Kissing the Witch (5 page)

We trotted along for some hours without speaking; the princess seemed lost in daydreams, and my mother had taught me never to be the first to break a silence. The day grew hotter as the sun
crawled up the sky. Sweat began to break through the princess’s white throat, trickling down the neck of her heavy gold dress. My thin smock was scorching through.

Suddenly there was a glint in the trees. The princess brought her great white horse to a halt and said, without looking at me, Please fill my golden cup with some cool water from that
stream.

The heat in my head was a hammer on an anvil, pounding a sword into shape. It was the first order I ever disobeyed in my life. If you’re thirsty, I told her, get it yourself.

The princess turned her milky face and stared at me. When my eyes refused to fall she climbed down, a little awkwardly, and untied her cup. She pulled back her veil as she walked to the stream.
I was thirsty myself, but I didn’t move. The white horse looked round at me with its long eyes that seemed to say, If her mother only knew, it would break her heart. When the princess walked
back from the stream, her mouth was wet and her cheeks were pale.

We rode on for several hours until the sun was beginning to sink. The princess reined in at the edge of a river and asked me again, more shyly, if I would fetch her some water. I did mean to say
yes this time, now that I had taught her a lesson; I was not plotting anything. But when I opened my mouth the sound that came out was No. If you want to drink, I said hoarsely, you have to stoop
down for it.

I held her gaze until her eyes fell. She got down and stepped through the rushes to the water. The horse tossed its foam-coloured head and neighed as if warning of an enemy approach. My lips
were cracked; my tongue rasped against them as I watched the princess. She bent over the stream to fill her cup, and something fluttered from the curve of her breast into the water. My
handkerchief, she cried, as it slid away. As if saying what it was would bring it back.

With that I leaped down from my knock-kneed horse and waded into the river. I found the square of linen caught in a knot of reeds, mud silting over the three brown drops. I turned and shook it
in the princess’s face. A drop of water caught on her golden sleeve. You know nothing, I told her. Do you even know how to wash a handkerchief?

She shook her head. Her cheeks were marked with red, like faint roads on a map.

You scrub it on a rock like this, I told her, and scrub again, and scrub harder, and keep scrubbing until your fingers are numb. Look, the spots are coming out. Your mother’s royal blood
is nearly gone.

The princess made a small moan.

Look, there are only three faint marks left, I said. And then you find somewhere off the ground and leave it to bleach in the sun, I instructed her, tossing the handkerchief up into the high
branches of a tree.

The princess’s eyes left the handkerchief and came back. Hers was the look of the rabbit and it brought out all the snake in me. Take off your dress, I told her.

She blinked.

Take off your dress or I’ll strip it from your body with my bare hands.

She reached behind to unfasten the hooks. I didn’t help. I watched. Then I slipped my own plain dress over my head. The air felt silken on my shoulders. The dresses lay crumpled at our
feet like snakeskins. Look, I said. Where is the difference between us now?

The princess had no answer.

I picked up the golden cup and filled it from the stream. I drank until my throat hurt. I splashed my face and arms and breasts until I shivered despite the sun. Then I stepped into the stiff
golden dress and turned my back on the girl. After a moment she understood, and began to do up the hooks and eyes. When she was finished, she hesitated, then pulled on the smock I had left in a
heap by the rushes. It suited her. Her fair hair hung around her dry lips. I filled the cup again and passed it to her. She drank without a word.

When I got on to the white horse, it reared under me, and I had to give it a kick to make it stand still. I waited until I could hear the girl settling in the saddle of the old nag, and then I
wheeled around. I am the queen’s daughter, I told her, and you are my maid, and if you ever say otherwise I will rip your throat open with my bare hands.

Her eyes slid down to my fingers. The skin was angry, with calluses on the thumbs; anyone who saw it would know. I rummaged around in the saddlebag until I found a pair of white gloves and
pulled them on. The girl was looking away. I moved my great horse alongside hers, until I was so close I could have struck her. Swear by the open sky, I whispered, that you will never tell anyone
what has happened by this river.

I swear by the open sky, she repeated doubtfully, raising her eyes to it.

We rode on. The gold dress was heavier than I could have imagined. My bones felt as if they had been made to bear this burden, as if they had found their one true dress at last.

It was dark by the time we reached the palace. They had lit a double row of torches for us to follow. The prince came to the foot of the steps and lifted me down from my horse. Through the hard
brocade I couldn’t feel whether he was warm or cold. He was pale with nerves but he had a kind face. At the top of the steps I made him put me down. I said, The maid I brought with me.

Yes? His voice was thin but not unpleasant.

She does not know anything about waiting on ladies. Could you set her to some simpler task?

Perhaps she could mind the geese, suggested the prince.

I gave a single nod and walked beside him towards the great doors. My back prickled. If the girl was going to denounce me this would be the moment for it. But I heard nothing except the clinking
harnesses as they led the horses away.

I found that I knew how to behave like a princess, from my short lifetime of watching. I snapped my fan; I offered my gloved hand to be kissed; I never bent my back. At times, I forgot for a
moment that I was acting.

But I never forgot to be afraid. I had wanted to be married at once, but the pace of royal life is stately. There were pigs to be fattened, spices to wait for, the king and his army to come
safely home. I was given a broad chamber with a view of the city arch and all the fields beyond.

The first week slid by. The goose girl seemed to go about her duties without a word. I had never eaten such good food in my life, but my stomach was a knotted rope. Every day I made some excuse
to pass by the stables and catch a glimpse of the great white horse in its box. Its eyes grew longer as they fixed on me. If the queen her mother only knew, they seemed to say.

I became convinced that it was the horse who would betray me. It was not scared the way the goose girl was. In the dreams that came to ride me in my gilt feather bed, the horse drew pictures in
the mud under the city arch with its hoof, illustrating my crime for all the court to see. Sometimes it spoke aloud in my head, its voice a deep whistle, telling all it knew. I woke with my knees
under my chin, as if I were packed in a barrel, as we punish thieves in these mountains. That evening at dinner I said to my pale fiancé, That brute of a horse I rode here tried to throw me
on the journey.

Then we will have it destroyed, he assured me.

His eyes were devoted, the shape of almonds. He looked as if he would believe every word that slipped from my mouth.

The next day, I passed by the stableyard, and the box was empty. Back in my chamber, I threw the window open to the delicate air. My eye caught sight of something bright, nailed to the city
arch. Something the shape of a horse’s head. Below it stood a girl, geese clacking at her skirts. From this distance I couldn’t be sure if her lips were moving.

She must have bribed the knacker to save the horse’s head and nail it up where she would pass by. She must have guessed the exact shape of my fears. I watched her make her way through the
arch and out into the open fields.

Another week crawled by. Every day I looked out for the girl pausing under the arch with her noisy flock, and tried to read her face. I wore my finest dresses, but my heart was drumming under
their weight. I kept my white gloves buttoned, even on the hottest days.

I began to worry that the queen might come to the wedding after all, as a surprise for her daughter, despite the danger of leaving her kingdom unguarded. In the dreams that lined up along my
bed, the queen pointed at me across the royal dining table and slapped the crown from my head. She ripped the glove from my hand and held up my finger, pressing it to the point of her knife, till
dark drops stained the tablecloth: See, she cried, there is nothing royal about this blood, common as dirt. When I woke, doubled up, I felt as if they were driving long spikes through the sides of
the barrel, into my skin.

One day I heard that a messenger had come from the kingdom of my birth. I couldn’t get to him before the prince did. I sat in my chamber, waiting for the heavy tramp of the guards. But the
step, when it came at last, was soft. The prince said, The queen your mother has fallen in battle.

So she will not be coming to the wedding? I asked, and only then understood his words. I bent over to hide my face from him; his gentle eyes shamed me. I hoped my laughter would sound like
tears. And then the tears did come, and I hoped they were for her, a queen dead in her prime, and not just for my own treacherous self.

I don’t know who told the goose girl. I had not the courage. I suppose she heard it in the kitchen, or from a goose boy. I thought that the moment of hearing might be the moment she would
run through the court to denounce me. But the next morning she was standing under the arch in the usual way, her face turned up as if in conversation with the rotting head above her. She paused no
longer than usual before walking her flock into the fields.

The day before the wedding I rode out into the country. I found myself near the river where it all began, this fantastical charade. I stopped beside the bank, and there in the tree above my head
was a flash of white.

I had to take off my dress to climb, or I would have got stuck in the branches. The tree left red lashes on my arms and thighs. At last my hand reached the handkerchief. It was washed through by
the dew and bleached stiff by the sun, but there were still three faint brown marks.

I saw then that the end was coming. When I had dressed myself I rode straight for the fields around the castle to find the goose girl. All at once I knew it would be tonight she would tell them;
she was waiting till the last minute, so my hopes would be at their highest just before the guards came to take me away to a walled-up, windowless room.

There she was with the breeze blowing her yellow hair out of its bonds and across her sunburned face. I rode up to her, then jumped down. I held out the handkerchief; my hand was shaking. It
still bears the marks of your mother’s royal blood, I told her. If I give it to you now, will you let me run away before you tell them?

She tucked the handkerchief into her rough dress and said, Tell what?

I stared at her. Your fear of me will die away, I said. Your need to speak the truth will swell within you. You will be overheard lamenting as you sleep beside the stove; you will confide in the
reeds and they will sing it back.

Her eyes flicked upwards. She said, By the open sky, I swear I will never tell what is not true.

But you are the royal princess, I reminded her.

A little time passed before she spoke. No, she said, I don’t think so, not any more. The horse helped me to understand.

What?

When it was alive, it seemed to be a proud and stern horse, she said. After you had it killed, I could hear it talking in my head, and what it had to say surprised me.

My mouth was hanging open.

I’ve grown accustomed to this life, the goose girl went on. I have found the fields are wider than any garden. I was always nervous, when I was a princess, in case I would forget what to
do. You fit the dresses better; you carry it off.

My mouth was dry; I shut it. I could hardly believe her words, this unlooked-for reprieve. If your mother only knew, I protested, it would break her heart.

My mother is dead, said the girl, and she knows everything now.

When I heard her, the barrel I felt always around my ribs seemed to crack open, its hoops ringing about my feet. I could breathe. I could stretch.

That night at dinner the prince filled my goblet with the best wine, and I gave him a regal smile. He had very clean fingernails and the blue pallor of true royalty. He was all I needed. Perhaps
I would even grow to love him in the end, once I was truly safe; stranger things had happened. Once I had the crown settled on my head and a baby or two on my lap, who knew what kind of woman I
might turn out to be? That night I slept deep and dreamless.

During the wedding, my mind wandered. I looked out of the chapel window, on to the rooftops. From here I couldn’t see the city arch, or the wide yellow fields. I wondered how the goose
girl had felt when she heard the wedding bells. I thought of how both of us had refused to follow the paths mapped out for us by our mothers and their mothers before them, but had perversely gone
our own ways instead, and I wondered whether this would bring us more or less happiness in the end.

Then I heard a tiny cough. When the prince took his lace handkerchief away from his mouth, there was a spatter of blood on it. I gave my husband a proper, searching look for the first time. I
saw the red rims of his eyes, the hollows of his cheeks. Once more I seemed to feel the barrel locked around me, the spikes hammering through. I knew if I was not with child in a month or two, I
would have nothing to hold on to. The day after my husband’s funeral I would be wandering the world again in search of a crown I could call my own.

Passing one day under the arch I looked

up and asked the grin of bone,

Who were you

before the queen chose you as her horse?

And the horse said, Will I tell you my own story?