Less than a day after I set foot in his castle, the King of England died.

His death, of course, had nothing to do with me.

Sadly.

Two nights prior began the month of June, gloomy and damp, with angry dark clouds overhead as I made my weekly trip into the city.

I did not envy the people who lived in the pits of London. In the shack-houses along the stone street, crammed in with the smoke and disease and filth of three-hundred thousand other poor people.

It was much better to live out in the country. In the country, you awoke to the sound of roosters and sheep. In London you awoke to men hollering and looked outside to see that someone had taken a shit on your doorstep.

Still, every week since I became old enough to carry a basket, my mother faithfully sent me off to buy the vegetables we could not grow ourselves and trade eggs for butter and milk.

Why this responsibility fell on me and not one of my older brothers was beyond me. Perhaps I would be most expendable if I never made it back. Martin and Westley liked to join in together and say it was so she could enjoy being rid of me.

I knew that wasn't so. My mother loved me best.

And besides, I didn't mind going. It allowed me time to make my own money the only way I knew how.

"It'll be twice what you paid last time, Brewer," I commented as the man dropped his trousers to the dirt.

"Don' say that." He was an old man, with a voice like air going through a metal pipe. "Makes the ole lad soften up, it does."

I had a glance at his 'lad' and curled my top lip. "Twice," I said, "or you can take it back to your wife and beg for a lick of cunny."

He gripped my forearm and pushed my front to the wooden wall. "Next week," he breathed, and then like an untrained mutt his short prick pressed against the back of my thigh.

"Now."

"Curse you!" His open hand slammed into the wall. "You're stingier than a madam on Soho."

"Try your luck there then," I said. "They'll spit on your boots the day you turn you up at a proper house. Or, you can be glad for what you get and pay me my charge."

He scoffed and bent to pull his trousers up from the ground. "No need. I'm as soft as a worm."

I leaned in. "Pay me and I'll fix it."

"Think you're all that, eh?" he hissed. I could feel his hot breath on my neck. "Someday you'll get what's comin' to you."

"Whatever you say, Brewer." I watched his zig-zag stagger as he felt his way along the back tavern wall into the narrow street. "Go sleep it off in a rubbish heap."

It was getting late. I should have left for home an hour ago, lest miss supper. No food was ever left over after a meal in my mother's house.

I kicked the ground as I walked. An hour wasted, and nothing to show for it. I couldn't keep doing this. I was getting too old and too unhappy. I didn't have a pretty smile or a tight little arse. There was nothing special about me.

Christ on a stick.

Market Lane had cleared out already, no one but the homeless wandering about. My breath caught in bitter disbelief. I waited for a merchant to appear, a milk cart to rumble by. Nothing.

A flutter of movement caught my eye.

A stiff parchment was tacked outside the tailor shop, flapping in the hot wind.

Hellp Wantd, it read.

There were much smaller and more faded words beneath the heading, written in a lavish, free-flowing hand, but unfortunately I possessed neither the eyesight nor the vocabulary to understand them.

I set the basket of eggs my mother had given me atop a wheelbarrow parked arbitrarily outside, then ran a hand through my dirty hair and knocked on the tailor's door.

"We're closed," a male voice rattled from inside.

I knocked again, louder. "Come on, open up."

"Run along, you vagabond. I don't need your fleas in here!"

I tapped my foot on the ground for a moment, then tore down the parchment and returned to the door. "My master's a nobleman!" I yelled. "He needs a suit to visit the King!"

There was only silence inside the shop for a moment, and then the door cracked open. "Who's your master?" the tailor asked.

"I don't have one." I pushed him aside and held out the advertisement. "Read it to me and you can have those eggs out there."

He peeked through the sliver of doorway. "Got me own eggs."

"Chrissakes, man-"

"Oh, fine." He snatched the parchment and squinted. "Blast this fancy tongue."

I amused myself with glancing about his shop as he read. A crudely cut wooden figure stood by the door, with nothing but two protruding arms and a wide ribcage to showcase its human resemblance. It was dressed in a burgundy waistcoat and white shirt underneath.

A table displayed an assortment of odd-smelling wigs, some long and thin, others tall and puffy. Some were gray, some white. A bright orange wig lay discarded on the floor.

"Hall boys," the tailor finally declared. "That's what they're after. Awful job. Might go through forty a'year."

"They don't last long?"

"Oh, no." He frowned deeply and handed me back the parchment. "Most wind up too sick to work and quit. You might just die off, livin' in that scum."

I folded it and tucked it into the waist of my trousers. "Living where?"

He rocked on his heels and gave me a sardonic grin. "Why, His Majesty's royal castle."

This stopped me dead. Surely any position there would be scooped up, filled by dozens of idealistic young chaps, hoping to meet a brave knight or distinguished statesman. "And the work," I said. "It's terrible?"

"Terrible," he repeated, still grinning.

My foot bounced again on the ground, more of an involuntary reaction than anything else. "Well, I should go. My thanks for reading." Against the thin material of my shirt, I was acutely aware of the parchment pinned to my side. It burned like a branding iron, itching for me to take out and read again.

I'd always wanted to get away. Do anything else with my life.

What if I could?

You'd never see Mama. You'd work all day, make nothing.

My fingers tapped against my thighs.

Forget it. Toss it in the dirt, sell the eggs and go home.

I wrenched open the shop door, turned to my left to reach for the basket, and felt my gut sink. Both the wheelbarrow and my eggs were gone.

🦢•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧.˚ *•̩̩͙ 🦢. •̩̩͙*˚⁺‧.˚ *•̩̩͙ 🦢

"Oh, this is wonderful, Auden!" my mother exclaimed that night. "My own son living away in a big castle! What glorious news this is!"

"Not that glorious, Ma," Westley said spitefully as he scooped a spoonful of my stew into his own bowl. "He'll only be shining shoes and dusting old books, likely."

She ignored him, staring at me in adoration. "You must write to me," she said, and held her arms out as if to embrace me. "And come and visit often- oh, how proud I am of you."

"You've got a maid for a son, what's there to be proud of?" my brother said, and all at once her hand flew and smacked the back of his head, causing his spoon and the stew in it to fall to the ground.

"You must stop taunting your brother so," she snapped. "I don't see your lazy arse employed anywhere."

"I'll be all you've got left after everyone runs off and leaves you." His wooden stool made a scraping noise as he slid it back from the table. "And you." He fixed me with a cold stare. "Don't think I won't forget you in a day, you little runt."

I waited until he'd left to clamber over to my mother. "He's always hated me," I murmured, nuzzling into her arms. "Don't fret."

"You're such a sweet, innocent boy." She kissed the top of my head. "No one should hate you."

I smirked at her naivety, but then suddenly felt sort of sad.

"I've got something for you, love." Her apron swished as she stood. It was a ragged, stiff cloth she'd been wearing every day for the past nine years. Sometimes I imagined the thing was fused to her skin.

She crossed to her bed and leaned over the rumpled pillow, thin fingers feeling along its stitched seam. My mother had slept alone every night since the one my father left for battle, and though I knew every inch of the four-wall box we lived in well, I tried to keep away from her one place of privacy.

Money, I thought when at last she forced her fingertips inside the pillow. She's been hiding a secret fortune all this time and now it's mine. Oh, how could I have never looked there just once?

My mother withdrew her hand, keeping her fingers clasped tightly over her palm. She had an odd, wistful smile on her face, like she would regret what she was about to do.

No money for me then.

"Here," she whispered, and instead of holding the object out she took my hand and placed the small thing inside, then covered it with my fingers.

I looked down to see a thick-banded bronze ring.

"This belonged to your father," she told me when I showed no reaction.

It was a signet ring, with the family crest engraved in the bronze. Something he would use for identification and signing legal papers. "I don't understand," I said slowly. "Shouldn't it go to Ronan next? He's oldest."

She lowered her eyes, wetting just the edge of her bottom lip before she spoke. "I know that. I've never cared as much for tradition as your father did. But just-" She pulled the ring away and slid it in the inner pocket of my wool vest, the one she'd sewn in herself. "Keep it. What would Ronan do with such a thing? Drop it in a gutter when he's drunk off his arse? Have it picked from his person and melted into a coin?"

"Mama-"

"Listen." She grasped both my hands tightly and looked me in the eye. Hers were light green, like soft grass in a meadow. "None of my boys will ever do anything in their lives. Except one. If someone brings change to this family, it'll be you, son."

I studied the round bump it made through the material of my vest. "I'm not sure what I'd use it for," I murmured.

She had already gotten up and was clearing stew bowls from the table. "Oh, well." There was a twinkle in her eye now. "Then keep it to remember your old Ma when you're living in the home of a King."