by Anne Forrest
mead
Hanging among the hams and bunches of garden herbs, the
atmosphere in the palace kitchens was one of uncertain quiet. The maids and
servant girls moved from pantry to cold-room to laundry room with a growing
dread about them. The only sound was a sad little tune beautifully played on a
reed-flute.
Suddenly: ‘The
Queen is dead! Long live the King!’ And over the court-crier and his bell, pandemonium
broke out in the halls and state-rooms above.
Never had thyme
and rosemary and lemon mint scented the pantry with such melancholic nostalgia.
This was the end of a magnanimous era.
From the
reed-flute, laden with a great sorrow, a keening and mournful cry filled the
kitchens.
*
The benevolent Queen Europia suffered pitifully in her last half
year but the poison had worked without suspicion. King Brexio and his men are
now in charge. Within a week of half-hearted mourning most of Her Majesty’s
Most Honourable Privy Council had been sent to the Tower and the Treasury purse
locked against coins being distributed among the poor and sick for food and
shelter; as had been Queen Europia’s benevolent way.
King Brexio headed
the table with men to the left of him and men to the right of him. Black drapes
covered the mirrors; sticks and sconces held black candles that gloomily lit
the room. By now barrels of small ale had been emptied into sewage pits and
flagons of real ale were brought in by the tousle-haired, stunned-looking
serving wenches; not before some of them had been used by the men: one decrepit
retainer brayed as he’d clutched handfuls of petticoat and rode the woman like
a donkey.
Outside the
chamber door in a little cloak-room crouched a young girl of fourteen years or
so; this child was bright of mind and though she had a tied-tongue, she sang
like a river fairy and created haunting melodies on a reed-flute. Her music
mesmerised people whenever they heard it; often she could be seen swaying in
the street with hordes of villagers following her until, clapping her hands and
laughingly, she sent them back to their chores. Her pretty face was marred by a
lip that looked as if it had been caught by a fishhook, and her speech was
indistinct until one got used to it. Zarinda was a foundling. The kitchen women
had discovered her while pegging out sheets in the field; she, no more than a
helpless chick thrown from a nest was as bare as she had left the womb a few
hours previously. Bulrushes had saved her from being swept away to the coast on
the waters of the chattering mountain stream.
Conspiring with
the kitchen maids, Queen Europia, who had always wanted a girl-child, allowed
the infant sanctuary in the kitchens where the maids petted and indulged. At
every opportunity Queen Europia bid the child into her chamber and there,
taught her to read music and some sampler-sewn letters. Once, when she was but
five or six, Zarinda remembered Queen Europia divulging to her a momentous
theory: she said her very own lady-in-waiting had had such a lip, and that she
suspected that her son, Crown Prince Brexit, had violated her and made her with
child. When the lady-in-waiting disappeared mysteriously and the infant was
found, the Queen said she was sure Zarinda was her granddaughter. She went on
to say that she would never be able to prove this and could give the child
nothing except a magic spell which would only work if she was indeed, of royal
blood. She taught Zarinda to use her forked tongue to reverse words and song –
this, the Queen explained, could reverse an action to extricate her from an
unbearable situation should she ever find herself so. The child did not need
ever to reverse herself from anything as she was well-cared for most of the
time and soon forgot the conversation and all it held.
Prince Brexio
disapproved of his mother’s involvement and if he caught sight of Zarinda in
the courtyard, would kick her like a dog; he would order her reed-pipe to be
snapped in two as his cruel, black heart could not bear to hear such sweet
notes. Taking this waif in, he said, was evidence of his mother’s soft control
and weak mind!
Now, the child
with a fishhook lip shrank behind fur-trimmed capes and cloaks and top-coats.
She shivered and shook and her heart leapt uncontrollably as she heard:
‘Order!’ A gavel
came down. King Brexio banged the board and eased himself into a maudlin
speech: ‘I loved my Ma-ma once...upon...a…time,’ his voice, a honey-disguised
indulgence for his soft-hearted mother, ‘but she had become too, too
tolerant…and I do not need to tell you how, nor to what extent upon our country
this has manifested itself.’
One of his
ministers agreed: ‘We are overrun with undesirables, with the useless cripples
and idiots, with the sick and those who roam the streets.’ Then others joined
in and the murmur rose until a cacophony of voices called: ‘We must be rid of
them. It is now your time, your majesty.’
‘Now is the time
to put it right!’
‘We must start as
we mean to continue!’
‘We must return to
being a strong race and rid our land of weak, helpless subjects.’
They bayed like
dogs at the kill.
The new king spoke
now with a cold, haughty voice: ‘There will be no more hand-outs to the needy. We
will invest our gold and silver to our own advantage.’ He continued: ‘Let us
pledge allegiance!’ This they did in a dark and bloody ceremony and before the
small light crept in to claim the dawn they had branded the serving girls on
their buttocks in celebration.
Zarinda was
paralysed with trauma until she heard the retreating maids weeping and whining
like beaten animals. She followed them to the kitchens and wept with them as
she poured salve upon their hurt. She promised them she would listen and spy at
every opportunity to keep abreast of the court’s plans.
The next day the
courtiers met to set out new rules for the land. They worked with the words
from their new king ringing around the room: ‘Somehow we must rid our land of
dependent people who drain our coffers.’
‘Aye, indeed, your
majesty.’
‘It is long
overdue!’
‘So it is, sir, so
it is.’
‘I rule over one
thousand subjects,’ Brexio reminded them. ‘Once, our Utopian realm was as pure
as the streams that pour plentifully from the natural springs. Now is it murky
with the weak, and our once mighty race is being diluted. This decline should
have been halted years ago. Our ruination is the result of my dear, departed
Ma-ma doing nothing to hinder it!
‘God rest her
soul.’
‘Aye, Aye…’
‘Indeed,’ said the
king signing a careless cross upon his richly decorated chest.
Trembling,
Zarinda, close to a knot-hole, kept a watch from her hide among the cloaks. She
saw Brexio’s new Secretary of State carefully take up his quill, dip it in
black ink and proceed to draw up a new constitution. He spoke the words to a
silent room:
At the command of His
Most Excellent Majesty King Brexio, this once important and powerful land known
as Britia will return to its original state, universally recognised and
signified by its own stamp and culture. It will revert to a people of strength
where the survival of the fittest is the natural way. Its armies will grow in
that strength. It will use its currency to purchase the best apothecary and
good fodder for its true subjects and animals. It will plough back all its
energy into its own land until, as a superior people, it conquers the earth
once more.
Therefore – at the
command of His Most Excellent Majesty King Brexio - his Faithful Servants at Court,
Members of Parliament and the Upper House, will rid the land of undesirables,
namely: the addle-brained, the lame, the hunchback, the crooked limbed, the
disfigured, the old and withered who have forgotten the grave, the
illegitimate, the whores; wandering groups who live under the stars, and those with
dubious coloured skin.
Zarinda watched
the king and his men take up ink and put their mark on the document. She
shuddered, touched her lip. Inside, her belly became that of a liquid pool.
*
By and by the King’s men gathered the feeble-minded, the
cripples, he with a bulbous nose and a red stain down his cheek, the child with
a stunted foot; the suckling mother with no spouse; two dwarves and a
large-headed simpleton in a Bath-chair: and Zarinda with the scored lip. The
midwife and the goodwife had been tortured until they revealed the woman with
four breasts, the boy-girl child and the one with badger-like hair down the
length of his back. Now, over six-hundred villagers crammed tight into the
holding pens.
How would the king
get them to leave his village? He declared he’d once heard of a musical piper
who led away rats to their death by drowning and children to an unknown
destination. A plan began to form in his wicked mind. The kitchen bastard! The
one with the fishhook lip and clucking speech. He knew she played haunting
notes which lulled the peasants into following her. He would force her to lead
the misfits away.
Contacting a
network of men and women who would pay for slave-labour and who had a special
use for little children of both sexes, the King struck up an illegal bargain
which brought him in a huge amount of gold. Zarinda was selected from the pen,
dressed in fancy clothes and given a silver-plated reed-flute; she was told to
play and play and dance onwards until she reached the sea where boats would take
the villagers to a better place. Horrified, having listened to the King’s
plans, she knew where the poor villagers were heading and what kind of life
they should expect!
The allotted
morning dawned and Zarinda was made to do the King’s bidding. Over the hills
and along the lanes and tracks went the misfits, all helping each other to keep
up with the rest; some stumbled and died on the way. After some days they
reached a viewpoint overlooking the sea and there were the waiting boats.
Zarinda knew she would have to act quickly to save the people. Recollecting the
Queen’s gift all those years ago, she tried using the spell by speaking words
backwards to reverse the plight they were all in but her voice kept breaking
and dissolving into heart-wrenching sobs and speech became impossible. What
should she do?
Now she could hear
unhealthy excitement in the voices off the boats.
‘Come, come!’ waved
a man, and a woman shouted, ‘this way, this way! Keep playing your tune and
advance then you will all be saved and taken to a better place…’
Zarinda felt
beaten. She was unable to help the people she had led to a dreadful fate. She
began to play her flute but her tied tongue clicked and she found she could
only play the notes backwards! The sound was ugly and discordant but as the
notes flew about drunkenly, the crowd began to turn around in wonder and made
way for the piper to take up the lead whence they had come. Her tied tongue!
Her forked tongue had back-played on the flute! Zarinda realised that the spell
Queen Europia had given her worked and proved she was a Princess! Her people
cheered and drowned the calls of the boat people and with energy anew, they
followed the now-royal-blooded reed-flute piper who led them back to the
village. Once there, the lame used their crutches and callipers to unmercifully
beat King Brexio and his men to the ground; as they lay dying, the
four-breasted woman teased them and made them choke on their milk while whores
pissed on them; the badger-haired boy and the two dwarves sat bare-arsed on
their faces. In revenge, the kitchen maids took knives and branding irons to
their manhood. At last, King Brexio was dead. Long Live the Queen. Zarinda’s
cacophonous notes filled the air with royal music.
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