AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It’s a news report from the BBC, and the sound is off, but Alex reads the scroll at the bottom of the screen:WORLDWIDE SUPPORT POURS IN FOR PRINCE HENRY AND FIRST SON OF US.
The room falls silent at the images on the screen. A rally in New York outside the Beekman, decked out in rainbows, with waving signs that say things like:FIRST SON OF OUR HEARTS. A banner on the side of a bridge in Paris that reads:HENRY+ALEX WERE HERE. A hasty mural on a wall in Mexico City of Alex’s face in blue, purple, and pink, a crown on his head. A herd of people in Hyde Park with rainbow Union Jacks and Henry’s face ripped out of magazines and pasted onto poster boards reading:FREE HENRY. A young woman with a buzz cut throwing two fingers up at the windows of theDaily Mail.A crowd of teenagers in front of the White House, wearing homemade T-shirts that all say the same thing in crooked Sharpie letters, a phrase he recognizes from one of his own emails:HISTORY, HUH?
Alex tries to swallow, but he can’t. He looks up, and Henry is looking back at him, mouth open, eyes wet.
Princess Catherine turns and crosses the room slowly, toward the tall windows on the east side of the room.
“Catherine, don’t—” the queen says, but Catherine grabs the heavy curtains with both hands and throws them open.
A burst of sunlight and color pushes the air out of the room. Down on the mall in front of Buckingham Palace, there’s a mass of people with banners, signs, American flags, Union Jacks, pride pennants streaming over their heads. It’s not as big as the royal wedding crowd, but it’s huge, filling up the pavement and pressed up to the gates. Alex and Henry were told to come in through the back of the palace—they never saw it.
Henry has carefully approached the window, and Alex watches from across the room as he reaches out and grazes his fingertips against the glass.
Catherine turns to him and says on a shaky sigh, “Oh, my love,” and pulls him into her chest somehow, even though he’s nearly a foot taller. Alex has to look away—even after everything, this feels too private for him to witness.
The queen clears her throat.
“This is… hardly representative of how the country as a whole will respond,” she says.
“JesusChrist,Mum,” Catherine says, releasing Henry and nudging him behind her on protective reflex.
“This is precisely why I didn’t want you to see. You’re too softhearted to accept the truth, Catherine, given any other option. The majority of this country still wants the ways of old.”
Catherine draws herself up, her posture ramrod straight as she approaches the table again. It’s a product of royal breeding, but it comes off more like a bow being drawn. “Of course they do, Mum. Of course the bloody Tories in Kensington and the Brexit fools don’t want it. That’s not thepoint.Are you so determined to believe nothing could change? That nothingshouldchange? We can have a real legacy here, of hope, and love, andchange.Not the same tepid shite and drudgery we’ve been selling since World War II—”
“You will not speak to me this way,” Queen Mary says icily, one tremulous, ancient hand still resting on her teaspoon.
“I’m sixty years old, Mum,” Catherine says. “Can’t we eschew decorum at this point?”
“No respect. Never an ounce of respect for thesanctity—”
“Or, perhaps I should bring some of my concerns to Parliament?” Catherine says, leaning in to lower her voice right in Queen Mary’s face. Alex recognizes the glint in her eyes. He never knew—he always assumed Henry got it from his dad. “You know, I do think Labour is rather finished with the old guard. I wonder, if I were to mention those meetings you keep forgetting about, or the names of countries you can’t quite keep straight, if they might decide that forty-seven is perhaps enough years for the people of Britain to expect you to serve?”
The tremor in the queen’s hand has doubled, but her jaw is steely. The room is deadly silent. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Wouldn’t I, Mum? Would you like to find out?”
Catherine turns to face Henry, and Alex is surprised to see tears on her face.
“I’m sorry, Henry,” she says. “I’ve failed you. I’ve failed all of you. You needed your mum, and I wasn’t there. And I was so frightened that I started to think maybe it was for the best, to let you all be kept behind glass.” She turns back to her mother. “Look at them, Mum. They’re not props of a legacy. They’re mychildren.And I swear on my life, andArthur’s,I will take you off the throne before I will let them feel the things you made me feel.”
The room hangs in suspense for a few agonizing seconds, then:
“I still don’t think—” Philip begins, but Bea seizes the pot of tea from the center of the table and dumps it into his lap.
“Oh, I’mterriblysorry, Pip!” she says, grabbing him by the shoulders and shoving him, sputtering and yelping, toward the door. “Sodreadfullyclumsy. You know, I think all thatcocaineI did must have really done a job on my reflexes! Let’s go get you cleaned up, shall we?”
She heaves him out, throwing Henry a thumbs-up over her shoulder, and shuts the door behind them.
The queen looks over at Alex and Henry, and Alex sees it in her eyes at last: She’s afraid of them. She’s afraid of the threat they pose to the perfect Faberge veneer she’s spent her whole life maintaining. Theyterrifyher.
And Catherine isn’t backing down.
“Well,” Queen Mary says. “I suppose. I suppose you don’t leave me much choice, do you?”
“Oh, you have a choice, Mum,” Catherine says. “You’ve always had a choice. Perhaps today you’ll make the right one.”
In the corridor of Buckingham Palace, as soon as the door has shut behind them, they fall sideways into a tapestry on a wall, breathless and delirious and laughing, cheeks wet. Henry pulls Alex close and kisses him, whispers, “I love you I love you I love you,” and it doesn’t matter, itdoesn’t matterif anyone sees.
