Before the Coronation
The table was made of good, dark wood, polished smooth each morn by a select and discreet pair of maidservants. Caspian brushed his fingertips over the grain, tracing the outline of a knothole. How many times had he sat here, with his father, listening as he spoke? How many days had his Professor spent teaching him from this very chair? The emerald inlays of the king's seat at the head of the table glittered at the corner of his vision, mocking him. He, ruler of all Narnia? Really? A fist of apprehension clenched under his rib cage, churning up a nausea with the breakfast he hadn't been able to eat.
"It wasn't stolen, you know." Caspian jumped, banged his shin on the table leg, and, swearing, looked up. Queen Susan stood in the doorway, silhouetted in the light from the next room. He flushed and tucked the injured leg behind the other, berating himself for being so foolish. What must she think?
"I apologize, Your Majesty," he stammered. "I should not have used such words near a lady's ears." Stupid, stupid, stupid!
Unexpectedly, she laughed, the sound ringing off the walls merrily. No bell would chime so sweetly, Caspian thought, smiling, and then promptly quashed that before more soppy observations could stem from it. She's a Queen of Old, he reminded himself harshly, and nearly missed her next statement.
"If all it took was a few oaths to turn my stomach, then it would certainly be a fearful thing for me to be left in charge of an entire country!" She stepped across the floor, so that she no longer blocked the lamp. The glow spread out into the chamber in her wake, touching everything in a bath of gold. He could see now that she wore a red dress, puffed slightly at the shoulders and elbows. The fabric hugged her figure in a way that made Caspian picture something very ungentlemanlike like on his part. He blushed again and quickly summoned up a mental image of what Susan's brother would do to him should he act.
"This table, though," she said, apparently unconscious of the effect she was having on him, "was given to us in the second-to-last year before we went back through the wardrobe. We were trying to build a trade road up to the northern mountains, but the only existing path was choked in trees. Queen Lucy and I had gone up to ask them to move aside, but this one," she rapped the wood surface sharply with her knuckles, "didn't want to leave the spot where she had spent so many happy years. She offered herself to us, most eloquently. We refused at first, but she insisted, said she would be proud to know she was part of the lives of Narnian royalty." She bent her head to the gleaming surface, hair swinging forward to hide her expression. "We gave her the highest honor we could find. She was always to be in the room in which the chosen wait to be crowned…I am glad that your forefathers have continued the practice."
Caspian looked down, eyes wide. He could not have envisioned that anything would make him fear less what was to come, but somehow learning of this enormous gift soothed his anxiety, quieted his worry. If he had heard this story any other time, he suspected, it would only have heightened his panic, but now he felt honored. "Thank you, Your Majesty," he managed.
"Susan." Laying her hand over his arm, creamy skin a striking contrast to his own tanned flesh, she leaned forward. "It is Susan, plain and unadorned. Only a ceremony separates us in rank, now. Aslan has named you; were you to leave this chamber and begin issuing orders at once, few would argue." Rough calluses, different from ones wrought by sword or dagger, pressed gently into the top of his wrist. "But most of them do tend to get annoyed when they are denied the excuse for a good party…and the feeling, when the crown is set on your head, and you look out over your people, with your future, their future, shining out before you…" She sighed, gazing off into times long past. "It is not one to miss."
Respect for her, for who she was, for what she had seen, washed through him and left him breathless. "Then I shall not, Majesty."
"Susan," she insisted. "Are we not friends?"
He smiled. "That we are…Susan."
