Black Pearls - Louise Hawes [44]
And now I searched through his legacy, the whole body of Royal Law. I saw no countenance of arbitrary execution there, no circumstance that allowed for punishment without a crime. When my taper at last failed and my eyes were closing on my own frightful visions, I stole softly to our bedroom and lay down beside my sleeping wife. I hoped I might dream, might travel back to that day spent with my father, and ask him for advice. But I never slept at all, only lay awake listening to Cinderella's light and easy breaths.
The next day, neither my mother nor my wife left me any peace. The queen made speeches about loyalty and duty, while my love sat beside her, nodding like an eager puppet. Though I had hoped her natural kindness would dissuade her from such madness, she found every chance, even when we were alone, to plead for the death of her family. For three nights, she wept and relived the hurtful past, and nothing would move her from the queen's plan.
I did not realize how completely and with what horrible fidelity Cinderella was emulating her new mother until the fourth day after our conference in the garden. I woke that morning to find her still in bed beside me. At first, I was delighted to think she might have chosen my company over the queen's. As if to assure myself she was real and not a dream conjured up by my greedy heart, I touched a spun-glass curlet by her ear. "Good morning, friend," I whispered. "I am glad to find I married a stay-abed, after all."
But the eyes she turned on me were moist and ringed with blue shadows. Her skin was pallid, her voice small and tired. "It is not for pleasure I lie here," she said, "but rather for the lack of pleasure once I rise."
"Why? What is lacking for you, love?" I asked. "You need only tell me and it is yours."
She raised a pale hand to her forehead and looked at me through half-closed eyes. "I have already told you, and yet you will not save me from the demons that pursue me."
"What demons? Name them and they are gone."
"My stepmother and stepsisters," she said. "The ghosts who trail shame and pain, who walk abroad and flaunt my humble past. They are free to spread gossip while I am imprisoned by their evil tongues and cannot show my face beyond these walls."
"Nonsense!" I told her, cupping her chin in my hand. "Who would look on this countenance and believe it anything but noble and divine?" In truth, though, I was unnerved by her white lips and the feverish drops between her brows. "Why all this talk of blood and death from someone who lived for dreams only a few short weeks ago? Which of them has not come true?" I left the bed and pulled aside the drapes. The room grew brighter, but I felt strangely chilled. "What did you long for that has not come to pass?"
"You know well what it is I long for," Cinderella told me. She rolled onto her back and stared vacantly at the ceiling. "I want them dead. And if you loved me, you would want it, too."
The princess stayed in bed from then on. And because she claimed to be too ill for visitors, I was banished to my father's chambers. Each day when I knocked on her door, I heard muffled sounds, the scrambling of servants, and then was greeted by a maid, who told me Cinderella was in her bath ... or with her ladies ... or too weak for conversation. As spring turned to summer and summer to fall, I was admitted to her rooms only seldom, and on each of these precious visits found her more wasted and wan than before.
So long as I refused to consider sending her family to their deaths, my wife lay exhausted in her bed. Her face, gaunt and anguished, reproached me, though she spoke few words now, only stared at me like a forlorn ghost. And if I sometimes caught sight of a brightly colored morning dress peeking from beneath her sheets, if I heard, occasionally, the vestiges of laughter and gay conversations cut short when I entered her domain, it mattered little. What pressed on me, what weighed on me night and day, was the absence of