Free Kissing the Witch by Emma Donoghue Page B

book.
    When the queen took sick, as good queens do, the king sent for physicians from east and west, far and wide. I overheard the maids talking about it. I asked to look at my mother but they told me
to go and play.
    By the time the physicians arrived, through the first drifts of snow, she was past hope. My father’s knees were planted at her bedside like pine trees. I saw him through a crack in the
door.
    Snow fell on the palace like a shroud that night, and in the spring the lilies stood tall on her grave. The king was still locking himself away every day to lament. He had his favourite donkey
brought to him, and wept into her hide until it was soaked; he slept between the animal’s legs each night. His courtiers breathed through their mouths.
    Fearing his mind was disturbed, they urged him to find a new wife. For the sake of his subjects, for the sake of the princess, for his own sweet sake. He shook his head from side to side as if
to shake grief loose. No one could compare to his queen, be bellowed at them: where would he find again such golden hair, such lily cheeks, such ruby lips?
    Finally he let them bring in the portraits. He stared at Flemish princesses and Spanish infantas, English duchesses and even an empress from beyond the sea. But though one had yellow hair and
another white cheeks and another red lips, not one of them had all these at once, so the king smashed each picture in turn against the walls of his room. The donkey brayed in panic, and stove in
the side of the throne with her hoofs. The king tore the hair from one canvas, the cheeks from a second, the lips from a third, and squeezed them together in his hand.
    The mingled howls of man and beast travelled along the corridors. The cowering courtiers held perfumed handkerchiefs to their noses so as not to catch the king’s madness. His food was set
on a gold tray outside his door.
    After the death of my mother, I grew paler and taller. My curves prickled as they swelled; my limbs hurt from stretching. Not all the flower-woman’s herbs could make me sleep through the
night. One day I was walking through the palace when I heard a moan. I stared at the door and remembered that the king was my father. I picked up the heavy gold tray and brought it into him.
    The king was as hairy and grimy as the donkey asleep beside him. He looked up as if the heavens had opened.
    I cleared my throat. Here is your dinner.
    He peered closer. To think that all this time, the answer was under my nose, he whispered.
    I gave him a doubtful smile.
    Tell me, do you love me?
    Of course.
    The words barely had time to leave my mouth. I have been waiting too long, cried my father, and then he dashed the tray from my hand and pressed his mouth to mine. Bowls spun like snow, goblets
shattered like hail. I knew that something was very wrong. He pleated me along the length of his body in a way no one had ever done before. He held me at arm’s length and said, Such ruby
lips, such lily cheeks, such golden hair is all my heart desires. You will be mine again, and more than ever before.
    By the time I got out of the room, my dress was torn in three places. I smelt of dirt, and fear, and something I didn’t understand. I wrapped myself in a cloak and ran to the
flower-woman’s cottage.
    The courtiers had it proclaimed that the king’s mind was unhinged; in a sort of waking dream he thought himself to be young again and the princess to be her mother in virgin form; a
natural mistake. They urged me to stall, to let him court me while they sent for better physicians from farther afield; it could do the poor man no harm. They spoke of compassion, but I knew they
were terrified.
    Each afternoon I would be called to the king’s chamber, with a maid for a chaperone. Some days he called me daughter; others, lover; others, his beauty. He sometimes let me comb the lice
from his hair. His starving lips would make their way from the tips of my fingers to the crease at my elbow. He