Marion Lennox - Wanted - Royal Wife and Mother

It was just an earth tremor. A minor one. Kelly sank to the ground on the lawns beside the forecourt and looked up at the towering castle walls. This castle had stood intact for centuries. It was clearly intending to stay intact for longer. There was no movement.

‘We wait outside,’ Rafael commanded into the morning stillness. ‘We wait.’

So they waited. Fifteen minutes. Twenty. Luckily, the constant rain of the past few days had given way to warm sunshine so waiting wasn’t a hardship. Rafael had them all gathered together. He was still dressed in his royal finery.

Laura ducked back into the dower house-against her son’s orders-and fetched shoes for Matty. He accepted them with gratitude, left the safety of his mother’s arms-he’d clung really close while the tremors had been happening-and started to be a little prince again.

‘We’ve had an earthquake,’ he said importantly. ‘An earthquake’s very dangerous.’

‘An earth tremor,’ Kelly corrected. ‘Not so bad.’

‘What’s the difference between an earthquake and an earth tremor?’

‘A tremor happens a lot,’ Kelly said. ‘When a little bit of the earth moves way, way down deep and everything on the top settles a bit. In an earthquake a whole lot of the earth settles. Your Uncle Rafael says we should stay outside until we’re sure it won’t get any worse but I think it’s okay.’

Everyone else obviously did too. After half an hour standing in the sun Rafael decided it seemed safe to return to normal.

‘The phone lines are down.’ Crater was fretting. ‘There must be damage somewhere.’

‘I’ll have someone check in the village,’ Rafael said, but as he did there was a shout from outside the castle gates.

There was a boy running. Shouting. Rafael stepped forward to meet him.

Rafael looked like a man in charge, Kelly thought, in his full royal regalia, his dress sword still in its scabbard, his whole bearing royal. The boy ran naturally to him. He was a teenager, sixteen maybe, wide-eyed with shock and breathless with worry.

‘Sir,’ he gasped in his own language. ‘Sir, we’re in trouble. The landslip…There’s been a huge landslip above the village. The houses…There are people buried. The road’s blocked. Sir, you have to come. Please.’

Rafael gripped the boy’s shoulder while he told his story. The boy looked to Rafael to take charge but Rafael’s wonderful uniform didn’t give him the local knowledge he needed now.

He’d hardly been home since he was fifteen. Crater knew the land, the people, the emergency drills. He was in his seventies but he stepped forward now and started giving orders.

The road was cut. They needed to get an assessment of what the damage was. He’d send a team to climb high above the castle to where a man could see right across the valley.

‘I’ll go,’ Rafael said. ‘I have radio gear in the workshop. I can use that to contact the outside world if the telephones stay cut. Crater, I’ll give you a handset as well so I can get back to you.’

‘You won’t get up there.’

‘I’ll take a horse,’ Rafael said and Kelly gasped. For him to ride again…

‘The villagers might need you,’ Crater said, not hearing the implications of what Rafael had said, thinking only of what was before them.

‘I’ll get back down and help dig, whatever you want, as soon as I can.’

‘You’re our prince,’ Crater said obliquely. ‘We’ll want you in the village.’

‘I’ll be there as soon as I can,’ Rafael said. ‘Kelly, love, make sure things stay safe here. Any more tremors, you’re in charge.’

She was in charge but there was nothing to do. Everyone else left. Even Laura disappeared, donning stout walking boots and going with Ellen and Marguerite down to the little village hospital to see if they could be of help.

Kelly stayed with Matty.

‘We should be down in the village too,’ Matty said, more and more insistently as the afternoon wore on.

‘We’d just get in the way,’ she told him. ‘Crater’s taken everyone who can dig with him. Your Uncle Rafael will be down there by now. We need to look after the castle.’

‘It’s cowardly to stay in the castle when our people need us.’

It did feel wrong. But every able-bodied man and woman had joined the team to go to the village, so Kelly needed to stay here with her son. Even though it killed her not to know what was happening. Where Rafael was. What had happened in the village.

‘I’m the Prince and you’re the Princess,’ Matty told her, deeply disapproving of her decision to stay where they were. ‘Crater says it’s the job of a prince to lead his people.’

‘You’re five years old and I’m not a princess,’ she said helplessly. ‘Maybe we could play Scrabble.’

He looked at her calmly, figuring out whether she meant it or not and intelligent enough to see that she did.

‘Okay,’ he said at last. ‘Will we play in your room?’

‘I…yes.’ Retire to her attic. ‘Why not?’

‘The Scrabble set’s in the nursery,’ he told her. ‘I’ll fetch it.’

Only he didn’t. Kelly checked on the dogs in the kitchen-the dog Marsha had been worried about was a bitch about to whelp and Kelly had promised to check on her every half hour. The bitch was lying peaceably in her basket, with three pups already at teat.

‘See, you have your priorities right,’ Kelly said, bending to fondle the big dog’s ears. ‘Home and hearth. It’d be good if we could be of help down in the village but a mother’s place is with her kids.’

The dog gave her a long lick, which cheered Kelly immeasurably. She walked up the stairs to her attic, but when she reached it Matty wasn’t there yet.

She wanted to tell him about the pups.

Maybe he’d had trouble finding the Scrabble set, she thought. She walked downstairs, along to the nursery.

She was worried, and not just about Matty. She hadn’t heard anything about what was happening out in the village. No one had come back. Rafael was out there somewhere in his magnificent uniform doing heroic stuff. Laura and Crater were down in the village helping. She was stuck here minding Matty.

Only where was Matty?

He wasn’t in the nursery.

Suddenly she felt sick.

‘Matty?’ she yelled, but her voice echoed ominously around the empty halls.

‘Matty…’

A clatter of horse hooves on the cobbles below drew her to the window.

‘Matty!’

If he heard her scream he didn’t acknowledge it. He was on a horse. Somehow he’d managed to saddle one of the smaller mares. He was firm in the saddle, his hands keeping good control, turning the mare’s head towards the gate and digging his small heels into her flanks.

‘Matty,’ she screamed again but he was gone.

Out of the gate towards the village.

For a long moment she simply stared at the gate as if she couldn’t believe what she’d seen. But she’d seen all right. Through the open window she could hear the faint clip-clop of the mare’s hooves as she disappeared from sight.

Matty was gone. Into a situation of which she knew nothing.

Her son.

Since Kass had kicked her out, Kelly had had her escape in a century past, a time warp that had held her close, protecting her from outside forces. Here she’d done her best to create a sanctuary again, where the outside world belonged to those who wanted it.

She didn’t want the outside world. But her son was riding into it, with the heart of a prince.

Something played back in her mind, some crazy lesson he’d repeated to her when she’d said it didn’t make much difference that he was a prince. When she’d talked to him of the possibility of staying in Australia.

‘They’re my people. I should be with them,’ he’d said sternly. ‘Crater says when there’s peril that’s when the people need their prince. He said in World War Two the English King and his Queen and their two little princesses should have gone to America to be safe. Only they didn’t. They stayed, and every time there was bombing the King would be there, just to say to everyone be brave.’