Masked Prince - Nikolai Andrew Page 0,50
to me, who had the fish-shaped tattoo of a smuggler on his hair-covered wrist, asked, “What do you think about it all, lass?”
I looked up at him. One of his eyes was clouded over like a hazy blue sky.
“I… I’m just a milkmaid. I know nothing of princes.” A lump in my throat stopped me from saying more.
Wherever Randal was, I hoped he was safe. And if he was safe, I prayed he was coming to help me—to help all of us.
“And I’m just an old man. Doesn’t mean I don’t have an opinion or a story of my own,” he said, blinking his old eyes patiently, and rubbing his arthritic fingers. “Tell me, how did you end up here? Hard to imagine what a milkmaid did to wrong the queen.”
It was as if the close, heavy air of the dungeon had slowed my thoughts. It had taken hours for me to stop trembling, and now it felt as though talking itself required more strength than I had.
“My father,” I said. “The queen’s men killed my father.”
“I’m sorry to hear it,” he said, with a grandfatherly pat on the back of my hand.
It was enough to stop the conversation, and I was thankful. I turned my attention again to those who surrounded us, but conversation went again and again to the bastard son. Everyone knew something about him. Or thought they did. Many of the prisoners expressed the very fears that I had long heard, that the prince was a monster, a horror.
But a servant woman who had been at the banquet said she had been there for the unveiling of the masked prince. He looked a lot like the carpenter who had helped during the floods, she said. Was it the same man, everybody wondered? Could it be? Could that monster that everybody feared actually be a kindly man who they all knew so well already?
It’s true, I said to myself, willing the rest of them to come to the same realization. But the old, cruel rumors were stronger than this new hope. It couldn’t be, they said.
“The bastard prince’s hands are so disfigured, he can’t even feed himself,” said a lady with dark kohl eyes and henna-red hair. A prostitute, I guessed. She was pretty, but it seemed to me she’d once been even prettier. She was haunted by it, soured by it. I could tell from the ripple of wrinkles above her upper lip.
Others in the dungeon agreed. More monstrous rumors flew around. It was clear to me how it had happened, how he’d become this prince of demons. People loved to feel the zinging quiver of fear. As I now knew better than I ever had before.
I couldn’t stand the rumors any longer. I had to speak. I had to put things right.
“It’s him,” I said, my voice creaky because it had been so long since I’d spoken aloud, and shaky with emotion. “He helped at my family farm once. I saw him today in the hall. It’s the same man. He is to be our king.”
Joy peeked through the misery then. But only for an instant. Even if it were true, they all agreed, it wouldn’t help our situation down here. The queen, they said, would stop at nothing to prevent Randal from taking the crown.
“It’s true enough,” muttered the old man next to me. “Just think of what she did to him as a child.”
I looked up at him once again.
He stared down at his lap, shaking his head. “Imagine burning a baby boy. It’s the work of the Devil come to life.”
“What?”
The old man was close to tears. “Aye, burned him alive, just weeks after his poor mother was put in the ground.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The scars Randal bore on his body...they had been there since he was a baby? And the suggestion that the queen herself had ordered such a horrific end for her stepson, bastard or not...
“How do you know?” I asked.
He took a deep breath, blowing it out heavily through his nose. “Lass, I’ve carried that secret with me since the day it happened.”
I had to know. I simply had to. I pressed my hand to his arm. “Please. I need to know.”
Nodding slowly, he blinked a few times. “Suppose it doesn’t much matter now, seeing where I’ve ended up and how unlikely it is that we’ll ever see outside this prison cell again.” His eyes were damp. “I’m a smuggler as you can see,” he