Chapter 2 #2
"That's what I've heard. My father knew her.
Not incredibly well, but well enough. They worked together some when he was here, but I know he worked with your grandfather quite a bit before he passed.
He has always spoken very highly of both of them.
" Jake looked more closely at the painting.
Something about the late queen seemed familiar in a different kind of way than he would have expected.
He'd seen pictures of her from time to time, but living outside of the country, he hadn't kept up with modern royal family as much as he had been looking at the ancient history of both his adopted country, Northern Santiero, and the land of his birth.
He remembered seeing photos of the new, young queen not long after her mother's passing, like the portrait from her first birthday on the throne, but nothing recent.
Before he could ask anything about the current queen, Issy moved on to one of the back rooms. "This is where Mumeleine and her staff work on new projects or restoration projects or further examinations of things we already have."
"Mumeleine?" He'd heard them use the name a couple of times throughout the evening but couldn't quite figure out where it came from.
"Madeleine isn't our biological mum," Kinsey explained from her spot leaning against the door.
"But in most ways that count, she is. She's been our mum, taken care of us like a mum, loved us like a mum, and everything else like a mum.
We started calling her Mummy Madeleine at one point, but eventually, it shortened to Mumeleine. "
"Makes sense." Wasn't it called a portemanteau when you mixed two words together?
"We don't use it in public," Issy went on.
"She's Madeleine to me and my older siblings.
The younger ones call her Mum of course, and so do we sometimes, but she and Papa are very clear they don't want anyone to think we're trying to erase Mum from our memory or the country's memory.
That's the last thing Mumeleine would want to do.
" She pulled a book carefully from a protective case.
"This is a more recent find. It's from 1701, but we've only had it for about fifteen years.
They've gone through it a lot and copied it and studied the copies, but Mum asked me to look through it carefully to see if I see or learn anything else. "
She stepped back as he put the gloves on and reached under the protective shield.
Carefully opening the cover, he felt a wave of awe come over him.
"This is incredible." He skimmed through the table of contents.
"Absolutely incredible. My dream would be to find something like this and be the first one to look through it. "
"Make sure Mumeleine knows that. If they find one, she could let you help." Issy pulled her phone out of her back pocket. As she read it, she tried to hide a smile.
Jake wondered if her sister noticed and what it was all about.
"I gotta go." Issy put it back in her pocket. "Kins can help you get back where you need to go."
He turned and smiled his appreciation. "She already helped me once today. I'd be happy to accept her assistance again."
"And I'd be happy to provide assistance." She looked straight at him and smiled. "It would be a privilege."
"You say that about everything, Kinsey," Issy called over her shoulder as walked away.
"I mean it about everything," Kinesey called back, looking over her shoulder as well, her smile changing as she watched her sister walk away then turned back to him.
"She loves this stuff." She pushed off her spot by the door frame and came to stand next to him, hands clasped behind her back.
"I haven't read much of this one, just the bits about the different King Gileads and how all of that worked so Papa could be regent. "
Jake flipped to the table of contents and skimmed until he found them in the 1600s. "Gilead I wasn't king very long," he mused. "He was young, too."
"His father, King Fulke, died suddenly. Speculation was that the man who became Gilead II was responsible for it.
He was Gilead I's uncle. He forced Gilead I's mum to sign a codicil to the Letters Patent Fulke had signed.
They would be legally required to make her the regent, but only if she was married.
So Gilead II married his brother's widow just a couple of months later.
Gilead I's death was suspicious, but no one has found proof Gilead II was behind it.
What is more certain is that Gilead III, born before Gilead II became king, did have his father assassinated somehow. "
"That's messed up."
"What's even more messed up is that Gildead III tried to force his aunt-turned-stepmother to marry him as well."
She leaned in to get a closer look, her shoulder brushing against his arm as she did. "There's no real proof of most of it. Even this book only alludes to some of it. You have to read between some lines, but that's what it implies."
"I wonder if the proof exists." Wouldn't it be amazing if he was the one to find it?
"At least my stepmum never tried to make sure I died under suspicious circumstances." She didn't look up at him.
It took a few seconds for what she said to really sink in, but even then he didn't quite understand "Make sure you died?"
"Yes. Of course, she's not my aunt, so she wouldn't become queen anyway. Patrick would be king."
The wheels in his brain turned too slow, but he finally realized what she meant. The pieces that hadn’t quite fit suddenly clicked into place.
He took a step back and looked at her more carefully. "You mean to tell me you’re the queen?"