The Fairest of Them All

16

After that, Josef pursued me as ardently as he ever had, trying to dance with me at the evening feasts, coming each night to my rooms the way he’d done before, but I refused him each time. It didn’t matter how handsome he was, how authentic his love. I’d waited for him, been locked in a tower for him. I’d never lain with anyone but him in all the years I was without him. I’d killed for him. I’d loved his daughter when my own son lay in the earth.

Now my body turned cold when he was near. He was not a bad man, I knew this. He loved me, though that love might not have been as deep as I would have liked. He was a man who loved pleasure and joy and did not mean ill toward anyone. But he was not a faithful man. He was spoiled, as Mathena had said. Used to having whatever he wanted. It was what he’d been bred for.

At times I thought I should be more understanding and forgive him for what he’d done.

But I could not. My heart was cold, my disappointment bitter.

It did not take long for everyone else to see the great divide between Josef and me. It seemed to hurt Snow White more than anyone. She worshipped her father, as any girl would. She overlooked his sins, focused on mine.

One night at dinner, I was seated at the high table next to Josef. We were entertaining a visiting retinue from one of the great estates in the countryside, led by one of the king’s most favored knights.

Snow White was laughing, flirting with the young male members. At fifteen, she was the image of her mother, and had suitors in every corner asking for her hand. The king turned to me and asked me to dance.

I refused.

I’d never refused the king so publicly, and an awkward silence came over the table. Snow White stopped laughing, and stared at me with disgust.

“I will dance with you, Father,” she said loudly, standing and walking toward him. “If your own queen will not.”

“I would be delighted,” he said, quickly recovering. He stood and held his arm out to her.

I watched them, unable to move. My hair hung down to the floor, where it whirled around at my feet like a golden lake, stretching out on every side of me, and I could feel, then, the thoughts of those around me as they watched the king and the princess move into each other’s arms and start to dance. Their horror that the queen from the forest, unworthy, with a reputation for being a witch, could reject the king.

More than that, I could feel their love for the princess Snow White. Their wish that she were queen rather than me. I was assaulted by their memories of and love for Teresa, their disbelief that this young princess could mimic her mother so precisely. Most of the retinue had last been at court for Josef and Teresa’s wedding, and now they felt as if they were being thrust back through time to that long-ago day. Lord Aubert glanced over at me, his lip curling, his thoughts rushing out at me as if he’d thrown a handful of rocks: that the king had been foolish to marry me rather than just take his pleasure of me, that there would be blood shed because of it.

All I could do was sit and watch them dance. The king was as handsome as ever in his robes, his face lit up with laughter, his joy irrepressible, even now, and she was the vision of grace, twirling out onto the floor and then back into his arms, tilting her head back and smiling up at the young men she’d been talking to just moments before.

Her eyes caught mine, two hooks. Only I would have seen how much hatred there was in them. Hatred, despite all those other moments, all that love. I winced and looked away.

My heart was full of grief, and loss.

Later, Snow White cornered me in the hallway leading back to my chambers. Her eyes flared with anger. “You embarrassed my father! How could you treat him that way, when he married you? When he brought you in from the forest?”

“I don’t . . . ” I stopped. I did not know how to explain things to a child, how to tell her that the king had been unfaithful to me, humiliated me with my own lady. That it was not my fault. That she would do and feel the same in my position. How could I explain any of that, about her own father?

“Your father has hurt me,” I said simply.

She was furious, shaking with rage. My own ladies stood back, and just watched in shock. “My mother would never treat him that way! You have driven him away from you. You don’t deserve to be married to a king! You, the daughter of a stag.”

It felt as if she’d punched me. “Snow White! Do not say these things to me. I love you as if I were your mother.”

I stepped forward and reached out my hand to touch her face. She swung her arm to push me away and her fingers brushed against my hair as she did. The jolt that went through me stunned me. All her rage and hurt, streaming into me. I could see, feel, her ferocious love for her father, her fierce loyalty, the way her heart had slowly turned against me as she watched me reject him. How betrayed she felt by me, when she’d loved me so much.

There was nothing I could do.

“You are not my mother,” she said. “Don’t compare yourself to her! She was a princess. Not a witch like you.”

I breathed in. “I only mean to love you,” I said. “I would never do anything to hurt you.”

But she stalked away from me.

It was a terrible winter, being locked in that palace, the hatred as present as marble and stone. It was too cold to hawk, or to ride on horseback, and, just like that, my few solaces were taken away from me.

Josef left me more and more alone, realizing that he could not sway me. At every meal and every dance, Snow White was surrounded by admirers. When she was forced to be in my presence, she refused to look at me.

It seemed my only friend was my mirror.

“Mirror, mirror, on the wall,” I’d ask, “who’s the fairest of them all?”

“Rapunzel is the fairest,” it would reply, every time.

There came a night, finally, late that winter, when the inevitable happened. The king took another lover. I did not know who it was and did not want to know, but I could feel it every time my hair brushed a person or even the walls, my bed, the rim of the bath. Clareta came and told me herself, begged me to fight for him, but I would not. I could not.

Instead, that night, when everyone was asleep, I ran to the kitchen,

I took a knife and sawed off my hair, letting it drop to the floor. Each cut was like a blade going into skin, but I kept going, I couldn’t bear it anymore, this hair that forced me to feel everything everyone was feeling, all the time. Their hatred for me. My husband’s betrayal. Snow White’s disdain.

I sawed it off in great hunks, let it slither onto the floor, golden and shining. Alive. I took it and tossed it into the fire, setting it all aflame.

I fell into bed, exhausted. My hair hung ragged to my shoulders, and it ached like a wound.

I slept.

When I woke the next morning, it had all grown back.

There was only one person left who loved me. When the snow finally melted, I went to the mews.

“My queen,” Gilles said, turning around as I approached, a falcon preening on his wrist.

I saw in his face what had always been there. That burning in his eyes, when he looked at me.

“I want to ride into the woods,” I said.

“Now?”

“Now.”

“Do you need guards to come with us?”

“No.”

We raced to the forest. My hair flying out behind us, snaking through the trees, a flag and a sail. We passed the inn and kept going.

The wildness of the woods was the only thing that could soothe me, finding my shadow self that lived there, that girl with her hair filled with forest. As night fell, I called out to the four winds, the corners of the earth. The falcons soared above us and it was like my spirit, my soul, was careening through the air and ripping into the star-strewn sky.

We entered the woods and I screamed out into the air. We stopped the horses and ran to get water.

I turned to Gilles.

With him, I did not need magic, did not need to enchant him or call him to me.

The next thing I knew, he was pressing me against a tree, his arms around me, his palm on my face, my neck, running down my breast.

I ached all over. From the center of my body. My hair flew all around us, in the wind. I slid down the tree, the bark scraping through my hair, pulling him with me. My body wrapped around his, and my hair cradled us. He was so thick, strong, pushing me down into the leaves.

I was shameless, pressing myself into him.

“Rapunzel,” he said into my ear. His mouth was right against me, so that I could feel his hot breath.

I hadn’t realized how trapped I felt in the palace. I sat on top of him, maneuvered him into me. I couldn’t take him deep enough into me.

It had never felt this way before, with Josef. This felt as natural as the blossoms preparing themselves to come to life once more. Death moving into life and back again.

My body was strong, open, powerful. I felt like if I concentrated, I, too, could hurl myself into the air the way the birds could, rip apart whole animals with my teeth and claws.

We lay on the earth, my body loose and warm, and my hair wrapped around us. His heart pounded underneath my palm, pulsing up to me. I could see the way he’d dreamt of me every night after those long days of riding through the countryside. The way he’d desired me as Snow White petted the falcon on his wrist, as Mathena hugged him in the garden, as he stood in the tower and looked down to the house where I myself was sleeping, watching me slip out into the moonlight to cry over my son’s grave.

I could feel, too, his own heart: his love of wildness, of beast, of bird. His longing to leave this kingdom one day and make a home for himself outside its excesses, its privileging of the court above all things.

He looked at me. He put his hand against my face and it made me feel warm, protected. I felt safer here than in those castle walls with the moats and ramparts.

He pressed his mouth against mine. His eyes flicked past me. “Look,” he said.

I twisted my head and saw, in the moonlight, three silver foxes, sleek and beautiful like something from a dream.

“Are they really foxes?” I imagined three cursed men moving through the woods. For a moment I was sure I knew exactly what it felt like. As if I were a wild thing, cursed to live inside the body of a human woman.

“Yes, they’re real,” he said, laughing at me.

“It’s hard to know.”

“Know what?”

“If they’re real.”

“There are ways to tell,” he said.

“I killed a man once,” I said. “Because I didn’t know.” I was surprised at how easily I could tell him this.

“What happened?”

“I thought it was a stag. I was hunting with my bow, and hit it right in the neck. And when it died, it turned into a man. I watched him die.”

He moved his hand through my hair, sending shivers throughout my body. “I’m sorry for that,” he said. “She should have taught you how to recognize an enchanted human.”

“He told me that Mathena had cursed him. As he was dying, he said that.”

“I am sure she has cursed more than one man in her time.”

I stiffened for a moment. Immediately, he reacted.

“Does that bother you?”

I wasn’t used to someone paying close attention to me. “No,” I said, lying. “But she did not curse him. She wanted to save him, and then change him back.”

“Perhaps,” he said. “She is a powerful witch, Rapunzel. She was powerful back then. I can only imagine what she’s capable of now.”

“I owe her my life,” I said. “I used to miss her so much, when I first came to the palace.”

“I’m sure she’ll stay well away.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, she was banished. She cannot return.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“Mathena was banished from the palace.”

“But . . . no one has ever told me that.”

“No one dares tell you, I expect. You are the queen. She raised you. I thought you knew this.”

“But Josef . . . he invited her to come live in the palace when we were married.”

He leaned down and kissed my forehead. “Rapunzel,” he said. “They would have killed her, had she come.”

I shifted, moving my hands over his chest, twisting to push my back against him. He wrapped himself around me, like a lettuce leaf. One hand on my breast, another on my belly.

“She left the kingdom to take care of me,” I said, my voice small. “To save me.”

He was quiet. “Is that what she told you?”

The trees swayed back and forth, the night wild and open. Above us, I saw a million stars through the branches that laced the sky, like pieces of thread.

I did not answer him. I reached out my hand, traced the ground, the leaves, acorns, pinecones, needles, bits of bark.

His hand moved down, pressed between my legs. I opened them, let his hand move inside me.

My hair glittered in the moonlight, and a swath of starlight spread across the black earth. In the distance, wolves howled, and my heart with them.