IP: 82.19.140.112
Posted on March 3, 2014 at 06:34:56 AM by arthur
 Finally his resolve broke. Arthur jumped off the table on which he had been sitting and stomped across the room. He threw open the door to a narrow staircase secreted away behind one of the room’s oak panels. The king did not look back, and nobody made to follow him. The steps terminated not too far from his chambers, but his mind was not focused on where he was stepping. That he found him way to his intended destination at all was fortunate, his feet carrying him automatically along the familiar corridors until he found himself outside his door. He was almost surprised to see it, but he managed to slip the key into the lock and step inside. Arthur’s rooms had two doors, one which opened directly into his bed chamber, and another that opened into his living quarters where comfy chairs were positioned around a great fireplace. Leading off the larger rooms were a bathroom and a small study, more private and secluded than his office on the floor below. The king threw himself down on the bed, but he did not remove his boots. Such mundane tasks had become irrelevant as his mind continued its musings which seemed to grow darker with each passing hour. Each unpleasant thought resulted in him trying to distract himself with artificial ideas of hope. They lead, inevitable to feelings of guilt and a worse worry than before. Arthur didn’t know what to do. He wanted to remain in silent seclusion, but he didn’t want to be alone...no, all he wanted was his son. Had he sinned so badly in his life that God would not allow him that one solitary comfort? Staring up at the canopy of his bed, Arthur’s fingers found his rosary beads at his belt. The silver cross pressed against his palm, and his finger tips caressed the smooth wood of the charms themselves as his mind stretched once again into the blackness of thought. --- Nimueh held up her skirts as she made her way down the steps towards the kitchens, so that she would not trip. Her silk slippered feet made little noise against the stonework as it spiralled downwards into the busiest part of the castle. She had watched her son pace with a heavy heart. Her instincts told her to go to him, and to wrap him in a warm embrace in an attempt to shield him from the world. The compulsion was countered by the knowledge that he would not want her to. He was not the kind of son that other women had, though her feelings for him remained the same as theirs. He was a king, if his soul had not always been so then time had shaped it to be so, and with the crown came intangibility, an untouchable quality which strayed towards being forbidding. It hurt her to watch him sometimes as his heart fought with the office, pulling him sometimes in two directions. She wanted to help him, as any mother would, but she also knew that she could not, and that he did not expect him to. The servants moved to the side to let her pass and Nimueh smiled her thanks to each of them, offering them each a ‘good afternoon’ of forced cheer as she moved along the corridor. It got steadily warmer, the closer to the ovens she got, until finally she arrived outside the door she was looking for. The king’s mother wrapped her knuckles against the wood before she stepped inside, and the young men and women sitting around the table in the room’s centre scrabbled to their feet. “Don’t mind me,” Nimueh smiled kindly, “sit down, all of you, I’m not staying long.” Chairs and stools scraped around her as the cook emerged from the back room where the food was cooked, wiping her hands on her apron. “Sorry to trouble you,” Nimueh said, “I just came to ask if you could have something sent up to the king’s rooms? Some soup, maybe? What with everything that’s happened, I don’t think he’s eaten and...well...I don’t want to think we’ve forgotten him. Perhaps one of the girls would just pop up and leave it for him?” |
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