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“I wasn’t sleeping, Majesty.”
She chuckled at that. “It seems you and I suffer the same maladies, do we not? Sleeplessness.”
“How have you been?” asked Nicolo, as he stood up and took the queen’s hand to help her walk back to her bed.
“I survive,” the elderly monarch replied. “No one is more surprised by this than I.”
“You’ll outlive us all.”
“I rather doubt that.” With Nicolo’s help, the queen sat upon her bed and Nicolo arranged the blankets across her lap. “The aches and pains get worse. I remember my own grandfather losing his mind at the end. I remember thinking: what a horror that must be. Now I wonder. My mind stays sharp yet trapped in this deteriorating body. Old age can be cruel, little Nicky.” She shook her head as she looked at him with a sweet expression. She cared about Nicolo, truly. “I’m twenty years older than my grandfather was when his mind went. Now… there’s a thing.”
“Well, I hope we’ve got you for a while longer yet.” There was such affection in his voice, as if he were speaking to his own grandmother.
“You were always a sweet child.” The Old Queen reached up to rub his cheek. “I suppose none of us know when the end will come. I’m surprised to wake up every morning. But I know it cannot be long now.” She paused.
“Your Majesty?”
“I did ask you here to thank you for your recent service,” the queen began. “Then I realized I had more to say and should say it while I still can.” Her eyes were small and red rimmed but still sharp as pinpricks as she turned them on Nicolo.
“Mine has been a long reign, and an eventful one. There are things I have achieved of which I am proud and some which I regret but which I would do again because they were the right thing to do. There are things I would have done which remain undone and now, I fear, will not be accomplished within my lifetime—that is the way of life, you will learn; it always feels incomplete. But there are also things of which I am ashamed, Nicolo, things I did for the wrong reasons or things I just got wrong.”
“We all make mistakes,” he started but she shook her head and exhaled a wistful breath.
“I like to hope that I always had in mind the best interests of the kingdom, of the Gath and of the royal family, but sometimes my focus on those concerns, or even on myself, led me to make mistakes, and I’m now powerless to change those mistakes, so can only regret them. And apologize.” She leaned forward. “You are the worst of those mistakes.”
Nicolo frowned. “I… don’t understand, Majesty.”
She nodded. “I feel a dagger to my heart whenever I look at you, Nicolo. And I am glad of it, because Ishouldsuffer for what I did.”
“Majesty?”
The queen sighed. “I took you from your mother, and though I did so to save another child, my grandson, it was a cruel and selfish act. I could have brought your mother along as well, but I feared because I didn’t understand what she was. Not that I understand it any better today, mind.”
“What she was?” Nicolo repeated, shaking his head in obvious misunderstanding.
The Old Queen nodded. “I wanted and needed you to be under my control, Nicolo.” A faint and wistful smile moved her face. “Perhaps I liked you too well. You were a bright boy even then, running in the sunshine. And you seemed to bring the sunshine with you. I was never a good mother to my own children, but I never felt more maternal than watching you play in the gardens.” Her head dropped. “But I robbed your mother of that joy, and I robbed you of her.” She breathed out deeply. “And I robbed you of the understanding of what you are.”
“What I am?” he shook his head. “You keep referring to such a subject and I must admit, Majesty, I don’t understand.”
“Of course, you don’t because you don’t know. And I will get to that part… in just a moment.”
Was it my imagination or were there tears in her eyes?
“First, I must get the rest of this off my chest. I must make you understand how sorry I am for the mistakes I have made.”
Nicolo knelt beside her. “I always loved you.”
The Old Queen shook her head. “No. You will not remember now, but you hated me when you first arrived and cried yourself to sleep each night. You came around, forced yourself to forget. And then you made yourself over in the image of your new friend.” She stared at Nicolo, almost distraught. “By the Great God, what did we turn you into?”
“Turn me into?”
“I did it for the succession,” the queen continued, almost talking to herself now. “It seemed the only way. Now I wonder if it would have been better to let that boy die.”
“You don’t mean that.”
The queen half-smiled. “You don’t see it now. I hope you will before it’s too late. Or perhaps there isn’t enough of that sweet young boy left to see so clearly.” Again, the head dropped. “What did we make you into? How did we turn that loving child into what you are now?”
Nicolo looked hurt, an expression I’d never seen on his face before. “Majesty, have I done something to…”
