hcrryofwales:
“Lad.” The appellation leaves a sardonic chuckle to rot on his lips. “You, uncle, have spent too much time in the company of Lord Douglas. When do you make time for yourself? For your fancies?” The swift reorient of topic allowed Harry to study his uncle’s profile intently, his eyes askance as they bore into Gloucester’s travel-weary countenance, and the tuft of coppery hair that abutted his mouth. Edmund bore enough similarities to his brother, the King, to parade himself as a Clifford, but not enough to be plucked amongst a crowd of hundreds as a Plantagenet. Henry envied this in his uncle; the ease in which he could transmute from Duke to countryman, scion to shadow –– when he peered into the mirror, he would not be forced to gaze at his father’s reflection in lieu of his own. And, furthermore, Edmund had been exempted from the loathly red-hair Edward and his offshoot shared. Indeed, of this, Henry confessed envy.
“There will be a hunt, I am told, on the Lord’s day,” Henry declares, as if it were of immediate interest to his uncle, eyes-peeled like grapefruit as they conjured an image of feathers and fur flying, the carnage and dismemberment, the grounding inhale of pine and horse sweat, the broad, brick-red streak of sunburn that would sear across his forehead and smart for days to come. Yet, he could not imagine that the balmy climes would persist in perpetuity. Sometime before then, he was certain, rainclouds would scud in from the north, and rain would fall. The Welsh Prince tipped his head toward the sun, the sky clear enough that one could peer into heaven and spy on what the angels above were conspiring about, and exhaled sonorously. The longer he gazed from the window, the warmer his cheeks grew. Flushed, though his complexion would be hard pressed to lose its English pallor.
His uncle might have already grown weary of the heat, the endless haze of blue, and yet, Harry feared that days such as these were growing numbered; inching toward autumn, toward dusk, to frosty fingertips and gelid earlobes and billowy plumes of breath. Toward wintertide.
“Endless as the Queen’s scheming is,” Harry remarked, clasping his hands behind his spine as he motioned away from the window, finding perch upon a trunk resting at the foot of his four-poster, “you may as well find the time to enjoy yourself.” His elbows fell upon his knees, brows knitted amusingly. “You are not getting any younger, are you, Uncle?” Harry’s words had been punctuated with a wink, directed at Edmund lightheartedly. “You ask me what has come to pass in your absence and yet, Glouc, it is always you who knows more than me. What shall I say? That I trust the Russians not? To that you will counsel that we must –– trust them –– and then something else will emerge from the woodwork that further cements my suspicions.”
“What say you that we might call upon the Crown Prince for a hunt of our own?”
Such ribbing may have felt like an adolescent taunt to his contemporaries, so often immersed in their own vanity that even the most jocular of teasing would shape-shift into the specter of an insult. He may have been plagued by his own vices and shortcomings, but he too possessed the rarest of virtues among England’s nobility — humility.
“You know very well that I am a sour old codger with little love for personal enterprises.” The dry intonation of his delivery was belayed by a conspiratorial glint to his eyes, the edge of his mouth, so often drawn into a taut line, quirking upward for a fleeting moment. Much like the fiery shock of red hair that adorned his scalp, Edmund had lacked the richness of his older brother’s sense of humor. Edward’s wit was as well known as his temper, and while he was well aware of the contention between king and prince, the duke was glad that Harry had inherited such lively character.
“Undermining Her Majesty’s endeavors is how I enjoy myself, nephew.” It was a cold truth wrapped in a lukewarm jest. With the exception of her fondness for their Russian counterparts, he had steadfastly endeavored to thwart the queen’s misbegotten influence on the English court, a venture which he took as great a pride in as the countless pilgrimages that had led him across the continent. Still, it was a touch nettling to know that a cause that could bring even him and Isabel together was still not enough to dislodge Harry from his suspicions concerning his young bride’s family.
“And so the dance continues,” he relents. Edmund and Edward had already extended their olive branches to the Russian court, though his own had needed to be passed to the Grand Duchess in the shadows. Only time would erode Harry’s misgivings — and even then, perhaps not completely. “The Crown Prince?” the older man queries, the title carried past his lips on the end of a gentle scoff. “And what are we to hunt for in his company? His manners? His good sense? I fear you’d have better luck rooting out a pure white fox.”
