*Throws chapter and runs*
The Troubled Heart
Felix Carriedo was not a sight for someone with a weak stomach. The muggy room in which he lay did not help matters in the slightest, the chaotic swarm of family and stench of urgency which swelled around his unconscious body giving the small wooden room a dizzying quality not unlike the sway of a ship at sea. Mel was there too - she was busiest of all, holding an oily cloth up to the pungent, gruesome area on Felix's shoulder, spidering veins of burgundy beneath his chalky, unwashed skin splintering off from the infected gash. The room felt to Arthur, like a furnace which creaked and chattered and flickered with lamp light, feverish hope and rabid despair.
Peter was pressed against a wall in the corner of the room, fiddling with an old wooden soldier, not looking in the direction of despair on dirty sheets, either too afraid to, or too absorbed in the triviality of his play thing.
Arthur had heard about the accident a few days before, sawing trees in the forest - Felix, just at an age to help out had worked with the loggers for no more than a month when an accident crushed his right shoulder. Mel had visited the following day but the infection was faster than she. Even a witch had her work cut out for her here where the dirt clung to enclosing walls and the soul seemed to want to claw its way from the claustrophobic inevitability of it all.
They had not had enough training, Sophia Carriedo emphasized over and over, it had not been like this years ago, she had thought it safer, more honest than it had proven, she had meant no harm sending him to the loggers, she had wanted to feed him, feed them all. She repeated these things over and over how a man sent to hang prays before the noose, like an urgent message to them all that she had tried as his mother and an attempt to shake the cursed truth that she had failed.
"Pa hasn't touched the forge in weeks," Antonio spoke gravely to Arthur in an intimate, distant feeling corner of the sordid room with a lowered voice, "I'm out there more than him - nowhere near as good, you know I'm better with wood - but since I was a boy I always fancied I'd take over the smithing work, forge for heroes and all that," he smiled cynically," but of course I never knew there'd be as good as none about by the time it was my turn."
"Will you still do it? Take over the forge?" Arthur questioned in a murmur, Jonas moving hurriedly past him with the cleanest wash towels he could find to give his mother.
"I suppose the choice is sort of gone now," Antonio was looking at his brother with a grim expression, "my pa stays out drinking all night, especially recently, you know...and it won't do, not here, not now - someone has to earn something and if I can master the forge then there's a market for that," Antonio paused to scowl bitterly, "however much I hate that market."
Arthur was silent for a few moments, watching Peter twist the cracked wooden head of the toy soldier in repetitive circles, lamp light illuminating the concentration on his young face. Suddenly he recalled something and reached into the pack behind him swiftly.
"What's wrong?" Antonio watched him with quizzical eyes, his own face shaped by the solemn orange light of the room, making him look a little like his father.
Arthur retrieved the rabbit at last, the one Alfred had given to him, a gesture which touched him more than he would have ever admitted to the other boy.
"I thought you could use this, I know you've had less time to get out so..." Arthur didn't meet his eye, only held the thing between them.
Once, Antonio might have declined, laughingly, told him not insult him with his petty kill, he would do better himself. Now he took it from him with little hesitation.
"Thanks, Art," he said with some of his old charm.
There was another silence and Arthur was reminded of the strange moment in the square. Perhaps they were both realising they had grown up. Maybe something else.
When they left Antonio's, the three of them, Mel, Arthur and Peter, let the cold, clean, stinging air fill their lungs openly and with relief. It was almost as if that stuffy room had an air of poison which fogged their chests and clouded their hearts. The sky was dark and the ground was developing an icy white carpet of snow. peter stuck out his tongue to catch the falling flakes as they walked home.
By the time they reached the street which led them home, Arthur found himself heatedly bickering with his younger brother who persisted in prodding him in the ribs with increasing force. It wasn't until they actually reached their humble, lopsided cabin that Arthur discovered what was truly troubling him.
"Why did you give away that meat to Toni, Arthur?" peter asked suddenly and accusingly as their rickety front door banged behind them with a low whistle of wind.
"What?" Arthur replied in an incredulous tone, slamming down his pack with a puff of icy dust.
"You don't care about us at all! You're always out and you don't bring enough back!" Peter was yelling with pink cheeks from the harsh wind, his blond hair flecked with snowflakes, "you're useless!"
Surprised by the onslaught, Arthur could only let his mouth hang open: his brother could despise him, that was no secret, but to be so enraged by his action seemed ridiculous.
"Peter!" Mel scolded harshly, pushing past them both to light the fire, "Antonio's family are having a hard time - you saw how ill Felix was."
"But...I'm hungry!" Peter protested, skirting around the table to tug at her skirt.
"Everybody is!" Arthur retorted, picking up the pack once more and unloading the vegetables he had picked up in the square with grim vigour, " don't be such a brat, Peter!"
The youngest brother balled his hands into tight fists and looked from Mel to Arthur in frustration, his lip quivering.
"I can make a broth - a good one - I collected herbs today," Mel affirmed, giving Peter a sharp look and emptying a rusty jug of water into the blackened pot hanging over the fire, "so none of this - both of you."
"But-!" Arthur began to protest at his own scolding, stepping forward in anger.
"Both of you!" she repeated with a flash of her lively, piercing eyes, "nobody ever got by through fighting with each other!"
Peter began to cry, pressing his palms into his eyes and wailing loudly. Arthur felt guilty and furious with him all at once. Peter was just a child, but he was constantly displeased with Arthur and it took the older boy by surprise how easily his words cut through him, how very cruel he could be while Arthur tried to do his best by them. But there remained an underlying guilt that he should not be messing around teaching Alfred to hunt - a boy who would have no use for such a skill except for sport! - and that he should have gone out by himself to provide for his family. Still, the guilt was a small knot in his stomach while the anger was an impressive wave which washed over him.
"He's being impossible!" came Arthur's offended, irritated retort.
"He said he'd bring something back!" was the muffled groan which came through Peter's sobs, "useless! Useless!"
Mel sighed, bending down and putting an arm around the infant and hushing him, trying to wipe the tears from his grubby face with a dishtowel.
Arthur, with heat rising in his cheeks and a sickening feeling in his gut, threw down the empty sack and left the house, letting the wind slam the door behind him, knowing how it made the floorboards shake.
Something Alfred was not short of in the Spades Palace was books.
The library was a large, formidable room on the second floor which was positively packed with the things, spines poking out from every available shelf and case and excess books piled beneath upholstered chairs or on window sills. However, it was the clutter of reading material that made the large space strangely comforting - a contrast to the sparsely populated rooms the palace usually had to offer. As a young child it was not somewhere Alfred ever had need of, save when playing hide and seek with Mattie. Now, of course, he was encouraged by the Jack to read - and always the biggest, heaviest books with the smallest text too - but this was not why he took to coming to the library at night as he had done this evening.
A year ago, the palace had recovered an old telescope from the attic and Alfred found himself fascinated by the constellations of the sky; the unfathomable shapes of the stars. Something about all that endlessness up there above him was a comfort in a way - perhaps it was due to his often feeling like a pinpoint in the kingdom which stuck out from everyone else - the millions of pinpricks up there made him feel a little insignificant in comparison, which sometimes - only sometimes - was sort of nice.
They had it put in the library in front of the great arching window, the one with the window seat. And it was here that the vast open sky of lights above him, the endless, startling space, put him in a state of rapture on a clear night. However, he had made a misjudgement in terms of the snowy weather conditions this evening when he had slipped out of bed as quietly as possible, stepping on the places where the floor was sure not to creak (and getting it wrong most of the time). But the way the wind whipped up the falling snow outside proved to be distracting enough to entertain him as he lay horizontally on the window seat, one arm propping up his head to watch the strange shapes appear and then dissolve on the glass. Alfred always found that if each place in the palace had a purpose, the window seat in the library was a place for thinking - and so he was trying his very best to; he had come up to consider the impending stay of the Card Royals and all the meetings there would be as a result - but instead he was thinking of the other things they would do - horse riding, competitive games by the fire (backgammon, chess those sorts of things), the dances, the tea parties. He liked all that but it was with a touch of nostalgia he thought of it now. It was all well and good when he was the 'baby royal', he thought this with a little contempt, but now he had to be a man - a man fit to be a king no less - and he had to prove it! So meetings were important. And that was what he would think of - not horse riding or checkers - meetings.
As Alfred tried his best to fill his head with the iconic images of 'meetings' at the palace he was distracted by some of the titles peeking out from the nearest shelf, lit up dimly by the moon's soft glow. A large book which he saw first provoked a look of fear from him: the history of trade in the upper north region of the Spades kingdom - a book Yao had sent him to fetch for a lesson and, not only did it take him half an hour to drag it down the stairs, he'd had to battle to keep his eyes open as he leant over the multitude of pages for at least four hard lessons. He still wasn't sure what the main plot of it was. There were some good ones too though, old favourites Georgia had once read to him on the lawn in summer when he was young - about orphan boys in cities and that kind of thing. It seemed much more exciting to be an orphan in the city than one stuck in a palace. Another book struck a different sort of fear in him and he felt his cheeks colour just to catch sight of its obscure title again. He'd picked the thing up out of pure curiosity one evening months ago, seeing that it was signed as a gift from the King of Diamonds. It was a complete surprise then to be greeted with what he soon realised to be some fairly graphic...um, stuff. The worst, most mortifying part was that he'd waited guiltily until everyone was downstairs to take the awful book to his room. He read the thing from cover to cover by the light of a lamp with a permanent expression of outrage, one shocked hand never leaving his mouth. He had turned a deep burgundy when the Jack asked him why he looked so exhausted the next day. All the same, that book had given him the only real education he had ever had on that sort of thing, excluding the short, tight lipped 'growing up' talk he'd had from the Jack himself. He had tried asking Mattie about it all once or twice but could never quite bring himself to say the actual word...you know... and so his brother hadn't really understood him. But how could he be a king and not have a real idea of that sort of thing. He would ask Mattie again properly. Or Arthur.
Or Maybe not Arthur, he thought with a deep flush. He tried to not think about Arthur and the stuff in the book at the same time but for some reason found it difficult to do. Maybe just because he was curious about his friend's own love life. Maybe because of the strange heat he felt whenever they were particularly close to one another. Heat that only made him consider some of the lurid things hidden in the books pages...
Alfred became aware of the flickering of a lamp to his right and jolted upright, fearing the Jack had caught him up again. It came as a surprise then to see Angelique in the doorway watching him, wearing a nightdress and holding her lamp beside her as if it were some sort of weapon she wielded against the shadows.
"There you are, Alfie," she said with something of a sigh which implied she had been looking for him.
"Angelique?" Alfred replied, standing from the window seat to face her properly, "how did you know I was in here?"
"I heard you trip in the hall," she answered bluntly, entering the room fully now and setting the lamp down on an end table.
Alfred found this action panicked him; the punishment for skulking around in the night was bound to be worse if he was found in here with Angelique of all people.
"What are you doing in the library anyway?" she made a show of ironing out the creases in her frilled, cotton nightdress with her hands and glancing around at the unfamiliar space she found herself in.
"I like to use the telescope," Alfred glanced at it and backed away from Angelique's figure which, no longer in shadows, invaded the comforting space he inhabited by the window, "only it's not so good for seeing anything tonight...so I was just thinking about stuff - important stuff."
"And there I thought perhaps you would come to see me!" Angelique plopped herself down on the soft cushion of the window seat, speaking in that confusing tone Alfred never knew whether to take seriously or not.
He looked at her quizzically and wondered where she could have got such an obscure idea from. Seeking someone out at night who is easily spoken to in the daytime seemed unnecessary first of all, but secondly, he was certain doing something like that was very un-gentlemanly and something Yao would click his tongue at. It was not something that had ever occurred to him - to visit Angelique after hours.
"Oh..." Alfred could find nothing else to reply with, "weird."
She shot him a glance and then sighed again, looking at the brass contraption in front of them.
"What do you use one of those for anyway?" she asked half heartedly, "what do you see with it?"
"Only like, all the stars!" Alfred was enthusiastic now and sat back down beside her, both their backs to the frosted world below them, "and the moon and all the constellations they make - those are like patterns - and, well... basically everything that's out there."
His conclusion caused Angelique to frown at the device as if she thought it might open itself up and spill out the earth's secrets.
"I once knew a lady who looked through a lens and said she saw the future," she offered in a detached tone, folding her arms.
"Oh, it's not like that - it isn't magic!" Alfred laughed, happy to be giving Angelique a lesson for the second time that day and the first time in almost a year, "it's all real."
Something Alfred had said made Angelique look annoyed for a moment and then she turned to him seriously. She seemed unsure of whether to speak at first but, never one to hold her tongue for long, she eventually gave in.
"I still can't do it," she muttered unhappily, "what the Jack wants me to do."
"Oh..." Alfred hadn't been expecting this and, due her haughty posture and disheartened expression, it seemed she was embarrassed to have said it - but he grew curious quickly, " what is it that your training for?"
"This thing...I don't even know really...some 'sense'..." she seemed bitter as she spoke, curling her lip; creasing her pretty face, " If I'm in the right state of mind, I'm meant to see something...or do something...something special."
"You can really do something like that?" Alfred leant forward in surprise and enthusiasm. Angelique had never mentioned something like this to him. Magic. Magic was interesting - scary and strange - but interesting. You only read about it in history books and fairy tales and nobody liked talking about it much - so Alfred found it something to be wary of but, all in all, to welcome.
"P-probably!" she replied quickly, frowning sharply,"...my uncle says I could see all sorts when I was younger...so I must have that 'sense' or whatever, mustn't I?"
"Sure," Alfred shrugged amiably.
Angelique seemed weirdly touchy about this stuff and he had not known her to care much for anything other than dresses and dances before. She glared at him, possibly feeling that he was making fun of her discomfort. Her fierce gaze dissolved to perplexity when she saw his genuine as ever smile directed dopily at her.
"It's important..." she began again, not looking at Alfred but at the all-seeing telescope, " ...the Jack says it is..." she sighed impatiently, "...it's important for the new Spades queen."
Alfred's body tensed at her last three words and a sharp stab of anxiety pierced through his stomach. He was silent, breath stilled in his throat though his lips were parted for its escape. His eyes stayed trained on the carpet pattern, wide with surprise because she had said those unspoken words. There were a few minutes of silence in which neither of them said anything at all, Alfred preparing frantically to make an excuse to return to his room, still too panicked to move other than to release the breath at last.
Before any excuses could be made, Angelique turned to him, sharply and with undeniable anger slashed across her face.
"What is the matter with you, Alfred?!" she asked, her voice a high pitched shriek which made Alfred aware of the sleeping bodies on this floor of the palace, "don't you even want me to be your queen?"
He gawped at her, stunned at the sudden fiery outburst and terrified of what she was asking.
"I-...well-" he groped desperately for the right words to soothe her.
"Well what!" she would not let him off easily, " I never ever thought it would be like this living here! You are so oblivious to everything, Alfred!"
"I'm not sure I get it," he was aware that she was becoming more upset but could not help holding back from what she seemed to want, " I really wouldn't mind if you were my queen - don't worry about Yao-..."
"-It isn't about stupid Yao!" she seemed close to tears now and Alfred could see the situation moving to more dire levels, "it's about you! I've been here two years, Alfred and nothing!...you never pay me much attention - you're always in your own world! I thought...I thought you would ask me to marry you...that's what my uncle said..."
Alfred felt another of those sharp stabs in his stomach and felt as though this must be a nightmare come to life in front of him. Perhaps he didn't get out of bed and sneak to the library at all, perhaps he was going to wake up soon and Angelique would poke fun at him at breakfast as usual.
"You're not just being polite are you?" she seemed to take on a different tone now, one more desperate and he found this worse to bear than anger, "Alfred, boys have sometimes said they would marry me - men too - I know I'm not unsightly, yet you seem not to notice at all!...You do know I would let you if you wanted? you know you can have me?...romantically, that is."
Alfred flexed his jaw muscle without uttering any words, brow pressed together in confusion and some distress.
"I can what-...?" His facial expression could only be described as a plea for help.
Angelique uttered a short, sharp 'huh!' sort of sound of exasperation and shook her head. Without further warning she leant over to Alfred, grabbed his shoulders and pulled him into a firm kiss.
AHHh here it is ! I'm sorry I'm sorry - for people asking what my update schedule is...clearly it's a mess but I really wanna get this story done and as there do seem to be at least a few people out there that care about it imma work hard to get a chapter out once every two weeks from now on.
I hope that's okay and please please let me know your feedback! :) Thank you for sticking with it guys! xo
p.s. please ignore my weird chapter numbering I clearly forgot how to count for a bit heh :o
