The Kingdom of Little Wounds Read online

  I.

  LIGHT

  II.

  FEAR

  III.

  DARKNESS

  IV.

  DEATH

  AFTERWORD

  THE WISE WOMEN OF HVENBÆK

  A NOTE ON THE HISTORY

  GRATITUDE

  There was once a family of princesses who were locked in a castle. By all reckonings this was for their own good, and indeed they had so rarely been outside that they would not have known what to do if they had been granted their freedom. As a consequence of their confinement, they took much pleasure in tales of distant lands as told by their nurses, some of whom came from quite far away.

  The more estranged the tales’ settings were from their own, the better the princesses liked them. Each night they demanded a new story, a longer one, with ever-greater invention on the part of the nurses and more of what the eldest girl (who by some law of the country was practically a queen) called Truth. By this she meant violence and heroic deeds and also details of how common people lived their lives from one day to the next. “To help me rule my subjects,” she explained.

  In the darkness of the curtained bed, her sisters made faces at one another. It would have been unnatural for them not to feel envy at the good fortune of her birth.

  “But it must have magic as well,” said the next-eldest princess.

  “Magic is Truth,” insisted the next-next-eldest. She was a scholar, interested in art and alchemy. She especially liked recipes for complicated poisons. “Or Truth is Magic.”

  “Never mind,” said the youngest, who was sucking her thumb behind a gently blowing drape. “Shut up and let it begin.”

  The others pummeled her severely for her language. And then the story did begin.

  It is while I stitch together the Queen’s gown, on the night her eldest daughter is to die, that I first sense an uneasy power.

  The feeling begins as I stand with hands humbly folded beneath my apron, a seamstress watching a queen unravel.

  “To think this is what comes of the years,” Queen Isabel laments as she picks at a rip in her blue-velvet bodice. “Such a night! Such calamities! We have been thoroughly cursed.”

  Every thread at the royal waist and armpit is straining, even the linen under-chemise (my work) and the stays laced beneath. The tear snakes beneath the sag of her bosom, sideways across the belly that has thickened with so many births.

  My hands itch to stop her. But she is in a fit, and I have no right but to let her continue.

  Queen Isabel is our kingdom’s treasure, once a legendary beauty and now a devoted mother and dull background figure to the King’s glittering majesty. Even so commonplace a matter as a ripped gown requires a retreat to the red draped damask and candles of her formal apartments, where she is attended by a historian as well as a host of ladies and aprons and dwarfs whose task is to amuse. A simple accident becomes a Once there was a queen whose gown burst as she danced for her daughter’s wedding . . .

  I have always loved a fairy tale.

  If I were a keeper of histories (scratching busily at a wax tablet, bony fingers covered in the sticky stuff), this is what I would record:

  With backs held straight by their corsets, ladies clad in rainbows lounge before gilded fireplace and blood-curtained bed. They fidget with their jewelry and shuffle their slippers on the floor tiles as music climbs through the shutters, a jangly old tune that Isabelle des Rayaux, this Isabel, brought from the Loire when she came to marry King Christian Lunedie V. It is a wedding song for a dance of hops and kisses; musicians play it floating in flat-bottomed boats on Skyggehavn’s bay and canals. It hangs in the air with the sweetness of imported sugar out of which every possible morsel at the wedding feast has been made.

  For this one night, there are sugar plates, sugar fruits, sugar goblets melting under spiced wine. And everyone has tasted it somehow, from King Christian on down to the little girl who sits in a nook and counts the dishes as they’re washed. Lords and ladies flit from treat to treat in the airy banquet houses built in the courtyards, clad in their finest satin and brocade and cloth of tinsel, glowing with jewels, rippling at slashed breeches and sleeves, trickling ribbons from swollen hats. They are tended by servants in yellow livery or in made-over versions of the nobles’ castoffs, and dwarfs run from spot to spot, enacting comic scenes of courtship. At every fragile little house, the gentles gorge themselves, and those who follow clean up after them, licking and nibbling what they can, blending that sweetness with the tang of sweat.

  On such a fantastical evening, we aprons imagine that someday we, too, might wed, and it could be for love. Such is the privilege of servants; the nobles may have their money and their political alliances, but we have our feelings. I once did.

  While the ladies think of dancing, my sister needlewomen and I stay tense and russet-gowned at the ready, anxious lest the work of so many hands and hours go flying to bits. To the nobility, we look like faded versions of humanity, being of the kingdom’s original stock rather than the French who conquered it a century ago. Yellow-haired and white-complected, without powder or paint. Anxious to satisfy our conquerors so we might spend a few days longer among our dreams.

  Our dreams are our riches; our hopes are our wealth. Our fears keep us working and thus let us live.

  I truly would like to think I’m in the middle of a fairy tale, facing the period of hardship that precedes a triumph. But I am not a likely heroine. To the courtiers, I’m just another native of the city; in my father’s home district, I’m the lovelorn object of gossip and shame. His neighbors among the glassmakers believe that, on a winter’s day in front of Holy Spirit Church, I lost my one chance at marriage and happiness, and I did it in a way that forced me to disappear.

  They are not wrong.

  But, nonetheless, I brood over a nest of hope. I am only seventeen, after all, and still given to daydreams. Some of which have included a scene such as this, myself honored to be included in the seamstresses on hand, so close to noble ladies that I might touch them by moving an elbow. And breathing the same sweet air as the Queen. But as a simple seamstress, I can do nothing until given permission. Except invent stories to soothe myself into patience.

  I have cause for fear now. Pink flesh is about to burst through Queen Isabel’s gown, and that would be a wicked outcome, indeed: her body must be protected like a relic shut in a box. She seems eager to dwell in a coffin of misery, though, as she picks at the silver embroidery and costly white pearls with which the gown is adorned. Thus far she hasn’t let anyone approach — not even Countess Elinor, who is her chief lady and confidante, and who makes another attempt now.

  “Your Highness.” Countess Elinor takes a cautious step forward. She is unusually pale for a noblewoman but wears silver brocade to complement the Queen’s costume, even though it washes out what little color she might have. “Most beloved Highness, it may be true that we’ve lived through an age of misfortune, but this is a happy evening. Perhaps a happy end to our trials. Think of your daughter —”

  “Sophia!” Isabel sobs, and the turquoise velvet gives another inch. “Twelve years old and married! To a Swede!”

  “She might be Queen of Sweden one day, if Duke Magnus’s older brothers die without issue.” Countess Elinor makes her voice soft as she takes another step. “You raised her well.” Another subtle step. “The entire kingdom sings praises of you both.”

  Queen Isabel wards her off with a clawing hand that flashes sapphire from a ring. She is behaving like a child. Hardship has done that to her.

  The last eleven years have been cruel to the royal city of Skyggehavn — cruel to the whole kingdom, in fact. First came the Great Sickness of 1561, which took m
y mother and four brothers, then seven years of war throughout Scandinavia, and when that ended, a mysterious illness that invaded the royal nursery and holds all the children, including Princess Sophia, in its canker-some grasp: Morbus Lunediernus, sent by God to scourge the royal innocents and test the nation.

  Now Countess Elinor has an idea. At a discreet signal, her maid and one of the in-waitings flap their skirts and shoo Queen toward Countess like a chicken.

  “Your Highness.” Triumphant, Countess Elinor finally manages to catch Queen Isabel’s hands in her own fishy white ones. Her maid dabs at the Queen’s cheeks as Elinor says, “Think of grandchildren. Isn’t that happiness?”

  Isabel’s dripping dark eyes wander to an Annunciation that hangs over the desk where she writes her letters and does her accounts. In the picture, the Virgin sits with a book open on her lap, head tilted to let the golden banner of an angel’s words tickle her right ear: she is going to birth a Savior.

  “Oh.” Queen Isabel sighs like a sail that the wind has forgotten. “Happiness.”

  Everyone — Queen, Countess, chronicler, assorted attendants and maids, dwarfs who are here to amuse — all are silent for a moment. We wonder when happiness, real happiness, will come to us. We breathe in and taste that tempting sweetness on the air. Maybe I, more than any, fill my lungs to the bottom.

  My movement draws Countess Elinor’s attention. She points a long white finger at me. “You. Fix this.”

  At first I’m astonished — I am the youngest and humblest of the needlewomen, responsible for linen undergarments and never chosen for the silks and velvets — so I’m unable to budge.

  “Get to it,” Countess Elinor snaps, as if this is my usual duty. But she would be the first with a slap if anyone approached the Queen without being ordered to do so.

  Gudrun Tovasdatter, the ruddy Mistress of the Needle, hands me a basket of velvet scraps. She whispers, “Be careful, Ava. Pay attention. This could make your future.”

  Excited, nervous, clutching that basket as if it holds my dead mother’s soul, I fall to my knees and make my way forward like a penitent in church. It has been thrilling enough before this day to think that my needle has stitched seams that would lie over royal skin; now it is to be my own fingers that feel for the Queen’s flesh, just a few thin layers of fabric between me and her belly. I am to touch royalty. I have been chosen.

  I crawl into the soft blue skirts until I’m close enough to smell Isabel’s sweat — meaty overlaid with musk, some sort of whale-oil perfume — and feel the heat coming off her body. Suddenly she becomes real to me, an actual person rather than an idea. I am as afraid to touch her as I am eager to do it. I fumble in the pocket pouch at my waist for a pair of spectacles made by my father.

  “Hurtigt, hurtigt.” The Countess pushes at my shoulder. She has the high-sprung breasts of a virgin (indeed, she has given her crippled husband no children); they shake like milk jellies as she scolds, and in a gesture of annoyance she hoists them even higher. To the other ladies, she remarks, in the French that they use among themselves, “If this cow doesn’t move quickly, the men will see to the Princess’s couchement alone.”

  The Queen moans at this thought, her daughter put to bed without her blessing. “The Duke,” she mourns, “is so much hairier than the men of this place . . .”

  For speed, I abandon the search for my lenses and dig through the basket, trying to find a patch for the odd-shaped rip. I fold a piece into the shape of an eye, anchor one point to the top of the Queen’s tear, and begin. Counting out the stitches to the rhythm of my breath: One, two, three, pause. Adjust the loose thread end. One, two, three, pause. The ancient rhythm known to every woman.

  I am like the girl in the story who stitches up a lady cut to bits by thieves, to be rewarded afterward with a purse of gold . . . a purse that more thieves will steal from her before she can spend it, but perhaps we may stop before that happens.

  With my hand on the Queen’s side, I feel her breathing: in and out, slow, as if she’s trying to calm herself too, though she unravels further with each inhalation.

  Suddenly Isabel frees her hand to scratch around her wig. At this, of course, the rip in her bodice grows wider. She’s stopped crying but not lamenting. “My daughter’s new husband is mad. How can she find happiness with him? I have heard that he once jumped from a window because —”

  Countess Elinor catches the hand again and pulls it down.

  “ — because he saw a mermaid in the moat below,” Queen Isabel finishes miserably. She struggles, but Countess Elinor holds her fast.

  I keep stitching.

  “The mermaid . . . incident . . . was nine years ago,” says the Countess. “And it is just gossip, told by Duke Magnus’s enemies.”

  (Here is the full story: Magnus, Duke of Östergötland, was inspecting a castle in progress when from the fourth-level window he thought he saw a mermaid swimming in the moat. He jumped instantly from the window to the water, hoping to catch her. What he caught was a bad cold and a worse reputation; he’s been known as Mad Magnus ever since.)

  Countess Elinor continues smoothly, “Everyone loves a mermaid. Think of the charming legend about the land’s first settlers . . .”

  “Heathens,” Queen Isabel says. “Witches! Servants of the devil!” She sobs again.

  Countess Elinor loses patience. “Bring the Queen a sweet,” she snaps, and her maid produces a sugar fig, expertly spun and painted. The Countess pops it into the Queen’s mouth, and Isabel stops weeping and begins to suck.

  In the sudden hush, the ladies stand as if they’re at Mass. Only one of them murmurs a stream of flattery for the Queen, complimenting her on every silly thing, from her silvering hair to the sapphire ring that never leaves her hand. The others, including the dwarfs, mumble a litanous assent. Our Queen is the greatest queen. The banquet she’s planned is the greatest banquet. There is no love like the love of our Queen for her children.

  Underneath those voices run the whispers of the ladies’ maids, who can speak without moving their lips.

  “. . . likes his fingers suckled while he’s inside,” one of them says. “I’ve seen it myself.”

  Still sewing (one, two, three, pause), I allow myself to glance up and recognize the green of Baroness Reventlow’s made-over gown, now worn by her personal servant. So the speckly, chinless baroness (her husband blind from the war) is having an affair, and she doesn’t make her maid leave the bedroom to conduct it.

  Queen Isabel crunches up the last of the fig in her teeth. I feel the vibrations in her waist.

  “’Swounds,” breathes another maid. “That’s a bit of nasty.”

  Absentmindedly, the Queen pulls a pearl from her gown and rolls it in her fingers. She puts it into her mouth like another confection, but when Elinor holds out her hand, Isabel spits the pearl into it. She looks ashamed, as if only just realizing what she’s done. Elinor calls for another fig and pops it into Isabel’s mouth.

  Poor Queen, I think, with a compassion that surprises me; usually I consider her the luckiest woman in the world. Poor Queen, whose beloved daughter is about to sail away to a part of Sweden called Östergötland. Poor Queen, who must always play a part scripted by others. Held in Elinor’s steel grasp, Isabel is no more free to act than the rest of us.

  She slumps against my hand, and the rip widens yet again. I stop caring about neat work and stitch madly against time.

  Our princesses are the loveliest princesses. Our prince is the handsomest prince . . .

  “. . . handsome legs, and those white teeth,” comes another whisper — clearly not about the Crown Prince, who is as comely as a stick insect. “Hair black as a Southerner’s. But what I heard about him —”

  “Gave his girl the Fire, he did,” whispers Reventlow’s maid, as the lady-in-waiting whose task it is to flatter declaims, The most fortunate kingdom in all creation!

  The whisper gets even softer, the bare stirring of a breath: “And she killed herself for the pain. Mand
rake and antimony. Stole them from the physicians’ stores.”

  I try to blink a blurriness away from my eyes. That horrid illness, Italian Fire, strikes nobles and prostitutes more often than their servants — there’s a famous wiggle in the court ladies’ hips, as they give a subtle scratch to its itch — but no one is immune. Half the sellers of simples and unguents outside the palace gates are touting cures for that burning white ooze and the ache in the bladder, but the cures are as bad as the symptoms and, often as not, even deadlier.

  However much we crave love, love brings danger. As I’ve found out too well — though not with the Fire.

  And now, the very worst happens: dim-sighted with grief for my own lost happiness, I let my needle slip. Of its own will, it plunges through layers of velvet and lawn and stiff linen, between whalebones and into royal flesh. One, two, disaster. A tiny bud of red appears around the slim shaft, then blooms to the size of my fingernail.

  I have just wounded the Queen.

  For a moment, time is frozen. I hold my breath; the voices murmur on. I think, Maybe I imagined it, the stab. Maybe I’m imagining the stain.

  Then Queen Isabel shrieks, tearing into the recitation of her praises. A piercing sound that seems forced from her very middle, as if her flesh has never been pricked before.

  The women turn to look at me, all hidden as I am in the turquoise. I’m cold to the toes.

  The Queen takes a step away, exposing me. She keeps her arms stiff and spread as if she’s afraid they’ll be splashed with blood.

  “This seamstress,” she says, staring forward, “is a clumsy troll.”

  Countess Elinor presses her lily-pale lips together. Her breasts are blue with fury. “What is your name?” she asks, one moment before she slaps my face.

  So there is my power, to stab the Queen. And there is her power, nurtured by the drone bees who tend her.

  SOPHIA LUNEDIE

  TWELVE and one-third years ago, in the twilit morning of a dark December day, Princess Sophia Lunedie slipped out between her mother’s legs and into a crown. Not her own crown but her father’s, or her future husband’s — it has never mattered whose. Invisible but no less insistent, a crown swaddled her through a childhood in which she was promised to a series of foreign princes that changed according to her father’s need for alliances. With each year the crown grew tighter, until, this spring, her woman’s courses stained its tines with blood. The rubies of a virtuous woman, more precious to her father’s kingdom than a real gem would be.