The Prince

Tyset II: Chapter 1

Chapter 1





Tyset had been beset by Lady Mavigna for two days now to apologize to her father.  Beseeching her while she practiced her needlework, writing, and mathematics, Lady Mavigna had continued even when Tyset had buried her nose in a book of poetry.  The woman pleaded with her as they walked the halls of the Middle Palace, begged her before they entered the dining hall for meals, then rebuked her afterwards when she had still not apologized.





Apologize, what was she supposed to apologize for?  That was what Tyset wanted to know.  All this talk of apologizing, shouldn’t it be her father who apologized?  He had insulted her, belittled her, humiliated and shamed her.  She couldn’t apologize for that, not for something he’d done.  She could, however, receive an apology.  Accept it?  Perhaps not, but she could definitely receive it.





Sitting in her rooms after breakfast on Prince’s Day, Tyset was working with a needle on a pair of gloves when Lady Mavigna entered.  Coming to her, she tore the gloves right out of Tyset’s hands.  “You will apologize to your father,” said the governess, her face red with anger.





Tyset stood, throwing down her needle.  “I will not.”





“You will.”





“No!  If anybody should be apologizing it is him!”





Lady Mavigna’s slap was so quick and hard that Tyset almost couldn’t believe it had happened.  But then her cheek told her otherwise, the hot, burning sensation rising there where the Lady’s hand had struck her.  Just like the other day.





“Go to your bed chamber,” said her governess.  “And stay there until I tell you to come out.”





Gritting her teeth against the pain in her cheek, Tyset sniffed and turned on her heel, marching away at once.  Reaching her room she slammed the doors closed behind her and, without pausing, threw herself across her bed.





That was the second time her governess had slapped her in the last week.  No one had slapped her before that.  Not her mother, not even her father.  It hurt worse than she had imagined.  Lifting her hand she felt the spot.  Her skin felt smooth, hot.  And it stung.





Presently, she realized that it was past the time for court to have begun.  She had never missed court, not since her mother’s death when she had taken the chair beside her father.  “The Meridians’ strength must not falter,” her father had said to her the day after her mother’s funeral.  “I must sit in the high seat, with the lady of the house at my side.”  Since then she had sat beside him, never missing the daily sessions between Prince’s Day and Duke’s Day that often dragged on for hours, ending only when her father grew weary and hungry and always long after she had done so.  They were boring but she was told they were educational, and that the people had to see her sitting there, the strength of her family undiminished by Lady Meridian Celine’s passing.





Always her father had sent for her, allowing her to spend the short time between the morning meal and court’s commencement as she would.  But today he had not.





He wanted her to become Lady Meridian she realized, remembering what he had said in the carriage.  Not Lady Meridian her mother, but the lady of the house.  The lady of the barony.





She was still angry, however.  Still wanting him to be the one who apologized.  Her toes had nearly frozen through; she had nearly gotten frostbite because of him.  And what about his broken promise?  Shouldn’t he be apologizing for that too?  Did he even care?





Even as she asked herself these questions though, Tyset was feeling much calmer, much less angry with her father.  Of course he cared.  He was her father after all.  He had not known about the near brush with frostbite, nor about how she had felt while in the carriage.  How could he?  She had not said one word to him since.  Not at any of the meals they had shared since then.  When addressed she had just scowled and stared at her plate or angrily stuffed some morsel between her lips so she could not reply.  That was also the probable reason for the lack of summons to today’s court:  Meridian Laurent did not want to look over only to see his daughter scowling at him.





Sitting up, she saw that it was snowing outside.  The window in a small alcove, there was a cushioned seat that ran around the alcove’s three sides.  Rising, she went to it, wrapping the blanket that lay there around her shoulders before sitting again.  Outside, beyond the walls of her family’s home and across the street that bore their name, there was a woman just emerging from an Artists Parlor.  Her face red with the heat of the place, Tyset wished she were in the woman’s shoes.





A passing sleigh stopped and the woman climbed in.  Tyset watched it until it had disappeared down the road.  She had the position, the power and the authority, not to mention all the money in the world.  She could be whatever she wanted to be.  Do whatever she wanted to do.  The only thing standing in the way of that was…was…herself.





She had to apologize to her father.  Only then would he allow her to leave her room, the palace, and do what she wanted to do.





Tyset smiled.  She was the only one holding herself back.  Like the great playwright Absolon de Chére said, she was in a prison of her own making.  Were she to stop doing that, to stop building it stronger and instead to just open the door, she could do anything.  Literally.