Princess Elizabeth

Warning: this one may be disturbing, because it is based on actual events. I wrote it after story of the man who kept his daughter and the children she bore him trapped under his own house for YEARS. I used all their names, which were published in newspapers and stuff. You've been warned.


Princess Elisabeth



I will tell you a story.
In the North. In the land of black forests. Snow in the winter and rolling summer hills. Where the Rhine empties into the North Sea and the swans’ Danube into the Black Sea.
There.
A king and queen had a daughter. Elisabeth. They had other children, of course- seven others. But this little girl, elfin and bright- she was the apple of her parent’s eye. The king and queen doted on the princess, and as she grew up, their only sorrow was that their little girl must some day leave their side, as all her brothers and sisters had done.
Imagine poor old Queen Rosemarie and King Josef, alone in the hollow castle. The king, who loved his little girl so, oh how he loved her- he could not let this happen. He thought of ways to preserve her this way, his darling girl, a maiden forever.
(Except that she wasn’t, anymore.)
When she was eleven years old, the king went into his daughter’s chamber and he laid himself on top of her and he quieted her crying, he said to her that this was right and beautiful.
I Made You. You Belong To Me.
Finders Keepers
And things like that.
And then he said
If You Were Ever Unhappy, Your Mother’s Heart Would Break.
Could You Watch That? Your Mother’s Heart Breaking?

King Josef studied all of the ways this had been done before. He could lock her in the tallest tower with no doors or stairs. He could encase her in a coffin of glass and jewels. What about poisoning her into a coma and keeping her behind a wall of thorny briars? No, no, no. These had all been done, and alas, these other girls had always walked away someone’s bride.
But not Elisabeth.
The king set about building a network of tunnels beneath the floors of the castle, a labyrinth, a dungeon, a place invisible to the living world. And finally in the autumn of Elisabeth’s twenty-fourth year, the king took her. He lured her in part way. But then it got ugly.
She Will Not Understand, And Will Struggle,
he thought, so he bound her hands.
She Will Be Scared, he thought, so he drugged her.
(But probably, the truth is that after more than ten years of the king in her bed, the princess would look at the floor and just go.)
He took her down into the underworld, right under the floorboards of his home, under the queen’s own bed and all the places where she walked. They say she didn’t know.
(But I’ll tell you what my friend said when I told her. She gave me the strangest look and said
I think she knew)
If Elisabeth’s mother had been Demeter, she would have gone on strike. The world would choke on Winter until her daughter was returned to her. But she was not a goddess. She was only a queen. She was only a wife.
The king said a letter came from Elisabeth, declaring that she was running away. And the queen cried. But she said Okay. And right under her feet, Persephone slept. Talia the Briar Rose slept. Repunzel slept. And no prince would come for her. But someone came. And it was the king. He came again and again and again.
My Lovely Girl, he said
You See How Much I Love You?
You See What You Made Me Do?
I Had To Take You Away, Just To Make Sure You Were Safe.
The first few months were difficult for the king. The princess did not understand his love for her. He had to leave her tied to a pole. He made her a leash- she could reach the lavatory. And then he made more rooms for her, her own home, her own kingdom. And every third day he came to her, the way that kings come to queens.
Twenty-four years passed this way.

Let me tell you about the blooming of spring in the ether of winter. The earth was sleeping, rigid, frozen. But the sun came to warm her body, and Spring bore fruit.
Seven times. The Princess bore her brothers and sisters, fathered by the king. Three boys and three girls. When they were still seven babies, one of them, a twin, died of neglect.
Why would a mother let a baby she made with her own body die?
But it is so easy.
You just don’t go to them. You just don’t put them to your breast. You leave them uncovered in the cold.
It’s easy.
And, luckily, the king had built an incinerator. So the little twin, the one who the princess pushed away, was incinerated. No trace left. Nothing. And all this time, the queen never knew. Never smelled any flesh burning- how could she, he was so tiny. And she didn’t hear the pitter patter beneath her, the offspring of her husband and her own daughter, the princess. The babies were named Kerstin, Stefan, Felix, Lisa, Monika, Alexander. Six pomegranate seeds to anchor her to this place.

The king took three more of the children.
(I don’t know why he did that.)
He put them on the front door of his own castle so that the queen could find them. And a note from the long-lost princess.
Mother, it said.
Please Take Care Of My Baby.
It Is Your Grandchild.
I cannot. I have others to care for.
Always Your Daughter,
Elisabeth.
And the Queen was so grateful that here was a little piece of her disappeared daughter. Somewhere out there, she thought, my princess is alive.
The king and queen raised these babies, Lisa, Monika, Alexander, inside the castle, as their own. But under the house, in the dungeon labyrinth were three more, were Kerstin, Stefan and Felix. Sun and Moon, Dawn and Day. Buried children, in the deep gut of the earth. The princess taught them words, talking. But the children taught each other to animal-talk. They cooed and grunted at each other, a secret language of bear cubs and wolf pups.
They had never seen the sun, or the moon, or felt wind or rain. They had never smelled the salt of the ocean, or the felt the grit of dirt between their fingers. And the three girls, above ground, under ground, did they also feel the weight of the king on their beds? And did they call him Father?
(One wonders.)

And then one day.
One day, Kerstin was dying. Maybe her heart was breaking from never having breathed real air. (Who knows.) But she was so sick that the king had to bring her up to a world that she had never seen.
But how?
How to explain this to the queen?
Well, the king was clever, and the queen so trusting.
(My friend, she gave me the strangest look; I think she knew).

Nineteen years old, a teenaged beauty, Kerstin was put on the doorstop, with a note.
But Kerstin was so sick, so sick that the doctors made an appeal- they made an appeal for the mother to appear, and yes, the king brought Elisabeth to the world, so that she could help the doctors help Kerstin. The Princess Elizabeth, now forty-two years old, stood at her mother’s doorstep. She said
Mama
I’ve Come To Help Kerstin.
What must the queen have said to see her tired, shriveled daughter, gray-skinned and shame-gazed? She never knew about the underground kingdom, she never thought that the thief of her only daughter could be her own husband.
But,
A long time before, the king had been imprisoned himself, in a neighboring kingdom for sneaking into the tower of another princess. He raped her. That other princess.
And throughout his marriage to this queen, Rosemarie, he added rooms and amenities to the labyrinth. He was so clever, and she, so trusting. Maybe.
(I think she knew.)

But finally, because of Dying Kerstin, the children of darkness were freed, brought up from the dungeon. No prince ever came. Instead, Kerstin rescued her own mother. Her organs revolted inside her body, she must have known (that she was doing this for her mother).
In a tower with nurses and beeping machines, washed in gentle colors, Kerstin is in a coma.
Demeter is free.
Now, Persephone sleeps.