Red as Blood, or Tales from the Sisters Grimmer: Expanded Edition Page 5

  “No, Royal Born. Not yet.”

  The prince turned about, still holding the knife. A man stood in the gateway. He wore skins like the people of the village, and he leaned on a wooden staff. He was old, older than Old Man. The flesh of his face and hands was like lizard skin or tree bark.

  “I mean you no harm, Royal Born,” he said in a voice as thin and as penetrating as the wind. “I am the Oldest One in the valley. I remember things, and I have waited for you.”

  “What is this place?” The prince cried out over the thunder.

  “A place of thorns,” said the Oldest One.

  Then he turned and moved down the street without a word, and without a word the prince followed him.

  * * * *

  He lived in the lowest room of a thin tower, and he had few belongings: a lamp, a pallet and a little wooden chest. The chest caught the prince’s eye at once, for it was intricately carved and would have needed sharper tools than stone. A few pine branches burned on the hearth.

  “You said you waited for me,” the prince said, “yet how could you know me?”

  “You are of no importance except that you are Royal Born. This I could see, having a gift for such things. One who is Royal Born was expected.”

  “Why? And for what?”

  “To enter the place you saw, and to go in to what lies beyond the briars.”

  “What, then, lies there?”

  “Ah,” The Oldest One smiled, and his wrinkled skin moved on his face like sea waves. “I know only what was said, this being what my father told me. If you would care to listen, I’ll tell you as much.

  “Well then. I was born at sunset on a strange day. It was the day the curse fell upon the valley. The nature of the curse is vague—it had to do with the Thirteenth Lady, the dark sorceress, and with a needle. For some sixteen years before my birth the king had allowed no sharp object into the valley—not an axe or a knife, not even a pin. And he had made a great bonfire and burned every spinning wheel in his kingdom on it. After which anyone who defied the law was put to death. I know nothing of the curse beyond this, except that on the day of my birth, at the very same moment that I arrived in the world, the curse came about, despite every precaution. Immediately a wall of thorns sprang up about the palace. My father and his neighbours saw it happen. The thorns twisted and turned and threaded together until the topmost towers of the palace could no longer be seen. No one could get in, and no one out. The city sent for help. Kings’ sons came, for it was said that only one Royal Born could cleave through the thorn wall. But the thorns impaled them and they died horribly. As you have seen, their bones hang there yet. After a few years the people abandoned the city. It was a place full of ghosts and fear. The walls cracked and the roofs fell in until it was as you find it now. Only my father and mother remained, and I, their child. I have outlived them, and I have known no other life than waiting for the last Royal Born.”

  “But how can you know who will be the last?” the prince asked, very low.

  “That was the softening of the curse. After a hundred years it might be broken if there were any man here to dare it.”

  “You stayed my hand,” the prince said.

  “Yes, for it was not the time. When the sun sinks tonight beyond the hills, that will be as at the hour of my birth and the hour of the curse. I shall be a hundred years old at sunset.”

  * * * *

  All through the afternoon the rain darted and rang on the stones of the city. But at last the sky cleared and turned golden, and the sun rested like a great red lamp on the crown of the hills.

  “Now it is the time,” said the Oldest One, and the prince rose. It was very chill and his arm burned coldly where the dark woman had touched it.

  “What shall I find?” he asked, as he stood in the doorway. “Suppose I should only turn away, and leave the valley by the quickest route?”

  “You know you can never do that till you’ve seen. As to what you will find, they said something beautiful lies asleep there, but it was seldom spoken of. I scarcely know.”

  It was very silent when he walked back up the slanting street. He paused at the rusty gate, and the bones rattled on the briars. He drew his knife, as before, and took a step inside.

  The great thorn stems writhed and twisted, though there was then no wind, and the barbs clashed together with a sound of battle.

  He raised his blade and struck at them.

  He’d come to expect, by that time, almost anything, and so was not surprised. The thorn wall broke apart before him and curled aside, forming a long avenue stretching away and away into a dim gloomy distance. He hesitated a moment. If he went up the path offered, the wall might easily spring back about him, and he would suffer the fate of all the rest. But something seemed to pull him on. He could no longer hang back. The shadow of the thorns fell over him but the avenue did not close up, though the stems thrashed about like angry serpents on either side.

  Underfoot the soil was grey. The thorns had drained it. For a long time there were only the moving latticed shadows and the grey soil, and then a pale light glowed in front of him. It was the end of the briar tunnel. He ran toward it, and suddenly came out into the lavender gloaming. Immediately, with a terrible sound, the thorns closed ranks behind him, but there was no room left in him for alarm.

  He was on a marble terrace which rose in marble steps to an incredible garden above. Dark green trees had been pruned into the shapes of birds and animals, fountains jetted into porphyry basins and a thousand roses bloomed. Not a leaf moved. The flowers were like things made of wax, and the water of the fountains stayed quite still like threads of crystal suspended in mid air. The prince climbed the steps and stood in the garden mystified and troubled, and ahead rose the vast pile of a palace with pointing milk-white towers. Taking one deep breath, he began to walk toward it.

  On the trees birds sat, their beaks open in silent song. He came upon a garland of doves with spread wings simply hanging impossibly in the air, and on a lawn a springing cat with its paws several inches from the ground, quite motionless.

  The doors of the palace were open as if something had rushed through them and blown them wide. Inside, soldiers with glaring eyes stood to attention down the length of the great hall. Pages were transfixed in the act of moving with their trays of sweets, and graceful women and proud men were posed in all manner of gestures, some laughing with their heads thrown back, the dim light glinting on their teeth, others frowning or yawning as they must have done for a hundred years. The prince noted that these people had kept their velvets and silks, though there were no hair pins or brooches, and the soldiers carried stone clubs at their belts.

  He came to two thrones of gold, and here sat a king and a queen. Her face was sad and pale, his harsh and cruel. It seemed they had guessed at the last instant that the curse had fallen after all. Huge nets of cobwebs drifted over everything, caught between the golden chandeliers, the lion feet of the chairs, the fingers of the king. They alone moved. An enamel clock stood in a corner, but its hands had fallen off and lay on the floor, for in this place time had stopped.

  The prince went from room to room, seeking something out, he didn’t know what.

  On the marble staircase a servant was lighting lamps, and the flare of his taper stood up like a piece of yellow ice, not flickering.

  The prince came into the upper rooms, and here the twilight fell very thick, like the dust. He came to a strange, narrow, dark door, and pushed it open. There was a waiting lady here, her hands frozen at her mouth which was open on a soundless scream, and her eyes wide in terror. He looked where she was looking, up a twisting ugly stair to a half-open door at the top.

  He ran up the steps and threw open the door.

  It was a long narrow gallery, mostly pitch black, yet lit at the centre by a shivering grey light. The first th
ing he saw there was the spinning wheel which gave off this light. It was all silver, even to the wheel, which, as he took half a step into the room, began suddenly to whirl round so fast and so angrily that hissing white sparks flew off it and burst in the air. It gave out a sawing spitting noise, but he came on toward it, for like the thorns it seemed to have no power to harm him.

  When he passed it by he glanced down and saw that on the tip of the wicked needle rested a single ruby—one drop of human blood.

  A thick mesh of cobwebs hung behind the spinning wheel. He thrust through them and stopped dead still, for he knew he had found what he came for.

  There was a great carved bed, hung with black velvet. On the curtains was embroidered many times the symbol of the silver wheel the sorceress had worn on her hand, and at the front of the canopy was a silver shield. Written on this shield in scarlet letters were the words:

  MY FINAL GIFT TO HER

  HER DEATH BED

  His heart thudding in slow heavy hammer strokes, the prince walked up to the bed and looked down at what lay there.

  She was more beautiful than anything he had ever seen.

  She wore white silk, with diamonds at her throat, but she shone more brightly. Her hands were like white feathers on the black velvet bed, her skin like lampshine through alabaster, but her hair was light itself.

  The prince stared at her and did not know what he must do. For she was quite still and unmoving, and more marvelous than any of the wonders he had ever seen. She did not even breathe.

  Then it came to him, that miracle in an Eastern city, when he had seen a man brought back to life.

  It seemed quite wrong that he should even touch her, she looked so peaceful. Yet it seemed also important that he had remembered at this moment how the thing was done. So he set his feelings aside and leaned down and placed his mouth on hers, and blew into her lungs the breath of life, as he had seen the priest do it. At first her ribcage rose and fell only with his breath, but presently she gave a deep sigh and he let her go. Her eyelids fluttered and lifted, and she looked at him and smiled.

  “Welcome, Royal Born,” she said. “So you came as they said you would.”

  At that the whirling thing shot off from the body of the spinning wheel and cracked in a thousand pieces like glass. It was strange. He had never really been afraid until she woke, and looked at him. Then fear began.

  She led him down into the hall where now all the lamps flickered gold. The people moved rustily, and stared about like ghosts. They were so old, and yet they had hardly lived at all. The king and queen drew her into their embraces, moving like puppets, and then there was a feast.

  They sat at the long tables, among the drifting cobwebs, and ate the roast meats and the peaches that had kept perfect for a hundred years, and they spoke in slow, hollow voices of all the things that had been a hundred years before and were no longer, though they did not know.

  It filled the prince with terrible icy melancholy.

  Even she, his princess, sitting at his side, seemed to be looking up at him out of her beautiful eyes through the dull waters of an ocean—the century which was between them.

  Near dawn, when the sad weird figures still moved in their old forgotten dances in the hall, he drew her out into the garden. Beyond the animal trees and the fountains he saw that all the thorns had withered and fallen into dust, which now blew about the hill. For a long while the palace of the king would be surrounded by a desert of black dunes. He took her hand, which felt unreal, like the hand of a doll, and said, “Madam, I can’t stay with you.”

  “This I know,” she said. “I saw it in your face at once.” She didn’t weep, or frown, but she murmured: “After all, I am still asleep. I shall never be awake again.”

  He tried to comfort her, but it was no use and he saw it, and her pride, so he kissed her gently and went away as the sun was rising.

  He didn’t look for the Oldest Man in the city. He looked neither left nor right till he was out of the valley, and then he did not look back.

  On the road the black stone was still standing up, and there was a raven perched on it which stared at him with silver eyes.

  “So, after all, you had the last laugh, Thirteenth Lady,” he said to it. “You were more clever than you thought.”

  But the bird flew up into the wide clear sky without a sound.

  WHEN THE CLOCK STRIKES

  Yes, the great ballroom is filled only with dust now. The slender columns of white marble and the slender columns of rose-red marble are woven together by cobwebs. The vivid frescoes, on which the Duke’s treasury spent so much, are dimmed by the dust; the faces of the painted goddesses look grey. And the velvet curtains—touch them, they will crumble. Two hundred years now, since anyone danced in this place on the sea-green floor in the candle-gleam. Two hundred years since the wonderful clock struck for the very last time.

  I thought you might care to examine the clock. It was considered exceptional in its day. The pedestal is ebony and the face fine porcelain. And these figures, which are of silver, would pass slowly about the circlet of the face. Each figure represents, you understand, an hour. And as the appropriate hours came level with this golden bell, they would strike it the correct number of times. All the figures are unique, as you see. Beginning at the first hour, they are, in this order, a girl-child, a dwarf, a maiden, a youth, a lady and a knight. And here, notice, the figures grow older as the day declines: a queen and king for the seventh and eighth hours, and after these, an abbess and a magician and next to last, a hag. But the very last is strangest of all. The twelfth figure; do you recognize him? It is Death. Yes, a most curious clock. It was reckoned a marvelous thing then. But it has not struck for two hundred years. Possibly you have been told the story? No? Oh, but I am certain that you have heard it, in another form, perhaps.

  However, as you have some while to wait for your carriage, I will recount the tale, if you wish.

  I will start with what was said of the clock. In those years, this city was prosperous, a stronghold—not as you see it today. Much was made in the city that was ornamental and unusual. But the clock, on which the twelfth hour was Death, caused something of a stir. It was thought unlucky, foolhardy, to have such a clock. It began to murmured, jokingly by some, by others in earnest, that one night when the clock struck the twelfth hour, Death would truly strike with it.

  Now life has always been a chancy business, and it was more so then. The Great Plague had come but twenty years before and was not yet forgotten. Besides, in the Duke’s court there was much intrigue, while enemies might be supposed to plot beyond the city walls, as happens even in our present age. But there was another thing.

  It was rumored that the Duke had obtained both his title and the city treacherously. Rumor declared that he had systematically destroyed those who had stood in line before him, the members of the princely house that formerly ruled here. He had accomplished the task slyly, hiring assassins talented with poisons and daggers. But rumor also declared that the Duke had not been sufficiently thorough. For though he had meant to rid himself of all that rival house, a single descendant remained, so obscure he had not traced her—for it was a woman.

  Of course, such matters were not spoken of openly. Like the prophecy of the clock, it was a subject for the dark.

  Nevertheless, I will tell you at once, there was such a descendant he had missed in his bloody work. And she was a woman. Royal and proud she was, and seething with bitter spite and a hunger for vengeance, and as bloody as the Duke, had he known it, in her own way.

  For her safety and disguise, she had long ago wed a wealthy merchant in the city, and presently bore the man a daughter. The merchant, a dealer in silks, was respected, a good fellow but not wise. He rejoiced in his handsome and aristocratic wife. He never dreamed what she might be about when he was not with her. In fact, she had swo
rn allegiance to Satanas. In the dead of night she would go up into an old tower adjoining the merchant’s house, and there she would say portions of the Black Mass, offer sacrifice, and thereafter practice witchcraft against the Duke. This witchery took a common form, the creation of a wax image and the maiming of the image that, by sympathy, the injuries inflicted on the wax be passed on to the living body of the victim. The woman was capable in what she did. The Duke fell sick. He lost the use of his limbs and was racked by excruciating pains from which he could get no relief. Thinking himself on the brink of death, the Duke named his sixteen-year-old son his heir. This son was dear to the Duke, as everyone knew, and be sure the woman knew it too. She intended sorcerously to murder the young man in his turn, preferably in his father’s sight. Thus, she let the Duke linger in his agony, and commenced planning the fate of the prince.

  Now all this while she had not been toiling alone. She had one helper. It was her own daughter, a maid of fourteen, that she had recruited to her service nearly as soon as the infant could walk. At six or seven, the child had been lisping the Satanic rite along with her mother. At fourteen, you may imagine, the girl was well versed in the Black Arts, though she did not have her mother’s natural genius for them.

  Perhaps you would like me to describe the daughter at this point. It has a bearing on the story, for the girl was astonishingly beautiful. Her hair was the rich dark red of antique burnished copper, her eyes were the hue of the reddish-golden amber that traders bring from the East. When she walked, you would say she was dancing. But when she danced, a gate seemed to open in the world, and bright fire spangled inside it, but she was the fire.