The Chambermaid's Tears

There was a land where the sun went wrong. It shone so starkly and so bright that the whole kingdom (which had been forested, pleasant and green) was reduced to an arid wasteland. A desert, in fact. Shadows were sharp as knives. Every hole was laid bare. Nothing could be saved from the claws of the sun, and all the people of that land looked at their ugliest in the cruel and glaring light. It was a curse upon them.

It never rained, nothing grew. The whole kingdom starved. They had neither flesh nor fish, neither loaves nor fishes, no loaves of bread or jugs of wine, not so much as a single paradisial apple ... not even the bread and water that prisoners in dungeons might get. The lack of water was the very worst part of it. That they might get nourishment, the people drank each others' tears - it was the only thing that sustained them - and for years and years, that was the manner in which they lived, the only way they survived. Some wept so generously that their tears eventually ran red, and then they died. All the ladies of the royal court were very dedicated to their duty to weep - they held weeping parties, where they all sat in rows with crystal cups pressed to their cheeks, and tears like diamonds trickled down, flashing in the light of the unforgiving sun. Then the only thing they found lovely in the whole arid kingdom, were those bright sparkling champagne tears. It was their Duty.

Poets were prized there, because they inspired others to weep.

There was one poet pre-eminent over all the other poets in the realm. He was a great hero, and for seven years he had wandered through the desolate kingdom, singing his songs, piercing every heart with the pure weapon of his calling, till tears flowed like rain in his wake and wherever he went, so many wept that there were floods. Crops even grew in the fields where he passed, grapes ripened on the vines, and the famine was averted - for a little while. Those who had grown up without ever a taste of commonplace bread or a sip of wine were able to enjoy these rarities, which were more precious by then than the most expensive gourmet cookery.

Eventually this poet was declared a national treasure, ushered into the royal palace and given over to the attentions of the kind ladies there. If he ever went hungry or became ill, the kingdom would surely meet its final doom. The ladies pledged themselves to feed him with their tears. The king's own daughter, his only daughter, made this her especial duty. "Duty is everything," she said, "and this is mine."

Because the poet's soul was so rarefied and refined, he had to live a life away from all ugliness. If ever he saw an ugly sight, his song died strangling in his throat. From an early age he had blindfolded himself, because the light of the evil sun made everything so stark; when he had to go somewhere, people led him by the hand. Every kind of ugly thought and picture was hidden from him. He could only take off the blindfold during the hours of dark night, and then his art bloomed like the gentle starlight of the jasmine.

The king's beautiful daughter used to come to him during the night, sit by him, and let firefly tears flash down one by one to the little flower of her hand. She would feed him with those tears, night after night. One night he leaned forward and kissed a single tear out of the hollow of her hand, and suddenly - just like that - they fell in love.

The princess fled from him, horrified. She ran into her bedchamber, threw herself down on her bed, and wept and wept - more than ever before - while her ladies gathered round like a cluster of bell-flowers, their full skirts bobbing, bent over the bed with ewers and cups and dishes to catch the precious tears.

Finally her eyes ran dry and all her ladies left her alone. (They had to take the tears away, to feed the poor who always waited at the palace gate.) The only one left in the room besides the princess was the chambermaid, fanning her devotedly. The chambermaid was the princess' close relation, but no one was sure exactly how because she had been born on the wrong side of the sheets. It was a mystery nobody cared to look into too closely. Since she was illegitimate, though, this didn't matter. She looked just like the princess, but was ugly instead of beautiful, of course, for the same reason.

"Why, pet, what's happened?" she coaxed.

The princess confessed all. "I can never go to his room at night anymore," she said, "can't you see that?"

"No, I don't see," said the chambermaid, "why, then?"

"Because, well, we'll be together in his room every night, loving each other, and in time, well, nature will take its course and, ah, oh, I can't talk about that to anyone, let alone do it, I was raised to be a good pure princess and certainly can't marry a poet, princesses are supposed to marry princes after all, and oh I could just die! Since, well, love-making ... oh, the poet makes it sound so romantic, but then he's never actually been with a woman and I certainly haven't been with a man, but the act itself is ugly. Animal. Impure. I believe it involves bleeding?" And her eyes went round and wide. "He's a national treasure! I could ruin him for life!"

Then a plan came to her.

"If he saw this ugliness, his art would certainly be ruined and he'd run and throw himself in the nearest well. And if I ever besmirched my purity with animal acts, I'd also have to throw myself in the well. I love his soul. But you can help me, chambermaid. You can go to him in my place."

So that evening, she said shyly to the poet, "I'll come to your chamber tonight as always, but from now on things must be different. Since I love you," and she hung her head. Then he was filled with exultation, but she went on, "I have only one condition. You must be in your bed, under the covers, when I come through the bedchamber door, and when I leave you must stay in your bed again. Never, ever, ever open the door to me or see me out afterwards. If you do that, we can be lovers. Do you agree?"

That was the way she arranged things. From that night on, she sent the chambermaid to the poet's bed in her place. Every night, the chambermaid stripped naked outside the poet's door and went in, leaving her clothes in the hall. She looked just like the princess, remember. All she wore was the princess's diamond necklace: it was a chain of woven silver jasmine vines and blossom, on which hung a solitaire diamond of a peculiar beauty. The poet had often admired it, saying only the princess's own tears were brighter and more sparkling. By this necklace, the princess knew, the poet would be convinced it was her. Every night, the maid slept with the poet, and when they were done and he lay back smiling in the pillows, she sat on the edge of the bed and wept.

Then, near dawn, she would steal away through the door and once she was in the hall, she would put back on the poor drab dress that told the world she was a chambermaid, and no princess. A whole year of nights passed this way.

But eventually, of course, the poet became curious.

"Beloved," he said one night, playing with the necklace with its jasmine chain, "you are like the jasmine, two meanings in one. Every night you feed my body, all day long you stay by me and feed my soul. You seldom speak at night, but never kiss me during the day. How can I solve this riddle? If ever I die, wash my face with jasmine-petals after you lay the winding-sheet on, that angels like you might love me all the more."

The maid hid her face, and would not answer.

But when she rose to leave his bed, he pretended to sleep but kept watch under his eyelids. When she opened the door, he rose up from the bed. When she stepped into the hall, he was on the other side of the door. When she picked up her shabby dress and pulled it over her head, the poet opened the door just a crack. And when she tucked the necklace under the collar of her dress and then glanced up, there he was. He had seen it all.

He knew everything then and there. While she ran away choking with both hands clapped over her mouth, the poet walked out of the king's palace like a man in a dream. "This is ugliness," he thought, "the most terrible ugliness imaginable." He twisted his hands together, over and over. "All year long I thought I was in love, and the princess thought she was in love, but that poor maidservant has been sacrificing herself for us." Tears welled up in his own eyes, the poet's eyes. They welled up so much he was blinded, and he tried to staunch them with his hands. He wiped wildly at them, and then saw blood running scarlet between his fingers and over his wrists.

It was his heart's blood. The first well he came to, he threw himself in. And he died at the empty bottom of the well.

When the princess heard of all this, her heart broke and she, too, threw herself to her death in a well. That was the measure of her love, you see.

The king had them buried in a twin grave in the palace garden, where they had liked to walk together during the long days, and talk of love. Two rose-trees were planted over their coffins, and eventually grew tall and twined together with boughs linked like joined hands. The trees were white roses, but the roses that bloomed on them were blood-red, and no matter how the merciless sun beat down on them, they never faded or were any color but red.

The chambermaid tended the trees for the remainder of her life. She watered them with her tears, but nobody ever knew why; those who had known were dead, and she herself never spoke till she was very old. Then, on her deathbed, she told everything to her confessor, who had been the palace chaplain since before either chambermaid or poet or princess had been born. To prove her story, she placed the necklace in his hands.

The priest had her buried in one grave with the princess and the poet, and a third rose-tree planted over her. As for the priceless diamond necklace, he hung it on the topmost branch of the tree. When the sun shone down on it, a fire started that burned all three trees to the ground in an instant, and the diamond itself fell flashing out of the burning boughs and struck the ground, cracking into a thousand coals and ashes. In that moment, the sun's destructive force was dimmed and the desolate kingdom was saved.

For a hundred years after, the grateful people of the garden kingdom tended the triple grave and the three rose-trees, bringing offerings to the heroes who had saved the kingdom. The trees grew up from their ashes and flourished again, making themselves a great tangled mass of greenery covered with pure-white roses. But which tree was which, nobody could ever tell.

Posted August 19th 2003.

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