Alexander Chee - The Queen of the Night

I imagined the Empress dead in the forest beside her horse, the entire party slain, the woods burning, filled with enemy soldiers. They would advance on the palace, setting fire to it next, I was sure.

The single way out I knew of was the road out of the palace into the town, but this would be full if there was an invasion or so it seemed to me. Or was it better to hide in the palace and wait? It seemed strange to me that there was no one to tell me what was happening or what to do if this was an attack until I remembered no one knew where I was.

I decided on changing into the dress the Empress gave me. I could leave disguised as a guest. I took off the palace uniform, and as I did, the door opened.

I leapt behind the dressing screen, afraid to think of who had entered.

Through a crack in the screen, I saw the tenor. He searched the room with his eyes before entering quietly, and I next saw a woman following behind, fair-haired, carefully dressed, a rich man’s wife, with a florid complexion on an intelligent face. Or she was blushing from what she was up to, I couldn’t say. She wore her tea gown already, clearly having abandoned the hunt, but there was no urgency, or not the urgency I would have expected, in either of them.

She looked askance at the room, as if reconsidering their joint aim.

I wondered for a moment if they could not hear the noise of the battle until the battle noise was rejoined.

How much longer? he asked.

I mean, who can say how long the ambush of a cottage can take? she said, indifferently, and crossed to the window before turning back to him with a smile.

The tenor chuckled at this, but he could see her hesitation. An expression crossed his face I did not recognize. He was softening, I saw, to her. Was it pity? Here was how he was with a woman he had not paid for. He reached for her.

With the French, he said, such an attack could last a week.

They laughed, rueful.

She said something I could not hear.

Well, you could say you have not recovered, he said. There’s no reason anyone should protest.

The tension of the battle seemed to thicken the air around them, slowing whatever passion there was, and then there was only quiet.

It’s over, and now they’ll be back, she said. Richard will be at my room in half an hour. I… we will try again, she said. Tomorrow the Empress seems likely to be at her councils again through tea. Perhaps then. I’m sure whatever indisposed me this afternoon will not leave me so quickly, she added, and leaned in to kiss him before slipping through the door expertly.

It was some game then, the cannons. A game of war. My own mistress would be back, then, as well. I waited for the tenor to leave, but he did not, sitting down instead and then reaching to where I had stowed my uniform. He pulled it out slowly and held it to his face.

I had never seen this before. The hunger he had for me.

You’re here, he said flatly. Show yourself.

He would try to force himself on me, it seemed to me then. Was it better to go to him or to be pulled from here?

I went to stand in front of the vanity. My body was pale in the late afternoon light, the gold of the sun covering my skin. I still had something of a girl’s body except across my hips, but a faint fullness to my breasts had appeared, which was new. A sense of what remained of my own beauty returned to me then. A sense of it and the powers it perhaps endowed. He had loved me best naked, I recalled. I could use this to my advantage.

You saw nothing, he said. He said this without having turned to see who it was, he was so sure of me. He held out my uniform and mastered his face back into the angry confidence of a moment earlier as I stopped before him.

You see? I told you I would have your secret.

He walked closer and circled me, examining me.

This is lucky, he said. Very lucky. So you are hers, then, yes?

He meant the Empress, of course. I still had not spoken and did not want to speak. My eyes averted themselves as he put his hand under my chin and lifted my face so that I was looking at him.

Understand me. You still belong to me. And when I leave, you leave with me. I may sell you; I may have you imprisoned; I will decide. Part of how I will decide will depend on if I am well pleased.

He took his finger from my chin and ran it down my front before handing me my uniform.

Dress then and return to your lady. But meet me here tomorrow, for I have something for you to do. Much depends on if you please me then.

He said this with such confidence, as if it were on the week’s schedule like the dinner that evening, the ball after; it chilled me as I made my way through the back passages, which comforted me now. I walked back to the Empress’s chambers and sat shivering on the bench.

How had he found me? I asked myself. How? But, of course, a single answer floated before me in the dark.

The tenor was sent here to remind me of what waited if I failed in my tasks. If the Comtesse was Providence, the tenor was a warning from God.

§

The following afternoon, when the Empress left again for her afternoon council, I returned to the apartment, seating myself on a sofa there.

The door opened and the tenor walked in.

He took in the scene I made as I waited, the picture of a palace grisette.

Where does your mistress think you are? he asked.

I shrugged.

Speak to me, he said. I asked a question. Or has the sight of me struck you dumb?

I closed my eyes, hoped for divine forgiveness, and cleared my throat.

She’s at council, I said. She thinks of me not at all. She thinks I am looking after her gowns.

This thundered inside of me and around me as I said it, speaking to him in French in our old way.

Are you? he asked.

I am, I said, and held my arms out to indicate the trunks around us.

Take off your uniform, he said. And put that on.

He made me dress in the gown I’d just brought up and then took me in it, brutally. And then continued, for he was not satisfied.

He took real pleasure in it and knew me enough to try to reach me in my pleasure also, and so these discomforts mixed to create a new one. This was no blunt cruelty, but something intimate. Here then came over me the old trick of the body, the way I could pull back from the surface of my skin as someone might leave a room.

The instrument took over and saved me.

Afterward, I ached and was wet, as if from a fever, and full of shame. As if we had fought on the floor. I felt the need to clean myself and stood. He, by contrast, seemed asleep, at rest. Childlike.

A long golden beam of light traced the skin across his stomach up to his left eye, and as if it pressed there, he blinked and opened his eyes.

Leaving, he said. Does your mistress need you so very much?

She does, I said.

He laughed. Who are you really? he said. Are you the ghost of the one I loved, here to torment me? Will you vanish now like mist?

I sat down on the chaise and tried not to let him see my own anguish.

No, he said. You’re not. You’re like a girl from the fairy tales of the Comtesse d’Aulnoy. And you’re back from the dead to kill me. You’ll be the death of me, I think.

I let myself smile a very little bit as I looked down at his naked body and the unexpected, even extraordinary beauty of it.

Why was I not used to it? But, of course, each time I saw it, I sought to forget it, and so each time it was new.

He noticed my examination and laughed again slowly and slapped his naked belly. He sat up. And then I will come back from the dead for you, he said. Perhaps it will never end.

He leaned in to kiss me, and his mouth against mine, unexpectedly soft, made me feel suddenly grave. The kiss was long and quiet, and had an insistent tenderness, unlike what had gone before.