Unmaking Percy

Part I - I (The Sleeping Castle)

I

Percy belonged to that noble breed of people for whom resentment aged like a fine wine. Neighbourly disagreements and simple misunderstandings could only become great family feuds if allowed to linger and grow. Some would say that they festered, but Percy's family was too grand to allow anything to fester: it simply allowed them to mature.

Percy was only one year older than his family's wealth, and what a sibling it had been. They had grown together and been displayed in the same rooms by the Freels. It had been a constant companion to him in his childhood and teenage years, more constant than any others, in whatever form it took, be it gold-trimmed tapestries or gold-framed mirrors or gold-plated gold. But in the quiet moments, when it stared down at him from the posthumous portrait of his grandfather or the carved animal heads on the marble fireplace, it became an overbearing playmate, and it made him glad he had no other siblings to smother his days.

The Freel's estate was an amalgamation of towers, turrets, east wings and west drawing rooms, all added to what had once been the family's drapery shop. They could have moved to one of the hills on the edge of town, where they would have been less crowded by everyone and their horses' shit, and where everyone would have been less crowded by their constant aggrandisements to their home. But while the hills had a good view of the town, the town would not have a good view of the house had it moved there, and so the point of turning it into a grand estate would have been lost. There was no purpose to decorative friezes and arches if they had no spectators. And Percy's father often said it was important to stay in what had once been the drapery shop, so that they may always remember their origins – as long as they never returned to them.

This was as far as his father's humility would stretch. He was determined that the town should witness not only the rise of his house from one-storey shop to four-storey manor, but equally the rise of his family. It rid itself of its new money veneer through old, dusty deeds: the Freels were avid contributors to noble causes, hoping some of its nobility would rub off on them. They had so skilfully traded their way into wealth with imported brocades and silks that they fully knew the power of a satin sheen or a gilded finish.

But even before his fortune found him, Percy's father believed a great destiny was owed to his family, and he laid the foundations for it to thrive. When his son was born, he named him Percival. Others in the town with smaller things ahead of them in life might be named Jim, Tom and Tim; but Percy would not merely be another in the town.

He woke now, half lost in sleep that lingered and silken sheets that engulfed him. He got up, resenting half the tasks of his day, and determined to resent the other half by the time he returned to his bed at night.

It was truly an art form to have an eye for the grandiose when one was so small. Percy stood at five feet two, with a slight frame and scrawny build that always denied him the dignity of having his age guessed correctly. His hair was a dark, tousled mass of waves, offset by a pale skin that bore the privilege of many a sunburning day spent indoors, subjected to the very best of educations. His delicate features did not help his efforts to achieve the imposing appearance of one with a great destiny ahead. For that, he could only count on his eyebrows, which sat thick and heavy over eyes of an unflattering murky colour. But his clothes were a precious asset, weighing down with furs and velvets the natural lightness of his graceful frame. And thus he began his day, cloaking himself in the heaviness his family had designed for him, his name, his future, his exquisite tunics and cloaks.

A knock came at the door.

"Master Percy?" he heard his housekeeper call. He had been quick to learn that possessive pronouns suited people to perfection. "The painter, Mr Perry, would like to see you in the morning drawing room."