Day 62 – Writing exercise

The first time he understood what hate felt like

…

Things don’t fall apart in a proverbial ball of fire, it’s the result of a single, almost invisible flame that takes time to take hold.

You see the smoke, a small tendril against a background that makes it almost invisible, and because you cannot definitively see it, it’s left to fester, then take hold.

And before you realise what’s happening, a gust of wind fans the embers and suddenly you have a forest fire.

It was an analogy my father told all of us when we were old enough to understand.

There were five of us: the eldest son, Harold, then me, Joseph, then Elizabeth, Mary, and Charles, the youngest.  We were members of a royal family, and one of five kingdoms, ours being Zarevia.

Our father was the King, a man who understood what it meant to be the ruler of a kingdom where the people looked for strength and fairness.  He was universally loved by everyone.  His Queen, our mother, was the epitome of kindness and light, and had taught us that what we had was not a divine right or privilege to be abused, but to be used for the betterment of our country and people.

The king understood that and led by example every day.  We, as children and successors, were allowed to practise every day.

Then, as time does to everyone, the current ruler ages and comes to the end of his reign, and a successor steps up and continues the work seamlessly.

Harold was the eldest son; he had spent his whole life preparing to continue as if nothing had changed.  Everything was as it should be.

Except…

One of the more interesting aspects of being a royal was the fact that the children’s lives were managed as tightly as the kingdom’s finances.  We had little say in our choice of partner, where the eldest son needed a wife fit to be queen, and the rest, whatever was left.

That might sound cruel, and to a certain extent it was, but it was tradition, and it had worked well for many centuries. 

Harold was matched with a princess from a distant kingdom, the eldest daughter, who was strong and forthright, which was more than what some would say about the future king.  It was a choice made solely to strengthen his position.

I was matched with what some might call an equivalent level princess, a rather condescending term I thought, but my station in the family dictated like-for-like, second son, second Princess.

But here’s the thing, I had known her since both of us were born, and I had adored her for the same amount of time.  She was charming, affable, approachable and adorable.  The people loved her, and mercifully, I wrapped myself in her bubble.

The others were equally fortunate in their matches, and it was only a matter of time before they would be married and living in their husbands’ kingdoms.

Everything was as it should be until…

…

Screams filled the castle when there should be peace and tranquillity.

The succession plan had been invoked, and over the next six months, my eldest brother would slowly step into the shoes of the monarch.

The screams put paid to that timeline.

I knew exactly what they meant.

The king had died suddenly, an outcome that had been predicted and prepared for.  That is to say, the Palace staff were prepared.  Harold was not.

Yet within an hour, Harold had been sworn in as the new King, and the first very small, almost invisible flame was lit. 

Eloise had leapt out of bed and gone straight to the Queen, thinking only of her pain at the premature loss of her husband and lifelong friend.  Theirs had been a match with a risky start, and love had developed over time.

Morgana, now Queen, decided that death was not on her agenda today, and pulled the covers over her and hoped it would all go away.

I just sat in the room with the man who was once my father, my mentor, and basically my whole life.  Even in death, he looked peaceful and content as if he knew he had done a good job.

Eloise had soothed my mother’s raw emotions and came with her to join me, and we sat on the lounge and quietly contemplated what this meant for each of us.

After an hour, Morgana stepped into the room, and the whole atmosphere changed.  There was not one ounce of sympathy in her condolences to my mother.  Then, that chore done, she looked around the room, wrinkling her nose.

“We are definitely going to have to do something about the gloomy room.  Not fit for a king, not at all.”

She was already taking over.  It was a side of her that none of us had seen, but rumours had filtered back from her kingdom, the princess they were glad to offload on someone else. 

Her own people hated her.

Until now I could not understand why.

Now I did.

My mother was too immersed in her grief to notice.

…

Harold was weak.  His father knew that and had worked hard on turning him into the man he needed to be.  But he hadn’t reckoned on the Morgana factor.

It was what I called it, and basically worked like this.  Harold made a decision, and if she liked it, it stayed; if she did not, it was not adopted.  Within a week, it was clear who was running the country.

Certainly not our family.

Harold’s saving grace was that she could not kill him and take over as monarch.  Ours was a kingdom that did not seat Queens, even if the line of succession was all female.

There had to be a king.  There was no other alternative.  Morgana may have thought something else, which is why she asked me about succession rules.  There was no reason for her to kill him; she needed him on the throne for her to be Queen.

Harold, of course, because of his training and father’s influence, was about maintaining the status quo.  In fact in his first speech to his people after the investiture, he said quite unequivocally there would be no changes and that life in the kingdom would continue as it had for hundreds of years.

I was proud to stand beside him that day, because I knew he had a kind heart.

But all of that changed subtly at first, until it was impossible to ignore it.  Morgana decided to assert herself.

The small flame and the embers flared.

I was in the King’s office, where he was sitting behind the large desk, completely clear of anything by the mace that proclaimed his authority.

Morgana was pacing impatiently.

When I walked in, she said, “You’re late.  When your king requests your presence, you will be here in time.”

“We’re family.  Time is irrelevant.”

“Not any more.  The king has finalised the reorganisation plan, and your role has been changed from Head of the King’s Guard to Parks and Gardens.  It also requires you to relinquish your current chambers and relocate to the east wing.  Effective immediately.”

I looked at Harold.  “You know the role of heading the King’s Guard is traditionally given to the second son.”

“That was when you were the son of the King.  You’re now my brother, and Morgana has reservations that you might kill me to become king yourself.  It makes sense.”

I laughed out loud at the thought.  I had no and never had any thoughts of killing him for his crown.  If anything, Morgana needed to separate us so that I wouldn’t try to influence him.

“Who’s taking my place?”

“The head of my personal guard,” she said. “He doesn’t have an axe to grind.”

No, but he was cruel and overbearing.  He just didn’t like Zavarians.  Why was I not surprised?

I looked at Harold, and he wouldn’t meet my eye.  “Is this what you’ll want, Harry?”

It elicited a sharp response.  “You will call your brother by his correct title.”

I turned slightly and glared at her.  “Let me be abundantly clear.  If you are asking for a pitch battle in the throne room, you’ll get it.  The King’s Guard are loyal to me.  Whatever dreams you might have in thinking that you can hijack this kingdom by manipulating my brother, think long and hard before you go down a road that you can’t turn back from.”

The smug look wavered for just a second before it returned with red spots of anger.  “You are no one in this kingdom.  You will do as your King commands.”

He raised his head, now aware this was spiralling.

“Joseph is by royal decree the Master at Arms and in charge of the King’s Guard.  It was proclaimed three hundred years ago, and we are not tampering with proclamations.  Nor will you reassign any of my family’s assigned roles or their accommodations.  Be content with being the Queen.  You have your role and position within the monarchy, as we all have.”

He stood and stretched as if to shed the shackles he believed were going to strangle him.  It was a subject we’d spoken of a week or so before.  I had told him then that I worried that Morgana might get overwhelmed if anything happened to the king and that he didn’t have to carry the burden alone.

I did not express my true thoughts about what Morgana might do if she assumed that he would not interfere with her plans.  From what I just heard, she had not consulted him first, and that might just tip the scales in our favour.

I say that not because i wanted a battle, but that I wanted the Harold I knew was there.  I had expected being overwhelmed himself might give her an opening, but perhaps I need not worry.

He looked at me.  “I appreciate your loyalty to me and this kingdom, Joseph.  There will be no pitch battles on the throne room.  Now or ever.  Perhaps in public you will defer to my title, in private with decorum.”

He turned to Morgana, who was barely containing her anger.  She had made her tilt too early, or perhaps when she believed the time was right.  Whatever she thought, she had completely misjudged him.  I might have wavered myself.

“You must never forget your place.  You are Queen, you have a title and responsibilities.  They do not include tossing my family aside.  If you want me to find roles for some of your family members, then we shall, but all requests must go through Elizabeth, who is the person in charge of the Palace people.  We do not under any circumstances put people in particular roles because of who they are or what they think they deserve.  And lastly, don’t ever use my name to push whatever agenda that suits your desires rather than the good of the kingdom.  Do I make myself clear?”

“Perfectly.”  It was said so quietly we both nearly missed it.

“You can go now, Joe.  They are being on time a little more.  Dad always gave you a little leeway, but I want more discipline in your manner and work.”

“As you wish, your royal highness.”  I kept the sarcasm out of my tone because he was right.  And it also conveyed respect, which had been somewhat lacking in all of us under the previous king.

“Now, go and alert your men to the fact that I’m bringing back the old rituals.  Instead of moping about, the Guard is going to be seen.  London has the Trooping of the Colour, parades, for their monarch and for the people to see that the monarchy is there for them.  I suggest you brush up on the exercises.  We’ll talk more about this tomorrow.”

A suggestion I had made, and believed it had gone through one ear and out the other.

“Excellent.”

Protocol demanded a bow and proper departure.  We had started overlooking these little things, and I missed it.

As I left, I wondered how he was going to deal with Morgana.  I would have liked to be a fly on the wall, but then what did it matter?  She had shown her hand, and it had failed.  And judging from the lost look she gave me, I had one less friend in the Palace.

…

The flames of the fire had subsided, but had not been extinguished.

We got through the funeral protocols with the appropriate amount of pageantry and celebration, the whole kingdom given a day to remember their old king and reflect on the new.

It was followed by a week-long tour of the whole kingdom so that Harold could meet the people. I had heard that Morgana detested the idea of mingling with the peasants, but this was ignored, and she had to play her part.

But it was clear she was still festering over me standing up to her and the dressing down by a totally different man to that she had married.

I was still coming to terms with the new Harold.

Eloise knew something had happened when I came back to our quarters.  I had tried to brush it off.

“Tell me,” was her first two words.  She knew me better than I knew myself.

“I threw down the gauntlet.  Harry let me slay the dragon in the room.”

“She did it.”

I gave my best effort at total surprise.  I often wondered just what sort of network she had in the Palace.

“She tried.  If it had been the old Harry, she would have seized the day.  He surprised me, and utterly shocked her, and rather on a more serious note, publicly rebuked her.

“You are the Master at Arms.  It’s your purview when there’s treachery afoot.”

“We all like to think that.”

I once thought that Palace security was within my purview, but others might think otherwise.  I didn’t know about the proclamation, and I was going to find out from the Palace historian.

“Don’t worry, it’ll take a lot more than bluster to get us out of here.  Besides were going to need the room.”

I had thought she had acquired a special glow about her, and from the lack of discussion about children i had thought she had given up.

“I figured something was afoot.  You have become even more beautiful than ever.”

“I am with child.  I was waiting, just to be sure.”

I hugged her tightly.

…

Two weeks later, after coming home from the new King’s first royal tour of the kingdom, a time-honoured tradition, the Palace Guard turned out to greet and escort him from the main gate to the Palace entrance.

As the Master at Arms, I would usually be the one who accompanies the elite group of Palace guards charged with the King’s protection when outside the Palace, but there had been a diplomatic problem that I was told needed my attention.

One of the neighbouring kingdoms had broken a long-standing rule of not hunting deer on their neighbours’ lands, not without formally requesting permission to do so.

The odd thing was that everyone, and especially these neighbours, always complied, and it was totally out of character.

Harold summoned me as told me to personally deal with the problem.  I protested, but he said my Sergeant could step up while I attended to the more important matters.  Almost as an aside, he said Morgana’s private guard was going home and would be accompanying them part of the way.

I thought about reminding him of protocols, but it seemed his mind was made up.  It might also have been a case of the changed relationship between him and Morgana after the episode in the throne room with Morgana.  He was the King, but she would not have accepted the rebuke.

Eloise was surprised when I told her of the change in plans, and though she didn’t say what she was thinking, I could guess.

Morgana.

I just shrugged.  My brother was the King, and I was his servant who must obey orders.

So,

The next day, the Royal party left to great fanfare, the new King on a mission of goodwill and the Queen looking very sullen. 

Later, I joined the Chancellor and, with far more men than was necessary, left for the other kingdom, by strange coincidence in totally the opposite direction.

Of course, with the Master and the King absent, the army was controlled by the Sergeant at Arms.  It was not a coincidence that the King had promoted him temporarily to command his personal guard.

It almost left the Palace guard and the castle, without leadership.  It did not.  Among the second tier of leaders, each responsible for twenty or so men, I had been secretly working on creating a new tier of leaders to draw from in the future.  In the meantime, they had orders to keep everyone close and not allow any groups of men to enter until the king or I returned.

We had not seen battle for a long time, as peace had reigned over the realm.  Or so it seemed.  A while back, a discontented villager from the Queen’s home kingdom had arrived in very poor shape with a harrowing tale.

I didn’t believe it.  Not at first, but I asked the scribe to take down his story from start to finish, asking questions, forgetting answers, the sort of answers a simple man could not invent.

He said quite simply that their King had become strange and had made life unbearable for the people.  They had suffered several famines in succeeding seasons and were forced to buy food from neighbouring kingdoms.  When the coffers emptied, taxes were imposed, and everyone gave what they could, and when it was not enough, he had his men take everything.

People were starving and dying.

Now, he said, they were waiting for our king to die and the new King to take his place.  Then Morgana would enact what he called the plan.

He did not know what that plan was.

At a guess, she was to take over, through Harold, and send what we have stored, wealth and food, back home.  I had interrupted that plan, so there had to be another plan.

I advised the Chancellor of parts of what I knew, enough to justify my departure before getting to the errant kingdom, where I suggested he would find they knew nothing of the allegations. 

I took most of the guard with me and took a parallel route to the king, where we would shadow on either flank.

Just in case.

…

I had hoped I was wrong. 

My imagination sometimes veered into mock battles and war-like scenarios, perhaps more out of a desire not just to be in charge of a whole army with nothing to do.

We had tournaments rotating through the Kingdoms each season, keeping the men sharp, with jousting, tests of strength, and archery.  The best of the best, the knights, took their skills to the field, and I had been in a few contests and come off second best more times than I cared to remember.

Those skills would be needed if anything happened, and at least our numbers were weighted on each of the possible fronts.

It took a day to catch up to the King’s procession.  We basically surrounded it and waited.

Four days passed with no sign of any trouble.  A rider returned with the news, it was as I had suspected, the neighbouring kingdoms had no idea what we were talking about.

I put everyone on high alert. 

We were waiting in the forest, not far from the town just visited.  As one of the larger towns, the festivities went on long into the night.  It was the closest point to the direct road to the Queen’s kingdom.

Everyone from the procession was still tired, and I doubted they would be alert to any trouble.  Perhaps that might be a tactic, because it was that time of day transitioning from dark to light.

The best time to attack.

One of the men from the Northern group came riding hard up to us.

A message.

Men on horseback.  Many men.

I told him to pass the word.  Before we had left the castle, I told the leaders the plan if we were attacked.  Stealthy, bold, and no survivors.  The King must never know.

Whilst the Royal procession slowly and obliviously wound along the narrow forest track, my men took care of a hundred ‘enemy soldiers’ from the Queen’s kingdom.

Her brother and the man who was in charge of her personal guard led the mission.  All of his men were slain, bar him, and he was brought before me.  He had not fared well in battle.

The plan was to kidnap the king and Queen and ransom them.  There was no intent to kill, nor to show their faces, so that he paid the ransom and everything went back to the way it was.

Foiled, there was no going back.  I personally executed him.  The men cleaned up, burying each of the bodies with military honour, despite my first command to just throw them into a chasm.

Then I went back to the castle, and having the Chancellor return, and work on a story that hopefully the King wouldn’t check.  The man who warned us had died and was buried in the graveyard.  I had worried about what I was going to do, especially if we had to keep the secret.

And…

On the day the king returned, there was much rejoicing and festivities to celebrate the start of a long and happy reign.

At the end, the King summoned me to his private chamber.  He could not have known about the deeds that had occurred.  My men, every single one of them, had been sworn to secrecy.

He looked tired.

“It was a success.  I had worried the people might not like me.”

‘What’s not to like, Harry?”

“They do not like Morgana.  To be honest, I have not seen so much hate for her.  She tries, but I don’t know, Joseph, ever since I became King, she has changed.”

“Perhaps this is who she has always been, and the fact that you both have had to take up the roles sooner than expected, and neither of you have had the time to settle into a routine.  We used to say when we were children how easy it would be, but I suspect it’s not easy at all.  You have all the people looking to you, you have the affairs of state, you have family duties, it all adds up.”

“We did, didn’t we?  Are you glad you were not born first?”

“I am where I’m supposed to be.  By your side.”

He sighed.  It did not seem to alleviate his mind.

“The Chancellor said the problem was a misunderstanding.”

“Such matters are, though at first it might seem serious.  These are people we have known and traded with for centuries.  It is good that it came to nothing.”

“Jacques tells me you locked down the castle.  Was that necessary?”

“I decided in your absence that I was going to run some battle plans to keep the men alert.  All this inactivity tends to make the men slack.”

“Are there any wars imminent.  I know you have spies in every kingdom.”

Not something he was supposed to be aware of, but necessary.  Long periods of peace could turn into war very quickly.  Which reminded me, my spy in the Queen’s kingdom had not reported recently, and I had to accept he had been discovered.

“None reported and none that I’m aware of.”

“Good.  Now, the Queen has requested that she return home briefly for a visit.  I am considering making it a state visit.  What do you think?”

“You command, I make it happen.”

He looked me up and down in a manner i had not seen before.  I was not sure it was admiration or utter horror.

“Perhaps the words, your Queen, sire, is a traitor, might be more appropriate.  You had to believe that I would find out what you did and why.”

“My job is to protect the King and the kingdom.  Sometimes it is better not to know the details, Sire.”

“Well, thankfully, you didn’t sulk.”

“It’s not in the job description, sire.”

“And you can stop calling me Sire, Joe.  Harry is more appropriate.  What do you recommend we do with her?”

“Nothing.  Once she realised that her brother was missing, she should get the message.  I would not recommend going to her kingdom on a state visit, given the circumstances.  You might agree to let her Hugo, but only with her own people.  If you do, she might not come back.”

“She was party to the plot?”

“I would not wish to comment, Harry.”

“Right.  Organise her visit.”  He stood.  “I’m going to bed, and hopefully tomorrow everything we be as it should be “

If only it were.

…

©  Charles Heath  2026