The King

by Tiffany Reisz

  lute. “Maybe I imagined it.”

  “Let’s toast,” Sam said.

  “What should we toast to?” Kingsley asked.

  “To you,” Sam said.

  “Agreed,” Søren said. “To Kingsley. Vive le roi.” Kingsley swallowed hard and raised his glass.

  “To me,” he said. “And my three dearest friends in the world.”

  “Three?” Sam asked.

  “The bartender, the blond and the booze.”

  “And to The Eighth Circle,” Søren said, lifting his glass. “I will beat you for naming it that, one of these days.”

  “Counting on it, mon ami.”

  They clinked their glasses and drank their champagne. It was the first alcohol Kingsley had tasted in weeks. He’d been drunk on hard work and happiness since Sam had come back to him; he’d needed no other intoxicant.

  “Your subjects await,” Sam said. Kingsley downed his champagne and set the f lute on the bar. He tugged his vest into place and ran a hand through his hair.

  He took a step forward.

  “Kingsley?”

  Kingsley looked back at Søren.

  “Jeg elsker dig,” Søren said.

  “I hate it when you speak Danish,” Kingsley said.

  “I know you do.”

  “Will you tell me what it means?” Kingsley asked, too happy to be more than playfully annoyed.

  “It means good luck.”

  Kingsley smiled back at Søren, gave a wink to Sam and knew then exactly what to say.

  He stepped right up on to the ledge that overlooked the pit below. They’d expected a hundred, maybe two hundred people. Easily five-hundred packed the pit below. He saw financiers, CEOs, artists, entertainers, poets, politicians and plebeians. He saw somebodies and nobodies, and they were all his people. He would guard them with his life. Nine months ago he’d wanted nothing more than to crawl into the bottom of a bottle and drown in the dregs. Now he had before him five hundred reasons to live. And behind him, standing at either side of him, his two most important reasons to live.

  The assembled crowd slowly quieted as his presence asserted itself. When at last silence reigned, he smiled down at them and in a loud clear voice spoke one and only one sentence to them all.

  “Welcome to the Kingdom.”

  42

  Somewhere in London 2013 A SOFT SIGH CAME OVER THE BABY MONITOR AS Kingsley finished his story. Grace looked at Kingsley and smiled.

  She stood up, crooked her finger at Kingsley, and he followed her up a short f light of stairs and down a darkened hallway. A light was already on in the room—a painted glass hot-air balloon in miniature. The toy lamp cast hues of red, blue, green and gold on to the walls, painting a rainbow of light around Fionn.

  “What are you doing up?” Grace asked as she reached over the side of the crib and laid her hand gently on her son’s small back. “Did you know we had company? Someone wants to meet you.”

  Kingsley gazed down on the boy in the crib in his pale blueand-white footie pajamas. He had a swath of pale blond hair on his small head, his mother’s bright blue eyes and a solemn expression on his face. Such a serious look on such a little boy. Kingsley almost laughed at him.

  “May I?” Kingsley asked, not looking at Grace. He couldn’t take his eyes off Fionn.

  “Of course,” Grace said. “He likes being held.”

  Kingsley gently lifted the boy out of his crib and cradled him against his chest. Grace gave him a soft blue blanket that Kingsley draped over Fionn’s head and back.

  “You’re good at this,” Grace said. “But you have more practice than I do.”

  Kingsley smiled but didn’t answer. He couldn’t answer. He couldn’t speak. Not a word.

  Kingsley laughed, and Grace, without a moment’s hesitation, raised her hand to his face and wiped the tears off his cheeks.

  “Merci,” he whispered and pressed a kiss on to the top of Fionn’s head. He smelled like a baby, like his own Céleste. The clean scent of lavender soap and innocence. “Fionn and I have something in common.”

  “And what is that?” Grace asked.

  “We’re both alive because of Søren.”

  “Yes. I suppose you both are.” Grace touched his face again, wiped off another tear. Kingsley laughed at himself. “You’re doing better than Nora did the first time she held him. She made it about three seconds before handing him back to me and bursting into tears in Zachary’s arms. He teased her mercilessly about it.”

  “He’s beautiful. No wonder she cried.”

  “She and Zachary talked a long time about Fionn,” Grace continued. “The two of them can talk for hours.”

  “What did they talk about?” Kingsley asked, patting Fionn on the back.

  “Nora being Fionn’s godmother.”

  “I thought she was already.”

  “She is. But Zachary and I talked and considering everything…”

  “You mean you want her to be his legal guardian?”

  “Yes. If something happens to me and Zachary, we want her to have Fionn. She hasn’t said yes to that yet.”

  “She wouldn’t say yes to it.”

  “Zachary’s wearing her down.”

  “I thought he had a brother?”

  “He does, and I have siblings, too, parents… But God forbid, I want him to go to Nora and so does Zachary. I want him to be with someone who knows the truth about him, someone who knows where he came from, and will love him because of it, not in spite of it.”

  And Fionn would be close to Søren, which Grace didn’t say. But she didn’t have to.

  “She doesn’t trust herself enough. But I can’t think of anyone better to raise him if something happened,” Kingsley said, and meant the words.

  “Neither can we.”

  “I’ll talk to her about it,” Kingsley said.

  “Would you? Please?” Grace asked. “Tomorrow’s his first birthday. I can’t believe my baby is already a year old.”

  “I still can’t believe he’s even here,” Kingsley said, holding Fionn a little tighter. The boy didn’t seem to mind. He’d fallen back asleep and was quietly drooling on Kingsley’s shirt. Nothing he wasn’t used to by now. “I never imagined… But who would? He’s a priest.”

  Grace smiled, and a soft blush appeared on her face.

  “I don’t know what came over me when I asked him,” Grace said.

  “You don’t have to tell me what happened,” Kingsley said. “It’s between you and him.”

  “But I need to tell someone. I didn’t cheat on my husband. He gave me permission to go have fun, as he said. No rules. Anything I wanted or needed. I’d been depressed and he knew it. Nora helped him. He thought she could help me.”

  “Nora has unusual methods for helping people in need. But they do work.”

  “They do. In that moment…” Grace began again, “I felt the rightness of it. And I knew if I didn’t say something, if I didn’t ask, I’d regret it the rest of my life. Now? I have a son. We have a son.”

  “We’re all…” Kingsley paused and swallowed hard. In a low voice he said, “We were all very happy.”

  It was an embarrassing failure of words—we were all very happy. Shell-shocked by elation would have been a better description of how they’d all felt when they heard Søren had a son. The news was like a bomb going off, and the blast of joy had felled them all.

  Kingsley bent his head and whispered to Fionn.

  “I know your father,” Kingsley said in French, a private message between him and Fionn. “He’s everything to me. You are blessed to be a part of him. If the day ever comes you don’t feel blessed to be his, you come see me, and I’ll tell you why you are.”

  Kingsley kissed the top of Fionn’s head. His heart clenched so tightly, his chest hurt. No wonder he’d sought after pain all his life. It felt just like love.

  “Did he really tell you that? That his friend Magdalena had said he’d have a child by the grace of God?”

  “He
did. And she did tell me he and I would be lovers again. Real prophecy? Or self-fulfilling? It happened. That’s what matters.”

  “That morning…” Grace began and paused. “Can I talk about it?”

  “Please,” Kingsley said. “You can tell me anything.”

  “The morning I walked with him to his sister’s house, the morning he thought he would die,” Grace said, picking up a blanket and folding it neatly. “He and I talked. He told me about Magdalena and something she’d said to him. Something about Nora and how it had come true.”

  “It all came true,” Kingsley said. “Even Fionn.”

  “I wonder if he was thinking of it then, what Magdalena had said about him having a son. I wonder if it gave him hope that morning. I want to believe it did.”

  “You gave us hope that morning,” Kingsley said. “If you hadn’t gotten to me in time… I can’t think about it. Destiny or not, you earned your son.”

  “As soon as I came home to Zachary I told him what had happened, what I’d done. And when I found I was pregnant, I had a feeling. A few months after he was born, I looked at him, and I knew and so did Zachary.”

  Kingsley looked at a photograph sitting on a side table— one of Zachary holding Fionn in his arms and looking utterly contented.

  “Zachary loves Fionn. Fionn is his son in every way that matters,” Grace said.

  “My son, Nico, had a good father. It hurts to say, and I’ll only say it to you—but as much as it hurts, I’m glad I didn’t know about him until he was grown. Nico’s perfect. I couldn’t have done a better job raising him than his father did.”

  “Do you regret it? Not being a father to Nico when he was growing up?”

  “Sometimes,” Kingsley confessed. “But I don’t regret it for him. I don’t think I was ready to be a father until recently. I had too much unfinished business. Nico deserved better than I could have given him. His father was a good man and loved him. Now…it’s hard for Nico to love me. But he’s trying. He told me he was trying. And that’s all I can ask.”

  Grace took a ragged breath and swallowed.

  “It’s hard,” she said. “I don’t want to hurt my husband, but I want Fionn to know his father.”

  Kingsley shook his head. “He knows his father. Zachary’s his father.”

  “He is. But still…”

  “I understand. I have a twenty-five-year-old son I didn’t meet until this year. If anyone understands, it’s me.”

  When Nora had told him about Nico, about the son he’d never dreamed he had, he’d been rent in two by the opposite emotions of joy and regret. Joy that he had a son. Regret that he only found out now, twenty-five years after the fact.

  “That must have been hard for you,” Grace said. “All those years lost.”

  “They were only lost to me,” Kingsley said. “Nico lost nothing. Nico had a father in his life who loved him, adored him, raised him into a good man. The comfort to me in all this. Nico. Fionn. That’s who matters in this.”

  “You matter, too,” Grace said. “You do matter. And I’m certain if we asked your son he would say he would have wanted to know you.”

  Kingsley smiled at her. He wasn’t sure he agreed with her, but it was kind of her to say.

  With Fionn in his arms, Kingsley walked around the nursery. He ached to hold his own daughter. He’d left Céleste and Juliette this morning and already he missed them so much it felt like a physical ache. But some things needed to be done in person. Some things couldn’t be said over the phone.

  “He’s a good boy,” Kingsley said, straightening Fionn’s blanket so it covered his little feet. “I can already tell.”

  “Thank you.” Grace spoke in a hoarse whisper. “He must take after his father, then.”

  “And his mother.”

  “You know he’s already walking and talking,” Grace said. “A few words of English, a few words of Welsh. And Zachary can teach him some Hebrew. And French, of course. He spent a year in France in his twenties.”

  Fionn stirred in his sleep and opened his eyes for a few seconds.

  “Tu parles français?” Kingsley asked, looking down at Fionn. Fionn released a heavy sigh, closed his eyes and fell back asleep. “I’ll take that as a no. What was his first word?”

  “Ta,” she said. “Tad is Welsh for father or dad. What was Céleste’s first word?”

  “Non.”

  Grace laughed.

  “I’m not joking,” Kingsley said. “She gets it from her mother. If Fionn takes after his father, he’ll learn languages easily.”

  “When he starts school we’ll make sure he takes his foreign languages. And music, too. Piano lessons if we can afford them. But it’s too early to think about that now.”

  “About that,” Kingsley said. “I brought him a birthday gift.”

  “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “I did. And if I didn’t I still would have.”

  With reluctance Kingsley placed Fionn back in his crib and covered him with his blanket. He looked at Grace and pulled the envelope from his pocket.

  “What is it?” Grace asked, her brow furrowing. She seemed reluctant to open it. Perhaps she sensed its contents.

  “Like I said, a birthday gift.”

  Grace peeled back the seal on the envelope and pulled out a tri-folded sheaf of papers.

  “When Søren joined the Jesuits,” Kingsley began, “he took a vow of poverty. The money he had from his trust fund, he gave it all to me. Since I can’t repay the father for the gift, I can repay the son.”

  Grace’s eyes went wide.

  “Kingsley, this is a trust fund.”

  “Yes,” Kingsley said. “And it’s worth roughly eighteen million pounds.”

  Grace covered her mouth with her hand in shock. Although it wasn’t easy, Kingsley managed not to laugh at her.

  “He’s to go to the best schools,” Kingsley said. “No expense is to be spared.”

  “We could buy a school for this much money.”

  “Buy one, then. You can teach in it,” Kingsley said.

  “We can’t accept this.” Grace started to fold the pages.

  “I told you the story of my club for a reason, Grace. I needed you to know how much I owe him. That club I built for him has made me wealthy beyond your wildest imagining. The club wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for him. I wouldn’t exist, either. I owe him everything—my life, my fortune and my family. I promise, Grace, this is the least I can do. I owe him a debt, and this is how I pay it back.”

  “But Kingsley…”

  “You’ll receive part of it now for living and education expenses. Everything else stays in a trust until he’s eighteen. Then it’s all his.”

  “This is all too much,” she said, shaking her head in disbelief.

  “There is one more thing.”

  “More?”

  Kingsley reached into his pocket once more and pulled out a deed. “What I gave you is the exact amount of the trust fund Søren gave me. But this is the interest.”

  Grace took the deed with a shaking hand.