Chapter Fourteen #3
“Yes, but that was what the prince was so happy about. I served as his mother’s maid of honor at the time.
Queen Gertrude said his father had constricted him for so long—so many babies dead, Hal the only living child.
Precious. The king finally agreed that Hal should be allowed on the council and be given more freedoms. He was old enough now, to ride out, to—” She picked at her nails, then her gaze flicked up.
“Marry. The king had such a tight grip on him as a child, as if one day he’d keel over and die. Well.” She snorted.
I leaned back and waited to see if she’d add anything, holding my breath. I was quickly rewarded. “I do believe there was someone else they should have questioned,” she said softly.
“Who?”
“The day before Hal’s death, it was storming,” she began.
She had been waiting patiently to reveal this, her excitement palpable.
“I remember because we wanted to play bowls outside, but we were forced indoors. Old Queen Gertrude’s bones ached in such weather, and I tended to her.
It was Alice who used to—despite what you may have heard, Alice insisted on visiting Gertrude, reading to her.
It was one of Alice’s many tricks.” Her mouth twisted.
“She wanted people to like her desperately. She reeked of it. She chose her charity cases, and Gertrude was one of them, even as she slid into her husband’s bed each night.
So, Alice was dead, of course, and there was no one to read to the queen.
I took her place. I sat with her for hours.
So I was in the eastern wing and heard voices.
I believe Hal was on his way to see his mother but was intercepted.
” She leaned toward me. “Can you guess who the other voice belonged to?” A pause for emphasis, a wicked gleam in her eye as she nocked her arrow.
“The person presiding over the inquiry itself. The lord chancellor.”
Prospero.
“Did you tell anyone this?” I asked.
Kitty fell back onto her cushion, rested her hands in her lap. The room darkened as the sun dipped below the river. She shrugged and said bitterly, “No. No one asked me. After Alice’s and my father’s deaths, no one asked me anything.”
And the memory rose up within her, as if it longed to be recalled: Prospero’s and Hal’s voices echoing through the gloom, drawn up from the well of the past.
It nearly tore me apart to hear them again.
Kitty leaned against the door and pressed her ear against the wood. “—your father’s consent!” Prospero was hissing.
There was the thrust of a body against stone. Hal’s curse.
“Find your reason. Find it! You were your father’s legacy before you ever were a man. We are all extensions of his will, you most of all.” Prospero made an exasperated sound. “You, my boy, must have restraint where he has only sensibilities.”
“Ah, yes,” Hal said bitterly. “Grow old as my father is allowed to remain a child forever.”
“But you will grow into a better king than he is. You are right. He is stunted. A boy still.”
Though I couldn’t see Hal’s face, I knew it must be twisted from the way he spat his words out. “What if a good king is simply the advisors who stand beside him?”
“A threat?”
“A reminder.”
Another shove, and one set of footsteps stormed away.
I was lifted from the memory as Kitty concluded, “The next morning he was dead. Curious, is it not?”
“Prospero is not a suspect,” I snapped, forgetting the pretense of Roland’s charm.
She smiled coyly. “A suspect for what, exactly? I’ve come to no conclusions myself.” Her eyes lit up again, her lips parted. I was embarrassed by the lust pointed directly and falsely at me.
“What conclusions have you come to?”
“Well, I only thought that if the king had sworn Hal into his privy council, he wanted to give him more responsibility. And I suppose when one is given power, it must be taken from someone else. I don’t suppose that person would have been very happy about it.
Especially if he knew the prince would choose someone else to be his magician and lord chancellor when he ascended the throne.
You, perhaps. Or the other one. The Moonborn.
” She shrugged. “But these are just my silly little thoughts.”
“Prospero would never. He—” My voice died. He was searching for immortality. For the king, or for his own assurance?
No. How easily I’d point a finger at him, the man who saw the quick step of my young mind and taught it how to run. And Prospero loved Hal, had rung the bells himself to announce his birth. He taught us to be powerful magicians, but he taught Hal to be king.
“What of Fulke Roet?” I asked.
“What about Fulke?”
“Where was he that morning?”
“Well…” I’d noticed how often she began her stories with well and then paused, as if to stifle her eagerness. “Presumably, he was asleep. He liked Hal well enough. You were the one he always despised. His poor—” She broke off, peered up at me. “Roland, your eyes are strange.”
My gaze snapped to the window.
The sky was black.
No Moon tonight.