it was a house my father had once frequented. They took relish in reviving old scandals and the foolish boasts of a widow in the habit of bragging about her "connections" to the palace. But those gossips never saw the smile with which Cinderella ran to me that day. They did not hear her laugh, warm and triumphant, as I placed the glass slipper on her foot. "My friend," I told her, "I was not certain I would ever be this happy again."

  "And I?" she replied, brushing away the soot that clung to my sleeve. "I knew I would. If not, I should have died." Now she opened her arms and I scooped her from the hearth. Her fawning sisters bobbed up and down, bowing and crying as I helped her to my horse. Her stepmother stood bemused, then waved as if she had planned it all. She smiled at last, urging her daughters and her neighbors to bid us farewell as we raced like children to our palace of dreams.

  Not without cost. The fact that my sweetheart's father had been, before he died, a wealthy man did little to stop busy tongues. Like a poison that infected the court and the market alike, talk of "Cinderella, the barefoot princess" spread everywhere. Old wives giggled over their stewpots, and ladies in waiting whispered at their sewing. They chattered and cackled and chewed on the story as though it were a meaty bone. How she had won a prince's heart, how she had cast a spell and caught a kingdom. Yet my mother, who usually despised such gossip, seemed not to mind.

  "This foolish prattle will pass," she told me one morning. She had taken, since I'd brought home my future wife, to summoning me every day to her chambers, to looking more flushed and eager as the marriage date drew near. It was as if she, not Cinderella, were to be wed. "Before your father died, there were rumors, too. The people love to think their rulers fall in love with commoners. It is nothing—all idle, empty talk."

  I had heard the gossip myself, the tired legend of my father's dalliances, his fondness for castle servants, tavern wenches, and finally a certain comely widow whose company he enjoyed until the queen's soldiers visited her home and persuaded her it was best to foreswear royal companionship. Though the king had died more than a do
zen years before, this perverse legacy lived on. It was, in fact, nearly all I had left of him. I was only a lad of four, after all, when the great bells pealed all night and my mother took to her bed. I cried then, kicking my toy soldiers from their orderly phalanxes and burying them deep in the furthest corner of the kitchen garden. Now, though, I could barely remember the face of the man whose death had made a kingdom weep.

  "Our subjects will have other things to occupy their idle tongues once you take the throne, my son. When your father's bloodline is assured, there will be no stopping us. Armies will be mustered; taxes will be raised. We will live as our birthrights demand."

  I considered the balls, the jewels, the damask tablecloths and mirrored halls. "We already live beyond most people's dreams," I told her. "What more could you want?"

  The queen's maids sat around her that day, two whispering over a tapestry, one plucking softly at a mandolin. My mother, who had been sewing as she spoke, stood suddenly, showering the floor with brocade and ribbon. "I have waited a long time for what your marriage will bring," she told me. Her fervor, her eagerness, filled her face with light and made it younger than her years.

  "And when, may I ask, am I to meet the princess apparent?" She sat again, her servants hastening to pick up the tumbled ribbons and lay them in her lap. She sighed then, her eyes closed and one ringed hand on her breast. "Am I not to see for myself the treasure you have wrested from its hiding place?"

  I sat beside her. "You know very well that Cinderella and I have come to visit you every day. But you have been busy with your maids or else in your bath."

  It was an old trick of hers, making me wait. I recalled running to her chambers, as a boy, with some urgent news, some childish triumph. I would stand outside that intricate, sweet-smelling realm of hers, slices of laughter fluttering out to me whenever the door opened. Like an exile from the promised land, I yearned to be let in. Sometimes it was days and days between my glimpses of her, so that at last nothing seemed as important, nothing as wondrous, as what I had been denied.

  It was not until the wedding day that my wife and my mother met face-to-face. In the interim, my sweetheart and I walked in the garden, took rides in the woods, though all along I sensed that my orphaned darling, just like the motherless boy I had once been, was waiting only to meet the queen. Finally, to my sweet relief, the bells rang, our carriages lined up for the ride to church, and the horses stamped, their breath smoky in the morning air. The queen, decked in fur, put her white hand into my bride's and smiled thinly. The new princess, unschooled in subtlety, missed the condescension that set my mother's face as if it were carved. All Cinderella saw, to judge from the admiration that shone in her eyes, was a dark-haired beauty who burned like a cool taper beside her own bright flame.

  And flame she did. Her dress was white silk lined with ermine, picked by my mother for its icy elegance. But my sunny love outshone her chaste gown, as lovely a bride as any dream could conjure. All the way to church, waving to the crowds from our velvet nest, the people's "barefoot princess" trailed beauty like streamers as crowds of goggle-eyed children chased our carriage down the street. Later, as we spoke the marriage pledges, our words trembling doves in the dark chapel, I watched tears trace her cheeks and melt into her smile.

  That night, all the cruel gossip seemed forgotten. It was a small price to pay, as at last I led Cinderella to a candlelit room and closed the door. I took her hand and stooped to blow out the light beside our bridal bed. But her hand and her voice stopped me. "No, please. I can't see how lovely it is in the dark."

  I shook my head, but obliged her. Then, with all the yearning that I had learned to stifle, with all the love I had saved, I untied her bodice and bent to kiss the brand-new face of love. She lifted her mouth to mine, but pulled back as I tried to unlace the shift that covered her breasts. "Do not take it off just yet," she said. "Let us dance first, you and I." She held her slender arms out to me and looked so like a child begging one more sweet that I walked into her embrace and held her fast. We whirled around the room while she sang off-key an old peasant song I had not heard in years.

  "This is the way it was the night we met," she told me. "The magic felt just like this. The lights were shining, and you looked at me with just those eyes. Tell me what you saw."

  "I saw my dream," I said. "I saw the fairest, most wondrous creature that ever walked the earth." She laughed, tossing her head and letting me slip my hand beneath the shift. "I saw a princess dressed in light, a fairy sporting moonbeams in her hair."

  I laid her on the bed and began to kiss away the shift. Still she stopped me, begging for another dance. "Tell me how it was. How the magic made me look."

  I could hardly speak for the knot of longing in my throat. But I held her gently, wooed her with tenderness and a patience born of years. "You looked as you do now." I touched her under the frothy gown she could not bear to part with. There would be time, I thought, for wearing away this shyness. Long chains of days together, filled with growing ease and love. She fell into the cloud of linens around us and her arms circled my neck. "As fair as any woman I hope to know."

  ***

  When I woke my bride was gone and a single streak of sun shot across the floor and up the sheets. Once I had stowed the chamber pot and made my way to the window, the world seemed fresher, more promising than I had ever seen it. The trees trembled with excitement and every hill sloped toward some undiscovered joy. I dressed quickly, eager to find Cinderella, to spend our first day in the sweet intimacy I had nursed in my imagination for weeks.

  I heard them laughing as I passed my mother's chambers. The sound stopped me in the cold hallway and drew me to the door. It was swung wide and I could see most of the sitting room from where I stood. A tiny tremor, not as sharp as disappointment, kept me on the threshold, watching the women at my mother's feet. They were clustered on pillows and footstools, some sewing, others working on the hair of the fair-headed beauty at the queen's knee. Her laugh was the gayest of all, as they fussed and giggled, rearranging combs and braiding tresses. "Is this the style you meant, Mother?" my sweetheart asked, turning to face the queen, then bringing a nervous hand to a curl that had strayed from its place. "Is it really French?"

  My mother looked down from her perch above them. Her inspection was thorough and emotionless. "Exactly," she concluded at last. "It's perfect for you, my dear." There was a hint of a smile on her face, until she glanced up and saw me at the door. All the women followed her gaze, staring blankly, as if I were a curious menagerie specimen that had somehow wandered into their human society.

  In that instant, something ancient and dispiriting gripped me, but I shook it off. When the frozen tableau spilled into action, bits of silk flying, a gilded mirror winking its bright eye at the ceiling, all the women rose and my mother walked to meet me. She stopped me just inside the door, and turned her face aside to be kissed.

  Behind her trailed my Cinderella, flushed and self-conscious in her new coiffure. Again she touched a loose feather of hair. "Your mother has been showing me how they dress in the French court," she told me over the queen's shoulder. "Do you like it?"

  I hardly heard her question. Her presence in my mother's chamber, her wild hair caught up in a stylish prison, disconcerted me. "I woke just now," I said, ignoring my mother's cheek and the ring of rustling skirts around me, "and you were gone."

  She laughed nervously. "I am afraid I shall never be a stay-abed princess. I was up with the birds, and your mother was kind enough to send for me." She withdrew further behind the queen, deferential and shy, but her eyes swam with secret, hidden delight.

  "Well, now that you are abroad," my mother announced, "your new bride is at your disposal. All that remains is to secure her Parisian look with a pin or two. Then she will join you in the garden." She moved forward, forcing me to step backwards out of the room. "Surely," she said, smiling at the women around her, "a prince's passions can be reined for fashion's sake." She nodded at one of the women w
ho reached for the door. "And French fashion at that!" As they were shut away from me, I heard the laughter start up again and saw my princess giggling with the rest, one hand raised delicately to hide her mouth.

  She spent most of that day with the queen. She stole back to me between her lessons in royalty, rushing to share each fresh marvel, each trinket or mannerism that removed her further and further from the sweet openness with which I had fallen in love. When dinner was over and night pried her from my mother's side, I proposed a different sort of lesson.

  "Let us ride tomorrow, just the two of us," I said. "I know a stream that will take us far from courtly courtesies and gossip. A place made for whispers and long embraces."

  "Oh, no, we cannot," she told me, alarmed. "We must not. Your mother has arranged for three of her finest seamstresses to fit me tomorrow. Besides, why on earth would we want to leave the castle?" Her question stung only a little, a tiny prick like a spring bumblebee's. "Who would ever want to leave such happiness?"

  "My love, your heart and not your eyes should tell you where happiness lies." I took her in my arms, remembering the night we had met, the way she had laughed without affectation, had looked at me with the steady, direct gaze of a child. "Surely you know that gowns and perfumed lace conceal and deceive? Sweep them away, toss them aside, and there is truth."

  She pulled back from me, her sparkle turned hard. "'Sweep them away'?" Her lips pursed as if she had tasted something bitter beyond words. "'Toss them aside'? Who are you to preach simplicity? I have done without your sweet deceptions my whole life, while you were playing at draughts and bending your knee to nothing more demanding than a dance tune!"

  "My dear bride," I told her. "My mother is full of beguilements, but you must—"