The Singe Rigmarole [ON HOLD]

Léo - The Forgotten

The King and my mother, a chambermaid, met during the fall. Soon enough, they met regularly and the other chamber maids and servants had their salaries doubled to keep their mouths shut.

My mother was executed after I was born, to cancel out all suspicions that the King had an affair with a chamber maid. I heard they took her out to sea, throwing her in a bay where water-nymphs were known to eat only the flesh off their victims. Later on, he brought me to the palace, telling his Queen that he found me abandoned in a brambles bush and suggesting that I was taken care of because of my misfortune. To make it seem truthful, the King threw me in a brambles bush then picked me up again just to prove it so.

Because of this little lie, I was never able to address the King as my father, my dad or my parent. Instead, I was made a servant and had to call him by official titles. T’was a shame. What I did not mind is that I was invited to go travelling with him and his “actual son”, my ape of a half-brother, Olivier. It was mostly great, even if I was just a servant.  

Olivier knew the truth about me. How I came to be – how I came to arrive unexpectedly. The King always confided in him more than his wife or any of the other important busy-bodies around. Olivier was six when I came to live in the palace. He was kind and gracious – just like real royalty should be. However, at eleven, he knew that the King and my mother soiled his bedroom while making me. Disgruntled with me, he’d pommel me into the manure at the stables four times a week – double that on my birthday.

Since then, we’ve never been close to having a peaceful bond.

Apart from the truth of my existence, I guess it’s also because of that one time.

I was eight and he was fourteen. He was about to become a man with this girl with one dimple and I disturbed them. During that time, the palace artist told me to fetch Olivier for his fifth portrait sitting that week. I ran into his bedroom, obediently repeating the artist’s instructions. The girl with one dimple stared at me with soft eyes, grinning at me. She then walked up to me and picked me up, saying how cute I was. Feeling adored, I told the girl that my half-brother sweated a lot when he wanted something. The smile on her face vanished and she put me down. The girl with the one dimple slapped Olivier really hard in the face, turned on her heel and left. The hours that followed were terrible for me – hung by my ankles above the palace moat.

I was small. How was I meant to know?

Olivier is just a self-righteous git.

That chump assumes he can get away with it all. He’s egotistical and isn’t all that attractive. I’m the offspring who should have the crown. I have refined features like my thick eyebrows; people can take me seriously because of them. But how? Olivier is always there, always here while I just stand in his shadow, staring at my feet, hoping that he’ll drop to the ground with scarlet fever and gonorrhoea. Stupid manwhore. Always taking away the girls, even if they fancied me first.

Now, he’s gone through the gates, attempting to kill my best friend, Eloi. Eloi was always considerate towards me and on Mondays, we had joke contests. But Olivier is ridiculously stupid. I’ve managed to slip Eloi the keys. They are the most common kinds of keys used in the kingdom and one of them is bound to open up that cage. When Olivier realises this, he’ll be more of a laughing stock than he already is.

The kingdom’s nobility have all been overthrown. The King and Queen have hidden themselves in a place unknown to me. I just know that they took large sacks of fruit, including the pears. So angry at them.

But not as angry as I am at Olivier.

I’ll be mightier than him when he returns because I have something he doesn’t.

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