The Sad Tale Of Queen Amethyst – Part 2 (A story I wrote when I was in secondary school, kind of far fetched)

The great banquet consisted of 20 stuffed roast swans, 10 fat suckling pigs, a hundred pidgeons eggs, two hundred gallons of wine and a hundred gallons of beer;  thirty loaves of bread; twenty  cinnamon and apple pies, fifty black currant tarts and a hundred gallons of double cream and it was all to feed just 30 people .

 

It was decorum however, that the first person to eat should be the monarch and before Queen Amethyst could eat something, a food taster had to eat part of it.

 

All the guests sat in suspense as the chief food taster was brought in to take a bite from some sweetly marinated, stuffed roast swan that lay upon the Queens golden plate.

 

For some minutes, the taster nibbled at a drumstick. Usually a number of minutes was given to the food taster because some poisons could be slow acting.

 

The taster famously complimented the cook on a finely prepared bird and all seemed well but then, suddenly, the food taster began to cough and choke, clutching his throat and gasping, “Poison!” then, suddenly, as if starting a mad dance, he whirled around and then, falling to the floor, shook violently before closing his eyes.

Queen Amethyst gasped in shock and a court physician was called into the banqueting hall to examine the food taster but after the merest examination of the fallen man, the physician turned to the Queen and, with a solemn expression upon his face said, in a grave voice, “This man is dead and he has all the signs of having been poisoned”.

 

The food taster was carried out of the banqueting hall and all the stuffed swans taken away and everyone moved onto the next course which was the roast suckling pigs. A large side of pork was carved up and placed upon the Queens golden plate and, just looking at it, her mouth watered hungrily but then, just as before, a servant had to be called into the hall to taste a portion of it before she could eat it.

 

Just as before, the food taster smiled at the opportunity to taste such lovely, rich and delicious fare and gobbled down a slice of pork greedily but then, just as the other food taster had, as soon as the pork had passed his lips, the servant started to choke, this time falling across the table and upturning an entire bowl full of clotted cream.

 

Then, again, a royal physician was called to examine the food taster and his verdict too was, “Death by poisoning”.

 

The servant was carried away along with all the roast suckling pigs and now the hardboiled pidgeons eggs were brought in in large baskets, each egg with its shell still on.

 

Picking up one of the eggs in her hand, the Queen smiled hopefully,

 

“Surely these must be safe to eat”, she remarked, “It would take a clever poisoner to take the shell off, poison the egg within and then replace the shell without even a crack”.

 

But imagine the misery she felt and the shock when she saw yet another poison taster who, having peeled off the delicate spotted egg shell and bitten into the yolk, yelled aloud in awful terror and collapsed in a seemingly dead heap on the ground.

 

Once more a court physician was called and, once more, “Death by poisoning” was the diagnosis.

 

“Oh my goodness! All these people dying”, exclaimed the Queen, “I think I need a drink to steady my nerves”.

 

And she ordered a servant to pour a goblet of wine.

 

But first, of course, the wine, from a bottle on which the seal was newly broken, had to be poured into a wooden cup for a servant to taste.

 

A new taster was thus brought in while the old taster, the one poisoned by a pigeons egg,  was carried out.

 

And at first, just like the other tasters, this one seemed to enjoy what he was tasting, in fact it seemed he was enjoying it a little too much for a servant for he drank not just one but two cups.

 

However, he like the others before, seemed to die a terrible death, gripping his throat, sinking to the floor and writhing in agony.

 

As the next court physician was examining the body of the wine taster, the Queen, waving her arms, shouted at her servants, “Take it away! Take it all away! All this death has made the Queen lose her apetite”.

 

Then the Queen, looking rather solemn went off to her private chambers accompanied by her cortege of body guards.

 

And for the next six weeks food and wine tasters died at Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. Servants started dropping like flies. Even courtiers and guests who she had forced to taste the food fell down dead.

 

Several more weeks passed and then a month and then two months and the Queen had not eaten so much as a mouthful of food and had started to drink cups of rainwater concluding that the water poured by God surely could not be poisoned.

 

Now she was not the young, smiling, serene beauty she had been but looked haggard and skeletal and raved with delirium and mad hunger.

 

In her anger, she ordered that all the cooks in the royal kitchens be locked in prison and new ones be brought in to replace them but this made no difference because even the food prepared by the new cooks made any one who tasted it fall to the floor, choking and gasping.

 

In a fit of desperation, she ran out into the royal orchard and asked a servant, one of the Royal Gardeners, to pick an apple from a tree and taste it but the Gardener, just like all the Queens other servants, had been promised Gold by the Duke and he only took one bite out of the apple when he clutched his chest as if he was having a heart attack and fell down dead upon the leaf strewn orchard floor.

 

“How can the fruit of a tree be poisoned while still on the branch?”, she thought, shaking her head in disbelief.

 

But then another thought occurred to her and she ran to where her servants kept the hunting dogs,

“What meat do you feed them upon? I will eat that?”.

 

But the dog handler, seeing the Queen coming did as the Dukes spies had instructed him and ordered the Dogs to all roll over and pretend to be dead then he said to the Queen, solemnly, “Poor Dogs who would be so cruel as to poison their meat?”.

 

“Is everything poisoned?”, she wailed, “I wonder that I am still able to breath. The air must be poisoned too”.

 

Running into her private chamber, slamming the door in the face of her body guards who were ordered never to leave her side, she collapsed upon her bed crying and sobbing and wanting to end her life but lacking the strength to do so.

 

Suddenly, however, outside her bedroom window, the same window that King Karnak had first seen her from, she heard a baby crying and, looking out, she saw a young peasant mother feeding a baby from her breast.

 

Seeing her, the mother looked distressed and tried to cover herself up but the Queen , rushing out of the Palace towards the girl told her to change clothes with her and, putting on the peasant womans clothes the Queen ran off into the streets.

 

The Queen had not gone among her people for some time for fear of assassination and when the ordinary peasants saw her emaciated, sickly form and the ragged peasants clothes she was wearing, they didn’t recognize her as the Queen but thought she must be a poor, starving beggar woman and, out of pity and kindness at seeing such a wretch, gave her food and water to drink.

 

But, sadly, poor Queen Amethyst was so weak and ill from malnutrition that her stomach could not take the food they gave her and she died soon afterwards.

 

And where she died, her body lying among the stems of the old fire-field, that is where her tomb and monument now stand with the last panel on the tomb depicting her reborn again ; a young, happy and carefree girl in the fields of Heaven.