Jon had never heard an expletive escape Maud’s lips before, even a relatively light one. She had always been mild mannered and polite. This word broke her. But not for reasons anyone else could understand. She sniffed and raked her hands through her hair and the perfect princess persona slipped back onto her face.
‘I would have been on time for the opening had Google Maps not decided to direct me to the wrong one at first. Two RSPCA catteries in one town? Plymouth has a feline issue, Jon. I really should try to do something about it, if I could summon it in my heart to like the little creatures.’
‘Princess Maud, I am so sorry. I had no idea.’
‘No, of course you didn’t, Jon,’ Princess Maud said, with the saddest smile that he had ever seen. ‘That was quite the point.’
Jon had always assumed himself King Eric’s confidant, being told of issues and concerns that he didn’t think graced the ears of even the highest members of the establishment. This day was showing, however, that that thought was entirely false – the King hadn’t told him anything of the issues he had with his family. Of course he hadn’t. Not a confidant at all. Jon was just the chef. Just the chef.
‘Poppy was like a ray of sunshine, if you will excuse the tired simile. There are a million things I regret in my life, but I don’t regret that kiss.’ Maud smiled a sad smile. ‘But why did they have to say that she died? Why could they not leave it at the fact that she moved away? You do not have to answer, Jon – I know it. The establishment has the stick and they love to draw lines in the sand. Their files must be full of the phrase “The End.” To tell me she had just moved away would be leaving things far too open, leaving the sentence without a full stop, as if inviting more words to come and join.’
‘Ma’am, why did you not tell me this before? I am under the assumption that this is what you talked about in your private audience with the King?’
‘Yes. Of course.’
‘Then why hide it? Why lock it away in your heart?’
‘Jon, is it not obvious? It is simply too painful for me to talk about. It is not shame, never shame. It is having to accept that my father had a hand in this. Even if what Poppy told me last week is untrue, and Father did not give the order to send her away, he was the only one who witnessed our true relationship. He would have had to go and tell the puppet masters. They had such a hold on him. Then I enter that room today, and my father has the audacity to complain about my choice of husband.’ She was seething with anger now. ‘A husband that I only had so I would appear proper and prim. And to sire my children. I had a husband for the British public, for the King and for the Crown. I’ve lied to myself for so long that I even believed it myself. Poppy is right, Jon.’
Something was inside Princess Maud, something he had never seen before. A pulsing, radiating fury. Jon did not know what it inspired more inside himself – fear at what she could have done, or sadness as what she had become. Could Jon believe that Maud – the young at heart, the free and joyous – hurt her father?
No. She was not confessing to murder here. She was confessing to being broken.
‘Do you see, Jon – the grand image?’ Maud wiped her nose, this time with the back of her hand instead of the handkerchief, abandoned in her pocket. ‘This place is hell. I will not stand for it anymore. I am done with this establishment, but I am part of the problem. For example, I disagree vehemently with Miss Darcy’s strategy, but I did not say a word because I was scared to go against her.’ Maud tried to stand, tripped and fell to the floor, her anger used up and her exhaustion overwhelming her.
Jon rushed to her, forgetting his own fatigue, and pulled her up. ‘Maybe you should get some rest, ma’am. I will wait here for Thomas to get back. Maybe Miss Darcy is somehow right. Maybe everything will be better in the morning.’
Maud hugged him. ‘Thank you, Jon. You have been so good to us today. Please don’t let anyone make you think otherwise.’
They left Crockley’s room and made their way over to Maud’s. With one final smile, she entered her room and shut the door behind her. Jon hoped that she could find sleep somewhere inside. Maybe he would find sleep someday soon too.
He went back into his pocket and checked the security tablet again. All the red dots were in order. Thomas Crockley was still outside and had even moved slightly away from the castle. Jon had no idea how a smoke could be worth braving that tundra. No quantity of cigars in the world could make him take a single step outside before the blizzard let up.
Still, the screen gave him an uneasy feeling. He was still haunted by the image of the . . .
Footsteps. Ahead of him in the corridor. His eyes shot up. A kilt again? Flitting around the corner of the corridor. John Brown was back, he thought. But no – it had to be Prince David again.
Jon made his way over to Prince David’s door and knocked – three times.
‘Who is it?’ came the familiarly cowardly voice. Jon cursed to himself – the figure was not the old Prince. ‘Go away, won’t you? I have had enough of this blasted Christmas. I just want to sleep.’
Movement again. A figure, the figure, had just moved down the corridor, darting around the corner of the hallway. How sure was he that it was the same person? How sure was he that he had even seen it? He couldn’t be sure of it at all, but he knew something had drawn his gaze and sent his inner alarm into turmoil. He listened and heard carpeted footsteps hurrying away from him, with flashbacks to the footsteps he had heard last time he was up here. John Brown was lurking around the bedrooms today, it seemed.
‘Hello?’ he asked as loudly as his frayed nerves would allow. His voice did not carry anywhere near enough. The footsteps remained, and it might have been his imagination, but they quickened. Jon started down the hall, ignoring the fact that David was twittering something beyond the door in response to his question. ‘Stop!’
He rounded the corner in the hallway onto another vast expanse that stretched the entire length of Balmoral. If any figure was here, it should have come into his sight, but there was none. Nothing. The footsteps had ceased. Was his mind playing tricks, or had the figure simply ducked into one of the many doorways littering the hall?
On this hallway, having passed the bedrooms, were illustrious studies, a dusty library, and decadent meeting rooms where the family took their callers. The only room of any consequence, however, was where Jon set about travelling to.
The King’s private study was at the far end of the hall, much farther than the figure could have made it in the short time that they were out of sight. This made it odd then, that the closer Jon got to the room, the more he became sure that someone was inside it. Jon heard a shuffling sound at first, as if someone was searching through a stack of papers at a hurried pace, and then he heard the unmistakable creak of the study floorboard.
This floorboard was famous among the family, especially the Princesses. When they were younger – around ten or so – and lamented the amount of time that their father had to spend working, Eric would have a habit of pacing around as he underwent his royal duties. Whenever they heard the floorboard, they knew that their fun would have to wait.
Now, the floorboard inspired something else – fear. An entity was indeed in the King’s study, and as Jon got ever closer, his legs carrying him as if on some fateful conveyor, he knew that somehow it was this mystery figure. There was something in that study that the figure wanted and as per the shuffling sounds, they were ransacking the room to look for it.
Closer still and able to peer around the frame, Jon saw that the door lay open. Even closer, and with the sounds getting louder, met with scurrying, and the occasional thumping of drawers being flung open, Jon had to begin to wonder if he could manage to confront this phantom alone. He was an older man, after all, physically exhausted after being on his feet all day without food or rest, and mentally exhausted from an unwanted career swerve, and the loss of a friend and employer. He was barely a formidable threat to anyone, let alone a figure who, most likely now, had killed the King. A loud bang from the study seemed to inform his decision, as his instinct was to run the last few steps to the study and round the door before he could even think about what he was doing.
He stood there, in the doorway, feeling like the very intruder he was attempting to stop. The study was in complete disarray – it had been thoroughly ransacked. The cupboards stood open, the chairs overturned, the desk a mess of loose papers. Stood over the desk was the culprit, bent over it with their hands on the desk curled up into fists. The bang Jon had heard was this culprit, thundering his fist into the mahogany in utter despair.
‘What are you doing?’
Jon forgot his suffix. The young man started with a desperation he had never seen woven into any man. His aura had gone cold and tainted, like stagnant water in a forgotten plant-pot. His eyes betrayed a truth that Jon was only beginning to understand.
Prince Matthew had the nerve to smile.