CHAPTER THREE

A few days later the King and Queen called Limerun into the Dayroom that was right beside the Decision Room. It had softer furnishings and was the smallest of the official rooms in the castle. As such, it was ideal for little secret conversations. This room had been designed to be the opposite of the Decision Room. Words spoken at normal pitch could hardly be heard by the person being addressed even if they were sitting close enough to touch. This was called the Room of Secrets. It was hardly ever used. The Advisers were not supposed to be in the room unless either the King or the Queen was also present.
Limerun watched in amazement as the Queen twirled her key in the lock and checked that the one door was securely fastened.
Whatever was going on, he wondered. He knew full well that not one single member of the royal household would dare enter the room without permission. Was this little key turning charade purely for his benefit?
It was and it turned his heart to ice. A shiver ran down his spine. His legs grew so weak that he would have fallen over had he not been sitting down in a small chair.
Since the Royal couple feared no one in this land of theirs there was hardly ever a need to go in to the Room of Secrets.
This afternoon was different. Both King and Queen sat huddled together in the centre of the room touching heads with their Most Senior Adviser. No one else was present. Absolutely no one else at all. The Queen kept looking about her, almost as if she expected one of her thousands of staff to be hiding under the carpet.
When the King had started to speak the Most Senior Adviser felt that something had gone wrong with his ears. He was in a dream. Or was this a nightmare? What he heard could not, really not ever, be true. It was truly horrible. Too horrible to think about, but he had to think about it, over and over and over again. Limerun dug his thumb and index finger nails into the side of his right thigh, causing some real pain. It was not a dream. It was real. He felt sick. Sick as sick he had never been. Down, down, down to the deepest part of his soul, he felt sick.
The Royal couple had entered the room with serious looks on their faces. They had sat down almost immediately and ordered Limerun to listen very carefully to every word they had to say and not to interrupt at all.
The King had started by telling the story of their child-to-be. How all the Palace rumours were correct? The Royal couple were going to have a new baby. And it was believed they would have a boy-child. All the signs were there. The baby kicked really hard inside the Queen’s tummy, and did not all the old wives’ tales mean this was a boy. It was certainly going to be a boy but the Palace gossips had got one small tiny detail quite wrong. Not that they could be blamed. For was not the Queen looking fatter and fatter, day by day? The small detail they had got so wrong was really quite simple. THE QUEEN WAS NOT GOING TO HAVE A BABY. ‘Actually, she is,’ said the King. But the baby would be provided by Limerun.
At this point, Limerun’s head began to swim. He could not follow what they were saying. It seemed like a load of nonsense to him. What on earth were they talking about? It was not long before he found out.
‘You see,’ he whispered to Limerun with his mouth right up against his adviser’s ear. ‘The Queen is too old to have a baby!’
A grunt came from the lips of Limerun. He did not understand what was going on.
‘But the Queen SHALL have a baby. And it will be a boy,’ added the King with great force. ‘This will be your job Limerun and it will be the most important job you have ever done for the Royal Family of Naltaraphet.’
‘Yes it will,’ confirmed the Cruel Queen. ‘And rest assured our friend you will be handsomely rewarded for this great service.’
This last comment surprised Limerun. He had never been thanked for anything he had done for the couple. And he certainly had never been called a “friend”. Well, this is something for the record books, he thought quietly to himself.
The King went on to explain. Although the Queen could not have any more children no one apart from the Court Physician knew this fact. And the Court Physician was bound to secrecy on point of death. So a baby boy would have to be provided from somewhere. Now, what the King planned was this: the Queen would continue adding extra clothes under her normal clothes, along with hankies and tea towels and pillow cases, until it was time for her to have her baby. Then she would disappear to her Bedchamber for as long as it took for the baby to appear.
When this time was reached it would be Limerun’s job to go out into Servantfamilyland and search through all the houses from all quarters of the rickety city outside the Royal walls until he found a young healthy couple who had just given birth to a boy. Then he would whisk them off to the Palace with promises of much gold and glory. He would tell them they had been chosen to be of great service to the King and Queen. Their child would be a friend and helpmate to the boy about to be born to the Royal Couple. They would live in great splendour, with large four-poster beds in all bedrooms, huge baths beside each bedroom, plenty of fine clothes and all the food they could ever eat until their son became King, after which time it would be up to him to decide what to do about his parents.
All this had to be done in the utmost secrecy. Even their closest relatives and friends must not know about these plans. They must tell everyone who would worry about their disappearance that they had to go to the castle for a special job to be conducted in the utmost secrecy, which meant a better life but with the drawback of having to part company for many years from all those people they knew. Everyone would understand. The King was convinced of it. So was Limerun. The Kingdom was not a place for going around asking difficult questions of people in authority.
‘Limerun’, the King went on, now in a whisper so low that even Limerun’s usually perfect hearing had trouble picking up the Royal murmurs. ‘Limerun, I want you to bring this family to the room beside the Queen’s bedchamber and give the parents a powerful sleeping draught. Then you must take the infant into the Queen’s room and place it with her. Naturally we shall expect the mother to bear the burden of bringing up the child although it must never be told that the Queen is not the real mother. If either of the parents speak they shall be taken to the deepest darkest dungeon and held there until the end of their days.’
‘Your next job will be to arrange for the sudden and quick death of the Court Physician. He must just disappear. We suggest in the lime bogs beyond the Palace Garden. You know them well, my good man, you’re named after their founder.
‘A new Court Physician must be appointed and told the former doctor had been taken suddenly ill with the stress of delivering a Royal Child. The new doctor will see the new-born baby boy as if it was the Queen’s.’