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“Why hello there, Henry. What are you doing awake? Looking around?” Arthur asked softly as he picked up his youngest son from his bassinet. Currently, it was just the two of them. Catherine had been dragged away by Beatrice to listen to the new song she wrote on her guitar and Philip was at school. “Can you hear the music coming from down the hall? That’s your sister. She’s not very good at the moment. Philip keeps telling her so. He doesn’t understand the art of lying to protect other people’s feelings just yet. Don’t worry, we’re working on it. How is he to be the future king if he can’t lie through his teeth?”
It’s a habit he developed when Philip was brought home. Whenever there was a baby in his arms and no one around, he would just talk. It’s good for babies, he’d read, but that’s not why he does it. He has never been one for silence.
On stage, if there was a lull for a moment, either the audience wasn't responding to the performance as the actors had anticipated, or there had been an occurrence on stage that went horrifically wrong. (Or, on one special occasion, both.) He needs to hear the audience, or a fellow actor on stage. He’s conditioned to it. Even on film sets, there is never a moment of quiet. When there’s meant to be complete silence, you can never escape the faint buzzing noise of technology.
It would stand to reason that Henry, who was only three weeks old and had spent half his life in the NICU, would be uncomfortable in the muteness of the palace as well. The sounds of heart monitors and nurses were more consistent than the dead air that eerily roamed the halls of Kensington like a shadow.
Henry, however, had started to grow fussy as Arthur continued to walk around the nursery spilling his thoughts.
“Am I not interesting enough for you, Henry George Edward James?” Arthur asked before he let out an amused huff. “And to think, I thought Philip William Louis Thomas was bad. I promise we don’t hate you. Your mother’s family is just… particular in their naming conventions. In a number of other things as well. You know, back home—”
He paced around the circumference of the nursery, chatting aimlessly about the Welsh countryside where he was raised and the family members Henry was yet to meet. Henry, however, didn’t seem as calmed by his stories as Arthur had hoped. It wasn’t until Arthur stopped to check his diaper and if it was time for him to eat that Henry’s high-pitched cries descended into soft whimpers. “Oh, I see. I’ll be quiet then.”
One would think that after spending that much time in the NICU, Henry would have grown used to the noise, but he seemed to truly find peace in the silence. The only sound around was the faint noise of cars passing by and their heartbeats. Not quite in sync, but healthy and strong.
The sound of piano strings faded in and out of his perception, however, he was aware that the sound never truly waned. It was consistent. A need for noise to never stop.
If the noise stopped, something was wrong.
He knew the song and if he could will himself to focus, he could name it. Instead, he let himself drift in the sea of noise and let the flashes of memories bring him comfort.
Beatrice, sitting next to him, still learning how to follow a metronome. Playing the right keys, but inconsistent in their timing. “Slow down, my love.” Followed soon by, “You need to be fast here… There you go!” All while Henry, not quite old enough to have control over his fingers, sat in Arthur’s lap and clapped.
Years later, while Bea spent two hours tuning her violin, Henry and Arthur would sit on the piano bench and play the same song he had taught Beatrice when she had been Henry’s age. Henry had always played it too long. He played every song too slow. But it was consistent and soft. He, like his sister, had taken some time to fully grasp why the metronome was yelling at him. He seemed to follow an invisible pacer. Slow, steady, and strong. They always had to play a song together for Henry to gain the confidence to speed up. “Practicing slowly is a great skill, but one day, life is going to speed ahead of you. How are you going to catch up?”
Henry hummed, as if his 4-year-old mind really had to think hard about it. Eventually, with the confidence of an old man passing down decades of wisdom, he said, “Slow and steady wins the race.”
Arthur had laughed and kissed his forehead.
Soon those memories will no longer exist. While Henry and Bea might know the song, they were both far too young to remember their time with Arthur learning it. They might know the song, but Henry and Bea were both far too young to remember learning it. No one else had been in the room during those moments. Those memories will die along with him.
It took a large amount of effort, but Arthur eventually forced his eyes open. He knew that tonight, he would need to be taken to the hospital. Once he passed through those doors, he would never come back. So, no matter how much pain he was in, he kept his eyes open and watched as Henry played the piano from across the room. Next to him, Bea tuned her violin before slamming her hand down onto a couple of piano keys. The sound surprised Henry enough that he faltered and stopped.
“Play faster. This sounds depressing.”
“That’s.. rather appropriate. Don’t you think, Bea?”
Bea, ever the adult, pushed Henry. “Come on. Think you could keep up with me?”
Henry shook his head, but counted them off anyway.
Arthur hoped against everything, that the two of them would continue to have this. That they would continue to make memories that may be forgotten and continue to cheer each other on. He wanted to grow old with them, but he also wanted them to have a life without him. This was the start of that life.
Days later, he dreamt of warm waters and a cloudy sky. A juxtaposition that would have baffled Philip but delighted Bea and Henry.
In a moment of clarity that could only happen while unconscious, he stepped into the water. He let it wash over him and take him under. When he came up for air, he was no longer in any pain.
And everything was quiet.
Before he could register that he was feeling a sensation, the calmness of warmth washed over him — threatening to drown him in the pool of a dreamless sleep.
Then memories of dying returned and life flooded his being like a lightning strike to a metal rod in the middle of an empty field. Sharp, fast, and blinding.
He was still dead, unfortunately, but he was conscious.
It was an unusual feeling, being alive in the way only humans are capable, but being dead in every other matter of the word. He had memories, almost five decades worth of them, because even dying won’t bring back the ones previously lost to time. He could think; contemplate his situation. He could feel comfort and longing. He had no heartbeat, but he could feel it thundering. No blood running through his veins, yet he felt a headrush. He was as alive as a thought.
Being dead was not what he imagined it would be and Arthur had spent most of his life jumping from one Shakespearean play to another. Contemplating death, the afterlife, and all it entails was part of the job description. However, being a vague presence was not an existence he put much thought to. Ghosts? Common place. Angels over in clouds of white watching the world below? Prepared for it. Standing in the middle of a meeting room in Kensington Palace as his mother-in-law made his teenage son sob without the ability to even make the air around him shift? Unexpected.
He would have rather been a vengeful spirit. At least he has experience in that field.
It hasn't been long since he’s last seen Henry, but the changes in him are stark. The dark circles underneath his eyes were large and overtook his face. Eyes drawn cast onto his hands as they trembled under the table. He shrank into himself, in a way that only a scolded child could. Terrified.
“You are, under no circumstances, allowed to disgrace this family. Am I understood?”
As if Henry were the dead one, not Arthur, he nodded. Lifeless in his defeat. Arthur can’t be certain what Mary is reprimanding him for, but he has an idea. If he were anything more than the air in the room, he would have shouted. Told Henry to run, be happy, and that his heart was the best of them all. He should be allowed to share it with whoever he wanted.
“Good. Now tell me, how did your exams go?”
Accepting the conversation shift for what it was, a permission to exist again, he looked up and met his grandmother’s eyes. “They went well, Gran. I believe I got high marks on all of them.”
“Believe?”
“I won’t know for certain until the middle of August.”
Mary hummed, as if this was an unsatisfactory answer. Time seemed to drag as she picked up her tea and drank. “Drink your tea, dear. You don’t look well.”
In the afterlife, time worked differently.
Arthur wasn’t sure how it worked, but only that it did not follow the conventions he’d spent fifty-five years consulting.
Knowledge, when dead, also worked differently.
Every time he woke up from his dreamless sleep, different periods of time had passed. A few weeks, a few months, and once an entire year. Sometimes, he would just know how much time had passed. Other times, fate decided it was in his best interest to figure it out himself.
He had come to realize that the fates were cruel and that they loved to place him in palace meeting rooms and watch as his family’s lives got ripped apart. He had met Alex in one of those meetings. Fate had found it necessary; he knew that, if had been given the chance, he would have loved that boy. If he had been alive, they would have been good friends and he would have loved him like a son. Every time he had seen him since, he could only agree with their decision.
So, as he watched as Catherine sat down in front of Alex with a grace that could only come from years of royal training and the keen knowledge of what the next hour was going to entail, he felt at peace. He had come to adore Alex in his own right. In the same way he had come to cherish Martha — from a place neither of them can reach, neither of them can feel, but there nonetheless. Alex and Martha were the partners of his sons, the parents of his future grandchildren, so he would love them and know them like they were his own.
And just like he knew Alex, so did Catherine. No matter how subtle he thought he could be, the moment Alex had requested a meeting with her, she knew.
“So, I’m more than well aware that Henry and I are… in a new situation for the royal family.”
At that, Catherine had let out a surprised laugh. The type of laugh reserved for family game nights and the little musicals Bea would force the boys into. The laugh that vibrated with love and pure amusement. “Really? I hadn’t noticed.”
Alex laughed too, and Arthur was certain that if he wasn’t nervous, it wouldn’t have sounded so stilted. “Yeah. Caused a bit of a scandal there for a moment. Sorry ‘bout all of that.”
Catherine gave him a knowing look, but it was softened by her smile. “Alex, was there something you wished to speak to me about?”
“Right. Of course. Well. Alright, I had a speech planned out, but I’m five seconds away from faking ill and leaving. So, I’m just going to say it. How would you feel about me asking Henry to marry me?”
“How would I feel?”
“Yeah. Do I have your blessing? I mean, I know asking for permission is really outdated — June once went on an hour-long tangent about how blessings are archaic; rooted in the patriarchy, and fathers owning daughters. None of that applies here, obviously, but what’s more lined with patriarchy and old-timey traditions than the monarchy? But I’m also asking because I respect you and your opinions. So, like, could I have your blessing anyway?”
He saw, along his peripheral, but also head-on, himself not much older than Alex. The ring he had picked out since his fifth date with Catherine hiding in the back of his pantry. Edward, sitting in front of him, had a permanent frown etched into his face. He was so certain he was going to say no. He had used every last ounce of his professional acting training to keep himself from not slipping into a bumbling fool who spent ten minutes ranting about how much Edward’s approval would mean to him and to Catherine and very nearly threw up on his shoes.
All Arthur got was, “It’s not my blessing you require. Her majesty must give her approval as head of state.”
For half a moment, Arthur expects Catherine to comment on Alex’s uncharacteristic nervous rambling. He most certainly would, if only to lighten the mood. However, Catherine had always been the better of the two of them.
“Dear, you are the only person I trust with my son’s heart.” She reached over the table and softly grasped his hand. “From the moment he was born, the world felt like they had a claim to him. His birth was announced in magazines and newspapers across the world for a month. His birth story has been recounted every year by thousands of people. For the first 18 years of his life, the photo a lot of people pictured when they thought of him was from the day he was allowed out of the hospital. Arthur and I were standing in front of the hospital just like everyone in this family has done. I was wearing this awful orange dress and Arthur was wearing a day-old button-up on top of some sleepshirt.
“We didn’t think he was going to come home that day, so we hadn’t put much effort into our appearance. The photo-op was a surprise as well. The public expected it, so we had to do it.
“At the time, I recall thinking that it was perhaps the worst photo either of us had ever taken, but the public loved it. Every year on his birthday, that photo would be on the front pages again. However, around his eighth or ninth birthday, I did come to appreciate the photo. We were there. At that point in time, he could have been anybody. He had so much potential to be anything. And that was terrifying. It was a terrifying thought with each of them, however, we were there. To guide him. To support him. And I realized why everyone loved that photo so much; you could see the love we had for him so clearly. You could see the pride each of us had for him. It didn’t matter that I looked like a pumpkin or that Arthur looked as if he had just gotten out of a coma, it was a moment of absolute love and security. I would rather that be the photo plastered on every newspaper than him alone.
“When Arthur died, I thought there would be no one else who could be trusted enough to truly know him. Pip was always at odds with him, Bea was off doing lord knows what, and Percy was spending half his time jetsetting to go save the world. And the photos consistently being published were of him… There were ones of him standing alone crying at the service, or him alone walking across campus. There were too many of him with some unknown girls. Half of which, I still think were plotted by my mother.
“My point is, no one knew him. Certainly, no one who loved him. But you do. All I’ve ever wanted was for him to have someone to hold his hand and look at him like he matters. Not his title.
“So, yes. You don’t need it, but you have it. You have my blessing. And I know, I know, you have Arthur’s too. Because no one else cares about him as much as we do, other than you. And that’s all a parent could want.”
As Arthur watched Alex walk around the table to pull Catherine into a hug, the only thing Arthur could do was agree and allow the water to consume him again.
He was in an unrecognizable room, but the scene before him was familiar.
There was a man at a piano playing a song that rang in his ears whenever it got too quiet. A song, even a decade after passing, he still could not name. It almost felt like a memory from an outsider's perspective until he realized that the little girl was not Beatrice and the man playing piano was not himself, but Henry.
It did not take long for Henry to notice her. She was much older than she was when Arthur last saw her, but still no older than three. Henry lifted her into his lap with ease as he gave up all intentions of practicing his piano.
The image flickered a little, snapshots flashing at the speed of light and moving slowly through molasses. He lifted Henry into his lap at an ancient piano in Kensington, abandoning Dubussy’s Clair de Lune in favor of playing Menken’s Be Our Guest, just to hear his excitable gasp when he recognized the song. Bea pushed Henry onto the piano bench as she grabbed a guitar. The two of them playing a song too depressing for a couple of kids under the age of ten to fully grasp the significance of, if their intermingled laughter meant anything. Philip and Bea screaming at each other off in the distance, a slamming door echoing down the hall not quite drowned out by Henry’s methodic playing as Arthur tried not to think about how this might be one of the last times he gets to see his son at peace.
Eighteen years of memories transposed on top of each other as Arthur watched as his granddaughter gently pressed down on the key in front of her, and the radiant delight that grew in her smile, so similar to the one he’d seen on his son countless of times — that he’d thought he’d never see again. But it was there as he watched Henry lightly picked up her hand and encouraged her to play a simple C-major scale with her index finger.
The sweet, calm moment was disturbed when a playful voice spoke from the doorway. “What if, when I kick the bucket, I just give everything to you and you can deal with it.”
Henry didn’t dignify his husband with an answer, only continued to instruct the child on how to play. Alex coughed.
“Fine. Sure, but what happens if we–” He paused, shooting a glance at the toddler in his lap, “go to… the farm upstate together?”
“Romeo and Juliet style? Dramatic, baby. I like it.”
“I was thinking more along the lines of ‘your mother is the former President of the United States, mine is the Queen of England, and we can’t go anywhere without security because someone might try to K.O. us’. But sure, Romeo and Juliet.”
“Dark,” Alex deadpanned, making his way over to the piano to pick up his daughter. “Okay, what about I just give everything to Nora? We know she’s gonna outlive us all.”
“I saw her shotgun a redbull three days ago.”
“And? I once shotgunned a bottle of barbecue sauce. She’s not special.”
Aria laughed. It’s unclear if she understood what had been said, but the sound filled Arthur with warmth not unsimilar to that of the water.
“I can’t believe I married you.”
“Ha-ha. Not only did you marry me, but now you are going to have, not just one, but two kids with me. Can’t ever get rid of me.”
“Not for the lack of trying.”
Alex flipped him off, making the toddler laugh again. Then he pressed a kiss to her cheek before pressing a brief kiss on Henry’s forehead. Arthur felt as if he was witnessing something he should not be allowed to see.
“So, I take it from this conversation that updating your will isn’t going well?”
Alex hummed, reaching over to rub Henry’s back. “Nah, it’s fine. There’s just a lot to go through. I’m tired of paperwork. Adoption paperwork, will paperwork, work paperwork.”
“That’s a lot of paper,” Aria said.
“Indeed,” Henry laughed. “We got to do it so your baby brother could come home, though.”
Aria nodded with all the seriousness a three-year-old could muster up.
Arthur loved her so much. He loved them all.
“So, what were you playing earlier?”
“Just something by Chopin. It’s sometimes called Reminiscence.”
“It’s lovely.”
“Yeah. Dad taught it to me. Bea and I used to race to see how fast each of us could play it. I don’t think I ever won.”
No, Arthur thought, you never did. But you remember.
He had met every one of his grandchildren the day they were born. As they laid in their hospital bassinet, whether in New York or in London, he somehow managed to watch over them, even when their parents were unable.
He still doesn’t know all the rules of his existence, and from the children he’s seen come into this world, he hasn’t known what he has been doing for well over a decade now. Despite this, he is almost positive they can see him, or that they at least know he’s around. They know him in such a way that only children can know all the secrets of the universe, only to lose it in favor of object permanence and critical thinking.
Long ago, in the privacy of their bedroom, Catherine had lightly accused Arthur of having a favorite kid. In return, Arthur just shrugged and said, “Franny the goat is lovely.”
Catherine had laughed. “I still can’t believe your mother named something that. No wonder my father hated Carys.” And that was the end of the conversation.
However, as he looked into the eyes of his youngest grandchild, he couldn't help but think perhaps she was right. He felt cold with the guilt, but it ebbed as his grandson’s eyes blinked open.
As much as the world liked to idolize him, he was a flawed man by nature. He and Philip hadn’t had the closest relationship since he went to Eton. Beatrice would rather have been with her friends or with Henry than with him most of the time. Henry, however, stuck to him like glue. As long as Arthur didn’t push him to talk, Henry eventually became more than willing to sit with him and listen to Arthur’s rambles. He was a great listener, especially when it was just the two of them sailing for hours. Arthur would talk about the stars, about plays, about Wales, about anything. Henry would listen, laugh at the right parts, and add in his piece.
Instinctively, Arthur can sense that his youngest grandchild will be the same. There is no blood shared between them, but Arthur can sense the same quiet love that Henry’s heart beats with.
Henry appeared then, smiling wide and unabashed. He lifted the newborn, careful to cradle his head effortlessly like a proficient parent would. “Would you like to meet your sister, Charlie?” Henry whispers into the infant's hair as he lightly sways with him. “Your dad says she brought you something, but I’m fairly certain she’s going to be taking it back. She’s not very good at sharing. Or gift-giving. Or the concept of selflessness. We’re working on it, I promise. Hopefully, by this time next year, she’ll be better.”
Henry continued to talk to the child as he swayed back and forth. Charlie kept his attention on Henry’s face until he eventually fell asleep. And Henry kept talking, no longer at ease in the quiet.
Loud laughter could be heard as two sets of footsteps ran down a hall coming closer to the room. Henry laughed too.
In life, all he wished was to grow old with his family.
In death, he did.