The Children of the Manor Chapter 2 YA Novel The Aristocrats
“She’s like our sister Arthur. Stop watching her like that.”
Arthur, thanks to a late summer growth spurt, stood shoulder to shoulder with Victoria. He takes a step back in case she notes she is barefoot while he is not. He leans against the tree, their tree. The one that marks the end of the lawn and the beginning of the orchard. A past ancestor had planted it for his wife. If you knew where to look, and being twelve and a future adventurer and lord of the world, Arthur did.
Under the lowest branch carved rough and deep were two initials, A’s with a heart between. In a finer sharper scrawl was written, so you will find shade and substance when I am from your side. Arthur had puzzled over it many a time. Imagining a grand romance. A promise. A vow. Something one would give their entire being to protect. A thing to aspire to. To be the one who could provide protection. The rock his other could lean on. The knight that would risk his very life if it meant that those under his care would be safe and whisper his name with gratitude even over his grave. A daydream he would never admit that he imagined with a regularity. He had practiced the moment so many times he no longer cried imagining a sunlit gravestone. He could now, with the practice of age and wisdom his twelve years allowed him, could consider his mortality and the effect his noble death would have on everyone, with no more than a far off stare and a set to his chin.
Victoria claimed it to be the curse of his name. His romantic nature, a thing fierce and defining. He woke up in love with the world. In love with the sun across the wide wooden floor, in love with the dust that danced Fae in the beam, in love with the fog that rolled over the hills, curling over the grass, making his morning tea all the warmer. Arthur loved Ace. He had since the moment they had scurried away in the library. A person as brave as himself. A person who imagined and demanded more from the world than what was on offer. He had read widely on the topic. Venturing into Austen’s Mansfield Park to gather a grander sense of romance beyond the Chaucer forced upon him by Mr. Sharp. Arthur was entirely unsure of what any of it meant, only that in front of him was a person who he could admire.
He loved watching Ace when she asked questions of cook until the exhausted woman could explain why bread rose no better. He laughed when she had exhausted the gardener’s knowledge of botany until he placed a spade in her hand. He ignored how his tutor glared at him when she asked the questions he should have been. When Ace would meld to shadow in the school room quiet until she could no more keep her silence than she could keep from breath. He could stare at her for his lifetime and never untangle if he loved her the way he loved all things wild and free. The quickness of her run and the sharpness of a mind always at work.
“Don’t be daft, Vickie, you just have to look at her to see she looks nothing like us. A distant cousin at the closest. That’s what they said.”
“They say a lot of things. The Aunt said she was a cookoo in the nest.”
“That old bat would do well to mind her tongue.”
“What would you do about it?”
“One day I will be lord of the manor and anyone who does not treat Ace the way she deserves will find themselves on the road with their bags packed.”
Victoria chews at her nail. Ace was now an inch into the mud studying something too small for them to have ever taken notice of. Victoria turned looking into Arthur’s face.
“What about me?”
“What about you? The two of you are thick as thieves. You would never insult her.” His voice had taken the edge of the girl’s new intimacies, the shared language that had their own words and meaning that he could not follow.
“No, what if they are mean to me?” Arthur furrows his brow, staring at his sister. It was difficult when he really saw her. He thought he knew her as he knew himself. It unnerves him to see he could be wrong, that she needed things he did not. That her fears were not his. That he could fail her without even knowing the how or the why of it all. He hated failing. He hated the distance that was growing bit by bit between them.
“Nitwit.” He cuffs her gently on the back of her head. “They may as well be cruel to me as to say a cross word to you.” Victoria smiles at him with half her mouth and none of her eyes before rushing the grass and tumbling into Ace. Arthur watches how their heads blend to silhouette. The way his sister, who could sit for nothing, settles as Ace explains her patch of the universe.
He contemplates joining them. Running after and inserting himself between them. He had done so before; he had stomped over to the girls, who looked at him as if he were a thing out of place, an ogre in a fairytale. “Stop” they yelled. He did, for who else would he take his instruction from then the two girls? “Slowly Arthur.” He did, sitting with a painful gentleness he hoped they noted. “Look what Ace found.” Ace tipped her hands pointing the cup of a flower towards him. Two bumble bees slumbered, their thin legs intertwined. The marvels of the world almost crushed under his boot.
Arthur settles into the tree letting the bark tattoo his back, crossing his arms. Best to let them be. A knight can not be slow, careful, and gentle. A knight goes crashing into battles. A knight is for swinging swords. He surveys the meadow understanding of his place in this world as the eventual head of the family and of the house. Arthur knows it will always be with sword and shield in hand, between the world and those two girls.
