"There we are," Jean said, carefully placing a small plate of biscuits and a fresh cup of tea on the end of the worktop where the King sat, lounging in his chair, watching her with eyes soft and blue and terribly sad. It was very, very late, and for once the halls beyond the kitchen were quiet; death sat heavy on that place, and though there were pockets of activity throughout the castle for the most part such efforts were undertaken in whispers, as if the living feared to speak too loudly, and draw the attention of whatever malevolent spirit stalked the corridors. Before now Jean had rather thought she ought to come up with some excuse to depart, to sneak off to her bed and leave the drunken King to his own devices, but he seemed to be steadier now than he had been before, and his face was pale and drawn, and Jean had been too long in the business of looking after people to simply abandon him when he seemed so in need of care.
"You will join me, won't you?" he asked her. His voice was low and worn, as she knew his very soul must be, and though his request was most improper, given the hour and the difference in their stations and their lack of a chaperone, there was nothing untoward in his expression, and Jean had already decided that she ought to stay, anyway.
"All right," she agreed, settling herself down in the chair beside him and reaching for her own now tepid cup of tea.
"Have a biscuit," he added quickly, reaching for the plate and offering it to her. There was something eager, almost boyish about the gesture; she couldn't quite get the measure of this man, who could be taciturn and complaisant both, who held tradition in disdain and yet had just inherited the most traditionally powerful position in the whole realm. She was beginning to suspect that she might never grow accustomed to him at all.
"Oh, I couldn't possibly," she demurred, but he looked so crestfallen that her heart could not bear it, and she changed course at once. "Maybe just the one," she amended, reaching for a ginger biscuit and trying not to blush at the smile that bloomed across his face. That smile was short lived, however, and a somewhat uncomfortable silence settled over them. Under normal circumstances Jean would be required to hold her tongue and not speak except to answer some question from him, but he had proven already that he did not stand on ceremony, and the slump of his shoulders as his burdens began to weigh him down once more told her that he was not likely to speak to her directly again for quite some time. It would fall to her, then, to accept that silence, or break it.
"I know it doesn't make much of a difference," she ventured after a time, "but I am sorry for your loss."
He did not immediately answer; he finished off the biscuit he held in two quick bites, and then washed it down with a long sip of tea. Carefully he placed his cup on the worktop and then leaned back in his chair, stretching his long legs out in front of him and crossing his arms over his chest. There was a faraway look in his eyes, as if he were staring not into the dying embers in the fireplace on the opposite wall, but into the dim recesses of the distant past.
"You'll think it cruel," he said in a tone that was thick with self-loathing, "but I won't miss the man." He was right; the words did seem to cruel to Jean, when the old King had only died a bare few hours before, when he had always been so kind to Jean, but she held her tongue and listened, anyway. "I can't remember the last time we spoke. Everyone here was so fond of him, but he was always so...cold, with me. I've often thought I reminded him of everything he hated about himself."
He said it so matter-of-factly that Jean's heart went out to him at once, and she could think of no possible response. She did not know her new King; she had not been in the castle when he was young, and though gossip was rampant she did not know the truth of how things had been for him, in his youth. She had no choice but to continue to listen, and so she did.
"My mother was French, you know." Of course she knew, everyone did. "It caused a bit of a scandal, at the time. He came home with this foreign bride, a commoner, this woman who seemed so strange to his people. But he loved her, to the point of madness. She had a hard labor, with me. She very nearly died. And despite the custom of the time my father was present. I found out about this later, but apparently all that blood, the screaming, it terrified him." That much Jean could understand; she'd borne two children herself, and she knew how dire that struggle could be. "My mother thought she was dying, and she begged him to name me Lucien. A French name. As the Crown Prince I should have had a good Christian name, maybe Thomas like my father, but she wanted me to have a French name, and in that moment my father would have done anything for her. And so my name is Lucien. That was my first mistake, you see. Every time he looked at me, he saw his own weakness. He couldn't marry a proper girl from a noble house, couldn't fill the nursery with enough heirs to make Sir Patrick happy, couldn't command obedience from his wife or his son. He studied medicine, too, did you know that?"
Jean just shook her head; he wasn't looking at her, and it didn't seem as if he really wanted her to answer, any way.
"He put it aside when he married my mother and brought her back to this place. He told me so in a letter, once. I can still remember every word of it; it's time for you to be a man and put aside this hobby, as I did. I was a commissioned officer in the Army, sworn to protect, to help people, and he called it a hobby! I was mortified, of course. If I'd known he'd ever had any interest in medicine I never would have pursued it myself." He laughed, but it was a bitter sound. "So you see? No matter how hard I tried to distance myself from him, to be own man, I made all the same mistakes he did, and he hated me for it. I fell in love with the wrong girl, and I lost her." What's this? Jean wondered, alarmed and intrigued by equal measure, but he bulled straight through, and she did not dare give voice to her many questions. "I studied medicine, but I wouldn't listen to him, wouldn't come home, wouldn't do the proper thing. I wanted to be as far away from this place as I possibly could. I suppose that sounds strange to you."
This time he did look at her, his eyes beseeching, though Jean could not say for certain what it was he was asking of her. Did he want pity, or absolution? Did he want her to agree with him, to tell him he had done wrong, that his father was right to chastise him? She did not know what he wanted, and so she could only speak the truth.
"May I speak freely, sir?" she asked carefully. It was dangerous, very dangerous, to reveal too much personal information to a person in a position of authority, and even if he had been no more than a gardener Jean was still a private sort of person, and did not readily share her history with anyone else. But he had shared so much with her, just now, and his heart was clearly aching, and she did not want to leave him alone with such grief.
"Of course," he answered at once. "Please do."
She took a very deep breath, and then spoke before she could think better of it. "I grew up on a farm, far outside the city. I went to school until I - until I was about thirteen." When Jean was young most girls in the rural communities of their kingdom left school when they reached puberty, but Jean was not about to share that particular piece of information with him. "I went straight to work, but all I wanted was to go back to school. I loved to read. The parish priest had a library, and he was constantly bringing in new books. Every book I read showed me that there was a world outside our farm, a place full of dreams, where anything could happen. And I grew to hate the farm. Truly, I did. The work was hot and hard and we were hungry. My father was...he was not a kind man, and my mother was ill. I couldn't wait to leave."
"But you did," he pointed out. "You're here now." He seemed almost defensive, and Jean fancied she could hear the words he had not said; it's not the same. You escaped your past, but I will never be free of mine.
She smiled at him sadly. "I am now," she said, "but I haven't always been. As I said, when I was young I could not wait to leave the farm. And then I met my husband. I was nineteen when we married, and we moved onto a farm of our own." There was more to that story of course, but Jean would cut out her own tongue before she told him all of it. Understanding was dawning in his eyes, and he sat as still and quiet now as she had done while he spoke. She had not expected such consideration from him, and could not remember a time when any noble person had ever listened to her so closely, so courteously. "We had two children, and I lived the next ten years of my life there, scratching out a living in the dirt, just like my parents."
You see? She wanted to say. I don't think it strange at all, that you should try to run from your upbringing. You are not the only one cursed by birth. There didn't seem to be any need to hammer her point home, however; her new King was a clever man, and his expression told her that he had heard her, and understood her.
"How did you end up here, Mrs. Beazley?" He asked after a moment. As she spoke his posture had changed; he was no longer leaning back, arms wrapped around his chest as if to protect himself from the ghosts of his past. He was leaning forward, now, his forearms resting on his knees, and he was looking right at her, with eyes that seemed to peer into her very heart.
"My husband died," she said simply. "I couldn't keep up the farm. I needed work. I came to the city, and I was hired here as a cook. I've been here ever since."
The night had been a long and strange one, and it was growing stranger by the second, Lucien thought as he looked at her. He had not hoped to find a friend, here at the end of life as he knew it, and yet Mrs. Beazley had been nothing but kind to him, had listened to him respectfully and then offered him her own tale, and a much-needed bit of perspective. It was easy for him to get lost in his own bitterness, in angry musings on every freedom that had just been snatched away from him, but the truth was he had been lucky, in many respects. Thomas had never been a particularly warm man, but he had never struck his son, and the hitch in Mrs. Beazley's voice when she spoke of her own father - he was...he was not a kind man - had carried with it the sorrow of a child who had fallen more than once beneath a heavy fist. He had never been hungry, had never been denied the chance to receive a full education, had not married so young, had not been left alone with two children to raise and no way to feed them. He had been held captive by the Japanese, had faced horror there, but he had survived, unlike Mrs. Beazley's husband. He had lost his wife and child, but he had always had a home to return to if he wished, an opulent place where his every need would be met, while the loss of her husband had left Mrs. Beazley no choice but to leave her own home and start over in a new place.
And she had not rebuked him, had not pointed any of this out herself, had simply told her own story, and let him draw his own conclusions. She had, very gently, reminded him that he was not the only person to ever suffer an indignity, that he was not the only person who longed to run from their upbringing and yet found themselves imprisoned by it. But Mrs. Beazley had made a new life for herself, and he supposed there was some hope to be found in that portion of her tale; she had found a way to move on with her life, and perhaps, one day, he would as well.
"Thank you," he said, wondering if she knew what exactly it was he was thanking her for. He wanted to tell her, to tell her that he was grateful for her kindness, for her honesty, for her willingness to share with him, her willingness to speak to him to as a man and not as a King. He wanted to tell her that he was grateful for her beautiful smile, and the delicate grace of her hands as they cradled her teacup. He wanted to tell her that he was grateful to her for giving him hope.
She only smiled at him, grey eyes sparkling, and a thousand questions leapt to his mind as he looked at her. He wanted to know about her children, their names and ages, wanted to know where they were now, wanted to know if she had friends, if she still read so voraciously, if she shared any of his opinions on literature or art. He wanted to know her husband's name, where the man had served, if they had ever stood upon the same blood-soaked piece of earth. He wanted to know if her hand would be soft and warm if he wrapped it in his own.
"It's late, your Majesty," she told him gently. He wondered for a moment if she was only trying to get rid of him, but he thought better of it almost at once. There was nothing but warmth in her expression, nothing but kindness, a genuine concern for his well-being, and his battered heart was revived by the knowledge that there was at least one person in the castle who cared for him. Well, perhaps there were two; Matthew was a friend to him still, and he knew he would rely on him heavily in the days ahead. But Matthew's face wasn't nearly as pretty as Mrs. Beazley's. "You should try to get some rest."
"And you, Mrs. Beazley," he said.
She rose from her chair, and took the cup from his hands with the deft command of a mother much used to cleaning up after her children. And as she did he tried to hide his smile, for she had just committed a grievous breach of protocol, taking his cup from his hand without being asked, but she had done it seemingly without thinking, and he was glad to see she had already grown somewhat more comfortable around him.
"I'll put these things away," she said, suddenly businesslike.
"Right," he agreed. It would do no good to try to stop her, he knew that already. "Sleep well, Mrs. Beazley."
She gave him a smile and a little nod, and he left her to tidy up the remnants of their late night snack, his feet carrying him up to his room without need of direction from his thoughts, which were at present occupied almost entirely by her.