The Prince

“What’s going on? Why did you come today? I found the bed like this just this morning. I sent the boys to a friend’s. Been trying to decide what to do all day.”

Søren looked back at that pile of ash where his bed had once stood, and didn’t speak.

Kingsley answered for him. “I received a photograph in the mail, taken of the two of us in our school days. It was postmarked from here. No other identifying marks. Merely a school photo, but threatening nonetheless.”

Elizabeth pulled away from the door and walked down the hallway a few steps before turning back around.

“Marcus, what’s happening?” she asked, her voice low and cold.

Kingsley stiffened. No one called Søren by his birth name of Marcus…ever. He didn’t allow it. And surely Elizabeth knew better, knew how much he hated being called by the name his father also bore. Either she was so distraught she’d forgotten, or so angry she didn’t care.

Søren looked at her and exhaled. “I don’t know, Elizabeth.”

“You’re lying to me. You know more than you’re telling me.”

“I do know more than I’m telling you. But I am not lying. I truly do not know who is behind this. Tell us everything you know.”

Shaking her head, she turned her back to them. “I have. I woke up this morning. I got out of bed. I noticed a strange smell in the house. I followed it. I checked every room. I came to this one last. I try to never go in here. You know that.”

Her brother nodded. Kingsley didn’t want to imagine what Søren felt, standing in the doorway to this room. He’d paused on the threshold like a film vampire, unable to cross without an invitation. No invitation came.

“I opened the door. I saw the bed, the words on the wall. I nearly vomited. Someone knows about us, about what happened. I racked my brain for anyone who could know. My mother is dead. Our father. Who does that leave? I told that reporter about us. But surely—”

“I know Suzanne,” Søren said. “Not only wouldn’t she do this, she couldn’t. She’s in Iraq right now.”

“That’s it. And you say Kingsley knows.” Elizabeth pointed his way. “Who else? You said he was one of two people you’d told. Who was the other?”

Søren’s jaw clenched almost imperceptibly. But Kingsley noticed.

“No one who would tell.”

“Are you sure about that?” she demanded.

“I’d stake my life on it.”

“Then that’s it.” She lifted her hands into the air before laying them on her face. “I just can’t imagine who or why...Kingsley.”

“Oui?”

“You know. Have you told anyone?”

It took all of Kingsley’s self-restraint not to level a look of utter disgust at her. He’d been a spy for the French government. A spy and so much more. Idle gossip could have gotten him killed in those days. He knew to use his mouth for activities other than gossiping.

“I have a reputation for having a tongue that gets around, ma chèrie. But not for talk. Your secret is safe with me. The only person I have told has been dead for thirty years.”

Elizabeth shook her head and exhaled. “Of course. I’m so sorry. This is the panic talking.”

“Pack, Elizabeth,” Søren ordered. “You’re wasting time. We’ll learn nothing staring at each other. Kingsley and I will find out what’s going on. Call me in a month. I’ll let you know if it’s safe to come back. Tell no one where you’re going. Not even me.”

She stared at them both a moment longer before turning and nearly running to the other wing of the house.

Kingsley opened the bedroom door again and studied the carnage. Nothing at all remained of the bed. He couldn’t even grasp how the perpetrator had managed to burn only the bed and leave nothing else damaged. Such a conflagration should have burned the house down. Ashes on the floor. Ashes on the wall. Nothing else out of place.

Love thy sister.

It sounded almost biblical. Love thy neighbor. Love the Lord thy God. What did it mean? Was it an order? Or a signature?

Love, Thy Sister.

The rest of the room remained untouched. As a child Søren had sat at that small ornate desk and practiced his English. As a quiet form of revenge, his mother had taught him Danish but not English. When his absentee father discovered his five-year-old bastard son didn’t understand a word of English, Søren’s mother had been sent back to Denmark. And every language but English had been banished from the house. Kingsley sometimes wondered if that act had been the root of Søren’s obsession with learning languages.

Next to the desk sat a bookshelf. On it were many classics of children’s literature in beautiful leather-bound editions, very likely worth a small fortune in their mint condition. Mint condition because young Marcus Stearns had never touched the books, never cracked the covers. He’d read the Bible as a child. Shakespeare, Milton. No George MacDonald or C. S. Lewis. Only Lewis Carroll’s books had gotten Søren’s attention at all. Considering Carroll’s obsession with young Alice Liddell, and a young Eleanor Schreiber’s obsession with the books, it seemed rather fitting.

Next to the bookshelf was the window that looked out on the rolling manicured lawns. A small wooded area bordered the back of the house. Søren had confided to Kingsley years ago that he and Elizabeth would often take their activities into the woods, far from the prying eyes of the household staff. There they were, just two children playing in the forest. So innocent. So bucolic and pastoral. If only the maids had known what passed between them behind the veil of those trees.