Interstitial
SECOND EPISTLE, concerning the contents of a foreigner’s wardrobe
Written by the hand of EDWARD by the grace of God King of England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of Aquitaine, Conqueror of Wales,
Hammer of Scots
“Eighty-six percent recycled polyester. Fourteen percent spandex. Made in India. Machine wash cold. Tumble dry low. Keep away
from fire. Wash dark colors separately. Do not soak. Do not iron printed part. Color may rub off.”
That was what the writing on the small white square sewn into the lining of the garment said. This was among the evidence
sent to me by the Lord of Greenwich, leading to my tracking and summoning of George and all the madness that ensued. It took
four days for a translator to decipher the characters and make the translation, making no reasonable interpretation beyond
what I could easily surmise on my own. I knew of greater India and had seen garments of similar brilliance among traders during
my pilgrimage to the Holy Land in my youth. The multi-deity beliefs of those in the Hindustan regions would account for the
word “polyester,” with poly meaning multiple and ester a derivative of ether, the unknowable substance of God.
“Spandex” could be the joining of span meaning the span of time and dexterity, giving credence to George’s assertion of time travel.
I know George did not hail from Hindustan, but religious inference seems a legitimate line of inquiry, given the circumstances—but why such markers would be plainly written and sewn into a garment makes no sense other than an aim to intentionally dissuade.
And I don’t believe there’s a single man on this Earth who hasn’t the predilection to deceive me.
When the Prince of Wales returned, he ambushed a meeting of my war council in a grotesque display of emotion, barging into
the room, clothing soiled, his frame like that of a rattling waif, more insult than son of mine, demanding his crusted rag
of a lover before all else:
“Where is Piers? Where is Piers? It’s real. It’s real, Father—Your Majesty. Apologies.” He twaddled into a bow. I stared.
“It killed two soldiers. Its tail stretches through fields and fields. Its eyes are like meaty discs. Its face, a small planet,
the weight of its body, heavier than our own, it crushes through the earth, and the fire. God almighty, Father, like heat,
like sweltering, like I don’t even know. And Piers? Where is my Piers?”
I banished the prince and ordered silence.
I ordered the rug where he had stood cleaned.
I ordered a censuring of the council and a full testimony to be taken from the soldier who had accompanied the prince and also borne witness to the beast. He was more coherent and of a sound mind and recounted the creature’s appearance, its destruction, all with admirable articulation beyond his rank.
He was a natural believer, unlike the prince, his steadfastness keeping him on the faithful side of hysterics, and I applauded him.
I noticed a scar stretching from his ear to his temple and remarked upon it.
I said that if he had managed to survive whatever Welsh demon had given him that injury, surely this English one could be brought under similar submission.
The soldier replied, “Aye, this? No, Your Majesty, it’s not from beast or man, Welsh or English. It’s from an unfortunate
incident when I was small, back in Lancashire. My sister had hoisted me up to tie a bale of hay and when I jumped down upon
her in jest, we both failed to see the scythe resting there on the ground, improperly stored. Just the unlucky business of
children, I’m afraid, nothing remarkable—still something we’re both lucky to be alive by. And even still, I’d have been just
a wee lad during the Welsh campaigns, barely fit enough to strip arrows let alone accompany Your Majesty in a vanguard.”
I asked the soldier his age and he confirmed he was only twenty-five, saying the number in such a way as all youth do—no one
more obsessed with being young than the young themselves—and I felt every single one of my sixty-two years. A reflexive fury
pulsed through me and the soldier took note of this, apologizing for his forthrightness and excusing it by saying it was only
because we had spoken before, actually, at Falkirk. He had been a spearman behind my archers.
“It was after Falkirk that I was awarded the patronage of your son,” he said, “for my bravery and the great success we had there. And whilst the Prince of Wales is no Scottish horde, some nights when he calls on me to his chambers I can attest to a fear not unlike what I felt as a spearman.” Again he apologized for his forthrightness before my anger could boil over, but I was more stunned at the gall that possessed him to speak in such a way.
Before I could react properly with anger, my sensibilities turned neutral and staid—a first. I tried to summon the memory of this soldier at Falkirk but saw only wanton rivers of blood, the leaves and grass they mixed with, how the eyelids of boys wouldn’t close.
I dismissed the soldier and returned to my battlements, thinking not on the Prince of Wales’s hysterics, nor the soldier’s
report, but on the image of the soldier as a child, climbing and falling from a bale of hay, thinking on my own children’s
travails of youth, the majority of which go unreported to me, my long separations from them, how this must have warped them
for the better and the worse, again feeling the solidity of all sixty-two of my years.
All abated rage reignited days later at Lindisfarne of all places, on that holy island, where I discovered the Prince of Wales
once again in the arms of the Gaveston sodomite as if the pair were on a bridal tour. I flew into a deserved fury against
the both of them. Gaveston fell in line immediately, of course, shielding his modesty, groveling. Of the prince I tore clumps
of hair from the scalp, pulled his neck and throttled it, feeling my own line of succession falter beneath my grip—and let
it be so: I have Thomas now, and Queen Margaret again with child, and plenty more heirs to come. I forced him to look at the
way his lover had so quickly filed behind me, how his filthy allegiances swayed and teetered by mere proximity to rank. I
shook the boy like all of the boy he was and he wept and wept.
My intention has always been to temper the boy, to cease the hysteria that only pushes him further into those duplicitous arms that know nothing of sacrifice, nothing of valor, nothing of brotherly love, only the romantic.
I told him love was the last thing that would save us.
And love drawn like blood from a stone, well that’s just humiliating. I spat.
My Eleanor, the boy’s mother, died when he was but a child and it’s as if a child he has stayed. I mourn for the nation the
lasting indentation this must have made on his psyche. My new dear Margaret, though a worthy wife and mother, is more closer
in age to be the prince’s sister than mother, and is no guide for his lack of wit, his inability to think linearly, his mind
too amorphous and dyeable by the mores of others. “Color may rub off.” That’s what Gaveston has done, the legal thief, the
heart stealer. He has tainted my son not with the spoiling pleasures of sodomy, but with the constant taking, the ruinous
humanizing, the desecration of our calling, making this all but an adornment to masturbate. He has taken my heir’s heart before
he has had the opportunity to consecrate it for another, let alone a nation. “Keep away from fire.” When I mourn at the cross
for Eleanor, I mourn for that loss. The loss of a goodness the boy will never know, and the sharp pain, that intake of stilted
breath I feel, of knowing I am not blameless. For if my son will one day become me, then what have I been that hasn’t been
enough? What have I not been that he will also one day become?