2 October 1958
The castle seems to operate autonomously, fully capable of managing its own affairs even while the king lay dying in his bed. Meals were made and linens changed and fires laid as if nothing were amiss, people passing through the corridors, industriously going about their business, and though Lucien knew it was not so he could not help but feel as if it were the stones themselves that gave the orders. The castle did not seem to care that Lucien's father was mute, that he could not so much as raise his right arm, that he could do no more than lay still and weeping and staring at his son, unable to communicate his distress or his confusion, his forgiveness or his derision. For a time Lucien had sat with him, had even reached out and taken his father's hand in his own. It was not affection that compelled him, necessarily; he harbored little fondness for the old man, truth be told. But Thomas was dying, and Lucien had been a doctor in the life he'd chosen for himself - the life that had been summarily stripped away from him - and two decades' worth of work in that field had filled him with compassion for the diseased and the dying.
Thomas had not approved of Lucien's chosen vocation. As a young man Lucien had been sent to Edinburgh to study history, like his father before him. He had enjoyed it well enough, but his curious heart had been drawn towards medicine as a moth to a flame. The virtues his father had tried to instill in him from birth - concern for his fellow man, a sense of duty to aid those in need, responsibility and chivalry - had likewise urged him to pursue a course of study that would help him to care for people in a tangible way. Thomas had not known when Lucien changed the focus of his coursework at university; Thomas paid the bills, and Lucien did not mention his school work in his brief letters home, and the soldiers sent to guard him could not have cared less either way. The truth came out eventually, as it always must, and Thomas had been livid when he discovered Lucien's deception. By then it had been too late; the thing was done.
After university it was Thomas who suggested Lucien join the army. Thomas was hale and hearty, the realm at peace, and the king thought a bit of structure and discipline would be a benefit to his son. Once again, however, Lucien had snubbed his father; their own kingdom's army was small and contained within their borders, but they had always enjoyed a friendly relationship with the British Empire, and it was the British army Lucien joined as a medic. That, too, was done before Thomas could put a stop to it; Lucien had sworn a solemn oath to serve, and there was no way for Thomas to secure his release from such a pledge and maintain his kingdom's honor at the same time.
And in the beginning, it wasn't so very bad. Thomas had assigned a young soldier named Derek Alderton to be Lucien's minder, and the pair of them had enjoyed a grand adventure. The army sent them to Singapore, as far from home as Lucien could possibly get, and there the only people who called him sir were junior officers and enlisted men. Lucien practiced medicine, and caused all sorts of trouble with Derek, and fell in love, and thought little of his father. Until 1937, when tensions between Japan and China escalated, when Italy and Germany were rattling their sabers, when Spain was tearing itself to pieces; come home, Lucien, Thomas had implored him in a letter. You are the future of our kingdom. It is time to put aside this foolishness, and assume the responsibilities you were born to.
Lucien's answer had been brief. No, he'd said.
Another letter had come in 1939; war had begun in Europe in earnest, and Thomas was nearly apoplectic. He'd always been a conservative, isolationist sort of ruler, and he wanted no part in the war that threatened to drown the entire world. We will close our borders, he'd written to Lucien. We will keep our people safe. Let the others fight it out amongst themselves; this is not our war.
But the king could not send his own people to retrieve a British soldier, not if that soldier would not willingly to consent to leave, and by then Lucien had firmly decided where his loyalties lay. He did not share his father's views and he could not abandon the men who were as good as his brothers, these men whose care was his responsibility. There were others he could not abandon, as well, but he could not think of them now without weeping. For over a year he and his father had exchanged heated letters, arguing the merits of their perspectives, neither of them giving any ground. And then came December of 1941, and the Japanese bombs.
There were no more letters after that.
It all seemed so very long ago, those rebellious days of his youth, but something about returning home at last, seeing his father once more, brought it all back. The anger he'd felt at having his choices made for him, the wild, reckless joy of throwing his father's commands back in the old man's teeth and setting off on his own, the pain that had haunted his steps for so very long; it all swirled round and round inside his mind, left him melancholy and quiet. At noontime he ate a light lunch in his rooms, and then strolled around the castle grounds, the echo of bombs and bullets ricocheting down through the years and ringing in his ears like some ghastly portent of doom. How different might things have been, he asked himself, if he and his father had tried more earnestly to understand one another back then? What course would his life have taken, if he had only done as his father asked? Would his heart be so burdened with grief, if either of them had chosen a different path?
Did it matter?
That evening Lucien ate alone in his suite, his meal served to him by his nervous valet. He had learned that the lad's name was Peter, but no further information on his life or his background had been forthcoming, and Lucien hadn't tried very hard to draw it out. It was a strange day, a bleak day; he was no more than a crown prince, and though Thomas was hardly competent to rule it seemed the great machinery of the government moved even slower than Lucien's memories. They would come for him eventually, he knew; Sir Patrick was the one who had written to him, dispatched men to retrieve him, and the Prime Minister would not have done so if he did not have plans that hinged on the prince's presence in the capital. What those plans were Lucien could not say, and Sir Patrick had not tried to reach him.
Yet.
It would be a problem for another day. After supper Lucien set to drinking with a grim determination, filling his glass again and again, sitting at his desk and staring blankly at a book he was making no real attempt to read. They want me to be king, he thought while he swigged his whiskey with all the enthusiasm of a man who wanted to die. They want to keep me here, forever. No more travelling the world, no more entertaining himself with whatever pretty girl caught his eye, no more desperate, fevered attempts to locate that which he had misplaced, that which was more precious to him than anything else in the world. No, a king was not meant for such a life. Endless meetings with government lackeys and wrangling over budgets and the struggling national health service and placating the working people, parties and state dinners and carefully staged public appearances, every moment of his life planned and dictated to him by someone else; that was the life he was born to lead, and it had come for him at last.
It was after ten when Lucien rose from his chair, somewhat unsteadily, and made his way out into the night. Sleep would not come for hours yet, if it came at all, and the ghosts in his mind were calling out so loudly he thought they might well drive him mad. A brisk walk in the chill October air would do him good, he thought, and so he made his way carefully up the spiraling stone staircase buried in the back corner of the castle, and emerged at last upon the battlements.
Guards were pacing along the parapet, but there were none close enough to speak to him, and Lucien was glad of it. He didn't want their bowed heads, their respectful your Royal Highnesses; he wanted peace. And maybe a bit more of the whiskey he'd left in his suite.
He turned to the right, and let his feet carry him where they wanted to go. A half-formed thought floated through his mind, that he could track down one of the guards and ask them where Matthew was, could go and find his old friend and wile away a few hours with him, but in the end he let the inclination pass without acting on it. It was late, and if he weren't already asleep Matthew likely had more important things to do than spend his time babysitting a drunken prince.
The night was foggy, as most nights in October were wont to be, and Lucien moved through that fog silent as a ghost. There was no one up here to see him, no one to take note of his agony, his distress; he was alone, and he felt himself to be as insubstantial as the mist that settled upon his skin, as if he could at any moment dissolve into memories and float away.
That's the whiskey talking, he thought, but still that sense of hopelessness lingered. It seemed to him that the longer he stayed in this place the more his very self would fade into shadows. He was Lucien Blake - the surname he'd chosen for himself while serving in the army - no longer. He was not a doctor, a husband, a father, a friend. He was a crown prince, soon to be king, and his own desires and ideals would cease to matter. Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown, and all that, he thought.
As he walked along the smooth, faded stones of this castle that had stood on this spot since time immemorial he quite forgot that there were other people about. The guards seemed to be giving him a wide berth, and beneath him the castle slept, for the most part. He did not think to encounter anyone up here at this hour, and so he was quite unprepared when he turned a corner and found himself confronted by a most unusual sight.
It was a woman, the same woman who had been feeding his father breakfast when he arrived in the king's suite that morning. She had wrapped a heavy cream shawl around her shoulders over her navy dress, but the curl of her dark hair, the curve of her neck, the rise of her cheek were unmistakable. At first she did not mark him; she was staring up at the sky, as if despite the lamps that glowed at intervals all around them and the steady glow of the city beyond the castle walls she could see the stars. As if she could see them, and she loved them. Her expression was peaceful, her posture unguarded, and for a moment Lucien envied her that apparent sense of contentment, for he had felt nothing but distress for weeks.
The spell was broken in a moment, for though Lucien had not moved, had made no sound, had hardly breathed she seemed to sense his presence. She turned her head, and her eyes went wide as she realized who had interrupted her contemplation.
"Your Royal Highness," she said, offering him a graceful curtsy. There was no warmth in her, no soft smile, but neither did she appear anxious or concerned; she had a proud bearing, and Lucien rather liked it. Most of the servants he'd encountered so far had fled the moment they caught sight of him, or fallen all over themselves trying to flatter or appease him, but this woman had done neither. She only stood, still and quiet, waiting to see what he might do.
"Good evening," he said. He tried to smile at her - he smiled at every beautiful woman who crossed his path - but it came out rather sickly, and he did not try again. He wanted to speak to her, was perishing with the need for earnest conversation, but the words would not come, and a long, uncomfortable silence stretched between them.
"Well," she said at last, while Lucien's tongue remained firmly lodged against the roof of his mouth. "By your leave, sir."
It was the right thing to do, the polite thing to do; decorum dictated that she could not simply turn her back on a prince, but likewise it was not a servant's place to stand in the way of their soon-to-be sovereign. She had no choice but to depart, if he would not detain or engage her. It occurred to Lucien then that he had placed her in a most uncomfortable predicament; they were standing in the far southern corner of the castle, hidden from view of the guards by the turn of a broad stone tower, and she was a lady alone with a man she did not know, a drunken man, well after dark.
"Begging your pardon," Lucien said, noting the momentary flash of confusion across her face at his courtesy. "I didn't mean to intrude, Miss-?"
"It's Mrs," she told him, lifting her chin slightly as if in defiance. "I'm Mrs. Beazley."
"Mrs. Beazley," he said. "Won't you stay a while, Mrs. Beazley? I have some questions, if you don't mind."