The Kingdom of Little Wounds

by Susann Cokal

  COUCHEMENT

  SHE belongs to him now. Or at least that is what she’s told, what the words spoken by the councillors (in French) and priests (in Latin) mean. And now, this gesture, this putting the two of them in bed together, in their nightclothes, with his hairy dark leg touching her thin, soft, bruised one, where the white paint can’t cover the dark marks of veins and sores: somehow, this gesture — with his thirty-six-year-old body touching her ten-year-old one in this way — signifies an irrevocable possession.

  Christina-Beatte has spent most of her life in bed, and in her fatigue she expects that the rest of it will be passed in much the same way. Lying down, ministered to. But possessed? She is a Lunedie princess! She is the Queen Apparent!

  All around the room, courtiers are clapping. Some smirk, as if at a sort of joke that they won’t allow themselves to speak aloud.

  Once the image of these two in bed has taken hold in so many minds, the smelly old Duke and Duchess of Marsvin begin unsteadily to roll the sheet away again.

  Christina-Beatte gets angrier and angrier. Her body will be revealed before all her courtiers, not just her ladies, in its undignified reediness, for she is still as thin and ill-formed as a sapling on a cliff side.

  “Stop,” she whimpers; but amid all the clapping, no one can hear her.

  Christina-Beatte is Queen. She has inherited her father’s discretion and her mother’s sleight of hand. So it is only the dwarfs, who are used to looking closely, who notice as she reaches for her pillow, while the courtiers’ applause grows louder and more of Count Nicolas’s chest comes into view.

  He has left his shirt untied, the slit exposed. Both Christina-Beatte and the dwarfs notice the prickles where hairs have started to grow back after their morning shave. They also notice that the Duke and Duchess are now having some difficulty, that the ceremonial sheet appears to be caught on something just below the Count’s waist.

  It is at this moment, as the glittering courtiers can’t help a laugh encouraged by the proud smile on Nicolas’s lips, that Christina-Beatte strikes. Just as he taught her to do, just as the nursery stories have suggested. Anyone who dishonors her, who holds her up to ridicule, who seeks to possess her — such a person deserves immediate punishment.

  She knows what the thing below his waist is. It is disgusting.

  But she is resourceful. She pulls the pillow out from under her head and boffs him across the face with it, to knock the smile away. And then, as delighted laughter shakes the very bricks and stones of the palace, and the Duke and Duchess lose their balance in freeing the sheet, Beatte springs up and plunges into that thing that has caused Nicolas such pride.

  She plunges her dagger. The one that he gave her. Into his thigh.

  The flesh yields more easily to the blade than she ever imagined, perhaps because she has put more weight into the cutting than ever before. In fact, she did not mean, she is sure she did not mean, to stab him so hard — she fell on him. And now falls against the thorns of his chest. She thinks he will probably tickle or — puhha — embrace her now. She does not expect him to make her wet.

  Once the evil king had robbed the lovely princess’s land of everything of value, and once he had departed with his shipload of treasure, the heavens sent a miracle: The tiny monsters who had survived his reign transformed into the children they were meant to be — healthy, beautiful children who laughed and played and hopped into the sea to pull starfish and mussels off the two princesses sleeping under the waves. The children swam the princesses back onto solid ground, where they joined their mother and brother in returning the land to prosperity.

  Yes, there was a brother. He was a brave boy and a clever one, but when he was young, according to the custom of the place, he had been sent to live with another family, who raised him well. When he returned to the palace, he proved a most just and wise ruler. He brought the country back to prosperity, found suitable husbands for both his sisters and his mother, and married a virtuous princess himself.

  As to the evil king: On the voyage back to his homeland, a relentless sun melted the crown that he’d conjured from his skull. The evil king choked on molten gold, and the jewels transformed into beetles that fed on his eyes. The songbirds formerly impaled on the crown’s bony tines regained their plumage and sang praises of the true royal family, before flying home on fresh wings.

  The guards and messengers have done their job well — too well. Before we can get my blood (the blood of my pure heart) and Isabel’s properly spread about, the room is nearly full. Isabel’s ladies, Beatte’s ladies, even a councillor or two. They rush toward the bed and then halt. Appalled, astonished, puzzled? For there Isabel is calmly nursing my brother, with a dreamy smile on her face and hardly a care that the court is now packing her chamber like herrings.

  “Shhh, shh, sh. There’s a baby,” Isabel says, quietly, but somehow everyone seems to hear. “My baby. A boy. Your King.”

  They fall silent. Staring. At the lips tugging away at the red royal nipple. At the nipple itself, which has so grown in color and size as to resemble a duke’s gouty thumb. Mostly, I think, they stare at the light that glows through my brother’s skin as he feeds, naked now and sprawled on the Queen’s great chest, with his chilly blue pallor replaced by a swell of rosy-gold.

  He is a beautiful child. We are all beautiful in his light.

  All at once, the women in the front — Baroness Reventlow, Lady Drin, Mistress Belskat — spread their skirts and fall to their knees, heads bent. As each cluster of courtiers behind them realizes what has happened, they follow suit, rustling and clanking into place. Their curtsies crowd against the others in the room, push the aprons and the guards to the edges and even out the door.

  In the absence of Duchess Margrethe, the Countess of Ditlevnavn is the highest-ranking lady here. She utters the thought in every spinning head:

  “Welcome, King Christian VI.”

  “Christian Klaus,” Isabel says.

  Many things happen in the next minutes; any momentary peace dies away as soon as Isabel allows her ladies to stand. Some enter, some exit, all of them wheel about the bed to admire the baby and to wonder, truly, how a Queen so gross and mad could produce such a perfect specimen.

  Lady Drin turns my brother over in her horny hands. “The cord is neatly cut,” she observes, as Isabel demands to have her son back. “The end is already crusting over.”

  Reading in this statement a question — which in fact is there; the court ladies rarely speak in simple declaratives — Midi squeezes to the linen chest where so much is stored. She produces a pair of scissors, conveniently stained red. Also a mother-cake, a small one, wrapped in linen. She unwraps it and lays it at the foot of the bed.

  We have provided proof.

  “’Swounds,” the courtiers murmur in astonishment.

  “But — when?” asks the pockmarked, chinless Baroness Reventlow.

  I clear my throat. No one must speak to this but I; even sane as she seems now, Isabel cannot be trusted to answer questions. “During the ceremony,” I say as bravely as I can. I imagine myself as Midi, suddenly given a whole tongue and a wily brain with which to pass on a false tale. “The cannons, I believe it was, brought on Her Highness’s labor. She requested Countess Elinor” — I curtsy in Midi’s direction —“and me to attend her. She said she did not wish to disturb her daughter’s betrothal while the length and outcome of her labor were uncertain.”

  I think how Nicolas will react when he hears my words repeated. He will curse himself, thinking that if only he’d delayed the betrothal, he might have managed to get Isabel properly murdered.

  No: he will curse me. And he will make his curse come true, in the way most bloody and painful to myself. But, strangely, I feel almost calm as I think of this. I believe I can withstand torture, even. I have been absolved.

  Queen Isabel smiles ecstatically, like one of the Virgins whose faces show ghostly through the linen drapings. “How proud my husband would have been,” she say
s. “We have a prince — even better, a king!”

  For that, Nicolas will kill me and anyone else he ordered to poison Isabel. Still, I am not as terrified as I might have thought. Death — it is only death. I can meet it with a clean heart.

  “Christian the Sixth,” Isabel continues in her dreamy voice. “Christian VI. Vi — you know, in the language of the common people, it means ‘we.’ Nous. He will be the people’s king.”

  These words, I know, will be printed in the history books — and not because they are particularly clever. They will be written down because Arthur Grammaticus has slipped into the chamber, with his wax tablets and sheaves of paper.

  I look for Midi. I see just the gleam of her eyes and her dirty skirts; she is holding herself up by a bedpost.

  Consider what an event this is, to bring the court historian to the Dowager’s private apartments. He left Christina-Beatte’s bridal bed to come record what must seem to most a miracle. Nicolas will be angry about that too, unless he ordered Grammaticus here to twist the truth as he witnesses it, to disprove the wondrous birth and finish off the Queen.

  Sainted lice and blowflies, as Nicolas himself once exclaimed — I somehow have myself believing that this baby really is Isabel’s, that she birthed him herself.

  Midi sets the mother-cake down on top of the chest. Two physicians have arrived, Candenzius and Venslov, and it is their duty to determine the truth, at least as it is currently configured.

  Most of the ladies leave while the two men poke at the bit of gray morkage, fuzzy with its linen threads. I wish Midi had found some other place to put it; but then again, as long as the men are performing their investigation on the lid of the chest, they can’t be lifting it to see what’s inside.

  “Seems rather dry,” says old Venslov.

  Grammaticus writes this down.

  “And undersized,” adds Candenzius.

  They both look at the baby, blissfully feeding. Isabel has switched him to her other nipple; she has no lack of milk. And the boy himself is of good vigor.

  “He must have come early?” Venslov suggests, almost as if it’s a question. “By my calculations, at least. Perhaps he ate the rest of what sat in the womb? Or there might be something left inside . . .”

  Candenzius approaches the Queen. “Begging permission, Your Highness.” He coughs delicately and gets her attention. “We should — it is our duty — to ensure your health. We will need to examine you once more. To see that all is as it should be.”

  Isabel smiles so wide, her face might crack. “Certainly,” she says with an air of haughty grandeur. “You may assure yourselves. In fact, as regent, I command you to do so.”

  She must know that this is another test, to see whether in fact a baby did lately pass between her thighs. I’m sure she thinks her greatest moment’s just about to come.

  “Donc, give me my ladies,” she says. “Elinor and Drin. Reventlow will hold the baby. And that maid there” (she points to me, so recently a seamstress again), “let her tidy up meanwhile.”

  Ava do n’t know it, Isabel do n’t, but I feel it. Some thing gone wrong.

  For one, my love have enter the same room as I and do not take notice. Write-write-write a stack of papers, his back in my direction and his fingers bleeding ink.

  But this be not what’s wrong in a big sense. The ladies and the men of court did not run in be cause of some report a king were born. This is a surprise and a distraction. They gape at him but also have some other shock in minds. Threads of mood stretch short to pluck like overstrung lutes.

  Yes, some thing’s a-rotted, more than the corpse. Which I hope Ava will have sense to move some place more safe as the rest of us be occupied.

  While the physicians dive between Isabel legs, I hold one hand and Drin the other. Both my hands be shaking but Isabel’s hold steady. We wait for men to make decisions one last time. Quiet Ava gathers rags in to a slop-bowl, tries to dab around here-there, does n’t have courage to open the chest and dispose of what really need be gone. I wish we did not leave the first child sleeping there so long, but who could guess we ’d succeed this far? I expect to have die my self some time in the hours just past.

  The Lump shift an inch lower down. My body be about to break. I must clench to Isabel to drain force from her if I am still to stand.

  I wonder where is my special cat, the one of black fur and white fur and a broken tail. Have she returned to her kittens.

  I wonder too where is Count Nicolas. He should be feared of any news that Isabel have produce a living infant.

  In sum, I wonder when we shall die, the three of us who dare to make this plan.

  “The Queen is in good health,” those physicians say on their far side of the sheet. Their voices tick like a clock, be cause they have some worry.

  The physicians pack Isabel wounds with they own linen. They predict the Queen will soon thrive as much her baby do all ready.

  Isabel hum a little song. The baby cries on Reventlow’s hip, to make for sound lost when he were too weak to cry.

  “Send for Doctor Krolik,” Isabel say in her new grand manner. “We should have his examination too, since this concerns the new King. I am sure Count Nicolas will want the assurance.”

  Doctor Candenzius come around the sheet and give her a hurt expression, for she were once greatly taken with him and needed no opinion more than his. Then he say, “Doctor Krolik must be with Count Nicolas now. There has been . . .”

  He pause as actors do when they wish to develop interest in the next words. “. . . a sort of accident.”

  CHRISTINA-BEATTE

  IT takes a moment for the courtiers to realize what has happened. At first they think this some sort of childish game.

  The dwarfs understand it first. They scurry under the bed, to roll together on the tiles. There they hear crepitations in the mattress; they sense the redistribution of weight. For Count Nicolas’s body is emptying its mass into the feathers and straw that support him.

  Atop the mattress and through Count Nicolas’s nightshirt, a red fountain bubbles from the linen covering that part of him. By chance or by luck, Christina-Beatte has struck deep inside her betrothed, a vein (or artery, a physician will later correct the misapprehension) that surges with the force of his vital spirits and then collapses to let life trickle away.

  Or nearly so. As the courtiers gasp, as the councillors recoil, as the dwarfs feel the first splashes of blood upon their poor tortured faces, Count Nicolas murmurs what sounds like a proverb: “Alors, the worm will turn.” Or perhaps: “Encore, a Rome will burn.”

  His breath hisses as blood loss snakes him to a place beyond words. His face appears . . . blank.

  The lords and ladies, maids and menservants, cluck like a butcher’s backyard. They back away, still unsure what’s happening, unsure whether they will claim in the future that they were present at the moment when Christina-Beatte stabbed her husband-to-be; unsure, most of all, whether it is she who will be punished or Count Nicolas, for aspiring too high. Or themselves, somehow, for being within reach. What they are sure of: They don’t want to watch him actually die beside his ten-year-old bride. That duty must fall to some other soul, someone willing to be held accountable. They vanish.

  Christina-Beatte breathes in deep. The blood from Nicolas’s wound is spreading so fast, she can taste it on the air. She rolls off the Count and onto her pillowless side of the mattress, banging her skull against the massive headboard. Her wig cushions the blow. She still clutches the dagger her betrothed gave her himself, with its blade’s elegant inscription (In tenebris lumen meum metue) now clouded with his blood, the jewels on the hilt still glowing clear through her fingers.

  O the minutes when he taught her how to use it! How he wooed her with bloodthirst! The quality that bound them most closely together. How strange and how smelly to be in the presence of a familiar life leaking away . . . She wonders when Count Nicolas will assume that expression of surprise she noticed on the executed Lord Tummler�
��s face. For the moment, he merely looks tired, with that wrinkle between his eyebrows still cut deep as if he’s puzzling out some great problem.

  Christina-Beatte thinks, Another worm will turn. A lover’s Rome will burn.

  Duchess Margrethe, still here and curiously unafraid, lays a papery hand on the little girl’s forehead. Christina-Beatte had all but forgotten her. “You may have a fever, my dear,” the old woman says, with as much deliberation as Maman used to show in the nursery. She takes the dagger from Christina-Beatte’s hand and lets it drop to the floor, then nudges it under the bed with one damp shoe. “I think perhaps you are ill.”

  Count Nicolas, if he hears at all, must hear these words as in a dream. The spotty Duke of Marsvin is padding his groin with the sheet. Everyone assumes that someone else has sent for a physician and that a physician will be willing to come. Or perhaps no one wants a physician at all, certainly not Krolik.

  Underneath the great bed of state, the dwarfs, like puppies, clean the blood from one another’s faces.

  QUEEN MOTHER ISABEL

  LISTENING to Candenzius, Isabel is overcome with pride. Not just with herself for having produced an heir, a male heir and a healthy one, a boy who was indisputably born while the rest of the court was at ceremony and whom she fed from the breast for the first hour of his court life — though she is proud of that, and even of the pains that still mark another child’s exit, while the greater burden of pain has moved upward and flowed out of her nipples and into his satisfied belly —

  Yes, she is proud of herself . . .

  But she is also proud of her daughter, not typically a category of creature about whom royalty can feel this way. Isabel’s daughter, fierce little Beatte, has brought down the terrible beast who tempted and prodded the Lunedies almost into extinction. For Beatte has all but killed Count Nicolas Bullen! Who knows, by the time Candenzius has finished telling the tale with his shapely chin a-wagging, Nicolas might already be dead.