When she awakens, he is fondling her excitedly, his excitement exciting her (she pleases him!), his touches, too (and he her!), her body tingling with his feverish explorations. It’s better even than she imagined it. His delicate hands are everywhere, lightly scrambling up and down her body, it’s almost as though he has more than two of them, and he is lashing her with a soft woolly whip, now her thighs, now her face, now her breasts. She smells sweet fennel, balm, lavender, and mint, mixed with dust and less pleasant odors, and she recognizes the smell from her childhood: the rushes strewn with the aromatic herbs on the great hall floor, where she often played beneath the trestle tables while her elders ate. Whom she now hears above her, laughing uproariously. She opens her eyes and sees the monkey perched on her chest between her breasts, smirking at her under the miniature crown tied under his chin. He pinches one pink nipple in his bony little fingers, lifts it and shakes it like a bell, his lips splitting in a maniacal grin, and she feels the ripples all the way to the depths of her belly, where a dull insistent pain resides. Her mother and father and all their friends and all the knights and servants of the castle are gathered around, gazing down with greasy-faced delight upon this spectacle, hooting and laughing and slapping their thighs. They have been eating and drinking, many are eating and drinking still, chewing, spitting, guzzling, and the refuse from their feast is all about her. The monkey rises on all fours, turns his back, lifts his tail to display to her his waxen crimson bottom, and commences to lick and paw between her legs as though picking fleas or searching for something to eat. She feels a burning itch there which she wants desperately to scrub, but she can’t move a finger, it’s as though all but her intimate parts have been turned to stone. She is terrified and humiliated, but she is also strangely thrilled, not only by the monkey’s frolicsome two-handed rummaging, but also by the outrage being committed upon her here, the flaunting of proprieties, the breaking of royal taboos. It’s like something is being released, and it feels almost explosive. If only the monkey would stop tickling her and (though she doesn’t know what ‘it’ might be) get on with it! That seems to spring a new burst of laughter from her audience, but she is certain she did not speak aloud, cannot. She cannot even cry out as the monkey, losing his temper and snatching and digging at her furiously, slapping, clawing, biting, finally shoving a whole arm inside her, brings back, redoubled, the spindled pain. It’s almost as though he wants to break her open, get at what’s down deep inside! This is terrible! Why are they all laughing?! She’s hurting so—! Just then, thankfully, a familiar old crone wanders through, shoos the monkey away (the revelers are gone, vanished, her mother and father among them, as though they never were), melts her petrified limbs, restores her voice to her: Was that it? Has it happened? Has the spell been broken? she gasps, clutching her assaulted parts with both hands. The crone does not reply (they are in the servery now, or maybe the nursery), but instead, cackling softly, says: Calm down, my precious. Let me tell you a story.
Once upon a time, the fairy relates, there was a rather wild and headstrong little girl who, ignoring the warnings of her elders, climbed up to the top of a secret tower where an old woman was spinning, got pricked by a spindle, and fell asleep for a hundred years. What was her name? I don’t know, don’t interrupt. It was me, wasn’t it? No, Rose, this was someone else. Her name was Beauty, I think. Have I heard this story before? Hush, now! When her hundred years were up, she was awakened by a handsome young prince who loved her very much and visited her whenever he could get away from his wife, which was usually about once every fortnight. He was married—?! Of course he was. Didn’t I just tell you? I must have forgotten. But didn’t it make her very unhappy — I mean, after waiting all that time—? Yes, it did, but she understood that, being from the last century, she was probably a bit old-fashioned, while he was a modern prince with different ideas, and anyway she had no choice. When the prince’s wife, who was an ogress, found out about the affair, she waited until the prince had gone off hunting one day, and then she went over to Beauty’s house and ordered the clerk of the kitchen to strip off Beauty’s finery, which the wife naturally wanted for herself and without any nasty stains on it, thank you, then to slit her throat and roast her on a spit over the fire. Meanwhile, she prepared a rich garlic soup with spicy fish dumplings, fresh leeks broiled in butter and black pepper, cabbage stuffed with sausage and seasoned with vinegar, mustard, saffron, ginger, and herbs from the garden, fresh baked bread, and for dessert a blancmange flavored with anise. When her husband came back from hunting and saw what she had done, he was very upset of course, Beauty was a special favorite of his, having helped him make his name and all, but he was also very hungry and his wife, who was a wise ogress, had brought along a big jug of delicious young wine from the south to go with the feast she’d prepared, so in the end he settled down and enjoyed his meal, even if he did find the meat a bit tough, being more than a century old as it was. As the ogress had never been able to have any children of her own, she and the prince adopted Beauty’s little orphans and took them home with them and they all lived happily ever after. Rose is not amused by this story. It was nothing like that, she complains. What do you know about it, you silly creature? demands the fairy. It is not easy, keeping this going for a hundred years, and she does not appreciate her charge’s dismissive attitude. It just doesn’t sound right, Rose says. Real stories aren’t like that. Real princes aren’t.
Her prince has come. The real one. It is dark and she does not know where she is but she knows he has come and that it is he. She is filled with rejoicing, but also with trepidation. So much is at stake! She has known all along that her prince would come, but she has also known there would be no uncoming, forever after as much a threat as promised delight. What if he is not as she’s imagined him to be? She was safe inside this impenetrable castle, protected even from the demands of her own body, and now this alien being who paces at her bedside has broached those walls and will soon break through to her very core, if he has not already done so. All her childhood fears return: of the dark, of strange noises, of monsters and ghosts, of murderers, of being left alone, of her parents dying, of getting sick and dying herself, of the world dying. He clears his throat. Has he kissed her yet? She doesn’t remember, but she musters her courage and opens her eyes to see who or what is there, terrified now that she will find a great hairy beast prowling beside her bed. But, no, it is he, a handsome young prince with manly brow and beard and flowing locks, tall and lean and strong. My prince, she whispers. You have come at last! Yes, well, he says with a grimace, wandering distractedly through the dimly lit room, draped in swags of gray dusty webs, which he swipes at irritably with his gauntleted hand. At a wooden chest, he picks up a bonehandled copper pitcher enameled with the family crest, thumps it, peers at its green bottom, sets it down again. He pokes through some wardrobe drawers, raising clouds of dust, finds some rings and necklaces and silver pennies, which he sorts through idly. Perhaps he takes some of these things, but not as a thief might: in effect, he possesses them. With one metallic finger he strokes a plump lute resting on a table: the dry strings snap and ping, their ancient tension released, but not hers. My prince? He turns his restless gaze upon her for a moment and then it seems to pierce right through her, as though focusing on something within or beyond her, chilling her to the marrow before it drifts away again, coming to rest on a chessboard with cracked and yellowed ivory pieces. He moves one of the figures, freeing it from its bonds of web, then, with a shrug, tips it over. It is a delicate, casual, yet studied gesture, and it terrifies her. In front of a round dust-grimed mirror on the wall, he stares at himself, stroking his beard. He is immaculately groomed and dressed, more elegant even than she had dreamt he would be. You are very beautiful, she murmurs timidly, but I thought you’d, I don’t know, show more outward signs of your terrible ordeal. Ordeal—? You know, the briars. He turns away from the mirror, peers at her warily with narrowed eyes. What briars? Didn’t you have to cut your way through a briar hedge outside? Maybe, he says stonily, I’m at the wrong castle.