The pasta did not take long to cook, and even less time to eat whilst I thumbed through that day’s edition of The Times. It told little, as did its Sagean sister Arn Etas. Even Quaintrelle was silent. I was surprised. I had expected the prince’s move to be mentioned, especially in the latter, which had covered in extensive, agonizing detail the prince’s breakup with his Australian girlfriend the June before.
I placed my plate into the dishwasher, having learnt to use it exactly a year before when my parents had first gone away on business. I smiled to the empty room. If the prince thought it was a disgrace that my title was not used, then what would he think of this? A Lady Sage – worse, a Duchess – cooking and cleaning and as she stripped out of her uniform, dressing herself. Not exactly royal behaviour.
No … I should be at a top school, studying politics and law and preparing for my first council appearance, which was suppposed to be on my sixteenth birthday, this November …
I wasn’t going. It wasn’t mandatory, and in my absence the Athenea sat in my empty seat and made decisions for me. It was mutually beneficial: they had more power and I could stay away from court. Nobody was exactly going to protest the situation.
On my desk, I warmed my laptop up, placing a strong cup of tea beside it. It filled the room with the scent of jasmine, steaming up one corner of the laptop screen. I folded my skirt and blouse and placed them on the flowery cushioning on the chest at the foot of my double bed. Opening the mahogany wardrobe in the corner, the only item of furniture I had convinced my parents to let me bring from the lodge at St. Sapphire’s, I felt my hands run themselves down the material hung inside. There were dresses, flowery, and black trousers for work. Beside my school jumper, reserved for the winter, were pleated skirts of every colour and stowed at one end, wrapped in grey polythene, were ball gowns, too small now, and corsets, lightly boned, but still so tight they restricted breathing; eating was out of the question.
In one of those bags I knew there hung a pale yellow court dress, with white elbow length gloves and a pair of satin shoes, laced with white ribbons. It was the dress I had worn to court when I was twelve. It had not been my first visit; it had not been the first time I had met the Athenea – my grandmother had been close to them – but it was the first time I had truly talked to the Athenean children; it was the first time I realized who I was and what I would become. When all the other little girls stared at me with jealous eyes and the adults treated my grandmother and I with reverence, I realized what it meant to be a member of the House of Al-Summers: to be second only to the Athenea themselves; as near to royalty as one could get.
Does he remember those weeks the Duchess and her granddaughter spent at his home?
In another bag, tucked behind the others, was a black dress. Mourning dress. He will remember that day.
I pushed that thought away and pulled down a loose shift, slipped it on and curled up on the seat in front of my laptop, proceeding to write a long rant of an email to Jo, an old Sagean friend, so very far away when I needed her most.
The next morning brought the prospect of first period English literature with the prince. As though I had swallowed a cherry stone whole, I felt a knot of dread work its way down my throat into my stomach as I counted up the members of his already-established entourage in the class. They made up more than half the group. The knot grew.
My routine had been much the same as the day before; except today, there was no fussing mother. The top button of my blouse remained undone, my skirt folded twice at the waistband, make-up lining my eyes. I’d had no choice but to fly to school that morning: no one was there to drop me off at the ferry and I was running too late for the bus.
For the second day of the term, the school was very much alive. The buses had arrived and it looked as if every member of the student population had tried to cram themselves into the quad. They hung from the railings lining the steps leading up to the quad, or else had seated themselves on the benches, odd blossom petals settling in their hair. Most stood. As I weaved my way between the groups, chattering animatedly, it didn’t take long to work out why. Leaning casually against the edge of one of the picnic benches was the prince, surrounded by his followers and, to my disgust, my friends.
He spotted me before they did and it was he who broke the silence.
‘Fallon,’ he corrected in advance, anticipating what would have been my next words. I did not respond, but curtsied; grateful he had not used my own title.
Insulted at being cut off mid-sentence, Gwen huffed and turned back to him, trying to engage him once more in conversation. If he heard her he did not acknowledge her efforts, his eyes transfixed in a steadfast gaze at me, as though I was a problem to be unravelled and solved.
‘Your sword. You carry it always?’
‘Occasionally.’
‘May I see it?’ He held out his hand expectantly, but I did not fulfil his request, feeling my hand tighten around the grip of its own accord. The puzzled look returned, before his expression cleared and he reached down to his own belt, offering his sword in return for my own. I did not hesitate this time and he took it, weighing it in his hands.
‘Light, very light. Too wide for a rapier, yet too long for a small sword.’ In my hands I did the same with his sword, though I refrained from speaking my thoughts aloud. Too heavy and stout for my liking. Rapier, though sharpened entirely along both edges, much like my own. ‘Swept hilt, very intricate. The grip is engraved with your coat of arms. Your grandmother’s sword, I presume?
A familiar fire started to flicker into life along my breastbone. I swallowed. ‘Yes.’
‘I thought it must be. It was transferred to you on the day of her funeral, wasn’t it? I remember it being blessed atop her coffin.’
I didn’t pause to consider the stupidity of what I was doing as I found myself raising his sword to rest under the curvature of his jaw, my breathing shaky; my hand steady. His look turned to complete confusion, as though he could not work out what he had said to offend, before it returned to one of calm assuredness.
‘I suggest you lower that.’
I did not move. His voice was soft, yet the authority clear as he spoke again. ‘Remember who I am, Duchess. Lower it.’
I know you know.
‘That’s an order!’
Behind him I could see the breeze stirring the uppermost petals of the blossom tree, snatching them from the branches to the ground, to be trampled beneath the feet of the students aware that the bell had rung.
Beyond that tree there was a sea of black; rough, weathered stone slotted in at odd angles between them. Amongst those dark pillars, motionless, was a girl, caught in the transition between child and adult, wrapped in a black shift and veil, concealing the tears that would not fall. Behind her was the family tomb that would not shelter her grandmother’s corpse, because she was afforded the honour of being laid to rest in the Athenean cathedral. Instead, the oak coffin stood atop the plinth in front of the tomb’s entrance, draped in Death’s Touch and a royal blue velvet cloth bearing the Al-Summers’ coat of arms; the late duchess’ sword and dagger there too, alongside some of the prettier tokens left by mourners during her lying in state.
‘Is there a death? The light of day at eventide shall fade away; from out the sod’s eternal gloom the flowers, in their season, bloom; bud, bloom and fade, and soon the spot whereon they flourished knows them not; blighted by chill, autumnal frost; “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust!”’
The blessing called and the mourners