Snow Glass Apples: A Play For Voices (2 page)

QUEEN

SOLDIER

KING

PEASANT

SOLDIER

PRINCESS

ARCHBISHOP

WINEBEARER

COURTIERS

HUNTSMAN

LORD OF THE FAIR

FRIAR

JENNA THE QUEEN’S MAIDSERVANT

PRINCE

SFX: INSIDE A CELL, FEET CRUNCHING ON STRAW,
THE QUEEN BACKING AWAY …

QUEEN

Don’t touch—don’t you try to touch me—

SOLDIER

Get her legs. You two, get her arms. And
up!

EXT: THE WINTER FEAST.

A low hubbub, the wail of the wind.

PEASANT

Here they come!

ASSORTED PEASANTS

– Look at her! She’s coming!

– Nothing to be scared of!

–Naked as a jaybird!

–Evil as a demon!

–Witch!

–Monster!

–Murderess!

SOLDIER

That’s where she’s going! You! Open that
door!

SFX: THE KILN DOOR IS OPENED, AND THEN
SLAMMED WITH A DULL BOOM.

INT: FURNACE

The furnace—a big oven or kiln: there is a
slight echo in here. We can barely hear outside the sound of the
people at the winter feast. This is the place from which the queen
is talking to us any flashbacks are in the ambient sound of the
places we are, while the queen’s narration is explicitly from the
furnace. She is talking to us in the language of fairy tales—a
precise, accurate, ever -so -slightly archaic language. She is
telling us her last story. A confessional. She is talking
quietly.

QUEEN—INTIMATE

I do not know what manner of thing she is.
None of us do. She killed her mother in the birthing, but that’s
never enough to account for it.

(beat)

They call me wise, but I am far from wise,
for all that I foresaw fragments of it, frozen moments caught in
pools of water or in the cold glass of my mirror. If I were wise I
would not have tried to change what I saw. If I were wise I would
have killed myself before ever I encountered her, before ever I
caught him.

(beat)

Wise, and a witch, or so they said, and I’d
seen his face in my dreams and in reflections for all my life:
eighteen years of dreaming of him before he reined his horse by the
bridge that day, and asked my name.

SFX: A HORSE IS AMBLING. BIRDS SING. A RIVER
RUNS.

KING

And do you know who I am?

QUEEN

Yes, your majesty.

KING

So you recognised me, eh? Do you live far
from here?

QUEEN

No. Not far, your majesty. Just past those
trees.

KING

Have you food there?

QUEEN

Yes. Just plain food.

KING

Plain food is good food, girl. Any wine?

QUEEN

A little.

QUEEN—INTIMATE

He helped me onto his high horse and we rode
together to my little cottage, my face buried in the gold of his
hair. He asked for the best of what I had; a king’s right, it was.
And he did not leave my cottage that night.

(beat)

His beard was red-bronze in the morning
light, and I knew him, not as a king, for I knew nothing of kings
then, but as my love. He took all he wanted from me, the right of
kings, but he returned to me on the following day, and on the night
after that: his beard so red, his hair so gold, his eyes the blue
of a summer sky, his skin tanned the gentle brown of ripe
wheat.

KING

These days have passed like hours, my
sweet.

QUEEN

Yes.

KING

I am afraid it is time for me to return to
the palace.

QUEEN

Oh?

KING

Darling … will you come with me?

QUEEN

As your slut?

KING

As my queen.

SFX: EXT. WE HEAR A HORSE’S HOOVES AS THEY
APPROACH THE PALACE … BIRDSONG…

QUEEN

I’m scared.

KING

Of the castle? You have nothing to worry
about there. They’ll all love you. Or they’ll have me to answer
to.

QUEEN

No…

(pause)

Odd. I thought I saw a face in that tower
window.

KING

That would be my daughter.

QUEEN

The face was so white. I thought she was a
ghost.

KING

You’d not be the first.

SFX: INT. THE CASTLE, ECHOES AND FOOTSTEPS
GOING UP STONE STAIRS

.

QUEEN

That painting at the top of the stairs. It’s
beautiful. She was your first wife?

KING

The first queen. My daughter’s mother.
Yes.

QUEEN

She was very lovely.

SFX: NOW THEY ARE WALKING DOWN A
CORRIDOR.

KING

Your rooms will be in here. Mine are at the
far end of the hall.

QUEEN

And where does that staircase go?

KING

Those are the little princess’s quarters.

QUEEN

Look! There she is, peeping round the corner.
Hello. Hello little one. I’m your new mother. Are you going to come
and say hello?

SFX/ FOOTSTEPS SCURRY UPSTAIRS.

QUEEN

I think I scared her.

KING

Nothing scares her. It’ll just take her a
while to get to know you.

QUEEN—INTIMATE

His daughter was only a child: no more than
five years of age when I came to the palace. Another portrait of
her dead mother hung in the princess’s tower room; a tall woman,
hair the colour of dark wood, eyes nut-brown. She was of a
different blood to her pale daughter.

(beat)

The girl would not eat with us. I do not
know where in the palace she ate.

(beat)

So, I had my own chambers. My husband the
king, he had his own rooms also. When he wanted me he would send
for me, and I would go to him, and pleasure him, and take my
pleasure with him.

(beat)

One night, several months after I was
brought to the palace, she came to my rooms. She was six. I was
embroidering by lamplight, squinting my eyes against the lamp’s
smoke and fitful illumination. When I looked up, she was there.

QUEEN

Princess?

QUEEN—INTIMATE

She said nothing. Her eyes were black as
coal, black as her hair; her lips were redder than blood. She
looked up at me and smiled. Her teeth seemed sharp, even then, in
the lamplight.

QUEEN

What are you doing away from your room?

PRINCESS

I’m hungry.

QUEEN

I have just the thing.

SFX/ SHE WALKS ACROSS THE ROOM. WE HEAR HER
TAKING A DRIED APPLE FROM THE BEAMS.

QUEEN (cont’d)

When they gathered the apples for the
midwinter feast I had them bring me some extra ones and hang them
in here. Here you are. It’s an apple.

QUEEN—INTIMATE

It was winter, when fresh food is a dream of
warmth and sunlight; but I had strings of whole apples, cored and
dried, hanging from the beams of my chamber, and I pulled an apple
down for her.

QUEEN

Everything has a season, princess. Did you
know that? Autumn is the time of drying, of preserving. It’s the
time when we pick apples, and we render the goose fat, and we store
food away. Now, winter is the time of hunger, of snow, and of
death; and that’s when we have the midwinter feast. Have you ever
been to the midwinter feast? No?

Well, first of all, we take a whole pig, and
we stuff it with that autumn’s apples, then we slather its skin
with goose fat, so it’ll be nice and crispy when it’s cooked, then
we roast it in a huge old brick oven, and everyone in the town
comes to feast upon the crackling. And if you’re good, I’ll take
you to the next festival. Would you like that?

PRINCESS

Will father be there?

QUEEN

Yes. I’m sure he will …You are so hungry.
Look at you devour that apple. What sharp little teeth you must
have.

SFX// THE GIRL IS EATING THE APPLE.

QUEEN

Is it good?

PRINCESS

Nice apple.

QUEEN—INTIMATE

Up till that moment, I had been, I suppose,
almost scared of the little princess, but looking down at her then
I warmed to her and, with my fingers, gently, I stroked her cheek.
She looked at me and smiled— she smiled but rarely—then she sank
her teeth into the base of my thumb, the Mound of Venus, and she
drew blood.

QUEEN

(She starts to scream)

QUEEN—INTIMATE

Then she looked at me and I fell silent.

(beat)

Her mouth fastened to my hand, where the
blood ran, and she licked and sucked and drank.

PRINCESS

Thank you. Nice.

SFX. THE PRINCESSES FOOTSTEPS WALK AWAY. THE
DOOR CLOSES.

QUEEN—INTIMATE

Beneath my gaze the cut that she had made
began to close, to scab, and to heal. The next day it was an old
scar: I might have cut my hand with a pocket-knife in my
childhood.

SFX—THE YOUNG QUEEN BEGINS TO CRY … OVER
IT: