by Susann Cokal
He wipe it and me off with a linen, then throw the linen in the fire with the papers I have written for him. He can not burn that smell, though. Every body who enter this room will know it.
He smile at me, sharp teeth, eyes be coals.
I straight my clothes and hate Ava Mariasdatter as if she be the devil’s servant instead of the Secretary’s. And as if I believe in devils.
“As far as anyone on the other side of that door knows,” he tell me as he close him self up, “this was the only reason you came here today. If you let on differently, or if you cannot keep your thoughts to yourself, there will be much worse for you. You will think me gentle in comparison to your jailers.”
I touch the doll belt and tell the hornets go there, leave my heart alone.
He crunch a savor-almond in his teeth and toss me one too. “Clean your breath,” he say. “Your secrets have the foulest smell.”
I eat. It is delicious. I hate that it is so.
PRAYER
ONE morning it comes: a miracle or a curse.
Today it is not just ladies-in-waiting but nurses, maids, and even dwarfs who stand at the stinking hollow’s uncertain edge. The Queen, much occupied in the nursery, has ordered them to pray loudly enough for her to hear; and this they do, their voices settling into the monotony of Saint Peter’s monks, till the words blur together:
Ave-Maria-gratia-plena-Dominus-tecum-benedicta-tu-in-mulieribus-et-benedictus-fructus-ventris-tui . . .
They are strangely feverish, as suspenseful as they are bored. A few of them feel something is about to happen, something more than the usual gossip of pregnancies and Italian Fire. They grab one another’s hands.
Their intuition is proved right. A skinny wench who works in the kitchens makes a sudden movement, cries out, and points:
There, in the center of the hollow. Something is not being sucked away but rather spat up. Something that emerges first as a yellow tip, then a jointed stalk, finally a silver base with a lump of muddy green on one side. This item pops through the surface and floats upon it full length. It spins slowly around, as if pointing at one lady, one girl, after another.
Some of the women are struck silent with terror. Several of them shriek. Two run away. Only one, that same Negresse lately linked in rumor with Count Nicolas Bullen, dares kneel down at the edge of the hollow and reach for this slowly spinning thing.
“She will die of the attempt,” whispers Lady Drin, in a mixture of horror and delight. These have been long, dull weeks, and the death of a nurse would make a change.
The Negresse snags the thing between two fingers but cannot get her balance to stand. She struggles as if she’s about to be sucked away herself. A nursery maid has to haul on the Negresse’s apron strings to help her stand. She does this more out of curiosity for the thing discovered than from desire to save a life.
When she is on her feet, the Negresse calmly (for this one never does anything but calmly) uses a clean spot on her apron to wipe the object dry. She holds it up and invites the women to guess at it.
“A fingertip!” exclaims the young Countess Ditlevnavn.
The women gasp. A dwarf vomits on her own skirts. It is clearly true; this is a finger removed below the second knuckle. But to whom does it belong? Perhaps the key is in the tight little ring at bottom.
“Princess Sophia?” asks Bridget Belskat, whose pockmarked lack of beauty has made her ever shy but eager to participate in events. “One of her wedding emeralds?”
Lest anyone doubt this, the Negresse turns it over.
“There is the scar from her baptism,” says Lady Drin, “when she grabbed the priest’s amulet and cut herself.”
The maids sink to their knees, praying for heaven’s protection. The ladies scatter: one to tell the Queen, another to the King, a third to Lord Nicolas Bullen.
The black nurse stands still. The yellow object lies flat across her palm; the green stone winks under a suddenly bright sky.
In the court at large, superstition takes over. Now everyone from lord to lackey is preoccupied with magic, with the idea that Sophia is coming back bit by bit. They decide there is some spell against her and all the Lunedie children. They accuse Countess Elinor Parfis not merely of a physical poisoning but of a deep magical one. Or else they believe Sophia herself is casting spells from beyond the grave. Some say she will piece herself together and destroy the court. The finger thus transforms the dead princess from an angel and a Perished Lily to a demon, a wraith, against whom all souls must protect themselves.
Now everyone with a portrait of Sophia scratches it out, plasters over the wall, and repaints to rid the house of her. Even fine gentlemen turn their shoes over at bedtime, so the spirits don’t use them at night. Out on the cathedral square, there is a brisk trade in amulets and other tokens against evil.
In this, the people go too far. The King issues a proclamation of disapprobation, and he punishes any amulet sellers who seem too blatantly to evoke the Wraith Princess as a threat. But there has always been a traffic in saints’ medals, and good Catholic sovereigns cannot outlaw those; nor can the King’s guardsmen examine every trinket that is for sale.
Christian V can, however, order the monks of Saint-Peter’s-on-the-Isle to open Sophia’s tomb and make sure a finger is missing. The three physicians — Candenzius, Venslov, and Dé — oversee the exhumation, standing tense while the monks push the marble slab off the sarcophagus.
They find the coffin filled with soup. Rotten flesh, chemicals, slivered bones and loops of entrails glistening with what might be a shining silvery insect — might be just a vision, for it flees the light and burrows into the macerated flesh.
Young Doctor Dé is aghast at what dissection has wrought. He prays aloud for his eternal soul. Old Doctor Venslov, with a sly air of self-righteousness, asks which one of them would like to put his own hand into the mess and hunt for Sophia’s.
Doctor Candenzius says, “I believe that what was found could be the Princess’s finger.”
The other two agree. They order the tomb closed without touching its contents and row speedily back to the palace. The crypt will reek for months, sickening several of Saint Peter’s monks unto death.
Back in their laboratory, the physicians examine the object fished from the witch’s hollow. They conclude that it is indeed flesh and of Sophia’s body (at the moment, they could not conclude otherwise) but that the ring is a fake — for it is not a real emerald but one made of glass, and not very well. When they announce as much, there is a general ripple of shock, that Duke Magnus of Östergötland, mad as he once was, would give his bride a false stone. King Christian and Lord Nicolas compose a letter of sternly worded hints to Sweden. They do this without checking the treasury records that indicate all Swedish emeralds were returned; but that is not important, for Mad Magnus will not bother with the letter anyway, being much involved in celebrating the birth of an illegitimate daughter born of a longtime mistress, and in devising a clever system of nets and pulleys to trap the next mer-girl who swims into his moat.
With the identification of the finger, Queen Isabel’s spirit is exhausted. She retreats to the grand bed in her state chamber and refuses to leave, claiming grief and the trials of pregnancy. But she also feels a tremendous sense of hopefulness. From the blood-red folds of drapery, she questions the Negresse who plucked the finger from the mud.
Did the sun shine in a special way? Did her head fill with heavenly voices? What gave her such strength and bravery as to collect it? Did the finger leap toward her hand? Did it feel warm or cold? Is she sure?
To every question, the Negresse shrugs and smiles. As far as the court knows, she has no other way to communicate. She curtsies very daintily, and the Queen scratches at her ears. Her brain is niggled by a dim memory of this girl, all but naked, coated in crystals that gave the air a sweetness . . .
The Negresse folds her hands together and turns her eyes skyward. The Queen begins to believe — dares to believe — that she is in
the presence of a miracle.
Isabel orders that her scarlet taffeta underskirt, now stored in a warehouse, be found and given to this girl. On further thought, she adds, “And a white satin bodice. It will look well on her.”
Of course the Queen herself is far stouter than the Negresse. But clothing can easily be remade.
Negresse forgotten, Isabel pushes up and declares herself ready to visit the nursery. “And send for a goldsmith. I will have him make a box to hold Sophia’s finger.” A reliquary, she adds to herself with pleasure. Decorated with jewels — real jewels, not the glass given Sophia by Duke Magnus. “And bring me the finger itself. I will take charge of it — not the physicians.”
Isabel’s maids and ladies curtsy, all of them. Furtively, the Queen takes advantage of the moment to scratch her swelling breasts, where the skin tingles with a constant itch.
Duchess Margrethe sends a lady to ask the King if he approves of this means of handling the finger. He does.
I was not there when the finger appeared, when Midi Sorte became a heroine and a favorite to the Queen. I seem to be present, though, whenever Midi wears the skirt that hisses like a barrel of snakes, its red shine shaming the dull russet serge of nursery workers. She likes to flaunt this evidence that the Queen now loves her. That she, Midi, has been the vehicle by which God sent Isabel a miracle. She wears it to the kitchens to eat; she wears it in the nurseries when Isabel is expected. Other times, it sits beneath her cot in a plain wooden box.
When Queen Isabel enters the nursery, she looks at Midi with a vague, kind expression usually reserved for her children themselves. The skirt gives a high howl of triumph as Midi curtsies.
The other nurses glower. If this has been a miracle, why was Midi chosen for it? Midi, with her split tongue and her prickly lack of kindness.
Much is said and not-said on this subject. I report it all to Grammaticus — Lord Nicolas still hasn’t summoned me again, and anyway I would tell Arthur, my lover, anything first. I am happy to avoid Nicolas; I am glad to tarnish Midi’s name.
But he isn’t interested in discussing Midi. “Why should the others be jealous?” he asks, not even bothering to look up from some paper or other that he’s covering with ink (my visit was unplanned). “No one would covet her reputation as you describe it. Or her life. Or herself.” He scratches out a word with a penknife — cuts all the way through the page. “She is nothing. Nothing.”
I am confused; she was the one who brought me to him. “But the skirt —”
His ears are turning red as if in fury, though I am here only to help. “It will be destroyed soon enough in her daily chores. And you will have a prettier one someday.”
He puts his pen down then and starts to kiss me with an air that I might call dutiful, but I resist. “Do you think it was a miracle?” I ask. “Or was it something else? The finger, I mean.”
Grammaticus sighs and scratches his beard, then removes his spectacles and rubs impatiently at the red spots on the bridge of his nose. “Men far more learned than I,” he says, “have spent years debating just what a miracle is. Suffice it to say that my report for the chronicles mentions only that a finger appeared and was determined to be Sophia’s, and the Queen was very much pleased.”
He picks up his pen again, wipes it on his sleeve as if preparing to write the observation down this very minute. I catch his hand and make my eyes large and wheedling. “You said that one day I will have a prettier skirt than Midi’s. Have you any idea when I might find the occasion to wear it?”
Even a shy scholar knows quite well what I am asking.
“I can’t trouble the King with my personal affairs at this moment. He is at a difficult point in his reign,” he says shortly. “All Catholic sovereigns are. Just last month, the French king and his Italian mother slaughtered hundreds of Huguenot Protestants. The gutters of Paris ran red — on Saint Bartholomew’s Day, no less.”
I could observe that it is always the day of some saint or other, and that the French are known for their tempers, but tart remarks lessen a wife’s appeal. “Why should that bother our Christian?” I ask instead, meekly, as if I am always interested in political discussion.
Grammaticus lets go of my hand to toy with his pen, rolling it lightly in his fingers. “No one wants a reputation for cruelty. Only for stern justice. If the lords of this country use the French massacre as an opportunity to denounce the corruption of the Church — and to try to seize some of the more democratic powers of Protestantism for themselves — our King could have another war to fight. There’s no money in the coffers for it, and no fresh supply of soldiers and commanders . . .”
Jacob Lille, I think. What if the land became safe for Protestants and he came back? I recall the faint piney sweetness of amber, feel the straw and spiders beneath my knees, see the house we were to have one day . . .
I must not trade in what ifs. I pick up one of Arthur’s big, bony hands and place it on my shoulder. I am fond of him in this moment. He is, may be, my salvation. But this is not the moment for caresses or fondness. Arthur has a chronicle to write. He sweeps me from his room with a flap of his long black sleeves.
I step into sunshine, with a tawny slant that hints already at autumn. September. Dodge some butchers with a skinned sheep for tomorrow’s eating, step around a crowd of ladies bound for chapel, enter the bustling hive that is the royal wing. And see my father.
Klaus Bingen, tall and beetling-browed, trails a robe with the charcoal smell of fresh black dye. As all of us do on early forays inside, Father has cocked his head back to gape at the frescoes, the tapestries and paintings, the ornamented ceilings, and the splendid garments of nobles who teeter about on pattens that raise them inches higher even than he is. His lenses reflect all of these splendors, while his rabbity apprentice (gawking also) sags under the weight of a leather-bound box.
Father does not recognize his only living child until I am, quite literally, on top of him. “Ava,” he says mildly, as if I am barely an acquaintance. His mind is on other things. “Health to your soul.”
“And to yours.” I am out of sorts, smarting from rejection. “What brings you here? Are you looking for me?”
“I’m on my way to see Stellarius,” Father says proudly.
“His chamber isn’t in this wing; it’s in —”
“And the King’s Secretary.” Klaus Bingen looks likely to burst with pleasure. “We’re meeting in Lord Nicolas Bullen’s apartments. To talk about the new observatorium, you know.”
“For looking at the stars,” the apprentice pipes up, as if I haven’t known my father’s business this last decade. The boy must be proud too; instead of learning the relatively simple craft of grinding lenses for spectacles, he is taking on the grander challenge of reaching the heavens.
“I have with me” — Father gestures at the box the apprentice is barely holding —“a selection of lenses for a new perspective glass. And small silvered mirrors, which I have discovered can reflect and magnify the light shed by stars . . .”
Father runs on, rehearsing the speech he will deliver to astrologer and secretary. I think how stunned and pleased he will be when he hears that I, too, have a special connection at court — not with Lord Nicolas, for I am trying to forget him, and hoping he does not connect Ava Mariasdatter with this eager artisan — but with the King’s chief scholar and chronicler of all important events in the land. How Father would beam if he knew that we are to be married someday.
I lose myself in dreams of the wedding ceremony — wax tapers, a new gown, my mother’s amber bracelet glowing on my wrist . . . Father and Sabine gazing on at their proudest moment, Sabine perhaps clutching the swell of her belly; for I would like the wedding to come soon, before the new heir to the Bingens pops out.
So what prevents me from sharing my good news? Why can’t I bring myself to stop the churn of Father’s words and toss a few well-chosen pebbles in to hear the splash? Is it the flow of court traffic around us, is it the rabbity apprentice,
is it . . . something else?
Doubt. I fear that Father will doubt this betrothal, that he will expect me to be jilted again. Arthur has not explicitly proposed to me, has not even met my father, has not even asked to meet him.
And at last, I admit it to myself: I doubt that this marriage will really come to be. Or, rather, I still lack entire faith, which is almost the same as doubting. Faith in ink-stained Grammaticus! Who could fail to trust a scholar and a historian? But when I see my husband turning toward me in my mind, his face is not Arthur’s. And it is followed by a cramp in the stomach that recalls my too-public miscarriage. And the memory of my awful hours with Lord Nicolas.
I must stop my thoughts from running away.
“How is Sabine progressing?” I ask abruptly.
I listen awhile to Father’s plans for his new heir and Sabine’s lying-in; until a note from the cathedral clock reminds him of his appointment, and he and the little apprentice scuttle off.
I return to the nursery’s royal whimpers, to quiet them with tales told in whispers beneath the gilded branches and glass leaves; to hope to weave these stories into, again, a new future. AVA.
When the duke’s new wife stepped into the chamber of the black key, she found there were indeed secrets inside. Ragged, ashy secrets: they clung like bats to the rafters, crept like lizards up the walls, seeped like beetles from cracks in the floorboards.
As the dark things came chittering greedily toward her, the princess tried to think of a secret of her own that might shield her — but no, she was a young girl much protected, with no conscience-stricken wraith inside to do battle.
The duke’s secrets swarmed over his bride, gnawing her soft flesh and burrowing into her most intimate parts. From here on, they would live and grow within her.
The princess felt all the pain of this, but she also felt a pleasure: she had come to her marriage a true innocent, and at last she, too, had something to hide.
