“Then I shall withdraw.”
Anthalon bowed again and walked toward the entrance. Gene stood rooted to the spot. Seeing his shoulders tremble, the court ladies grew afraid and quietly drew back. Then a voice came from the bedchamber.
“Come in.”
Erektina sat at an angle in a white gown. Her black hair fell in rich waves over one shoulder. The red lips set in her pale, unadorned face truly resembled Epherina, the rose in the rear garden.
More than ten years earlier, when she had been pursued by the queen’s men and tormented by fear and poverty, his mother had been pitiable rather than beautiful. She had deliberately smeared soot on her face, left her hair disheveled, and worn a foolish expression to hide her beauty. Back then, Gene had been ready to do anything to comfort his mother. If she told him to steal, he stole. If she told him to throw something away, he did. If she told him to put on a girl’s clothes, he wore them. Once, with sewing in hand, his mother had fallen asleep, and he had tried to sew in her place. When his mother was tired, he embraced her and sang to her. Even when Anthalon came and told him he was a prince, he had not resented his mother in the least for not telling him beforehand. His mother had kept the secret because her young son might inadvertently let it slip and bring their pursuers down on them.
Now that woman was the king’s woman and the true power in the palace. Since returning to the palace, Gene had seen Erektina cry exactly once. It was the night after the first banquet held for Gene’s return. In the empty hall of that banquet, where the king had not stayed long either, Erektina held Gene and said, “I will make you a real prince, without fail.” Gene had not known what a real prince was, but feeling how desperately his mother wished it, he nodded. After that, Erektina did not shed tears. Instead, she smiled. More beautifully with each passing day. Several years later, lost in old memories, Gene had looked at his mother and suddenly been startled. As though time had run backward, his mother’s cheeks seemed tinted with petals, her lips seemed to hold dew, and her eyes were like blue feathers. Back then, he had not known that they seemed so because they were honed to a keen edge.
“You rose early.”
“You rose even earlier, Mother.”
“I sleep little. I am always awake at this hour. It was so before too. Don’t you remember?”
“Before, it was because you feared someone might be after my life. Now there should be no need.”
“No. It is still so. That is why I cannot rest for even a moment.”
Setting down her hand mirror, Erektina looked at her face for a moment, then turned toward Gene and smiled.
“Our prince has grown so much. Mother grows old like this, yet the more I hear about this expedition, the more astonished I am, wondering when my son changed so greatly. Yesterday, the soldiers told me you fought on the battlefield like a ghost. It seems only yesterday that you could not bear to leave your mother’s arms.”
The previous afternoon, Erektina had summoned the soldiers Gene brought to the capital into the palace. She would surely have intended to show her power by doing without hesitation the sort of thing only a queen might do.
“But you were left alone in a castle, and of all places, the savages attacked that very castle. It smells of a plot. A shadow cast over the Lotus Crown. Yet I did not know our prince had grown strong enough to overcome even such a plot himself. She could not have imagined it. Ah, the more I think of it, the prouder I become.”
The Lotus Crown was another name for the crown used by the queen. Erektina began combing her hair. Usually, the court ladies would have attended to it, but for the first time in a long while, she seemed intent on doing it herself as she spoke with her son. No, she was probably deliberately trying to calm Gene by calling up memories of the past. Gene suddenly spoke.
“At least I thought you would be ashamed, Mother.”
Erektina did not even stop the hand holding her comb.
“I? Of what? I am a mother protecting her son. It is something I do for you, so what is there to be ashamed of?”
“You betray His Majesty for my sake? If His Majesty knew of this, he…”
“His Majesty gave you a body, but he does not bestow a future upon you. We must win that with our own hands. Anthalon is someone who will help us do that. And he cherishes you. He has our fate in his hands. He took you to His Majesty, and he found us again after we were driven away. Only he can help me make you crown prince. I will always need that man.”
“I do not need such help! I will obtain what I want myself!”
“Do you think it is so easy? Have you forgotten when you first returned to the palace? For two years, His Majesty did not even look after you. Yet yesterday he gave a banquet for you, and was so pleased at the sight of you that he drank himself insensible. You cannot know how full my heart was. Do you think that happened because I sat and waited?”
“Really? And so, Mother, at dawn the next day, you commit adultery beyond His Majesty’s sight?”
“If I had gained Anthalon’s help earlier, you would never have married such an ugly girl as Thea!”
At the mention of Thea’s name, Gene felt as though something pierced a corner of his chest. Because of what had happened the night before, he felt something had come between them, as if he were no longer Thea’s husband. If there was fault, it was his, yet without realizing it, his anger turned outward.
“Do not insult my wife. I have no complaint against Thea. She is someone who has done nothing wrong in ten years. If there is fault, it lies with me.”
“No complaint? No fault? That girl, like a sick puppy, has not borne your child, and she never will. I knew it would be like this from the moment the queen first brought her. The queen was satisfied to block your bloodline, but I will not allow it to remain so. A new consort has already been chosen. Once I tell His Majesty, a royal marriage will be announced within a month. I wanted you to choose at yesterday’s banquet, but with your standards so low you have no complaint even against Thea, I have no choice but to choose for you.”
“Thea is only seventeen. And yesterday’s banquet sickened me. Did you think I would be pleased if you lined women up in rows?”
Neither yielded even a single word. During their days on the run, because they could settle nowhere, mother and son had each been the other’s only friend. They knew each other intimately. But because she was his mother, she knew her son better.
“So in the end, didn’t you do something? Why, was last night not so enjoyable? What a pity. If you had only said the word yesterday, I would have given you ten of those women.”
Gene’s face reddened. In the meantime, Erektina finished her preparations. Ignoring even the rule that a married woman should wear her hair up, she let her long black hair fall, and among it shone five Stars of Epheria. The Star of Epheria, a five-pointed star with slightly curved tips, was the emblem of the royal family’s women. Traditionally, it was an ornament worn by unmarried princesses, but Erektina often wore it, merely saying she liked it.
“Polytimos.”
After returning to the palace, Erektina never called him Gene again. Gene did not answer.
“You annihilated the Jandana and led the war to victory. You are an adult now, but to me, I still see so clearly the little baby clinging to my breast. I have lived for so many years with all my hopes placed in you alone. But it is not over yet. Look at your mother. We still have far to go. This is no time to quarrel like this. You must keep going as you have done well until now. But one wrong step, and it is the edge of a cliff. I feel as though we are performing acrobatics.”
“You are the one performing acrobatics, Mother. If you fall, I will fall too.”
“Really? Does where we stand now look safe to you? Does the queen look like a toothless tiger? She is not such a person. She is a woman who never gives up. She always gets rid of whatever displeases her!”
Suddenly something flashed at the corners of Erektina’s eyes. She wiped it away before it could run. Gene thought he had seen wrongly.
“And do not act as though today is the first time you knew. I have long known you already suspected it. Suspicion is all right, but you cannot bear what happens before your eyes? How will you become this country’s king if you are so weak!”
Erektina’s words were true. Gene had known for a long time. That was why he had not wanted to face Anthalon. The polite smile Anthalon gave him made him feel unpleasant, as though he had been stripped bare. Every act of help and protection Anthalon offered Gene seemed as if he were claiming even Gene himself as his possession, and he could not bear it.
Because he knew it all yet constantly tried to deny the fact as though he did not, Gene was always running away from his own place. He was more comfortable among common soldiers than in the royal palace, and the things given to him because he was a prince had never seemed his. Gene suddenly spoke.
“Mother, let us go there.”
Giving a final touch to the ends of her hair and setting down her hand mirror, Erektina asked in an indifferent voice,
“There?”
“Do not pretend you do not know. I mean the place where I lived until I was three.”
Gene and Erektina had been driven out of the palace when he was about six months old, but he had been told they had settled somewhere until he was three. Gene had only a few memories of that time. A wooden horse he had ridden in a stable, getting scolded after riding a foal on a neighboring farm, and such things remained faintly. At the same time, there was one person whose face he could not remember. During their wandering days, whenever Gene brought up that story, Erektina soon cried. In the end, she always called upon the name of Adalnus, the god of vengeance. After they entered the palace, when Gene raised the story, Erektina grew angry. She told him never to speak of it again. Erektina had not told him that person’s name. She had never told him where the place was either.
“I do not know what you mean. Life is too busy to remember things so long ago.”
“There were sunflowers blooming. There were horses and donkeys. There was a cat too. In the stable there was a wooden horse…”
Erektina’s eyebrow moved slightly.
“I said I have forgotten.”
“Do not lie!”
Gene rose from his chair and took Erektina’s hand. Erektina had turned her head and was looking down at the floor. No, not the floor. She was looking down at her own forearm. There lay the large scar said to be her only flaw.
“This life cannot be difficult for me alone. You must miss those days too, Mother. So let us go together. I need neither the throne nor the position of crown prince, so let us simply go. We will not be in danger. Now I can protect you. Your son defended a castle with a single sword. If it is only you, Mother, I will protect you until I die. So let us go together. I wish to meet the man you said taught me to ride.”
Erektina slowly raised her head. Mother and son’s eyes met. Erektina rose. Her lips trembled. Even her voice came out shaking.
“If you say such a thing ever again, this mother of yours will hang herself.”
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