Chapter 2
II.
Delivered from guards to household staff, aprons replaced gold braid, and burnished glittering halls devolved into dark, cramped corridors.
When deposited in a barren communal room, a servant demanded my clothing, and I did not protest. I sat near the fireplace, too stunned to care about my nudity, wiping down with a dirty rag from a basin of water whose bottom I could not see.
I passed the stained, scratchy cloth over my skin dozens of times, no cleaner for the multitude of attempts at making myself so.
Even the ache from sitting on the stone hearth could not pull me from my numbness.
My head swam while the rest of me continued to go through the motions.
My naked ring finger finally brought tears.
Someone eventually pointed me to a straw pallet on the floor. I just nodded and retreated to it. No worse accommodation than in prison then, but I lacked the privacy to lick my wounds and indulge in self-pity. Instead, I stared at the ceiling.
Tomorrow, I told myself, reasoning with panic and misery. Tomorrow, I could think about it seriously and fully and find a solution to it. Tomorrow, I could figure out where it had all gone wrong. Tomorrow, I could worry about the future.
For now, I would just stare up at the ceiling, my wet hair plastered to my head, my nakedness covered only by a scratchy blanket, and try not to think about anything at all.
I failed miserably. My younger brother’s face haunted me through the night.
A grown man, of course, but all I saw was a terrified little boy who realized that even his older brother could do nothing to keep him safe.
Not now. He had done what I expected him to do, and, though painful, I would never have wanted him to get pulled into any of this anyway.
But when tomorrow came, nothing happened to torment my imaginings or fulfill my fears.
The day after too only saw me shelling peas and scrubbing floors in the kitchen with coarse draw-string trousers borrowed from another.
Glances from those around me slid in my direction when they thought I would not notice or would not see, but each smug look burned like spitting embers from a fire.
And I kept silent.
Silence was the last bastion of dignity.
It was not humility that frightened me. The military did not skimp on physical challenges, filthy work, or menial tasks.
I had put my hands to many an occupation that, outside of royal uniform, might have been consigned to serfs.
I had toiled beside commoners in pursuit of a military goal.
I had shared in labor and victory with all walks of life during my military career.
My wealth, family name, titles, and personal achievements had cushioned the harder realities of life after I retired from the military, but few things held the power to frighten me at my age.
It was the other thing that frightened me, the word the tsarina gave me of which I had no personal knowledge beyond some court entertainment: jester.
That invited far too many possibilities for which I could not properly prepare.
It implied amusement and entertainment exacted from mockery and ridicule.
It was a different kind of humility than I had ever known.
The humility I knew was based on necessity, and this new one was based on absurdity.
So the tsarina, if she could not make me her lover, would make me absurd.
Would I be given a cap and bells? Standard in the courts throughout the continent, yes, but not often seen in Ilyichia.
Would I be made to tumble or dance or warble bawdy songs?
Would the tsarina want me a wit or a dullard?
And if I were to become such a thing, should I not be in communication with her others so that I might find a way to navigate the new role she had thrust upon me?
I had yet to speak to anyone beyond the maids and footmen who had no idea what to do with me.
I did not have much longer to wonder. Within the week, another servant roused me from my slumber and bade me follow.
I could have disobeyed when they instructed me to follow.
I could have disobeyed at any time up until now, refused to play the role assigned, attempted to flee the palace and my fate.
But the servants watched, more intent and curious than any guard, and they would be the first to correct any unseemly behavior, their potential cruel glee in having the opportunity to degrade a former prince worse than any prison.
The servant conducted me to another room, not ornamental enough to be public for nobility, but slightly more ornamented than the servant rooms. Two others awaited my arrival, dressed better than the servants who had overseen my last few days.
They interacted with nobles as a daily obligation.
I no longer knew my precise place now, but I possessed wisdom enough to assume my lowliness.
These people, servants though they may be, had charge of me.
I ran my hand over the scruffy hair growth on my face and up through my wild, unbrushed curls. I likely looked a mess, but did that matter now?
No one said anything, all of us aware of the strangeness of this arrangement.
“Put those on,” the woman finally said, breaking the tension. She gestured to undergarments and white tights laid out over a bench.
Both servants pointedly looked away as I shed the trousers and replaced them with the offerings. Without a tunic or other apparent clothing to go over the tights, I shifted my anatomy to a less awkward position.
While most nobles I knew, especially those who retired from the military, turned to complacent heft in their aging comfort, my frame had lost the width and mass of muscle from daily exertions.
And while nakedness did not shame me, the act of being displayed in the nude, even if it was just my top half and just in front of servants, left me wishing I had retained some of my exercise regimen and the respectable musculature it provided.
Vanity, it seemed, had not left me entirely.
The tights suggested the part of a tumbler. And without additional garments, the cold would creep into my bones unless I exerted myself.
I rubbed at a scar on my right shoulder, a token of a foolish youth who insisted he could best me in swordplay, though I had been almost twice his age at the time and thus had twice his experience.
He glanced my shoulder with the blade, but the opening I had given him to do so offered me the victorious strike, permanently scarring his cheek and thoroughly disarming him so that he had no choice but to surrender.
This too had to be played like a duel. All my advantages had been stripped from me.
But just because I was without weapons did not mean that I could not out-maneuver a tsarina accustomed to getting her way.
I would be willing to be scratched, scarred even, if it gave me an opening to win.
I prayed that I had enough energy, endurance, and fortitude still left in me.
When the silence again hung thick in the air, I asked, “Do you know what role she intends to have me play?”
The servants glanced at each other. A knowing look, but an unwilling one.
“That good?” I sighed and bowed my head. “Shall we then?”
“We’re not done,” the woman said. She gestured to the bench and indicated for me to sit.
I obeyed.
The woman brought over a long-sleeved shirt and held it out for me to put my arms and head through.
My arms found the sleeves without trouble, but the woman had to help me with the neck.
She pushed an attached hood behind my head and pulled white gloves over my hands.
She glanced at her companion when she finished.
The other servant brought over a massive white pillow and held it out in front of me.
I blinked, not comprehending what was required.
“Your arms,” he explained.
I held my arms out, not certain what the aim might be.
The servant found arm holes in the pillow and slipped them over my hands, up my arms, and hefted the pillow over my shoulders.
My sleeves billowed out from the pillow, covered with white fabric strips.
The woman came behind me to pull the pillow around and begin fastening it.
After an interminable stretch of time and my heated panic forming sweat beads on my brow, I asked, “Are the buttons that complicated?”
Another stretch of silence answered.
“No,” the woman said, again unwillingly answering me but not so uncivil as to ignore me completely. “I am sewing you in.”
My body assumed the stillness of prey, my shoulders and spine rigid in the heat of my horror. I tasted bile. A fever spiked as I fought not to tremble.
“I’m sorry,” the woman whispered. “She said she would have my hands cut off if it came undone.”
“Then,” I assured her with a calm I did not feel, “please take your time and do a good job. You need your hands.”
The pillow’s heft and compression, growing tighter around my torso, would not allow me to remove it. This was to be my costume until the tsarina decreed otherwise.
Sweat dripped from my temples and hairline.
“What...” I struggled to choke out words. “What role am I to play?”
The man, realizing that the woman had taken the burden of this strange and tension-filled conversation, whispered, “You are going to be her chicken.”