Briar Rose - Part 3 of 4
Music pulls me from my sleep. Notes plucked out in candlelight.
Chapter 12
Music pulls me from my sleep. Notes plucked out in candlelight. They penetrate the glass case, wind around me, stroke my skin. I sit up, leaving my body, and slip out. Isabella pauses in her lute playing.
“Are you not afraid someone will find you here?” I ask her.
“The palace sleeps. Only we are awake. I made sure of it.”
“You drugged the entire palace? I can see why my ladies do not want you moving into the tower. They fear your power.”
“But they use it when it is convenient for them.”
“I believe I have heard something of that.”
She laughs and puts the lute aside. And as easily as old friends, we fall into conversation. This will be the pattern of our nights together, and though I fear the Duke will not take the powder she slips into his wine one day, and he will come here and find her in my chamber, still the knowledge that I will not pass the night alone comforts me.
Sometimes I visit her, and those nights there is no need to drug anyone for no one can see me pass through the palace. In the pavilion, she keeps her voice low, lest the guards outside hear her speaking. Even if they did, as she points out, they believe her to be in contact with spirits, and so the sound of her speaking in a tent devoid of anyone but herself would surprise no one.
“They keep their distance, those men out there,” she laughed one night. “Lest they be drawn into black magic.”
“I wanted to ask you about the hedge,” I say. “You made a corridor through it. But the rest still circles the palace. The thorns are as deadly as ever. Was your magic not strong enough to truly defeat the briar roses?”
“Why defeat them? I like to look on them. Only a corridor was required, no more.”
I know there are things she does not tell me. She makes plans. They will serve the Duke ill, but that’s an easy guess. The details I know nothing of. Perhaps she casts a spell over me for I should not trust her and yet I do. Each day, each night, I long more for her company. This is surely an enchantment, though different from the spell of sleep.
Chapter 13
One morning, after a night’s visit with Isabella, I sit up from my sleeping form only to find the Duke standing over the casket. Of course, he does not see me as I slip through the case. Instead, he stares down on his sleeping princess with an expression that unsettles me. And I wonder if he has ever visited me while I slept or visited Isabella. He is the very model of a handsome aristocrat. And now, watching him, studying his fine clothes and his bearing, I wonder what manner of man would want a wife he can never converse with, one he would lay out for display before others.
He raises his hand, as if to open the casket, and I step away, ready to flee.
There is laughter outside the chamber. One of the ladies. He moves away from the glass case and steps over to the window, his hands clasped behind his back as the door swings open. The ladies fall silent as they spy his silhouette. One studies my sleeping form in the casket, but appears to find nothing amiss. He exchanges a few words of greeting with them, and then is gone.
“Never to grow old, never to die, not as long as she sleeps,” a lady muses later that morning. “I pity any children she has for they will never have a kind word from her, much less proper mothering.”
“And who shall look after her once His Grace is gone?”
“I’ll tell you what I’ve heard,” the painted lady whispers. “They are saying His Grace tried to wake her, but could not. According to the stories, one would come who would break the spell of sleep, who would stir her sleeping heart to wakefulness. And he tried but failed so now he’s trying to say he likes her just as she is.”
“I don’t believe that,” scoffs another lady. “She is worth more to him in her present state. People will come from far and wide to see the sleeping princess. Already, we have visitors petitioning to see her.”
“But he is turning them away.”
“Only because they are not important enough.”
“The plan is working. This palace has come to life again.”
Chapter 14
That visit made by the Duke to my chamber is the first of many. Soon, he comes once, twice a day. One evening, in flickering candlelight, he opens the case and runs his fingers through my hair, his hands over my form. I shudder and retreat into a darkened corner of the room. He stares an hour or more, then after closing the case, he departs. When the door of the chamber creaks open again, I want to run and throw myself on Isabella and beg for her protection. But my form will only pass through hers.
Her greeting smile fades. “What troubles you? Has something occurred?”
“Oh, Isabella, I would gladly have met death when you first came here. A quick, painless death. It was infinitely better than to endure my sleep alone, with all the people I once knew gone, and nothing but murderous strangers around me. Now I have no wish to die, but it could happen. Someone, the Duke, could decide to end my life and I can do nothing about it. If he were to die, what would become of me?”
“These things do not signify.”
“Oh, but they do. How easy it is for you to say it doesn’t signify. You are not the one imprisoned.”
“And I have told you more than once that I am working on the solution to the problem.”
“How? I see no evidence of it. You visit me, I visit you. What do you mean to do?”
“Trust me.”
“I can’t bear this! He comes and stands over my casket, staring for hours. Every day.”
“Why did you not tell me?”
“Why don’t you know? Are you not a witch? Do you not hear the palace gossip?”
“I knew he paid you visits, but not that they passed for hours.”
I wrap my ghostly arms around myself. “I thought he might grow weary of looking at a sleeping woman. But he does not. Today, he opened the casket. He ran his fingers through my hair. He touched me where I would not be touched. Not by him.”
Isabella’s face darkens. She steps forward, reaches out a hand to caress me, but it passes through my arm.
“See,” I say bitterly, “you cannot offer me comfort. You can do nothing for me.”
“Oh, but I can.”
I shake my head and turn away, shedding ghostly tears. Never in the past one hundred years have I felt so alone. “Leave me. I do not want company tonight.”
“No.”
“This is my chamber, and I ask you to leave it. I cannot push you out, I cannot call on guards to throw you out. You have the advantage. But if you have any feeling at all for me, you’ll go and leave me be.”
“Very well,” she says, and her tone is low and sad. “I shall go. But you are wrong when you say I cannot comfort you.”
“I don’t want words! It’s not words I need to comfort me.”
“I didn’t mean words.”
I turn then to look on her. She is standing by the casket.
“Go into your sleeping form and I will open the casket and take your hand.”
“The casket is locked. Only he has the key.”
“No, I have one too.” She reaches into the bodice of her gown and pulls out a key.
“What? Did you take it from him while he lay sleeping?”
“No, I had one made. Now, come, lie down.” She steps over to a table and lays down the candle. Shadows dance on the walls of the chamber. Her cheekbones are carved out by night and flame.
I walk over to the casket and slip in, lying down. She slides the key into the lock and turns it. She lifts the lid of the casket, setting it back carefully on its hinges.
All these things I hear for my sleeping eyes are closed as always. Breath stirs the hair around my face. My hands are clasped on my breast. One hand is lifted and turned over until the palm rests on a silken cheek, and my fingertips brush the feathers of her lashes. Her hair, sweetly scented, falls on to my bodice and trails over the flesh above. Then my hand is returned to my bosom.
“One moment,” she says, and I hear her step away.
There is a dragging sound, and then something nudges at my legs and heavy skirts fall over mine. She is climbing into the open case, stretching herself out over me. A hand slides under my shoulder, another strokes my cheek. And all the time my breathing feels strange, strained. I feel tears squeezing between my eyelids, fingers brushing them away.
“Does my touch displease you?”
I sit up, passing though her. “No,” I say, “oh no, it does not displease me.”
“Lie down.” Her fingers play around the edges of my ghostly form, urging me to lay back and I do. Her lips plant feathery kisses along my cheek. Finally, she lies still, her arms around me. I think we lie like that for hours, or so it seems. And then, she raises herself, and after pressing a kiss to my cheek she whispers that she must get out. The palace will be stirring, the servants will come, and they must not find her here.
I remain in my body while she leaves the casket. I miss her warmth immediately. Then I leave my form and stand and watch as she straightens my gown and hair. The casket lid is closed and the key turned in the lock.
“I do not want you to go,” I say.
“Come with me back to the pavilion.”
“When am I going to wake up, Isabella?”
‘Any day now.’ She stretches out a hand and brushes her fingertips over the outline of my lips, careful not to let her fingers pass through, as though it matters.
Chapter 15
Sunlight falls over my sleeping form, the cooler sunlight of approaching winter. In the gardens, the leaves fall from the trees. Autumn casts its fiery, melancholic colours. I stand at the windows as the servants polish my casket. From here I can see a little of the briar hedge. I declined Isabella’s invitation to accompany her to her pavilion. Instead, I wished to spend time alone to savour the memory of the night by her side.
Any day now, she said.
Already, my body feels different when I return to it. I lie down inside my form and from my toes to my fingertips I tingle. For a while I try very hard to move my limbs, but I cannot. Eventually, tired of the attempts, I fall into sleep, woken later by the squeaking of rags over my casket.
The Duke comes to inspect me and leans closer, as though he detects some change in me. Are my clothes crushed from the body that lay beside me? Or are his thoughts on something else?
I leave him to his inspection and pass through the closed door of the chamber. I walk through the palace and observe the changes they have wrought here, these people of the future. The Great Hall has been decorated as befits a man of ambition like His Grace. For he intends in time to inherit the throne from those he would send to their deaths, his father and brother. There is a growing court here which rivals that of his father.
“The princess will not be in the casket during the marriage ceremony, no,” one of the Duke’s advisors is instructing a lady of the court. “She will be carried to the altar.”
I move away, not interested in their plans for me. Any day now. Any day, she said. It cannot come too soon.
There are visitors from afar, all having petitioned to see me in my chamber. Every day, visitors arrive. They bring gifts. They have ambitions, and they see ambition in the Duke’s eyes. He is a man they want to court. But I will leave all this behind. I only wish I knew how it will happen, my awakening.
A soldier patrols the corridor of the briar hedge. As I pass him, I see him glance at the white roses. He looks on them fearfully, afraid perhaps that they will close in on him. At the pavilion, I pause outside. There are other smaller tents, and local people have set up camp here to market their wares to those in the palace. Everyone keeps their distance from the Necromancer’s tent.
I step through the silken walls.
She looks up from her books. She has bundled herself under a cloak. Her breath is misty.
“I’ve come to know the truth. I want no more secrets. You play with me when you don’t share your plans. You leave me as helpless as a babe.”
There is a silence. “I am sorry that you feel that way. I simply thought it better to let events take their own course without any prompting.”
“What events?”
“Have you not sensed any changes in your sleeping form?”
“Yes. My skin tingles. I feel heat and cold more so than I once did.”
“Then it has begun.”
“But, how?”
“When I first came to visit you, you told me you didn’t like me very much. It was very important that you like me. And instructing someone to love rarely achieves the desired effect.”
“Love?” I swear I can feel my heartbeat even though a ghost has no heart.
“Love will break the spell.”
“But...” I fall silent, afraid to ask the question.
“What? Ask me anything and I shall answer.”
“Then I am your love?”
“Of course.”
“And you mean to wake me? We shall leave here?”
“We shall leave.”
“When?”
“That depends on you.”
“On me?”
“Well, you have to love me to break the spell. It is not enough that I love you.”
“But I do love you. I do! And still I sleep.”
“I must kiss you. It is your body that must awake. You spirit has been awake for some time.”
“Then you might have awoken me last night? Why did you not?”
“Because we must escape. We do not want the Duke’s soldiers following us. Nor do we want innocents suffering in our escape. I promise you,” she says, laying her hand on the table through mine so that the two lay in the same space, “I am making the last of my plans.”
I cannot contain myself. I jump to my feet and dance around the room. “Oh, to feel the sun on my cheeks. To walk, and run! And ride a horse once more!”
“All those things and more.”
I turn to look at her. “Yes, and more.”
“Then you have got over your dislike of me,” she says wryly.
Image by Fusion Dreams. One more part still to come.