Read Online The Kingdom of Little Wounds by Susann Cokal - Free Book Online

his coarse monkey body pressing against hers, and at every gesture she expected that he would transform into a husband as pleasing as his courtiers. In the morning, the king hung the bloodied sheets out the chamber window; a barbaric custom. And barbaric, too, was the transformation — for the princess discovered that while her husband had remained the same, all his courtiers had reverted into monkeys, which was their true shape.
    Thenceforth she was the queen of a wild, speechless monkey-land. Her children had long hairy fingers and curling tails, with slobbering lips that the king insisted must suckle on no breasts but her own.
    In time, the queen began to pray that she, too, would turn into a monkey, if only to make these circumstances easier to bear. But the angels of the monkey-land did not heed her prayers, for in all the years she lived among them, she never managed once to give her husband a loving kiss.

H ISTORY
    S
O,
writes the chronicler,
it always is for royal brides;
though Princess Sophia never had the chance to suffer among the apish Swedes. Perhaps this would be considered a sort of blessing. The chronicler has witnessed the sorrows of Queen Isabel and her gradual decline these past ten years; she might be glad to know her daughter has been spared those same trials.
    But he is a historian, not a moralist. He does not interpret facts; nor does he make judgments. That is for others to do as time passes.
    He slips this paper into his bed canopy to mingle with his other private observations.

R OYAL P ASSING
    T HE Lunedie chapel, the great cathedral, the parish towers all over town: every church bell clucks its tongue over Sophia’s death. They scour away sleep.
    In the midst of life,
shout the bells,
we are in death.
The householders of Skyggehavn rouse themselves, blinking, and hang black cloths from their windows. The canals reflect wavering black; the bakers char the bread.
    The story of Sophia’s death spreads with the waves of noise, till it is well established that the Devil himself (in the guise of a Swede) tried to pluck the girl from her bed, then fought an angel for her soul. The angel, it is said, carried the princess bodily to Heaven so that Satan couldn’t ravish her.
    “Nonsense,” say the priests. “A fantasy,” say the scholars. But there are many who believe, and who carve Sophia’s portrait into their walls with knives and nails, praying that she might protect them from Devil, trolls, and Protestants.
    At the palace, Sophia Lunedie has left a very real and material corpse. Before the bells ring the sun overhead, that corpse has begun to rot. It fills the rooms with the reek of an overripe strawberry, an odor that makes mouths water and stomachs churn at the same time. The green flies of May buzz around it, and black ants nibble from below. Blood and serum from her necklace of wounds have hardened into dark jewels around which the princess’s flesh is starting to melt.
    In the speed of its corruption, the girl’s body presents several questions. Perhaps least among these is the
how
of her death; whether from
Morbus Lunediernus
or some other cause, it almost doesn’t matter. More important: Is she Princess of the realm or Duchess of Östergötland — that is, did the Duke complete the union before his bride’s demise? An answer must be found immediately. So much blood streaks the sheets that no one can be sure; even the Duke himself might not know, given the uproar in their marriage bed. No one would dream of breaching etiquette by posing him the question directly, and no one would trust Mad Magnus with an honest reply. Yet everything depends on the answer. If the marriage was not consummated, the treaty with Sweden hasn’t been ratified, and the new peace may unravel. Then all of Scandinavia might very well be back at war.
    To some of the nobles, Sophia’s death is good news: the marriage was not universally popular. Several lords favored a connection with Denmark; but