Snow Glass Apples: A Play For Voices Read Free

listless,
confused. He could no longer make love as a man makes love; and he
would not permit me to pleasure him with my mouth: the one time I
tried, he started, violently, and began to weep. I pulled my mouth
away and held him tightly, until the sobbing had stopped, and he
slept, like a child.
    I ran my fingers across his skin as he
slept. It was covered in a multitude of ancient scars. But I could
recall no scars from the days of our courtship, save one, on his
side, where a boar had gored him when he was a youth. Soon he was
just a shadow of the man I had met and loved by the bridge.
    His bones showed, blue and white, beneath
his skin.
     
    INT. THE KING’S CHAMBER. DAY.
    SFX: THE KING IS MUMBLING IN HIS SICK BED.
THE QUEEN IS, WE CAN ASSUME ALTHOUGH I DON’T KNOW WHAT IT SOUNDS
LIKE, MOPPING HIS FEVERED BROW, MUTTERING ENDEARMENTS …
     
    MAIDSERVANT
    The Archbishop, your majesty.
     
    QUEEN
    Send him in.
     
    SFX: THE ARCHBISHOP’S FOOTSTEPS.

    QUEEN
    I am pleased you came, Archbishop. His
majesty will die soon. I need you to deliver the final
sacraments.
     
    ARCHBISHOP
    I see. Do you know why he is dying, your
majesty? Do you know what is killing him?
     
    QUEEN
    (A beat.)
    I believe so.
     
    ARCHBISHOP
    Then you know as well as I why I cannot
administer the last rites.
     
    QUEEN
    He is your king. How dare you —
     
    ARCHBISHOP
    I dare because this is a monstrous thing,
your majesty.
     
    KING
    (delirious)
    Daughter… no. Please, little one…
     
    And he dies …
     
    ARCHBISHOP
    And he is nobody’s king, your majesty. Not
anymore.
     
    QUEEN
    (coldly angry)
    Get out of here.
     
    SFX: FOOTSTEPS, AND A DOOR CLOSES.
     
    QUEEN—INTIMATE
    I sat there with my love’s dead body. His
hands were cold as stone, his eyes milky-blue, his hair and beard
faded and lustreless and limp
    He weighed near to nothing.
     
    SFX: OUTSIDE. SNOW BLOWS. A RAVEN CROWS.
STONES FALL.

    QUEEN—INTIMATE
    The ground was frozen hard, and we could dig
no grave for him, so we made a cairn of rocks and stones above his
body, as a memorial only, for there was little enough of him left
to protect from the hunger of the beasts and the birds.
    So I was queen.
     
    SFX: LUTE MUSIC STARTS …
     
    QUEEN—INTIMATE
    And I was foolish, and young, and I did not
do what I would do, now.
    If it were today, I would have her heart cut
out, true. But then I would have her head and arms and legs cut
off. I would have them disembowel her. And then I would watch, in
the town square, as the hangman heated the fire to white-heat with
bellows, watch unblinking as he consigned each part of her to the
fire. I would have archers around the square, who would shoot any
bird or animal who came close to the flames, any raven or dog or
hawk or rat. And I would not close my eyes until the princess was
ash, and a gentle wind could scatter her like snow.
     
    SFX: THE LUTE MUSIC HAS FADED TO NOTHING MORE
THAN FALLING SNOW AND DUST AND WIND.
     
    QUEEN—INTIMATE
    I did not do this thing, and we pay for our
mistakes.
    (beat)
    They say I was fooled; that it was not her
heart. That it was the heart of an animal—a stag, perhaps, or a
boar. They say that, and they are wrong.
    And some say (but it is her lie, not mine)
that I was given the heart, and that I ate it. Lies and half-truths
fall like snow, covering the things that I remember, the things I
saw. A landscape, unrecognizable after a snowfall; that is what she
has made of my life.
    (beat)
    There were scars on my love, her father’s
thighs, and on his ballock-pouch, and on his male member, when he
died. We took her in the day, while she slept and was at her
weakest.
     
    PRINCESS
    (she wakes and yawns, sleepily)
    Stepmother?
     
    QUEEN
    Tie her up.
     
    HUNTSMAN
    Yes, majesty.
     
    SFX: WE HEAR A SCUFFLE … THE PRINCESS WAILS
LIKE THE FRIGHTENED CHILD SHE MIGHT BE …
     
    PRINCESS
    No… please… No… Mother. Make them let me
go.
     
    QUEEN
    I’m not your mother. Take her into the forest
and kill her.
     
    SFX: