Beware the Little White Rabbit Read online

  Da set to work skinning the rabbit, first slicing a ring around each leg, just above the leg joint, and up the back. He worked his fingers into the sleeve of the hide and pushed it to the base of the rabbit’s skull, like a fine lady removing her glove. With a quick twist, he snapped off the head, and yanked the skin off entirely.

  Alice had watched this skinning many times before, but today a wave of dizziness washed over her. She closed her eyes and tipped her head against the doorframe.

  In the distance, a rumbling. Alice knew what it was without opening her eyes.

  The dead-cart.

  The cart slowly approached their cottage. Arms and legs stuck out over the top, flopping up and down as if waving their final good-byes. Her own dear mother had been taken away on a dead-cart for pit burial with other plague victims. She had begged Da to find private burial ground, but the graveyards were full. Hundreds of the sick were dying daily, their bodies stacked up against the walls of houses until the dead-carts hauled them away.

  Alice shifted to block the door, but the driver had already spied the blazing red cross. “Bring out your dead,” the cart-driver called to them. “Bring out your dead!”

  Alice curled her hands into fists at her side. A rage exploded in her, so fierce it made her head ache. “Be gone, cart-man,” she shouted. “My brother lives. We have no dead for you.”

  The driver shrugged and spit in the dirt. “Tomorrow then,” he said casually, as if collecting bodies was a normal occupation like blacksmithing or cobbling. “I will return tomorrow.”

  While Da gutted the rabbit, Alice slipped inside and set a kettle to heat. Fury simmered in her. There would be no body for the dead-cart driver tomorrow, or ever. Edward was still breathing, still alive, and she would use every remedy and potion to cure him, even search to the ends of the earth for a unicorn horn. She stacked wood in the fireplace and fanned the embers. It was rumored bad air caused the plague, and fires burning night and day, even in the heat of summer, would cleanse the air. Alice would set their thatched cottage to a bonfire if it would heal Edward.

  Alice felt a tickle in her throat. Suddenly, without warning, a great wracking cough shook her. At first she willed her ears into disbelieving. It was only the smoke from the fire irritating her throat. She poked at the wood and it blazed, sending sparks up the chimney. Although great heat emanated from the fire, Alice felt chilled. She took her mother’s shawl from a peg and drew it around her shoulders.

  Edward cried out and thrashed in his bed. “Lord have mercy upon me,” he muttered over and over in a raspy whisper.

  Alice took a step toward him, but the room spun in a dizzying spiral. She staggered and fell backward against the stone fireplace. Sparks ignited her dress, burning black holes in the thin fabric. She beat at the sparks with her hands. Stooping, she doused her hem in a pail of wash water near the hearth. Her aching bones were so stiff she could barely ease herself upright. Her mouth was as dry as ashes.

  With great effort she climbed to her sleeping loft and fell on the thin pallet. Her throbbing head felt about to burst. She drew in a shuddery breath. The symptoms were all familiar. Chills, dizziness, weakness, and headache were the signs of plague sickness. The next day or two would bring drenching sweats, pus-filled swellings, and seizures.

  The dead-cart would be stopping for her within the week.

  “Dear God,” she whimpered. “Please…”

  No. She would not stoop to prayer. Instead, she reached for her stuffed poppet, a hand-sewn rabbit made by her mother. The poppet’s body was made of rough-spun white fabric and wearing a patchwork jacket. The lumpy head had two longish ears adorned with tufts of fur, the body stuffed with leaves and dried flowers. Widow Maud had put a protection spell on it. Alice hugged the poppet to her chest and breathed in the scent of herbs. “Mamma,” she whispered to it, “open your arms for me. I am coming to you.”

  As she spoke, the world went black and Alice tumbled head over heels, Falling

  Falling down, down, down

  Through the swirling vortex of a warm dark tunnel.

  Alice fell slowly, drifting from side to side like an autumn leaf, giving her time to think. If this was death, it was very comfortable indeed. It gave Alice great comfort to think that her mother had been freed from pain and seizures in this same tunnel. Her mind shifted to the living. Edward would miss her very much. Widow Maud would declare her abduction by fairies. And Da, poor Da, would fret when he found the pot boiling but no daughter to cook his rabbit stew.

  Wherever she was going, Alice felt remarkably clear-headed, not woozy from sickness at all.

  Thump. Alice landed on a soft, fluffy pillow.

  “Oof! Get off me,” pleaded a muffled voice.

  Alice sat back on her heels. Lying crushed beneath was not a pillow but her rabbit, no longer a child’s hand-sewn poppet but a full-grown white rabbit wearing a patchwork waistcoat. He hopped up and looked anxiously about as if he had lost something.

  “Oh, my dear paws. Oh, my fur and whiskers. She’ll have my head.” He sat on his haunches, lifted a hind leg, and scratched furiously behind one ear. “Wretched fleas. These fleas will be my death.”

  “May I help?” Alice reached out her fingers to ear-scratch the same way she did for Dinah, her cat. Dear Dinah was gone too, not from plague directly, but by order of the City Corporation. All cats and dogs were ordered to be killed as a plague precaution.

  The rabbit flinched and leapt back. “How rude of you to fall on me,” he grumped, brushing dirt from his sleeves. “Where are your manners?”

  “It was not on purpose.” How ridiculous, conversing with a rabbit. Edward would call her a silly goose if he could see her now.

  “Purpose, porpoise.” The rabbit waved her away with his paw. “Now run along home.”

  Alice turned in a circle. An expanse of green fields and leafy trees stretched out in all directions. Which way was home? If she was indeed dead, wasn’t this her new home?

  “Is this not heaven?” she asked.

  “Heaven?” The rabbit scratched frantically under his chin. “I do not know the place.”

  “Then where am I?”

  A dark thought filled her mind. She had been falling down, not up. The bowels of Hell were ruled by Satan, though it was unlikely Satan bred rabbits. Wherever she was, how nice of God to spare her even though she had refused to pray to Him.

  “Why, everyone knows this is the land beyond the end of the world.”

  Alice thought this very curious. Widow Maud said the world was round and had no end. The only land beyond was the moon. Maud claimed the moon was inhabited by a man with a bundle of sticks on his back, so far removed from Earth that he was beyond the reach of death. This place most certainly was not the moon.

  The rabbit pulled a watch from his waistcoat pocket. “Oh, mercy me. I am very late. She will snap off my head and boil my bones in her stew pot.”

  Alice gasped. She poked at a shadowy memory lodged in her brain. Da, snapping off a rabbit’s head.

  At this moment a voice called out, “All hail Her Majesty the Queen.”

  “Oh, my fleas and fur.” The rabbit held his head in his paws. “My head, my poor head.”

  Queen? Alice expected to face a white-bearded God, scolding her for her disobedience. Were the church elders wrong? Was God a woman, and a queen?

  Alice fluffed her blue homespun dress and adjusted her apron to hide the burn holes at the hem. She raked fingers through her tangled hair. Taking a deep breath and forming her mouth into a smile, she turned in the direction of trumpets.

  A regiment of royal foot guards marched toward Alice and came to a halt. They parted to allow a dozen courtiers to pass down the middle, followed by a stately woman dressed in a billowing silver gown trimmed with jewels.

  Alice stood as if frozen. She squinted into the sunlight as the entourage approached. She rubbed her eyes and looked again. No, this could not be.

  The Death Queen was her own Queen Catherine of En
gland. Alice had only once seen the queen, wife of King Charles, from afar during a procession in the city. But her likenesses were everywhere, on paintings and embroidered linens. Alice thought perhaps she had not died at all.

  Instead of Heaven or Hell, she seemed to have been delivered to the king’s country estate in Oxford.

  The queen floated toward Alice and pointed her scepter. “Who is this wretch trespassing on my land?”

  The rabbit nervously scratched behind one flea-bitten ear. “Oh, my goodness gracious.” His nose twitched as fleas hopped between his whiskers. “She fell from the sky, Your Grace. Right atop – ”

  “Silence!” the queen bellowed. “Let the wretch speak.”

  Alice dipped in a low curtsey. “I am Alice, your humble servant. In all truth, I fell on my poppet by accident.”

  “Poppet?” the rabbit sputtered. “I am most certainly not your poppet.”

  “My mother sewed him from scraps, but he seems to have taken on a mind of his own.” She grabbed for the rabbit’s ears, to give him a sound shake for his brazenness.

  The queen’s scepter knocked Alice’s hand away. “Do not touch my rabbit.”

  “Scraps” – the rabbit sniffed – “as if I were a common field rabbit instead of a royal white Snowshoe courtier.”

  “Tell me, Wretch Alice,” the queen said, “from where do you come?”

  Alice hesitated. The queen must be testing her. “Why, I am from London, the same as you.”

  “Lun-dun?” The queen turned to her rabbit. “Do you know of such a place?”

  “I do not, Your Grace. It seems to be a land in the sky. Perhaps the moon.”

  “Nonsense,” the queen huffed. “Everyone knows the moon is ruled by the Earl of Sticks-on-His-Back. His estate is definitely not titled Lun-dun.”

  The queen faced Alice again. “Wretch, where is this Lun-dun?”

  If this was a silly game, Alice decided she’d had quite enough. Had the plague made Queen Catherine feeble-minded? Why did she not remember her own city?

  Alice spoke slowly and plainly, as if to a half-wit. “In the country you rule with King Charles, your husband.”

  The queen’s face burned with fury. “I have no husband. No king rules here.”

  Alice had always been a quiet, sensible girl, but she could no longer tolerate this nonsense. She crossed her arms and snapped, “In my country, you are my queen and King Charles is your husband. You deserted your subjects who are dying from plague.” Her bowels cramped as the misery of her existence spewed like poison bursting from a pustule. “We are trapped in your filthy city, the cobbles slick with horse dung and slops, the stench so thick we walk with scented kerchiefs pressed to our noses. We sup on flea-bitten rabbit and bitter ale” – the rabbit moaned and put a paw to his throat – “while you dine on sweetmeats and wine at your grand country estate.”

  The queen’s guards and courtiers gasped and whispered behind their hands.

  The queen stepped close to Alice. She dipped her head so low their noses nearly touched. “Silence,” she hissed, “or this will be your fate.” From her fingers dangled a furry white lump on a chain. Alice shuddered when she recognized what it was.

  A severed rabbit’s foot.

  The queen’s breath smelled of something sickeningly sweet, like rotting apples. Her eyes drilled into Alice, black as the tunnel but lacking its warmth. Alice scoured her memory for Widow Maud’s protection spell. Finally, it came to her.

  Against all evil, I set this charm,

  Keep its bearer from all harm.

  So mote it be.

  She would need the rabbit poppet in hand for the spell to work its magic. Without the hand-sewn poppet, a live rabbit must do.

  “Rabbit,” Alice beckoned him, “come to me. Quickly.”

  The rabbit jittered nervously as he pattered toward her.

  Whack. The queen’s scepter sliced between them, barring his way. “Are you a half-wit, wretch?” she thundered.

  Alice took a giant breath and blew it out. “No, Your Majesty.”

  “Do you remember my royal command?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “Well?”

  “Do not touch the rabbit,” Alice repeated. “Never touch the rabbit.”

  “Very well then,” the queen said, fluttering her fingers in royal dispensation. With her scepter, she lifted the hem of Alice’s apron to expose the burn holes. “I have a notion to take you as my scullery maid. You may tend my hearth and empty my chamber pot.” The queen extended her arm. “I don’t like the look of you, or your attitude, but you may kiss my hand if you wish.”

  “I’d rather not,” Alice said.

  The queen’s eyes bulged in astonishment. “What did you say?”

  “I would rather not kiss your hand. It might carry plague.”

  The rabbit scratched frantically behind his ears, chin, and hindquarters. “Fleas. Fleas and plague.”

  “Blasphemy,” the queen roared. “How dare you insult your sovereign? This is treason, a criminal offense. Guards, arrest her.”

  Two foot guards strode forward, swords drawn.

  “No,” Alice shouted, hand up to halt them.

  For a moment, the queen stood stunned. “No?” She seemed never to have been addressed in such an impertinent manner. “You said…no?” With both hands she hoisted her scepter like a croquet mallet and swung at Alice’s head.

  “I did nothing wrong,” Alice cried, ducking the blow. “I fell into your land through no fault of my own. I committed no offense.”

  “Fetch the executioner,” the queen ordered. “This wretch will die.”

  The rabbit squealed and spun in shuffling circles, his pink eyes pinwheeling. “Die. She must die.”

  The royal bugler lifted his horn and blew three notes. Alice heard a familiar rumbling starting far in the distance. Dread inched up her throat. The dead-cart heaped with bodies wheeled along the rutted road, limp arms and legs bouncing and waving.

  “Bring me your living, soon-to-be-dead,” the executioner sang, stopping his cart at the queen’s upraised hand. He drew a gleaming sword from its scabbard and hobbled toward Alice. Dung and mud caked his boots. He grinned a row of yellow, chipped teeth, as if meeting an old friend.

  “’Tis the morrow, Alice,” he said, tipping his blood-smeared cap. “I have returned as promised.”

  The queen jabbed a finger at Alice. “You know this wretch?”

  “I do, Your Grace.” He fingered the fabric of Alice’s dress and apron, payment for his services. His lips twisted in disgust. “These will hardly fetch two pence.” He spat in the dirt. “Remove your garments and kneel before me in your shift. Pray to God to have mercy upon your soul.”

  Pray to God? A raging defiance surged through Alice. What had she done wrong, what sins committed? It was not her fault that she was cast into this awful place.

  “I most certainly will not,” she told the executioner. She did not need God’s mercy. She did not need a poppet or its protection spell. She had her own talisman within, locked in her heart. Her love for Edward was a bold, fearless charm.

  “Carry on,” the queen ordered. “She may keep her filthy rags. The devil take her.”

  “Wait,” Alice said. “I beg of you a last request.”

  “What say you? A request?” The queen turned to the executioner. “Is this allowed?”

  He touched two gnarled fingers to his forehead, feigning thought. Shielded by his hand, he winked at Alice.

  “It is highly unusual in your queendom, but I believe tradition calls for the dying to be granted a last request.”

  “This is very vexing,” the queen said. She turned to her courtiers and consulted with them privately. With a swirl and flounce of her skirt she again faced Alice. “Although your manner is insolent and you are unworthy of my favor, I am intrigued by your strange entreaty. I am wealthy beyond all imagining. What is your request?”

  “The horn of a unicorn,” Alice said, “ground to a powde
r.”

  Peals of laughter rang out from the guards and courtiers. The queen shrieked in spasms of laughter, so heartily her bosom nearly burst from the low-cut neckline of her gown. “Such…such a small thing,” she choked out, barely able to catch her breath, “when you could have your choice from my royal coffers.”

  Alice could not understand the humor in her request. The queen’s riches held no appeal. Edward was dying, and a plaster of unicorn horn was the only remedy that might heal him. It was all she wanted. That, and a secret escape route back to Edward’s bedside.

  The rabbit offered his handkerchief, and the queen dabbed at her teary eyes. “Why, we drink tea brewed with powdered unicorn horn every afternoon at four.”

  The attendants again exploded with laughter.

  “Silly wretch, you have wasted your request, but I will be generous.” The queen raised her scepter. “I grant you one horn from my stable of unicorns, ground into powder by the royal apothecary. So shall it be.”

  Alice was bound to the dead-cart while a horseman was dispatched to fulfill her request. Swarms of flies buzzed over the bodies. Strangely, they bore no signs of plague, no swellings or ruptures. The corpses seemed almost asleep, not dead at all but lost in dreams.

  Dreams. Was she dreaming? Alice bit down on her tongue and winced. No, of course she wasn’t. Dreams were hardly this real. Alice considered the dilemma before her. Home. She must find a way home to Edward. How she arrived at the royal country estate was a mystery, but the way leading back to London must begin from these grounds. With the powdered unicorn’s horn in hand, she would only need to escape and find safe passage.

  Alice set her mind to formulating a plan, but her eyes grew heavy and her thoughts blurred. Yawning, she slid down as far as her bound hands would allow. She rested her head against the cart wheel and dozed, flies buzzing over her body as if she were already among the dead.

  “Wake up, wretch.”

  Alice snapped out of her nightmare. She shook off sleep, blinking and squinting as the ropes on her wrists were cut free.

  The queen loomed over her, blocking the sun. She held out a drawstring pouch. “Here is your powder. Taste to your pleasure. Then prepare to die.”