Dear Reader,
This short story is a companion piece to the adventure/romance series The Daughters of New Victoria. The series is “steampunk adjacent” which earns this work its “fantasy” category. Read on.
The Honorable Philbin Makepeace, of the South Country Makepeaces, sat in his rolling carriage staring out at the colourless sand mountains of the Interim Desert. He was restless and eager for something to happen. His father and mother had railed against his most recent escapade that ended in damage to the baker’s store front three days ago. The baker had come, demanding money to repair the damage.
“If you do not pay, I shall drag you before the emperor himself,” he roared.
Following the baker’s noisy exit, Philbin’s father sat in his appointed chair in the large front room sobbing. His enormous, over-fed belly wobbled and shook as he did so. He held a perfumed kerchief to his tear-filled eyes wailing in despair over his good-for-nothing son.
Philbin’s mother roared obscenities as she shook the list of damages the baker had brought. Of them both, he feared his mother’s reaction the most. It was difficult to navigate the House of Makepeace. Philbin was never quite sure which days he could walk through his home in peace and which days he risked life and limb due to the barrage of items his mother threw in her fits of rage.
The damage to the baker’s store front came about by Philbin’s successful rallying of the young farm hands of the region. He didn’t know how he came to the idea, but he suddenly realized the untapped potential of these young men’s strength and vitality. If he could gain their trust, he could bring about change in New Victoria!
Philbin was unhappy with the Emperor’s managing of finances, taxes, roads, and what he considered being overly restrictive entertainment laws. What business was it of the emperor on how he enjoyed himself? Sure he was on the right path, he frequented the favourite lowly pubs and ale houses that his “constituents” preferred.
A child of comfort and wealth, he was ill prepared for the atmosphere of such places. He quickly learned the wrong word would get him a fist on the chin.
He changed his approach. He avoided wearing his finery, gems, and jewels. Instead, he demanded his mother command her servants to lend him whatever extra clothes they had for his use. Thus more appropriately garbed, and congratulating his quick wit, he enjoyed much higher success with the laborers.
“And what, ye great curd-faced baby, do we get if we listen to you?” the laborers demanded at first.
Philbin knew he was dangerously near a fist-to-chin encounter.
“I pledge my life to working for you, my dear friends, toward great leisure time. I shall do all I can to remove the deplorable restrictions placed upon you by our out-of-touch ruler!”
At this, the laborers muttered and glanced at each other in apprehension.
“What you say sounds too near to treason, my boy,” one man said.
“What,” Philbin muttered, “is treason, but a worthy idea not acceptable to someone in power? We have nothing to fear, brothers!”
“Steady on, there. We’ve seen nothing that declares you a ‘brother’ to us.”
Philbin lowered his chin into his collar, hoping the fabric proved an adequate cushion. “Let us swear a blood oath! I’ll go first. Has anyone a goblet?”
“Is your wart-covered mother a witch, too, boy? Where do you get such black ideas?!”
Philbin left immediately.
He needed a new tactic. He could not convince crowds of men surrounded by fellows with the same ideas to change their minds. Philbin chose instead to single out the vulnerable ones separated from the herd.
He had splendid success.
Many late evenings brought dark alley conversions to his side…that is once he learned which alleys were free from muggings and which were not. He converted his first disciple, holding a mud sodden rag to his bleeding lip.
Two young men joined him and held up wooden signs depicting the evils of the emperor. Philbin crowed elegantly and wittily to the passersby. He reveled in the power he held. He understood his voice should carry to enormous crowds! This was his destiny.
“Out of the way, you lazy, good-for-nothin’ seat cushion,” a burly, blood-stained man growled. He pushed a wooden cart full of animal carcasses. The flies danced a dizzy ballet above them.
Philbin wrinkled his nose.
“Wouldn’t you like to change your circumstances, old man?” he gagged.
“Out of the way, I said!” The man pivoted quickly, forcing the cart to turn toward the young men.
Philbin spoke desperately, “I can help you. I can ensure you never have to work a day in your life-ahhhhhh!”
Philbin screamed as the cart of bloody, dead animals hurtled toward him. He climbed up his nearest compatriot, grabbed the other’s hair to pull him nearer so he could use him as a step. All three fell, but Philbin was the most fortunate. The baker’s outside wares bin caught his fall.
Gasping and a groaning, Philbin climbed out of the wreckage to glare balefully at his attacker. He slipped on the filling of the cream buns spilling from the baker’s display and plunged backward again. He heard tinkling glass and laughter.
The baker tore out of his place of business and shouted insults at Philbin and his partners. Everyone, including the man with the bloody animals, roared with laughter. Philbin blinked. The cart that threatened him with a disgusting and bloody injury was nowhere near him. It stood with its owner several feet away, and now he knew he looked like a fool.
Following this event, his parents sent him to the Imperial City to work for his uncle in the palace.
Such a mistake!
Philbin escaped his uncle’s strict rules and wandered about the Imperial City. He walked through the slums with more wisdom this time. He avoided it when the sun set and wore only the simplest of garments. As he roamed, he chattered his treasonous doctrine. He gained disciples and grew in power.
Or so he believed.
The young men, not farm laborers, or country yokels were more polished in thought. They watched him to see how quickly they could part him from the money he swore he had. The Imperial City thrived on knowledge and advancement and even the lowest of the low knew something about science, agriculture, finance, and business. Philbin believed that because he encountered them in the slums, they were the stupidest of all the earth’s creatures.
But the slums of a large prosperous city are not the slums of the country.
“What of this money you speak, good man,” the young men purred. “Show us what you have so we may believe in you more fully.”
“Oh! Absolutely. Yes…I can give you a sample.”
“When?”
“Very soon!”
“How soon?”
Philbin wondered if he should protect his chin.
“Meet me tomorrow night. We will enjoy drinks at the tavern nearest the palace.”
“Not tomorrow. Tonight.”
“Well…”
“Tonight.”
“Yes,” he replied with a slight shake in his voice, “tonight.”
That night proved to be more damaging than his altercation at the baker’s in his home village. Shouting drunkenly and with raucous abandon, Philbin’s friends destroyed the tavern as they chanted his cleverly crafted political rhetoric:
If we only have a royal, no one else can get a try.
But they added their own line, to which Philbin’s reaction was decidedly against.
Philbin for emperor!
“Er…no! No, no no! I do not want to be emperor. That’s…eh-that’s treason, brothers! Treason!”
Philbin had only meant to garner attention with his rhetoric. He never intended to debate the legitimacy of the royal bloodline! Never!
They shoved him aside, pulled his money bag from his belt and went on to crash about the city in the night. Delete Created with Sketch.
Outrage over the incident filled the conversation at the breakfast table the next morning. Well, it filled Uncle’s one-sided conversation.
“Ruffians absolutely decimated the Crow & Gun last night! I continue to warn the palace of the encroaching danger in keeping the slums so near the place. I tell them to push them out! Cart them off to the villages! Let them be someone else’s problem! Hey…what? Why do you look so guilty, nephew?”
Philbin felt the blood draining down, down, down his neck, leaving a pale white fish-belly pallor in its place.
“Er…eh…” he attempted.
“Did you have something to do with this? Are you telling me you leave your rooms in the evening when I explicitly forbid you to do so? I’m outraged! Aghast! Your mother, my dear sister, shall hear of this!”
And she did.
Her letter—of course filled with obscenities—threatened , gave ultimatums, and promised doom.
Following, Philbin moped about with such depression and for so long that his uncle roared that he should go out and find himself a girl. That would solve his stupid personality problems. Yes, all he needed was a girl.
Philbin didn’t want a girl. He wanted the power to change things, to entertain himself as he wished. He wanted another chance to be heard in the streets of New Victoria. Seeing his chance, he left late one evening, promising he would find a girl. Instead, he went out to seek followers for his cause.
Disaster once again.
This time, his followers smashed up a royal coach and burnt two ornamental trees on the palace grounds. They pelted rotten fruit at both and spit their liquor through the gates and tossed matches in afterward.
His parents, and his uncle, knelt before the Emperor begging him not to kill the boy, but pretty please…could he place him in the North Tower? Just until he grew out of this sorry phase in his life?
So, Philbin lived “at the courtesy of the palace” in the prison tower of the Imperial Palace. Much of the body fat he attained through rich foods and lazy pursuits fell off of him. He no longer cared about his appearance and his hair grew shaggy, and long down past his shoulders. The only entertainments accessible to him were the books in the cell library and watching people go about their business through the barred windows. Twice a day, his guard opened the trap door and allowed him to stand outside on the balcony and imagine he was free. They were not fools: they tied a chain to his ankle to ensure he didn’t jump.
He is who a visiting princess saw as her family stayed in the South Tower as guests—actual welcome guests—of the emperor. Her Royal Highness Princess Violetta stayed at the window as much as possible to catch glimpses of him.
“Who is that man who stares so forlornly from the window in the other tower?” she asked in her nasal, unpleasant voice as her family sat with the Emperor enjoying a ten course meal.
“That is no one, Your Highness,” the Emperor said, waving away the question and returning to his conversation with her father.
“No one who looks so sad and noble can be ‘no one’, Your Majesty. Who is he, really?” she persisted as she spit out a wad of pork and replaced it with a large meatball.
The Emperor turned a twitching eye toward the brat and gave as frustrating an answer as he could muster.
“He is the rabble-rousing son of some inconsequential nobles in the lands to the west. As I say, he is ‘no one’.”
“But why is he there rotting away in a prison? What has he done?” She took a large gulp of wine and burped loudly as she waited.
The emperor flicked a disgusted glance over her food stained clothes, greasy hair, and rough congested skin.
“Treason,” he said and turned away firmly.
“What kind of treason?”
No answer came. As her visit wore on, she asked the guards. She asked the servants. She asked the officials. No one could give an answer.
After several days of refusing hot meals and sight-seeing to stare out the window to catch sight of him, she bribed a guard to take her to the prisoner. She stood staring through the bars at Philbin who sat at the window in clothes that were so large he had to tie ropes around his waist to secure them to his body. He leaned weakly against the back of the chair and stared at the girl in distaste.
“Hello,” she said shyly. She pressed her face against the bars to get a better look.
Philbin, tired of seeing only his guards, walked near. He leaned heavily against the bars and stared.
The two stared at each other for sometime, Violetta with the budding love of a stupid woman, and he with curiosity of a cat. Besides his mother, he had never seen someone so ugly and unkempt. Besides her favourite horse, Florenzio, she had never seen anyone so handsome in her entire life.
Violetta giggled terribly, kissed her fingers, pressed them to his lips, and fled back down the tower steps.
Philbin turned his confused eyes to the guard, who shrugged.
Two days later, the guard opened the barred doors and held it open. Philbin stared at him for a while, expecting it to be a joke.
“Abe? What is this?”
“Come along,” the guard said, holding out a hand.
“Why? Am I free?”
“…not exactly ‘free’” the guard muttered.
“What?”
“Nothin’.”
Philbin had to lean on Abe as they descended the long, long flight of stone stairs. When they reached the bottom, he stopped in confusion. There stood that odd, ugly girl with two old people standing behind her.
“What is this, Abe?” he asked.
Abe sighed. “You’ll find out soon. Go on.”
Philbin tottered weakly in bare feet toward the girl who stood clasping her hands together and wore an expression of rapturous joy.
“My husband!” she cried.
Philbin stopped. He turned to see to whom she had referred. There was no one there but Abe.
“What?” he said.
“We’re to be married!” she said.
“Oh…no, no…I believe you have the wrong man.” Philbin said, reaching toward Abe, hoping for rescue.
Abe stepped backward and slowly began closing the barred door.
“Don’t you want to be a prince?” Violetta exclaimed.
Philbin turned back around. “What?” he said.
Violetta smiled brightly and beckoned to him in the manner one beckons to an animal, hoping to lure it with food.
Wonderful dreams of change danced in Philbin’s mind. Becoming a Prince would show everyone up! He could do what he wanted and go where he pleased! No one could ever say a cross word to him ever again. His mother and father would be sad that he never, ever wanted to see them again. His rich uncle would be poorer than he!
He smiled weakly and tottered over to his betrothed.
Violetta patted his cheek, grinned a slightly off-putting smile, and picked him up tenderly to carry him away.
And no one ever heard from them again.
The end.
Copyright Nathina Knight 2023. All Rights Reserved.
Est. 1980 