Chapter 3: Preparations
The summons came just after noon, a sharp rap on the kitchen door that cut through the midday lull. It was one of the king’s personal guards, his expression unreadable. “The King requests your presence in his chambers. Now.” He paused, then added, “The Princess is also in attendance.”
A cold thread of anxiety pulled tight in Fred’s gut. A joint summons was unusual. It felt like a tribunal. He wiped his hands on a cloth, his mind racing through possible transgressions. Had de Vere already made his move? Had Simon fabricated something?
“Of course,” Fred said, his voice steady.
He followed the guard up through the palace, the route now becoming familiar. The anxiety didn’t ease; it simply changed shape, becoming a hard, focused knot between his shoulders. The guard announced him and opened the door to the king’s study.
The room was warmer than last time, a robust fire claiming the hearth. King Henry was seated in his chair by it, a blanket across his lap despite the warmth. Princess Eleanor stood at the window, the light haloing her red hair. She turned as he entered, and her gaze was intense, searching. Fred offered a minimal bow to the king, then a deeper one to her.
“Frederick. Come, sit,” the king said, his voice carrying a weariness that seemed bone-deep. He gestured to a stool. “Eleanor, stop looming. Sit.”
Eleanor complied, taking the chair opposite her father, leaving Fred the stool between them. He felt like a piece on a chessboard, positioned for a game he didn’t know the rules of.
“The May Day festival is in a fortnight,” the king began without preamble, his fingers tracing the wool of the blanket. “Traditionally, the Lord Chamberlain oversees the spectacle. He is currently in York, settling a land dispute that is, frankly, more tiresome than a three-day sermon. He will not return in time.”
Fred waited. The May Day festival was a sprawling beast of a thing—a public feast, tournaments, plays, and a thousand opportunities for things to go wrong. It was noble business.
“I am putting you in charge of the preparations,” the king said, watching him.
The words didn’t compute for a second. “Sire? The… the festival? The kitchens, of course, I can manage the provisioning, but the logistics, the entertainers, the seating for the nobility—”
“Are all part of running my household,” the king interrupted, though not unkindly. “You are the Seneschal. The household is your concern. From the stables to the table. This is what that means.”
Fred’s mind was a whirl of inventory lists, contractor costs, and the certain, vicious politics of seating charts. He opened his mouth to protest, to list the reasons why a former kitchen boy should not be tasked with entertaining the entire court and half of London.
“You’ll do brilliantly,” Eleanor said, her voice cutting through his panic. She was leaning forward slightly, her green eyes holding his. “You see how things work. The real mechanics of it. Not just the pretty picture they want to paint. You can make it function. And you can make it…” She searched for the word, a slight, defiant smile touching her lips. “Spectacular. In a real way.”
Her belief was a tangible force in the room. It didn’t calm him; it electrified him. It was a challenge and a gift wrapped together.
The king nodded, a slow, grinding movement. “She’s right. The barons will expect pomposity and outdated pageantry. I am tired of it. Give me something that feels… alive. Something that makes them remember this court isn’t a mausoleum.” He coughed, a wet, thick sound he suppressed into a fist. “The budget is in the ledger on the desk. You have full authority to hire, commission, and command. Use it.”
The full authority of the king. It was a weapon of immense power and infinite danger. Every tradesman he paid, every musician he hired, would be a potential informant for de Vere or others. Every decision would be scrutinized for favoritism or weakness.
He had no choice. To refuse was to admit he wasn’t the Seneschal, just a lucky servant. He met the king’s weary gaze. “I’ll see it done, Your Majesty.”
“Good.” The king’s eyes shifted to his daughter. “Eleanor, you may go. I wish to discuss the… menu. In private.”
Eleanor’s smile faded into a look of mild irritation. She knew a dismissal when she heard one. She stood, gave her father a perfunctory curtsy, and shot Fred a last, unreadable glance before sweeping from the room. The door clicked shut, leaving the two men in the crackling silence of the fire.
The king’s demeanor shifted. The paternal, task-giving ruler bled away, leaving the suspicious, hunted monarch Fred had seen before. He leaned forward, the blanket slipping. “Have you heard anything? About the levy.”
Fred’s hand went instinctively to his belt pouch, where the iron ring lay. “Nothing concrete, sire. Not about the gold, or the men who took it.” He took a breath. “But Baron de Vere has recruited a spy. The page, Simon. He ordered him to watch me. To note my movements, my contacts. He specifically asked if I wore any new jewelry.”
The king’s face went still, all its lines deepening. He stared into the fire for a long moment. “Gilbert,” he muttered, the name a curse. “He has been a thorn for years. A splinter I could never quite dig out. Cautious. Plausible. His ambitions were always… veiled.” He looked back at Fred, his eyes glacial. “Asking about jewelry means he suspects a direct channel to me. He is trying to confirm it. This is no longer just court gossip. This is action.”
“What should I do about the page, sire?”
“Nothing,” the king said sharply. “You act as if you do not know. Let him watch. Feed him trivialities—concern over the price of lampreys, anxiety about enough clean linen for the nobles. Let de Vere think your mind is consumed by pastry and petals.” A grim smile touched his lips. “The festival is your perfect shield. You will be endlessly busy, publicly so. It gives you reason to speak to everyone, to go anywhere. Use it. Listen. A man planning a rebellion does not stop his planning for a festival. He sees it as a distraction, a cover. Look for who isn’t distracted.”
The logic was cunning. The overwhelming public task was camouflage for the private war. Fred nodded.
“And the ring?” the king asked.
“I keep it safe. Unseen.”
“See that you do.” The king slumped back into his chair, a sudden wave of fatigue seeming to drain him. “You may go. I need to rest. The realm is a heavy blanket, Frederick. It steals the warmth from you as it covers you.”
Fred stood, bowed, and left quietly. In the antechamber, he expected emptiness. Instead, Eleanor was there, pretending to examine a tapestry.
She turned as he emerged. “The menu must have been a brief discussion.”
“We settled on mutton,” Fred said, deadpan.
She didn’t smile. She stepped closer, her voice dropping. “He’s asked you more, hasn’t he? About the robbery. About de Vere.”
Fred said nothing. His silence was confirmation enough.
“I can help,” she insisted, a fierce whisper. “With the festival. I know these people. I know what they expect, what they scorn. I can be your guide through that maze. It would be… natural. No one would question my involvement.”
It was true. Her interest would be seen as caprice, a princess amusing herself with party planning. It would give them a legitimate reason to be in contact, to strategize. And her insight would be invaluable.
It was also a monumental risk. Pulling her deeper into this shadow game felt like a violation.
“Eleanor…”
“Don’t,” she cut him off, her chin lifting. “Don’t try to protect me from my own life. I am surrounded by spies and sycophants every day. I navigate it. Let me navigate this with you. For him.”
She was speaking of the king. Her father. Her loyalty was a twin to his own. He saw the determination in her eyes, the same fire that had drawn him from the start. To refuse her would be to treat her like a child, and she was anything but.
“Alright,” he said, the word a surrender and a pact. “We’ll need to meet. To plan.”
“The old music room. West wing, third floor. It’s dusty and unused since my mother died. No one goes there. Tomorrow afternoon. After prayers.” She reached out, her fingers brushing his wrist for a fleeting second, a touch like a spark. “Make it spectacular, Fred.”
Then she was gone, the scent of rosewater and defiance lingering in her wake.
The next week was a waking frenzy. Fred’s world contracted and expanded simultaneously. His domain was no longer just the kitchen, but the entire bustling organism of Westminster preparing for a festival. He was everywhere at once, his voice growing hoarse from constant commands and questions.
He met with the master of the horse about procession routes. He haggled with merchants from the city over the price of ribbons, saffron, and beeswax candles. He argued with the head gardener about which flowers would be in bloom and could be cut without ruining the royal beds. He approved the designs for temporary stages in the great yard, his carpenter’s eye critiquing the joinery.
Through it all, he watched. He listened.
He saw Simon, the page, perpetually loitering at the edges, trying to look busy with a broom or a message scroll. Fred made a point of publicly fretting about the structural integrity of the lemonade pavilion to the head carpenter within Simon’s earshot.
He saw de Vere, too. The Baron moved through the chaos with detached amusement, sometimes offering a smooth, unhelpful suggestion. “I remember one year we had swans gliding on a pool of rosewater, Seneschal. A marvelous effect.” His eyes never stopped calculating.
Fred also heard things. Fragments. A groom complaining about a nobleman’s horse being taken out late at night, returning lathered. A laundry maid giggling about a guard who was too drunk on duty to stand, leaving his post empty for an hour. A clerk from the Exchequer muttering about an unusual request to view old land grant records for properties near the Kent road.
He stored each piece like a scrap of metal, unsure if any were part of the same weapon.
The afternoon meetings with Eleanor in the old music room became the still center of the storm. The room was a tomb to forgotten joy, sheet music yellowing on stands, a harp draped in a shroud of linen. Sunlight bled through a high, dirty window.
They would sit on a velvet settee, its stuffing leaking, the ledger between them. She was brilliant. She knew which baron was secretly bankrupt and would demand the most visible seat to project strength. She knew which bishop hated musicians and should be placed far from the lutenists. She suggested diverting some of the budget from yet another jousting display to fund a dancing bear and acrobats from the city—a crowd-pleaser that would endear the king to the commoners.
The dust in the music room motes swirled around their heads like confused stars. They were arguing over wine merchants, the logistics of it, when Fred stopped mid-sentence. He’d been staring at a faded tapestry of Romans in a coliseum, the threads bleeding together into a smear of conflict.
“What if we gave them what they actually want?” he said, his voice quiet.
Eleanor put down her quill. “Which is?”
“Blood. Competition. A chance to prove whose piss freezes yellowest.” He leaned forward, the old settee groaning. “The king wants a spectacle that isn’t stale. The nobles are bored with parades. So give them a real fight.”
He laid it out, the words coming faster. Not a joust with its expensive armor and rules. A tournament of the nobles themselves. One-on-one. Sword and feet on hard-packed earth. Advertised as non-lethal, but everyone would understand the truth. Old grievances could find an outlet, sanctioned by the crown. The entry fees would build a massive purse for the winner, and the common folk could bet on their favorites. The weapons, afterward, could be auctioned—a noble’s sword held by a merchant, the ultimate prize.
“It’s raw. It’s real,” Fred finished, his own pulse thrumming at the vision. “Like the gladiators of old, but it’s them. They’ll either love it or be too proud to refuse.”
Eleanor’s eyes were wide, then they ignited. She let out a short, sharp laugh of pure delight. “It’s perfect. It’s chaos, but contained. They’ll be too busy measuring each other’s necks to plot.” She snatched a fresh piece of parchment. “We need fliers. Bold lettering. ‘The Crown’s Challenge.’ I’ll draft them tonight.”
The energy in the room shifted, becoming something potent and collaborative. They bent over the ledger again, but now the numbers had a fierce, thrilling purpose.
“The day needs structure,” Eleanor said, her quill flying. “We can’t just throw them into the dirt. There has to be beauty first.”
“The May Queen,” Fred said, the thought arriving fully formed. He looked at her. The sunlight from the high window caught the copper in her hair. “You should be her. It has to be you.”
She froze. The quill tip hovered above the parchment, a drop of ink falling to bloom like a dark flower. She looked up at him, and the practiced royal mask was utterly gone. Her eyes shimmered, not with regal dignity, but with a vulnerable, astonished joy she made no effort to hide. A single tear traced a path through the faint dust on her cheek.
“Fred,” she whispered. It was just his name, but it held volumes.
He cleared his throat, the moment stretching almost past bearing. “First, the May Queen celebration. You’re crowned. Then, the feast. Then, the tournament.” He gestured to the ledger. “A day of creation, then consumption, then… combustion.”
“It’s brilliant,” she said, her voice firm again, wiping her cheek with the back of her hand. A smile played on her lips. “They’ll talk about this for years.”
For the next several days, the idea was a secret fire they nurtured. Eleanor’s fliers appeared on message boards and pillars, the bold script causing instant uproar. The castle buzzed with a new, jagged energy. Some nobles were scoffing, calling it a peasant’s diversion. Others were quietly consulting their sword-masters. The common servants looked at Fred with renewed, wary interest.
A week before the festival, their plans were as solid as they could be. The ledger was a mosaic of costs, schedules, and sketches. They stood together outside the king’s door, Fred holding the heavy tome. He could feel the weight of the iron ring in his pouch, a counterbalance to the official plan in his hands.
“Ready?” Eleanor asked, adjusting the fall of her sleeve.
“No,” he said truthfully.
She gave him that defiant smile and knocked.
The king was at his desk, not by the fire. He looked up, his gaze moving from his daughter’s determined face to the ledger in Fred’s arms. “Show me.”
They spread the book before him. Fred talked through the sequence: the procession, the crowning, the feast with its subtleties shaped like sailing ships. He saved the tournament for last.
“The final spectacle, Your Majesty,” Fred said, his finger landing on the cost breakdown for the fighting ring, the physicians, the prize purse. “A challenge to the nobility themselves. To test their skill, not just their wealth. Swords. Single combat. The people will bet, the winners will be celebrated, and the court… will be too focused on the fight to remember to fight each other.”
King Henry was silent for a long time, staring at the numbers. He stroked his beard, his eyes distant. Then he looked at Eleanor. “You are the May Queen?”
“If it pleases you, Father.”
A strange, almost sad smile touched his lips. “It pleases me.” He looked back at Fred, his weary eyes sharpening. “You are asking me to let the wolves into my yard and hand them clubs.”
“Yes, sire,” Fred said, not denying it. “But in your yard, you make the rules. And everyone is watching. A wolf focused on the fight in front of him isn’t sneaking around the sheep pen.”
The king leaned back, the chair creaking. He stared at the ceiling, at the water-stained cherubs. The silence stretched, filled only by the sputter of a candle. He was weighing the chaos against the control, the innovation against the tradition.
Finally, he lowered his gaze. There was a new light there, a faint, grim spark of something like anticipation. “Do it.”
The king’s final words, “Do it,” hung in the air of the study like a sword being sharpened. It was dismissal and benediction in one. Fred bowed, gathered the heavy ledger, and followed Eleanor out into the antechamber. The thick oak door thudded shut behind them, sealing them into the sudden, profound quiet of the corridor.
The tension of the audience snapped.
Eleanor whirled, her face alight with a triumph so fierce it was almost frightening. Before Fred could speak, she threw herself into his arms. The ledger thumped against his back, forgotten.
He stiffened, his eyes widening in surprise. Then the rigidity melted. He wrapped his arms around her, the rough wool of her gown under his palms, and drew her in. She buried her face in the hollow of his shoulder, her laugh a warm, shuddering breath against his neck.
He lost himself. In the scent of her—rosewater and crushed green stems and the faint, clean smell of linen. In the impossible fact of her weight against him. For three heartbeats, the world was just this: a silent stone corridor and her body against his.
Movement ahead caught his eye.
He glanced over Eleanor’s shoulder, down the length of the passage. His blood turned to ice. Simon was peeking past the corner where the corridor turned, his sharp features frozen in a perfect mask of shock. Their eyes met.
A moment later, Simon vanished, darting back around the corner as if yanked by a string.
“God’s teeth,” Fred cursed, the words a harsh rasp. He untangled himself from Eleanor’s arms, setting her aside with a urgency that made her stumble.
“Fred? What—”
He didn’t answer. He strode to the corner, his boots loud in the silence, and peered around it. The next corridor was empty, just a long stretch of sunlit stone and fading tapestries. A side door to the servant’s stairwell stood slightly ajar. Simon was gone.
Fred’s brow furrowed, a deep line of anger cut between his eyes, underpinned by a cold slab of concern. This was bad.
Eleanor placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. Her joy had evaporated, replaced by wary confusion. “What’s wrong? What did you see?”
He turned back to her, his mind racing. The music room was compromised. Their careful secrecy was a joke. He thought of de Vere’s oily voice, of Simon’s terrified face in the service pass. The geometry.
“Simon,” he said, his voice low. “The page. He was watching. He saw us.”
Her hand fell from his shoulder. “So? A servant saw the Seneschal and the Princess discussing festival business. It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing.” Fred ran a hand through his hair, gripping it at the roots. “De Vere blackmailed him. Gambling debts, a girl in trouble. He owns him. Simon’s been his spy for a week, watching my every move. And now he’s seen something that isn’t about linen counts or lamprey prices.”
The color drained from Eleanor’s face, leaving her freckles stark. The implications crashed over her. A spy reporting to de Vere. A witness to a moment of unguarded, undeniable affection. This wasn’t a strategic conference; it was a vulnerability.
“What do we do?” she asked, her voice small.
Fred leaned against the cold wall, the stone leaching warmth through his tunic. He stared at the ajar door. “I don’t know yet.” He looked at her, his gaze direct. “But we stop. Right now. We can’t meet in the music room anymore. We can’t be seen like this. Every word, every touch, every look needs a public reason. The festival is the reason. We cling to it like a raft.”
He pushed off the wall, a new, grim energy propelling him. “The Baron has eyes everywhere. But we have the festival. We use its noise. Its chaos. We hide in plain sight.” He picked up the ledger he’d dropped. “Starting now. You go left, back to your apartments. I go right, down to the kitchens. We were never here alone.”
She nodded, pulling her regal bearing around her like a cloak. But her eyes were scared. “Fred… if he tells de Vere what he saw…”
“Then de Vere knows we have a weakness,” Fred finished for her, the truth of it bitter on his tongue. “And he will try to use it. So we can’t be weak. We have to be smarter.” He offered her the ledger. “Take this. Review the floral allocations. Find me later in the great yard with ‘suggestions.’ In front of everyone.”
She took the book, her fingers brushing his. It was a transaction now, not a touch. “Be careful.”
“You too.”
She turned and walked away, her posture perfect, the Princess of England carrying a ledger of party plans. Fred watched her go until she turned a corner. Then he exhaled, a long, shaky breath that misted in the cool air.
He looked once more at the servant’s door. A leak in the sieve. The king’s words echoed. Simon was more than a leak; he was a dagger pointed right at Fred’s heart, held in de Vere’s hand. The festival shield just got heavier. And far more fragile.
He moved toward the main stairs, his mind already turning, discarding plans, forming new ones. He couldn’t silence Simon. That would confirm everything. He had to discredit him, or turn him, or make his information useless. The festival’s overwhelming demands were his only weapon. He would bury de Vere in so much trivial, authentic detail about ribbon colors and wine vintages that a report about an embrace would seem like a fever dream.
As he descended into the warmer, busier levels of the palace, the noise of preparation washed over him—the shout of carpenters, the scent of fresh sawdust. He straightened his tunic. The Seneschal was back. The ghost with the ledger.
But now the ghost was being hunted. And he could still feel the phantom pressure of Eleanor’s body against his, a brand of heat in the cold center of the coming storm.