by Annie Dyer
“Twenty. He was a few months younger than me.” Lennox moves away slightly from Elise and I see her hand reach out for him.
I shake my head, look at her. She knows because I see the guilty look.
You’re fucking my brother.
You promised you’d never hurt him.
You’ll eat his heart.
She smiles.
“He did well in the army. He’s decorated.” Lennox’s mouth curves, that wide beautiful grin that loves the world and never fears it. “Saved lives. He’ll be good working for you.”
For me. Not for the rest of us. Ben has been assigned to me, replacing my old head of security, Micky, who’s been with me for years, since I was nineteen and at university. He knew all of my habits and foibles, the places I’d hide, the bars I’d go to be normal, the boys I’d bring back to my apartment. He was discreet, never judged and nor did I when I found him with his lovers, always off duty.
If Micky’s eyes wandered to a young man in a club and lingered there, his knuckles would clench and I knew exactly what he’d want to do to him later. The depravity. The sins. The golden moment when pure pleasure streamed through veins and gave more life than oxygen. I’d seen it and felt it, touching a life I could never own in the cold light of reality.
“Micky may come back.”
Lennox nods. “He needs his knee surgery. Then something more strategic while he recovers. Dad’s happy with Ben. And that he knows us.”
Our life. Our complicated little life that never belonged to us. Not truly.
I stand up, stretch, look to the clouds and then the earth. “I’m going to head back. It’s three hours and I have dinner with Leah McClaren tonight.”
“The black widow.” Lennox smiles. “How many husbands?”
“Sensible woman.”
He shakes his head and then his attention is drawn to Elise, her dark hair now loose about her shoulders, draped over her chest. I pretend to ignore them as I pack up my rubbish and stick it in Lennox’s rucksack.
He eyes me and says nothing.
Without the weight on my back I can gallop home, feel the air strike my skin and hear nothing but the sound of the breeze as it whispers around me and the echo of hooves and their rhythmic prayer to the land.
I climb on my horse, make a click and she whinnies, her feet busy. We’re ready.
We always are.
Sixteen years ago.
There is a maze. Hedges and shrubs and flowers run in straight lines the turn at right angles, corner after corner, turning left, right, a crossroads, a decision. A choice. I get to choose each time because there’s no one with me to say no or to advise or to strongly suggest.
Just me.
I run, feeling the muted wind because the height of the trees keeps me sheltered. Somewhere above me there will be a drone, should I get lost or fall or there is someone there who wishes me harm, but I’m not thinking about that, instead I’m thinking about where to go, where to find the centre and what will be there when I find it.
The maze has been out of bounds forever until now. My grandad left it to grow over, never seeing the point of it being tended and preferring to leave it to curl back into the dense forests that crowded the castle. My father has changed it, employing a new gardener, one with ideas and knowledge and a passion for the land or so my mother says.
There’s another corner and a cross roads and I’m sure I’m going in circles but it doesn’t matter because I have weeks of being free from school and work and the teachers who want to drill our heads full of facts and science and I don’t know what else because I’ve forgotten it all.
I’m not thinking about school or my dormitory or Elise and her new best friend. I’m thinking about the hare I can see, skittering through a hole in the shrubbery and the woodpecker I can hear tapping and the hush. The hush of no voices.
There’s a rustle and I stop.
I should be here alone because I know the gardener is on the other side of the palace with his team, tending the flowerbeds for a garden party I might not have to attend.
Again. Leaves whisper too rushed. Too boldly.
Panic starts; the quickened bubbles in the bottom of a pan of boiling water. I freeze.
Laughter – muffled - sounds. A branch shakes and an apple falls, missing my head by an inch.
I make the noise I use as an alarm when Lennox has teased me too much and stomp off and then the bushes move again.
“We’re watching you!”
I hear the laughter in a boy’s voice, a boy that isn’t Lennox. A boy I don’t know. I should run, but I never do what I should.
“Maybe I’m watching you.” My hands perch on my hips. “Maybe I’ll have you locked away in a dungeon.” Because I am a princess and we do have dungeons, although they’re used to store things and not people anymore.
Laughter. Just one person.
“And I know where your balls are and how hard I need to kick you so you can’t pee for a week. Or do other gross things.” My teachers said I was best at learning through experience and I’d learned exactly where to hit Lennox so he didn’t tell mum what I’d been reading.
“That’s no’ fair. Little girls shouldn’t kick lads there.” The bushes rustle some more and a blonde boy with sticks in his hair and a tear in his T-shirt steps out.
He’s older than me and tall, really tall. He’s wider than Lennox but his face looks younger.
I’m staring at him when he reaches out to me and yanks my hair. “Thought that were a wig!”
No one pulls my hair. It’s blonde and long and thick and sometimes it curls and it doesn’t look Scottish so I run after him when he runs away, yelling cuss words and threats and listening to his feet as they hit the earth.
He pauses at corners and peers round, laughing and then running away and I’m laughing too, half-breathless, trying to catch him but he knows the shortcuts and I don’t.
I don’t know the shortcuts because it’s the first time I’ve been in the maze but he’s letting me find him before he runs again. I’m lost, chasing this boy I don’t know who’s as tall as a pine and as yellow haired as the fields in May.
When I see the centre of the maze, I stop. There’s nothing grand like I thought there would be, just a tree. An oak. An English oak.
He stands against it, half panting, half laughing, looking at me.
“Think you can find your way out?”
It’s a challenge. A dare.
“Of course.” I’m not sure I can.
“Before me?”
“Girls are cleverer than boys.” I stick my chin out.
He laughs. “Really.”
“Have you met my brother? Living proof.” I don’t feel bad for Lennox saying that. I get higher marks than him on the same paper and I’m nearly three years younger.
He’s quiet, watching me, trying not to smile.
“Are you the princess?”
“What if I am?”
“I didn’t think princesses would run. I thought you stayed in rooms with the blinds drawn and learned how to play the harp or something fucking stupid like that.”
I blink at the swear word.
“I don’t do anything that’s f… fucking stupid.”
“You’ve never said that word before, have you?”
“Course I have.” I haven’t.
He laughs. “Princess just used a bad word.” His voice is sing-song. “Naughty princess. She said fuck!”
I kick him in the shin. Hard.
He swears again.
I start to run. “I’ll be out of this maze before you. Last to get back to the roses is a loser!”
The clock is striking five before I see him again. I’ve heard him nearby, never too far away until the last half hour or so. Heard his teasing words and I’ve made sure he hears mine back. I’m by the roses first and when I see him appear he looks worried.
“Where were you?”
“Here. I’ve been waiting ages, loser!”
He sha
kes his head, serious. Too serious. “I got out ages ago. Seriously. I went back in the maze to find you.” He is tanned, but I can see the yellow peeling off him. Fear. It’s genuine.
“I didn’t get lost…”
“You must’ve taken a wrong turning near the gargoyles. I thought you knew the short cut…
“What short cut?”
He shakes his head. “Shit. I thought you knew the maze.”
“First time in it today. You didn’t need to look for me though. I’d have been alright.” My balloon of pride has been popped. “I thought I’d won.”
He shrugs, awkward with his lankiness. “You did. You were at the roses first.”
“You don’t need to let me win. You went back in to find me.”
He looks at me funny, serious. “Aye. I’m good at finding things usually. If they’re lost. What’s your name? Apart from ‘princess’?”
I scowl. I hate the title. “Blair. And not Princess Blair. Just Blair. What’s yours?”
“Ben.”
I’ll say the name a lot in the next few years.
In more ways than one.
He never did let me win again.
I dismount my horse and lead her into the stables to rub her down. Later, Elise will bring her mount here and let the stable hands do it, just like I know she’d laugh at me for doing it myself.
You have staff to do that.
Doesn’t mean I can’t do it myself.
She’s never understood why I’d want to do it myself, not when there were people paid to do it for me, but that wasn’t the point. Being able to do things is empowering but not for Elise. Whenever she stayed or even stays now, she makes full use of the staff, always polite, grateful, but she’d never help.
She isn’t the help. She’s practicing the role of a future queen.
The stables are quiet, most of the horses out in the fields. I can hear a few people lingering around, those that are horse-hearted and want to avoid people, those hiding from what awaits them.
I hear voices, familiar ones. A lilt from the Hebrides, soft tones and the memory of grey light. I remember the smell, the musky air of wood on an autumn day and my heart races. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen: I would linger for a look from him, my heart would beat for him to pull my hair again.
“I’m glad you’re back.” Leonard’s voice was gruff.
I step back into the shadows, staying out of sight. I want to see Ben, see how he’s changed, whether he’s in the same piece he was when he left for the army, but he can’t see me. Not yet. Not here.
There’s silence.
“You’re not glad to be back?”
“I’m not used to staying in one place.” His voice is gruffer, deeper. I hear frayed edges and torn cloth.
“You’ll be travelling round with the girl.”
“She isn’t a girl anymore, Dad.” There was a sigh and footsteps.
I move further back, listening, desperate to see.
Before I’d been too young; the three years’ difference between us an impassable chasm. Now the chasm was a different breed: I was royalty. Just not the heir to the throne.
“She isn’t. She’s been a woman for a while and you’ll need to take care of her.”
“And that’s my job.”
I hear the zip of a lighter and the deep sound of inhalation, and then I see him. Ben. He’s wearing fatigues, worn ones, and a black tank that’s tight. I can see the differences between Ben now and the Ben who went away.
My nails are dug into my palms and my chest aches. That hasn’t changed. Ben stands with his arms by his sides, one hand holding his cigarette.
“Job.” Leonard is maybe six inches smaller than Ben but still pokes him in the chest. “She’s your job. Nothing else.”
I see a coldness in Ben’s eyes that I hadn’t noticed before.
“How is she?”
I want to cry. The sixteen-year-old inside me is still very much alive and sobbing into her pillow.
“How do you think? An older version of the girl you left behind. You’ll see her soon enough.”
Ben looks to the skies. “I should’ve stayed away.”
His father smacks his arm lightly. “You’re wrong. You stayed away too long.”
I don’t know which one is correct. And neither does my heart.
Chapter Three
Sleep isn’t peaceful. It’s filled with dreams that make no sense, chopped up film reels of blurred images and events with no endings. Morning hits me with light that’s painful and I recognise the unwelcoming arms of an oncoming migraine.
My room isn’t in a tower, but it does have a balcony that overlooks a loch, the land between the building and the water rugged and wild. I asked for it to never be tended, to be left as it was meant, and my father upheld my request. No one goes to this side of the palace; it’s our private quarters and guests are kept away. Only a handful of friends stay in this part, such as Elise.
A desert has taken residence in my mouth and a light is flashing in the corner of my eye. Whatever I had planned for today will be lost as my head will be fogged and thick in another couple of hours.
Instead of trying to go back to sleep, because that will only worsen what is to come, I grab my dressing gown and wander onto the corridor towards my parents’ lounge. My mother, I know, has gone to Glasgow to visit the new wing of a hospital and a school. Lennox will be a law unto the unknown, and I imagine he has Elise in his bed.
I didn’t see them return from the ride. I didn’t look for them. After Ben walked away with his father, I retreated to my room and let my head walk down a lane that was usually blockaded and loaded with grenades.
The grenades exploded.
“Is that you, Blair?” My father’s voice sounds tired.
I head into their lounge and he’s not there. The room is tidy, cushions plumped and not discarded. Next to their lounge is a spare bedroom, used if one of them returns late or if my mother wants to read in bed and not disturb my father. I walk in, not expecting him to be in bed, but he is and he looks pale, a fragility I haven’t seen before is soaked into his skin.
“You don’t look well.”
He laughs and it sounds broken.
“It’s been a bit busy recently - America. It’s just catching up with me. A few days off will do the trick.”
I sit down on the side of the bed. He’s buried into his pillows, his face almost as white as them.
“Is the doctor coming?”
“She’s been already. It’s fine, Blair. Don’t worry.”
“Do you want tea? Coffee? Breakfast?” I want to look after him. My father has always been a rock for us all. We were lucky; our parents were never cold or disinterested.
He smiles and shakes his head. “Not yet. In another hour or so.” He puts his hand on my forearm and gently rubs it. “You don’t need to worry. Everything’s fine. How was your ride yesterday?”
I nod. “Good. I forget how much I like being outdoors and not having to talk to people.”
He smiles. “You didn’t talk to your brother and Elise?”
“I rode back without them. I think they wanted some time to themselves.”
My father isn’t a stupid man. He’s known what has been happening between Lennox and my friend for years, he just chooses not to interfere because that would probably make my brother propose.
“Better he’s riding with Elise than a lot of other women he could have.”
His words aren’t lost on me.
I shake my head, my hair loosening from the tie it was in. “I’m not sure.”
My father doesn’t say anything, which translates as that he isn’t going to interfere because it’s not worth it.
“Ben starts today.”
I nod. I don’t especially want to talk about Ben. My dreams have left me feeling raw, the scab on an old unhealed wound has been knocked off.
“Is mum still having the garden party?” There was a tenuous connection.
One that made my fa
ther smile. “You know he applied for the job?”
We are still talking about Ben.
“I assumed he’d been asked to take it.”
My father shakes his head. “It was common knowledge that Micky needed to retire. Ben contacted Murray and asked how he could apply.”
Murray is my father’s secretary and the real ruler of the country. He quietly makes everything work and run smoothly. I know he has a wicked temper and I also know he has a penchant for kink.
My mother once told me that everything is fuelled by either money or sex, because both lead to power.
She’s very rarely wrong.
“And he got the job.”
My father nods. “He was the best candidate. And you know him.”
“So he was appointed with me in mind.”
This surprises me. I had thought that someone from my father’s security team would step over, someone who already knew the procedures and the gaps.
“He’s young. Better for you when you go on vacation. And you used to get along. I’m worried you’re lonely, Blair.”
I see more pain in his eyes now than when I’d first come into the room. He was pale and tired before, but now he looks anxious because he thinks I’m lonely.
“I’m happy as I am, Dad.” This is the truth. My life isn’t one I would’ve chosen, but I cannot choose not to have it.
“You should be having more fun. Don’t do as many engagements. Travel more. Take a year or two out and see the world. Get away from here.” There’s anger in his voice. He knows something more than I’m aware of.
“I can’t leave you and mum and Lennox. Especially not Lennox.”
Some may have felt jealously for not being the first born and not being in line to succeed. I feel guilt because as much as I haven’t chosen this life, neither has Lennox and his head must eventually wear a heavy crown.
“Blair…” He shakes his head and there are details he can’t tell me.
“Tell me about Ben.” The words will lighten him. He liked Ben. Ben was the boy he would’ve wanted Lennox to be, had our grandfather not been who he was. “What has he been up to while he’s been away?”
“Fighting.” My father’s eyes see something that isn’t in this room. He was in the army, only briefly, before his father became king in the newly liberated Scotland. “He saved people. He’s brave.”
