Black Pearls - Louise Hawes [39]
I had heard the gossip myself, the tired legend of my father's dalliances, his fondness for castle servants, tavern wenches, and finally a certain comely widow whose company he enjoyed until the queen's soldiers visited her home and persuaded her it was best to foreswear royal companionship. Though the king had died more than a dozen years before, this perverse legacy lived on. It was, in fact, nearly all I had left of him. I was only a lad of four, after all, when the great bells pealed all night and my mother took to her bed. I cried then, kicking my toy soldiers from their orderly phalanxes and burying them deep in the furthest corner of the kitchen garden. Now, though, I could barely remember the face of the man whose death had made a kingdom weep.
"Our subjects will have other things to occupy their idle tongues once you take the throne, my son. When your father's bloodline is assured, there will be no stopping us. Armies will be mustered; taxes will be raised. We will live as our birthrights demand."
I considered the balls, the jewels, the damask tablecloths and mirrored halls. "We already live beyond most people's dreams," I told her. "What more could you want?"
The queen's maids sat around her that day, two whispering over a tapestry, one plucking softly at a mandolin. My mother, who had been sewing as she spoke, stood suddenly, showering the floor with brocade and ribbon. "I have waited a long time for what your marriage will bring," she told me. Her fervor, her eagerness, filled her face with light and made it younger than her years.
"And when, may I ask, am I to meet the princess apparent?" She sat again, her servants hastening to pick up the tumbled ribbons and lay them in her lap. She sighed then, her eyes closed and one ringed hand on her breast. "Am I not to see for myself the treasure you have wrested from its hiding place?"
I sat beside her. "You know very well that Cinderella and I have come to visit you every day. But you have been busy with your maids or else in your bath."
It was an old trick of hers, making me wait. I recalled running to her chambers, as a boy, with some urgent news, some childish triumph. I would stand outside that intricate, sweet-smelling realm of hers, slices of laughter fluttering out to me whenever the door opened. Like an exile from the promised land, I yearned to be let in. Sometimes it was days and days between my glimpses of her, so that at last nothing seemed as important, nothing as wondrous, as what I had been denied.
It was not until the wedding day that my wife and my mother met face-to-face. In the interim, my sweetheart and I walked in the garden, took rides in the woods, though all along I sensed that my orphaned darling, just like the motherless boy I had once been, was waiting only to meet the queen. Finally, to my sweet relief, the bells rang, our carriages lined up for the ride to church, and the horses stamped, their breath smoky in the morning air. The queen, decked in fur, put her white hand into my bride's and smiled thinly. The new princess, unschooled in subtlety, missed the condescension that set my mother's face as if it were carved. All Cinderella saw, to judge from the admiration that shone in her eyes, was a dark-haired beauty who burned like a cool taper beside her own bright flame.
And flame she did. Her dress was white silk lined with ermine, picked by my mother for its icy elegance. But my sunny love outshone her chaste gown, as lovely a bride as any dream could conjure. All the way to church, waving to the crowds from our velvet nest, the people's "barefoot princess" trailed beauty like streamers as crowds of goggle-eyed children chased our carriage down the street. Later, as we spoke the marriage pledges, our words trembling doves in the dark chapel, I watched tears trace her cheeks and melt into her smile.
That night, all the cruel gossip seemed forgotten. It was a small price to pay, as at last I led Cinderella to a candlelit room and closed the door. I took her hand and stooped to blow out the