Even after we race back through the palace as fast as our legs would carry us we still show up at the "surprise" fest twenty minutes late. As we are announced I can feel the scolding eyes of the King and Queen, I don't look up but rather around at the huge dining hall were everyone is seated, hundreds of courters, and thousands of commoners who are piled in the rooms above, watching the court eat, waiting until we are through with the fifty course fest so they can go around back and buy the scraps off our plates, for prices usually ungodly. Kyle and James walk on either side of me as we stride quickly to our sits; the servant outside the doors have explained to me that since it was a fest for my honor that I am to sit at the high table with the royal family. Meaning that the King and Queen would be an easy reach to scold us for being late on my first night back. Hopefully we were fashionably late and not embarrassingly late.
"Glade to see that you three have graced us with your presents." The Queen says bluntly as we rise from our bows and curtsies.
"And it starts again, the sneaking off, the trouble, the giggling at mass, the late nights in one of your rooms, singing and stumbling about like drunkards!" the King gasps, holding his chest like it was a physical blow to think about what might come off with all three of us together again.
"I am stun and most humble for the surprise your Graces." I try, my smile stretched, face white and eyes casted. The boys and I walk silently to our seats next to the King and Queen, Kyle sits at the king's left, James at the Queen's left and I at James’s side. I am glade not to be directly side by side at the scolding two.
The King rises, the hushed whispers fall to complete silent. "Now that the Princes and Mistress AnaRose have graced us with their company, let us welcome back our little AnaRose court, and may God have mercy on us as they continue to make me old and gray haired!" A ripple of half suppressed laughter rings throughout the court. At the kings raised hand the servants come and put in front of us the finest dishes in the entire kingdom. Delicate meats, breads cheese, fruits sliced and stuffed into meats, meats stuffed into other meats, stuffed into vision. I realize that besides the half loaf of bread and apple that I had this morning on the boat I haven’t eaten a single thing.
I eat a little of everything set in front of me, soon my mouth is over filled with sweet and spicy dishes and meats. Almost drunk with the taste I lazily send the dishes that I’ve picked at to the other tables, to the King's favorites, council or men, to the Queen's maids and ladies in waiting, to ambassadors and others at court. After ten minutes or so of scolding eyes from the King and Queen's faces they break and start to talk. The King striking a conversation up with Kyle about battle tactics and weather the Moors are a problem in Africa, the Queen turns to me and smiles gently.
"What do you think AnaRose?" the Queen asks sweetly, as she dips her fingertips into a bowel full of rose water. I follow suit as the servants take the courses away and place new and more mouthwatering ones in front of us. I can already feel my stomacher getting tighter and tighter.
"It is truly wonderful your Majesty the Queen. I hadn't any idea! I beg your pardon for being so late to the fest, time slipped away before we knew it." The boys have always left it up to me to apologize, and I couldn't blame them, who else but I have big green eyes that can easily fill with tears, and a lips that can pout or tremble at a moment’s notice, and a voice that is honey sweet and wavers with fear or sincerity? Surely not Kyle and James have crocked smiles and eyes that gleam with mischief and wrong doing.
"You three are quite forgiven; just don't let it happen again...at least not this week if your three can help it." James and I exchange a quick sideways grin.
