Nobody's Child (complete)

Chapter 17 - Somebody's Child

Chapter 17 - Somebody's Child ©2018CarolynAnnAish 

King Branden brushed aside his wife's and mother's urgings that he should take time out to eat his evening meal. Instead, the king demanded his wife tell him about her time with the boy in the Octagon house.

He listened with forced patience to her halting narration. Though moved by her description of the encounter; the boy's tearful recognition; naming her 'Moma-Bee', the king kept his confused, humiliated feelings hidden. When he asked her if she was keeping something back, she was tearful and withdrawn; her body-language reinforcing that she had not told him everything.

Dropping to sit on a couch in his wife's sitting room, the king stared across at his mother, who remained silent. Her face was unreadable but he knew she was expert at concealing her feelings.

The grandmother, in turn, knew her son was unreasonable when in an ill temper, thus she kept her peace.

"Did you ever, even just once, tell anyone the secret of the tunnels?" The king asked his wife, watching her facial reactions intently.

Queen Beatrice couldn't hide her inner turmoil. A look of pain furrowed her fair brow. She didn't want to admit her disobedience to his commands. The years had hidden this deep in her mind and emotions.

"You have. I knew it! Was it Herbert?" the king asked, still believing Boy to be an impostor.

"No! I'd never have told him." She flung herself to kneel at his feet, confessing, "One day I went through the maze, with our son —he was not yet four years old —we reached the Octagon house —you'll remember, my lord, I told you back then. Against your wishes, I let him walk bare-foot; he's cut his foot which bled badly. You commanded the doctor to stitch it when you saw it, remember, it was cut right through, between his big toe and the next, his left foot..."

The king froze at her words, realizing that right here, was their answer. Thawing, he said, eagerly, "Yes, he had five stitches; three underneath and two on the top; they almost joined the two toes. He will still have the scar! It was ugly with thick scar tissue. Clarence had stitched it..." Locked in recollections, he wondered how he could have forgotten; it had been a great drama at the time.

His thoughts returned to the problem of the tunnels as he drew his queen to her feet asking, "What has his foot got to do with my question?"

"I... it bled a lot. I was worried and knew I must take him back to the palace in haste to have it tended. Instead of going the long way through the maze, I opened the steps and carried him up, along the tunnel." She looked away, admitting, "You made me promise never to tell him and I was afraid. But I did not actually, 'tell' him —he saw me do it. Later, he asked about 'the short way back' and I told him it was to be our secret, that you would show him when he was older, but for then, he was to forget about it and pretend he never knew. You were too concerned about his foot to ask how we got from the Octagon to the palace..." The queen, twisting her fingers together, looked back at her husband, saying, "One day, while we were in the house there, he was in a mischievous mood. He... he disappeared. I searched for him in the maze, then I wondered about the steps. I found that he'd gone into the tunnel by himself. After that, I showed him how to work the mechanisms so he wouldn't get stuck again —but it was our secret."

"And the archway —in the courtyard? The entrance to the passage which comes up here, to your quarters?" the king asked.

"Oh," the queen said, remembering.

"Oh? Is that all you can say?" The king's voice was more subdued; his anger with his wife was mingling now with concern for the boy. Due to her revelations combined with the boy's answers regarding the tunnels, he might, in truth, be his son. "You can't use his foot twice! You disobeyed me, Beatrice! And —did you show him how to enter the tunnel from the arch?"