Selected Tales of the Brothers Grimm(52)

The following morning, the king to whom the garden belonged came to count the pears and noticed that one was missing. He asked the gardener what had become of it, since he could not see it lying under the tree. The gardener replied, “Last night, sire, a ghost with no hands bit one straight off the tree.”

The king said, “How did the ghost get across the moat? And where did he go after eating the pear?”

The gardener replied, “Someone in a snow-white gown came down from the sky and built a sluice to drain off the water so that the ghost could walk across. And since it must have been an angel, I took fright and didn’t dare object. As soon as the ghost ate the pear he went away again.”

To which the king replied, “If what you say is true, I’ll stand guard with you tonight.”

When darkness fell, the king came into the garden and brought a priest along to speak to the ghost. The three of them sat under the tree and waited. At midnight the girl crept out from behind the bush, approached the tree, and gnawed off another pear with her teeth. The angel in white was standing beside her.

Now the priest stepped forward and said, “Are you God-sent or of this world? Are you ghost or mortal?”

To which she replied, “I am no ghost, but a poor lost soul, forsaken by all but the Lord.”

The king said, “If you are forsaken by all, I will not forsake you.” He took her along with him into his castle, and because she was so pretty and pious, he loved her with all his heart, had silver hands fashioned for her, and took her as his wife.

A year passed and the king had affairs to attend to far afield. So he left the young queen in the care of his mother and said, “When she is ready to bear me a child, take good care of her and make quick to send me a dispatch.”

It came to pass that she gave birth to a beautiful boy. Whereupon the king’s old mother made haste to send him the glad tidings. But along the way the messenger rested beside a stream, and because he was so tired, he promptly fell asleep.

Now the Devil, who had long born a grudge against the pious queen, appeared and exchanged the letter for another that said that the queen had given birth to a changeling. No sooner did the king read the letter than he was horrified and fell into a deep depression, but he wrote back that the queen should be well cared for until his return. The messenger returned with the letter, rested at the same spot along the way, where he once again fell asleep. Whereupon the Devil dropped by again, took the letter from the messenger’s pouch, and replaced it with another that said the queen and the child should be killed. Upon reading it, the old mother was stunned and could not believe her eyes. She wrote back to the king again, but each time the Devil switched letters – and in the last one it said that the queen’s eyes and tongue were to be cut out and kept as proof of her execution.

Horrified at the thought of shedding such innocent blood, the old mother had a doe hunted down that night and cut out her tongue and eyes to keep for the king. Then she said to the young queen, “I cannot have you killed, as the king commands, but you can’t stay here any longer. Go with your child out into the world and never return.” She bound the child onto his mother’s back and the poor woman went away weeping. She came to a big, wild woods. There she knelt down and prayed to God, and the Lord’s angel appeared and led her to a little house on which hung a little sign with the words: “All are free to enter.” Out the door came a snow-white maiden who said, “Welcome, Your Highness,” and led her in. She unbound the boy from off the poor woman’s back and put him to her breast, so that he might drink, and lay him in a soft white bed.

Whereupon the woman said to the maiden, “How do you know that I am a queen?”

To which the maiden replied, “I am an angel sent by God to care for you and your child.”

And the woman remained seven years in the little house, where she was cared for and fed, and because of her piety, by the mercy of God her hacked-off hands grew back.

The king finally returned to his castle, and his first wish was to see the queen and the child. Then his old mother started crying and said, “You evil man, did you not write, commanding me to take two innocent lives?” And she showed him the two letters the Evil One had falsified, and continued: “I did as you ordered,” and showed him as proof the tongue and eyes.

Then the king cried such bitter tears over his poor wife and little son that his old mother took mercy on him and said, “It’s all right, she still lives! I had a doe slaughtered in her place and kept the tongue and eyes, but I bound the child on your wife’s back and sent them out into the world, and made her promise never to come back, on account of your wrath.”