Mirror, Mirror Page 10

  The night was long for Rosamund, as the anguish of her grief did battle with her dread for the uppermost place in her mind. She could not sleep, for fear that her son would be taken away in the night. She could not think, for fear that she truly would go mad if she let herself realize the true depth of her loss. All she could do was wait in slow terror, suffer, and quietly cry.

  A torment though that night was, it was nothing compared to the following days. For the next three nights, the queen continued to dine on the leftovers of Aurora, and on each of those nights Rosamund was dragged from the nursery down to the dining room, and forced to watch. At every meal, the queen offered to share the repast with Rosamund, who refused - at first with indignation and anger, then with an effort at stoic calm, and finally with a trembling apprehension, as she grew more and more afraid of the queen, and weaker in her own mind and body. Rosamund was wasting away from grief and hunger.

  The queen had kept to her word at that first meal, and had given instructions that the princess was not to be given any food while she continued to refuse what was put in front of her at dinner. It had been days since Rosamund had last had a full meal, and though the cook had managed to sneak some very poor fare to her - crusts of bread and other small scraps that would normally have gone to the pig - he was unable to get more to her, as the kitchen was being watched.

  At first the nurse tried to share her own food with Rosamund, which she reluctantly accepted, though in truth the princess had almost no appetite anyway. She sustained herself with dread. Her son also tried to share his food with her, once he came to understand that she was hungry, but Rosamund absolutely refused to take food away from her child.

  It was not long before these small deceptions were discovered however, and the scraps from the kitchen were stopped. Later that same day, the mercenaries appeared at the door, and dragged the nurse away, crying and screaming as she went. Rosamund did not see her again, although every once in awhile she thought that she could very faintly hear the girl screaming from far away in another part of the house - though she told herself that she was imagining things.

  Eventually, the queen finished every last scrap of the murdered child, and Rosamund began to feel that the worst part of her torture was over. Though she knew she would never recover from the loss of her daughter, Rosamund was able to console herself with the thought that the child’s suffering was at least over - which she had not been able to do while the queen paraded her on the dinner table each night. The resignation of despair had crept over her, and she lacked the strength to struggle against it.

  As Rosamund grew more and more resigned to her situation, the queen grew steadily more disgruntled and ill tempered. As the days passed, Eugenia’s craving for human flesh, so recently indulged, became stronger and stronger. She could not understand it, for in the past whenever she had broken down and indulged herself in this manner the craving had gone away - gone away for years at a time. On this occasion however, the craving had only been increased.

  The queen began to suffer a torment of her own, as she tried to subdue the desire to have yet another meal of the forbidden meat. It was made so much the worse by the knowledge that there was another child at hand just upstairs, who would have to be done away with anyway. Eugenia had intended to make the boy suffer much longer than his sister had, as a punishment for being the heir who could take away her brother’s kingdom, but as each hour passed she was more and more tempted to let him follow in his sister’s footsteps instead. Eventually she could stand it no longer, and gave the orders that the boy was to be butchered and prepared in the same way.

  * * *

  Rosamund awoke with a start, and sat up abruptly. The sun had set and the room was dim, for she had not yet lit any of the lamps. “Day?” she said softly, calling for her son. There was no answer, and she stood up carefully, stretching as she did so. She must have fallen asleep, she mused to herself somewhat dully as she cautiously crossed the room and fumbled for the lamp that should be standing on the bedside table.

  She had barely allowed herself to sleep at all since that first terrible night, for fear of what she might awake to find, but sheer exhaustion had eventually overtaken her. It could not have been for long however, Rosamund reflected to herself, as the sun had already been low on the horizon when she had closed her eyes.

  With her mind still clouded with sleep, Rosamund lit the lamp on the table, then moved to light the wall sconces as well. Once the room was filled with the warm glow, she turned towards the low child‘s bed in the corner, prepared to smile lovingly down on the form of her sleeping son. Instead, she saw only tousled sheets and a blanket that had been pulled askew and now trailed half along the floor.

  Panic chased away the last of her drowsiness, and Rosamund called her son’s name again. Frantically she began searching the room, looking under the bed and inside the wardrobe, and any other place that a four year old might think to hide. Just as she was forced to acknowledge that he was no longer in the room, there was a loud pounding from behind her.

  Rosamund jumped and whirled about to look at the door. She heard a key grating in the lock, then the door opened to reveal two of the guards, as cold and expressionless as ever. A terrible dread came over her, and she didn’t resist when they pulled her out of the room and began leading her downstairs. Before they were halfway there however, the guards were more carrying her than leading her, for Rosamund did not seem able to walk.

  Sick and feverish with worry, grief, hunger, and lack of sleep, Rosamund was brought into the dining room and placed in a chair. The queen as in her usual place, and Rosamund heard her speaking as if through a haze. “…my dear, you aren’t looking at all well. I’m afraid you may be ill…“ The room began to blur strangely, and Rosamund could no longer see the queen, only a patch of darker color. “…no matter, for we have a special treat for you this evening…”

  Sudden pain blazed across her face, and Rosamund gasped as her vision and hearing abruptly cleared. After a dazed moment she realized that one of the guards had slapped her, hard. Despite everything that she had gone through, she was still shocked. No one had ever dared to do such a thing to her before, not even when she had misbehaved as a child.

  “As I was saying,” Eugenia went on to say, satisfied that the princess could now hear her. “I considered having him served a la mode, but the sauce served with your daughter was so delicious that I decided to have your son prepared the same way. The new cook is really quite talented - much better than the last one. For some reason we go through cooks very quickly in this establishment.”

  As she spoke a horrible repetition was being pantomimed, with the servant bearing the same silver platter and lid out from the kitchen, and setting it on the table. With the same flourish he removed the lid, and another pile of sauce-drenched meat was revealed. The princess moaned piteously, like an animal that knows it’s about to die, but she no longer had the strength to wail or scream. She did however cry, held helplessly in her chair by the mercenaries, as she was once again forced to watch the bizarre and ghastly sight of the queen consuming her child.

  “On a not un-related subject,” Eugenia said as she helped herself to a generous portion of meat. “What were you thinking of, naming your children Aurora and Day? A more ridiculous pair of names I have never heard of. I’m sure Randolph’s father would never have countenanced it.”

  Rosamund tried to look away as the queen brought the first forkful of food to her mouth, but one of the guards took a firm hold on her chin and pushed her face back around. “…I…what?” she said after a moment, her mind having begun to blur again.

  “Oh, pay attention, do,” said the queen irritably. “I thought that legend of yours said that you had been gifted with intelligence, or wit, or something of that nature. Surely you’re able to follow a simple conversation?”

  “What is wrong with my children’s names?” Rosamund managed to ask.

  “Well, Aurora by itself is perhaps acceptable,” responded Eug
enia, as she began making inroads into her meal. “But when it’s paired with ‘Day’ of all things - what on earth kind of name is ‘Day’?”

  Rosamund stiffened under the guards restraining hands, anger temporarily subduing her exhaustion. “It is my son’s name, and I will thank you to not comment further on the subject.”

  “Really the fault lies with Randolph,” Eugenia continued as if the princess hadn’t spoken. “He should never have permitted such folly.”

  “He named our son Damon,” said Rosamund defensively. “And ‘Day’ is what we call him for short.” The queen retorted about a name of two syllables needing a shorter version of itself, but Rosamund refused to comment further on such a trivial subject. The temporary numbing effect of anger was rapidly wearing off, and her misery and nausea was surging back up around her again.

  As she listened to the queen’s rambling, self-important speeches, Rosamund came to realize that her fear of the woman had disappeared. She no longer had anything to dread - she had days ago given up hope of ever seeing Randolph again, and she had now lost both of her children. There was nothing left for her to lose, and thus nothing left for her to fear.

  Still with that feeling of discovery, Rosamund interrupted the queen and said off-handedly, “You’re quite insane, you know.”

  The queen paused, looking at Rosamund from under lowered eyebrows. Instead of the expected acid comment about people who interrupt others when they are speaking, she leaned back in her chair and seemed to consider the question for a moment. After a long pause, she said, “No, I am not insane. Your husband wanted me to leave court and take up residence in this hunting lodge instead, and I have done so. You might say that I am simply following a royal decree.”

  “Next I suppose you’ll tell me that Randolph really did want us to come here, and that he knew what you were planning to do,” retorted Rosamund bitterly.

  Entranced by this new possibility of torment, Eugenia immediately said, “Are you so certain that he didn’t?” When Rosamund didn’t bother to reply, she pushed a step further. “After all, he kept you shut up in that castle in the woods for years, didn’t he? Kept you a secret? Kept the children a secret? Now that he’s king, and no longer has an excuse to keep you hidden, are you so sure that he didn’t want to just be rid of the lot of you? He might marry again, and could choose a princess whose family and influence haven’t been dead for generations.”

  Rosamund just shook her head, but Eugenia thought that she could see a flicker of doubt in the princess’ eyes, and was satisfied. The queen kept up a stream of mostly one-sided conversation throughout the rest of the meal, and managed to drop any number of barbs on the subject of Randolph’s probable desertion as she did so.

  * * *

  Again, for three days Rosamund went through unimaginable suffering as the queen finished eating Day. At the end of those three days, the princess was beginning to die from her sorrows and privations, and that fact was as clear to everyone who looked upon her as it was to herself. The queen, whose craving had once again been augmented instead of satisfied by her indulgence in human flesh, began to think that it would be a terrible waste if the princess were to be allowed to simply die and be buried somewhere.

  Now quite ravenous for the taste of human, the queen began eyeing the princess more and more avariciously. The craving, the need to consume more human flesh was so great within her that she had no more than finished off the boy than she gave orders that the princess too was to be eaten. It was a shame, in the queen‘s mind, that Rosamund’s flesh would undoubtedly be older and tougher than her tender little children, and when she looked over Rosamund’s now quite scrawny frame the queen knew a moment of real regret that she hadn’t been allowing the princess to eat.

  Eugenia knew another, fainter moment of regret later, for she had hoped to have further tormented the princess by personally informing her of her fate. To the queen’s dismay however, Rosamund received the news almost gladly, even going so far as to say that once her throat had been cut she could be reunited with her children. Displeased, the queen sent her away, and the guards handed the weak and unresisting Rosamund over to the cook.

  Once in the kitchen, Rosamund was seized with a sudden burst of energy, and she rushed across the room and snatched up a large knife that lay there. “Let me do your dark task for you,” she cried, and turned the blade against herself. The cook was at her side in an instant, wrestling the knife away from her and telling her not to be so melodramatic.

  Bereft of her weapon, Rosamund leaned against a table and tried to catch her breath. She was so weak that even this small exertion had winded her, and her fogged brain was having difficulty in understanding the cook’s meaning - for why shouldn’t she be melodramatic at her own death if she wanted to?

  Setting the knife down firmly, the cook gathered Rosamund up and began leading her outside. Clouds dotted the sky, casting wide shadows along the length of the yard, at the end of which stood a small outbuilding, which looked like it was used for cleaning and butchering the kills that hunting parties brought back. When she saw it, Rosamund gave a bitter laugh.

  “Oh, I see,” she said. “You do not wish to make a mess in your kitchen. Well, I cannot blame you.”

  “Be quiet, milady,” the cook said sternly, taking her arm and continuing to proceed across the yard, moving slowly for the princess‘ sake.

  “Excuse me?” Rosamund said, more confused than affronted. When she had met him on their first day at the hunting lodge, the cook had reminded her a great deal of the old steward at her own home. They were much of an age, with their spry movements belied by their white hair, and they had both had the same avuncular attitude towards her children. In the beginning, Rosamund had quite liked the cook, though later events had naturally changed her opinion of the man.

  “I said, be quiet,” the cook repeated in a low voice. “I’m going to tell you something, so that you might prepare yourself, but you must not say anything, and you must keep your head down. The guards often practice back here - anyone could be listening.”

  “What do you mean, you have something to tell me?” asked Rosamund, her voice cracking a little, for her throat had grown sore from frequent sobbing.

  The cook hesitated, as if uncertain of how to proceed. Jumping in, he finally said simply, “Your children are alive.”

  Rosamund’s first thought was that this was as bad a joke as the queen’s. Then she remembered that the queen hadn’t actually been joking, and she hesitated.

  The cook, seeing that the princess was not convinced, began telling his story, of how he had been quite unable to follow his instructions and kill her little girl. Instead, he had hid the child in the outbuilding that they were even now walking towards, and had fed her scraps from the kitchen.

  It had been extremely difficult at first, he went on to say, to keep her quiet and inside the building. Once he had been able to rescue the nurse however, and had smuggled her too into the building, it had become much easier. Adding the princess’ son to the hidden little group had been just as hard, but just as necessary, for he was no killer of children.

  The story was so improbable but so simple that Rosamund found herself believing him, and she stopped halfway across the yard to stare up at him. The cook looked around nervously in case they were being watched, but allowed her to stand still for a moment.

  “So, when the queen thought she was eating…Aurora? She was actually eating…?” Rosamund managed to ask.

  “Lamb, mi’lady. With a strong sauce, naturally,” the cook replied readily.

  “And Day?”

  “A small goat, mi’lady. With the same sauce,” said the cook. “I am quite well known for my sauces,” he added with a touch of pride.

  Rosamund’s eyes shone brightly at him. “As well you should be, sir,” she said, containing her burgeoning hope and happiness with difficulty. “And what about me? What poor animal was going to be served to the queen in my place?” she went on to ask, with something pe
rilously close to a laugh.

  “Oh, I have a small deer all ready,” the cook replied cheerfully, though quietly. “It’s in the outbuilding, waiting for me to take it back. So anyone watching will see the two of us enter, and only me leaving.”

  “And then? What then?” asked Rosamund eagerly, clutching the cook’s arm tightly for support. She wanted to run forward, but was so weak that she still needed his help just to remain standing.

  “Ah, well, mi’lady, that will be the tricky part,” the cook answered. “But it’s my belief that once the queen has finished eating you - or what she thinks will be you - that she will have very little reason to remain here. From what I’ve heard, she never does stay here for very long once she’s done, um, gorging.”

  “And once she’s gone?”

  “Then we’ll have to smuggle you out. Most of the guards will go with her, and the ones that stay become lazy and idle right quick when they know no one is watching them,” the cook said. “I have a cousin who lives not far away - he has a cart and pony that he might be able to lend us for our purpose.”

  As they spoke together in hushed tones, trying to put together a plan of escape, they continued moving steadily towards the outbuilding. With every step closer that they took, Rosamund found it harder and harder to pay attention to what the cook was saying. Her excitement was rising almost beyond control, and was well blended with a terrible fear that it may not in fact be true - that her children might not really be alive, and that this whole conversation was just another cruel gesture orchestrated by the queen.

  Within a few short minutes however they were at the outbuilding’s door, then the cook was unlocking that door, and then she was inside. The room was dim and smelled strongly of deer meat, but Rosamund did not care. She stepped further into the room, looking about eagerly.