Read While Beauty Slept Online
Authors: Elizabeth Blackwell
While Beauty Slept
AMY EINHORN BOOKS
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Copyright © 2014 by Elizabeth Blackwell
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Blackwell, Elizabeth Canning.
While beauty slept / Elizabeth Blackwell.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-101-63519-3
1. Women—Fiction. I. Sleeping Beauty. English. II. Title.
PS3602.L32575W48 2014 2013030337
813'.6—dc23
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
For Mom, Dad, and Rachel, my first readers
CONTENTS
Fifteen: TILL DEATH DO US PART
PROLOGUE
S
he
has already become a legend. The beautiful, headstrong girl I knew is gone forever, her life transformed into myth. The princess who pricked her finger on a spinning wheel and fell asleep for a hundred years, only to be awakened by true love’s kiss.
I heard the tale last night, as I shuffled past the children’s room on my way to bed. My hearing’s not what it was, but Raimy’s voice carried clearly enough through the door. No doubt she was prancing about as she recounted it, for I heard the telltale creaks of the floorboards. My great-granddaughter is rarely content to recount a story; she must enact it, as if her whole body has a part in the telling.
I heard her cackle as she embodied the witch who cast the spell, then gasp as the princess touched the fatal needle. Most of it was nonsense, of course, yet I remained rooted in the hallway, despite the dull ache in my knees and ankles. Raimy’s brother and sister must have been equally enthralled, for they made no sound as the story continued.
“On the first day of the hundredth year, a prince came to the land, a prince more handsome and brave than any before him,” I heard Raimy say. “He could not rest till he had seen the sleeping princess of legend. As he rode up toward the wall of thorny trees, the branches parted. He rode through and saw the castle before him, its stone and marble gleaming in the sunlight.
“He entered the grand hall and was confronted with a miraculous sight: the whole court, lying in a sleep that looked like death. He raced through the castle until he came to the highest tower. There, on a bed in the center of the room, lay Sleeping Beauty, her golden hair spread on the pillow, her cheeks still flushed pink. He could not resist. He bent his head and kissed her.
“The spell was broken. Sleeping Beauty awakened, and around her the castle came to life once again. The king and queen wept with joy to be reunited with their daughter, and happiness was restored to the realm. The prince married the princess, and they lived happily ever after.”
Ha! It would be a fine trick indeed to fell a royal daughter with a needle, then see her revived by a single kiss. If such magic exists, I have yet to witness it. The horror of what really happened has been lost, and no wonder. The truth is hardly a story for children.
The next day I asked Raimy where she had heard the tale.
“A minstrel sang it, at the fair.” Her eyes gleamed at the memory, and I could picture her in the village square, pushing herself to the front of the crowd. “Can you imagine the princess all alone in her tower, waiting for her true love? It gives me a chill to think of it.”
It chilled me as well, though Raimy could never guess the reason. Does anyone believe that a woman can survive a sleeping death and emerge unscathed? How we tried to heal her, those who loved her most. But some damage is too deep to reach.
“Better to fill your mind with Bible verses than such nonsense,” her father grumbled.
I have never liked him. Raimy’s mother, my granddaughter Thelyn, treats me kindly and carefully, as one would a decrepit family pet not long for this world, but her husband complains of how much I eat—as if my withered body should be denied food!—and calls me an old crone when he thinks I’m out of earshot.
Raimy pouted at him. “It’s only a story,” she said.
Approaching fourteen, already beautiful, she chafes at her life on this farm. Looking at her then, I was struck with a vision of Rose at the same age: lips curved in a mischievous smile, the flicker of her long eyelashes. I felt a pang of adoration, for both Raimy and the princess I had once known. Though I often struggle to match names to my other great-grandchildren, Raimy has always been my favorite. Self-assured and intensely curious, she seems more fully alive than those around her.
She is also perceptive enough to notice when her prattling provokes an unexpected reaction. Over the following days, she returned often to her story of the sleeping princess, glancing my way expectantly as I attempted to maintain an expression of blank disinterest. One evening, irritated when she failed to reappear with a cap I had asked her to fetch, I hobbled to the bedroom that Thelyn and her husband had given over to me—another cause, no doubt, of the man’s continual grumbling at my presence. As I walked in, I saw that the small trunk holding my possessions had been flung open, my clothes tossed haphazardly over the sides. Raimy, kneeling before it, jolted her head upward, her gasp matching my own as I saw what she clutched in her hand.
Even in that dimly lit space, the emeralds and rubies embedded in the dagger’s handle sparkled. The sharp, cruel blade retained its silvery luster, and I felt a wave of revulsion as I remembered that same surface coated in blood. Could minuscule drops still cling to those jewels, within reach of Raimy’s tender skin?
Any other child caught trespassing among an adult’s private possessions would have made a show of embarrassment or contrition. Not Raimy.
“What is this?” she asked, her voice awed. Such an object, so costly and so deadly, had no place among the things of a simple tradesman’s widow.
I could have put Raimy off with a falsehood and shooed her away. But I looked at my beloved great-granddaughter and found I could not lie. In the fifty years since those terrible days in the tower, I have never spoken of what happened there. But with my body failing and death in my sights, I have been plagued by memories, rushing in unbidden, provoking waves of longing for what once was. Perhaps that is why I remain on this earth, the only person who knew Rose when she was young and untouched by tragedy. The only one who watched it all unfold, from the curse to the final kiss.
Gently, I took the dagger from Raimy’s hand and slid it back into the leather pouch where it had been concealed. I looked at the jumble of objects she had pulled from the bottom of my trunk: a braided leather bracelet that was more precious to me than any diamond-encrusted ornament, intricate lace trim salvaged from dresses that had long since disintegrated, a verse written in elegant script on a cracking piece of parchment. A golden three-tiered necklace adorned with miniature flowers that Raimy gazed at in covetous wonder while my heart grieved anew for the woman who had once worn it. Remnants of a life, meaningless to anyone but myself.
Easing myself slowly onto the bed, I gestured to Raimy to join me. The household was settling down to sleep; we would not be missed if we kept to ourselves for a few hours.
And so I began. “I will tell you a tale. . . .”
