Free The Kingdom of Little Wounds by Susann Cokal

physician before Candenzius’s arrival last year) to hold the candle closer.
    “And closer still,” he barks, leading the other two to speculate that he is using this opportunity to remind Venslov once again of their relative positions in court hierarchy.
    The flame flickers in air currents stirred by the physicians’ robes. The space between Sophia’s legs is getting crowded; her nightdress blooms with light. Candenzius bends so deep, his face disappears beneath the tent of cloth.
    While her body is inspected, the departed Princess continues to stare upward. Her corneas have gone white as milk, so it is impossible to see that at one time her eyes were brown. Dé wonders if he should note this, as the other two are so intimately engaged. It may have some bearing on the cause of her death. He imagines the favors that King Christian would bestow on the man who could name the poison that felled her . . . Dé would very much like a room of his own in which to live and work, rather than sharing with Venslov, and perhaps one of the minor honorific orders that the King bestows on those who’ve pleased him. An enameled giraffe on a gold chain would mean the world to Dé.
    Candenzius, still peering at the Princess’s secret, stops short of probing it with his finger. He mutters to himself, wondering how the land and his own reputation are best served in this situation. Again, a question: Is there advantage to declaring the Princess
virgo intacta
? Might that finding anger Sweden — perhaps enough to inspire a murderous plot against a lowly court physician? Or the King: Is he likely to punish Candenzius for breaking the treaty, or would he be relieved to be released from a contract that will now yield limited advantages, given that there shall be no grandchildren, no commingling of royal seed?
    He thinks of the Queen, his patroness and friend, who plucked him from Dresden on the basis of one long letter of application and an egg-size portrait enclosed with it. (Candenzius would not accuse himself of vanity, precisely, but he has been told he has fine eyes.) Isabel thought Sophia too young for marriage, too narrow for childbirth, her womanly courses a mere trickle. All this to be married off to Magnus’s madness.
Don’t we have more than reason for delay?
she asked Candenzius that winter, in one of the quiet conversations in which the two sat snug in the firelight of her chamber, attended only by a dozy lady-in-waiting whose ale Candenzius had treated with valerian.
Can’t you convince my husband to wait?
    The King could not be persuaded, declaring that sacrifices must be made for the good of the land; and, in fact, he gave Candenzius a gold coin in exchange for a prescription of lamb’s blood and coltsfoot that helped shake those courses free from Sophia’s womb. So the marriage went forth, with Isabel so distraught, she needed soothing tinctures of poppy.
    Out of sentiment for Isabel, and because some hunch tells him it is the desired answer, Candenzius makes a decision.
    “The Princess is a virgin,” he pronounces, withdrawing and dropping the nightdress over Sophia’s legs so quickly that it nearly catches the candle.
    Mercifully the gust of skirt wind blows the flame out. For good measure, Venslov licks his knobby fingertips and snuffs the wick. Fire in the palace would be a mortal calamity; his own books and papers, records of his private experiments, would surely burn.
    So the Princess is declared intact, a daughter rather than a wife. But there still remains the matter of the poison.
    “We must open her belly,” Candenzius decides.
    While Venslov helps push the girl’s legs back together, Dé finds a pair of scissors so that Candenzius can slit the nightdress where needed — shielding that pleat between her thighs from the other men’s gaze.
    So they make their cuts into yellowed flesh and jellied veins, till they reach the Princess’s entrails. Venslov fetches basins to accommodate her organs and the