Red, White & Royal Blue(102)

“Jesus Christ, Mum,” Catherine says, releasing Henry and nudging him behind her on protective reflex.

“This is precisely why I didn’t want you to see. You’re too softhearted to accept the truth, Catherine, given any other option. The majority of this country still wants the ways of old.”

Catherine draws herself up, her posture ramrod straight as she approaches the table again. It’s a product of royal breeding, but it comes off more like a bow being drawn. “Of course they do, Mum. Of course the bloody Tories in Kensington and the Brexit fools don’t want it. That’s not the point. Are you so determined to believe nothing could change? That nothing should change? We can have a real legacy here, of hope, and love, and change. Not the same tepid shite and drudgery we’ve been selling since World War II—”

“You will not speak to me this way,” Queen Mary says icily, one tremulous, ancient hand still resting on her teaspoon.

“I’m sixty years old, Mum,” Catherine says. “Can’t we eschew decorum at this point?”

“No respect. Never an ounce of respect for the sanctity—”

“Or, perhaps I should bring some of my concerns to Parliament?” Catherine says, leaning in to lower her voice right in Queen Mary’s face. Alex recognizes the glint in her eyes. He never knew—he always assumed Henry got it from his dad. “You know, I do think Labour is rather finished with the old guard. I wonder, if I were to mention those meetings you keep forgetting about, or the names of countries you can’t quite keep straight, if they might decide that forty-seven is perhaps enough years for the people of Britain to expect you to serve?”

The tremor in the queen’s hand has doubled, but her jaw is steely. The room is deadly silent. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Wouldn’t I, Mum? Would you like to find out?”

Catherine turns to face Henry, and Alex is surprised to see tears on her face.

“I’m sorry, Henry,” she says. “I’ve failed you. I’ve failed all of you. You needed your mum, and I wasn’t there. And I was so frightened that I started to think maybe it was for the best, to let you all be kept behind glass.” She turns back to her mother. “Look at them, Mum. They’re not props of a legacy. They’re my children. And I swear on my life, and Arthur’s, I will take you off the throne before I will let them feel the things you made me feel.”

The room hangs in suspense for a few agonizing seconds, then:

“I still don’t think—” Philip begins, but Bea seizes the pot of tea from the center of the table and dumps it into his lap.

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry, Pip!” she says, grabbing him by the shoulders and shoving him, sputtering and yelping, toward the door. “So dreadfully clumsy. You know, I think all that cocaine I did must have really done a job on my reflexes! Let’s go get you cleaned up, shall we?”

She heaves him out, throwing Henry a thumbs-up over her shoulder, and shuts the door behind them.

The queen looks over at Alex and Henry, and Alex sees it in her eyes at last: She’s afraid of them. She’s afraid of the threat they pose to the perfect Faberge veneer she’s spent her whole life maintaining. They terrify her.

And Catherine isn’t backing down.

“Well,” Queen Mary says. “I suppose. I suppose you don’t leave me much choice, do you?”

“Oh, you have a choice, Mum,” Catherine says. “You’ve always had a choice. Perhaps today you’ll make the right one.”



* * *



In the corridor of Buckingham Palace, as soon as the door has shut behind them, they fall sideways into a tapestry on a wall, breathless and delirious and laughing, cheeks wet. Henry pulls Alex close and kisses him, whispers, “I love you I love you I love you,” and it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter if anyone sees.



* * *



He’s on the way back to the airstrip when he sees it, emblazoned on the side of a brick building, a shock of color against a gray street.

“Wait!” Alex yells up to the driver. “Stop! Stop the car!”

Up close, it’s beautiful. Two stories tall. He can’t imagine how somebody was able to put together something like this so fast.

It’s a mural of himself and Henry, facing each other, haloed by a bright yellow sun, depicted as Han and Leia. Henry in all white, starlight in his hair. Alex dressed as a scruffy smuggler, a blaster at his hip. A royal and a rebel, arms around each other.

He snaps a photo on his phone, and fingers shaking, types out a tweet: Never tell me the odds.



* * *



He calls June from the air over the Atlantic.

“I need your help,” he says.

He hears the click of her pen cocking on the other end of the line. “Whatcha got?”





FOURTEEN




Jezebel @Jezebel

WATCH: DC Dykes on Bikes chase protesters from Westboro Baptist Church down Pennsylvania Avenue, and yes, it’s as amazing as it sounds. bit.ly/2ySPeRj

9:15 PM · 29 Sept 2020





* * *



The very first time Alex pulled up to Pennsylvania Avenue as the First Son of the United States, he almost fell into a bush.