The Swans

Sara Maitland

The Swans

The Young Queen lies in her great bed and listens. In her own silence she has become attuned to the silence of the night, so she can hear the huge silent spinning of the stars and the soft footfalls of cats on the prowl. Her new born boy child in the carved and gilded cradle breathes silently through his first night.

The Young Queen has been silent long enough to hear properly. She hears the quiet malevolent steps of the Old Queen, her husband’s mother, climbing the winding stair, and approaching the royal birth chamber along the cold passageway. The Young Queen closes her eyes so she cannot see, but she cannot close her ears. She hears the door-latch lift and the candle flames shimmer in the new draught. She hears the Old Queen walk to the cradle and the whispered creak as the baby is lifted out. She hears the Old Queen’s slippers turn on the stone floor and – nearly as silently as the cats – come towards the bed. She knows the Old Queen is standing beside her, the child on one arm and the small bowl of goat’s blood in her other hand.

“I know you are awake,” says the Old Queen, very softly.

The Young Queen opens her eyes and the two of them look straight at each other. Almost, perhaps, nearly, they smile.

The Young Queen respects the Old Queen; she even admires her. The Young Queen knows that she herself would not rest easy if her son, if any of her three sons, came home one day with a half naked but beautiful woman-child who would not speak. A woman whose eyes proved her understanding and her feeling, but who never spoke, never laughed, never sang. ‘Witchcraft,’ she would have feared, ‘magic things’; and the Old Queen fears them too. Sometimes, as the Old Queen does always, the Young Queen despises the King, her husband, because he loves a woman about whom he knows nothing – a woman who never speaks, never laughs, never sings, never cries out in joy or pain, even in the night in the great royal bed.

“I know you are awake,” says the Old Queen into the Young Queen’s silence.

“Look,” says the Old Queen, “Look at me. Once again, I am going to steal this child away. I am going to smear your mouth with goat’s blood and tell them you have eaten him. This will be the third time. This time they will believe me. You will be burned for a witch.”

The Young Queen closes her eyes.

“Call, go on call out,” says the Old Queen, “shout, just once, and they’ll come running. I have the baby and the bowl of blood. Proof. They’ll burn me instead.”

And I will have won says her silence, which the Young Queen can hear, I will have defeated you and your everlasting silence.

The Old Queen places the bowl on the table beside the bed and dabbles her fingers in it. The Young Queen feels the Old Queen’s hand warm on her mouth and chin; she can smell the salt sweet goat’s blood. Then she feels the air stretch between her lips and the heavy ringed fingers, hears the Old Queen shift the child on her arm, pick up the bowl, turn and leave the room.

The Young Queen lies quite still. There is blood on her mouth and blood between her legs but she does not attempt to wipe either away. Silently the night turns, turns towards the morning and the Young Queen waits until there is light enough to get up and continue her sewing.

High on the shoulder, in the pass between the mountains, the tarn holds the water from the steep hills above in its peaceful arms. This plateau is the watershed; two tiny streams flow out at either ends of the tarn, but it itself is perfectly still. The dawn comes slowly. The stars fade and the black sky turns indigo. Details emerge colourless out of the darkness. The sky changes: indigo, grey, cream. The view opens away mysteriously: far, far below, southwards, the river twists and loops silver down to the bay; far, far below, northwards, the forest stretches dark and dense into the distance.

The sky changes: grey, cream, peach. The higher mountains to the west catch the first sun, a splash of brightness like blood. Over the eastern cliff two buzzards float. The moth-markings of their under-wings are lit suddenly by the new sun, tawny gold as they ride the air.

The sky changes: cream, peach, pale, palest blue. There is no wind. The tarn is milky white. But when the six swans lumber up out of the reed bed and lurch clumsy, bulky, awkward on their stubby feet to the pebble shore, then surface of the tarn is not white but silver because the swans are white. They take to the water and are changed, graceful, wild and silent. Whiter than dreams, their beaks red-orange, with black knobbed nostrils and eyes, they drift so, not rippling the shining silver. The sun rises. A sudden shocking gold stabs onto the water. The swans swim together, a raft of white, heads curving forward. They turn together, facing northwards, the sun bright on their right flanks.

There is a huge bashing, crashing, splashing din as they lumber, beat their way down the tarn, wings labouring, feet running, kicking on the water. Faster, louder. Then on a breath they are airborne, majestic, powerful, circling as the water falls back into stillness. Above the tarn they form themselves into a wedge, an arrowhead. Together as a single flight they turn north. As they settle into their steady drive, the throbbing music of their wingbeats breaks the silence over the hills and forest.

The Young Queen sits near the window to catch the first light. As soon as she can see what she doing she picks up her sewing. Her stitches are tiny, delicate and placed with exquisite care. The middle finger of her right hand is roughened and calloused from the pricks and pins of her long task. Even after all her years of practice it is still difficult to sew the dry white starwort petals with the short threads of yellow sepal. She cannot hurry this work. She does not hurry even though she is fairly certain that she will not have time now to complete the last of the shirts.

The sky changes: grey, cream, peach. She does not wipe the blood from her lips. As the sky brightens she hears The King come up the stairs. There is knock on her door but no pause before the latch is lifted. She lowers her head over her sewing. The King and his close council come into the room, standing solemn, stern, strangely calm. The King crosses the floor and glances into the empty cradle. He looks at her and she raises her head to meet his eyes. She sees his horror and sadness. He sees how beautiful she is, and how serene. Tears spring in both their eyes, spill over the lashes, run down their cheeks, but they say nothing. For once he has joined her in her silence. They look at each other for a long moment. Then he turns, and all the court with him, and blunders from the room.

The sky changes: cream, peach, pale palest blue. At last she rises and looks out the window southward over the enormous forest. She is not frightened of the forest though many people are. She has wandered there by moonlight from April through to June gathering starwort, the white flowers nodding on their tall straggling stems. Today there is nothing to be seen but the dark of the forest and the pale blue sky. She leans forward over the casement and looks down on the courtyard where there are men busy building a pile of tarred wood around a stake, a bonfire to burn the witch. The tower is high so they look foreshortened, unreal, like insects scuttling. She walks to a chest on the far side of the room, and opens it and takes out the five shirts she has finished. She goes back to her seat, lays the shirts in a tidy pile beside her and picks up the unfinished shirt. She starts sewing again; stitching carefully, patiently while she waits.

It is clear that she cannot walk down the spiral staircase. Only yesterday she had a child. One of the guards carries her. His arms are strong and her head lies on his shoulder. She has one arm round his neck and on the other she carries the six starwort shirts, even the last, the unfinished one which has no left sleeve, because there is no more time. They have a strange old-fashioned scent, a smell of summer and hops and mown grass, that soothes her.

At the foot of the tower the young guard puts her down, but she sways and falls against him. He picks her up again and slowly and solemnly carries her across the great courtyard to the pyre they have built for her. She is so beautiful he thinks his heart will break, but when she raises her head he sees the blood still on her mouth and his gorge rises and he puts her down abruptly. She turns away from him and by herself, freely, she clambers up the log pile. At the top she pauses. Now she uses one of the shirts to wipe her face, to wipe away the blood. The she turns to face the crowd and she is so beautiful that there is silence.

The silence is broken by a pompous lawyer reading a long and pointless document. You cannot kill a Queen or a witch in silence. There has to be some legal process to go through. The law is about words so it is no concern of hers. She wants for him to be done and while she waits, she thinks. She is sad because she does not want to die. She is sad because she loves the King. She is sad because she has held each of her three children for only a few moments. She is sad because she has not rescued her six brothers from their enchantment, although she has tried so hard.

The reading is finishes. They ask her formally if she has any defense, but they know now she will not speak and so there is a slight blurring of the protocol. Let what must be done be done quickly now. No one likes it and no one will turn back. The Old Queen is as silent now as the Young Queen. A trumpet is blown. A brand is lit. The smoke rises thick and black against the white walls of the palace; then thinner and whiter against the pale blue sky. Everyone’s eyes follow it upwards, then squint into the morning sun. The bearer of the flaming brand starts to march up the courtyard towards the Young Queen on her high pyre.

There is a throbbing song, a dark music in the air, and through the smoke, fast, faster than dreams, there is an arrow head, a white drive of power and air and wind and the great beating music of the swans’ wings and a high shrill cry. And the Young Queen takes the shirts from her left arm with her right hand and tosses them high into the air and each swan, without a break in its onrushing flight, without its shifting place in the wedge, catches up a shirt in its red-orange bill. There is a fierce hissing noise, which might be a swan in anger, but is, in fact, six swords drawn from six scabbards as the six brothers surround their sister. They are swans no more, but the Young Queen’s brothers, now set free from their long enchantment. Then there is a peal of laughter like a bell and it is the Young Queen laughing in the arms of the King.

They all live happily ever after. Though the youngest brother walks strangely lopsided, and grows silent. He has no left arm and from his shoulder springs a great white wing of power and beauty. But even a blessed brother in a fairy story cannot fly with only one wing.