Catch part I of this story, “Solstice Goose, Spineless King”
Day One
How many rulers have stolen land from a king, murdered his peasants, and received a marriage proposal in response? Very few in all of history.
This king was an idiot! A spineless urchin! A loon! And soon, his kingdom would be mine. Everywhere I looked, I saw something new that would belong to me.
These peasants, their labor, and their profits: mine. Those citrus orchards, those rolling hills of wine, the capital and its castle: mine. And last but not least the king: all mine. Until I murdered him. I never was any good at sharing.
Was it all too easy, though? Had I become too good at removing my enemies and taking what I wanted? Was getting my way getting boring?
I forced a laugh to perish the thought. My Grand Vizier, Frandon, looked at me sadly, his own mood low ever since we received the marriage proposal. Was he as bored as I was?
He tapped a finger on the window and asked, “How close shall I keep the army?”
“Just outside downtown. As Mummy used to say, keep your soldiers close, but not too close.”
He chuckled. “When did she give you that advice?”
“Same day she walked into a volley of arrows. Terrible training accident.”
He half-grinned. “Terrible indeed.” He leaned in and grasped my hand, quite tenderly. He’d never done that before. “We’ve come so far together, my Queen. I look forward to going all the way, one day.” What a nice thing to say! And that look in his gaze — desire! Desirous of the world and conquering it, no doubt.
“May we burn it all down together,” I gushed.
With far less gusto he replied, “Uh…right.”
The king and his court waited before his castle’s gate. He was waving and smiling — looking like a fool. Oh, God, I hoped he wasn’t friendly too. He looked alarmingly friendly. His politicos, advisors, and hangers-on all appeared…no. It couldn’t be. They were smiling too. And waving! Rotten luck. A court of fools led by a crowned clown.
At least he was handsome. Might he be house-trained and meek, too?
“Your Majesty,” he said, helping me out of the carriage. “I hope your journey was smooth.”
“It was, your Majesty.” I squeezed his hand, beginning the Game of Touch. I’d use physical and verbal cues to psychologically bend this king to my will. Soon, he’d be on his knees, begging for my love. I smiled at the image.
I learned the Game of Touch all thanks to my sister Federica…whose heart stopped when her lover disappeared one night. It was quite the scandal.
I realized I was smiling like a fool myself, and not saying anything. Someone in the court coughed. Loudly. Calling attention to the awkwardness. Couldn’t have that. I put them on the TBB - my to-be-beheaded list.
“Might we take brunch on the lake I saw down there? And send away this boring court of yours?” I loved wording commands like questions. It always worked on simple men.
“Of course, of course. Let’s get you settled and then we will rejoin at the lake.”
“My maids will take care of that. I’ve got my Royal Taster somewhere around. She’s all I need.”
In short order, we had a small feast ready by the lake. Fridenza’s famous Rosemary Spatchcocked Goose. Some lovely bread. And a lime pie, something new to me. Citrus only grew here, where it was warmer, milder. I should relocate the capital to these lovely climes. Burn the current one down and set my new one atop it. I did love a good capital burning. Might be some barbarians around to blame it on? Unruly peasants? Wouldn’t be the first time I blamed a people group to start a renovation.
“Oh…my,” my Royal Taster moaned. She’d taken a bite of the lime pie. Was it that good? “This is amazing.”
“Enough, Renata, I’m hungry as a wolf.”
“But I think I detected a hint of poison…” She went in for another bite.
I slapped her hand with my fan. “So greedy!”
The king laughed generously. Too generously. His own Royal Taster covered her goose-filled mouth to cackle as well. Wait…she wasn’t a mere Taster. She was wearing the robes of a head of household and the sash of…an advisor? A Taster-Maid-Advisor? That’s not a thing! Maids can’t handle more than one role at a time.
Removing her hand she smiled at me, mouth full of goose. Disgusting! Hold on…what kind of smile was that? I’d seen that look on my face this very morning in the mirror. A smile of conquest.
My rage prickled. I bent the fork over in my hand without thinking. I examined her more thoroughly, now that I registered her as a threat.
First, and worst of all, she was entirely too pretty. At least a thirteen out of fifteen. No one over ten was allowed in my court. Couldn’t very well be ruling if everyone was screwing! And still, she smiled that particular grin at me.
Oh, we’d be making some changes around here. But I couldn’t do so until the king and I were wed…speaking of.
“Shall we get married tomorrow?”
The king snorted his orange juice and began a fit of coughing. With a cry, his maid pounded his back, glaring daggers at me. He coughed out, “Tomorrow? So soon? What about the courting, the festivities, the parties?”
“I’ve had enough parties in my life. I’m tired of pomp and circumstance. I just want to get things done quickly. Get to the…best parts of being married, hm?” The king’s blush told me that I’d hit the mark with that one.
“His majesty is a bit old-fashioned,” his maid said, sounding a bit too comfortable speaking on his behalf. “Perhaps a date in the future? A few months from now?”
My anger flared again. There went another fork. I said, “No. This week and no later.”
“Two months from tomorrow.”
“Two weeks.”
“Three…and a half.”
“Three,” I said. “Or I’ll invade.”
“Three and a day…or,” she began to threaten before the king stopped her.
Look who was at the top of the TBB now!
Generously, through gritted teeth, I said, “Three weeks and one day it is.”
I left that brunch table as angry as ever. Back in my room, I paced about.
“This stupid, rustic kingdom. That idiotic maid. This quaint room with cute quilts and magnificent oil paintings. I’m about to take that decorative crossbow in the bathroom and shoot everyone with it!”
“It probably doesn’t work,” my Grand Vizier replied. “And you can’t get the goose if you shoot everyone.”
“Goose?”
“As in, the kingdom.”
I scoffed. “Enough about gooses.”
“Geese,” he corrected.
“Whatever. Can you believe that wench of a maid negotiating in place of the king? What petulance.”
A knock came from the door. Good timing too. I was about to break something.
I sighed. “Time for a walk with the king through his adorable town.”
“Do try to have fun.”
As we strolled, the rustic, fairytale look of the place struck me as…disgusting. Everything was wood-beams and stone spires and bright banners. What was this, the dark ages? Where were the steel mills and the smokestacks? Where were the factories and the coughing peasants pouring out? Fates, this place was an absolute backwater!
Even so, it did appear that everyone was working. But they were doing it so slowly. The painters on a scaffold were joking about. A group of carpenters shared cheese and bread, like they had all the time in the world. Horrible way to live. I was, however, most impressed by the orphanage we saw; the children were learning things like statecraft and spear-work. Quite inspiring!
I cleared my throat and addressed His Majesty, “Have you any explanation for that unruly maid of yours?”
“Yes, she can be quite vocal.”
“She was arguing with me. It’s far beyond her place.”
“I know. It’s hard to be in her shoes, I think. We speak for them their whole lives, and once they get an ounce of power, they think they can roll all over us.”
I nodded in agreement. “My oldest brother, Genafrion, taught me that we could trust no one. Advisors will kiss the ring, then plot your assassination. Soldiers would kill for you and then complain about the bread. And maids would work silently, year after year, until one day they snapped and strangled you in bed. It’s what happened to him, actually. You should take that story to heart.”
“I shall, Your Majesty. And how tragic. I’ve heard of the many mysterious deaths in your family, but you seem so poised and calm. And, my goodness, your kingdom is spick and span, not a gold coin or peasant unaccounted for.”
I opened my mouth to reply with a compliment and found I had none, so I coughed to fill the space, and lied, “It’s incredible what you’ve done with your lands. Your people work so little but have so much. I’m not surprised my ambassador never came home.”
“We like to have a work-life balance here. And…I must apologize for his beheading. He was being such an ass.”
“I apologize in return,” I said, “as he was being an ass on my behalf.” I slipped my arm through his and brought him close, enhancing the intimacy of the moment. He blushed but did not move away.
He said, “His substitutionary assholery is forgiven.”
I shrugged coquettishly. I am as good as ever!
After the stroll and a stop at a quaint restaurant, which was this kingdom’s version of fine dining, I retired to my room. I walked through the doorway, going through lists of to-do’s in my head: corrupt a local advisor, learn the king’s secrets, establish a network of informants, find coal deposits, etc., etc., when something caught my eye.
It was the rug. It wasn’t in the middle of the room. And the bed. It was a hand’s distance away from the wall and rotated slightly. My dresser was no longer flush with the window. The paintings. The curtains. All of it, everything, horribly out of place.
I stormed into the bathroom. It was the same! Bathtub askew, credenza shifted, everything wrong.
“Guards!” I shrieked, “Fetch Frandon!”
My Grand Vizier looked about the room. “Weird. Have you asked the maids?”
“You know I don’t like talking to maids. This is clearly the work of a saboteur who knows me.”
“I’ll have it fixed forthwith.”
“Do so. And have some pie brought up. I never got to try it.” He bowed and went off to do my bidding.
I sat by the window, eyeing my room, looking for something else out of place. My guards had put everything back and nailed in anything they could. The bed, the rug, the dresser, there was no way they could be moved now!
A wind blew in. It smelled of citrus and…nothing else. I shivered. I missed the bitter aroma of burning coal; the perfume of productivity!
A guard knocked and entered, lime pie on a plate. “Your pie, my Queen.”
“Thank you.”
“Freshly made, too. Renata apparently ate the rest of the pie earlier today.”
“What a greedy goat.”
I set the pie down and inhaled the sweet air again. Maybe it wasn’t so bad? The people here weren’t coughing or dying of breathing issues. My nose wasn’t running for once. A brief respite would do until I became queen of these lands.
I picked up the plate of delicate lime pie. I deserved this after a day like today. Traveling, plotting a takeover, wooing, dealing with out-of-place furniture — it was all too much.
The soft green goodness melted on my fork. I raised it to my lips.
And then came a clatter from the hallway as if all my guards had been dashed to the ground by a giant ball.
And then my door exploded open. The king — the bloody king! — rushed toward me. He…was going to kill me! Push me out the window!
“Never stand by an open window in your chambers.”
Who had given me that advice? Ah, yes, Grandfather. Before a harpsichord fell on him from an open window above. They say it played the Dies Irae on the way down.
I readied myself to die at the king’s hands. His long hair billowing. His fierce gaze jaw-dropping. His pectorals rippling. His foot catching the nailed-in rug. The look of surprise as he flew toward the floor about to smash his face in. Then a blur of a somersault brought him directly before me.
And as he came to his feet: a royal uppercut to the plate in my hand. It was sent into the night, my pie slice separating from the plate, taking flight like some green, gelatinous bird, and for a brief moment, it obscured the moon with its triangle. Both pie and plate then disappeared with only a clatter to mark their passage.
I addressed the king, “What the…I don’t…explain yourself!”
My guards seized him. He avoided my gaze.
“I had to get here in time. I had to stop you from eating that pie.”
“Why?”
“Your Royal Taster just died, drowned in a pool of regurgitated pie.”
We eyed each other. I asked, “Who could have done such a thing?”
“I will investigate. I will question the cook, the staff, everyone!”
I fumed. Someone under his own roof had tried to kill me! Was it at all connected to my room’s rearrangement? Was I safe?
“And I will cross-check your investigations.”
“Of course, my Queen.”
“Let him go. And good night.”
I was left alone. But it wasn’t fear that took me — it was the image of the king rushing to my rescue. The drama! The bravery! The sumptuous glimpse of pectorals!
Day Two
“How fare you, my dear?” It was my father, the former king, in a bathtub that glowed red-hot. I was in one too. All around us were flames. It was profusely hot. I blinked at him. Not sure I heard the question. His face wavered, distorted in the heat waves. “Oh, you’ll get used to it down here. It’s always this hot. Don’t know why they put us in bathtubs, though.”
I replied, “It’s because you died in one. This must be Death’s great joke.”
“But you haven’t died, have you?” He asked. He began scrubbing his back with a skeletal arm.
“No, I don’t think so. But I feel like a boiled lobster.”
“Oh, how I miss lobster. Do have some for me, will you?”
“I’ll try, father, but my goodness, it’s so hot. I can hardly bear it.”
My eyes snapped open, the feeling of hot sweat around my head and down my back. Why was it so hot? I sat up and found why: a great blaze burned in the fireplace. It looked so large I thought the room was on fire. And who was that tossing in more wood?
The king’s maid.
“Ah, you’re awake. Sleep well, Your Majesty?”
“Put that out! I’m all but melting.”
“Oh, sorry. One of your staff informed me you liked it hot in the morning. Hot enough to cook an egg on your forehead.”
“Did they? And why are you in here instead of my maid?”
She grimaced. “They found poison in her belongings, the same kind that killed your Taster. Competing for the job, perhaps?”
I grabbed a porcelain figure of a rooster — a very cute rooster — and threw it into the fireplace. “Put out that damn fire and draw me up a cold bath!”
Her eyes wide, an annoying little smile on her face, she said, “Yes, my Queen.”
I made a mental note to triple-check all of her facts. I couldn’t trust anyone here. And if more of my people were removed, I’d have to abandon this whole endeavor. Someone was gunning for my death and discomfort.
Frandon stood with his back to me while I bathed off the sweat and heat. He seemed to be peeking over his shoulder, though, at times. Flattering, to say the least. I let him. We’d been through so much together, we were practically lovers without all those mushy feelings.
“You better seal the deal today,” he said, sounding less than half-hearted in his advice. More like one-tenth-hearted.
“I plan on it. Three weeks will be too long for the wedding at this rate. Someone’s trying to ruin my life — permanently.”
“The re-arranged room. The poisoned pie. The fire. Your saboteur and would-be killer seem to be erratic. Idiotic even. They can’t decide between irritating you and killing you.”
“If it is the same person. But yes. Very idiotic.”
“I’ll double the guard. We’ll make sure your excursion goes without a hitch today.”
I stopped playing with my bath ducky and hissed, “Excursion?”
He cleared his throat. “Yes. A rustic ride through the orange groves, replete with a history of the lands and lunch. The King has arranged everything.”
“Oh, no. I hate history. And rustic strolls. How am I supposed to seal the deal out there among…vegetation?” I shivered at the thought.
“Yes. Well. I’ll make sure it’s very empty.” He sighed. Looked at me. Trying to say something?
“Please do so.” I didn’t have time to decode whatever the hell he was trying to say with his eyes. I had my life to look out for. And a king to seduce. “Want to bet that he’ll put a ring on my finger this afternoon?”
He rolled his eyes. “Sure. I’ll bet a solid gold goose.”
“And I’ll bet a solid gold camel.”
We trotted on our horses through the gentle slopes of the king’s own orchards. The sweet air, the clear sky, the wind in the trees. Eh. Still didn’t do anything for me. I longed for brick and smoke and the clatter of prison carriages. And here he was, droning on and on about this battle, that oath. I’d had enough history from Grandma by the time I could take myself to the shitter. In fact, history was what got her killed — buried beneath a mountain of tomes when her bookshelves collapsed. Such was the weight of knowledge.
He dismounted his horse and offered a hand to me. “Here we are. Lunchtime.”
A luscious, huge picnic awaited us on a long stretch of blankets adorned with colorful cushions. It was…not so bad looking. And after the king removed his riding cloak, leaving a low-cut linen shirt, and reclining on the cushions…oh my. What a stirring that gave me. Then he let his long hair down, and, my goodness, I’d never been so jealous of a man’s hair.
I sat next to him, keeping my wits about me. The Game of Touch was afoot, but it was easily derailed by temptation.
“Mind a grape?” I dangled a bunch before him. He set his head on my lap and I lowered it into his mouth. “So, what do you dream for our kingdoms?”
He looked at me as if I’d asked him something he’d been waiting his whole life to say. That actually might have been the case. A tear fell from his eye.
He began, “I wish for…”
When he was done, I replied with my plan to improve my kingdom. Help the poor, give old people blankets, etc., etc., blah, blah, blah. And within the hour, we were kissing passionately, having spilled our hearts’ desires to one another. I was making quite successful use of the Chaboneur technique when an irritating buzzing caught my attention.
“What is that? Ah! A bee!” I pulled away and fluttered my hand at it. It flew off.
He tried to pull me back, “I love the way you say what.”
“We say what the same way! Hold on. Another one. And another one!”
Indeed, the buzzing grew louder. And louder. Like the sawmill where my old sword master died. Couldn’t even hear his screams when he fell. And he’d claimed no blade could take him.
A flitting, twitching cloud appeared not far from us. A swarm of bees!
The king got up to flee. I caught his arm. “You mustn’t run from them.”
That was how my old, horrible, cruel nanny passed away. Chased by a swarm of bees off a cliff! I was thinking about dead people a lot. Was it the dream of my father that prompted such grim reminiscences?
I pulled the quilt up from the ground, tossing our lunch every which way just as they swarmed. In darkness, the buzzing was muffled, but we’d trapped a few bees in there with us.
“Ow! Incredible quick-thinking,” said the king.
“Ouch. You’re welcome. Where did these bees come from?”
“No idea…Gah! Right on the damn knuckle.” He groaned, then chuckled.
“What’s so funny? Ah! My neck!”
“I’m having a great time with you, stinging and all. Ow.”
I grit my teeth. “I am too. Although, I can’t help but feel this was an attack of sorts.”
“You think someone set the bees on us?”
“In my experience, if it feels impossible or sounds impossible, then someone is trying to off you.”
“That can’t be true.” I heard the king rustle about, mumbling about something, then he said, “I was going to wait for a better time…but nothing proves we’re compatible like surviving a bee attack.”
He found my hand and slipped a cold circle onto my index finger. It was a ring!
I squealed in legitimate glee. Not for the official proposal, but that I’d won the bet.
“This is the perfect timing,” I gushed.
And in the midst of stinging bees, under a blanket, on the ground, we sealed the proposal with a kiss.
In the tub, again. Soaking. Wincing. But also, bored. I was so bored. It was all too easy. Hadn’t even taken months. Just hours. Where was the challenge?
“Anything else, Your Majesty?” The king’s maid had two cucumbers ready for my eyes. When I’d returned, all bee-stung and swollen, she’d been very pleasant. Very amicable. It was a nice change in behavior.
“Yes. Could you take this ring to be resized? It’s a little loose.” I pulled it from my finger and proffered it to her. She didn’t take it. She stared.
“When did that happen?”
“Just today. Sorry, I thought you’d seen it.” Her face was turning red. A vein was popping out. Her right eye twitched horribly. “Something wrong?”
“No!” She snatched the ring, tossed the cukes at me, and left the room.
“How odd,” said my Grand Vizier. He was standing at the bathroom window. His tall, thin body looking smaller in the light. “She seemed jealous or something.”
“You think so?” I lay the cucumbers on my eyes. What a lovely feeling.
The maid wasn’t the only one acting odd. Even Frandon had been disheartened by my success, by the ring, by all of it. Downright depressed! It annoyed me. If this persisted, he’d end up on the TBB list; there wasn’t any room in my court for party poopers.
“My Queen,” he said. “I have something to ask of you.”
Ah! Maybe he’d tell me what was going on with him now.
I replied without removing the cucumbers from my eyes: “Anything.”
I heard him close the distance in a rustling of fancy robes, and then felt his hand on mine. I turned my head toward him and blinked away the green disks.
“What are you doing?”
“After all we’ve done. After how far we’ve come. Me, as the king’s literal footstool servant. You, the troubled middle-child of a failing kingdom. Look at us. Look at what you and I can do. Anything! Nothing can stop us. I…I love you.”
“No, don’t say that,” I replied, pulling my arm away. “You can’t be in love with me. You simply can’t! Love ruins everything. We’ll end up killing each other.”
“We won’t. I promise. Let us be wed in secret. Plenty of royalty do that. There’s the public marriage that they hate, then the private romance that keeps them going.”
“Impossible. I will not ruin the only friendship I have.”
He pulled out a ring. A simple gold band I quite liked. “If you don’t love me, I cannot serve you.” He choked out a sob that sounded like a dying animal and dropped the ring into the tub. It landed on my belly button.
“Then don’t,” I said, irritated. “Begone, peasant.” He gasped, recoiled from me with such a horrible look. Definitely an ugly crier. He fled, his sobs coming like so many trumpets from the hall.
I groaned and tried to settle back into my relaxing bath, plucking the floating cucumbers and putting them back in place. “What has gotten into everyone? This kingdom is full of fairytale poison. Tasty pies. Clean air. Love. Work-life balance. Ugh. Kill me.”
“Happy to,” came a voice.
I whipped around, the cukes flying off my face, plopping on the floor. The maid? Hadn’t she left in a rush? But there she was, leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed, one side of her face upturned in a self-satisfied grin.
I began to tirade, “How dare—“
“Your face is so ugly now. You look an old hag. I thought that might make the king see what his wife would look like when she aged.”
“My face? The bees?”
“I didn’t come out of it unscathed, of course. They got me in the bum somehow. Won’t be able to sit for a week.”
I gripped the edge of the tub, knuckles white. “You’ve done it all, haven’t you? The pie. The furniture and room. The blazing fire this morning?”
The maid rolled her eyes. “Obviously.” She stepped away from the doorframe and toward me, her eyes filled with grim intent. Her hands were gloved. Was she going to kill me?
“When bathing, always keep a sword on you,” I recited, then removed the dagger I always took with me into the tub. That was the last advice my father gave me before he died in his bathtub. Too bad he took his baths on a balcony overlooking the ocean cliffs. That old wood suddenly so rotten. It was a good ten-seconds of a fall before he hit the rocks below. He was still scrubbing on the way down. “Wouldn’t do to die dirty,” was probably his last thought.
The maid scoffed at the dagger. “You think I want to strangle you? Please. I may be peasant-born, but I’m not vulgar.” She went instead toward the credenza, from which she removed a bundle of crossbow bolts. Weird. Then she took the crossbow from its hooks. “This is the way civilized women murder each other.”
I said, “Don’t you see this marriage will be good for both kingdoms?”
“Please. I know what kind of Queen you are. You were planning to kill him, weren’t you?”
“First of all, how dare you say what like a royal. Secondly, no. Never dreamed of killing him.”
“Liar.” She put the bolt into the crossbow. Began to pull back the string. If she got it loaded, I was good as a pincushion. I shrieked and jumped out of the bath, barely keeping my feet, and stabbed at her face.
She knocked the blade away with the crossbow, quite handily, and aimed the bow at my face in short order. I ducked. The bolt shot through my hair, grazing my scalp. I spun in the Moscariato style, going to sweep her legs. She jumped back, taking the bait of my feint. Then I got in nice and close and smashed the pommel into her pretty cheek. I’m sure my old sword master was cheering for me from his grave.
We found ourselves in a clinch, gripping each other, scrambling for purchase.
“You’re obsessed with the king,” I said. “You’re insane!”
“No! I’m in love.”
We screeched and scratched like alley cats, slapping and hitting and biting. I grabbed her hair. She kicked my gut. I slipped on the wet tile, lost my balance, and brought us both down. We rolled. We clawed at each other. I felt a sort of thrill. Never had I ever gone this far with an adversary. I hadn’t even known she was my enemy. Who knew a backwater of a kingdom like this could harbor vicious thinkers like me.
She twisted and turned, but I soon put her in a chokehold. “A poisoned pie, some disarrayed furniture, and a swarm of bees? Please, I’ve had worse done to me by my own family. You’re just an upstart. A rube. A rodent of unusual size in human clothing.” She struggled and I squeezed harder, harder until she gripped her hands on my arm. “Any last words?” As if I’d give them to her.
A shape blocked the light from the bathroom window. A man-shape. An attractive man-shape with a glittering crown. It was the king! Outside the window?
He crashed through, let go of the rope he held on to, performed a somersault like a true acrobat, then slipped on wet tiles, arms windmilling, and cracked his head on the floor, sliding to a stop beside us with a long squeak.
I said, “Oh my.”
She spoke from the chokehold, “Shouldn’t we check on him?”
I relaxed my grip with a sigh. If I was caught in the bathroom with a suffocated maid and a dead king, I wouldn’t get out of this kingdom alive.
“He’s breathing,” she said.
I got up to stand beside her. “Thank the fates.”
We stared at the unconscious king. A ruler made useless with just a slip. An idea popped into my head.
I started, “You know…”
“What?” she replied.
I cringed, but continued, “We could just…” and I bopped my head at the broken window. “We’d figure things out. We’re brilliant, capable women. Think of it.” It literally hurt me to compliment her.
Her jaw dropped at the suggestion, then snapped back up. She looked at him, shrugged, and said, “Wouldn’t be the worst idea. No puppeteering behind a spineless king. And you and I protected by mutually assured destruction.”
“Well, what do you say?”
The king groaned, his eyes flickering open. We both went to our knees.
“Your Majesty!” we cried out in unison.
We moved him to my bed so he could recover and had a sumptuous dinner brought up to us. We did not speak for the duration. Dessert was then delivered: a non-poisoned lime pie and a drink called “coffee” that tasted like hot bean water.
The maid gestured at me with a fork. “I never meant to kill your Taster. The pie was only laced with poison. If she hadn’t eaten so much of it she wouldn’t have died.”
“Greedy goat,” I mumbled.
“How horrible,” the king said.
“And the furniture? The bees?” I asked.
“The furniture was just to annoy you. The bees, as I said, to make you ugly. I did have a pit full of venomous snakes nearby. I was hoping you would run into it.”
The king whined, “What if I had run into it?”
“I had every confidence in your acrobatic mastery, my lord. As well as the anti-venom.”
I asked the king, “Why did you break through the window?”
He cleared his throat, “Well, I found your Grand Vizier, Frandon, totally distraught and attempted to comfort him. Out of spite, he told me all about your regicide. Every single family member, distant cousins, even your sword master! How horrible. Then I heard you two struggling from my room. I assumed I had no time to get all the way down here, so the window seemed the neatest option.”
Mental note: execute Frandon.
The maid repeated, “You killed your whole family.”
“Yup. That’s my secret. The culling of my family tree.” They stared at me. “I wanted to be Queen! Not the middle child married off to some knobby old wanker in the sticks. And besides, you cavort with an insane maid!”
“Not insane,” she whispered.
He nodded. “You’re right. We all have secrets. And if this farce is to continue, then we must be equal partners. I will tell you my secret, ensuring mutually assured destruction, if you will.”
The maid went still. Had he heard us plotting to toss him out the window? I hoped not. That would not bode well for the future.
“Ahem. My mother, the Queen, once took a trip out to Fierceholden Domain for a holiday. The same lands you annexed, Your Majesty. She wanted to see the hills, swim in the alpine lakes, and let her son bother people other than her. He was a little shit.
“He’d force the villagers to throw parades for him. He’d use them as dummies for his sick games. He was capricious and foul and the Queen hated him. One day, the little prince wandered into the hills and found a young shepherd boy. He was poor, bored, and looking for a friend. He and the prince spent a lot of time together, the shepherd boy happy to know someone with money and food.
“The prince brought this poor boy to the vacation villa for dinner one night and the Queen was there. She got a twinkle in her eye watching them play. She said, ‘My, my, you look like brothers. You could be brothers.’ And when the Queen returned from her holiday, it was not the terrible prince that returned with her.”
The fire crackled. A cricket chirped. The maid dropped her mug of hot bean water and backed away from the bed, speechless. I felt like a firework had gone off in my face; I was shocked, not sure anything was real.
“Wow,” I said, “that’s incredible. I might have had my whole family murdered, but I’ve never lived a lie my whole life to cover up filicide. Most masterful indeed.”
His maid said, “You…you’re not a real king?”
He smiled. A big, wide, goofy smile. “And now I can be myself with both of you.”
“Glad you’re feeling good.” I got up from the chair and plopped down on the bed. “I feel like this whole trip has been a waste. Not a single person beheaded, and only bee stings and a poisoned Renata as a souvenir.”
“But don’t you see?” the king replied, “Now we can be equals. We can proceed with the wedding…” His maid literally hissed at that. “But it’s a front! Then the three of us can rule the kingdoms, do whatever we like.”
“Equals…,” the maid echoed. Ugh. Great. As if she needed more encouragement to pretend to be royalty.
I said, “I doubt I’ll gain anything from either of you.”
They laughed in my face. The maid, chuckling, replied, “Whatever do you mean? You were totally bamboozled, totally caught off-guard. It’s obvious you don’t have everything under control. You could use our talents.”
I wasn’t even mad about that. She was right. “Fine, then. A triumvirate of convenience, under threat of complete destruction.”
“A triplicate of necessity,” added the maid. Trying to sound smart.
The king finished, “The most powerful three-way I’ve ever seen.”
A liar king. A jealous, homicidal maid. And the paranoid queen. What could possibly go wrong?
April Discussion Thread:
Hop on over to the discussion and answer this question (in light of this comedy):
How many references to birds (fowl) did you catch?
As always, thank you for reading and listening.
Fowl Play By Any Other Name