Epilogue
The older schoolgirls glanced at each other, sighed with superiority, and then joined hands with the little girls in resignation. Together they all skipped in a wide circle around a column covered with the vining flower once known as moonflowers but now usually called princelings, as all the children sang loudly:
My Prince one;
My Prince two;
My Prince loves
Only, only you.
When the rhyme ended, the girls clapped each other’s hands in the air over their heads and fell backward onto the ground, laughing. Behind the column several meters away their older brothers glanced toward where the girls sprawled on the ground and then returned to practicing combat skills with sticks and quarterstaffs.
At the top of the column stood the statue of a tall young man with a crossbow on his back. The palm of one of his hands enclosed a cane topped by a phoenix, and his other hand rested on the shoulder of another man who sat with a blanket across his legs and a crossbow resting against one of the chair's large wheels. Next to the two men was the statue of an enormous wolfhound, and at the feet of the tall young man stood a statue of a small girl. At the base of the column was a plaque with the word “Forever” etched on it. Next to that was a stone and gurygum bench.
“They fought to save the life of a beautiful princess,” the oldest girl explained to the others with the certain authority of an oldest child. “They both loved the beautiful princess with all their hearts. Every night they would sneak out and plant beautiful white princelings all over this field so she would have a meadow full of her favorite flowers. Each prince wanted her to marry him and not the other prince.”
A gilded carriage stopped at the edge of the park and a footman held the door open, while another assisted the elderly King Seán to disembark. Although the king’s back was straight and true, the old king walked cautiously toward the column using the aid of a gold-inlaid cane topped with a silver phoenix.
The boys hurriedly put away their quarterstaffs and scrambled to collect their sisters. The littlest girl’s brother tossed away the broken tree branch he’d used for sparring, took her arm gently, and urged, “Let’s go, Grace.”
Instead of cooperating, the littlest girl struggled against her brother’s grip, saying, “But I want to hear the end of the story, Robbie. I want to know which prince she married.”
“Hush, Grace. It’s King Seán. You know he likes to visit here. We have to get out of the way,” Robbie admonished, lightly tugging her arm again.
“Behave,” the oldest girl barked, then reached out and pinched Little Grace’s arm until tears welled up in the child’s eyes. “Anyway, I don’t even know which prince the princess chose.”
Little Grace kicked her brother’s shin, causing him to release her arm as he grabbed at his leg. She dashed across the park, skidded to a stop in front of King Seán, bowed clumsily, and said, “Your Majessey, Robbie says our Mama named me after your queen. Robbie says that you waited for your queen a long time.”
“I did, Grace,” King Seán answered kindly as he brushed away the Kings Guards who approached to remove her. “May I call you Little Grace? I’m used to calling the queen Grace.” Little Grace smiled and bobbed her head, so King Seán continued, “We were both children when we first met, and we waited many years until we were grown before we married.”
King Seán reached out and lifted her arm where a vicious red mark had started to swell and asked suspiciously, “How did you injure your arm, Little Grace? That looks as if someone mean pinched you.”
She automatically glanced over her shoulder to where the older girl stood. The king deliberately scowled at the older girl until she squirmed, and then he returned his attention to Little Grace.
“Mama told Robbie that she wanted me to be strong. Like Queen Grace was when she led all the soldiers into battle,” Little Grace said as she hooked a casual hand toward the older boys to indicate that one of them was Robbie. “Did Queen Grace really fight with all the soldiers?”
“Yes, she did,” King Seán agreed, remembering not her long career as a soldier, but how as a child she ran into the blood-soaked arena to save first Alec Mulrian, and then him, and then Holy King Harrison. He smiled to himself and reached under his shirt to pull out a gold chain linked to a small, broken piece of slate with its sharp edge smoothed down. He rubbed it softly with a faraway look in his eyes and then smiled at Little Grace. “She became the Commander of the Royal United Forces.”
As she listened, Little Grace tilted her head and smiled at a pair of faces peeking out of a window in the king’s carriage. She smiled and asked, “Are they your mini-ers? Robbie says that bad scientists hurt people and they became mini-ers. He says they are all very nice people and that we need to be kind because of what happened to them.” She looked at King Seán while she spoke, then shifted her gaze back to the carriage.
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“They are minotaurs, yes, but they don’t belong to me. They are free like you, like Robbie, like everyone else,” the king responded. “Robbie is right. We should always try to be polite and kind to others, especially when they are different from us. The boy is older than you. His name is Reggie 3. The girl is Callie. She is probably close to your age.”
Little Grace waved enthusiastically at the two minotaurs. When they waved back hesitantly, she smiled widely, and her eyes lit up. She gestured behind her and asked, “Did you know the princes on the statue?”
“See the tall one who’s standing?” he replied. He gestured so that she would turn around, and then continued, “That was my brother Jon.”
“Who was prince in the chair with wheels?”
“Alec. They lived in a cottage I had built for them near the castle.”
“What was the doggy’s name? Was she really that big?”
“Fia, and yes, she was that big, and seemed much larger. She was very loving and very loyal.”
“Is the little girl with them a princess like her Mama was?”
“I’ve always thought of her as my princess,” The king responded. “But most people call her Commissioner Holdingfree.”
“Commshhhhonor. Robbie told me about her. He wants her to help our Papa. Robbie says Papa didn’t do anything wrong. The captain did and blamed Papa for it. Now Papa is locked up all alone. Robbie said that she makes sure soldiers in trouble are treated fairly.”
“She does. She is the Royal Commissioner of Military Justice.”
“If she wasn’t a princess, why is she up there with the two princes?”
“Her Mama knew all of us and when her Mama died, we gave her a home with us.”
King Seán held out the palm of his hand, the Kings Guards parted, and a middle-aged woman wearing a uniform with ribbons and medals strolled up to them. Walking beside her was a tall, middle-aged man who resembled King Seán.
“Here is your princess, now,” the king said. “Little Grace, please meet my blessing-daughter, Alannah, and her husband, my nephew Prince Fitzreginald.”
Little Grace looked to King Seán for guidance and when he nodded reassuringly, bowed to Alannah and Prince Fitzreginald. She surprised everyone by saying sympathetically, “You’ll be okay without your Mama. You’ll miss her, but it will be okay. I know it’s hard. My Mama died, too, so Robbie takes care of me. We sleep under the bridge by a Blue Fluttering where butterflies will hatch from underground. The whole world will be all blue and flickery when they are born and fill the sky. I can hardly wait to see it. Have you ever been there?”
“Yes, I have. You live under the bridge?” Alannah asked so she would be certain she understood. She reached out instinctively and smoothed Little Grace’s wayward hair behind the child’s ear.
“Only at night,” Little Grace answered. “During the day we go to lots of different places.”
“Well, today, I would like you to come to my home,” King Seán suggested. “You and Robbie can live with me and Queen Grace. Would you like that?”
“Will I be able to play with Reggie 3 and Callie if I lived there?” she asked as she pulled in her bottom lip and thoughtfully weighed the suggestion.
“Yes, of course,” King Seán replied with a grin. “They visit me often. You could be good friends.”
“Then I would like to very much, yes, thank you,” Little Grace answered. After a moment she added studiously, “I don’t know if Robbie would want to. We have to ask him.”
“We can do that now,” the king said, holding out a hand for her to take so they could stroll to her brother.
“But I haven’t asked you my question yet,” Little Grace objected in frustration.
King Seán chuckled as he thought of the long line of questions she’d already asked, and then said indulgently, “Ask away.”
Little Grace furrowed her brow with serious concern and asked, “Do you know which prince married the princess?”
“Neither of them.”
“Neither of them! But they loved her so much they planted all these beautiful princelings for her.”
“They didn’t. That happened because –” the king looked at the innocence in the child’s face and instead of explaining how the moonflower seeds and plantlets scattered when Jon was nearly dragged to his death in this same field, he offered, “They loved each other, Little Grace. They married each other.”
“They did!” she cried out in surprise. “Oh, that’s wonderful!”
King Seán offered her his hand again and they sauntered to the base of the column where the old king, Alannah, and Fitzreginald sat on the bench to wait while Little Grace ran to get her brother Robbie.
“You need to find out her father’s name and look into his case,” King Seán said to Alannah as he leaned toward her so he could speak privately. “Little Grace says he’s in prison. I can’t imagine why no arrangements were made for them, but they can’t continue living out in the open. I’m ashamed that we would treat a soldier’s children like that.”
As Alannah started to respond, Little Grace came running over shouting, “Robbie says, yes! Yes, of course, he would like to live at your house, Your Majessey. And he says thank you.”
Robbie trailed behind his sister, trying to catch her before she was too forward with the king. Sensing Robbie’s frustration, Seán smiled reassuringly at the boy and then scooched over to let Grace sit next to him. When she was settled, she swung her feet back and forth, smiled at him with wide, bright eyes, and asked, “Would you tell us about the two princes?”
Robbie Cavendish and the other children settled quietly on the grass in front of them. The two minotaur children hurried out of the carriage and Callie squeezed onto the bench next to Little Grace while Robbie gestured for Reggie 3 to sit by him. The Kings Guards positioned themselves into a ring a short distance away.
All of them listened as Seán told them the story of Jon and Alec Holdingfree.
The End
©2022 Vera S Scott