Black Pearls - Louise Hawes [47]
"And then?" she asks, her voice hoarse with longing.
"And then," I tell her, "a lovely stranger stepped out of a silver coach and into the prince's heart. She was more beautiful than any woman he had ever seen, more dazzling than a fairy queen."
Cinderella listens and nods, prompting me if I forget any part of the tired tale. She sighs and smiles, even as her eyes close and the story sends her off to sleep.
Evelyn's Song
Now that witches are rarer than fish wings, most people don't know the first thing about magic. And the first thing about magic is that it hurts. When my aunt sent for the crone who lived at the edge of town, she meant only to scare me. So far as we villagers could tell, that foolish hag had never done more harm than give our night watchman a potion that made him mad for the weaver's widow. The object of his affections weighed at least twice as much as the poor man himself, yet their match was no stranger than many made without benefit of incantations or philters.
The marriage my aunt intended for me, I assure you, was far more ill advised and much more laughable. Yet she would have me wed Lord Brevington, a man forty years my elder. And she would have me curtsy sweetly before him, speak my little Latin, and play the harp. I, of course, would have none of it, and that is when the witch was sent for.
"You have humiliated me for the last time, my girl," Aunt Hazel scolded. "Nor will I permit you to demean the honest proposal of our dear guest." She nodded at this, toward Lord Brevington, who seemed less demeaned than sleepy. He sat over the remains of Aunt's tea and scones, his head sinking lower and lower on his hollow chest.
But I sat with the harp beside me unplucked, reluctant to play the song she had bade me sing for His Lordship. It was "The Turtle Dove's Lament," a ballad that had found favor first with the court and then with all the unwed ladies in our town. The tale of a young woman abandoned by her love, it told of her standing above the sea on a towering cliff. She searched for her lost sweetheart's ship, clasped her pale hands across her breast, and leapt into the waves. The chorus, repeated three times, began with the words "Your wild love has won me, now claim your prize."
I could not, you see, sing that refrain to the grizzled gentleman on our settle. I dared not, for fear I would burst into laughter as I played. Indeed, one look at the poor old soul, his withered legs crossed under orange garters, had nearly undone me. "May I not play Your Lordship a sprightlier tune?" I asked. "'Derry Down, Derry Down,' say?"
My ardent suitor, who seemed to be snoozing, made no reply. So I begged my aunt instead. "Oh, please, Auntie Dearest, let me choose a song less passionate, more in keeping with the—er, age and state of our visitor."
I could not keep from smiling as I pointed at the napping noble, and my aunt was in a rage straightway. She scolded me so loudly, I was certain Lord Brevington would wake, but I need not have worried. It turned out that the good man had gone to a deeper sleep than the two of us guessed, for when we tried to rouse him, we found that he was dead.
"Now see what you have done!" As if it were I who had caused the old man's soul to leave his body, Aunt Hazel grew angrier still. "All our prospects, all our high hopes—dashed by a willful girl's stubbornness." She paced our small parlor like a trapped animal, sighing and calling on my dead mother to witness her daughter's perfidy. At last, she summoned Lord Brevington's footman from the kitchen. And then she called the witch.
I was not afraid of Dame Meredith; I had grown up used to the sight of her bent form hobbling through the crowd at market, the sound of her nanny goat's bell when it wandered, as it often did, into our yard. So, after our noble visitor had been dispatched to his castle and Dame Meredith had arranged her