Chapter 1: Two Ladies Lacking Husbands
Once upon a time, there was a beautiful girl who lost her glass slipper at a royal ball, and that was how she met and married the Prince. The two of them were very happy together, and when the old King died, the Prince declared that she would rule at his side as his Queen. But Princes are made of flesh and bone, just like the humblest of their subjects, and accidents can happen to them as surely as they can happen to a woodcutter or a miller. And so it happened that a few short months after his coronation, the young King suffered a mishap during a hunting trip, and Cinderella became a widow.
People came from far and wide to pay their respects during the wake and the funeral that followed, and it was generally agreed that the little cinder-girl wore her mourning remarkably well. Her eyes and nose were red from all the sleepless nights spent crying for her husband, and her attention wandered when she received the condolences of this Earl and that Shah, but nobody could fault her for that. Her face, though very pale, seemed to become all the more lovely for her tragic expression, and the gold of her hair still shone underneath the long black veil she donned each day.
Snow White noticed this instantly when Cinderella received her in a small parlor far from the main rooms of the palace, but she knew better than to comment on it. She too had recently lost her husband, the Prince who had woken her from her magical death-like sleep, and she knew that compliments on one's looks were scant comfort for the loss of a loved one. True, she had lost him for much more prosaic reasons — his inability to stop lying with other women, both common and noble, made him an unsuitable royal consort — but she had loved him for a time, and had truly grieved when it became clear that a divorce was necessary. In hindsight, it was clear that she ought to have known there was something wrong with a man who went around kissing apparently dead girls in glass coffins that he found in the woods, but he was handsome and charming, and she was too young and too grateful to know any better.
She also refrained from commenting on the way the curtains were drawn despite the weather being sunny and pleasant or how none of the hustle and bustle of the palace reached the room, but she did insist that her hostess share the hot chocolate and sugary cakes that the servants brought for them. Dark, quiet rooms were all very well, she thought, but it would not do for her friend to starve herself because of grief.
Anyone who beheld the two women sitting together at the little table would have seen at once that they were very different, but both very beautiful. As Snow White poured chocolate for Cinderella from the elegant silver pot, they could have been posing for a painting of Night and Day taking their ease. Snow White wore her straight, ebony-dark hair loose about her bare white shoulders, while Cinderella had let her lady's maid arrange her golden curls in a fashionable manner beneath her mourning-veil and she was dressed from her throat to her ankles in the deepest black. If they had gotten to their feet, Cinderella would have been the taller of the two, for Snow White was built along rather more delicate, curvier lines. But both of them were stronger than their looks suggested, and their hands were slightly rougher than those of other well-born ladies from their years of enforced drudgery.
Because they had such similar stories, it should come as no surprise that these two became fast friends when they met at Snow White's coronation ball. Today's meeting was only the last in a string of exchanged visits, and Snow White only wished that it could have happened under happier circumstances.
"I miss my Prince — my King — so much. How I wish he hadn't taken it into his head to go after that wild boar!" said Cinderella, taking a sip of chocolate as Snow White directed. "But I'm afraid that I am also in mourning for my own situation — oh, do forgive me! I must sound so selfish, but I haven't been able to speak freely with anyone else."
"Tell me," prompted Snow White.
"It is the law here that the King must have a male heir," Cinderella explained. "And as you know, we didn't have any children. The throne will pass to a Duke, my husband's eldest cousin, and he — he has no love for me." She set down her cup, and turned to her companion. "He makes no secret of the fact that he believes me to be a wretched peasant who ensnared my husband through trickery and deception. He has told me that he will give me such treatment as I deserve when he ascends the throne. I take that to mean he will make me a drudge in the palace, or, worse, that he will return me to my stepmother's household without a penny to my name."
"It is different in my country," said Snow White, tapping her finger on her delicate porcelain cup as she mused on this difference in their customs. "Women have a right to their men's title and property. That is how my stepmother came to power after my father's death, and how I took the crown after her."
Cinderella's pink lips curved in a bitter grin. "To tell the truth, I am glad it isn't like that here. I wouldn't know what to do with a kingdom. I was a simple maid of all work for most of my life, and a simple merchant's daughter before that, however wealthy. I am only afraid of being ill-treated and misused once more. I swore I would never go back to that life."
The two ladies lacking husbands were quiet for a while, as one contemplated her difficulties, and the other thought of how she could be of help.
"You must come and stay with me," said Snow White at last. "The Duke will make no difficulties if I tell him you are to be my guest, under my special protection — for my kingdom is not to be trifled with, and he knows it — and if you make it clear that you have no desire to claim the throne." She reached across the table to take Cinderella's trembling hand, and smiled gently at her fellow Queen. "Besides, I should like to always have a friend with me. The two of us know something of housework and wicked stepmothers, do we not?"
