The Book of the Unknown: Tales of the Thirty-six by Jonathon Keats Read Free Book Online

his trip. He was alone.
    — You tried to humiliate me, Beit. You know that’s a crime.
    — Your Majesty asked for a prediction. Perhaps you’d like another one?
    — I would not.
    — Last night I dreamed of a man who tried to lay the sky with stone.
    — And . . . what happened?
    — It tumbled down on him.
    — Could it have been a castle? Up on a mountain?
    — I don’t know, Your Majesty. I didn’t have a good view. It isn’t easy sleeping underground.
     
    Beit was given a suite of three rooms with a balcony overlooking the royal gardens, and, in place of a sentry, a pair of footmen. They brought her cheese and grapes, which she ate while Ruth and Leah tended to her braids, and Elke the seamstress took her orders for a whole silken wardrobe.
    Chaim found her there. (Every marble vault in the royal court reverberated with rumors of her restored fortunes, the king’s abandoned building plans.) She received the courtier with a lady’s grace, and offered him a bunch of purple grapes. She told him about the glorious gowns she’d have soon. Then she asked him, coy like a courtesan, where the king planned now to erect his new castle. Chaim had no answer. She took back her fruit, and suggested he find out. She turned to Elke. She asked when she could expect her couture. The seamstress told her that His Majesty immediately required a new doublet suitable for a fox hunt, but promised her a gown that would garner marriage vows in time for the upcoming pageant.
    Beit supped at the royal table that night, where the king toasted her talent as a seer, and asked what new visions she had to share. She frowned. She took a gulp of port. Then, fixing his gaze with her turquoise eyes, she told him of a fox who so admired the cut of a hunter’s silk jacket that it gave up its own fur coat.
    Before the courtiers could laugh at her, the king asked if the hunter was wearing a red doublet. She nodded sagely. Triumphant, he commanded his retinue never again to doubt Beit. He ordered them to venerate her.
    They obeyed. She’d no need of new gowns, so tightly did they cling to her. The gossipy patter of their flirtation gave her fodder for a thousand and one dreams with which to amuse His petulant Highness. For a man who has no time for history, an oracle is the ultimate entertainment, and it made no difference to the king whether Beit foretold the apocalypse or the names of that evening’s supper guests, as long as the prediction proved correct.
     
    Everyone adored Beit. Only Chaim was distraught by her behavior, the way she wallowed in courtly rumor, teasing it from men beneath an abundance of cleavage, letting them caress her wherever they pleased, as long as they whispered fresh intrigues in her ear. He was as impressed as anyone by her foresight, naturally, yet he wondered when, given all the revelry that consumed her night and day, she even had time to dream.
    Chaim had time aplenty, and, in his sleep, Beit was always with him alone, far from the courtiers he’d grown up with, or the palace where he’d been born. She was a shepherdess again, he a woodsman, and their whole wealth was in children, a veritable kingdom of them. The only trouble was that, unlike Beit’s charmed dreams, poor Chaim’s never came to pass.
    In fact, since Chaim had no talent for gossip, Beit barely noticed him anymore. His lowly social rank ensured that he was never seated near her at supper. Occasionally, he found her with other courtiers in the gardens—stumbled over a foursome of feet entangled in the hedgerow—but such circumstances proved unsuitable for conversation. If he wanted her attention again, much less to share his dreams with her, he’d need a miracle, or at least a good scandal.
    He attended more closely to the king. He lingered while His Majesty received ministers and soldiers and foreign emissaries. And not more than a week passed before he had his wish.
    He wished immediately that he hadn’t. For his miracle, the scandal,