The Queen's Poison
My coffin is wide. Airy. I remember how they left holes in the unusual gilt ornamentation of the glass lid. If it were not for that detail, I would be fully visible to random wanderers—and dead. Truly dead.
Though fully conscious I cannot move. My eyes stay shut as they did when I collapsed to the floor. When I came to, surrounded by my friends, I remained paralyzed.
I remember how she boasted about her knowledge of poisons. Publicly, but it was only with me—still a child—that she would share great details.
Not just poisoned food or drink. She knew how to create poisonous vapors. Poisonous objects.
Poisons that would kill within a fraction of a second. Or cause slow lingering deaths. Or not take effect until years after being ingested when the victim would suddenly fall dead from a heart attack.
Poisons to render unconscious. Poisons to cause paralysis.
“The wonder about this elixir, Snowdrop,” she lowered the vial of dark gold liquid to my eye level, “Is it doesn’t kill immediately. Once the victim has swallowed it, they will be unable to speak or move. Even if they are able to recover days later, the recovery will come too late. For they will seem to be dead to all around them and be buried alive.” She chuckled a little. “I reserve this for my worst enemies.”
I had no idea she hated me this much until now.
Do they have any idea I’m still alive? They have been around since the beginning of the world and know a lot.
They wept bitter tears. I felt some fall upon me.
I struggled to make the smallest sound or movement but couldn’t. My friends washed and dressed my passive form. I felt them carry me outdoors and lay me in the coffin I had seen them make months before. As a dark jest. Or so I thought at the time.
“Humans aren’t like we are,” said Verm. “They die. But unlike the beasts and birds they don’t stay dead forever.
“Is she dead now?” asked another. “She’s no paler than usual.”
Verm responded by clasping my wrist for a pulse and feeling my face to see if I retained heat. It was summer though. Finally, he held a large feather over my mouth and nose. I struggled to exhale more.
“I fear that she is, but maybe not. We’ll keep her here above earth and check on her every evening until she visibly decays or recovers. Help me with this lid. If Eva still lives, she’ll be kept cool, so she won’t thirst as much.
“Farewell Eva. Farewell, sweet child.” He kissed my right cheek and wept audibly. The other six took their turns. Each said goodbye and kissed one of my cheeks or forehead.
It doesn’t matter than they are only three feet high. That they are odd looking and the color of clay. I love them dearly. They are my protectors. My fathers. My brothers.
My father and my brother…
My mother…
Mother was no consort who wheedled her way into court politics through her husband as she loved to remind all around her. She was of royal lineage. The scion of a mighty house of renown. House Ignatius— said to be the mightiest bloodline among the Seven Kingdoms. Known as the most ruthless among its numerous enemies.
Born to be queen and occupy the throne. Her majesty, Lilith I. Sovereign monarch of the Kingdom of Grimm.
At the start there were five brothers. The oldest died of a fever as a small child. The other four died during my grandfather’s final lingering illness within a single fortnight.
The two youngest died of mysterious illnesses. The next youngest—my mother’s twin—died in a mysterious hunting accident. The second oldest suddenly drowned himself for no known reason.
Then Grandfather expired and the court physician suggested he had been smothered. Mother swore to bring the killer to justice.
Upon ascending the throne at age nineteen she tried and found Grandfather’s widow—his young second wife who had tenderly nursed him during his long days of sickness—guilty of murder and treason.
“To the end she kept protesting her innocence. Her love for my father,” She would speak the last words scornfully. “But it did her no good. Grete was burned alive. A punishment befitting a regicide. Alas. My stepmother’s air of wounded innocence and blonde good looks could not save her as she was led weeping to the stake.”
Mother laughed a little, rubbing her hands together. “Once the fire was lit her pleas turned to shrieks. Grete expired from the heat before the flames significantly damaged her dainty body. I’m sure the pretty little thing would have found consolation in that if she had known.”
I keep remembering. These thoughts—dark as they are—distract me from my current helpless situation.
God bless the seven little men. Still watching over me. My protectors. They may save me yet.
Though blessed with a striking beauty, a beauty unlike that of any other in the land it was said, mother rejected all offers of marriage. The abundant fields, forests, and mines of Grimm, its river with access to the sea would have rendered a much plainer queen desirable.
Mother frequently played with the proposals. Pretending to consider offers from all the kings asking on behalf of their sons or themselves.
All those portraits by Grimm’s greatest artists she had painted and sent out to various kingdoms for men to worship. All those poems and songs written in praise of her majesty’s great beauty. Her favorite song which troubadours sing to this day was, “To the Fairest of Them All.”
This offered her countless opportunities for banquets, balls, jousting tournaments, and other courtly amusements. Opportunities to display her kingdom’s riches, her opulent tastes and ability to throw lavish parties. And that rare beauty which, combined with her artful charms, could drive men mad. Killing themselves or one another in vying for her lovely hand.
How do I know all these stories? They reside among my earliest memories. Stories my mother recited to me over and over while combing my hair. Back in the days when she loved me.
Knowing my mother, it’s impossible to think she had a maiden’s head to offer my father on their wedding night. Especially since she was over thirty, having reigned solitary for twelve years before accepting him as her consort.
All those parties and countless attractive young men. So tall and muscular. She would discuss their comeliness—their “manly forms”—to me in a way unfit for a six-year-old’s ears.
Part of the reason she remained unwed for so long was her own lofty lineage and wealth. Few houses were so high and pure as that of Ignatius. Few kingdoms, near or far, were so rich as Grimm.
In the end, the marriage offers grew fewer. Mother’s hair remained thick and black, her form slender, her fair skin smooth. Yet she had lost the first bloom. Many kings and princes decided no alliance would result and they were being toyed with.
Looking back, I believe my mother did not wish to share her throne. She certainly didn’t want some powerful king to rule over Grimm through her.
“Such a man would have confined me to the domestic duties of his castle,” she frequently told me. A sneer on her cold, beautiful face.
Even being allowed to retain some powers as his co-regent was unacceptable. I believe the young king of Forstenwald—just across Grimm’s mountains—made her such an offer early in her reign. He withdrew it and married another shortly after.
“A woman of the people.” Mother would laugh disdainfully. “A commoner from among his own bourgeoise.”
Finally acknowledging the need for an heir, Mother began frantically searching for a husband after turning thirty. Due to a strange lack of branching in the family tree of Ignatius there were no nephews or nieces ready for immediate succession. Too few marriages altogether, too few born (who lived past infancy), too many marriages between first and double cousins. My prolific grandfather had been an anomaly.
Her counselors reminded her that the next in line was a distant cousin from the House of Pelagius. There had been a long-standing rivalry which had become a feud between our houses.
Upon being urged to seek peace with them, Mother searched among the nobility of Grimm for a husband. Her mother’s younger sister had wed a noble from my father’s court. Both of royal extraction and noble birth.
(There was a nasty rumor I later heard that the connection between my mother and father was even closer. The duke whom my great-aunt had married was older than her father and suffered from a clubfoot. My Grandfather was a lusty man when young and loved to hunt and falcon at their estate.)
His lordship Wilhelm, Marquis of the Copper Mountains, was barely twenty. Tall and comely yet lacking the strength and animal virility Mother prefers in men. His physique was very slender even for a youth. His face was unusually pale despite his freckles, with enormous dark eyes that had hollows beneath, and a reddish beard so sparse Mother bade him shave it off for their wedding.
But he was not to be her lover, nor her king. Instead, he was made Prince Wilhelm, royal consort to Queen Lilith I of Grimm.
“It took him over a year to beget you,” Mother said. “I should have guessed he was consumptive from all that coughing he did during our wedding.
“Yet I finally felt the change within my body. The royal physician confirmed that I was pregnant.
“As my stomach began to swell, I ordered new gowns to be made to conceal it. While my servants spun, wove and sewed me 100 ample gowns, I sat watching. Too weary for my normal diversions.
“I took to embroidery. While working on a sampler that winter, I gazed out the window and called for my furs. It was the dead of winter.
“The royal hunters had left the entrails of a deer within view. Several ravens settled down upon it. Red and black over white.
“As I gazed upon this scene, I ran the needle deeply into the fleshy part of the middle finger of my left hand. Drops of my blood spilled onto the cambric inside the ebony hoop.
“I said to one of the servants, ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I had a child with skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and hair as black as ebony? Wouldn’t it be glorious to have a daughter exactly like myself?’
“Then you, my precious Snowdrop, were born six months afterwards.”