by Euan McAllen
The stunned silence could not last. It began to disintegrate: first with whispers then erupting voices, demanding answers as to why now? Why the secrecy until now? And who was next in line? A cool, calculating voice at the very front put a question to the king.
‘Where is the prince Your Highness? Is he dead?’
King Bizi zeroed in on the source: it was Lord Fucho, one of the most powerful men in the kingdom. He ruled the biggest estate in the kingdom, west of the castle, with an iron fist inside a leather glove. The two had never got on. Bizi refused to recognise him by name or title.
‘He’s not dead. He’s been kidnapped. But I will rescue him, that I swear as his father. He will be back here to celebrate his coming of age. That I swear!’
To some it sounded like he was trying to hard.
King Bizi refused to respond to any more questions and stepped down from the throne - now a stage for high theatre - and made his exit, pushing his way through the crowd which surged towards him. On cue - one pre-arranged - a loyal supporter of the king began to clap and shout ‘Tascho! Tascho! Tascho!’ Others join in: some enthusiastically, some less so; some wishing not to be seen not joining in. Each time Timothy heard his new name, it drilled deeper into his soul, where it really hurt; and the only way to relieve the pain was to adopt it. Slowly Timothy was being pushed aside and Tascho demanded he play the part.
A joke rang out from the edge of the crowd. ‘What about the pig! Is he yours, too!’
Laughter rippled around the Great Hall but it quickly evaporated for the majority were in no mood for laughing. A loutish knight - a known oaf and brainless twit - received a hard punch in the ribs for his lack of decorum on such an important occasion.
‘It’s time we tried a republic!’ shouted another young man at the back. He was not looking for laughs, he was deadly serious, and he too received a kicking.
At the entrance Bizi stopped and turned, and glared back in utter disgust and contempt for those he had to rule over. He had no friends here anymore - which was exactly what he wanted. His only friend was his pig. He stormed out. Timothy come Tascho, looking like he was also under fire - his only crime being the king’s son - bounded after him. Outside, stranded, he looked around for somewhere - anywhere - to hide from the mob. He looked as if he had taken a beaten, like back at the Monastery. Lady Agnes was there to save him: she took his hand and led him away. She asked him if there was anywhere he wanted to go, like her room? No, he replied, as if in a trance. Take me to the maze. Her presence did not go unnoticed: was Tascho stealing the Prince’s wife-to-be and future princess as well as his inheritance?
***
In those few weeks since he had first entered the Maze, Timothy had undergone a transformation: from someone mainly internalised, self-conscious but still strong; to someone driven by external forces, his substance drawn out, diluted, leaving only a shell sustained by image. And over the following week, it would continue, and he would have to suffer it alone.
His father told him ‘No more Timothy. You are Tascho now. I do not want to hear that name again.’
Timothy-Tascho swallowed it, just, but it made him sick. He repeated his true name out loud, over and over, until he got use to the new sound of his own voice. Tascho put Timothy behind him and Timothy hid beneath the new clothes, the new body armour. Tascho played the king’s game, never protesting. The king was his father he kept reminding himself: show him respect, he is always right; stay on his right side and you could be king one day. Don’t mess this one up. You messed things up at the Monastery. Thinking of the Monastery reminded him (with a sting) that he had taken vows to live by, and preach the word of God. And now here he was in a place where the word ‘God’, let alone the word of God, was banned. There was one person with whom he could share his god and that was his mother. Thank God.
If the King, Queen or the Royal Tutor did not keep him busy, Tascho kept himself busy; afraid to slow down; afraid to stop, think, assess; afraid to fail in his new role. His father, often drunk, lectured him repeatedly on what it took to be a good prince, a strong king. And as he spoke, Tascho replayed what his mother had said about his father: the two versions did not add up. King Bizi was his father but Tascho did not feel it, and could not bring himself to ask why. He got drunk instead. At night however Timothy did ask. He asked God but God would not give him an answer. God help me, thought Timothy in his darkest moment.
At night, Timothy took over and speculated about returning to the Village, that place where life was simple compared with inside and outside the Maze; and Esmeralda, a simple girl with a simple heart, easily pleased he assumed as only a male could. Inside and Outside were complicated, heavy on the head; both ruled by absolute rulers who were disconnected from those they ruled, and didn’t care.
Some things did feel good and gave him relief: chasing after a pack of hounds who had caught the scent and were baying for blood, shouting at the top of his voice ‘kill!’; drinking with his father until he fell asleep; cuddling and snogging Lady Agnes - she was a tough nut to crack. And there was the castle maze: a source of comfort, a retreat. Sometimes he would spend an entire afternoon alone in there, sometimes share it with Lady Agnes; putting off the moment when he would have to step back outside again.
He avoided Gregory, once his guardian and mentor, for now he felt the man was his sternest critic: watching, saying nothing but meaning a lot. He objected when the man called him Timothy.
‘My name is Tascho now. Just as yours is Valadino. Or is that also a lie? Is it something else?’ snarled Tascho.
Gregory decided to let it be. He had to watch Timothy decline into Tascho, and felt powerless. This was not what he had wished for. He anguished over Mozak’s ordeal and kept telling himself that Iedazimus would not harm him. He resolved to return to the Village, cut a deal, and get the poor boy home.
And during this time Timothy would dream of his previous life; a life abandoned for something which was supposed to be better, empower him, provide completeness. It didn’t feel like that. It was a strain, hard work, emotionally draining. Lady Agnes sensed it and felt it, and was more than willing to provide comfort and support. As she spent more and more time at Tascho’s side she grew to admire him. Tascho had all the best bits of Mozak and other bits better still. She knew she could have him anytime she liked: ensnaring him was easy - he was begging for it - but she wanted him to fall in love with her. She wanted to fall in love with him. But what if Mozak returned? Was the marriage still on? She could not jump ship yet. So she allowed a drunken Tascho to grope her, snog her, play with the buttons of her dress but she did not sleep with him. That constant refusal only served to drive him wild; send him crazy; increase his consumption of alcohol; and inflame the hedonistic lifestyle of a disenchanted, dislocated prince.
‘Make the most of a situation.’ That was what her mother had always told her.
So Lady Agnes made the most of it. And the icing on the cake was the fact that never once did Tascho remark upon her weight.
Now Timothy was Tascho and Tascho had to be taught how to be a prince: that meant lessons with the Royal Tutor - a balding man with a head full of too much energy and too few ideas. He regarded himself as a superior being and held in contempt all those around him: for they could not think what he could think; they did not know what he knew; they had not read the books.
Lessons were a stormy affair. Tascho did not like it that he knew more of the world than this idiot who clothed himself in airs and graces. His tutor on the other hand did not take kindly to a pupil who kept answering back, asking questions, asking what was the point and purpose; who showed no enthusiasm for learning the ways of the Royal Court, of Royal Protocol and how to play the part of a king. Mozak had been a problem child, a challenge, but nothing on a scale like this. Mozak had been lazy and not particularly bright but at least he had been tamed.
Things came to a hea
d when they argued over the existence of gods: one versus many; some versus none at all. Timothy was adamant: there was only the one and he was the greatest; all others were an invention of an unbalanced mind. Without realising it his tutor both agreed and protested: gods were the product of enfeebled, ravaged minds who could not cope with the harsh realities of life, its hard facts, its conflicts and desires. Gods were the product of crazy minds. I’m not crazy! protested Tascho.
His tutor gave him a stern warning: the castle was a ‘god free zone’; the kingdom had been founded for that very reason, to escape religion; the Maze had been built to keep religion and all its crazy disciples out - no in, he said on second thoughts, sounding slightly confused. The king ruled here, not gods. And a king could not believe in gods, not even one.
Things finally fell apart when the Royal Tutor instructed his troublesome pupil as to the best place to stick the point of his sword into the body of his enemy. Tascho told him where to stick it. When the Royal Tutor complained to the king the king just laughed.
‘That’s enough!’ he said.
‘What’s enough?’ asked the Royal Tutor.
‘Enough learning for now. Take a holiday. I don’t want to see you for a long time yet.’
Bizi laughed again, louder this time. ‘I don’t want to see you until my grandchildren are running around the castle. Now bugger off!’
Silenced into submission the Royal Tutor had no choice except to bugger off. Unable to contain his rage and loss of earnings he kicked aside his manservant when he got home.
***
During this time Dowager Queen Anneeni received no visitors except Tascho. She cared for no one except her sons. She wanted to know more about the both of them now. She hoped to start with Tascho and end with Mozak. She sat mesmerised by the alternative world her son described, and the God which had persuaded him. She took in every word, spellbound by a life which had pursued such mighty ideals. Her son had something solid at his core which she lacked, and she hated herself for it.
‘God will rescue us all,’ Timothy proclaimed at one point.
‘Do you need rescuing?’ she asked innocently. Though it sounded like a dig.
‘I’m not sure,’ he replied.
His abilities impressed her. Queen Anneeni demanded he write something down in front of her eyes: a performance of words. Tascho looked beautiful when he wrote down his name and hers. One time Tascho wrote out a prayer and Timothy read it back to her. It sounded beautiful when he spoke it: he missed that life, she could tell. A mother could always tell. She told him about the King’s library and the ancient books which gathered dust there. She recognised that Mozak was not capable of such clever things, which was a shame; but he made up for it in other ways - she hoped.
Alone, when Tascho was gone, Queen Anneeni felt broken by an ironic curse that she only ever had one son at a time within her grasp. She wanted to pull her hair out and scream. But she did not want to go mad like Bizi’s mother. She much preferred to drive Bizi mad instead.
While the Dowager Queen worked to relax her son, King Bizi pushed and pushed and pushed his son on. Tascho had to gallop faster, jump higher, shout louder at the hounds during the hunt, shoot quicker, drink more. Father and son betted on the hounds together. And although Timothy had been raised to abhor all forms of gambling, Tascho quickly took to it, and hated himself for it.
Tascho had to find himself a wife he was told. When he was eighteen he had to get married. No delay. That was the rule. Rules: as far as Tascho could tell, Castle life was driven by a set of rules which had never changed. If he had learnt anything at the Monastery it was that rules were made to be broken - with one except: you never stopped believing in God. Timothy was determined to never break that one. For Tascho it was a struggle.
When Bizi saw his son sketching his stupid little dog (the dog had to go he decided) he demanded the same for Pig. Tascho dutifully obliged and Bizi had it framed and hung up on the wall above his bed, much to the dismay of his mistresses. It was not a good sketch. Bizi never felt better. He had filled the massive black hole in his life. He was a whole man again. He was standing on the top of the world, on solid rock for a change, not in mud; feet firm, head held up proud; his critics having run for cover. His Secretary and Chancellor never felt so unhappy, and struggled to conceal it.
‘There is a new world order!’ he told them. ‘Cheer up! Get used to it!’
‘You have created a constitutional crisis,’ moaned the Chancellor. ‘If Prince Mozak returns-’
‘When, when he returns!’ growled Bizi before the Chancellor could finish his sentence.
‘Pardon me your majesty. When Prince Mozak returns we will have a crisis, a crisis of succession.’
‘No, we won’t. We simply change the rules, you moron!’
That was too much: for the first time in his professional life the Chancellor walked out of a scheduled meeting with the king. He had never been called a moron before. The King’s Secretary stood alone, ashen-faced, until Bizi told him to piss off. He walked out smartly - but unlike the Chancellor he was not offended. The king had told him to piss off countless times before. Insults went with the job.
‘He’s not only mad he’s an idiot,’ the Chancellor later confessed to the Secretary. ‘Are we the only two intelligent people in the entire kingdom?’
The King’s Secretary nodded in agreement.
During this time the king’s mistresses swapped positions and Lady Tarmina took up the baton and sat on the king. She found him highly charged, reinvigorated, a force to be rediscovered in bed - much to her sister’s envy. They laughed about it in private but only to cover up the tension which erupted between them: Parmina had him at his worse; now Tarmina had him at his best. That was simply not fair.
And meanwhile the king’s mother, Lady Tamatellini, carried on as usual, oblivious to all that was happening below. Her tiny, tightly controlled world never changed. But that was for the best: change was something she was not equipped to handle these days. For long periods, she sat and stared out of the window, watching the clouds change shape at a speed which was sometimes too slow to show change actually happening - only that it had happened. In the clouds she saw faces come and faces go. She saw objects take shape then dissolve in a constant flow of time. She saw what she wanted to see.
When not seated, she walked around in circles; travelling the same piece of carpet; playing hopscotch across the patterns; sometimes naked, waiting for, or recovering from, the body wash her nurse administered on a regular basis. Lady Tamatellini called her Nancy though that was not her name. Nancy never stopped for a chat. Nancy never offered to comb her hair.
And all the while, out of sight, in the background, underground, away from the castle, out in the countryside, on the estates where rich nobles lived alongside their poor peasants in an uneasy understanding and tense truce, mutterings and grievances were aired late into the night - both amongst the nobility and the peasantry but never between them; only between the powerful; only between the powerless; only between the fat, only between the thin. Some now openly called Bizi the Bastard the ‘pig-king’, pig-faced, and used him as an excuse to bitch and complain and demand something better. The Republican movement, having fallen asleep, began to stir: like an ants nest it had been poked with a stick.
Whispers flew around here and there and back again. Voices grew louder, bolder, more insistent, more divisive. Heads were turned and hearts were won over to the cause. Serious talk took place in secret places: on horseback; in woods; in the middle of fields. The mad king’s peculiar friendship with a pig had been the trigger. The return of Tascho provided the fuel. The King’s Secretary knew it was happening: he had his spies. Ignore or engage? Or expose? The question troubled him at night - and likewise the Chancellor when he was brought into the Secretary’s confidence. One night, under the influence of alcohol, he shared what infor
mation he had with the Chancellor and whispered into his ear the unthinkable.
‘You know, perhaps there is something in this idea of a republic? An elected leader running the kingdom? Clever people like us in, imbeciles out?’
The Chancellor, also under the influence, stared back at him wide-eyed, but did not admonish him. Instead, he posed a question.
‘If a kingdom has no king, how can it be called a kingdom?’
The question received no answer.
And then there was Rufus. He kept popping up out of the blue, making demands on Tascho’s time; showing no respect. Each time Tascho gave a little less so Rufus tried to take a little more. Each time Tascho prayed for the next encounter to be the last. Until finally he broke off all contact, refusing to see Rufus; citing a busy schedule, exhaustion and the demands placed upon a prince and possible future king (all of it true). Rufus quickly realised - for he was not stupid - that Timothy and Tascho were not the same person, and came to resent the false promises he had been fed. His frustration with Tascho was in part due to his frustration with himself: his inability to confront his sweetheart with his job offer. They always let you down, he told his Sweetheart Tilsa. You can’t trust them. They never keep their promises.
‘I could have told you that,’ was her blunt response.
Things came to ahead when one day a frustrated Rufus grabbed Tascho from behind, begging for attention, for promises to be kept. Tascho pushed him off, threatening to call the guards. The exchange was bitter.
‘You do not lay your hands upon the prince!’
‘You keep avoiding me! I just want you to educate me - like you promised!’
‘I don’t have time for this right now.’
‘When will you have time?’
‘I don’t know. Stop bothering me with your questions. I’m the prince!’