MISC/HCC: The Queen's Roast, a fairy-tale

[Tom Russell]

   THE QUEEN'S ROAST, a fairy-tale.
     told by Tom Russell

I have no idea if this should be flagged with "ACRA" or not, but if
you've read any fairy tales, you probably know the kinds of things to
expect!


There was once a good king. He was wise and temperate; he was a
skilled diplomat and also an able campaigner; he was without guile,
but was not overly trusting; he was just and he was kind. He was
excellent in all ways, and excelled in all things, save for one fault,
one blind-spot: his queen.
   The queen was vain, and wicked, and selfish, and cruel. If the king
had a thousand virtues and one fault, then the queen had a thousand
faults and one virtue - and that virtue was that she made him happy.
   He loved her so completely that he could never see what she really
was. He denied her nothing and forgave every fault. His subjects knew;
his advisers knew; his son, the prince, knew. But he did not listen,
and would not suffer to hear ill of her.
   The king died.
   The prince not yet being of age, the queen was appointed his
regent. The kingdom suffered mightily under her rule. Her cruelties
were multiplied a hundred-fold, becoming more exquisite and decadent.
   The people had no choice but to wait for the young king to come of
age, at which point he would throw off his mother's evil rule, and
relieve their burden. The people rejoiced when the young king, still
in his minority, was wed. His bride was comely, and clever, and soon
was with child. The date of the young king's majority would coincide
with the birth of the new prince. The kingdom held its breath.
   But the queen regent, having grown steadily accustomed to greater
and greater cruelty, and becoming bored in turn with each new outrage,
found that there was nothing that would give her any pause. She also
found that she had no desire to give up the power to which she had
become accustomed, and it occurred to her that if the crown were to
pass to her soon-to-be-born grandson, she might again serve as regent,
and thus extend her rule for another sixteen years, even though, in
her waning years, she was not likely to live for that long.
   And so on the night before his majority, she killed her son the
young king and ate him. Just as she finished the final course, she was
given news that the young queen had given birth. Before the young
queen could give suck, she too was killed and devoured.
   The queen regent - and I shall just call her the queen from now on,
as her rival was in the process of being digested - was feeling very
pleased with herself, if a little bloated. There was a pang of
indigestion when she discovered the sex of her grandchild. For it was
not a prince at all, but a princess. This would mean that the throne
would pass to the good king's brother, who was no friend to the queen.
And so she decided to disguise the child as a boy, so that the queen
might rule in "his" stead.
   Cruelty attracts cruelty, and that night the wicked queen was
visited by a wicked imp. A bargain was struck. Every year, on
Walpurgis Night, the two of them would have a private feast, and
together eat a young and beautiful girl,  which the queen was obliged
to provide, "but not from peasant stock; I want premium meat,
delicately roasted". In exchange, the queen would grow younger,
instead of older, and live beyond her natural life. The queen, having
found her daughter-in-law far more delicious than her son, was
planning on making a regular diet of young and beautiful girls anyway,
and so felt like she got the better of the bargain.
   "But should you fail even once," hissed the imp, "I'll suck the
meat from your bones instead."
   The deal was struck, and the years passed in this ghastly fashion.
   The queen grew younger with each passing year, and her
granddaughter the king grew older. I would like to say that the king,
who was called Jack, was sweet and good, and free of guile, as her
grandfather and father had been, and that her grandmother's cruelty
only made her better, the way a fire only serves to temper steel. Jack
was better than the queen, but neither was she as good as all that,
and Jack learned many bad habits from her grandmother, as every child
learns from those who rear them. Jack learned to be clever, and to
lie, and not to trust. Jack did not learn how to forgive or to forget,
but to be vengeful and capricious.
   Because she spent every day disguised as a boy, Jack became good at
disguises, and fond of them. Often she would disguise herself,
sometimes as a boy and sometimes as a girl, sometimes as a noble and
sometimes a peasant, sometimes as old and sometimes as young,
sometimes as a person and sometimes as an animal, and escape the
castle for a day, and go on some adventure. So long as Jack returned
to the castle every night, the queen allowed her this indulgence. Some
say that Jack had some special magic to change her form; I don't know
if this is true, and will let you draw your own conclusions.
   Whatever her disguise, Jack listened and observed, and became
keenly aware of all that was going on in the kingdom. In such a way,
she grew to hate her grandmother, and sympathized with the peasants,
who looked forward to the day when "Good King Jack would assume the
throne in his own right, and depose the wicked queen."
   As that day grew nearer, the queen began to worry. One year before
the day, on Walpurgis Night, she asked the imp what was to be done.
   "Oh, that's an easy thing," said the imp as he gnawed on a
sumptuous thigh, "you'll do as you did once before. Jack will take a
bride, and once the bride is with child, you'll roast the parents, and
we'll have a double feast." He licked his lips.
   "But Jack can't father a child," said the queen. "And besides,
there's hardly any suitable young brides left in my kingdom." To
reinforce the point, she scraped a rosy-red cheek with her fork.
   The imp snapped his greasy fingers. "I have it! Look you in the
mirror. Are you not beautiful and young? As young as Jack? You hardly
look like the wicked old queen the people hate, and who has not been
seen in years. You'll marry Jack yourself, and I'll get you with
child." The imp smiled inwardly, for this was his aim all along. When
the imp-child came of age, it would not be so easily disposed of, and
his kind would again rule over the lands of men.
   "Next Walpurgis Night," continued the imp, "you will not serve a
roasted maiden of noble birth, but a wee peasant babe, newborn, and
never-loved, freely given up by its mother. There is such misery in
your kingdom that it should not be hard to find such a heartless
mother."
   "It shall be done. Should the babe be roasted?"
   "Of course, roasted!" said the imp. "Delicately roasted, and
roasted alive! We're not savages. But mark me well, my queen," and the
imp had a way of saying 'my queen' so as to make it clear that she
belonged to him, and not the other way around, "should you fail, I'll
suck the meat from your bones instead!" With that, he left, and so too
did the queen, and once the room was empty and she was unobserved, so
too did Jack, who was disguised as a chair.
   Jack had often wondered with whom her grandmother dined every
Walpurgis Night, and what they ate, and was outraged upon making her
discovery. She was likewise outraged that an innocent babe would be
roasted alive a year hence, but not, I'm afraid to say, nearly as much
as she was to discover that upon reaching her maturity, she herself
would be roasted and devoured.
   Jack immediately infiltrated the kitchen staff, and determined that
on Walpurgis Night, they were all dismissed save one, who did the
roasting. Only a wicked man could do such a thing every year, and so
Jack had no qualms about shoving him into his own oven.
   This naturally created a vacancy in the staff, and a problem for
the queen, who worried she would be unable to find a replacement who
would consent to meet her special dietary needs, and who would
particularly be able to prepare the special delicacy she needed a year
hence.
   That night, she was visited by the imp, who assured her that on the
day the babe was to be roasted alive, a stranger would appear at the
castle, a beautiful maiden with flaxen hair, whose name would be
Mercy. And Mercy would know what to do, and would do it. The queen was
delighted.
   The imp took his leave, and once out of sight, threw off his cloak;
it was Jack. And Jack would be Mercy, too, one year later.
   "I was expecting you," said the queen when Mercy presented herself.
"Here is the menu." She handed her disguised granddaughter the crying
babe, and dismissed the rest of the kitchen staff.
   Mercy of course did not roast the babe, who she gave to a loving
but childless peasant couple. In its stead, she roasted a pig. Mercy
stood there while they ate. The queen could not tell the difference,
and neither could the imp, until they had devoured everything but its
tiny, twisty tail.
   "A tail?" said the imp, squinching it between his fingernails. "Is
it customary for human babies to have a tail?"
   "No," said Mercy, "but it's quite common for a pig!"
   "A pig? A pig!" hissed the imp, and all at once he was shuffling
across the great long dining table and toward the queen.
   "This was your girl!" said the queen. "You sent her to me!"
   "I did no such thing!" said the imp.
   Jack smiled; there was no mercy in it. "Good-bye, grandmother."
   "A bargain is a bargain," sung the imp, "and now, I'll suck the
meat from your bones!"
   And so he did. When the imp had finished, he turned to Jack.
"Perhaps I'll eat you as well!"
   "We've made no bargain," said Jack, "and you'll make no bargain
here this night. Leave now, and never return!" And because Jack had
tricked the imp, the imp had no power over her, and had to follow her
commands.
   The people rejoiced that the queen was dead, and fully expected a
new golden age to begin with Jack's rule in "his" own right. And while
their misery was much relieved, they were on the whole disappointed,
for Jack was not an especially good king.
   But she was clever and crafty, and fond of disguises.

COPYRIGHT 2017 TOM RUSSELL