I have some questions, if you don't mind.
She eyed him warily for a moment, and then gave a little nod. "All right, then," she said. She hadn't called him sir that time, and Lucien was glad of it.
"Can you tell me, Mrs. Beazley, what is your role here?"
It seemed as good a place as any to start. Though he knew he would likely never complete the task Lucien wanted, very much, to know as many of the people working in the castle as he could. Those people, maids and cooks and groundskeepers and butlers, were the only ordinary people he was likely to meet again for quite some time. Those people, the guards and the mechanics and the drivers, were his only link to the outside world, and he needed that connection desperately. He needed to know the sentiments of his people, their fears and their hopes, needed to know what was expected of him in order to best care for them. The very thought of ruling over an entire kingdom of strangers was not appealing to him in the least, but his father's health was failing, and he supposed he had to start somewhere. Mrs. Beazley evidently enjoyed some status among the servants, given that she was the one who had been feeding the king alone that morning, given that the guards appeared unbothered by her appearance on the rooftop late at night. Such a position could only be attained after many years of faithful service, and if she had indeed been employed there for quite some time she was likely to be familiar with the attitudes of her compatriots.
"I'm the Chief Housekeeper," she told him, still watching him suspiciously.
"You've been here for quite some time then, yes?"
"About fifteen years, sir."
That satisfied Lucien's immediate concern; it would appear that Mrs. Beazley was in fact an integral part of the fabric of life in the castle. The Chief Housekeeper was in charge of all the maids for every one of the royal houses - of which there were four, including the castle on top of which they now stood - and oversaw most of the day-to-day operations of those houses. Her word was law, and no one would violate it. There were others with more lofty titles, with more ceremonious duties, but hers was the key to the whole operation. Everyone would know her, and she would know everyone, and he doubted there was a single grievance that would slip past her watchful eye.
Having dispensed with that portion of his queries, he floundered for a moment, wondering how to approach the subject that most concerned him. He was glad to have made her acquaintance, glad to have a sturdy, practical soul to speak to, but still he felt himself on an uneven footing, unsure which course of action would be the best to take.
"I've been away from home for quite some time," Lucien began, faltering slightly when he caught sight of her expression. Chin lifted, eyes narrowed, arms crossed tightly in front of her, Mrs. Beazley looked every inch the disapproving school marm. "I worry that my people don't know me, that I don't know them."
"And you're afraid they won't trust you? Sir?" she asked shrewdly. For all that she was beautiful it would seem that Mrs. Beazley was quite clever, too, and she had seen to the heart of his dilemma at once. Lucien knew he shouldn't like that about her, but he did just the same.
"Well...yes."
It might have been a bad idea, broaching this topic with a stranger, but Lucien had had rather a lot to drink, and he was consumed with worry for the future, and Mrs. Beazley was lovely, and the gold band sparkling on her finger made him feel somehow safe, as if he could trust himself to confide in her - and admire her - without being tempted, knowing she belonged to another.
"I think everyone is just a bit...confused, sir," she told him after a moment's thoughtful pause. "You were hardly more than a boy the last time any of us saw you. All through the war there were rumors, but no one knew where you were. Your father was here, and he saw us through that catastrophe, but you-"
"Abandoned my countrymen," Lucien supplied grimly.
"I wouldn't have said it quite that way." Her tone was not exactly soft, but it wasn't accusing, either, and Lucien took that as a point in his favor.
"You worry too much," she told him, and he found it rather an odd thing for her to say, given they'd only just met one another and she could hardly have been privy to his internal struggles so early on in their acquaintance. And yet as he looked at her in the feeble light from the nearby lamp he could not help but feel as if she did understand, somehow, as if she had read him like a book.
"These are trying times," she continued. "Everyone is feeling just a bit nervous. Give them time to see you, to learn what sort of man you are, and that will change."
"Do you know what sort of man I am, Mrs. Beazley?" Lucien asked, amused by the very idea.
His companion did not appear amused in the least.
"I know that you're drunk," she answered him coolly. And just how does she know that? He wondered. Maybe it was the trembling in his hands that gave him away. Or the smell of liquor on his breath. "And I know that you've been neglecting your responsibilities here for two decades."
"That doesn't bode well for me, does it?" In truth, Lucien didn't much care for the woman's tone, but he did not give in to his desire to chastise her, for fear that would only prove her judgement well-founded. What Lucien needed, in that moment, was a friend, and he would not give her cause to dislike more than she seemed to already.
"Where have you been, sir? If I might be permitted to ask." She'd remembered her pleasantries that time; she actually took a step back from him, as if she'd only just realized how familiar their conversation had become, and he grieved for that distance. It seemed to him that everyone was stepping back from him, now, that he was alone and reeling in the darkness.
"I was serving in the army. The British army," he added when he noted the look of confusion on her face. "I joined them as a medic when I left university, and stayed on after the war."
For a moment she studied him carefully, her grey eyes bright but unreadable in the darkness. He could almost feel the wheels in her mind turning, could almost hear her thinking.
"You were a soldier," she said softly. It wasn't a question.
"I was."
"I know you aren't asking for my advice-"
"I am, actually," he told her earnestly. "I'm a bit...lost at the moment, Mrs. Beazley. This is all very strange, and I'd welcome any assistance."
"People should know that you were a soldier," she said. Her voice had gone quiet, sad almost. Mrs. Beazley looked to be in her early forties, not much younger than Lucien himself. And, like everyone else of their age, the words soldier and the war seemed to have brought her a host of bitter memories, a burden of sorrow he knew that none of them would ever truly shake. That war had changed the very substance of the earth, and all of the people in it. Their had been the generation that fought, and theirs had been the generation that lost. "There will be questions. People will want to know where you were. If they knew that you served in the army, they might understand, and they might appreciate it."
Lucien brooded on that for a time, turning to rest his elbows on the rough stone parapet and gaze out into the darkness of the city below. It was not in his nature to talk about himself, to ramble on about his experiences, what his war had been like. Every man who served had fought a different battle inside himself, had seen different horrors, had walked away changed. Lucien's war had been bitter, and black, full of agony and grief, and it was not a period of his life he cared to revisit. There was wisdom in what Mrs. Beazley had told him, however, and he knew it. Stories made up the fabric of people's lives; they told themselves stories to explain why the sun came up each morning, why they were still breathing, why they had been put on the earth in the first place. Stories gave structure and meaning to the relationships between people, rooted them in their homelands and bound them to their neighbors. Tell a good story, and the people would love it, and him as well. His story was not a particularly good one, nor a particularly righteous one, but he knew that it would appeal to the masses. Their brave young prince, marching off to war, dedicating himself to serving others. Their brave young prince, trapped in horror, surviving still for he knew he must one day make his way back home. Their brave young prince, returned to them at last.
He almost laughed; their brave young prince was a fiction, but if he sat down with a few newspapermen, said all the right words, they would love him just the same.
"Did you lose someone, in the war?" he asked her.
He hadn't meant to say those words, and he regretted them the moment the question passed his lips. This entire discussion had been far too personal, far too familiar, and he did not wish to pressure his companion into divulging anything she did not freely wish to share. Much as he might have wished it were not so, anything said to him was not said to Lucien the man; anything she told him was said to the crown, and she would be weighing her words carefully, whether he wanted her to or not. It wasn't any of his business, the details of her life, where she had been or who she had known, and he did not want her to feel as if she owed him this confession. He wanted to curse; he wanted to weep. For so long now he had been free, after a fashion, free from the constraints of this terrible life, and all of that freedom had been snatched from his grip the moment he was accosted in Hong Kong.
"My husband," she answered after a long moment. She came to stand beside him, resting her delicate hands flat on those selfsame stones, though she left a respectable distance between them.
He wanted, so badly, to tell her. The words were there, just on the tip of his tongue. I lost my wife, too. I know the weight of your grief. And yet, he could not give voice to those thoughts. His wedding had been a quiet one, attended only by Mei Lin's family, his marriage carefully concealed with Derek's help. No one, in the whole of the kingdom, knew that their young prince had been wed, that he'd had a child, that his family had been entirely swallowed by the war. It would have been a catastrophe if King Thomas had ever learned the truth; it might well have meant the end of everything for Lucien. But he had loved that girl, and he had wed her, and he had lost her. One dark night before the Japanese arrived he'd put his family on a ship bound for home with Derek to protect them. The ship had not survived the journey, and the three people Lucien loved best in all the world had been lost to the sea. That secret belonged to him, and him alone, and he could not share it with anyone, not even the very kind Mrs. Beazley.
"I'm sorry," he said, wishing there was something else, something more he could tell her, and yet knowing no words would be sufficient in the fact of this pain she still carried, all these many years later.
"It was a very long time ago," she said. It seemed to Lucien that everything was a very long time ago, that his world had stopped in 1942, and never got started again. His memories were distant, faded, but with him always, and nothing that had happened to him since had affected him so deeply. He had been, for 16 years, a man out of time. At least now his surroundings matched his circumstances, he thought glumly.
"This is all terribly maudlin, isn't it?" he mused aloud. He turned his head, and caught the flicker of a smile on Mrs. Beazley's face.
"Oh, I think we all feel that way when it's dark," she told him. "Things will be easier when the sun comes up, you'll see."
At that very moment he heard the crunch of a bootheel on the stones behind them, and turned to see Matthew Lawson limping towards him, grim-faced and determined.
"Matthew!" Lucien said, standing up straight and reaching out to shake his old friend's hand. Matthew did not accept him, however.
"Jean," he said, nodding his head towards Mrs. Beazley.
"Matthew," she answered him, her response somehow both perfunctory and tense.
"What's going on?" Lucien asked as the fear began to nibble around the edges of his consciousness. Something wasn't right, it seemed to him; Matthew had not yet acknowledged him, and seemed instead to be stealing himself for the revelation of some great calamity.
"I'm sorry," he said, and what scared Lucien most was that he sounded like he meant it. "The King is dead." Then he drew in a very deep breath, and nodded his head to Lucien in deference. "Long live the King."
Lucien stared at him, aghast and shaken to the very core. Beside him Mrs. Beazley looked at him sharply, tears already gathering in the corners of her eyes, and then she gave a graceful curtsy.
"Long live the King," she echoed in an unsteady voice.