Chapter Text
Prelude: July 4th, 2010
Henry wakes up to loud voices echoing elsewhere in the White House and his mother’s cool hand on his face.
“Henry. Please, darling, wake up.”
“Mum?” He squints; she hasn’t turned a light on, so he can just make out her pinched mouth, the way her eyebrows knit in the middle of her face. “What’s going on?”
“Oh, my baby. It’s the vote. We’re out.”
The vote. It’s been hanging over them for months—will the American Commonwealth remain a monarchy, or become a republic? Gran may have refused to discuss it, convinced that she understood the will of the people and they had no desire to displace their queen, but it’s been inescapable everywhere else.
“Okay…” Henry rubs his eyes, trying to shift the sleep from them, when there’s a loud crash from somewhere outside. A pit of dread gnaws at Henry’s stomach as he puts it all together—the late hour, the expression on his mum’s face, the yelling. “Mummy—”
At twelve years old, he’s probably too old to be calling her ‘mummy’. Phillip would call him a baby. But it’s the middle of the night, and he’s terrified.
“Pack a bag, my darling. Quickly. Just a few things, okay?”
“I thought we were supposed to have three months?” That’s what they’d said on the television, on the news programme Henry was absolutely not supposed to be watching—that if the people chose independence, the Prime Minister wouldn’t rush the change. That there’d be a peaceful transition of power.
“They lied.” His mother’s voice is tight. “Please, love, hurry.” She pulls the blankets down to the end of the bed so he can climb out, handing him a backpack she must have found in the bottom of his wardrobe.
Even though it’s the middle of summer, he shivers as he slides out of bed, shoving his feet into the slippers already sitting under his bed before he blindly grabs some clothes out of his chest of drawers. His eyes land on his bedside table, where his signet ring lies alongside the book he was reading before he went to sleep, and he sweeps both of those into his bag as well.
“Good boy.” She manages a small smile for him, though Henry can see the effort it takes. “Your dad’s getting Bea, and Phillip was helping your gran, so we’d better go and meet them, hmm?” She turns on her heel and opens Henry’s bedroom door a crack, peering out before she reaches out and takes his hand. “Stay with me, darling.” She pulls him along with her out the door and into the corridor, moving quickly but with a light step. Henry does his best to copy her. Somewhere not as far away as Henry would like, there’s the sound of glass being smashed.
“Where are we going?”
She sighs. “We’ll have to go to England, baby. Gran’s cousin will look after us as family, even if we’re no longer royalty.”
Henry gasps as her words sink in. No longer royalty. Once upon a time it would have been a relief, but now, with his home being ransacked and his mother’s hand trembling in his as they rush down the plush, red-carpeted stairs Henry has been running up and down ever since he could walk, he’d give anything to take back all the times he wished away his public life.
The rest of Henry’s family are gathered at the bottom of the Grand Staircase. Bea looks how Henry feels, sleep-rumpled and terrified, and she pulls him into a hug as soon as his mum lets go of his hand. Half-tucked into her shoulder, Henry takes in the crease in his dad’s forehead, the pinch between his brows he usually only has when Henry’s gran is being particularly rude about something, as he whispers something in Henry’s mum’s ear that makes her squeeze her eyes shut for a moment. Gran’s hand is tucked into the crook of Philip’s arm, and the giant suitcase Pip’s holding in his other hand is definitely Gran’s, not his.
“We’ll go through the servants’ quarters.” His dad reaches out, ruffling Henry’s hair with a tight smile. “Quick as we can across the hallway, all right? There’s someone waiting for us just outside the door. We’ll be all right.”
Henry’s gran frowns. “What sort of someone? Why was I not informed of this?”
“Because while you’ve spent the last few months burying your head in the sand, I’ve been making contingency plans to keep my family safe.” His dad doesn’t even look at her as he says it, wiping away a tear that’s slowly creeping its way down Bea’s cheek instead. And then he straightens, turning to tower over his mother-in-law, and Henry finds himself shrinking away from a man who has never so much as raised his voice to him or his siblings, for as long as Henry can remember. “Come with us and be polite to the people who are helping us, or stay here and take your chances with the people who are currently looting a royal home. Frankly, Mary, I don’t care which one you choose, but choose fast.”
“How dare you speak to me like that? I am your queen, and you will—” She stutters to a stop, eyes wide and fearful and flitting between them all one by one. It’s Henry’s mum who finally responds.
“You’re not, though, are you, Mum? You’re not his queen anymore. You’re not anyone’s.”
A loud crash, the sounds of splintering wood downstairs, and a sudden rush of loud voices interrupts the silence that follows this pronouncement, and Bea grabs Henry’s hand and squeezes it so hard his fingers start to tingle.
“There’s no time for this.” Henry’s dad looks around the corner. “We have to make a run for the servants’ quarters before they come up the stairs. Pip, take your gran. Cat, you go next, Henry after Bea, and I’ll take the rear, all right?”
For a moment, Henry thinks his gran is going to argue, but Philip just nods at their dad, and then the two of them disappear. The rest of them fall in line, checking that the coast is clear—all they have to do is get down the hallway; all Henry has to do is keep up with Bea.
Henry is on her heels until he’s not. One moment he’s running as fast as the rest of them, the next his slipper is snagging on a loose bit of carpet and he goes tumbling to the ground, his head slamming into the wall and teeth sinking into his lip when his chin hits the floor. It feels like forever that he lies there, dazed, all the sounds around him oddly muffled and a weird, wet feeling in his left ear.
He thinks he hears his dad say something like go — catch up — out, but it’s hard to tell through what is now a high-pitched ringing. He tries to sit up, but there’s a kaleidoscope of colour dancing at the edges of his vision, and he slumps back against the wall.
“All right, my lad?” His dad’s voice comes from very far away, which is weird, because Henry can see his face right in front of him. “I’ve got you, come on.”
“Can’t.” A jolt of pain shoots up Henry’s neck as his head flops to the side, and it takes all the effort he can muster to pull it back up again. He brings a hand to his ear to try to get rid of the annoying wetness; when it falls back into his line of vision, he can’t understand why his fingers are red. “Dad…”
“It’s all right, Henry.” Dazed and dizzy, Henry barely registers his dad’s hands on him, half-lifting and half-dragging him a few metres down the corridor before opening a door Henry doesn’t think he’s ever noticed before. Once his dad pushes him inside, he realises why—it’s a storage cupboard, probably designed to have the door blend into the wall so visitors don’t try to open it. He has to curl up in order to fit under the shelf, tucking his backpack into his stomach.
“Stay here and stay quiet, all right?” Henry stares up at his dad, backlit by the fluorescent lights of the hallway and looking more determined than Henry has ever seen him. His head snaps to the side for a moment before he looks back at Henry. “No one’s going to come looking in here, as long as you keep quiet. I’ll be back for you as soon as I can, love.”
The door slams shut before Henry can reply, and he’s left alone with the ache in his head and the darkness and the ache and the ringing in his ears and the ache and the terror and the ache…
No one will look for him here. His dad said so, and his dad has never lied to him.
It’s probably safe to close his eyes for a minute.
Just for a minute.