The Hidden Past

THE ARRANGEMENT

Nicholas

     “Nicholas” my mother’s voice rang. I groaned in frustration as I tried to silence her voice by a pillow against my ear. I had stayed up till ungodly hours last night and I was too exhausted to be up this early. I heard my mother sigh as I heard her footsteps. Suddenly the room was filled with light as she opened the window. By this point I knew I had to wake up but my body kept furrowing deeper into the mattress. The next time I heard my mothers voice she was much closer as if she was standing right next to me “if you don’t wake up, I will ask the maids to fetch me water and I will dump it on you” she said. I knew my mother I also knew she would do it. Sighing I sat up in bed “good” she stated as she crossed her arms Infront of her. “Mother, I know the kingdom will be fine If I slept in once in a while, I don’t know why you insist on waking me up like a rooster each and every morning”. If looks   could kill I would have been buried already. “If you don’t fix it now your habit as a prince will follow you when you become king.” Walking away from me she added “god knows where this behavior came from all of a sudden, a few months ago you didn’t even need to be woken up”. I lulled my head backwards taking in a deep breath I was too exhausted to argue with her this early in the morning.

     When I looked back again my gaze collided with one of the maids standing in front of me. Her head was bowed down but her eyes were looking straight at me. When our eyes met, hers widened a bit and she smiled looking at me or more like she smirked at me. I knew what was going on in her head and all of the other maids. She thought I was just like my father chasing the maids and bringing them to my bed. She thought I was enjoying the company of one of them and that is why I didn’t want to wake early in the morning just like my father. It disgusted me the fact that any of them were thinking that. My father is a great king, a good father and one might say a good husband if he stopped chasing women and stayed loyal to my mother. But he wasn’t and he didn’t have enough decency to keep it a secret either and everybody knew that. You don’t bring your wife around my father or your mother or your sister or your daughter. Even though I never indulged myself in such things and even more recently due to a girl with black hair and green eyes.

     When the memory of her came to mind and how brightly she smiled at me last night when I gave her the book she wanted. a smile crept in to my lips and without knowing it I was grinning like an idiot.

After I gave her “the curse of the queen” one of my favorite books, she asked me to bring her more books about it and when I gave it to her last night the smile, she gave me would have cured any illness in the world. My thought was drifting away from the present and swimming in the past when I heard my mother say “stop grinning like an idiot and get of the bed and take a bath” then she turned and looked at the maid and said “and you stop staring at my son like he is desert you want to sink your claws into and prepare his bath” she practically screamed the last words. My mother hated it when even the maids gave me their attention and I knew why. She didn’t want me to turn like my father.

     With that order the maid scrambled away to do my mother’s bidding. my mother turned to me “take a bath and come to the dining room, your father wants to talk to you so make haste” and with that she was out of the room. I really wanted to lay back and sleep but I knew that if my father wanted to talk to me, it is probably something important like marriage may be, God knows they both have been hinting at it for months now.

     The maids came back prepared my bath and scattered out the room as quick as they entered. I took a bath, changed my cloth and when I opened the door Henry was standing there. “Finally,” he breathed when he saw me “I was wondering if you drowned in your enormous bath tub or something” he joked. “It would have been much preferred than being greeted by your face at such early hours of the morning” I retorted. He chuckled as he walked beside me “though I highly doubt you would want to wake up to any face except one”. It was my turn to chuckle because he was right there is only one face I would want to see in the morning or even ever and there was only one voice I wanted to hear but even a prince can’t have everything he wants.