The Fairest of Them All

14

That year, the snow and ice came quickly. One day the ground was covered in dead leaves, and the next we were submerged in snow, which piled up in great, gleaming mounds under a silver sky. Inside, everyone massed together. The great hall was constantly full of courtiers, who came in from their estates all over the kingdom to gather around the king and eat from his table. There was little else to do at the estates, when at court there was endless entertainment and wonderful gossip to pass the time. I knew I myself was a favorite subject, but I made sure to focus on Josef and Snow White, both of whom I loved more than I could have ever imagined loving anyone. I would not let petty talk and petty jealousies distract me from those pleasures, and kept my hair tightly wrapped.

I did appreciate being surrounded by all that life. I spent less time in my chambers and more time in the great hall or one of the galleries, playing chess or cards with Snow White, or Clareta or Yolande. It was the best way to soothe myself in a palace full of ghosts and secrets, reminders of my past wrongs.

Outside, the wind howled. Snow piled up so high I could barely see outside. I often asked the mirror to show Mathena to me, and watched as she sat every day in front of that fire with only Loup and Brune for company, and the occasional desperate soul. I was sorry for her, that her ambition for me had left her so alone.

My main focus that winter was on giving the king an heir. I’d been at the palace since the previous spring, and many had expected me to be pregnant by the time the first snow fell. I continued to study my spell book and use every spell I could find to help me conceive. I used every trick I could to seduce my husband, keeping him enchanted, and we spent whole nights and the occasional afternoon blissfully tangled up in each other’s arms. But as my belly stayed flat and my cycle kept returning, I began to despair, wondering if my magic was leaving me.

The painter, Monsieur Morel, finally finished the unicorn ceiling and we all admired it, danced under it, and the master was free to paint my portrait, which he did in the same room, the unicorn and hunters rushing overhead. I spent many hours that winter frozen in place in front of the small man as he captured me on his canvas. I wore my most elaborate silk damask gown with the Chauvin family crest woven into it, along with my crown and the heaviest and largest of the royal jewels, which hung from my ears and neck and wrists.

When I took breaks from posing, Snow White came to visit me. She’d sit at my feet and I’d brush mashed-up horsetail and aloe pulp through her thick black hair. As black as can be. I liked to brush it up and let it fall, in waves, along her back. Once in a while she’d shiver, and look up at me.

“This will make your hair very strong,” I said once. “Impossible to break. And then it will grow and grow. Did you know that my hair is so strong your father was able to climb it?”

“What?”

“He climbed my hair,” I said.

“Why would he do that?”

“I was in a tower when he came to me,” I said, “to make me his wife.”

“So you let down your hair?” She whipped around to face me, her hair flicking to the side and hurling pulp across the room.

“Careful,” I said, gently turning her back around, “and yes. It fell right out the window, streamed down like a waterfall. He grabbed it with his hands and hoisted himself up.”

“That is so silly,” she said.

“You can’t imagine your father doing such a thing?”

I leaned down to see her scrunch up her face, the way she always did when she was considering something. “I suppose I can,” she said. “But that doesn’t make it any less silly.”

“Are you calling your father silly?” I asked, smiling.

“Well, he paid a lot of gold for this unicorn painting,” she said. “That seems pretty silly to me.”

“It’s very important to him,” I said, “to fill this palace with treasures. And it’s a stunning work of art, don’t you agree?”

She looked up and my hands slid to her forehead. I leaned down and kissed her there, making her laugh. “It is,” she said. “Even if unicorns aren’t real.” She leaned her head back even more so that she could see me. “They’re not real, right?”

“Not as far as I know,” I said. “But the world is strange. It’s impossible to predict what new miracle you’ll run into, from one moment to the next.”

“That’s true,” she said, nodding. “I did not know I would meet you.”

I winced. “I suppose it was unexpected for you, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” she said. “But you make my father so happy. And me, too.”

It continued to snow every day, and soon it was the winter solstice. The palace was swept up in preparations for Christmas, as hundreds of geese and swans were cooked in butter and saffron. On Christmas I woke up sick and spent the morning bent over a chamber pot, while the rest of the court was at Mass. Immediately there was talk that I was with child. I took to my bed while the rest of the court feasted and rejoiced. When I was strong enough, I rubbed yarrow oil on my belly, willing a child into existence.

Later, I sent the maidservant away for a moment and shuffled over to the mirror. My own wan face stared back at me.

“Mirror, mirror on the wall,” I said, as the glass began to ripple. “Who’s the fairest of them all?”

For a moment it was silent. And then: “Rapunzel is the fairest,” it said.

I laughed. “That is very kind of you.”

The glass continued to ripple. I almost felt I could put my hand in it, that it’d feel like plunging into water.

I tilted my head, continued to watch myself.

“Am I carrying the king’s heir?” I whispered then.

For a moment the glass did not change. Then it stopped, became flat and still, and my face came into sharp relief. I waited a few seconds longer, and was turning back to my bed when I heard that one word, “No.”

I swung around. “What?”

My own panicked face stared back at me, and the mirror was silent once more.

I spent the next few days lying in bed, while Josef visited me every hour or so and Snow White spent afternoons reading in bed beside me. She spread out, stretching her legs, holding a manuscript to her face, sometimes reading stories out loud to me from the Bible or the old epics.

When my cycle came after the New Year celebration, the disappointment everyone felt was palpable. Josef took me in his arms and there was no way for me to avoid feeling his grief, as well as the beginning of his suspicion that there was something wrong with me. I felt his heart pulsing up to my hair and forced myself to smile, to kiss him, as anxiety twisted inside me.

“Don’t worry, my love,” he said, stroking my hair, my face. “It will happen in the spring.”

When the snow finally started to melt, Snow White and I rode out into the kingdom, our skirts and hair flying. And slowly, beautifully, the world turned green again. Because Gilles was out training a new peregrine, we brought guards with us instead—a host of them, at Josef’s insistence—and watched with delight as the people came out of their houses and bent over their gardens, which were lush and full, or came out into the wheat fields to marvel at the brilliant green stalks, far thicker and healthier than they’d ever seen before. We stopped and talked to the people we’d helped in the fall, including the young mother whose baby boy was crawling now, who stared up at us through long lashes.

One afternoon we went farther out, and when we reached a perfect, open meadow, we hitched our horses to a tree and began wandering through the grass and wildflowers.

I signaled the guards to stay back, as Snow White ran about, plucking up batches of yellow cowslips and purple sweet violets, letting the grass stain the pale hem of her dress. I watched, amazed that this was the same gloomy girl I’d met a year before. I ran after her.

Suddenly I heard the sound of bells. I looked up, saw a great bird in flight, with bells strapped to her legs by leather fastenings. The sky was a rich perfect blue and the falcon’s wings spread so beautifully, spanning across the heavens. For a moment I was lost in the vision of it, as if I myself were in the air like that, strong and ferocious. The open sky, endless, and that massive bird soaring through it.

And then I saw another, smaller bird, gliding through the air. “Look,” I said, pointing up. Snow White and I stood side by side watching as the two birds circled and swooped. The falcon was hunting the smaller bird—a blackbird, I realized—and they danced, up and down through the air, around each other . . . and then, in a flash, the falcon struck the blackbird, taking it to the ground.

Before we could approach, a horse burst out of the trees, and Gilles rode out into the meadow.

“Gilles!” Snow White called out.

I stepped forward.

“Your Highness,” he said, clearly taken aback. “And Your Majesty. Are you alone?”

“Our guards are back there,” Snow White said, pointing.

“Good. There are bandits who wander these parts.”

She laughed, unconcerned, and handed a bunch of cowslips up to him. “We’ve missed you on our adventures,” she said.

“And I, you,” he said, taking the flowers and dismounting the horse. He bowed to her. “Thank you for your kindness, Princess. I’ve seen the crops shooting up all around, healthier than I’ve ever seen. There’s abundance everywhere. I even heard that some farmers were able to harvest wheat before the first snow came.”

“Yes,” she said. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

He glanced up to me, smiling, before turning back to her. “Indeed. Did you see my new falcon, Princess?”

“She’s beautiful!” she said, as we all walked to where the falcon stood over the blackbird.

Gilles walked up to the falcon, speaking words of praise, as the bird ripped her prey apart. We all watched the falcon eat as if she were starving, a bloody mess on the ground. After a while, Gilles signaled for her to leap back onto his wrist. She squawked, annoyed, but obeyed. He laughed, a wide, open laugh from somewhere deep inside of him, and stroked her breast with his fingers.

“I want to touch her, too!” Snow White said.

“I don’t know if that’s wise . . . She’s a bit wild still. We’re in the middle of our—”

“It’s all right,” she said, interrupting him, putting her hand on the bird’s head. “She wants me to touch her.”

I held my breath, but the bird just looked at the child. Gilles looked from the bird to Snow White and back again, and then stood still, waiting to see what would happen.

“Beautiful creature,” Snow White whispered. “Lovely beast.” She raked her fingers through its soft feathers. The falcon tilted her head.

“How can the bird let her do that?” I asked. Brune would never have let a stranger touch her like that.

“I don’t know,” Gilles said, careful to keep his voice low so as not to upset the bird. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Snow White just looked up at him, laughing with delight. “She likes me petting her.”

“Well,” he said, clearly charmed, “how could any creature resist such a sweet princess?”

We watched, transfixed, as Snow White continued to stroke the bird, her pretty hands smoothing down the white feathers.

“So you’re training this falcon?” I asked after a moment, pulling my eyes from Snow White to Gilles.

“Yes. Tomorrow I’m training her to hunt cranes.”

“How do you do that?” Snow White asked, looking up at him.

“Teach her not to fear them, first.”

“I thought falcons were fearless,” I said. “Brune was.”

“No creature is without fear, my queen,” he said. “You have to work it out of them. Teach them to be brave. Brune had to be taught once, too.”

“How do you do that?” I asked, fascinated.

“Come to the mews tomorrow, and I’ll show you.”

“I would like that,” Snow White said, pulling back from the bird. “You will be very brave tomorrow, won’t you?” she asked her.

The falcon tilted her head in response.

The three of us rode back together to the palace, the falcon high in the air above. I was exhilarated, completely alive as we flew on horseback through the wide-open world. I was happy, despite everything.

The next day, Snow White and I went to see the falcon, walking hand in hand to the mews, with several guards trailing behind us. She glowed with excitement.

As we walked past a hedge, I thought I saw a pale figure behind the leaves, but when I looked more closely, there was nothing there. I turned my head, tightened my grip on Snow White’s hand.

Gilles was standing outside with the falcon on his wrist, the hood covering her face.

As we approached, two assistants walked out of the mews, carrying a crane, which was flapping its wings and calling out. The men carried the crane to a stake, held its wings down to subdue it, and began binding it to the wood.

“Oh,” Snow White breathed.

“It’s all right,” I said. I looked at her. Her face was serious, her eyes wide.

She nodded.

“Do you want to turn back? We could read together, or walk through the gardens.”

“No!” she said.

Gilles’ eyes lit up when he saw us. My own heart quickened for a moment, too, and I ascribed it to my surprise—at the tied crane, at Snow White’s insistence—rather than to him. “Ah, you’ve come. This is her biggest test yet.”

“Welcome, Your Highness,” the other men said, bowing to me.

“You must tie it like that?” Snow White asked, pointing.

“She has to know that she can kill the crane,” Gilles said, “that she’s strong enough.”

“But the crane doesn’t have a chance to fight for its life,” she said. “It’s not fair.”

“You’re right, it’s not. But the falcon needs to learn what she can do. We must keep the crane very still and quiet, so it doesn’t scare her. That’s why we tie it up. It happens very quickly.”

Snow White looked up at me for reassurance. I became conscious of how fascinated and excited I was by what was about to happen. I wanted the falcon to kill the crane, without a trace of fear.

I squeezed Snow White’s hand. “It will not feel a thing,” I said.

When the crane was in place, Gilles removed the hood and released the falcon.

“Look at her,” I said, as the falcon swooped in the air and then down to the crane. She struck the crane with her clenched foot, killing it instantly. The next moment, she was ripping at the crane’s breast.

After a few minutes, one of the assistants lifted the falcon from the crane and perched her on his wrist.

Gilles placed his hands against the crane’s breast. Then he reached inside and pulled something out, bright red and dripping.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“We feed her its heart.”

“Why?” Snow White asked, stepping forward. She was no longer horrified, I realized. She knew the falcon had done well.

“She eats her prey, becomes master of it by taking it into herself. This gives her the crane’s power, its beauty.”

“Her reward,” I said.

I thought of Mathena and me eating the red petals in the forest, the eyes of the stag as it turned into a beautiful naked man.

The falcon stretched her wings, stamped her feet with excitement. The ringing of bells filled the air.

Gilles held the heart in his hand and stretched out his arm.

And then the falcon ate.

After that, I started visiting the mews regularly. Often I went alone in the mornings, when Snow White was busy with her studies. I came to love the birds, all their majesty and power. I became a falconer, the way I’d been in the forest. I hadn’t realized how much I missed it: the freedom I’d felt racing over dirt and leaves and pine needles, Brune in the air above me, all manner of creatures crouching in the trees. I loved the feel of a bird on my wrist again, the moment when it first came back to me, after I’d released it. The way the falcon and falconer became one, my heart in the air soaring above me. It distracted me, too, from life in the palace.

Though spring had come and the earth burst open all around us, my womb remained barren. Each night I could feel the king’s frustration, which he tried to hide from me. I could always feel it—when he lay next to me, when he stroked my hair—those cracks in his heart. Clareta’s hands betrayed even more: that my ladies had begun whispering among themselves, wondering why I could not carry the kingdom’s heir. As Clareta strung pearls through my hair and sculpted it into ships and castles, I could feel her own doubt, the way her mind stretched back to that wintry day when she’d come to the forest, leaving the next morning with a package in her grip.

By the time summer came again, and the wheat fields turned the countryside golden, healthy grain sparking up like fire, I started to feel like there was only one thing for me to do. If my own spells did not work, maybe Mathena’s would.

Plus, I missed her. I missed the forest and the life I’d had before, and I knew she would never visit me in the palace.

I told the king that I wanted to visit Mathena, and he agreed to let me go if I brought Gilles along, as well as a retinue of guards. When he wanted me to go in the carriage, I insisted that I’d be more comfortable riding my own horse, dressed in the simple clothes I’d worn before coming to the palace. No one needed to know that I was queen.

He agreed, of course, for my safety.

“My lady of the forest,” he said. “Don’t stay away too long. I’m instructing my guards to keep close watch on Mathena, so that she doesn’t lock you away from me again.”

“I promise I’ll return, my king.” I smiled and curtsied to him.

It was my first ride back into the forest after over a year of being away. My ladies packed a few satchels for me and helped make preparations. As the stablemen led out the horses, Gilles seemed uncharacteristically excited, greeting me with a warm smile.

“I haven’t seen Mathena since I was a boy,” he said.

“I wonder if you’ll find her changed.”

“Perhaps I’ll find that I myself have changed and don’t see her as I did then.”

“I wonder that, too. About myself.”

“I imagine your life there was quite different from the one you have now.”

I smiled. “A bit.”

We mounted our horses and set off slowly away from the castle, through the gates and into the kingdom at large, and then we began to fly. My hair streamed out behind me. The guards rode in front and behind, while Gilles stayed by my side. Occasionally, I looked over to him and caught his eye, and we both laughed, and I could see that he loved, as much as I did, being wild, out in the open air. That he understood.

We rode hard, back through my past, through the kingdom. We stopped the first night in the inn at the edge of the forest, to rest, and the next day we entered the woods. I breathed in deeply, the scent of forest and life and rot. I remembered the girl I’d been, a bow strapped to her arm, and felt more alive than I had in months.

Once we entered the woods, one of the guards let me use his bow and I hunted alongside the men for fresh venison, though we had plenty of dried meat packed in our bags. I enjoyed the hunt so much that day turned to evening and we set up camp a second night, sleeping on the earth, more peacefully than I could remember ever having slept in the castle, with all its ghosts and secrets. Finally, on the third day, I saw the tower in the distance, and knew I’d come home.

She was in the garden, bent over the earth. As we approached, she looked up at us, her eyes like copper in the sunlight. She looked years younger than she was.

“You’ve come to visit,” she said, as if she’d been expecting me.

Above us, the tower loomed. The trees crisscrossed each other, cutting the light into sections.

I slipped off my horse. Suddenly I was years younger.

She stood and made her way over to me, stretching out her arms. I let her hold me, and took in her scent of earth and herbs, the faint smell of smoke. As usual, I could not feel anything of her, though she touched my hair.

“And who are you?” she asked, pulling away from me and gesturing to Gilles. “You look familiar.”

He bowed, and I saw him through her eyes: this imposing man, roughly handsome, his eyes black and burning. He looked like he belonged in the forest, like he was already half wild.

“I’m the king’s falconer, my lady,” he said. “I believe I knew you when I was a boy, when you were a great friend to my father.”

She smiled with recognition and disbelief. “Yes!” To my surprise, she rushed over and threw her arms around him, genuinely moved.

He folded her into his arms more gently than I would have expected, given his gruffness.

“It’s an honor to see you again,” he said, as they broke apart. “My father spoke so highly of you. I remember you clearly.”

“Your father was very loyal to me. He was the only one who was loyal to me, at the end.”

“You didn’t deserve the treatment you were given.”

I looked back and forth at the two of them, speechless.

“Let’s go inside and get something to eat,” she said, “and then you can tell me why you’ve come.” She looked over to the three guards, who were caring for the horses discreetly. “Would you like to join us?”

They seemed taken aback by her offer, and bowed awkwardly. “We are fine here, my lady,” one of them said.

I knew they were thinking of bandits; they’d been keeping watch vigilantly ever since we entered the woods, not knowing that we were already protected.

“Very well.”

We stepped into the cottage and there was Loup, rubbing against my ankles, meowing up at me. I bent down and picked her up, carried her with me to the couch. Brune stood on the mantel, and looked away from me haughtily.

“Brune!” Gilles said, striding over to the bird. “What a grand lady you’ve become. You have aged better than any of us, haven’t you?”

Brune hopped on Gilles’ wrist, letting out a squawk of recognition.

It was disorienting, seeing Gilles standing by the fire in this little house, as Mathena busied herself preparing tea and heating two bowls of stew for us. She served them to us with thick slices of brown bread. Brune stayed on Gilles’ shoulder, and occasionally he passed chunks of meat up to her. As I ate, I could feel my strength coming back to me. My heart starting to mend.

She had always been a powerful witch.

“This is where you grew up,” he said, shaking his head, sitting across from me now with his bowl in his lap. “And now you’re queen. Did you ever think such a thing would happen, when you were a girl?”

“Oh, no,” I said, shaking my head. “But she did. She knew.”

I gestured to Mathena, smiling, but she pretended not to have heard. Gilles watched her as she stood to refill our mugs.

“Well, it is wonderful, anyway,” he said, turning back to me, “the way fate can twist and surprise you.”

It was comforting, being with the two of them, and with Brune above us, and Loup, old and nearly blind now, curled next to Mathena on the couch. I had the sudden, fleeting thought that I could stay like that and never return to the palace at all.

When night fell, I led Gilles and the guards to the tower, where they would sleep. It was strange, having men inside the house and tower, the only real sign that things had changed dramatically since the last time I’d been there.

“I hope you’ll be comfortable here,” I said, turning to him. The guards were already laying out blankets on the stone floor.

“I will,” he said. “I love this place you come from.”

“You do?” I asked, breathing in.

“Yes.”

“You know, you can see the palace from up here. I used to stare at it, when I was a girl, imagining what it would be like to go there one day.”

I pointed to the window. A faint twinkle was visible, spires lit by the moon.

But he did not take his dark eyes off of me.

“Well, good night, then,” I said.

“Good night,” he said.

I was careful, as I turned to go, to keep my hair from touching him. It would be too dangerous to look into his heart right then. Too dangerous to look into my own.

Once I returned, Mathena sat me down on the couch, took my hands into her own.

“What is it that troubles you?” she asked. “Is your life at the palace what you hoped it would be?”

I took a deep breath. “I cannot conceive,” I said. “And the king is not pleased with me.”

She nodded.

“I need you to help me,” I said. “Give me something so I can have a child.”

“What can I give you that you haven’t already tried yourself?”

“You know so much more than I do, Mathena.”

I thought of her with Clareta and all those women who came to see us, the way she’d take their hands in her own and cast spells to heal their gardens, their children, their hearts. Surely she could do the same for me now.

A sadness crept into her face as she watched me. “Rapunzel,” she said, shaking her head. “You cannot have a child.”

“What do you mean?”

“You cannot have a child. I am sorry.”

“But . . . I had his child. I had a child.”

She shook her head. “It has never been possible, for you.”

I closed my eyes, remembering the teas and my ancient suspicions. “Did you . . . Was it the teas you gave me?”

She sighed. “No. I told you. When you killed the stag, something changed. Your fate changed. I tried to protect you when you were with child, because I knew . . . it was not right.”

“What do you mean? Was it . . . the flower we ate? Isn’t there something you can do to fix it? I must give him a child, Mathena.”

She did not answer my question. Instead she said, “He has a child already. The princess Snow White.”

“Yes,” I said, shocked at how casually she said it.

“How is she?”

“She’s a good girl. I didn’t expect to love her the way I do. But I do.”

“Ahh.” She tilted her head, watching me as if she knew something I didn’t.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she said. “I’m surprised that you love the child. When her mother took him away from you.”

“That was not her fault,” I said. And then I looked at her directly, trying to read her. “Mathena, did you do something to me, to make me barren?”

“No,” she said, and I was sure, in that moment, that she was lying. She smiled softly, and yet her eyes were hard as diamonds. “But it is true that you will never conceive.”

I let the information sink into me, and with it, a whole new sense of the world and what was possible, a new grief that bit into my heart.

“What about Gilles?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” I asked, blinking up at her.

“He’s an extremely handsome man, don’t you think? You do realize he’s in love with you.”

“Mathena!” I said incredulously, as if I had not had the same thought myself. “I’m married. I love Josef.”

“Josef is a king. You can never be fully married to a man who has everything in the world.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” I said.

I turned away from her, not wanting to hear anything more.

That night, as Mathena slept, I padded out into the moonlight to visit my son’s grave. Red, heart-shaped petals scattered the ground all around it. I focused, tried to send all my feeling down into him as if the ground were my hair in all its magic, as if my own heart—with all its love and grief, as fresh as if it’d just happened—could stream down to him, comfort him in the cold ground.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “that I could not give you life.”

The next morning, I wandered through the garden with Gilles and Mathena, picking herbs that I thought might help me, the right magical combination that might defy fate and anything Mathena had done. Each plant, herb, and vegetable in Mathena’s garden was far superior to anything we grew at the palace. I gathered fresh dandelion, mandrake, burdock root, yarrow, and lady’s mantle. For Snow White, I gathered valerian and poppies, and some of the fennel that lined the garden. It felt good, seeing the results of my own efforts over the years. Gilles watched, fascinated, asking us about the properties of certain plants.

I plucked up a bit of caraway and shook some seeds into my hand. “Take these,” I said, smiling as I dropped them into his palm. “Carry them with you, and you’ll attract a lover.”

I laughed out loud when he blushed in response.

I wished I could stop time, but the sun rose bright above us and I knew the king was expecting us in two days’ time. When I said good-bye to Mathena, I could barely look at her.

“Good-bye, Rapunzel,” she said, pulling me to her, letting her black curls brush against my cheek. “Godspeed.”

As we rode back out of the woods, the two guards following behind us, Gilles turned to me.

“Did you find what you wanted, Your Highness?” he asked.

“How do you mean?”

“Whatever it is you came to ask.”

Around us, wings and leaves flickered in the air. “Yes,” I said, through the pain in my throat. “Though I did not receive the answer I wanted.”