19

The Queen's Companions

How Orem came to be called the Little King and met those who would most kindly, most cruelly use him.

The Love of Beauty

Who can blame Orem Scanthips for awaking in wonder, surprised at joy? For the first time in his life the truth was better than the dream, and more improbable. For that first hour he thought he had found name and place and poem, all in one, and that all were happy. Sunlight danced from a thousand mirrors. And more:

I believe that if Beauty had been kind to him, he would have loved her, and so we and the gods would have been undone.

Yet if Beauty had been able to be kind, it would not have taken her death to release us all from bondage.

So we go in circles. And here is the cruelest circle of all, Palicrovol: I believe that, by the end of her life, Beauty loved Orem Scanthips as much in her way as the Flower Princess loved her King. Though Orem was born when Beauty had already passed three centuries of life in power, still the girl Asineth had found her lover—a dreamer, a good man, a kind man who cared less for his plan than for the people in it. That is how he was unlike you, Palicrovol, and that is why she loved him.

Poor Beauty. May I not pity her, of all people? She loved him, but she had only learned one way to show her love—through cruelty and abuse. After all, whom did she love most in all the world? Those who had dwelt at her right and left hand for fifteen score years: Weasel Sootmouth, Urubugala, and Craven. That was what she knew of love. No wonder Orem never recognized her love when she gave it to him. Even now, if he knew that she had loved him, it would break his heart.

But he did not know, and does not know, because this is how she served him from the first day of their life as husband and wife:

The Naming of the Little King In the morning they dressed him in brocades and velvet, clothes so heavy that at first they bowed him and made him look a bit ridiculous. He did not know how to wear the robes of a King—that is not born in a man, as you know. Then they led him through the palace, whispering to him the names of the rooms so he could ask for them again, though he did not yet know what to do with the Chamber of Stars or the Hall of Asps, the Porch of Keening or the Room of the Dancing Bulls.

"Are you blind?" Orem asked softly. Surely he could not see without an aperture for vision; yet didn't the eyes look up at him?

"To light I am blind," whispered the old man, not taking his gaze from Orem's face.

Where had he seen such eyes? "Who are you?" Orem asked.

"I am God," said the old man. He smiled, and his mouth had neither tongue nor teeth nor anything at all—just blackness behind the lips. Then he bent again to his work, and the servants gently insisted Orem up the stairs.

Who but the Little King would have spoken to an aged, naked servant oiling the wooden stairs? This is sure: only one who carried with him an invisible hole in Queen Beauty's Searching Eye could have heard the answer that Orem heard. He did not understand; he did not forget, either, despite all he learned of Queen Beauty before the hour was up.

Who but Queen Beauty could be noticed in the Moon Chamber, with its great discs of silver lit by a thousand candles? She used it as her private court. The servants led Orem to the edge of that huge circle of glass called now the Round Table and called then Beauty's Moon. He faced the Queen, who sat on her ivory throne.

When the servants had left, the Queen arose and stepped forward, offering him her hand. Orem took it and started to bow to her, unsure of protocol, thinking only of the night before and marveling that this woman now was his wife. But the Queen stopped him, and did not let him bow. Instead she bowed her head to him. The gasp from behind him was the first he noticed that someone else was in the room.

"Beauty has taken a wife," intoned a high-pitched voice with an edge of madness, "to last her all his life. Has she taken him to bed with poison in his head?"

The Queen lifted her head and faced the others in the room; Orem also turned. In the middle of the table sat a black man, a small man, nearly naked, with a headdress of cow's horns on his head and an immense false phallus hanging from his belt. He had not been there when Orem entered. It was he who had recited the rhyme, and now he spoke again.

What a pretty little king, With a pretty little thing,

When he finds he has no sting?

"Shut up," the Queen said beautifully. The dwarf turned a somersault and landed, laughing, at Beauty's feet.

"Ah, beat me, beat me, Beauty!" cried the black man, and then he wept piteously. In a moment he started tasting the tears, then retreated to a corner of the room, dabbing at his eyes with the stuffed phallus that dangled longer than his legs.

"As you see," said the Queen, "I have taken a husband. He is a common criminal from the filthiest part of the city. He is as attractive to me as a leprous hog. But he was given to me in a dream from the Sweet Sisters, and it amused me to follow their advice."

Orem could not sort out the difference between her sweet, musical voice and the harsh words she was saying. He smiled stupidly, vaguely aware that he was being abused, but unable to be angry at the song from Queen Beauty's lips.

"As you see, he is also quite stupid. He once had a name, but in this court he will be called Little King. Also, despite the fact that he has the sexual prowess of a dung beetle, we conceived a child last night."

Orem was not surprised that Queen Beauty already knew. Other women might have to wait until the moon didn't rise for them, but not her. With Beauty such things were not left to chance.

"You will speak of my child to the others, my Gossips. Spread it as a rumor through all the world. Dear Palicrovol will know what it means, even if the rest do not, and he will come to knock at my gates. I miss the man. I want to see him weep again."

Each in turn the Queen's Companions came to her, and she received them gravely.

The old soldier's step was slow and unsteady; he lurched under the weight of the armor. His voice was hollow and soft, full of air. He spoke to Orem first.

"Little King, I see you wear your ring wisely. Look at it often and follow its advice." Then he turned to the Queen and looked in her eyes. Orem was surprised by the force of his gaze—when the old man looked at him his eyes had been gentle and soft, but now they were full of fire. Hatred? This man had power despite his weak body and the large armor that made a joke of it. "Beauty, dear Beauty," said the old soldier, "I give your child a blessing. May your son have my strength."

Orem looked at the Queen in alarm. Surely she would be angry that the old man had cursed her unborn child so. Orem knew well the power of wishes on the unborn—many a dullwit and cripple had been the result of an ill-thought jest. But the Queen only nodded and smiled as if the old man had given her a great gift.

And then the woman. Her walk was canted a bit, so that one step was long, the next short. Her hands were gnarled and twisted, and when she touched Orem's cheek it felt as though her fingers were scaled like fish. She smiled, and Orem realized that the dirt on her lip was a scraggly moustache; her hair was also thin and wispy, and she was bald in a few patches, which had not been granted even the mercy of a wig. "Little King," she said in a voice that grated like the cry of a rutting hen, "be lonely, love no one, and live long." Then she, too, turned to the Queen. "I also give your child a blessing. May your son have my beauty."

The short man waddled up to take his turn, grinning idiotically. He stopped in front of Orem and pulled down his loincloth to reveal that he had only one testicle in his scrotum, and a penis so small it could hardly be seen. "I'm half what I should be," said the fool, "but twice the man you are." Then he giggled, pulled his loincloth back in place, and darted forward to part Orem's robe and lift his shirt and peer under it. Orem tried to back away, but the dwarf was quick and saw what he wanted to see. "Little King!" he crowed as he emerged from Orem's clothing. "Little King!" Then, suddenly, he was somber. "The Queen sees all, except that which she sees not that she sees not. Remember it, Little King!"