She was in the garden training a new falcon the next morning when I returned to the Summer Palace. She was feeding the vicious little creature bloody strips of meat, and the sight of her fingers black with dried blood made me queasy. I was ever shocked and shocked again by the visceral and almost casual brutality in Faerie, yet was it not there, hidden in between the lines of the oldest faerie tales? Is that not why the children of my world woke in terror and screamed after hearing a faerie tale, to the astonishment of their parents?
Seeing me, the queen gave the bird into the hands of one of the other queens, and laved her fingers in a bowl of petal-strewn water to clean them. Then she dismissed everyone and invited me to sit with her in a perfumed arbour.
She began by informing me that her son, the king, had sailed away at dawn and that he would likely not return for some time. I bit back my rage at the thought that he had done what he said he would do, wondering what sort of fool I was to have thought it would be otherwise. Nevertheless, I was angry enough to ask her if faerie kings had no interest in the bride-getting of their sons, even when it must save the boy from a curse conferred upon him by his father’s tainted blood. I stabbed the words at her, making them an accusation, though it was not by her choosing that he had left. But I was as angry with her, almost, as with him.
‘You said the curse upon my husband’s bloodline would be cured by marrying me,’ I hissed.
‘And so it shall be,’ said my husband’s mother mildly, and to my complete surprise. ‘You have only to find the right bride and test her well to end the curse forever.’
‘But I thought that you meant I cured the curse when I married your son,’ I said.
She laughed, and for a moment her habitual haughtiness was softened. ‘Do you really think that falling in love is an end to anything? It is only the end of the beginning for your kind no less than mine. It is in our children that our endings are written. As for us women, it is not as princesses we have true power, but as queens and mothers. It was as a mother that I scried out the future, and I saw that you would save my son, but more importantly, that you were the means by which the curse might be broken. But what I saw is only a revealed potential, which you must fulfil. I do not know how. It is a pity that you did not inform your husband sooner about the boy’s degeneration, though, for he might have bade him seek a bride the sooner. As it is, there is no time to waste.’
I was chilled by her words, but furious too, for how could I have known my son was cursed when no one had ever thought to tell me the symptoms of that curse? As to confiding in my husband, ought he not to have spent time enough with the boy to see for himself what was happening, instead of dallying in the Summer Palace or questing? I wanted to ask her those things and to demand savagely how my son was to catch his bride – was he to be sent out to sit on a stoop in a lane and await a fool, as her son had done? But I only bade her stiffly to tell me what to do.
An echo of the anger I had experienced that day in the flowery arbour with my mother-in-law flows through me, and I have to fight the impulse to dash the brush from Cloud-Marie’s patient fingers, for though I do not doubt my husband grieves over what came to pass as much as my mother-in-law, neither of them holds themselves in any way responsible. They do not say it, but I know they blame me, as indeed I blame myself. Yet even now, I do not know what I could have done to prevent what has happened.
The first of many things the queen-mother told me was that her son had spoken the truth; our son must wed a princess bride.
‘It would be best if the maid he chooses has some mortal blood,’ she told me gravely and reminded me that in Faerie, a true princess was not a mere princess by lineage, as in my world. A girl became a princess in Faerie as the result of a spell brewed up between the prince and his mother, the chosen candidate and a magical chamber such as the one that I had occupied in the King’s Palace.
‘But I have no magic,’ I cried, aghast.
‘The instructions you give your son, the way he conducts his hunt for his bride and the way his chosen responds to the tests set for her are the ingredients of the spell. It is the Princess Chamber that will cast the spell, but only if all the ingredients required are present in enough strength,’ said my mother-in-law. ‘And the better the ingredients, the stronger the spell.’
She summoned the other queens to instruct me in the rituals and practices surrounding a son getting a bride. In sympathy, or perhaps by tradition, all of them came in the guise of elderly faerie godmothers and each bore a gift. I was given advice and old wives’ tales, tokens and spells and tomes to aid me. I heard the full history of the curse that afflicted my husband’s lineage, which had been brewed up by a powerful faerie maiden who killed the human man she had loved after he betrayed her, as well as his lover, her own half-sister. It was when she tried to close the gates forever between the human world and Faerie that the king intervened, forbidding it. Affronted, she cursed him, though he was her own father, and when she would not undo the curse, the king took her power from her, but he could not break the curse she had laid upon him and the sons of his blood. From that time, the moment a boy first became a man, he turned slowly and inexorably into a beast, until he was fully beast and had not the wit to turn himself into anything. She had known, of course, that without a true king, Faerie would fail and her revenge would be complete. So far, Faerie had not been closed off, but the ways had dwindled as each king sought the princess bride who would save him.
Later, when I returned to the King’s Palace, a storm cracked its whip viciously overhead, and lightning clawed at the sky, which responded with a hail of bitter pellets of icy rain. But I ignored the weather and my own fear and grief, for the faerie queens had told me, too, of the mother of that king, a wizened but powerful crone, who had spent herself spelling up the magical Princess Chamber in the King’s Palace and devising the rites surrounding it that would produce a princess bride capable of breaking the curse. Many princess brides had come from that chamber and had saved their princes from bestiality, even as I had done, but I was to be the one to save her son and all future sons.
So said my mother-in-law and so I must believe.
I bent my head and heart to this end, examining the strange and sometimes unsavoury tokens I had been given by the queens, and referring to the tomes I had carried off with me. I discovered that there were many rituals as well as rules connected to the getting of a princess bride, and that although I had no choice in the rules, I might alter the rituals or even dispense with them if I chose, that I might brew a more powerful spell. My husband had told me the day before that I must send my son to hunt a bride, but I now understood that it would be the imposition of the help or hindrances I deemed appropriate to test the girl that would give strength to the spell wrought by the chamber.
So, the rules: my son must choose a maid with some mortal blood in her, and she must enter the Wolfsgate Valley and endure three dusks there. He might protect her and aid her as best he could, but the more thoroughly she was tested, the more potent the princess spell would be.
The books made it clear that the prince had no say in anything save that he might choose the maid to be tested and interact with her, within the parameters set by the queen. I was so preoccupied with my research and my preparations that I had failed to note that something had been left unsaid in all the books just as it had not been said in the talk and advice in the garden of the Summer Palace.
None of the queens or books had said what would happen if my son failed to find a bride.
Would it have helped, I wonder now, if I had gone back to my husband’s mother, and demanded to know what would happen? Would it have saved my son for me to know the whole truth? But I did not go back, for I believed my mother-in-law when she said that it was my destiny to help my son find a princess bride to save him and his sons.
At length I got up from my bed, put everything neatly away and made a meticulous toilette before going down to supper. My son was there before me, all eagerness to hear
how he was to get a bride. No doubt he had some notion of a ball. Would that it was so simple, I thought bitterly. I drew his grandmother’s formality about me like a ceremonial cloak and told my son that the reason he must take a bride was because he carried in his blood the same curse that had afflicted his father, which could be cured only by his wedding a princess bride.
His face darkened with anger, and he growled that if a bride was all it wanted, he should get one soon enough, for women were weak and easily caught. Had he not already dallied with several sprites? It was a churlish thing to say, but I comforted myself with the thought that these graceless words were a symptom of his degeneration. Once he had found his bride, he would become again the handsome, charming youth that he had been before the curse began to exert itself.
Ignoring his interruption, I told him sternly that he could not choose just any woman to be his bride. She must have mortal blood and be a worthy candidate for the Princess Chamber. His task would be to bring her to the Wolfsgate Valley, where she must remain for three dusks. He might protect her but he must not speak a word to her, from start to finish. Given his graceless manners, it had seemed wisest to forbid conversation. He should have a token I had prepared to aid him in getting her to the Wolfsgate Valley, and at the end of the three days, he must drive or lure her through the Endgate into the grounds of the King’s Palace, before the sun had fully set. She would then be tested by me and, if I deemed her fitting, conducted to the Princess Chamber.
My son’s scowl deepened. ‘How am I to know if the one I hunt can pass all of these tests?’
‘Choose a woman who can love, who is courageous and strong, and worthy of loving,’ I told him.
His insolence angered me, but in truth I did not know how he could best choose his bride. Inwardly I cursed my husband for his absence. He might at least have explained his choosing of me more clearly, so that I could better guide our son. But even more than for my husband I longed for Yssa, for being a faerie, she would surely have been able to guide me.
My son broke into my reverie, sullenly demanding to know why the maid must have mortal blood when pure-blood faerie folk were more fair by far and the girl’s power would be greater if she was wholly faerie. Was this not a condition I had invented, out of vanity?
I drew myself up and told him coldly that if I had my way, I would send him to hunt a mortal woman, for the wits and courage and will of any such who survived the Wolfsgate Valley would have been truly tested, since she had not magic to smooth her way and protect her. I ought to know, I added, for had I not survived without a skerrick of magic?
His cheeks suffused with angry colour, but something in my expression must have made him wary, for he said nothing. Turning from him, I drew myself up and announced in a formal voice that my son, the prince, was to hunt a princess bride, and that the hunt would begin in an hour. I needed time to complete the spell given me by one of the queens, which I would cast upon a small ring from my jewellery box. It would tell the maid that he who put it upon her finger was a noble young man under a spell that would be broken only if she carried the ring to a certain lady who was mistress of a certain mansion.
My son would have raced off at once, but I bade him wait patiently, and suggested he go and bathe and comb his hair and dress in comely attire before returning to my chamber where I would give him the token I had prepared.
‘All of these stupid fucking rules,’ my son snarled, and slouched out slamming the doors.
When he set off an hour later, I threw myself into my own preparations. I set Cloud-Marie to scrub and polish the grand parlour as I sought candles enough to fill it with a warm haze of light. Then I went to the gardens and cut great armfuls of long-stemmed, perfumed lilies and sprays of lilac and wisteria, while Cloud-Marie lit and nursed the great stove in the bathing room, and filled and heaved enormous cauldrons of water to boil over the flames. These would boil and be topped up continually now, like the fires, until the period of testing was done.
I laid sheaves of cut flowers on the kitchen bench and went to the mist garden with a feeling of apprehension. Just as the queen had predicted, all of the rose bushes now hung heavy, weighed down by the dense, miraculous crop of white blooms that flowered only when a blood prince of the royal house of Faerie had begun his hunt for a bride. Their appearance meant that my son had truly gone seeking a bride, for if he had merely pretended, the roses would not have bloomed.
The petals from the bushes had to be plucked and strewn upon the floor of the Princess Chamber and on the surface of the bath-water ‘so thickly that her nakedness would not be apparent to her own eyes . . .’ There they would lie fresh and soft and fragrant as the moment they were plucked, until the morning a true princess bride lay within the chamber.
I tore rose petals off their blooms in handfuls, piled them in my wicker basket and carried it up to the Princess Chamber. Cloud-Marie was on her knees brushing the plush of the green runner on the grand stairs when I reached her with my fragrant burden. She laid down her brush and stood up to follow me, mouth loosely agape, for she understood as well as I that all of the other preparations had been no more than a prelude to this, the reopening and preparation of the Princess Chamber, which I had not entered since my own testing.
Coming to stand before the high double doors with their ornate carvings of roses and thorns, I set down my basket and wiped the palms of my hands on my skirt. Then I closed them about the smooth nestling doves that were the handles and parted them, expecting a resistance that acknowledged the long years that had gone by since I last passed this way, but the doves bowed to one another and the doors opened with the same silky willingness, as if there were no more than a whisper of air between yesteryear and today.
The doors swung inward, revealing the dark maw of the unlit chamber. I could see nothing at all, and I gestured to Cloud-Marie who shuffled down the hall to get two candelabra, one of which she pressed into my hand upon her return. I thrust it before me into the darkness, and after a long, uncanny pause, the profound shadows filling the room ebbed and allowed the light to enter. I stepped through the door, unsettled by the sudden odd feeling that the light had created the room, and before, there had been nothing but a black void.
I had not thought of the Princess Chamber since the night I had slept here, but on its threshold I remembered the almost suffocating intensity of the scent given off by the roses, which had flowed from the room to which my hostess had shown me. And that other smell, which I had fallen asleep trying to name, and now knew very well. It was the scent of magic, of course, and the room was thick with it.
‘Tradition,’ my hostess had told me, gesturing lightly, dismissively, to the petals that lay on the floor, the absurdity of the bed.
I set the candelabrum on a small table pushed against the whitewashed stone wall beside the door, and drew aside the long damask curtains that concealed the door to the small balcony. It seemed but moments since I had first drawn those curtains to discover the exquisite little balcony behind it, and imagined how lovely it would be to go out onto it in the morning and look down on a sunlit garden. I had no way of knowing that it overlooked a mist garden, where sunlight never fell.
A movement in the chamber behind me recalled me to the present and I turned to see Cloud-Marie looking at me with the soft, sucking, bog-brown eyes of a cow. I pointed to the fireplace and she nodded and lurched over to tend to it. There was no need to sweep or dust. All that needed doing, according to the tome my mother-in-law had given me, was to lay down a carpet of petals, heat bathwater, remove the ashes of the old fire, and lay and light a new one, then renew the bed.
‘The last and final task is the renewing of the bed . . .’
I had assumed this to mean the bed was to be made up afresh, but it was as perfectly made as a bed with dozens of mattresses piled one upon the other could be. I went over and took the rich fabric of the coverlet between thumb and forefinger, hauled it back and recoiled to find the sheets and the top mattress badly mouse-c
hewed. The reek of damp and mouse musk made me gag and I wondered why the cover had not been affected when the sheet and mattresses had got into such a state.
Cloud-Marie helped me drag all of the mattresses down and spread those that were intact about the room to air, then she cleaned the hearth and lit a fire that was soon crackling merrily, warming the chamber. Later, I would have her bring lavender and cedar balls and camphor to put between the mattresses. Now we dragged those mattresses that were entirely ruined into the hallway to be disposed of, and those that could be repaired we dragged to my sitting room. The rest we must pile up anew. I did not know how repairs could be managed but even as I pondered it, Cloud-Marie led me to a linen closet where there were silk sheets aplenty that could be sewed together as covers, and great bales of fresh cotton and wool wadding as well as goose down. I was surprised to see them, for even though I had bought them myself long ago at the market in my own world, after I had used them in a frenzy of making new bedding for my chamber and Yssa’s, they had vanished. I touched them softly, thinking that Yssa must have put them here. For a moment, my eyes blurred with tears, and I wondered what had become of her, but Cloud-Marie touched my arm and I pulled myself together. Soon we were both sitting back in my tower room, bent over the new mattress cases, our stabbing needles hard at work.
The next day, our eyes red-rimmed and burning with strain and lack of sleep, we carried the new mattress covers back to the chamber and half stuffed them with pure goose down so they would flatten the better. The number of mattresses was the vital thing, according to the books, not their thickness, and I remembered all too clearly my own astonished reaction to an elegant bed made atop a fantastic pile of mattresses that would have me lying closer to the ceiling than the floor.
Metro Winds Page 21
