A Royal Affair by John Wiltshire

am. We’re supposed to attend luncheon. You have to meet the rest of the family. Lucky you.”
    “How old are you?”
    “Ten. Well, I will be next year.”
    “Can you read and write?”
    He gave me a derisive look. I could honestly not tell whether this was a Yes, of course, how stupid are you ? or Read? Write? Hardly . I waited patiently with raised eyebrows, and he mumbled, “I prefer stories, if I do have to read.”
    I chuckled. “So do I.” He led me through some gardens, and I saw again the sea. The wind had got up, and white horses flicked the top of the waves right across the harbor. “Tell me who else I have to meet, Stephen.”
    “Oh, there’s heaps of them. They all look alike, or the ladies do. And they all smell the same: pretty horrible sometimes. His Majesty has two brothers now, but His Royal Highness Prince Harold is visiting—”
    “Stephen, just between us, can we drop some of the titles? Just Prince This or Prince That? I only have a few more years of life, and I feel them rapidly being used up.”
    He nodded solemnly. “Aleksey said you were quite old.”
    I spluttered. “He what? I’m thirty-five!”
    He grinned suddenly and thrust his hands in his pockets.
    I studied the smug look. “Did he put you up to that?”
    He nodded. “He wanted to know how old you were.”
    I couldn’t explain the sudden flush of warmth I felt wash through me at this. I wanted to ask the boy what else Aleksey had asked about me but had the certain belief that this would be reported straight back to the subject of the inquiry. I held my tongue. With some prompting and reminders to try and simplify the names, I managed to get out of Stephen that the king had two living brothers: Harold, who was never to be called Hal, and John, who was a fool. Whether the boy meant John was a literal fool in a cap with bells or whether he was just deemed stupid by a stupid nine-year-old with too much time on his hands, I could not decipher.
    I was soon able to make up my own mind on this, as I met the prince almost as soon as I entered the dining hall. This was an impressively long, hi gh chamber with two tables arranged to form a T: a short table at the top for the more important diners and the long one laid on both sides for the less significant. I gathered that the farther you were from the high table the less was your perceived importance and wondered where I would be seated. Apparently I was considered to be very important: I was right at the top, in the junction between the lesser beings and my illustrious betters. Before I could sit, a man who introduced himself as John accosted me. I will skip all the titles and His Highnesses and whatever else he gave himself. I was tired of them already, and I’d only been in the castle a few hours.
    I’m not given to snap judgments about others. Most people I have discovered have hidden depths, and if given a chance, they will reveal treasures they might otherwise have kept private. This man, however, I disliked on first sight. I might even go as far as to say detested. I almost recoiled from his handshake. Why? He was it. He was that one hidden fear we all have, that one secret we keep from everyone. He was a man who preferred the company of other men—as did I. I suspected he acted upon his preferences, however, in a way that I had renounced. But he showed me that terrible path. He reminded me that it existed and that with one slip, one weak moment, I too could be following its siren call. From the look he gave me, I believe he would have taken my hand and led me down that road personally.
    I swallowed deeply, trying to concentrate on his words of greeting, not on his scent, his hand in mine, his knowing eyes. He was disturbingly seductive. I was extremely relieved, therefore, when Stephen tugged my arm and said I had to meet the rest of the herd (his word, not mine) and pulled me over to a small group of beautifully dressed men and women who comprised the main body of the