The Fairest of Them All (25 page)

T
he 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.”

O
ver the next several years I was, for the most part, happy. King Josef continued to love me and
to fill my life with delights, constantly—new delicacies, otherworldly art and poetry. I loved him and was faithful to him, I loved Snow White, and I grew closer to Gilles, my one great friend and confidant at court. My ladies continued to try to comfort and please me, though I spent more and more time away from them. Most often, I passed my days hawking or riding through the countryside or walking
through the palace gardens. Snow White and I continued to ride the gardens and fields and to dispense help where we could, though our kingdom was thriving—thriving everywhere, that is, but in the king’s own chambers.

I continued to try every spell I could find, every combination of plants, to conceive. I prayed to Artemis and Zeus and Hera, as well as to the god the priest spoke about. But as
the months became years, no one believed that I would ever carry an heir. I became known, throughout the court and no doubt the kingdom, as deeply unlucky. I could feel it, through courtiers who brushed against stray strands of my hair, through Clareta and Josef, who never would have voiced the thoughts they carried
inside them. That I was unlucky, a witch queen from the forest.

One day Yolande
came up behind me, her hand grazing my hair as she touched my shoulder, and I could feel the thought that was buried in her mind: that she would have made a better wife to Josef than me. Her blood was more royal, her womb more fertile. I wanted to turn and smack the insolence out of her, but there was no use. She was not the only one who had such thoughts.

“Mirror, mirror, on the wall,” I began
asking every morning, my own ritual, “who’s the fairest of them all?”

The mirror comforted me, let me take refuge in my own beauty, though that beauty seemed more and more useless to me as time went by.

J
osef’s advisors urged him to take another wife, but he refused. Father Martin made clear that he thought God was punishing us. Everyone knew what he meant but was forbidden
to say it openly: that God was punishing the kingdom for letting a witch sit on the throne.

Even Snow White began pulling away from me as she grew older. It was only natural, I suppose, that she would become more interested in her peers than in her stepmother, but it stung me nonetheless. I watched her at feasts as she danced and laughed with her friends, the fine-boned children of nobles. It
didn’t help that by the time she was fourteen, she looked even more like Teresa than she had before. More than once I caught a glimpse of her around a corner and was sure it was the dead queen’s ghost returning to me. Mocking me, and punishing me, for what I’d done.

It became clear that Snow White was—and would remain—the sole heir to the kingdom. I tried to tamp down my darkest
thoughts, but
could not help feeling that it should have been my son. That somehow, she had wrested away what should have been his.

T
hat autumn, I found a new spell in Mathena’s book. One that was technically for husbandry but that I thought might work on me. I infused each herb with intent, and whispered over them before downing them all in a tea.

The night of the harvest ball, Clareta
prepared my hair and painted my face, and I wore a new dress, a shimmering pale blue, the color of a robin’s egg. I was pleased with my reflection, though I missed the laughter of my ladies and Snow White scurrying around me. Now Snow White prepared herself in her own chambers, surrounded by her ladies. My own ladies were silent, giving each other secret looks, and I could feel their disapproval
as if it were rain.

I stepped into the ballroom and stood framed by the golden doorway, as my ladies arranged my hair around me. I braced myself for their judgments and dark thoughts. Snow White was there already, sitting with a young nobleman and his sister, both from a prominent family. Her eyes flashed up as I entered, and then she quickly looked away. The king sat at our raised table, dressed
in rich, jeweled robes. He was laughing, surrounded by lords and ladies.

When he turned to face me, I could feel the blood rushing to my face, under his gaze. The rest of the court was silent now, watching me, but I cared only for what he thought.

His face lit up when he saw me, as if a torch had been set ablaze within him. He smiled. “Rapunzel,” he called.

As I approached the dais, one of
the ladies gathered around him met my eye. She was red-haired, someone I’d never seen before, dressed in a pale pink dress that nipped in at the waist and exaggerated the span of her hips. She had hair stuck through with diamond pins and hanging down to her elbows. Her hand, I realized, was on my husband’s shoulder.

I glared at her, whispered a quick spell, and she snatched her hand away as if
she’d been burned.

“My queen,” he said, as affectionately as he ever had.

I forced myself to smile.

He leapt from the table, came around, and swept me out to the marble floor. Everyone moved aside. I looked up, caught sight of the redhead watching us, envy animating all her perfect features.

We moved around and around. I leaned into him, let him guide us both, as above us the chandeliers seemed
to drip ice.

“I love you,” I said, into his skin, over and over.

T
hat night, I waited for him to come to my room. I lay on my bed with my gown unlaced and pulled down over my shoulders, my hair unfurling to the floor. Around me, the torches flickered along the walls and through the diaphanous curtains that dropped around me. I could feel the magic working. Tonight, I hoped,
we would finally make another child.

My skin was warm, soft. I ran my palm down my thigh, pulled up the crisp fabric.

I concentrated, reciting additional spells under my breath. For fertility, for love, to make him come to me.

I rose from the bed and looked out of the window, up at the
star-strewn sky. Surely he had left the ballroom and prepared himself for me by now.

I went back to bed and
struggled not to fall asleep, though the mattress felt so comfortable, the fire so warm, the wine had made me so relaxed . . .

I wasn’t sure how much time had passed when I woke, but the night was quiet now. I listened, but did not hear even the faintest music from the ballroom, or any sound of carriages leaving from the front of the castle.

I left my room and stepped into the outer chambers,
where a guard stood staring into the fire. He turned quickly at my approach. “Your Highness?”

“Has the king come to visit?” I asked, trying to keep the desperation out of my voice.

“No, my lady,” he said, bowing to me. But he did not seem to want to meet my eye.

“He has not sent for me, either?”

“No, my lady. Not that I have been told.”

“Do you need something, Your Highness?” another voice
asked. I turned as Clareta entered the room.

“Lace me,” I said. “I will go to see the king myself.”

Her eyes darted to the guard and then back to me. Then she nodded, and moved quickly behind me to move my hair and lace me into the dress. I’d wanted him to see me lying half in it, with the flames reflecting off the stones, before I slipped out of it.

As she touched me, I could feel her pity
moving through me. She believed the king had rejected me. I was furious at him for letting someone like her think such a thing, and gritted my teeth until she finished.

“Shall I accompany you, Your Highness?” the guard asked. “And announce you to the king?”

“Yes,” I said, lifting my chin. I knew he would follow me, regardless.

The palace seemed deserted, full of ghosts and secrets. As we passed
the portrait of Queen Teresa, I did not look up, afraid to see her face staring down at me in the dark.