Chapter Text
She has a gift for birds, for finding them, catching them. She loves the feathers, that burst of flight, that swoop between the mottled canopy and the sparkling river. It is an impossible gift, for she is a creature bound to the earth – there must be bread, warmth and shelter for the cold nights, and tools to hold, and cut, and carry. So she spreads a gossamer net between the low lying branches in a grove of birches and picks her way cautiously through the thicket. Her features are sharp and fine – avian, and her eyes are a forest green. She is a birdcatcher, sent into the woods for the King’s pleasure. Her father had taught her this trade, her father from the east. Long dead. Of her mother, there is not a word.
Her eyes flit across the dappled leaves, ever watchful. She shrugs. The contraption on her back, held by the straps, seems precariously frail, a cage of twisted bark and wire.
She steps carefully as she approaches yesterday’s net, sets the cage against the fallen boughs at the foot of the willow. There, in the corner of the mesh, struggles a golden breasted wonder, wings spread, a tiny, curled foot caught in the thread – such beauty, it would seem a sin to cage it. Gently, she folds her hands around the bird, feels in her palms the wild, frenetic heart. She grasps, not too tightly, but enough to hold the pulse of regret and sorrow. She slips the creature into her cage and watches as the bird hops, wings flapping, onto a perch. She allows herself a sigh of relief: there is no injury then. Roughly, she pulls on her padded vest, and the bird-beak hat, to hide from prying eyes, and slips on the straps of the cage, doubly so, to cover her chest. There. Now she can go into town.
They will whisper about this stranger, this birdcatcher but the King’s gold is good for provisions, some flour, and eggs, and tin to work into the wire. Her hut, nestled in the wood, is so small that it has never drawn any attention from straying townsfolk, indeed, if any have ever wandered so deep into this great forest.
Her solitude is perfection.
In town, her breath draws shorter. She does not like the narrow streets, the stench of the gutters, there are too many eyes, and wagging tongues. At the castle’s great door she knocks loudly, the dark oak scored by the passage of many hands. She can hear the scrapes from the kitchen, feel the wash of pungent steam from the scullery. On any other day, the jovial Stewart would drop the coins into her small hands, but today is different. Today the Stewart wears a frown, and roughly knocks her shoulder, pushing her to the hallway, to the court, for she has been called before the Queen. Fear twists, low in her belly. With a clumsy shove, she is thrust alone into the vestibule of the Tower, the realm of the Queen. What does she know of this creature? She knows that if there are Queens, then there are pawns, and the corruption of bishops with the endgame of conquest. She waits. Ornate tapestries hang from iron rods. The iron sets her jaw; she can taste the bite in the air, like blood, an unsheathed sword.
The bird, on its perch, sings.
We are the same, she realizes, caught and caged.
The door to vestibule opens and a dark cloak enters, how it cascades like a waterfall of the richest burgundy, a thick, flowing fabric, an embrace like velvet.
A white hand holds an emerald green glove, rises to pull back the hooded cloak. The birdcatcher’s gaze falls to the floor. But at a glance she can see the delicate bones of the wrist, fingers sculpted, as if out of the finest marble. She is prickled by a certain curiosity, a curiosity she distrusts. The hood has fallen and the Queen, in her iron red, her arm raised, how she holds the only light, her golden hair curling about her neck, her leonine face, and eyes as blue as ice, as sky.
The birdcatcher gasps, dazzled. Her Queen. She understands this now, how the lightness dances in her eyes, her knees buckling, the sudden tilt of the world. Her chest clutches, her heart’s rapture in a cage, as she thinks of gilded wings, cradled in a fist.
The Queen, how her glance turns grey-eyed, mercurial: she stands as the other bows, her regality etched in shadow. Her edges, a blade, cuts like glass, like slate. A sharpness defines her, her eyes, stormy, a depth that is vast, impenetrable. But there is a glimmer, a shard; could it be loneliness?
The bird in the cage. A flutter and flare.
“You come from the woods.” It is not a question. She is here at the Queen’s pleasure. Her voice is mellifluous, as thick as honey, her bright lips, vermillion.
The birdcatcher nods. The air is close, too close, heavy with the scent of floral petals.
“Can you speak?”
The birdcatcher knows that the Queen will not ask again. Another moment and she will be free, released from this Tower, into her solitude, into her life. The birdcatcher raises her head. She shivers and grapples with the balance, of fire and of wood.
“You… are magnificent.”
The Queen smiles, like burst of flight, like a perpetual sunrise that draws up all the heavens. She slaps her gloves in one hand, and then reaches, as if to clasp the beak mask, to reveal the birdcatcher, but no, she unclasps the hinge of the cage and the golden wings burst into the air, darting from tapestry to tapestry, to there, the window, to the unfettered air.
“Walk with me.” The Queen takes the birdcatcher’s hand.