by Helen Lowe
“A gift,” the Margravine said, “to remember me by.” And she laughed her tinkling laugh.
Sigismund shivered as his fingers reached for the ring. He thought that a cold wind must have sprung up or a cloud covered the sun, and he looked around, brushing a hand across his eyes to clear them. He saw someone through the blur of sweat, standing in the long shadow cast by the gate. For a moment Sigismund thought it was the crone, with her head twisted up beneath her load of sticks. But then his vision cleared, and he realized that the silhouette was in fact slim and very straight. It was hard to see through the sun’s dazzle, but Sigismund had an impression of bare dusty feet beneath a ragged kirtle, centered in the pool of shadow. A village girl—but what, he wondered, would she be doing outside the gate?
He wiped his eyes again and tried to focus, but the girl had vanished. The Margravine did not seem to have noticed anything, but she started slightly as a flock of sparrows rose up, out of the ditch, and darted between her outstretched hand and the gate. The ring dropped sparkling into the dust, and Sigismund thought the lady frowned—but then she was smiling again as she stooped to pick it up. For a moment she stared down at the blue jewel in her hand, her gaze searching, intent, before she shrugged and turned away.
The thudding hooves were louder now and very close. Sigismund could hear voices calling his name, but he did not turn or call back to them, just stared at the Margravine as she stepped back into her blue and yellow coach.
“Until later then,” she said over her shoulder, as the plumed hat dipped through the door. A gloved hand waved in farewell. “We will meet again. I am sure of it.”
He was still standing there, staring after the coach, when Sir Andreas and the guard galloped up. The cavalcade did not seem nearly so long as it had before, and the last lancers were just disappearing around the bend in the road as the castle horses slid to a halt, sweating and blowing from the speed of their run.
“Who was that?” Sir Andreas demanded, quick and sharp. “Did anyone speak to you? What did they say?”
But Sigismund could only shake his head. His tongue felt too swollen for speech, and the buzzing of the flies was louder and more frenzied than before.
“He seems dazed,” the guard captain said. “It must be from the sun, coming out in this heat without a hat.”
“Or gloves,” Sir Andreas said, frowning, for a horseman always wore gloves.
“It’s alright,” said Sigismund, enunciating each word with great effort, “my hands are quite cold.” And he slumped to the ground at their feet.
The Enchanted Sleep
Everything after that was a blur of anxious voices, with someone calling for a wagon to be brought from the village, or a hurdle if there was no wagon to be had. Sigismund could hear the quick to-and-fro of voices above his head and the thud of hooves galloping away, but a darkness had come between him and the day. After a time even the voices faded, and his body felt as though it was burning up. He couldn’t remember being brought back to the castle, whether by wagon or horseback. He only knew that the next time his eyes cleared he was in his own bed, with people whispering somewhere beyond his line of vision.
“Not sunstroke,” one voice said gravely.
“This may be beyond our powers,” said a second, unknown voice. Then Master Griff said something about a message being sent to the King at once. He sounded tense and unhappy, and someone else cursed, a pithy expletive that made Sigismund want to smile.
Sir Andreas, he thought, before he drifted away again into a shadowy, indistinct realm remote from his body. He tossed and turned on the bed, now hot and now cold, now pushing the blankets away, now shivering beneath the piled-up covers. Sigismund was aware of crying out and having bitter medicine poured down his throat, but the fever did not abate. Even when his vision cleared, as it did from time to time, he still felt as though he was floating somewhere above his body. He could see the topmost tower through the window of his room and sometimes he drifted beside it, close enough to touch the lichened stone. He saw, from this lofty height, that there was a fire burning in his room, but he felt cold anyway. He tried to call out but his throat was dry, and his skin felt as though someone was tapping at it with blunt nails. It made his body feel heavy, even while his mind floated beside the tower.
The next time he opened his eyes it was night, with only firelight illuminating the room, and someone was leaning over his bed. Dark wings of shadow flared on either side of a featureless face and Sigismund tried to draw back, to call for help, but only a croak came out. A hand touched his forehead, cool as water in a summer brook, while the other rested on his wrist. “Be still,” a voice said, cool as the hands, and then: “Drink this.”
Sigismund shook his head and twisted, but the cool hands were firm and combined with the voice to make him drink down something that was smooth against his swollen throat, refreshing rather than bitter. It pulled him back into his body, enough to see that the dimly lit figure by his bed was a woman, not some creature out of nightmare. He still could not make out her face, but her voice was like a thread of silver in the firelit dark, bidding him sleep.
“Can’t,” whispered Sigismund, and put out a hot, dry hand, grasping at her wrist. “Who are you? Did Sir Andreas bring you here?”
He thought she smiled. “I am here,” she told him, “that is what matters. And if you lie still and close your eyes, I will tell you a story to help you sleep.” Her cool hand rested lightly over his own. “Once,” she said, “long ago but not so very far from here, there was a small but happy kingdom….”
The silver voice went on, weaving itself into Sigismund’s dreams and telling him how the King and Queen of that happy land had one daughter, who was both blessed and cursed at her naming ceremony: blessed with many gifts and virtues, but cursed by an evil faie to prick her hand on a poisoned thorn and die on her eighteenth birthday. Everyone present had wailed and lamented, but at the last minute another faie stepped forward and converted the curse of death into one of sleep, an enchanted sleep that would last for one hundred years. And so it had come to pass. On the day that the princess turned eighteen a thorn did pierce her hand, and she fell into a deep sleep. And all the great palace, from her royal parents to the lowliest kennel boy, slept with her. A great hedge of thorns grew up around the sleeping palace, and the wild forest around that, pressing in close on turret and wall—and so it would remain until the hundred years were up and the chosen prince came to break the spell.
“A brave prince and true,” the silver voice said, “for only one who is courageous and true of heart can dissolve that spell. And the faie do not die, so the one who cast the evil spell lives on, still pursuing her wickedness and her grudge against the sleeping princess.”
In the morning the fever had gone completely, but so too had the woman with the silver voice. Sir Andreas shook his head when Sigismund asked who she was and said he must have dreamed her—there had been no woman here that he knew of. The castle apothecary had come at one stage, with his assistant, but that was all. Sigismund wanted to protest, but he had only the haziest recollection of what the woman looked like. It was her cool, firm hands that he remembered, and her voice, telling him the story of the princess in the wood. And he was sure, because it fitted with the interdict and the other stories, that the wild forest that had grown up around the enchanted palace must be the same Wood that he looked at every day from the castle.
This thought stayed with Sigismund throughout the long, slow weeks of his recuperation. He would lie in bed and think about the view of the forest, its vastness, and how it stretched into the mist of distance. Despite all the stories, he had never seen any sign that there might be a castle hidden in its midst, not even a glimpse of the topmost spire of some tall tower. Now, however, he found himself haunted by the tale of the enchanted sleep. He would daydream about it while the summer heat swam in the languid air, and wonder what it would be like in a castle where everyone was asleep—and had been sleeping for close to a hundred
years.
It would be very quiet, Sigismund thought, and very, very still. No fly would buzz or bird sing, fluttering from tree to wall. No horse would stamp or swish its tail in the stable, no dog would bark. He wondered too about the birthday feast set out on the long tables, and the guests gathered in their finery. Would the dust of years have settled on the food until it shriveled and disappeared, or did the enchantment keep it as fresh as the moment it was first set out? And what of the guests? Were they sleeping in their chairs, in the same position as when the enchantment fell, or had their heads fallen forward onto the table?
The atmosphere would be eerie, Sigismund decided, and not a little sad, with that whole glowing, beautiful gathering fallen, between one breath and the next, into the magic sleep. He could picture it all in his mind: the King and Queen on their golden thrones with pages and ladies-in-waiting sleeping around them, while courtiers leaned against walls or sprawled on the floor. The only person he could not visualize was the princess herself. Every time he tried to imagine her, he saw a spiral staircase instead, with its wrought-iron balustrade winding up, and then up again, into a shimmering golden mist. But there was never any sign of the princess, or what lay at the top.
It was very odd, Sigismund thought, almost as strange as the idea of a whole palace falling asleep at all. He found it hard to imagine his own gray castle falling into an enchanted sleep, especially when he listened to its bustle. People were constantly going in and out of its many doors, pursuing all the work that kept the household running: the food growing and preparation, the cleaning and dusting and laundering. Servants called out to each other, clattering up and down stairs, banging doors open and closed and jeering at the men-at-arms, who of course jeered back when they were not drilling in the courtyard or patrolling the walls. It would take a very powerful spell indeed, Sigismund thought, to make a whole castle fall asleep.
He said as much one afternoon when Sir Andreas came to visit him. He was feeling drowsy and the words were out of his mouth before he realized their implication. “Now who,” the steward said, “has been telling you stories of a sleeping castle? Was it the lady you met at the gate?”
Sigismund frowned with the effort of remembering the lady at the gate. It all seemed hazy now, lost somewhere on the far side of his illness, but he remembered her eyes and the sweetness of her voice. She had tried to give him something, he recalled, remembering how it flashed and glittered as it spun into the dust. He thought there might have been someone else there too, and the image of bare brown feet beneath a ragged skirt surfaced briefly in his mind. A shadow, perhaps, watching from the hedgerow, but Sigismund could recall no more than that. He sighed.
“I don’t think so, but I can’t really remember her very well. It was the other lady, the one who came when I was sick.”
“And what lady was that?” Sir Andreas asked. His voice was calm, but his eyes had narrowed.
Sigismund stretched out one arm and let his hand drift down the plastered wall, watching the fall of shadow beneath it. “You said she must have been part of my fever dream, but I don’t think she was. She had cool hands, and she gave me something to drink that made the fever go away.”
“Did she now?” the steward said. “And you’re sure that she was the person who told you this story?”
“Mmmm.” Sigismund looked up and was startled by the intensity of Sir Andreas’s gaze. “Is something wrong?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” Sir Andreas replied. “Tell me more about this lady.”
So Sigismund told him, while Sir Andreas leaned against one post of the four-poster bed and watched him closely. He would nod occasionally or ask a question, but Sigismund thought he seemed more thoughtful than worried. “Interesting,” he said at last. “But may I ask you a favor, Sigismund? If you meet this lady again, even if you just dream of her or think you have been daydreaming, will you let me know at once?”
“She seemed kind,” said Sigismund, feeling that some defense was required.
The steward’s expression softened. “She may well be. But all the same, I should like to know.”
“Alright.” Sigismund continued to watch him. “And the other lady, the one on the road?”
Sir Andreas’s face hardened again. “I don’t want you to talk to anyone beyond the gates. Will you promise me that too, Sigismund? Not anyone!”
“Alright,” Sigismund said again, taken aback by the rasp in the steward’s voice. “But I would like to know why.”
Sir Andreas sighed. “It’s because your father has enemies, and they’re not all in the southern provinces. That’s why he sent you here after your mother died, so that we could keep you safe. But this is a strange part of the world, and there are things that live and walk here that folk in the cities and the central provinces would scoff at. Not everything that’s strange is ill disposed, but you never know, and that’s why the gate is there—and why I want you to promise me to stay away from it. Even,” he added, “if there’s something out there that you feel you just have to investigate, or you think it’s Master Griff, or me, or someone else you know, calling to you from the other side.”
Sigismund studied the back of his hand where it rested against the plastered wall. “You’re talking about magic,” he said, and his voice was small.
“I’m talking about being careful, that’s all,” Sir Andreas replied. “It’s a strange part of the world, as I said, and we can’t afford to overlook that.”
“No,” said Sigismund. He does mean magic, he thought, with a little thrill of excitement, but he doesn’t want to come right out and say so in case it alarms me—or because I might say something to Master Griff. He walked his hand up the wall again, studying it as though fascinated by the detail of muscle and skin.
“It was a sad story though, about the sleeping princess. Do you think it could be true, perhaps even the reason for the interdict?”
“No one knows the truth of the interdict and the Wood anymore,” Sir Andreas said, “not even me, and I am your father’s steward here in the west. It may be that my father knew, but if so he died without passing the information on.”
Shortly after that, Sigismund dreamed of the enchanted palace for the first time. In the dream he was walking along silent corridors and halls, through courtyards where even the fountain water hung glittering in midair, and up long flights of stairs. As he walked he would open doors and peer into quiet rooms, and he had a sense of urgency, as though he was looking for someone or something just out of sight. The sleeping princess, he thought, when he woke and remembered the dream, but although he had the same dream several times after that, he never found her. Everyone else was there, exactly as he had imagined them after his illness, but the princess was always concealed, always just out of sight or hidden around the next corner.
Sigismund never met anyone in these dreams or spoke with them, so he told himself that they were outside the scope of his promise to Sir Andreas. He repressed the suspicion that Sir Andreas might not agree, reassuring himself that they were only dreams and therefore harmless, spun out of the tale that the lady with the silver voice had told him.
Then one night the dream changed. This time he was not inside the palace, but standing in the forest, staring at a vast, twisting hedge of thorns. The sky overhead was dark, and Sigismund was filled with doubt and a sense of danger. Thunder cracked in the distance and lightning severed the sky, illuminating the sword in his hand. It was long and straight, with a white gleam along the edge of the blade and a jewel, red as blood, set into the pommel. The sword was as compelling a presence as the hedge of thorns and Sigismund could sense its power, like lightning in his hand. It was important in some way, he knew that too: that was why it was in the dream.
The next dream was dark as well, and the power of the storm and the brooding oppression of the forest had grown, but there was no red and white sword in his hand. Sigismund was shaking with cold and kept circling the hedge of thorns, looking for a way in, but there was none to
be found. And this time there were voices in the darkness, shrieks amongst the treetops and slithering whispers in the hedge that made him start at every shadow. He wanted to escape from the dream and wake up safe in his own bed, with a candle close at hand, but he was trapped in the menacing dark.
When light did come, it was in a blaze of carnelian and gold, like the winter sun coming up over a stark horizon. It filled Sigismund’s dream, banishing the darkness and the whispering voices, and he had to fling up an arm against its brilliance. There was someone at the heart of the light, he thought, squinting against the dazzle—a man on a horse pacing toward him out of the ball of fire. The horse was red, and light rippled like water on the rider’s mail shirt and gleamed on his metal coif as he leaned forward, gazing down at Sigismund. A corona flared and flickered around the spiked helm, and just like the woman with the silver voice, Sigismund could not make out any details of the rider’s face.
“So,” the horseman said. His voice was light and pleasant; it reminded Sigismund of bees humming on a summer day. “It is good that we meet, but dreams like this can be dangerous. We will have no more of them for now.”
He straightened and made a brief, imperative gesture with one gauntleted hand. The light followed the movement, spiraling around horse and rider like a comet and pulling Sigismund forward, into its burning heart. He wanted to cry out as the woods spun away from him, to ask who the horseman was, but as is the way with dreams, no words came.
“Soon,” promised the summer voice, amused, and the comet swept between them. The next thing Sigismund knew, he was waking up in his own bed, with the castle bell ringing out a new day and Annie twitching his bed curtains aside, her face bright with excitement.
