7. Boiling Pitch
7
Boiling Pitch
JACOB
Karl hovers at the door of the tiny kitchen, a dry-cleaning bag hooked over one finger.
“Hang the suit over the door and go,” I say, reaching up to tighten a cabinet screw with my multipurpose tool.
“ Vrouw Tiele sent me your schedule. She used bullet points and a color-coded calendar.”
“What’s that smile for?” I ask, swinging the door back and forth. I make another adjustment to perfect the alignment.
“She’s wonderfully organized,” Karl admits, the tips of his ears lifting. “We’ll be going over state visit details this morning. Her Royal Highness would like to see you in the Chevres drawing room to begin learning the Fundamentals of Eating.”
This is Little Duckies all over again. “I know how to eat.” I snap the tool closed. In the few days I’ve been here, I haven’t seen so much as Alma’s heel rounding the corner of our suite. “It’s insulting. The pride of Vorburg won’t stand for it.” Karl will back me up.
He doesn’t. “Eating in public is a different matter, sir.” His eyes start at my bare feet and continue up, his expression sour. “I’ll leave you to change.”
I glance down, brushing the back of my hand over my ‘Johnny Flamen Marr’ concert t-shirt, and carry the dry-cleaning bag into the sitting room. Even after having been washed and pressed each day, the cheap materials of the suit remind me of 70s era imitation wood paneling. No one is mistaking it for the good stuff.
Ever since the verdict came down, the king has been trying to make up for the fact that I grew up wearing hand-me-downs from my cousins and looked forward to Mac & Cheese Surprise—a dish requiring Mom to slice hotdogs into the boxed noodles—every Friday night. But he’s trying to pay off a debt that can’t be wiped out, attempting to erase the things that shaped me into the man I am.
A distant timer sounds, Karl’s warning that I can’t commit the Sondish sin of keeping people waiting. I should be out the door now.
I shuck my jeans and jump into the suit pants, buttoning them at the waist. Jeans get tossed against my bedroom door to land in a crumpled heap at its base. Quickly, but with all due care for the bangers he produced, I peel off my vintage concert tee, draping it over the arm of the sofa, and thrust my arms into the sleeves of my dress shirt, the starched material flying around me as I locate the buttons.
I hear a tiny squeak and see Alma spinning quickly around. She hits a side table and steadies it. “I didn’t know you were still here,” she breathes. “I came— It’s fine. I didn’t see anything.”
I glance down to make sure I’m not actually flashing her. The pants hang off my hips but the barn door, as my grandma would say, is closed. Maybe she’s never seen abs.
“I’m sorry,” she repeats, talking to the front door. “I should have knocked or something.”
With a grin, I fasten the buttons. “I shouldn’t be changing out here,” I say. “Okay, done. You can turn around.”
She does, but a flush climbs up her neck, and she averts her eyes as I shove the dress shirt into the waistband, forward and back. I breathe out a silent expletive. I’m not allowed to find an engaged girl—scheduled to walk down the nave of Roslav Cathedral to wed an ecological saint while the entire world looks on—cute.
Eyes fixed on the ceiling beams, her repentance plays on a loop. “I’m sorry. So sorry.”
I lean forward, hands gripping the back of the couch. The stiff neck of my shirt gapes open. “I haven’t seen you come through here. I was beginning to think you had a secret passageway.”
“Not in this room,” she says, leaving open the possibility of secret passageways in other rooms. She chances a glance at me and inhales sharply, biting her lip. “I was…I was getting my notebook. I forgot it.” She points to her suite. “I’ll get it now.”
She shoots through the opening almost as soon as she cracks the door. I take the tie from the hanger, gather my clothes into my bedroom, and begin the process of retying the zeklen thing until the front finally hangs where it’s supposed to.
I hear her door open, and I shout from the other room, “I’ll be down in a second.”
“No hurry,” she calls.
My tie is properly mangled.
At seven minutes past the hour, I present myself in the Chevres drawing room to a princess who looks like she spent the morning leafing through the pages of a book on etiquette instead of checking me out. But I know what I saw.
“Good morning,” Alma says, her hands folded in her lap. Surrounded by so much properness, I savor the memory of the blush on her neck and the telltale intake of breath. “Have you been moisturizing?”
Not even once. “Didn’t get to it.”
“You may do so now.”
She hands over a bottle. I’m used to knowing where my pennies go. Mom taught me early how to calculate the cost per unit, which is why I buy my lotion in large, medicinal containers. I squeeze enough out to adequately cover a dried lentil, glancing up to gauge her approval.
Alma watches my hands and frowns. “We need to be methodical as we tackle your lessons.” She reaches blindly for the table but frowns more deeply as I rub in the lotion. “I prepared a syllabus—” Something snaps and she abandons her prepared remarks. “Here.” She waves for the bottle.
I hand it over and she squirts a circle of lotion the size of a copper polska into her palm. “Hands, please.”
“It’s going to be wasted on me,” I say, obeying her.
“Every morning and night,” she explains, working the solution into my skin, rubbing each of the calluses, spreading her thumbs over my palm, holding my rough hand between her small ones. “You can’t skip even once.”
She switches hands, giving the same thorough treatment to the other, and I silently watch her bent head. This is nothing. No more than when she caught me changing. I was laughing then. I look away now, picking up the faint scent of sandalwood and flowers. This lotion isn’t an olfactory throat-punch. It’s too expensive.
“Morning and night?” I repeat.
Her fingers still, and I fight the impulse to hold on. She pulls away, wiping her hands on a cloth. Maybe she thinks of me as a bear wandering through the halls of the palace, sniffing the suits of armor. Dangerous.
Alma clicks the bottle closed and hands it over, along with the syllabus, in command of herself again.
I scan the headings. Food, Dressing, Public Manners... “We’re not going to spend any time on Naps, Taking Turns, and Going Potty?”
Her brow lifts.
“This is basic stuff. Do we really have to spend a whole week on food?” I fiddle with a button, and she glances away. “I know how to eat.”
Her smile allows that I might have a passing acquaintance with a small-town buffet and sneeze guard. “The most complex protocol has to do with food. We will only scratch the surface in a week, but it’s a solid beginning.”
The daily schedule sketches out a similar routine: wake up, have breakfast, meet with Karl to discuss my father’s expectations or the events surrounding the state visit. Next comes five or six hours with Alma as she drills me in the most basic elements of royal life. In the late afternoon, I’ll study the Vorburgian language and the richness of its history.
I grunt. Karl’s going to have to work hard, hand-waving the fact that most of my ancestors were raiders, warlords, and murderers.
“Is there any time for me?” I ask, suffocated by the inflexibility of these lessons—the way they feel like hard yellow plastic, the kind from the game I played in my grandmother’s front room when we raced to place odd shapes into specific slots before the heart-slapping buzz of the timer and the sudden, jack-in-the-box pop of the board.
“I don’t understand the question,” she answers. “Every minute of the schedule has been designed for your needs.”
I drop the pages to the table. It’s pointless to fight when we don’t speak the same language.
Shortly before midday, a servant rolls in a cart of food, setting out two elaborate table settings and uncovering a series of complicated dishes. My stomach rumbles as soon as the scent reaches my nose, but I don’t recognize anything as satisfying as a piece of fried chicken or scoop of mashed potatoes. Instead, each plate has spears of vegetation jutting upward or unnaturally round deposits of semi-solid substances. There are fiddly bits.
“We’re supposed to eat this?” I ask.
“Not yet, you’re not.” Alma smiles and turns to the maid. “I’ll be serving. Thank you, Sibela.” Alma flicks me a glance. “First we’ll run through a state dinner simulation.”
“It’ll be cold by then.”
“That’s correct. We begin with walking in.”
She positions me on her left, as though the rumbling stomach had never been. I offer her my elbow but she lifts my arm, running her hands along it, setting it in a level plane
I tense from the contact, hating it in precisely the same way I hate the hunger gnawing at me when food is within easy reach. She pulls back. “My apologies. I should have asked.”
I rub a hand over my heart, pushing away the tightness. “You have my permission to manhandle, when necessary.”
She rests light fingers over the back of my hand.
“Will you be wearing gloves again?” I ask.
Again. I don’t mean anything by it, but the word—and the memory it calls—buffets against us like a sudden gust of wind, the kind that makes you correct the steering wheel and say, half-praying, “Almost home.”
She straightens her shoulders, and I smile. Alma’s going to start monologuing.
“The British monarchy do not touch when they do this in London. They simply walk into the room in pairs. Sondmark, in contrast, is old-fashioned. Every royal house in Europe has a slightly different protocol, and it will be your duty in the coming years to learn it, relying on trusted advisors. They want to make Vorburg look good.”
“Not me?”
“You and Vorburg are the same thing. You give the state a human form.”
I glance at a long mirror, taking in my rumpled suit and scuffed shoe, comparing it to the woman wearing pearl earrings and the kind of sweater you can’t throw into the wash with a pair of jeans. On the surface, there’s no way I can measure up, but my thoughts complicate when I think of the stammering, blush-pink girl from this morning. We’re not so different.
When I finally conquer the mechanics of sitting at a table—to be done after the monarch sits and with the aid of a footman—we move on to the actual food.
“This is Sole Bonne Femme ,” she says, offering an ice-cold filet of fish resting atop a swirl of frigid cream sauce. She sets it down. As my hand halts over the array of cutlery, she holds her breath in anticipation of my choice.
“Correct,” she whispers when I pick up a fork. “What goes in your other hand?” It takes me three tries to select the notched knife, and when I do, she reaches forward, adjusting my grip on the utensils, hands cupping mine, fingers gently molding them into position. Twelve weeks . Heat pours through my veins, and when she retreats, my hands go slack, the silverware clattering against the china.
“Again,” she prompts.
“Like this?” I ask.
Her hands return, and with them comes a slow and familiar eruption of warmth spreading from my palms and up my arms as she corrects me. Chol nia, Jacob . She’s engaged. I grip the utensil more firmly.
“Too tight,” she says, reaching again.
“I’ve got it,” I insist, forcing myself to relax.
She shows me how to slice through a wedge of Sondish pie with a quick, decisive stroke, instead of wiggling my fork against china. I make more mistakes. She catches every one, bending over my plate, breath on my skin as she instructs me on each point. If I could be perfect, I might escape this torture.
“The good news,” she assures me, “is that no one expects you to eat much at a state banquet. If you don’t know how to tackle a dish, you might discreetly observe your dinner companion or move the food around enough to be polite.”
“I’ll starve.”
She gives me a side-eye. “A crown prince will never starve. I suggest you eat something at the palace when you can let your guard down.”
I lean back in the dining chair. “I don’t understand the fuss. Food is for eating.”
A crease tucks her cheek. “One of your kings was poisoned over dinner.”
“A rival to the throne?”
“It was his wife’s lover.”
I catch a brief smile and match it. “No one will care if I make mistakes. They’ll accept that I’m not perfect.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. Your public face has to be flawless. If it is, you can protect your most precious commodity.”
“What’s that?”
“The life you have when no one is looking. Whenever you’re walking a rope line or in a friendly interview, you can be tempted to disclose personal details,” she goes on. “But once a piece of information is given away, there’s no getting it back. It’ll show up in tabloid articles written after you die. It’ll shape the narrative about your character and reign. A good rule to live by is that you are a fortress, and you don’t drop the drawbridge for just anybody.”
I grin. “Should I keep a cauldron of pitch boiling over the fire?”
She glows with an approving aura. “Ideally.”
“How long before you dropped the drawbridge with your fiancé?” I regret the question as soon as it leaves my mouth.
Her eyes flicker. “Every relationship you form will be different.”
I prop my elbow on the table. “You just did it,” I say.
“Hmm?”
“You dodged that question. I was too direct, again?”
I swear she’s relieved. “It’s good that you recognize it.”
“Who do you let in?” Boiling pitch wobbles on its stand. “I mean, who should I let in?” Alma likes it when I give her a chance to tell me how to behave.
“ Whom . Your oldest school friends and your family are the safest.”
“No can do, boss. I don’t have siblings, I’ve never known my father, and I can’t think of a topic my oldest friends would rather talk about less than the unbearable burdens of wealth and privilege.”
She bites her lip even though she wants to laugh. “You’ll find your people.”
“I have.”
The clock chimes, and Alma begins gathering her things. “Hmm?”
I made it through another day, torn between wanting to slam myself behind a door and pour cold water over my head, and wanting to stay as close to her as I am now. “You can be my people.”
She stands abruptly. “I’m neither an old friend nor family.”
“True.” I stuff my hands into my pockets. “But you’re not going to run off to the tabloids if you find out I sleep in one-piece winter flannels,” I say, following her to the door.
Her eyes dance in a way that makes me want to go through each map and atlas in the palace, defacing every sign of Himmelstein.
“Stop,” she says. Then, as though her better judgment has succumbed to a beating, she asks, “ Do you sleep in one-piece flannel underwear?”
I click my tongue. “Wouldn’t you like to know. That question was far too direct, Your Royal Highness.”
Her lips twitch until, finally, she laughs. In the space of a single heartbeat, we shift from unwilling tutor and difficult student to something that might be strong enough to bear the weight of trust.
“Stop avoiding your sitting room.” I exhale, leaning back against the doorway. “I feel like I chased you out.”
She lifts her hand, hovering a slim finger over the wavy edge of my blue suit. “We have to address your clothes,” she says, scooting past me and jogging out of easy reach.
I wave, and she shakes her head but waves back. A flash of white on her hand warns me away.
Alma is engaged. I can’t forget.