SFX: THE FIRE CRACKLES.
FRIAR
That’s the thing.
He gets comfortable, noisily.
FRIAR (CONT’D)
Who’s there? Is someone there?
SFX: NOTHING. A RUSTLE IN THE BUSHES. THEN FOOTSTEPS APPROACH, NERVOUSLY.
FRIAR (CONT’D)
Hello… My, you’re a pretty thing. Come on, pretty thing. Over here.
There is a rustling.
FRIAR (CONT’D)
Oh yes. Such a pretty little thing. Now let’s see what you’ll do to a man of god for a shiny penny…
QUEEN—INTIMATE
She stood up and walked around the fire, and waited, an arm’s-length away. He pulled in his robe until he found a coin—a tiny, copper penny—and tossed it to her. She caught it, and nodded, and went to him. He pulled at the rope around his waist, and his robe swung open. His body was as hairy as a bear’s. She pushed him back onto the moss. One hand crept, spider-like, through the tangle of hair, until it closed on his manhood; the other hand traced a circle on his left nipple. He closed his eyes, and fumbled one huge hand under her skirt. She lowered her mouth to the nipple she had been teasing, her smooth skin white on the furry brown body of him.
SFX: IN THE BACKGROUND WE HAVE HEARD THE FRIAR CHUCKLE AND MUTTER ENDEARMENTS. NOW, FOR A MOMENT, HE SQUEALS, AND THEN ALL WE CAN HEAR IS A LAPPING NOISE
…
QUEEN—INTIMATE
She sank her teeth deep into his breast. His eyes opened, then they closed again, and she drank. She straddled him, and she fed. As she did so a thin blackish liquid began to dribble from between her legs…
The end of the Mirror sequence: we can hear the noises of the throne room, crisp and clear.
LORD OF THE FAIR
Majesty? Do you know what is keeping the travellers from our town? What is happening to the forest people?
QUEEN
Yes. I know.
LORD OF THE FAIR
Is something killing the travellers?
QUEEN
Yes, something is. Go home, my lord. I will take it upon myself to make the forest safe once more.
QUEEN—INTIMATE
I had to, although she terrified me. I was the queen.
A foolish woman would have gone then into the forest and tried to capture the creature; but I had been foolish once and had no wish to be so a second time.
I spent time with old books. I spent time with the gypsy women (who passed through our country across the mountains to the south, rather than cross the forest to the north and the west).
I prepared myself, and obtained those things I would need, and when the first snows began to fall, then I was ready.
SFX: WE’RE OUTSIDE, AND A FREEZING WIND IS BLOWING, HOWLING AND SCREAMING ACROSS THE CASTLE WALLS.
QUEEN—INTIMATE
Naked, I was, and alone in the highest tower of the palace, a place open to the sky. The winds chilled my body; goose-pimples crept across my arms and thighs and breasts. I carried a silver basin, and a basket in which I had placed a silver knife, a silver pin, some tongs, a grey robe and three green apples. I put them down and stood there, unclothed, on the tower, humble before the night sky and the wind. Had any man seen me standing there, I would have had his eyes; but there was no-one to spy. Clouds scudded across the sky, hiding and uncovering the waning moon.
QUEEN
(She starts to hum, as if she is half-humming, half-chanting, magically.)
QUEEN—INTIMATE
I took the silver knife, and slashed my left arm—once, twice, three times.
QUEEN
(Sharp intake of breath as she gashes her arm.)
QUEEN—INTIMATE
The blood dripped into the basin, scarlet seeming black in the moonlight.
I added the powder from the vial that hung around my neck. It was a brown dust, made of dried herbs and the skin of a particular toad, and from certain other things. It thickened the blood, while preventing it from clotting.
I took the three apples, one by one, and pricked their skins gently with my silver pin. Then I placed the apples in the silver bowl, and let them sit there while the tiny flakes of snow fell slowly onto my skin, and onto the apples, and onto the blood.
SFX: ALL THE WIND HAS GONE.
DAWN CHORUS BIRDSONG.
QUEEN—INTIMATE
When dawn began to brighten the sky I covered myself with the grey cloak, and took the red apples from the silver bowl, one by one, lifting each into my basket with silver tongs, taking care not to touch it.
There was nothing left of my blood or of the brown powder in the silver bowl, nothing save a black residue, like a verdigris, on the inside.
I buried the bowl in the earth.
SFX: MAGIC SOUNDS …
QUEEN—INTIMATE
Then I cast a glamour on the apples (as once, years before, by abridge, I had cast a glamour on myself), that they were, beyond any doubt, the most wonderful apples in the world; and the crimson blush of their skins was the warm colour of fresh blood.
SFX: FOR A MOMENT WE HEAR THE BEAT OF THE PRINCESS’S HEART …
WHICH FADES INTO THE FOREST …
QUEEN—INTIMATE
I pulled the hood of my cloak low over my face, and I took ribbons and pretty hair ornaments with me, placed them above the apples in the reed basket, and I walked alone into the forest, until I came to her dwelling: a high, sandstone cliff, laced with deep caves going back a way into the rock wall.
There were trees and boulders around the cliff-face, and I walked quietly and gently from tree to tree, without disturbing a twig or a fallen leaf.
Eventually I found my place to hide, and I waited, and I watched.
SFX: THE SOUNDS OF DWARFS COMING OUT OF THE CAVE, CURSING AND CLAMBERING. THEY DO NOT SING HI HO HI HO.
QUEEN—INTIMATE
After some hours a clutch of dwarfs crawled out of the hole in the cave-front -ugly, misshapen, hairy little men -the old inhabitants of this country. You saw them seldom now.
They vanished into the wood, and none of them saw me, though one of them stopped to piss against the rock I hid behind.
I waited. No more came out.
QUEEN (AS OLD WOMAN)
Hullo? Is anybody there? I’ve got ribbons, pretty ribbons and combs…
QUEEN—INTIMATE
The scar on my Mound of Venus throbbed and pulsed as she came towards me, out of the darkness, naked and alone.
She was thirteen years of age, my stepdaughter, and nothing marred the perfect whiteness of her skin save for the livid scar on her left breast, where her heart had been cut from her long since.
The insides of her thighs were stained with wet black filth.
QUEEN (AS OLD WOMAN)
Ribbons, goodwife. Pretty ribbons for your hair..
PRINCESS
(whispering)
Come to me…
QUEEN (AS OLD WOMAN)
(a screech, then)
Keep away from me!
QUEEN—INTIMATE
I dropped my basket, and screeched like the bloodless old pedlar woman I was pretending to be, and I ran.
My grey cloak was the colour of the forest, and I was fast; she did not catch me.
I made my way back to the palace.
SFX: THE HEARTBEAT BEGINS IN THE BACKGROUND. IT GETS LOUDER OVER THIS …
QUEEN—INTIMATE
I did not see it. Let us imagine though, the girl returning, frustrated and hungry, to her cave, and finding my fallen basket on the ground.
What did she do?
I like to think she played first with the ribbons, twined them into her raven hair, looped them around her pale neck or her tiny waist. And then, curious, she moved the cloth to see what else was in the basket; and she saw the red, red apples. They smelled like fresh apples, of course; and they also smelled of blood. And she was hungry. I imagine her picking up an apple, pressing it against her cheek, feeling the cold smoothness of it against her skin.
And she opened her mouth and bit deep into it…
SFX: AND SILENCE. THE HEARTBEAT STOPS.
QUEEN—INTIMATE
By the time I reached my chambers, the heart that hung from the roof-beam, with the apples and hams and the dried sausages, had ceased to beat. It hung there, quietly, without motion or life, and I felt safe once more.
SFX: WINTER WINDS HOWL. …
QUEEN—INTIMATE
That winter the snows were high and deep, and were late melting.
We were all hungry come the spring.
SFX: MARKET SOUNDS ONCE MORE …
QUEEN—INTIMATE
The Spring Fair was slightly improved that year. The forest folk were few, but they were there, and there were travellers from the lands beyond the forest.
QUEEN
Well?
LORD OF THE FAIR
Better, your majesty. Better.
SFX: WE HEAR THE SOUNDS OF HAGGLING, AD-LIB DWARFS AND MARKET FOLK …
QUEEN
Over there. The forest folk. Those dwarf-things. What are they doing?
LORD OF THE FAIR
What they’ve been doing this whole market. Buying glass. All the glass they can get. Paying good money for it, too.
QUEEN—INTIMATE
I saw the little hairy men of the forest-cave buying and bargaining for pieces of glass, and lumps of crystal and of clear quartz. They paid for the glass with silver coins—the spoils of my stepdaughter’s depredations, I had no doubt. When it got about what they were buying, townsfolk rushed back to their homes, came back with their lucky crystals, and, in a few cases, with whole sheets of glass.
I thought, briefly, about having the dwarfs killed, but I did not. As long as the heart hung, silent and immobile and cold, from the beam of my chamber, I was safe, and so were the folk of the forest, and, thus, eventually, the folk of the town.
SFX: PASSAGE OF TIME MUSIC … LUTE, PERHAPS?
SFX: EXT—HORSES DRAW UP AND ARE STAMPING AND WHINNYING …
QUEEN—INTIMATE
My stepdaughter had eaten the poisoned fruit two winters back, when the Prince came to my Palace.
SFX: INT NOW, THE HORSES ARE DISTANT AND BELOW US …
MAIDSERVANT
Do you know who he is, majesty?
QUEEN
From his arms, he’s Prince of the land beyond the mountains.
MAIDSERVANT
He is very handsome.
QUEEN
Yes. He is.
SFX: …CROSSFADE INTO THE NOISE OF A BANQUET.
PRINCE
…of choosing a retinue is that it need be large enough to defend oneself in case of , well, bandits, let us say, but small enough that another monarch—well, yourself, for example— would not see it as any kind of a threat.
QUEEN
No threat at all?
They are flirting here, very seriously…
PRINCE
Certainly not to you, majesty.
QUEEN
How very charming. And what would you say, your highness, would be the purpose of all your… peregrinations?
PRINCE
I travel to make alliances. I am looking for allies. With other monarchs, and other kingdoms.
QUEEN
Alliances.
SFX: FADEOUT THE BANQUET.
QUEEN—INTIMATE
I was practical: I thought of the alliance of our lands, thought of the
Kingdom running from the forests all the way south to the sea; I thought of my golden-haired bearded love, dead these eight years; and, in the night, I went to the Prince’s room.
SFX: FOOTSTEPS ECHOING ON A STONE FLOOR.
QUEEN—INTIMATE
I am no innocent, although my late husband, who was once my king, was truly my first lover, no matter what they say.
SFX: WE ARE IN THE PRINCES’S CHAMBER.
A FIRE CRACKLES IN THE GRATE.
A KNOCK ON THE DOOR.
PRINCE
Yes?
SFX: A DOOR OPENS.
PRINCE (CONT’D)
My. A visitor. And such a damn pretty one.
QUEEN
Thank you.
PRINCE
No. Don’t come any closer.
QUEEN
I thought you wanted me.
PRINCE
I do. I just… I want you to do what I tell you. Do you understand?
QUEEN
As you wish.
PRINCE (CONT’D)
Take off your robe. Let it fall. Good. You are. You are very beautiful. Now, walk over to the open window.
SFX. THE WIND BLOWS …
QUEEN
It’s cold.
PRINCE
And do not say another word. Stand there until your skin is chilled and cold.
QUEEN
I am chilled, your highness.
PRINCE
Come here. Lie on your back. Good. Now, fold your hands across your breast. Like this. No, keep your eyes open, but do not look at me. Look up at the beams.
(he is getting very excited)
Now. You must not move. Breathe as—as little as possible. No.
Don’t move. Let me open your legs… Oh yes. Don’t say anything.
Do not make a sound.
SFX: His body starts to move on hers… And then a MOAN of passion from the queen. And, immediately, the noise of bodies moving together stops.
QUEEN—INTIMATE
I could not help moaning. It had been so long.
PRINCE
No… Damn you…
QUEEN—INTIMATE
His manhood slid out of me. I reached out and touched it, a tiny, slippery thing.
QUEEN
What’s wrong?
PRINCE
I told you. You must neither move, nor speak.
Just lie there on the stones, so cold and so fair.
QUEEN—INTIMATE
I did my best, but he had lost whatever force it was that had made him virile; and, some short while later, I left the Prince’s room, his tears and curses still resounding in my ears.
PRINCE
You evil witch! Monstrous evil lustful creature.
SFX: NEXT MORNING—WE CAN HEAR THE JINGLING OF HARNESSES AND THE STAMPING OF HORSES, FAR, FAR, BELOW US.
MAIDSERVANT
So how was he, majesty?
QUEEN
Charming. But He. He does not like… live women.
MAIDSERVANT
Do you think they will ever come back?
QUEEN
No, Jenna. He won’t be back.
SFX: HORSES RIDE THROUGH A FOREST, HARNESSES JANGLING.
QUEEN—INTIMATE
And what happened next? I do not know. But I can guess. I imagine his loins, now, as he rode, a knot of frustration at the base of his manhood. I imagine his pale lips pressed so tightly together. Then I imagine his little troupe riding through the forest, finally coming upon the glass-and-crystal cairn of my stepdaughter. So pale. So cold. Naked, beneath the glass, and little more than a girl, and dead.
PRINCE (to himself)
Oh yes.
SFX: HE DISMOUNTS.
PRINCE (cont’d)
Oh yes.
QUEEN—INTIMATE
In my fancy, I can almost feel the sudden hardness of his manhood inside his britches, envision the lust that took him then, the prayer she muttered beneath his breath in thanks for his good fortune. Imagine him negotiating with the little hairy men - offering them gold and spices for the lovely corpse under the crystal mound.