The Frozen World

Deux

"And so culminates this ten-page entry about Alexander. I never saw him again."

Michelle stood up, and stomped the parqueted floor with the heel of her decorated-with-colour-thread-embroidery leather shoes. "But! Uncle! You always leave stories unfinished, it's most irritating."

Little John clapped, still on the carpet and eyeing curiously the journal the older man held. "She was daughter!"

"His daughter you mean, don't you?" Joan picked up her brother and arranged him on her lap, combing his blond curls affectionately. At fourteen, she had plenty of experience with this type of situations. Unless asked enthusiastically about it, uncle Miles would end his every anecdote in an awful cliffhanger. "Who was she uncle? Did she save him? You must know! You cannot not know!"

"Tell us!" Michelle echoed.

"All right, settle, settle." Miles cracked a smile, patting the red curls of the inquisitive nine-year old that had pounced onto the arm of his couch and was now trying to peek at his writings, an always brave endeavour.

"Your cursive is so foul, Uncle!"

"She was Marie's daughter."

"Marie's!" Joan gasped, hugging her brother closer. "Marie Antoinette's older daughter, is that right?"

"Yes, she must have been a ten years of age at that time. Alexander had found her hiding in a corner, crying for her mum. Thinking it was one of the women's daughters he picked her up and set to take her outside but then she whimpered on, 'Marie, I want my mere. Take me to her.' Quite predictably, the men in his company demanded him to kill her..."

"Oh crumbs!" Michelle spat out in a high voice. "Uncle-"

"Sister! Let him finish." Joan warned as she watched the rebellious girl ignore her completely and shake her head, red curls bouncing out of the hairstyle she'd spent all morning carefully arranging for her.

"...he didn't, did he? He can't have!"

"No, dear, he didn't. He refused to on the grounds children cannot be held accountable for their parents doings and so pushed her towards a hallway he heard guards approaching down from. Soon labelled a traitor, an altercation began and they succeeded in stabbing him, his own people... leaving him to bleed out in the open as they scurried to hide." Miles felt his choler rising and so paused to exhale. "He scrambled to reach a window and sat behind those heavy curtains, attempting at some bandage but giving up when seeing he was rapidly losing strength and wouldn't be able to get himself out without help. I came by quite timely, you see. Anyway, the girl was rightly reunited with Marie but, having seen men attack her rescuer she demanded he be found and aided by the physicians that resided with them in the palace...and Marie obliged, sending for hers, who in turn saved his life."

"He survived!"

"Yes, John, he did, love!" Joan cooed at the boy then gazed back at the black-haired man his mother inexplicably called a babbling bore. "I love happy endings. You did know quite a bunch of revolutionary young men back in France, uncle!"

"Wait, actually...how did you know all this?" Michelle folded her arms. "And where were you taken to in the end? I do not understand!"

They wanted me to slaughter her, cold-bloodedly, a defenceless child. And I'd more readily be a corpse than a monster. I have nothing but principles, and I always act according to them, Your Highness.

"Marie..."He felt their eyes all on him, but most acutely a dark pair pricking his nape as if he'd find them there, were he to turn around, just centimetres away and regarding him warily.