Black Pearls - Louise Hawes [45]
Which meant, of course, I saw even less of her than before. With her health, her appetite for royal amusements was restored, even doubled. There was no parlor game, no ballet or theatrical, no audience with pandering gossips, that did not find her sitting, deweyed and worshipful, beside my mother. Unless I chose to join in these empty pastimes, and I seldom did, I missed my wife more than ever. From my lonely waking to the evening meal, I was again deprived of the tender companion I had met at the ball. Only night drove her to our chambers, which she could no longer deny me. But when we were alone at last, she would sigh deeply, as if to remind me that our time together was the price she paid for the glittering company of the queen.
The morning of the execution dawned chilly and fair. In the sewing room, where I went to find Cinderella, my mother pretended over her loom to have forgotten what day it was. She spoke of dresses and poets, but as her needle disappeared and reappeared above the cloth, I noticed an immodest shine in her eyes, an expectant, nervous gleam. "The princess," she answered my unspoken question, "has not joined us yet this morning. Perhaps she has need of some privacy today."
I hoped that it was true, hoped that, after all, my wife had found again the gentle heart I'd felt beating beside mine when we first danced. This ugly business must, at last, have sickened her soul. I paced the length of the room, feeling the same dizzy ing revulsion that had undoubtedly sent her into hiding. But where?
I decided to search the garden, thinking to find her weeping at the site where she had first begged me to put her family to death. I was determined, as I raced outdoors, to pull her from her knees, to forgive her pauper's greediness, to welcome home the bright and passionate child for whom I still pined. Perhaps, if we acted quickly, there was yet time to save her family's lives.
But the garden was empty, save for the blood-red roses and the new buds that had sprouted to take the place of the blooms the queen had cut. As I started back to the palace, I met one of my mother's serving maids coming back from market. Wearing a rough brown cloak over her head and scrambling up the rock-studded path from town, the girl was in such a hurry, she nearly ran into me.
There was something in her furtive, headlong rush that made me certain of her mission. Though my mother feigned indifference, I knew she must be eager to confirm the executions. There seemed little doubt she had sent a servant to witness the gruesome spectacle. Suddenly, all my own guilt and anguish over the event seemed focused on this innocent messenger, and I stepped into the middle of the path to block her way. I could not bear to let her run to my mother with her bloody news; as if I could prevent the deed by barring its report, I grabbed the poor creature by the shoulders and ordered her to stop.
When the cloak fell away to reveal Cinderella's spun-glass hair, I backed away, astonished. "I saw it all," she told me, a broad, ingenuous grin lighting her face. "I even got a lock of Lucinda's hair!" Triumphant, she held up a curlicue of fine dark locks. I turned my head away as if it might burn my eyes.
"You should have seen the people!" she went on, her eyes shining. "They were all pushing and shoving behind me, but I stayed right up front. That is how I managed to get this lock. I walked up and pulled it off her before anyone could stop me."
I had not seen my bride so animated since the night of the ball. She had forgotten all her lessons in refinement and was aglow with her old unbridled eagerness. "Their bodies did not twitch at all afterward, but you should have