Spider Dance

Author:Carole Nelson Douglas [Douglas, Carole Nelson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Forge Books
Published: 2007-04-01T05:00:00+00:00

My Lollita:

I am glad the gold comb in the shape of a crown is favorable to you in California, the place of gold lying on and inside the ground. I am glad that you have your swan bed with its curtains of silk and the ebony-and-pearl furniture and the nine-foot mirrors and gilt and the pearwood table with ormolu and most of all the love seat upon which you look so beautiful. I see all these things I keep as you left them and I see you. Now they are all in that rustic world of California, where you have bears for pets, and I am not amazed that tame them you will.

It is with sadness, much, I did as you write two, three month ago: pack things you so favored during your stay in Munich, in the palace I fitted for you as if a queen.

It is with great happy that I know you to be peaceful at last in this place of California. I am remembering of the mountains in my own land, and the simple folk who there dwell.

I see you there in your white silk gown, wearing the rubies that speak for your heart of great feeling, among the bears and the men who mine, yet an island of beauty and the stateliness of Europe.

Then I hear word here from the castle at Aschaffenburg, where Theresa my queen keeps. My two nephew saw a lady dressed all in black, her face veiled so as to be unseen. They spoke, but she did not answer. She passed them into the servants’ quarters.

The princes followed, they are good boys, curious. The servants had seen no one. So all, servant and prince, went to Queen Theresa and asked if she had seen this dark lady.

Her face went white, they say, as if a specter she had see. She said the Black Lady who appeared foretold the death of a member of the royal family.

I thought of you, my Lollita, when I heard this story as I worked in Munich to ship to you those pieces of your time here in Bavaria you longed for. I remember then the tale of the Black Lady, a princess of my house who has been dead for a century, or more. Once, like you, she danced at a ball, and after her death was often glimpsed dancing among the living, years later. Immediately, a member of the royal house of Wittelsbach had died.

Is she an omen, this Black Lady? I look upon the things we shared and loved, and think of death. Mine? Yours? My Maximilian, who now reigns in my place while I am a packing agent?

No, my Lollita, that was all months ago, numbering two. Now I can tell whom the Lady in Black was seeking. And it was not I, not you. It was Theresa. She had died of the cholera. I am what you call ‘a free man’ now, so much as any man who has been a king may be.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.