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Nicolo shook his head. “No. If anyone has designs on your throne, I believe it’s your sister and her husband’s too scared of her not to do as she says.” Then he frowned with a shrug of his very broad shoulders. “Can’t say I blame him.”
Balduin had a strange look on his face, one that appeared placid and yet, his eyes burned. “His fear will land him on a scaffold if he’s not careful.”
***
My duties as a squire didn’t include attending Nicolo at dinner—some other maid would be smiling and flashing her breasts at him tonight—so I retired to my new and very much improved quarters.
I’d hoped to be close to Nicolo, or at least in the Prince’s Tower, but no such luck. Nicolo found safety in solitude, and the room I now occupied was in the Lay House, a long building adjacent to the chapel where various guests and dignitaries stayed. It was not usual for a squire to be roomed there, but I was the only woman in that role, or in any comparable one, and Nicolo was oddly protective about placing me alongside so many men.
It was a setback to find I was physically no closer to the locked room where Nicolo slept, alone behind boarded windows and with a knife under his pillow (or at least Balduin joked with him about as much), but today had still been a huge step forward, and my difficult assignment had never seemed more achievable.
‘The more you know about your target, the better,’ the words of Master Sharif came back to me. I certainly knew more than I had a few days ago, and had learned a little more before Nicolo went off to Hazel’s dinner.
Before we’d gone our separate ways, Nicolo had given me a tour of my new living facility and, along the way, I’d decided to ask him a question which had been plaguing me since the day before.
“Master,” I spoke in a quiet voice, “may I ask you a question?”
He looked at me and gave me a clipped nod. “You may.”
“Do you always let the prince win in all your games and physical activities?” I was pretty sure my guess was right.
Nicolo’s face didn’t change as he replied. “Charlotte, if you ask questions like that, I will have you thrashed before ripping you of your title of squire and sending you back to the kitchens.”
“My apologies.”
It was a curious relationship that existed between the two men; very competitive and yet not very competitive; both appearing as equals and yet so imbalanced. Balduin would always be the social superior, yet he pretended not to be, and Nicolo was clearly the superior athlete, yet pretended not to be. Did Balduin realize as much? Did he understand that Nicolo swayed each game and deferred to Balduin in the end? And why would Nicolo do such a thing? Was Nicolo simply being a good friend or was he afraid of Balduin? Or was there some other explanation at play?
I could certainly understand how one could be afraid of the prince because Balduin’s moods were constantly changing. It wasn’t out of the realm of believability for him to be quite pleased one moment and speaking daggers the next.
As I lay on the comfortable bed, staring at the ceiling, my mind suddenly took me back to the maids’ dormitory and that curious piece of graffiti on the wall, the two vertical lines, Nicolo’s longer than Balduin’s. I realized now what that graffiti was—a measure of each man’s cock.
I had to laugh to myself as I wondered how in the world I could have been so naïve as not to know at first? As I started to think about the fact that Nicolo was more gifted in the manhood category, it began to make more sense to me as to why Nicolo always allowed the prince to win. Most inter-male competitions were simply polite substitutes for both men dropping their trousers and pulling out a ruler to measure their rather awkward appendage of flesh.
And no matter how many races Balduin won, no matter how many times he wrestled his friend to the ground, Nicolo would always have that extra finger-length. I couldn’t help but laugh to myself.
***
Being a squire wasn’t simply about passing towels and watching half-naked men wrestle. And being Master Nicolo wasn’t all about childsitting the heir to the throne and allowing him always to be the victor. Nicolo’s ‘job’ was essentially to be alive. That was it. To be alive and in the vicinity of Balduin, no doubt owing to Balduin’s sickness which appeared whenever Nicolo wasn’t in the vicinity—according to lore, anyway.
But Nicolo had carved out a role for himself in Balduin’s court by picking up the slack for his closest friend, who had no interest in affairs of court (unless those ‘affairs’ involved married ladies). Thus, Nicolo attended the meetings for which Balduin had no interest. Regarding those meetings which the prince couldn’t avoid, Nicolo paid attention while Balduin daydreamed—no doubt about heaving breasts and high, firm asses.
And, all the while, I sat alongside Nicolo and the prince and simply watched, absorbing as much information as I could.
“The prince believes the situation will defuse itself, provided we don’t take a heavy-handed approach,” Nicolo announced during one such meeting.
“But…”
“You would be well-advised not to question the prince.”
The noble on the other side of the table, who outranked Nicolo by an almost infinite number of rungs, could only sweat and bluster and mutter something about wanting to see the prince himself.
“Charlotte, show the man out.”
Whether or not Nicolo enjoyed this work was hard to say, but I swiftly realized he wasgoodat it. Master Nicolo certainly had a handle on court politics.
“Why can’t I sit next to her?” Balduin whined after the meeting as Nicolo stared at a seating chart for the next meeting at hand. “She’s damned pretty.”
Nicolo regarded the prince with a frown. “Her husband thinks so too, and his brother is the big noise in grain production in Kirkfield.”
