The Kingdom of Little Wounds (27 page)

In fact, Sabine (not unlike the Queen herself) is so old that the neighbors must be constantly surprised the baby hasn’t given up his grip and slipped away.

I cross myself to ward off the evil thought. Somewhat to my surprise, I find I’m looking forward to this baby. And I want my father and his wife to be happy . . . Which is one reason I don’t tell him of my most recent crisis of fortune: I can’t bear to disappoint him. I resolve to free myself of scrubbing duties as soon as I can. Maybe he’ll never need to know.

“How are you, my dear?” he asks, and one resolve holds firm; but then I offer all in a hopeful rush what I had earlier vowed not to say:

“Father, a man highly placed said he loves me. He offered to marry me.”

My father sits still a moment, letting silence speak for him. “Ava, my dear,” he says at last, “please have a care. Remember the dangers. And remember that it is not just your reputation at risk but that of your family.”

He leans forward to poke at the fire, finding a new subject. “Several of the lords, and Doctor Candenzius himself, have commissioned perspective glasses. They want them ever longer and stronger than the King’s. But I” — chuckling indulgently —“I know not to do
that.
”

I imagine the star snagged on an exceptionally long perspective device, dripping marzipan onto the King’s sleeping entourage. They might lick themselves like a pack of cats, and Grammaticus would write it all down for the annals. And Nicolas, perhaps.

“I’m glad your business is prospering,” I say politely.

“Beyond our dreams,” says my stepmother, squeezing herself through the doorway. “But one does miss the chance to appear at court.”

To my knowledge, Sabine has never been to the palace. But, like everyone else who’s never visited, she thinks about it in a very real way. The splendors inside belong not only to the Lunedies but also to all of us, who take pride in our ruling family’s wealth and in the beauty of their surroundings.

Gerda pours Sabine another cup of small ale and helps her settle into a chair.

Sabine sips as if she’s a grand lady. “Ava, do tell us about the Queen.” Her cup is pewter with some complicated ornament. “Is her belly progressing well?”

I
N the lengthening nights of her incarceration, Isabel is more than usually troubled. She is wakeful and anxious. Sometimes she steps over the sleeping maids and opens her shutters and unsticks the window glass to crane her head out and look at the new star.
Stella Maris, Stella Mariae.
It is speaking to her; if only she knew how to hear it.

Isabel would like to walk beneath the stars.

Even more, she would like to visit her children again. Give them their medicine, reassure them that the new star means no harm, only good things for their family. She hears Princess Gorma is feeling nearly well; if reports can be believed, all three of the remaining little souls are improving. Isabel is glad, of course.

But she also feels just the least bit hurt that her children might be healing without her. All those hours of care and worry, draughts and consultations and treatments . . . now rewritten entirely by that hideous Polish physician . . . who cannot, cannot,
cannot
be right about Isabel . . . unless somehow he
is
right, which would mean the unthinkable. That to which Elinor, wise Elinor, sweet friend, surprisingly confessed.

The new star beams serenely down on the Lunedie Queen. The music of the celestial spheres rings inside her sensitive ears. Yes, she should see the children with her own eyes. They must need her, surely they must. She is only good.

When she demands to visit the nursery, she is given wine to drink instead.

“Is this Doctor Candenzius’s formula?” she asks before she drinks, and her ladies (new ladies) tell her, “Yes.” She drinks, and it makes her sleep through the day.

So at night she wakes and gazes at her star. The sleeping maids don’t notice the cold air from the window, except to curl deeper into each other and their blankets.

Sometimes Isabel tiptoes to a tall oak chest where she keeps silver boxes full of relics from the children who have left her. The locks of hair and milk teeth, a few fingernail cuttings, the precious miracle of Sophia’s half finger. The box rattles; there are also some bits of bone she’s found here and there.

Isabel takes Sophia’s finger from the box and points it at
Stella Mariae
as a navigator points an astrolabe (she thinks) toward the North Star. Surely
this
star is somehow connected to the children. Surely it can do something for them. Draw them to her, alive or dead.

When she looks toward the earth, she sees starlight wink along the surface of spreading mud in the witch’s hollow. It does not sink inside. It does, however, frighten some courtiers enough that Isabel sees them sneaking over to toss down their jewels, ribbons, golden braids: offerings to some old spirit residing between the slit in the earth and the eye in the heavens. They think their sacrifices might protect them. From what? From an evil they cannot name.

“Fools.” Isabel runs Sophia’s finger over her belly. What would she sacrifice? Nothing, for she has already lost everything. Or almost. She clutches the finger tight, rattles the bones in their box just enough to reassure herself that they’re there, not enough to wake anyone.

She imagines herself outdoors. She is leaning not over the witch’s hollow but over that quicksilver pool at her uncle’s castle: there, she experiences the heady feel of the moving reflection, distorting the face now this way, now that, according to the wind’s direction. The sweet, dizzy air above. It was no wonder that ladies bent down to kiss their own images, to fix their loveliness in one silver second.

It is impossible to believe that something so beautiful, something that feels so good, would actually kill.

Isabel shuts the reliquary box in its cabinet and locks the door. She keeps Sophia’s finger with her, though; she likes the shape of it in her fist. Sophia, her eldest, her darling.

When she climbs into bed, she feels the weight of that extra finger in her hand, pulling her down. She is falling . . . falling . . . tumbling into a quicksilver pond as round as the moon and as bright as the new star.

She lets herself sink deeply into it — descending through the exquisitely shivering metal. It is cool and soft and exciting. She may never come back. She may never want to. Quicksilver mercury-maids, kindhearted reflections of the ladies above, take her by the hands. They embrace Isabel and tell her she is safe. They spit mercury into the air until the demons and witches are driven away.

Isabel, dreaming, clutches Sophia’s finger and feels the small dead thing growing warm and soft. She presses it into her belly.
Stay with me,
she begs them, the finger and the belly.
Save me.

A
ND now, the Crown Prince dies.

There can be no words to express his parents’ sorrow, for there is no sorrow like that of parents who have lost their only son. Their worst fears have been realized. Royal parents, royal son.

The bells clang; the courtiers grieve. They weep, and the salt of their tears makes a hard white frost on the floors and walls of the palace.

But all of this has happened already, it is always happening. Theirs is a kingdom of mourners. Out in the city, emotion does not run as high as it should. The people are tired of eating black bread; their black clothes are in tatters, reeking of sweat. They’ve made their throats sore with praying, and they have to cough new prayers out to comply with tradition.

The King orders all the palace mirrors covered in crepe, all the portraits and paintings and other pretties. He would cover the night sky in black if he could, to muffle the star that he now feels has called down doom upon the Lunedies.

The boy lies on view in the amber cathedral, decaying slowly in the chill almost-winter.

In these terrible hours, Christian leans heavily on Count Nicolas. His Secretary is the one soul who seems to understand both what Christian is feeling and what must be done. In Christian’s cabinet, during his hours upon the stool, Nicolas is all sympathy and especially tender, resting a hand on Christian’s shoulder while he listens to the royal laments, brushing the hair beneath the wig, removing Christian’s pearl earring for bed as delicately as the King’s own nursemaid.

At the grieving feast, no one weeps harder than Nicolas, seated on Christian’s right; except of course the Queen, who spreads in between them. She has been allowed out of her quarters for this occasion of state. Nicolas promises it will do the nobles good to see their Queen with her full belly; she represents the future, with the Lunedies still on the throne.

But reports about Isabel overall are bad. She is crying so hard now that the courtiers can barely keep up with her; they have to dig into their thighs and wrists with the tips of their knives in order to summon enough pain for tears. She might weep her baby away.

The King is too grief-struck to weep anymore. He simply sits and lets the leek pie and battered dolphin congeal upon his plate. The peasants outside the gates will make a fine supper on his scraps, and of course the courtiers’; no one at table dares eat more than a royal, however hungry that person may be. Christian broods, watching Nicolas’s fine fingers scooping up food for the Queen, the famous ruby glowing as they move.

Isabel chews as if for duty, eyes still streaming. By accident (so the King believes), she catches one of Nicolas’s fingers between her teeth, giving it a sharp nip before realizing her mistake and setting Nicolas free.

Christian feels a tightness around his heart. “So now we have a Crown Princess,” he says aloud. His words shatter the silence; they echo down the hall, settling like ash into the fine dishes on the table. “Eventually, perhaps, a Queen. A woman to rule our
king
dom.”

Nicolas, wiping his fingers, says in the softest of voices, “Your Majesty, do not forget the present Queen’s belly. We must take hope from that.” He nods gallantly toward Isabel.

Petulantly, Christian decides to ignore him, though he settles back into the traditional silence. He blames his wife, of course, for this death as for those of the princesses. Once again he considers having her hands tied to her bedposts. This may be the only way to protect the child-to-be. Then again, such an arrangement might make her weep even more violently, causing more harm to the infant . . .

As if she guesses his thoughts, Isabel bursts into a loud storm of tears that rinses away the last traces of her face paint, soaks her ruff, and leaves it limp around her neck. The weary courtiers politely follow suit and soak themselves. Faces bloom with pimples and sores around the table.

“Your Highness.” Krolik materializes at Isabel’s side with a boldness that would not be tolerated if the situation were not so dire. As it is, Christian just ignores the Polish doctor, lets him do as he thinks best. “On behalf of your husband, I must forbid you to cry any longer. Think of the child within you. The son.” He offers her a cup of his special wine; Nicolas lifts it to Isabel’s mouth. “Health to both your souls.”

With the glass cold against her lips, Isabel looks hard at Christian. “We can rename the oldest girl Christina if you like. Since it is so important that every ruler must have your name.” Then she is violently, expansively sick into his lap.

T
HAT night, a thick frost settles over the palace. It turns the rain into ice and lays a downy white fuzz on top; it dulls the outlines of stone ornaments — mermaids, crosses, crescent moons,
In tenebris lumen meum
metue
— and holds the light inside itself, so the roofs glow like fairy sails and the sentries’ helmets glitter. Christian’s shoes leave dark, distinct prints as he steps gingerly out onto the west tower to join the heavens.

All the stars, not just the new one, hang so low that the King thinks he might grab them, even without use of the several perspective glasses that the rival scholars and nobles have set up here and use around the clock — for Christian has changed his mind about draping the heavens in crepe and ordered that at this time, above all others, the overbright new star and its neighbors must be studied and analyzed so the future may be corrected if need be.

Skyggehavn Bay is a black stretch behind the palace spires, punctuated only by a lantern moving on Saint-Peter’s-on-the-Isle. The city crouches to the other side, a bumpy, tumorous mass lit here and there with some dull gold light that makes dim parody of the stars overhead.

“The world looks small tonight, what,” says Christian, dully. The world is bound to look small on a night like this, a night without a son. His belly cramps in nearly unbearable pain, but he doesn’t think he needs the stool now. What he needs is distraction.

His courtiers rush to agree with what he just said. Stellarius and Candenzius bow low in their dark robes, murmuring that the King honors them too greatly by visiting on this night of all nights, a night with a small world. As they speak, white frost shakes loose from their beards and drifts through the air.

Christian asks himself:
A king has unlimited honors to give, unlimited wealth, unlimited land — what does he receive in return?

Love. The dutiful love of his people.
The answer comes to him in his father’s voice, a voice the people did love. Christian IV was handsome until the day he died from a stray splinter in a joust. Christian V is not handsome. Nor is he loved.

Christian cannot bear to look at Nicolas in this moment. He turns instead to the closest of the perspective devices (Candenzius’s) and crouches to look up into it. He is pleased, once more, to be so much taller than the ordinary man that he cannot stand straight at the glass. Then again, he thinks his men should adjust their machines to his height; they could always stand on boxes, but how is the King to make himself shorter?