No Fury

Then: Twenty

"Tell me about your mum."

He was lying in the grass,  staring up at the clouds when I said this. He was thirteen, here, and I could see nothing of the king in his face. The king: broad and rough, blond and massive. My prince: tall, willowy, slow to turn into a man.

He turned his head to look  at me, asking, "You mean what my uncle's told me? That's all I have."

"Yes, my Lord."

He closed his eyes, tilting his face back up to the sun. "He's told me she was beautiful." The prince peeked at me out of the corner of his eye. "Of course I take after her," he added, and we  both laughed.

His smile dissolved slowly. "My eyes. My height." He paused,  seeming reluctant to add, "My kindness."

"Your kindness," I repeated, agreeing. "You are known for it, my Lord."

"Am I?"

"Aye." I nodded, closing my eyes. "You are beloved."

"By all?" he asked, voice carrying a teasing lift.

I turned my head to gaze at him, returning his wicked grin. "By most, my Lord."

He  laughed, and rolled as if to wrestle with me before he seemed to think  better of it, jerking upright and resting his elbows on his bent knees.

A tense silence overtook us. He broke it at length with a quiet, "Why do you not call me by my name?"

I didn't know how to answer this. I could admit to him that I wanted to be queen; he could admit that he had no desire to be king, but these were things that we had no say in anyway. Saying his given name was different. Even at that young age, the boundaries had been hammered in to me. When to bow, when to avert my gaze, when to cheer, when to stand silently in the shadows. It was the way of things, you see. The rules weren't imposed on us; they simply existed.

When I didn't answer, he seemed to give up. He picked up a blade of glass, slicing it neatly down the middle with his thumbnail.

His clean, smooth thumbnail.

I regarded my hands in my lap: coarse, not dirty, but nowhere near clean either. I ran my fingertip along a narrow scar on the back of my hand and then tucked my hands neatly into my skirts.

He noticed.

"I don't mind how you come to me," he said.

I felt my blush crawl up my neck. "Thank you, my Lord."

"I mean to say, sometimes I would rather come to you however I am when I rise these Saturdays: rumpled, or wrinkled, or sloppy."

My blush intensified and I tried to smooth out my skirts. "Oh."

He huffed out a breath."That is not what I mean to say either. I suppose I am just ruminating. I don't like that I never knew her."

I wasn't sure what connected my state of dishevelment to his mother, but I answered only with a quiet: "I am sure."

"I rather think she would have made my life something quite different than what it is."

I regarded him sidelong when he said this. He was beautiful, tall, graceful. His skin was pink with blood  rushing though: well fed. His muscles were growing nearly daily it  seemed. He was clean, healthy, adored.

"You don't like your life? In the castle with food unending, clean linens and fresh candles on your nightstand?"

"There are aspects that are nice," he allowed. "But I don't need help bathing, or dressing. I don't require such lavish meals. It is lonely, Cathryn.There is no one in the house who calls me by my given name. I am my Lord. My Lordship. Sir. Son."

I watched him, waiting.

"I  laugh only with you. I mean truly laugh, from here." He pressed a hand  beneath his ribs. "I would give all of the candles and linens up for a  life of song and laughing and simply being loved. Simply."

"My Lord," I argued gently. "You are loved by all."

"Ah," he said, laughing without mirth. "That's just it, though. I would rather be loved deeply by one, than loved blindly by hundreds."