Robert Coover - Briar Rose & Spanking the Maid

He enters her bedchamber, brushing aside the thick dusty webs of a lost century. She lies more upon the bed than in it, propped up in overflowing silks and soft wools and elegant brocades, and delicately aglow in the dusky room as though her unawakened spirit were hovering on her surface like some sort of sorcelous cosmetic. Is she wearing anything? No. Or, rather, yes, a taffeta gown perhaps, deep blue to set off her unbound golden hair, which flows in lustrous rivulets over the feather pillows and bedding and over her body, too, as though to illuminate its contours. Her matching slippers are not of leather but also of a heavy blue silk and her stockings, gartered at the knees, are of the purest white. Of course, dark as it is, he might not be able to see all this, though, as he imagines it, dawn is breaking and, as he pushes aside the ancient drapes (he has already, hands now at her knees, pushed them aside, they turned to dust at his touch), the rising sun casts its roseate beams upon her, and especially upon her fair brow, her faintly flushed cheeks, her coral lips, parted slightly to receive his kiss. He pauses to catch his breath, lowers his sword. He has been hacking his way feverishly through the intransigent briar hedge, driven on by his dreams of the prize that awaits him and by his firm sense of vocation, but, far from turning to dust at his touch, the hedge has been resisting his every movement, thickening even as he prunes it, snatching at him with its thorns, closing in behind and above him as he advances, if advancing is what he has truly been doing. He should have reached the castle walls long ago. Did he, distracted by the heady blossoms, make a wrong turning, and is he now circling the walls instead of moving toward them? It is impossible to tell, he is utterly enclosed in the briars, could not see the castle turrets even were they still overhead, which, he feels certain (clouds have obscured the moon, all is darkness), they are not. Perhaps, he thinks with a shudder, I have not been chosen after all. Perhaps … Perhaps I am not the one.

Well, everyone might have lived happily ever after, replies the old crone, gutting a plucked cock, if it hadn’t been for his jealous wife. He was married—?! Of course, my love, what did you think? And she was, as you can imagine, a very unhappy lady, even if perhaps she was not the ogress everyone said she was, her husband especially. But that’s terrible! That’s not the worst of it, I’m afraid. I don’t know if I want to hear the rest. She is in the kitchen, which at first was more like her parents’ bedchamber or else the bath house, listening to the ancient scold in there tell a story about a princess who fell into an enchanted sleep as a child and woke up a mother. The princess is called Sleeping Beauty, though that might not have been her real name. Has she heard this story before? She can’t remember, but it sounds all too familiar, and she is almost certain something bad is about to happen. But she goes on listening because she cannot do otherwise. So she waited until her husband was off hunting or at one of his other houses of pleasure, the old crone continues, ripping out the cock’s inner organs, and then she went over to Sleeping Beauty’s house and cooked up her children and ordered the clerk of the kitchen to build a big bonfire and burn Beauty alive, calling her a cruel homewrecking bitch and a lump of you-know-what. The kitchen hag, cackling softly, squeezes a handful of chicken guts, making them break wind. There is something vaguely reassuring about this, not unlike a happy ending. The prince’s wife, the crone continues, her hands braceleted in pink intestines, had in mind serving up a very special roast to her husband when he got home, believing, you see, that the way to a man’s heart is, heh heh, through the stomach. She sniffs at the cock’s tail. The story seems to be over. And that’s all? she demands in helpless rage. Not quite, smiles the crone. She shakes her old head and a swarm of blue lights rises and falls around her ears. Sleeping Beauty was wearing a beautiful jewel-studded gown her friend the prince had given her and his wife wanted it, so she ordered Beauty, before being thrown on the fire, to strip down, which she did, slowly, one article at a time, shrieking wildly with each little thing she removed, as though denuding herself was driving her crazy. Meanwhile, as she’d hoped, the prince was just returning from whatever he’d been up to and, on hearing Beauty scream, came running, but before he knew it he found himself in the middle of a huge briar patch. Oh no! Oh yes! He had to cut his way through with his sword, redoubling his effort with each cry of his poor beloved, but the briars seemed to spring up around him even as he chopped them down, and the more she screamed and the more he slashed away, the thicker they got. Yes, yes, I can see him! No, you can’t, he was completely swallowed up by the briars. A pity, but it was too late. No! Hurry! Here I am! It’s not too late!

He is caught in the briars. The gnarled branches entwine him like a vindictive lover, the thorns lacerate his flesh. Everywhere, like a swampy miasma: the stench of death. He longs now for the solace of the blossoms, their caresses, their fragrance. Ever life’s student, he reminds himself that at least he has learned something about the realm of the marvelous, but it does not comfort him. Nothing does, not even fantasies of the beautiful sleeper who lies within, though he does think of her, less now in erotic longing than in sympathetic curiosity. He is young but has adventured the world over, while she, though nearly a century his senior, knows only a tiny corner of a world that no longer even exists, and that but innocently. What kind of a thing is this that jumps about so funnily? she is said to have asked just before being pricked by the fatal spindle and falling into her deep swoon. And now, what if no one ever reaches her, what if she goes on dreaming in there forever, what sort of a life would that be, so strangely timeless and insubstantial? Yet, is it really any different from the life he himself has until now led, driven by his dream of vocation and heroic endeavor and bewitched by desire? Ah, the beautiful: what a deadly illusion! Yet, still he is drawn to it. Still, though all progress through the hedge has been brought to a painful halt and the thorns tear at him with every stroke, he labors on, slashing determinedly at the hedge with his sword, beating back the grasping branches, and musing the while upon this beautiful maiden, fast asleep, called Briar Rose. Does she ever dream of her disenchantment? Does she ever dream of him?

Certainly, she dreamt of her sweetlipped prince all the time, says the fairy, in reply to Rose’s question. But that was not who finally kissed her awake. No? No, in the end she was taken rather rudely by a band of drunken peasants who had broken into the castle, intent on loot. I don’t believe this. Of course you believe it, says the fairy. You have no choice. They thought she was dead and commenced to strip her of her finery and naturally one thing led to another and they all had a turn on her, both before she was kissed and after. As the poet put it: Lucky people, so ’tis said,/Are blessed by Fortune whilst in bed. But that’s terrible! The dreaming child has come to her, fleeing a nightmare about being awakened by an old administrator of her father’s kingdom, a stuffy and decrepit ancient with fetid breath, and the fairy has told her an antidotal story about Sleeping Beauty (Have I heard this story before? Rose wanted to know), one of several in the fairy’s repertoire, this one with a happy ending. Of course, when the ruffians woke up Beauty they also woke up everything else in the castle, down to the flames in the hearth and the flies on the wall, and including the household knights, who captured the thieves and made them eat their own offending privates before hanging them in the courtyard as an edifying entertainment for the domestic servants, failing to realize that, in effect, they were at the same time severally widowing the poor princess, soon heavy with child. And that was how, fatherless, Dawn and Day were born. Rose is clearly not consoled by this story. She’s had enough, she cries. She wants to wake up. Why me? she demands. Why am I the one? It’s not fair!