In prison, this queen becomes known for her stitching. One queen to another, she embroiders a cat, because a cat can look at a queen, can it not? It will beseech her so prettily for help: An escape and an army and freedom, sweet cousin, before the two of us are nothing but claws scratching at history.
​
She strands her silk through the eye of a fishbone, then pricks it back into the canvas. Up one and over, down one and done. A fly fits itself in through the shutters and alights on her hand.
​
Beyond, a dark blue lake stretches to darker blue depths. How many times has she thought of leaving this way? She could jump from a window and let the lake rise to catch her. But the water’s rough wooing might break her legs, her spine; gouge her face with a secret stone and ruin her beauty. How would she make her way then, without her beautiful face?
​
On the far side of the lake sits another castle, now in ruins. At the laird’s behest, men once rowed its stones over to fashion this one. Boat after boat lipped low on the water, to raise a keep just tall enough to put a queen in her place.
​
Only one castle can thrive at a time. How many queens?
​
Two, she thinks hard. Then one. Because she has a claim to both thrones.
​
… … …
​
In a sea dark with squids’ ink, a diver plunges wrist-deep into the sand. She collects the painstaking oysters, the ones who refuse to stop tonguing their troubles till the luster is so black and deep that all it reflects appears virginal white.
​
To search too long would mean to be crushed under the weight of the water, unable to swim back up to air. But not to search is unthinkable; it would mean disappointing several queens.
​
Down one and done.
​
… … …
​
A queen ought to have subjects, not hobbies. Her cat does not look like a cat so much as a tiger-striped table.
​
In happier days, she was given a tiger. The pretty thing lolled like a drunk in its cage unless somebody gave it a goat. Then up it sprang, batted and scraped, before it grew bored, then fed up: No more goat.
​
To be sure her intentions are clear, she stitches the letters into a blue banner: A CATTE.
​
Another needle breaks, this time into her fingertip. A bloody rosebud blooms under the paws of A CATTE.
In a pique, the queen threads one last thin bone. Out of the stain, she will give her cat a bloody mouse to play with. A cat may also be a queen, may it not? Allegorically. This one shall wear a crown upon its ginger head to help make her case, that she needs her crown back.
If one queen is A CATTE, the other must be the mouse. Which will be which?
She plots. Cats are sly.
… … …
Elsewhere in the imagination rises a city where the streets are not paved with stone but running with water. In such a street, a courtier rows his boat to the house of his lady, and he whistles her to the window.
Let down your favors, my beauty, he sings. Let down some sweet treasure.
Does the lady in the story go to her window, unlatch her shutters, welcome the light and the lover with the smell of the sewer? For sewage is the fate of all water that puddles around humans, and what lies fly-clouded just under this window too. Even a queen has to live where she’s at.
Let them down and I will come, sings the suitor, very close. He has left the story and is afloat on the lake. Not even a queen can resist the fairy tale. A CATTE falls to the floor, and she goes to see what she might.
The window’s recess has been her chapel, and now it has answered her prayers. For there, in the rippling blue water, a humbler boat awaits. It is poled by a man plain dressed and slender, dark, arrogant; one who may be floating among shite but is not part of it. Her rescuer. Kidnapper? Future. Darling.
He leans against the long pole propped in the hull and laughs up at her, heedless of the flies that alight on his flesh. His blue eyes are liquid and deep under the nacre of flies; his voice feels mellow and soft.
Let down your hair, my queen, he croons, as if he continues a song that everyone knows. Then let me in.
Would you choose the serenade or the CATTE?
She grips the window’s wood frame and leans out as far as she dares. The lake reflects her in wavelets, a woman in black whose white collar and veil have gone tatty. But the jet rosary gleams. The flies crawl over her cheeks and inside her gown with their tiny, ticklesome feet, till she thinks she will scream.
If she wants this lover, she has to make charm of the horror. She shall be a question, a danger, a conquest. (Let him think so.)
I am a thrice-married woman, she calls. I have twice given death birth.
He calls back, Then may the greatest be behind. Let me in, love!
It pleases her to hear the word said in such a way as to make her believe it. (Love: that which closes a letter. Every letter, in every casket that arrives sans an army. Love.)
She unpins the veil from her rusty red hair.
… … …
In faraway years, in a faraway land, a young girl took scarcely a stitch. With hair flowing loose, chime through chime she danced, as she will soon dance again; she was the subject of poetry, and learned Latin, and prayed.She was a beauty folded inside a cockleshell name, with four pretty maids to share it. They passed Mary around the way three Greeks once divided an eye and a tooth. Rings on their fingers, bells on their toes, the name rang so often, she almost forgot it was tinkling for her. In this way, she was kept safe.
Her mother, also a Mary, gone seven years now, was the one who first said it: A true witch can never be caught. Except by the death that catches us all.
Mary Mary Mary Mary Mary … A song for summer. It is icumen in.
… … …
This past year, her braids have grown ropy and tangled, like the snakes of Medusa. When she flings their coils out the window, they will arrow to the ground, or almost. And then the man will leap from his boat, and he will grasp the hair and use it to drag himself to her window. The pain of the pull will be exquisite, like childbirth. Like bearing twin miscarriages.
Such is her vision, her plot to this point.
And so it happens, perfect to plan, every tug and scrape as her future approaches. Except that the thin boatman is heavier than he looks; the weight of him rips her hair from its roots. Her neck will surely snap; she will tumble down into the lake.
But she has been inside pain before, and she knows all its secrets. She breathes. Deep. She holds tight to the window frame and surrenders while she is still standing.
Every queen favors a paradox, and this one is hers: If you let the pain into yourself, it gets bored with the game and grants you release. This is the martyr’s trick, the Catholic’s delight; because the pleasure of pain is mere legend, but the absence of pain is sheer joy.
You have enchanted me, sings her suitor, climbing. I cannot resist you.
Good. She grinds that one word between her teeth. Good, because a true witch will never be caught by another.
… … …
This secret paradox is also hers: When a man cedes her his power, she turns helpless before him. The Queen of Hearts faces away from her Knave, only to spin slick on her back and try catching his eye.
The cards signal to be cautious. And the scry-stone, and the star maps, and the vial of liquid mercury that her advisor once poured into a bowl, to hint at the future as a poisonous reflection quivering under her breath.
…
On her first wedding night, her mother-in-law draped her in black pearls, a rope of the same that the old serpent brought from her own land as a dowry. In a bed wrapped in white linen, that girl slid her tongue against her young husband’s and he recoiled. By morning, nothing had stained the marital sheets, nor would it ever—the boy was as débile as if she’d been his mother herself. And then he died, of a poison that wicked into his ear and awoke him to agony.
Not her doing. But the pearls, at least, were hers to keep.
They’ve carried the chill of her grave ever since. Sent back to this cold land, where everything that once made her dazzle has remade her dark: She is too pretty, her clothes are too fine, she is a Catholic, her pearls are black. She took a second husband on impulse and then conspired to kill him while her belly filled with his child. Or so the lairds charged when they took her Marys (those blooming groundlings) and her crown and her treasures and her newlywed third, then locked her away.
She admits nothing. Except this: A true witch should never be caught.
Only by an idea.
… … …
They lie in the mare’s nest of her bed. Her hair is shedding in clumps; beauty, fleeting.
There is a word, she hints, and she traces the letters over his chest. A word in France, where I grew. It is spelled C-H-A-T-T-E.
I know that word, the boy says. He tears the sheet from her body with a growl, and the two of them laugh. He kisses and bites his way down the length of her, a trail of pink plague roses.
Ah (he says), here we are, little chatte. I am pleased to be meeting you. He speaks directly into the place. Is there something you would like? Oh yes, yes, you want me to pet you. You need to be petted, chatonne.
This … visitor, let us call him … is really just a lad, like her first husband or the youth that her infant son may become. He would do anything for her. He is doing it now. And yes—yes—he finds the one pearl she still carries with her.
… … …
Two other queens have put bids on the black pearls—out of affection, they say, for the captive. The winner will wear her esteem round the neck. Which neck will so be laced? Not that of the mouse.
Up, down, and over: the motion of a dead-header’s ax. Coming to one of these women someday.
… … …
After, he thinks it’s funny to pluck the cushion from under her body, then toss it out the window to a splash. He rests his head on her bosom and laughs at her dismay. It was, of course, A CATTE.
You will not be needing it, he says. Or needling.
A week’s very hard work, she protests. But she does not mind that her time here is floating off on the foul lake. Let that emissary swim to her cousin; let the news arrive soaked in the excreta of every last soul in this castle. By the time A CATTE reaches A QUEENE, this queen and her new love will be gone.
… … …
Alone, and with hope, she stitches A PHENIX. A golden bird with a fire and a halo, worked in her own fallen hair. A bird can vanquish a cat, if the bird be a goddess. A bird can fly through a fire and come out much stronger; a cat will take one quick look and run.
Lest anyone miss her message, she adds a tangle of M’s like the bars of a broken cage … MMMM and an R. Regina. Or are they W’s? V’s?
Virescit Vulnere Virtus, her mother’s motto. A wound makes the courage grow stronger. To keep a single rose sweet, prune the bush.
Upside-down and sideways, she remains Queen of Hearts.
… … …
Down at the tower’s foundation, the walls spread themselves wide. She orders wine and invites her jailors to drink in the pillared great hall.
These days, a queen must also, always, be a witch.
It is May Day; Sumer is icumen in. She sings the song while lairds and soldiers get themselves drunk, while she picks up her skirts and dances like the whore some say she is, while the noisome lake lap-laps its foul tongue at the stalk of the castle.
These men she hates. They were her third husband’s friends, until they weren’t. Then were, then weren’t again. They sent him to prison and let him escape; then they let him be caught and sentenced. He is now chained to a pillar against which he dashes his head all day long.
She knows a murder when she sees one.
Sumer is icumen in, Sumer is icumen.
And with it the flies. Flies everywhere if the flesh stops for a second. They cling to her black dress; they hover like fate.
So she whirls. She sheds those maddening flies till the black overdress is gone and the red petticoat flares, and the red sleeves, and the bodice with its PHENIX badge. Then she claps her hands and hops. Whirls and claps and hops: up, down, over. She dances like women of the South and the East and the as yet unseen West. She fascinates; she smiles. She pours some more wine for the men.
Flies hang thick in the air, drop into the lap like a fruit. They roam the merry lairds’ brows, their eyes, their flies. They are all (flies and men) dozy from spices and drink. She pulls a silk square from her bosom, wisps it over the old ruddy noses to make sure, then drops it into the oldest one’s lap. Right over his—why, right over his key ring. But it is her lover who fishes them out of that lap. Her Abbot of Unreason, her keeper of keys, her prison master’s son, her partner.
Could anyone expect this plot to end without a wedding? This time, as she lays it, entirely for love.
Sumer is icumen in, but only one boat is going out. A dozen more have been pegged to the mucky strip of shoreline, with poles thrust through their bows like fish strung up for a cat’s dinner. So she and her youth lock the doors, the gates, the latches, the padlocks; they step over the larvae twisting in shallows, to climb into their boat and pole their way from this castle …
… toward the other castle. That is, they pole from the one that stands to the one that was destroyed in order to heighten her prison. Other words, the first castle’s corpse.
The air swirls with pollen; the water makes music. The flies grow much thinner, the farther they go.
This time it is he who says, A true witch cannot be caught.
Nor can a rightful queen, dearest love.
We will win you a crown.
Aye, that we will.
She can reward him later. When the crown and the pearls are her own once again, she will put them on—nothing else—and have him come to her. Run those gleaming drops along flesh that still bears the stripes of her teeth … Wrap them around his—yes, around his pole. He will like that.
The flies gather on rosebuds, for Sumer is icumen in. And on the shore, amid the ruins, a brace of Marys flit and hop, for Sumer is icumen in. They await her with a crown made of strawflowers. They beckon with promises. With love. They are laughing and singing and there.
She fluffs the red skirts and points her long nose into the wind. She always knew the people wanted her too.
Mary, my lady, the boy grunts, struggling to move, are you taking on weight as you’re freed?
But it is not her doing. Or it is, but it also isn’t, like the rest of her life. For when he hauls his pole up, what do you suppose she spies on its tip?
A CATTE.
Sodden, swollen, her tapestry drags the boat down. With its evil cat grin and its golden cat crown. With the mouse a-wriggle under its paws, because her bloodstain is now blooming leeches. The wet black tongues of them uncurl in the air.
What is this? she cries. Throw it right away!
But it is hers. When he tries to shake it off, it comes flying toward her.
And it is not-hers—for she has always belonged to A CATTE, not the other way around. The foul wet threads are spreading, icumen in with needle-sharp claws.
After all, she is not on her way to a wedding. The ruins are not dancing with friends; the boy is not setting her free. Her lairds and judges, ces chats fourrés, have lined up on shore with her cousin’s army, pikes pointed toward her. They are solemn and broad and unimpressed, for her own springtime is gone and summer brings nothing but flies. There at the shore, it is icumen in. It has icumen for her as A CATTE, which let her escape to prove that she wanted to do it. Now it sets its clawed paw back down on her lap.
Her lover, her traitor, poles silently forward. The image in the blue wavelets shatters, and wind rattles the crown, because the thing is all needles. The new Marys extend it to arm’s length, dripping red from pricked fingers.
This Mary, quite contrary to herself, bows her head. You have created the end to all my troubles, she says into the place where A CATTE has spread heavy and wet. The leeches stretch blindly, groping for new blood. Already their ends are shiny with flies.
Foolish witch, to shape with her own hands that which has trapped her! To be both oyster and pearl, the means and the prize.
… … …
A week’s ride to the south, a different queen listens to a long lay on the lute. A very young man is playing it to her; enough said about that. Except that his voice is warm and it jellies her marrow; his eyes are liquid and if her heart weren’t so hollow, she might drown in them.
Let down your sweetness, my lady, he sings. Lady, be gentle, and show me your charms.
She decides she will show him. She lifts off her wig to reveal hair shorn short over a balding pate. She drags a fresh towel over her face and the paint scrapes away, to pimples and scabbings beneath. Quickly covered by flies, which explore every raw place.
Show me your graces, My Grace, pleads the lute. Let me but look on your beauty.
What makes you believe, she replies, that I owe you a thing?
Her lips, black. Her soul, blacker. And proud of it. Once the dark pearls are hers, she will fashion new teeth to reflect nothing but light. For now, she gums a ragged smile that is also a roar and a roundelay, glorianously loud.
She holds out a hand for the young man to grasp. Do you think he will take it?
She pulls music inside her as sourire swallows souris. Even an old witch has to muse with her CHATTE.
Up, down, and over.
Susann Cokal
Susann Cokal’s novels are The Kingdom of Little Wounds, Mirabilis, Breath and Bones, and Mermaid Moon. She is a steady contributor to Enchanted Living, and her other short work has appeared in venues such as Cincinnati Review, Electric Lit, Prairie Schooner, The Los Angeles Review, The Journal, Writers on the Job, Miracle Monacle, The Bellevue Literary Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Quarterly West, Rain Taxi, Gargoyle, Sequestrum, and The New York Times Book Review. Her website is susanncokal.com.