Deerskin Read Online Free

curtained windows; and then she dismissed the footmen who had done the moving, and all her serving-women but one. That one she told to draw the curtains—open; let the sunlight in, to fall upon the faces of the portraits. But the woman was to stand, facing out the window, with her back to the room; and she was not to stir till she was told. This woman knew her mistress well, as the queen knew; and would do exactly as she was told, as the queen also knew.
    But the woman could hear. And what she heard was the sound of the queen turning back her bedclothes, and setting her feet upon the floor. She had lain there among her pillows for so many weeks that her steps were feeble and uncertain, and the waiting-woman trembled where she stood, for all her training told her she should rush to support her queen. But her training also told her that she must obey a command; and the command was that she remain where she was; and so she did not stir a foot, though her muscles shivered.
    The queen stumbled—fell; “Mistress!” cried the woman, half turning— “Stay where you are!” said the queen in a voice as sharp and strong and unflinching as the fall of the executioner’s axe. The woman burst into tears and covered her face with her hands, and so did not hear the queen pull herself to her feet and resume her slow progress toward the windows.
    When the woman dropped her hands and sniffed, she could see, out of the corner of her eye as she looked straight ahead of her, the dark narrow bulk of the queen’s body, leaning on the back of a chair. The queen moved the chair a little, her hands groping either at her own weakness or at the unfamiliarity of such a task, so its back was perfectly opposed to the waiting-woman’s tiny peripheral glimpse of it. Slowly the queen sat down in the chair, facing the last three portraits of the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms, lit as they were now by golden afternoon sunlight, till they were almost as glorious as the woman herself had been. The waiting-woman saw the shadow of a gesture, and knew that the queen was raising her veil.
    The final selection was made, and the other two painters sent on their way—with three coins each, and a silver necklace and a ring with a stone in it, because they had been good enough almost to have been chosen. Although they would not have admitted it, they were at the last relieved that their work had not found favor in the queen’s eyes, and that they could go home, and return to painting bowls of flowers for rich young men courting, and dragons the size of palaces being dispatched by solitary knights in gleaming armor for city council chambers, and fat old merchants spilling over their collars and waistbands for their counting-houses and inheriting sons. For they did not like the smell of the place where the queen lay dying of her own will, who had once been the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms; and they had heard that the king was mad.
    The young man who remained behind grimaced at his paint-stained fingers, and wondered if those fingers, of which he had long been proud, had betrayed him.
    He never saw the queen. The painting that had won him his commission was returned to him, and he and it—now standing on a jewelled easel—were established in a large sunny chamber with windows on three sides and a curtained bed pushed up against the fourth. He was asked what he wanted; he wanted very little. He wanted a plain easel—plain, he emphasized—to set up his new canvas; and enough food to keep him on his feet. No wine, he said, only water; and food as plain as his painting-frame.
    He had been so sure he would win the commission—so sure of his talent—that he had brought a fresh canvas with him, and all his best brushes and colors, for he was very particular about these things, and knew that to paint the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms he must be more particular than he had even guessed at, thus far in his risky career. And so he had spent