She pulled tighter, the laces burning her cold fingers like rope and Snow White gasped.
‘Not too tight, your Majesty,’ the other maid stepped forward. This one was bolder. Older perhaps, and her eyes met the queen’s. ‘I can do it.’
‘You will stay silent,’ Lilith spat, and the girl, whatever bravery she might have had, slunk back a few steps like a scolded cat.
‘It is really tight,’ Snow White said, her voice small. ‘I’m not sure I can breathe properly.’
‘That’s how it should be.’ The stays secured, the queen stepped back. Her fingers flashed white against pink and burned where she’d pulled the laces so tight. ‘There. Now you look like a proper princess. Of course you won’t be able to ride like that. And if you have hidden some other clothes somewhere . . .’ The darting glance from Snow White confirmed that was the case, ‘. . . then don’t even think about changing into them.’
‘I’ll ride anyway,’ Snow White said. Her faced had paled.
‘Don’t be so ridiculous,’ Lilith said. ‘You can’t.’
‘You can’t stop me!’ The girl pushed past her and stormed out into the corridor. ‘I’ll do what I want!’
Lilith stared at the door. There was no way she could go riding, not in that dress. She was just having a tantrum. Always the child. Always so child-like.
‘I’m surprised she hasn’t broken a rib,’ one of the servants muttered. ‘Far too tight.’
Lilith ignored them both and strode out of the room. The boy was due back at any moment and she had more to think about than the disapproval of a pair of foolish maids. Her fingertips still felt numb from working on the rough stays. She thought of Snow White’s soft skin that would be rubbed by the bone and pinched by the tightness of the bindings.
Good, she thought bitterly. Good.
The queen was never fooled by Aladdin. He always returned full of simpering smiles and obsequious comments but she knew that, underneath them all, he hated her. No, he loathed her. Of course he did. No one ever liked anyone they were beholden to, or who controlled them. That was the nature of people; more than that, Aladdin simply wasn’t a very pleasant child. Even by Lilith’s standards.
He was standing in front of her, perhaps thirteen years old, as he always would be, wearing the same clothes he wore on any of these trips – the only clothes he could possibly wear, and his dark eyes danced in that Arabian face which was made to be the subject of tales in market places where snakes danced to tunes played by weathered men. He bowed.
She waved him up, but kept her distance. Their whole relationship was based on a lie, but she felt no guilt about that. After all, Aladdin had murdered a great magician to get the lamp in the first place, and then he’d murdered his own father when he’d tried to sell the lamp. Greed could be a terrible thing, but greed combined with the wickedness of this small boy’s heart was a terrible combination.
The boy, however, had never learned the secret of the lamp. The curse of it. How could he have? The genie hadn’t been about to tell him and Aladdin was too arrogant to realise that with magic there was always a catch. Ten wishes. That was all you got. Although technically it was nine, because once you breathed your tenth wish the genie was free – and you took their place. You became the slave to the next owner of the lamp. The genie Aladdin had freed had been wise to sell it to her – he’d had enough of magic, and he was perceptive enough to know the boy was a psychopath. When he eventually regained his freedom he would hunt the old genie down. He did not want that sword hanging over his head. Lilith had promised him that while she would make the boy hers to command, she would never make a single wish. It suited her anyway. Her grandmother had taught her early on that a wish was just a curse disguised.
Lilith had used the powers of the lamp more wisely than for wishes and whims. She would let the boy out for two weeks at a time to go and search for magical items for her. He was a slave of the lamp and had to do her bidding. If he returned empty-handed then she made the delay before his next release much longer. She had quickly learned that Aladdin did not like being caged. But then, who did? She’d promised him that one day she’d give the lamp to an enemy to make his ten wishes and then the boy would be free. That would never happen. She’d heard the reports of unsettling, sadistic murders that always occurred when he was abroad from the lamp, and she was sure that not even a queen would be safe from him.
The room was as ever lit by flickering candles and as he handed over the small silver comb, it glittered in the glow. Two unicorns were carved into it, their heads bowed at each other. It was a pretty trinket, that was for sure, but in itself it held no interest for her.
‘It brings the wearer happiness. Great happiness,’ Aladdin said. He smiled, his small teeth white and sharp. He had blood under his fingernails. She didn’t want to ask about that.
‘Happiness?’ she said, sharply. Too sharply. The word had stung her – could he sense her unhappiness? Was that it?
‘That is, after all, the only thing some people desire, isn’t it?’ His dark eyes watched her carefully. ‘To be happy?’
She stared at him, trying to read something in his cold, dead eyes. ‘Well, then they are fools,’ she said eventually and then snapped her fingers and said the word and enjoyed the moment of pain and anger that flashed across his face as the tarnished lamp on the table sucked him back in through the spout.
She looked at the comb again. Happiness. For a moment she was almost tempted to slide it into her blonde hair, but instead she put it in the glass cabinet, before carefully placing the lamp beside it. False happiness was probably no happiness at all.
Snow White was barely breathing when Grouchy and Dreamy found her. Her face was pale and her horse was whinnying and pawing at the ground in distress beside her.
‘Can’t . . . breathe . . .’ she finally whispered, her lips almost blue and her violet eyes watery with fear. Dreamy stared at her in horror. Had the horse thrown her? Had she fallen? ‘My . . . dress . . .’
‘Quickly!’ Grouchy snapped. ‘Get your knife!’ He was already rolling the limp girl over and pulling at the cords tied so tightly at her back. Dreamy, with trembling hands, scrabbled at his belt, pulling the small blade free and almost dropping it before Grouchy snatched it away from him, forcing the blade under the rough thick strings and tearing through them. One by one they broke, and Snow White’s breath came deep and fast and desperate as she sucked the air into her starved lungs. She coughed and sat up, the dress gaping open at the back to reveal purple bruises in lines across her pale back. Her whole body trembled and she struggled to her feet.
‘No,’ Dreamy said. ‘Sit down.’
‘It’s fine,’ Snow White said, the words more wheeze than sound. ‘Really, I’m . . .’
And with that, she fainted.
The queen knew what they were saying about her. That she’d known Snow White would go riding, if only to spite her, and she’d laced the stays too tight on purpose. That she’d known the exertion would suffocate the princess and she’d die in the forest somewhere.
It had been a day and a half since she’d come back, wrapped in a dwarf blanket, her back and ribs as violet as her eyes with bruising. The queen had tried to apologise but Snow White hadn’t even paused, just gone into her rooms and locked the doors. Lilith had questioned her maids of course, and they told her the princess had simply had a long bath and then slept. The queen ordered them to remove all the new dresses and have them burned. She’d supervised their destruction herself. She’d hoped it would go part way to an apology but it had dawned on her, as she caught the looks flashing between the kitchen staff as each of the new garments was thrust into the oven, that they thought she might just be disposing of the evidence.
Her heart thumped hard as she stood in her room of treasures. Her face was flushed. She poured wine with a shaking hand and swallowed half the glass in one go. It was too early to drink but she needed to calm herself. What had she done? The glimpse of the bruises on Snow White’s
body haunted her. She’d gone too far. How could she take it back? How could she make it better? It was one thing to be feared, and quite another to have the entire castle thinking she’d tried to murder the princess. Had messages been sent to the king already? She needed to get more spies abroad. She needed eyes everywhere.
She drank more wine and tried to breathe deeply, finally calming. There were images she couldn’t shift though. The bruises. The glare of the old dwarf who’d defied her ruling to bring the princess back safely. And more than all of that, Snow White’s face as she walked past Lilith in the corridor as if she wasn’t there. Her eyes watering still. Her shoulders slumped. She’d looked defeated. All her natural fire had gone. She’d looked so desperately unhappy.
Unhappy.
Lilith stared into the glass cabinet, her reflection like a sad watery ghost trapped on the other side. She stared so long her breath misted the surface. But still, on its velvet cushion, the small silver hair comb shone in the candlelight. She’d tried to apologise but just couldn’t get the words out. She’d never get the right words out, not now. She thought of the corsets. She thought of her own unhappy marriage and her relief when the king had gone to war again. She tried to imagine Snow White, so wild and free, confined in a marriage like hers. No tight corset could prepare you for that. Her head was giddy with wine and her heart was heavy with things she didn’t understand.
In a moment of impetuousness, the kind she hadn’t felt since she’d been a child running through the forest around her great-grandmother’s house, she grabbed the hair comb from the cabinet and thrust it into a small box. She didn’t pause. She didn’t hesitate. She didn’t want to change her mind. She ran out through the empty library, one hand holding her skirt up while her hair flew out behind her like a bridal train. Maybe she could make things better, after all. Maybe false happiness wouldn’t be so bad if the person didn’t know. Surely the happiness was all that counted?
By the time she arrived at Snow White’s rooms she was flushed and out of breath. It had been a long time since she’d moved with such abandon, and she paused and smoothed her dress and stood tall before opening the door. She could do this. She could apologise.
The two maids were tidying the room and changing the water in the jug on the table. Lilith stared at the large bed that was now neatly made and empty.
‘Where’s Snow White?’ she asked. ‘I thought she was recuperating?’
‘She’s gone out,’ the prettier of the two answered. ‘Don’t worry, she’s not gone riding. She’s still too bruised for that.’
The barb in the remarks stung but Lilith kept her chin up. She might owe Snow White an apology, but not these girls.
‘Where is she?’
‘She went walking,’ the drab-looking thing said, eager not to be entirely outdone by her peer. ‘Not sure where though. Maybe to the market.’
Lilith didn’t pause. She knew if she hesitated then she’d change her mind and the moment would be lost. She thrust the box at the more confident girl. ‘Here. It’s a gift for her.’
The servant took it cautiously.
‘It’s for Snow White alone. No one else is to touch it. Do you understand?’ She was glad to hear her voice returning to normal. To the icy cool that had become normal at any rate. ‘There will be grave consequences if you disobey me.’
‘Yes, your Majesty.’ The girl’s eyes dropped. She knew her place. ‘Of course, your Majesty.’
‘Tell her I want . . .’ Lilith stopped and her voice softened, ‘Tell her I would like her to wear it to dinner this evening.’
‘Yes, your Majesty.’
‘Good.’ She turned and left them, and she felt better than she had in a long time. Perhaps it was just the wine.
The girl died two hours later.
She hadn’t been pretty to start with but in death her face was left frozen in the agony in which she’d died. No longer mousy and hunched, her body was contorted and her hair matted and red where her scalp had bled from contact with the poison. It was Snow White who had found her, and after the doctors had been called and the body removed from the hushed castle, it was Snow White who now stood trembling with anger, her violet eyes flecked with red from crying, in front of her.
‘The comb was poisoned,’ she said, eventually, once she’d got her breathing under control. ‘It killed Tillie, but it was meant for me. You gave it to me. She only tried it on because she wanted to look pretty. Like a princess!’
‘It wasn’t like that,’ Lilith said. Her haughtiness had left her and her stomach was a watery pit of fear. The stays being too tight had been one thing. But this, this to all and sundry, looked like attempted murder. What would the whispers be saying now? How far would they travel? ‘I didn’t know.’
‘You didn’t know?’ Snow White almost laughed. Her nose was running and she wiped it with the back of her hand. ‘You know everything!’
‘I thought it was simply enchanted.’ Tears pricked at her and she did her best to swallow them down, but one broke free, cutting a sparkling track down the angles of her face. ‘That’s all. Why would I poison you? And if I wanted to poison you why would I do it so obviously?’ Her fear was turning to aggression, just as it always had, even when she was a little girl. ‘I was trying to say sorry.’
‘Enchanted?’ Snow White stared at her. ‘What do you mean?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Around them, the unused library had settled into silence as if listening to their story so as to bind it and add it to their shelves later. ‘It was supposed to bring you happiness. I almost used it myself.’
‘I don’t trust your magic,’ Snow White said. Her voice was calmer and her eyes, although still hurt, were now confused. It was a gift and a blessing, this trait she had of wanting to believe the best in everyone.
‘I didn’t know it was poisoned,’ Lilith repeated. The dark beauty stared at her for a long time, and the queen knew that if there was ever a moment for all the secrets she hid, this was the time to share them. They choked in her throat, though. She couldn’t bring herself to set them free.
‘I believe you,’ the princess said eventually. ‘But stay away from me.’ She turned and walked away and didn’t look back. The queen didn’t blame her, but she also knew that things had changed. How could this be kept a secret? A girl had been killed by her gift and Snow White no longer trusted her. The king would hear about it. Her tears threatened her again and she cursed the day she’d ever laid eyes on the beautiful princess.
By nightfall her fear had hardened. She would take control of the city. It was the only option she had. The people needed to fear their queen as much as they loved and respected their absent king. She’d already sent her most loyal soldiers – some of whom were no doubt more than a little in love with her – to track down any messages that might have been sent from the castle. The king would not hear about this yet. He would not at all, if she could help it. She hadn’t been through all of this to stumble now.
She went to her small room at the back of the library and locked the door. She placed several pieces of her gold jewellery into a small cast iron pot; trinkets and gifts from visiting ambassadors. From one of the cabinets she took a small vial and tipped some of the dust on top. Within seconds the gold began to melt and bubble. She smiled. She sipped her wine, enjoying the moment, and then carefully took the battered lamp from its place. She had a score to settle.
‘Good try, Aladdin,’ she whispered, leaning so close her face almost touched the surface and she could smell the tang of a thousand sweaty palms. ‘Good try.’
She picked up a paintbrush and carefully painted the liquid gold across the surface of the lamp, covering every centimetre. No one would ever rub the magic bronze again. When she was finished she took what was left of the melted gold and poured it over the spout. Just in case. It cooled instantly, sealing the dangerous little boy in forever.
The queen was sure she could hear the tiniest echo of his frustrated scream.
It made he
r feel better.
4
‘I want her heart’
It was a warm day in the forest and even though it made the hair on his chest tickle with sweat as he moved through the trees, that pleased the huntsman. Heat slowed animals as much as men and although his skills were such he’d had no doubt meat would roast over the fire tonight, the task was going to be easier than he’d expected. He could counter the laziness that came with the sun and force himself to be alert. It was unlikely to be the same for the animals in this dense woodland. So far, apart from an old crone scurrying between the trees just before he’d spied the stag, he’d seen little sign of human habitation and he’d heard no horn blowing for a royal hunt. It was wild here. He liked that.
These woods were new to him, but he tracked the white beast easily enough, moving silently perhaps twenty feet or so behind it, his eyes scanning for the simplest of landmarks and storing them to memory. Following the animal would not be the problem. In his home land the men born to the hunt could track even the lightest footed doe by the time they were ten. It was a matter of pride. Finding the kill was easy. Finding your way home afterwards could be harder. He’d spent one night lost in the forest when he was six and although that was now twenty years ago it was an experience that would stay with him until his dying day. He shook away the memory of those long hours of darkness and the unnatural wolf – a beast that still haunted his dreams – and moved steadily forward, sunlight cutting jagged hot paths through the heavy-laden branches. The air was sweet with the fresh scent of unfamiliar greenery; citrus and leathery and sweet. He had no idea which of the kingdoms he was now in, whether they were friend or foe, but he was far from home, that was for certain.
His bag sat awkwardly on his back alongside his bow and arrows, and perhaps he should have left it at the camp site, but he’d learned a long time ago to keep the rewards of your hunts close. Man was the wiliest of creatures and very few could be trusted. Huntsmen grew up fast and he’d earned what he carried. The shoes he’d taken as a prize would stay with him.