「The Secret Life of Gardenias」
「September, 181: Quid Pro Quo – Wild Thistle」
...
Bishop to pawn, rook to… the golden-haired boy noticed his mistake immediately after making it and thought a word wholly inappropriate for a five year-old which, had it been uttered, would have forced his minders to wash out his companion's mouth with copious amounts of soap in his stead.
Normally, that would have made ample motivation for Prince Milliard Peacecraft to swear like a sailor at every opportunity. He was pretty sure he had lost at least three Boys on those trips to the royal bathroom and was more than eager to lose the latest one any way he can. On the other hand, it would severely diminish him in the eyes of the King and Queen to display any ungentlemanly conduct in the presence of a lady, which rather limited his options in light of the fact that his new Boy of the Bedchamber was a girl.
However, while it was bad form for Milliard to leave the customary worm in her tea (the coup de grâce for many of her predecessors) and subject her to the consequences of his mischief, one could not reasonably blame anyone except herself for the inability to become his academic peer, the other vital quality in this aging tradition. A Prince's Boy was his closest companion, his shadow and also his reflection, and a Prince has no need of a schoolmate who would become a hindrance to his education.
"Is father saying I'm no better than a girl?" He demanded at breakfast with the Queen the morning after their strained introduction. "I'm already working on algebra and the theory of arrowdyna… aerodenomi…"
"Aerodynamics?" Queen Katrina suggested kindly over her morning tea.
"Yes, the one about flying." His cheeks warmed at the slip, but the boy did not allow that to interrupt his petition. "It would be kinder to let her go before she embarrasses herself in the schoolroom by not being as advanced as I, and appoint someone closer to my level instead."
His stepmother smiled to herself in recognition of the familiar argument. "Maybe they're her favourite subjects."
"Katrina," Milliard sighed the long-suffering sigh of children frustrated with having to explain the obvious to their adults. "She's a girl. Girls are all about drawing unicorns, and poetry, and sewing flowers into dresses. It's boring."
"I'm a girl too. You don't think I'm boring," Katrina was quick to point out.
"No you're not, you're a woman!" The princeling protested. Katrina chuckled girlishly at the little Ladies' Man as he fixed his eyes on the fists bunched in his lap and blushed to the roots of his wavy blond hair.
"Highness," she advised when they have both regained their composure, "it's natural to generalise people's abilities based on what they are, but how do you know what someone is until you've gotten to know them?"
He was just going to have to deal with it himself.
Milliard wasn't worried though. There was an undeniable fundamental difference between the genders that he was unconvinced anyone could overcome. Even though she was two languages ahead of him and knew nearly as much as he about mathematics, history and astronomy, girls were neither as clever as boys nor as fast nor strong. It was a scientific fact. And seeing as no mere girl could stomach the life of a boy, he expected her to be gone as soon as she saw how much hard work was involved in life beyond the bower.
That it was taking her more than eight weeks to realise this was only more proof towards how dull-witted she was.
.
Lucrezia scowled at the chessboard. They should be outside, running with the other children and soaking up the sun, not cooped up in the Prince's rooms watching him devise chess strategies against himself. It wouldn't be so bad if he'd let her play too, except that would violate the spirit of his research, the goal of which, she grew certain, involved boring her to death… or, at least, into begging for release from the King's service.
She regretted accepting the position. Thus far, the experience was fairly disappointing. The playground was rife with tales of his devilry, and going forth to brave them was going to be her greatest adventure yet, greater, even, then Maytaug's Tooth-Fairy Hunt.
This past Spring, Milliard painted a frog in the red-and-blue colours of a poison-dart frog and left it in the schoolroom for young Lord Wadfield, who fainted when the poor thing plopped out from the schoolroom's water pitcher and tipped over his drinking glass in its attempt to get away. Last winter, they said he replaced the educational programs on the schoolroom's Personal Virtual Devices* with a collection of classic horror films that Lady Macintyre insists have scarred her son for life.
So, as much as she thought it to be no more than glorified babysitting, she had expected her new job to be a little more exciting than it was turning out to be. She also hadn't considered the devastation it would cause to her social life.
Prince Milliard did not care for anyone under the age of ten and their presence in his wing of the Palace was met with furious princely disapproval. Thus were the Royal Sanq Knights of Mars reduced to creeping along the Palace halls during His Highness' bath-time in order to meet with their Captain.
It wasn't strictly necessary to creep since the staff in the Prince's Wing never bother with enforcing his rules and were obliging enough to help steal those moments for them —provided it was before the children's bedtime— but it added greatly to the atmosphere of things.
"He's killing me," Lucrezia confessed to her most loyal troops.
"Didn't you say you can do anything as well as any boy?" Spencer leered as the eight of them huddled in a curtained alcove.
"I don't think a snobby recluse even counts as human, at this point," she huffed indignantly.
"What's a recluse?"
Lucrezia explained.
"Still beats joining the bower," Elisa Weridge replied sullenly. She was seven and expected to join the Princess' company in the next two years. In preparation for this honour, her aunt had started bringing her to lunch with the Queen's Ladies-in-Waiting. Elisa was not impressed. She did not have the vocabulary to call it a ludicrous farce, though she would if she did. What does it matter in this day and age to memorise poetry and embroidery instructions when all these can come easily to your fingertips at any time via the Internet? What is the point of learning recipes for ingredients that have not been in use for over two hundred years, or gossip about people you don't know?
"… don't you want to find out?"
Elisa made a face. "No!"
All eyes turned on her.
"Why not?"
"Aren't you curious at all?"
"You didn't actually listen to what we've been talking about, did you?" Thomas Feenly, the big brother of the group and Official Vice-Captain, sighed. Elisa blushed.
"When my sister goes wool-gathering, she's usually thinking about some boy," Dimitri grinned.
"We should find out what that chip on his Highness' shoulder is," Spencer repeated himself, ploughing stubbornly through the interrupting chatter.
"Oh, it must be the Princess. Turning into the eldest child does that. Everyone says Kristy loved kids until I came around. Now, she can hardly stand them."
"That's because her little brother is you," Lucrezia pointed out, drawing laughter from the rest, including Dimitri himself.
Their first clue came, perhaps unsurprisingly, from Elisa's weekly lunch dates. Rumour has it, she whispered confidentially to her fellow knights crouched together under a long side-table in the halls, that the Prince's on-going campaign against his study companions is the result of a private wager between him and the King. Unfortunately, that was as much as the Queen's Ladies knew and, at any rate, the new Alliance Emissary's wardrobe was a topic of far greater interest.
Micah wrote it all down dutifully in his best handwriting, which is to say he doodled brightly coloured geometric shapes across his sketchpad with a look of delighted concentration while his twin fiddled with a broken tape-recorder they had managed to find for her position as Micah's co-secretary.
"That's not fair!" Cammi remarked, punching buttons in a vigorous sequence of her own devising. She was only allowed to hang out at these meetings if she agreed to operate the recorder and leave Micah's crayons alone. Since this is the only time she gets to see Lucrezia any more, she was keen to ensure her continued attendance and for that, she told herself, she was going to operate the hell out of the damned thing.
"Shut-up, Cam," Spencer shushed her automatically. "You have to be quiet for the recorder to work."
"No I don't," she stuck her tongue out at the older boy, "it works fine. It just won't be able to hear us if we all talk at once, like mommy."
Spencer groaned. "Who's the idiot that told her?"
The whole point of giving Cammi the job was to shut her up while they talk about important things, just like telling Micah he has to write down everything they say was an easy means of keeping him occupied.
"Leave her alone, she's not being a bother," Elisa glared.
"Why don't you just quit?" Dimitri had been gathering the courage to propose all week. He did not expect it to go down well, but it seemed the best way to get Lucrezia out of her predicament.
"Luc's not a quitter!" Cammi scowled, screwing up her face in preparation for a defensive howling match. Micah nodded grimly and switched to a black crayon.
"Like you said, Cam, the Prince is not being fair… it'll be like not playing with a bully, right? So it's not really quitting, it's being clever," Dimitri explained quickly. "She wouldn't be the first, either."
Dimitri spoke from experience, though he was too ashamed to admit it. He had been Milliard's fifth Boy until he lost his nerve and let mother plead his way out of it before he'd even met the Prince. It had all been his father's idea anyway.
The older children fell into silent agreement. Dimitri had a point. It wasn't like they could hang Milliard up on a tree and prod him with twigs until he pinky-swears to mend his ways, he is the son of the King for-God's-sake; which is a shame because the hangman method worked admirably well on Spencer.
"It is the most sensible way, but you're not going to do it," the last member of their Order looked up from his hand-held game console. Alain spoke so rarely and softly that it was a moment before Lucrezia realised he had spoken, and whom he was speaking to. When their eyes met, she felt the shock of an empathic connection for the first time.
"Why, big brother?" Cammi piped up. Four year-olds adore the opportunity to ask 'why'. The actual answer is usually of lesser importance.
Alain kept his dark eyes on their leader and smiled a touch disturbingly. Lucrezia chewed on the inside of her bottom lip and fought to keep the tension out of her facial expression. There was no way he could have known her secret, yet, everything she was able to read from his posture said that he did. Please don't tell, she thought hard at him. She could not afford to be exposed in front of the others, especially now, when her position is at its weakest.
Alain blinked and turned to his little sister, still smiling.
"Because I've just realised what's wrong with the Captain."
.
A/N:
I thought I'd best give you the first ~2000 words of chapter 2 soon as pos while I cobble the rest together, in case you forget me heh.
Fun fact. In Italian and French, among other languages, a slightly different grammatical form of quid pro quo, qui pro quo, apparently mean "misunderstanding". Hence, when speaking any of these languages, the phrase do ut des (latin. Lit. "I give so you may give") is used to mean the usual "something for something" instead.
Revision History:
Original Posting- 25 Jan 09
Flower Language 花言葉:
Thistle is the official Emblem of the Scotland, symbolising nobility of character and birth and almost universally meaning "(Karmic) Retribution". Legend has it that it was adopted by the Scots in the late 1200s, after an unfortunate incident involving a sneaky invading army and the folly of removing your shoes in a wild field while trying to sneak up on your enemies in the dead of the night. The word "OUCH" tells the rest of that story.