Yes, now he is allowed to see the princess. He has won the sleep game. He can present his request. Save the children.
But he needs to be patient a little while longer.
Martin is waiting outside the grand door, asleep on his feet, and would have fallen had it not been for the guards, who are moved by the pitiful sight of the boy, and so they brace him, left and right, ready to fend off any criticism that might come from the ladies-in-waiting or passing servants. Yet no one reports them and no one says a word, so the boy is able to sleep for a few minutes. Although even the thunderous boom of cannons would probably not have roused him. The rooster rests against the boy’s chest; the boy rests against the guard’s arm. His exhaustion finds solace in the knowledge that he has succeeded. At least, that is what Martin believes.
Finally, the princess finds time to receive the child. The door opens. Martin wakes up as he is pushed to his feet and ushered into the room.
The chirping of countless songbirds fills the air. They flutter about the room, displaying their vibrant colours and restless energy. They perch on mantelpieces and curtain rails. On the princess’s bedposts. Bird droppings everywhere. The floor is carpeted with soft feathers.
The princess assumes her customary pose, supported by pillows. She is coughing more than ever. The baby is in her arms. The children sit on the covers. They are dazed and feeble. They are still unaccustomed to the role forced upon them. They haven’t been suffering it for very long – which is why they are suffering terribly.
The painter stands in the corner working on a canvas. What is he painting? Green fields and a picnic blanket. But Martin knows that the children will never again experience the outdoors or the sensation of grass beneath their feet. They only have this year left. But what does the painter know about this? Does he suspect anything? His tension is palpable and his smile, which now reaches Martin, betrays his concern.
Martin’s heart aches profoundly.
‘Come closer,’ the princess says, beckoning. ‘Let me look at you.’
He approaches the bed. The princess holds songbirds in her palm and allows them to peck at some grain. When she coughs, the birds briefly take flight, but quickly return.
‘A child has never participated before,’ she remarks. Her breathing is laboured. Her lungs make a raspy sound when she draws breath, and a wheezing sound when she exhales. Martin feels his own chest tighten.
‘You must be exceptionally brave,’ she says, and her words are meant to sound friendly, but Martin yearns to flee and stop listening to her.
The rooster is kicking under Martin’s shirt. He takes it out and places it on his shoulder.
‘The wonderful creature!’ the princess exclaims. ‘I wonder if it might utter something marvellous again! Something amusing! Something audacious!’ Her delight is evident. It is unbearable to see how she rejoices while the girl on the covers collapses in a faint. The little boy straightens her up again. Hastily. Fearful, before the princess notices.
There is the painted lady, clapping her hands. Martin rubs his hands. He must say it now. He is allowed to present his request. The time has come.
‘I want to take the children,’ Martin says.
Yet the princess only has eyes for the creature. She entices the rooster with grain.
‘I want to take the children, do you hear?’ Martin repeats.
The painter lowers his brush. Never again will he leave this child.
‘Cluck, cluck, cluck,’ the princess says to the rooster.
Martin gets fidgety. Why is she not listening to him? Why is she not paying attention to him?
‘You have to stop,’ he says. A little louder. He barely has any strength left. ‘You cannot steal any more children!’
The princess glares at him. ‘Why not?’ she says. ‘I can do as I please.’
‘Why not!’ Martin shrieks. ‘Why are you allowed to do as you please? What you are doing is wrong.’
‘But I like it,’ she says.
‘But you are wrong. You are very wrong.’
The guards exchange glances. Should they intervene? The princess does not seem upset. She seems content and satisfied. The new children are doing well in their new role. It has only taken a few blows. They also cried much less than the others. It hasn’t even been necessary to show them the view from the bell tower. It is going to be a good year. A good year with little children whom she loves so much. She feels young and strong. She will live forever and remain beautiful forever. It is so good to feel herself again. All the happiness of youth is flowing through her body. She will be a good princess this year. Wise and clever. Such a pity that the jester has gone. Where might she find a replacement? At least she has a painter. She is happy with him. And of course she will take the rooster. Perhaps it can crow compliments. She would like it to perch on the tower in the mornings, praising the princess’s beauty. Yes, but there is the matter of the boy.
What is it that the boy wants? Why is he so upset? He is quite flushed.
‘She is not listening,’ the rooster says.
‘Ah, look,’ the princess calls out delightedly. ‘It is doing it again.’
‘Give me the children,’ Martin says.
‘Of course not,’ the princess says.
‘You must,’ the rooster says. ‘You must give them to him. And you must never steal any ever again.’
The princess laughs at him. ‘And your second wish?’ she finally asks. She doesn’t want to take too narrow a view today.
‘There is no second wish,’ Martin says. He says it very quietly. His ears are hurting and his heart is stumbling around in his chest as if it were looking for the way out. He feels as fragile and tremulous as a songbird, whereas just moments ago, when he entered the room, he thought he was a horseman, a gaunt hero, a child capable of riding and healing. All that seems lost now. The princess is not listening, and it is no different to sitting in his village talking to Henning, Sattler and Seidel. No one listens and no one keeps their promises.
It may be that the princess did grant and fulfil the wish of one or two winners of the sleep game. She is even said to have given fields as presents. Well, strictly speaking, she took the fields away from someone and then gave them to someone else; what does she care about the devastation this causes the original owners? Those without fields are left with no income and nothing to eat. They must still feed children and elderly grandparents, who will throw themselves off the hayloft so as not to be a burden. Which worked for the grandmother at her first attempt. Not for the grandfather. He just broke his leg and shoulder and groaned his way up the ladder to the hayloft again and threw himself down, head first this time. That time it worked. But what does the princess know about such hardships? She sits there coughing and wheezing amid her songbirds, her stolen children.
‘It is not yet done,’ the rooster says. He says it into Martin’s wounded heart. ‘Just one more time,’ the creature says.
I can’t go on, Martin thinks. Everything in me is old and lived, long past and worn out. Now I am here and I can’t bear another thought, another delay, another setback. She is not going to give me the children.
‘It is not this moment that must count,’ the rooster says.
The painter has long since set down his brushes and paints and forgotten about them. How can he help? My God, the boy is dying before my eyes, he thinks.
The songbirds are darting and swooping madly around them. Their incessant twittering gets under Martin’s skin, gnawing at his bones. The feathers. The cranes’ calls. The princess’s eye, milky with age, which is supposed to serve as the gateway to a soul. Yet, upon closer inspection, there is nothing within – only pale wax and a feverish self, woven into the everlasting cough.
And of course Martin cannot know yet what will become known later. But he can and does see beyond his lack of education and the ignorance of his century, sees the fever that is weakening the princess and hears the rattling coming from her body, from the clogged-up and useless branches of her lungs. He senses the harm that emanates from the lead white on her skin. How it gradually seeps into her body. How she licks the dry traces from her lips. Her abdomen aches. She is lying down. Her chamber pot has remained empty for days. Then there is the musty odour coming from her bed. Does she even detect the stench? The dust between the birds’ feathers. The droppings. All of it is making her sick. Inflaming her body. Each flutter of wings in that room is a step towards death. And Martin might have thought that he had done everything, given everything, but there is one more thing he must do. It is just a few strides to the bed.
He tenderly and slowly strokes his beloved rooster, the rhythm matching the unhurried pace of his steps towards the bed.
Dearest friend, Martin thinks.
The time has come, the rooster’s voice in his head says.
Martin reaches the princess and places the rooster on the frail chest of this witch, this tyrant, this murderess, and the rooster begins a frenzied dance on top of her, clutching tightly and flapping its wings, raising clouds of dust and dirt. The princess screeches, ingesting the dirt. The very particles that foretold her demise. Still, everything seems to happen slowly. Martin reaches the little boy, the eight-year-old, barely taller than a child of five, and lifts him onto his back. The little boy has wet himself. They will sort it out later.
‘Hold on tight,’ Martin says to the child.
The rooster also holds on tight and remains on the princess’s chest. The painter abandons his paints, brushes and stool and picks up the little girl. She is so drugged that she can barely open her eyes.
No one will stop them while the princess is dying.
Martin, the painter and the children hurry through the corridors and halls. More and more servants are coming towards them. The state of the princess is making the castle tremble. Everyone, everyone suddenly knows about it, as if the parakeets or the paintings on the walls had alerted them. The first arrivals rush to their mistress’s bedside – they want to help, or feel they must. But they stop as soon as they behold the ghostly spectacle – the princess’s discoloured face and the way her veins strain at her neck. How the rooster’s claws tear her clothes. Feathers are raining down from the pillows like snow.
Dead. Let her finally be dead, it flashes through the minds of the ladies-in-waiting. Wouldn’t that be something? If she were gone and there was no heir? Then they would have tales to tell. That they witnessed the final spasms. And that no one shed a tear. And that no one wanted to bury her. Which is why they dragged her stiff, cumbersome body to the very shaft where countless children suffered and perished year after year. So there she goes now. There she shall be haunted and consumed by the dead.
Martin and the painter reach the castle courtyard, where everyone has gathered, as if those down below have already sensed that something is coming to an end. Perhaps the villagers believe that they felt a tremor in the mountain, a rumbling that foreshadowed the collapse. But it won’t be made easy for them. They won’t be swept away to die. They will have to live with what has been, and with what lies ahead. And Martin will have to bear the fact that there can be no farewell, because between him and the others, whether it be the horseman, his wife, perhaps even Marie, stands the knowledge of the rescued children, the awareness of their suffering. He has to suppress the longing to hug the wife. But it is no longer bearable.
And the others do nothing. They remain motionless. The shame. The shame. Henceforth, they will have to deal with it, and denial will offer little solace.
The rooster flutters out of the tower window, seeking rest under Martin’s shirt after its repugnant exertions. Martin keeps it safe.
Might it be a coincidence that the horseman’s horse stands at the castle gate? There is a blanket on it, in any case, as well as a sack of provisions. Martin lifts the boy onto the animal. The painter places the girl alongside. They lead the animal out of the castle. Away from the court. Down the mountain. And into the valley.