The Book of Gothel, page 8
“I wasn’t sure it was you,” he said, nodding at my clothes.
I looked down. “I didn’t want to be recognized.”
“I’m so sorry about your mother,” Matthäus said. He pulled me to him, his eyes haunted with sorrow. “Mother told me last night.”
In his embrace, my grief arose from where it had been lying in wait. My eyes burned, and I felt myself crumple in his arms. I wanted him to hold me like this forever.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered, pulling back to look at me. “I know how close you were. I’m going to miss her too.”
I didn’t know what to say. There was a knot in my throat. I wiped my face with the blanket, suddenly aware that my nose was running. “When did you get back?”
“Only yesterday.”
“I’m sorry to wake you,” I said, trying not to sound desperate. “The chickens flew away. I forgot to feed them. I need help finishing the last of my mother’s poppets so I can sell them to buy food.”
“Your father isn’t providing for you?”
“He married the widow Felisberta.”
Matthäus’s eyes widened with anger. “Married—so soon?”
“Aye,” I said curtly, my own anger at my father rearing up. “Mother died in December. He moved into her house the day after Christmas. I’ve been living alone, selling poppets for money.”
“He didn’t invite you to move with him?”
I shook my head, pressing my lips together tight.
The sympathy on his face was unbearable. Suddenly aware of how wretched I must seem, I lifted my chin. “I wouldn’t have gone if he did.”
He shook his head. “Let me go tell my father.”
As soon as he went inside, I wiped my face carefully with the blanket. I smoothed its cloth, wishing I had worn something more presentable. I’d become so used to leaving the house in this blanket that I hadn’t spared a thought for how he would see me.
As I waited for him to come out, the street grew visibly lighter. I thought about how Matthäus had promised to see me as soon as he got back. The fact that he was taking so long, that he hadn’t come to see me right away, did not bode well. If he’d fixed things with his father, wouldn’t he have come to tell me right away? By the time he came back out, my heart was full of dread.
He’d changed into his day clothes, put on his overshirt, and stuck a needle in his cape. His expression was difficult to read. “Sorry that took so long. It was hard to convince him to give me the morning off.”
My heart fluttered. I opened my mouth to ask whether he’d talked to his father, then decided I wasn’t ready. His father’s reluctance to let him help me this morning was a bad sign.
We started the walk back to my house, our footsteps echoing through the largely empty street. The only other person we saw was a woman emptying a chamber pot.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come to see you yesterday,” Matthäus said. “I wanted to, but my father was insistent I see someone else first.”
“Who?”
“Phoebe of Kürenberg.”
I knew of the Kürenbergers. They owned estates in the foothills of the mountains in the northern forest and a beautiful cottage on the banks of the lake.
“Did she need to be fitted?”
He heaved a great sigh. “Unfortunately not.”
“Why did your father want you to meet with her?”
He looked pained. Dread knotted my stomach. I had to ask. I couldn’t wait any longer. “Matthäus. Did you talk to your father?”
“Haelewise—”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
He couldn’t meet my eyes. “The conversation didn’t go well.”
I knew he was going to say something along those lines, but hearing him say it was devastating.
“I’m working on it,” he said quickly. “I promise—”
My thoughts whirled. All that hoping I’d done, all that praying. I felt like I was going to be sick.
“Haelewise, I mean it. I’m trying to get through to him. My mother’s on my side.”
He met my eyes.
I took a deep breath. “Thank you for telling me.”
A long moment passed before either of us spoke. Our footsteps echoed on the cobblestones.
“I missed you,” he said finally.
The look on my face must’ve been wretched.
After a moment, he changed the subject. “Did you hear about Princess Ursilda’s wedding?”
“No,” I admitted, trying hard to keep my voice even.
“Her father finally convinced a prince to marry her,” Matthäus went on. “The wedding is next week. Father finished her dress yesterday. He won’t stop joking about sewing wolf-fur onto the sleeves to match her brother’s coat.”
Matthäus kept up a stream of chatter about the wedding, and eventually I regained my faculties enough to pay attention. King Frederick would be attending, and he’d ordered a dress for his runaway daughter in case she turned up. Apparently Ursilda and Frederika were friends, and Frederika had been betrothed to Ursilda’s brother, Prince Ulrich, before she fled.
That detail caught my attention. I stopped in my tracks. Prince Ulrich with the wolf-skin? “No wonder Frederika ran off!”
Matthäus nodded. “I know.”
“Why would he promise his daughter to Ulrich?”
He sighed. “I can only guess that he doesn’t believe the stories.”
When we got to the hut, I started a fire, then set out the unfinished poppets on the table with my mother’s scraps. Bald princes and princesses whose legs were unstuffed, half-clad dukes in sad little capes and nothing else. We planned out seven poppets and began sewing dresses and trousers, threading yarn into scalps. I kept pricking myself with my needle and cursing. The third time it happened, Matthäus stopped me, putting his hand on mine. “Haelewise, will you grant me a request?”
I looked up at him, hopeful. My skin tingled where our hands touched. The look in his eyes said he felt it too. He opened his mouth, his expression dazed, then closed it. His thoughts were clear on his face. He wanted me, and not only that: He was surprised by the strength of his desire. I took his hand in mine and clasped it tightly, smiling at him, praying his request would have something to do with us.
But then, as he looked down at our hands, something shifted inside him. “Give me the needle,” he said, pulling his hand back, his expression resigned.
A moan of protest escaped my lips.
“You can’t sew,” he said, laughing, turning his attention to the task at hand. “Tell me a story instead.”
I turned away so he couldn’t see my disappointment. You can easily entertain him, I told myself, you’re good at this. I forced myself to focus, to think about the kind of story that would be best for this moment. I knew Matthäus liked stories inspired by real-life nobles, stories about illnesses cured and injustice made right. But bitterness poisoned my thoughts. All the ideas that came to mind were tawdry yarns that I knew he wouldn’t like. Scandalous stories that ended badly. I wasn’t in the mood to please him.
Resigning myself to a story I would enjoy telling, I smirked and began the tale. “In stories old, there was a beautiful young queen who couldn’t have children. She shared her husband’s bed every night for years, but her belly never swelled.”
Matthäus blinked at the reference to sex, freezing in the act of threading his needle.
I leaned in closer toward him, our shoulders almost touching, eyebrows raised, my voice an earthy whisper. “The queen drank the royal healer’s teas. She prayed. She tried all the herbs the king’s monks gave her, all the tricks the midwives recommended, but her belly stayed as flat as a board. Eventually, she heard rumors the king would seek an annulment. She sent for a witch from the forest who knew the hidden properties of plants. In secret, the queen asked the witch for a draught that would help her conceive. ‘Life can only be wrought from life,’ the witch told her in her raspy voice. ‘There will be a cost.’”
Matthäus sat up perfectly straight. Part of me felt bad. I understood what I was doing. Using my body to remind him of his feelings for me. Intentionally trying to throw him off balance, telling him a tale that would disturb him. And yet, I couldn’t make myself stop. I was angry, deep down, that Matthäus hadn’t stood up to his father, angry that his father was keeping us apart.
“The queen didn’t care,” I said, defiant. “There was nothing she wouldn’t give up for a child. The witch made her an unnatural elixir. That night, she kept the king awake for many hours.”
By this point, Matthäus had gone completely still, his face bright red. There was a part of me that enjoyed it.
“The next winter, her belly swelled big and round. She laughed and sang. She was hot all the time, no matter how cold it was. When her time drew near, it became difficult for her to sleep. She stayed up all night, embroidering tiny dresses, sitting on the sill with the window open, gazing out. One night while she was sewing, she pricked herself. A droplet of blood fell to the snow. The blood spattered, and a flower grew where it landed. Bright red, it was, the most frightful rose.”
Matthäus watched me, puzzled about where the story was going, but I could see that a part of him was entertained despite himself. A faint smile haunted his lips. I focused on the interested part of him—that part deep inside, which loved stories for their own sake—and spoke to it.
“From the petals of that rose there came a fairy,” I pushed on. My voice rose. “A wicked nymph with hair the color of night and skin the color of snow. Her hair was a tangle of black thorns, and her lips were blood-red. She sang a terrible tune:
“Life from life! Snow White is my name.
Your child will die in three days’ time
unless you make it her name too.”
He looked taken aback at the fairy’s threat, setting down his needle. “By thunder,” he swore. “What did she do?”
I smiled, triumphant that my tale had grabbed him. “She cried out. Her ladies-in-waiting came running. But the fairy had vanished by the time they arrived, leaving only the rose. Barefoot, distraught, in her nightgown, the queen rushed outside to pluck the flower. Only by the time she got there, the rose was gone. When she returned to her chamber—her toes covered in snow, her breathing labored—she had her first pangs. Her labor lasted three nights before the midwife finally told her to push.”
Matthäus leaned forward, waiting for me to continue. I smiled at him, proud that my storytelling had made him so enrapt.
“The queen was so exhausted by the time the baby came that she thought she couldn’t go on. When she finally held her daughter in her arms and saw the strangeness of the girl’s features—her white skin, her red lips, her black hair—she knew what she had done: traded her own life for that of the girl. She drew the child to her breast to nurse, her eyes full of tears.”
Matthäus stared at me, horrified.
I held up my finger. “She called for the king and told him they had to name the child immediately. Snow White, she insisted, so her sacrifice wouldn’t be in vain. Then—her heart breaking—she fell into a swoon. She died the next day.”
Matthäus dropped the poppet he was holding.
I waited an appropriate time before I went on. I had learned this from my mother, from the bishop’s physician. A death is significant, important. A death requires a pause. “The king didn’t take his wife’s death well. His grief made him weak. Within a month, he was remarried. His new bride, Golden Braids, was a powerful witch who had preyed upon him in his grief. She carried a gold hand-mirror in which she could see the whole of the kingdom. She wore a magic yellow shawl made from her own hair.”
I made my eyes widen with the alarm I knew Matthäus would feel at the queen’s unnatural magic. Every good story needs a villain of some sort, and I was still angry about Felisberta. I saw no reason not to choose the stepmother for this one.
“As Snow White grew more beautiful, the aging Golden Braids became envious. The girl’s lips were red. Roses blushed in her cheeks. She reminded the king of his late wife, whom he still seemed to mourn. When the girl turned twelve, Golden Braids convinced the king to promise Snow White to a wicked prince. Unbeknownst to the king, the prince turned into a wolf on the night of every full moon.”
I paused here, overwhelmed, falling into the story, sympathizing with the characters. The grieving king. The fairy daughter. For a moment, I almost sympathized with the queen. “Snow White fled the castle on horseback, black hair twisting behind her. The king asked the queen to use her mirror to find her. But the queen lied to him, saying the mirror only showed mist. In truth, the queen could see Snow White in the mirror: The innocent girl lay in a clearing, fast asleep. After the king went to bed, Golden Braids closed her eyes and murmured a spell that made the night-birds hungry. The evil queen watched in the wonder-mirror, as night-herons and owls flew into the clearing. They hovered above Snow White, landing in the branches of nearby trees. The queen kept chanting the incantation, until there were hundreds of birds in the clearing. She didn’t stop until the birds pecked Snow White to death.”
Matthäus gasped.
“That’s it,” I said, my voice flat. “That’s the end.”
Matthäus paused, sitting up straight. He picked up the poppet he had been sewing and stared at it as if it were a foreign thing. For a long moment, he was silent, examining the poppet. Then he went back to sewing, his voice taking on a thoughtful tone. “Call me a fool. I don’t know. Only a fool expects all to turn out well in life. But I prefer tales that give the listener hope.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Matthäus didn’t come back to my hut for a long time after that. Whether this was because of his father or my story, I didn’t know. I was terribly lonely without him, deeply regretful that my bitterness had gotten the better of me. I turned my story over and over in my mind, wishing I had told it differently.
The blooming of my mother’s garden, that spring, nearly brought me to tears. Every time a new stem burst from the earth, my head filled with memories of kneeling beside her, learning how to plant seeds or identify seedlings. Each new stem bore a name she had taught me. Endive and spinach, sprouts and asparagus. Sometimes I heard the music of her voice as she taught me their names, sweetened by a mother’s love for her daughter, and my heart broke. Other times, the sight of a new cluster of seedlings infuriated me. How dare they thrive—so steadfast, predictable—after their gardener was plucked from the earth?
These betrayals were closely followed by an uprising of flowers. Bloom after bloom of dainty blue primrose, followed by turnip flowers and frothy yellow lady’s mantle. There were new seedlings everywhere, as if turning the earth had inspired old seeds to grow. Turnip and parsnip grew too close to the wall. Each morning, I stood over them, wrapped in my tattered robe, wondering where my father had laid my mother to rest. Was her head beneath the spinach or the primrose? Did the lilies grow over her toes?
One morning, when I went out to weed, I noticed a new plant I didn’t recognize among the lilies, a plant for which my mother never taught me a name. A green stem, twisting up from the soil, with a single purple bud on its tip. Within a few weeks, another plant of its kind sprang up beside it. The next week, more appeared. By May there were dozens of them, scattered across the back of the garden. Strange bushes with leaves like wild lettuce, a bouquet of tiny purple buds at their centers. Light-thieves, my mother would’ve called them. Weeds. I couldn’t bring myself to pull them up.
By summer’s end, they were everywhere, healthy cabbage-like bushes with huge leaves a foot tall and three feet wide. At the center of each where the flowers once bloomed grew tiny nutlike globes, wild green fruit like none I had ever seen before. As the weeks passed, the berries grew larger, their skins turning yellow.
What happened next should have come as no surprise. Matthäus was over a year older than me, eighteen, nearing the end of his apprenticeship. I hadn’t seen him in months. Phoebe of Kürenberg was twenty-one or twenty-two. If her father didn’t marry her off soon, it would be too late. When the priest announced Matthäus’s betrothal to Phoebe during the marriage banns, I was standing in my usual spot behind the rail at the back of the church, near the beggar who often sought alms on the minster steps, where I wouldn’t accidentally sit next to anyone who would recognize me. As soon as the priest said the words Matthäus, son-of-Heinrich-the-Tailor, I was struck with the worst headache I’d ever felt.
I clutched the rail, white-knuckled. The beggar met my eyes. “A marriage,” he breathed. “Is that what drives you away?”
“Away?” I whispered. “Where would I go?”
He didn’t answer.
The priest droned on. The church swam around me. I felt nauseated, as if my body wanted to reject what my ears had heard. Calm down, I told myself. Of course Matthäus is marrying the Kürenberg girl. Did you think that you had mesmerized him, somehow, with your blind-bat eyes and dazzling wit? How could he possibly convince his father to let him marry you?
Somehow I made it through the service. Afterward, I saw Matthäus leaving with Phoebe, her wheat-colored plaits wound around her head like a crown. She wore a rich green dress that clung to her hips. She was a woman, much more so than me, that was clear. Never before had I hated anyone so much.
When I got home from church, for the rest of the day, I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. There is a limit to the amount of loss one person can take; I had already endured more than my share. It seemed unjust for the world to take Matthäus too. It was as if the gods were testing me to find out the limit of what I could take.
The next morning, exhausted, I went out to the back garden to try to make peace with what had happened. I thought I would sit on the broken bench and say a prayer. I’d hoped sitting outside among the plants and vines and stones would calm me, but instead I found myself haunted with memories of my mother. Sitting on that bench, I remembered a spring day we were turning the earth for planting, when a family of robins jumped down from a nest they had made in the back garden wall. The robins had fluttered down, fluting and warbling, to search the freshly dug earth for worms. One of them landed on her skirt, and Mother’s laughter had been brilliant.
