The Queen of Thorns – Part 1: The Gate of Thorns

The wall was higher than a castle tower and as thick as a house, built of grey stone and wound from top to bottom with roses. They grew in a riot of crimson and white and deep apricot, their thorns as long as a man's finger. A single iron gate stood in the middle, half open. Beyond it, a green, silent, scented dusk.

Tristan stopped in front of it with his lute on his back. He was thirty-five, a wandering minstrel, thin and weathered and tired, who had walked three hundred miles to find a place where no one wanted anything from him. He pushed the gate open and went in.

The kingdom within was a garden. Paths of white gravel wound between hedges and arbours and tall banks of roses. Somewhere a fountain played. At the end of the longest avenue, under an arch of pink blooms, a woman sat on a stone bench with a book in her lap.

"You are trespassing," said Queen Rosalind, without looking up.

"I beg your pardon, Majesty. The gate was open."

"The gate is always open." She turned a page. "It is the leaving that is difficult."

She was forty-four, tall and spare, with silver-streaked red hair coiled at her neck and a gown of dark green velvet cut close at the wrist. A thin circlet of thorn-wire sat on her brow. She had ruled the walled kingdom for twenty years, alone, and had not, in all that time, allowed a stranger to stay the night.

She closed the book and looked at him for a long time. "A minstrel."

"Yes, Majesty."

"Play."

He unslung the lute and played. A slow, plain song, an old ballad about a wanderer and a locked door. When he had finished, the garden was very still, and the Queen's eyes were bright.

"You play as though no one is listening," said Rosalind.

"Someone was, Majesty."

"I was." She rose. "I will tell you what I offer, and you may refuse it. In my kingdom, anyone who enters may stay for a night, as a guest. But I am lonely, and I am particular, and I have a rule: I will take a servant only if he asks. And if he asks, he must hear the terms."

"The terms?"

"A bond of service. You would kneel when I say. You would wait, in silence, when I tell you. You would be corrected, by my hand and my voice, as a servant is who has not yet learned the way of the court. I would not harm you. I would not shame you beyond the game. I would not keep you from the gate. And there is a word."

"A word."

"Gate. Speak it, at any moment, and the bond ends, and you walk out unharmed, with bread in your pack and my goodwill behind you." She held his gaze. "Do you wish to hear more?"

He looked at the roses. He looked at the long, quiet avenue, and the woman who had not smiled once. He thought of every roadside inn, every noisy hall, every long night of playing for coins.

"I think," said Tristan, "that I would like to ask."

"Then ask."

"May I serve you, Majesty? On those terms?"

"You may." She extended a gloved hand, and he took it, and knelt. "Say the oath."

"I, Tristan, freely and with my own will, place myself in the service of Queen Rosalind. I accept her terms. I may end it by one word."

"And I, Rosalind, accept your service, and swear to keep you safe. The word is Gate."

"The word is Gate."

She laid two fingers beneath his chin.

"Are you content, Tristan?"

"Content, Majesty."

"Good," said the Queen of Thorns, and above them, a rose let fall a single petal.

Continue the story: Part 2 – Gate.