You're Shaking

You have a beautiful palace, your majesty. The marble pillars, high vaulting ceilings, the delicate paintings. How far did these carpets and furs travel to reach you? How much did the velvet couches and chairs cost? Do you even know? I doubt my family could afford one of these trinkets, even if we worked our entire lives to reach them.

I stood there, in that line outside, waiting for an audience, for nine hours. Your palace sits atop this steep, sloping mountain, the surrounding landscape is dotted with expensive shops and the nobilities’ baroque houses. The road leading to the palace front, one that I have become unfortunately familiar with, is a series of worn down staircases, ill-maintained after a point, crisscrossing through the old city for miles. 

My family’s house lies beyond that. Beyond the bridge that you cannot see from the top of these steps. This mountain is a small dot on the horizon from where I live. Every day these steps are crowded, not with shoppers or residents, but with those waiting to talk with you, your majesty. I didn’t know that, before I came here.

I am a seamstress. I sew clothes for a living. My craft requires I have a steady hand and a good eye. But being here, seeing the capital with my own eyes, has filled me with uncontrollable emotion. I see your painted houses, and remember the decrepit buildings belonging to me and my neighbors. I see your new fancy clothes, imported from a distant land, and I remember every time I stitched up my five year aged trousers. I watched as your ‘noble’ men and women avoided these ‘urchins’ who sat upon the long winding steps they left their homes and families to climb. My eyes dampened as your people shoved their starving neighbors away, more care for the state of the cloth around their bodies than the man who was struggling to stand. I stood by in silence as the street returned to normalcy, the residents flowing past the needy like the water that flowed down the stairs. Some sensation burned itself in my soul, roaring to a peak as the enraged thunder cracked overhead. When the drums faded away, I was left with the sound of splashing steps, and hands that wouldn’t stay still.

This morning, it rained. Maybe you heard it thundering off your rooftop? I know when it started, because I woke to the droplets on my face. I slept outside the previous night among many others, unable to find a place to rest, trailing at the end of the line from the day before that never got to meet you. And still I stood there, and those in front of me stood there, for nine hours in clothes soaked by a rain that wouldn't cease, as if the sky was crying with us. I raised my head, mouth open to catch the drops that might wet my travel-dry lips. I couldn't risk leaving to drink or eat, because then I would have never talked with you today, such was the line that grew behind me. 

You probably do not know this, but on a mountain like this one, the wind often curls sharply up to the peak, tearing through the streets outside. It clawed its way through my wet clothes, I couldn't help the shaking, but they dried faster. The chill gave my mind a focus, one that wasn't on the sharp rock digging into my sore, bare feet, or the pang of too many missed meals in my stomach, or the holes in my trousers, or rips in my tunic, or stains on my hat. You will have to pardon my appearance, your majesty, but this is the best I had.

I waited, with nothing to occupy my mind except this conversation, until finally I stepped into this room. I curtsied, my right foot behind my left, in the proper way. My mother taught me, just in case. My breath caught in my throat then, at that thought, and for a moment I was frozen. I think you caught that, mistaking my grief for weakness. But you called me up, and I rose. We met each other’s gaze and I thought to myself, ‘you’re shaking.’ My hands wouldn’t stop. I gripped the sides of my trousers until my knuckles turned white. My fingers slipped through the holes and dug into my thigh, and still they wouldn’t stop. You asked me why I came here, as if it were some great mystery. 

My mother died a week ago. She fell asleep, hungry and freezing from the coming winter, and didn’t wake up. That’s when I made the decision to come here. I couldn’t wait for something to change, I had to do something. My father is old, you see. His hair has gone grey, he has sunspots up and down his arms and face. He is blind in his left eye, has a crooked step, and I fear each day he goes into our fields that he will not return. I have three little siblings, a sister and two brothers, all under ten years of age. They can not work in the fields, they cannot lift the tools, they were dependent on my parents for food and right now my father is the only one with them. If he falls ill, or cannot work, I don’t want to think about what will happen. But I have to take that risk, because their situation will only worsen if I leave them to your neglect.

I came here begging for help. You looked at me, looked at my clothes, and you laughed. ‘Why have you come here?’ you repeated. You were not focused on my face any longer, no, your gaze had found my trembling grip. ‘You’re shaking,’ you snickered. ‘You’re shaking! You stand before me, only to quiver in fear at the slightest provocation!’

And so, my eyes on yours, with hands that shake, I say to you now, in an unwavering voice: I am not frightened. I am furious.