Chapter Text
“Your Highness,” gasped the tutor, shocked.
“Oh,” said Prince Augustin, disappointed they’d been interrupted before every last bottle had been enhanced, “drat.”
His guard, red-faced from the search, gave a deep, gravel-voiced, harrumph.
“Come along then, Your Highness,” said his guard quellingly. “Away from the bottles.”
Prince Augustin drew up, very much feeling the dignity of his ten years settle like a mantle across his shoulders, about to explain to Berte why exactly it wasn’t a problem, him adding a drop of the silly juice to each bottle of wine in advance of the evening’s festivities, but!
The guard reached out a meaty hand, and wrapped it around Feste’s arm, and his mouth closed on every word he’d been about to speak, as Feste’s head whipped around and he stared up at Prince Augustin with the pleading expression Augustin hated most.
“Where- where would you like me to come?” he asked, as politely as he could, carefully settling the bottle of wine back in its spot in the rows upon rows of them. The bottle of potion, he slipped back into the pocket in his doublet, that Berte dared not reach in and draw it out from. “Only I’ve just- I’m very much in the middle of something, and I’d like to, if you please, not be interrupted in my experiment.”
“Any experiment the like of which I think I’m seeing, can be explained to your mother,” said Berte in far too stern a voice. “And, if what happened just now is what I think happened just now, I’ll ensure it’s explained to your Consciences’s backside, directly after.”
“Only he didn’t do anything,” said Prince Augustin haughtily, “and therefore I give him leave.”
He’d heard his mother and his father use the phrase often enough, and it was high time people at the castle began respecting his right to use the phrase!
Berte grunted, and dragged Feste forward like a brute, though, so Augustin had to skip to keep up and Feste almost lost his footing, and the tutor was left to explain to the distraught sommelier that perhaps the many dozen uncorked bottles should be put to one side, and tested.
“Please do be careful with my Conscience,” scolded Augustin severely, and after that Berte did allow Feste to keep his footing, so that was better.
When they arrived in his mother’s chambers, she turned her graceful face to study their approach, her sharp eyes missing nothing about the scene Berte set before her.
Prince Augustin raised his royal chin, and allowed it.
“Some mischief?” she asked in her gracious, melodious voice. “Prince Augustin, your timing…”
She shook her gracious, lovely head, the bright sunlight of the solarium and the jewels in her crown making rainbows dance along the walls with the motion.
Her maids-and-matrons-in-waiting tittered at their tasks, needles stabbing and shuttles weaving together warp and weft at the looms.
“It was only a silly one,” he informed her, stepping forward. “None of my people would be harmed, I swear it! And so, if no harm is done, I don’t see how I can possibly be punished for it!”
“What was done?” she asked, considering him with a serene face.
“My potion,” he said, proudly. “The one I learned last week! The hiccuping bubbles one!”
“Oh, dear,” she sighed. “I can already see the shape of this amusement which harms none.”
“Indeed, Your Gracious Majesty,” said Berte. “We must get someone- I cannot always be at his side, and that foolish tutor-”
“Yes, Berte,” sighed his mother again, raising a single hand in a motion that silenced the brute. “I will engage upon it. You have, at last, convinced me.”
“It wouldn’t have hurt anyone,” pointed out Prince Augustin, because the entire plan had hinged on that especial consideration.
“No, but it would have disrupted the event, and one cannot become known for dosing guests with any kind of potion, Augustin,” said his mother quite severely. “It invites concerns that other potions may as easily be slipped in, beside the… hiccuping bubbles one.”
“Oh,” said Prince Augustin, disappointed. “I… had not…”
“Yes,” she said, shaking her head in disappointment while her maids-and-matrons tittered.
“May I-?” began Berte, just as Prince Augustin protested, “But, Gracious Majesty Mother, might I be forgiven-?”
“Yes,” said his mother to Berte, in a firm voice. “His Royal Highness the Prince Augustin has been very naughty and thoughtless, indeed, with this scheme of his.”
Augustin flinched.
Very naughty? And thoughtless?
Oh no!
“Very naughty,” repeated Berte with satisfaction.
Feste, still clutched in the guard’s tight grip, whimpered near-silently.
Augustin swallowed. “Only, Gracious Majesty Mother, might it have been only a little naughty, and somewhat thoughtless?” he asked hopefully. “As no one could be hurt?”
She frowned. “You, boy- Feste- did you tell His Royal Highness the Low Prince Augustin that you felt he ought not to do this thing?”
“I- I did, Your Royal Majesty,” sobbed Feste, nodding miserably several times.
“Very well,” said the Queen. “Your Conscience, Your Highness, has spoken. Very naughty, very thoughtless, to have not listened to your Conscience, when he tells you something is likely very naughty.”
Prince Augustin drew a low, pained breath, listening to Feste choke back further noises as best the boy could.
He ought not to have protested, to have asked for a lighter sentence, for now his actions had been deemed very thoughtless, and the only thing he knew was worse than that, was rash.
“I’ll take my leave, Gracious Majesty Mother,” he said with as much dignity as he could.
“I’ll have a written apology- in your own hands- before you’ll be allowed at the festival this afternoon,” said his mother.
Both Feste and Augustin choked, but Augustin rallied faster, saying quickly, “Of course, Gracious Majesty Mother.”
A quick retreat was definitely in order.
And anyway, he would help Feste with his letter, he silently vowed. It wasn’t his Conscience’s fault he’d had no schooling, before being chosen for his duties.
He led Berte and Feste back down to his own study in the tower, entirely unsurprised to find the tutor there, wringing his hands.
“I only- they said they needed- he said he needed to use the lav!” wailed the man, as Berte dragged Feste in and pushed him to the large desk where the tutor usually sat.
“Lies, Your Highness?” asked Berte in a very dangerous tone of voice.
“No,” said Prince Augustin, shocked by the accusation. “I very dearly needed to use the lav, and I made Feste go, as well, so you see it was not a lie, not at all!”
“I didn’t go much,” confessed Feste, cheeks flaming as he stood in front of the desk already and looked over his hunched and miserable shoulder at the large man.
“Mm,” said Berte, removing his very large belt.
“Oh, no, please,” begged Prince Augustin, coming to stand between the man and Feste. “I- not the belt, please, I- no one was harmed, Berte! No one could be! It would only be- be harmless little- they would only hiccup, and the bubbles- I wanted to see five hundred peoples’ worth of bubbles in the grand ballroom, I- it was harmless, Berte! Please not the belt!”
“It’s all right,” said Feste miserably, from behind him. “I- I can- if it was very naughty and very thoughtless, I can- I can be very brave, Your Highness.”
“It’ll hurt him so much!” protested Prince Augustin wildly, waving his arms by his side as Berte looked down, so far visibly unimpressed. “And he- he did say that I ought not, and I-”
“You did not listen to your Conscience, for which duty he is fed and sheltered, clothed and educated, Your Highness,” said Berte in far too stern a tone. “Step aside, Your Highness. Consequences must remain consequences, for the good of the kingdom.”
“Please not your belt,” begged Prince Augustin. “Please, Berte, he’s-”
“You’ve got to learn,” said Berte stubbornly. “Step aside, Your Highness, or I will belt him and then switch him, for refusing to take a punishment.”
“He’s not refusing!” yelped Prince Augustin, already in motion at that threat from the brute, sidling toward the corner. “I’m refusing! On his behalf!”
“Please,” begged Feste at the same time. “I can- I can be very brave, Your Highness. Step- step aside.”
It was only the other boy’s miserable plea which made Prince Augustin fully relent.
“Have a-” began the tutor, before clearing his throat. “Have a seat, Your Highness.”
He patted the Naughty Stool where Prince Augustin was bound to sit, in the corner of the room.
Horrified and miserable, but with no clear options before him- any further delay or refusals, he could see, would end in Feste both belted and switched, and perhaps denied his supper or denied the festival or some other such punishment- Prince Augustin slunk to the stool and settled gingerly onto it.
“Face the wall, Your Highness,” prompted the tutor nervously.
Prince Augustin scowled, but twisted ungraciously on the stool.
He felt at once the warm glow of his great-grandfather’s magic warm the seat.
Behind him, Feste whimpered, his hands no doubt placed precisely on the carved runes on the far edge of the desk, his hips tight to the runes on the edge closest.
That meant Berte had already taken down the boy’s trousers, and Prince Augustin felt his lower lip tremble, thinking of how awful that must be, for the other boy.
Feste had been so shocked by how often Augustin must stand for the tailors, his nightly bath with the handmaidens, the massages he must also take from the masseuses, the inspections by the Royal doctours, and then the endless rites of the Ancient Ones, which of course the peasantry, being devoted to the Lesser Gods, would never have been allowed to see.
Augustin’s body was very much a vessel for the greater glory of the kingdom, but his vassal’s had never even been properly bathed, until he’d been chosen.
Having it bared for a punishment was the ultimate of indignities, Prince Augustin considered, his throat tightening with the heavy grasp of guilt.
He heard Berte grunt, and Feste gasp, and that’s how he knew it was going to begin.
He grit his teeth, and when the first loud crack! resounded through the small suite, he did not whimper, although Feste, being of common blood, had already been given his leave to make whatever noises he needed, to get through it.
He felt the heat at once, of course, which meant his great-grandfather’s spell had still not worn off, and it really, properly, should have!
The Ancient Ones were good, but They weren’t perpetual-spell-never-reordained good!
And the stool, he’d been told, had taken his great-grandfather twelve months and twelve days with twelve men in each of the twelve rites he’d needed to perform, so it wasn’t like his mother could just- reordain the blasted thing on the sly!
Berte landed his blows at a judiciously-spaced pace, no doubt to make Prince Augustin squirm on the stool and try hard to breathe properly, and not squeak or yelp or shout or shed tears for as long as he could!
He was, after all, a brute.
It had been, his Gracious Majesty Mother had assured him, the defining characteristic that had made him rise above the rest of the guards under selection to be the youngest Prince’s personal bodyguard.
“You are far too sweet-natured,” she’d sighed, brushing the hair back from Prince Augustin’s forehead. “And the spell has chosen a very sweet-faced Conscience for you. It would be too easy for a lesser brute to forgive you, and allow you to grow to your majority entirely ungoverned and spoil you.”
He did not whimper as the next blow fell, interrupting his memory of his first meeting of Feste, who sobbed openly now, behind him, voice raw and wretched.
If it wouldn’t be wicked, he would damn his great-grandfather, King Utherly the Wise, to the twelfth hell with which he had no doubt conferred for the design of the naughty stool and the Conscience entirely!
But it would be wicked, for the man had simply been addressing The Curse.
Which, quite properly, all the peasants referred to as The Blessing of Bemorant, because of course they’d think of it that way, wouldn’t they?
The witch or gremlin or mage or hedgewizard who’d cast it had been very clever about concealing it, for they still worried away at the exact wording, up in His Glorious Majesty Father’s tower, even though mostly it didn’t matter, because of great-grandfather’s naughty stool.
All curses carried within them the unravelled threads with which a very clever cursebreaker might untangle them, although according to His Glorious Majesty Father it was dashedly hard to sometimes suss each and every word-thread out and determine what needed to be done to counter it.
Gracious Majesty Mother had married Glorious Majesty Father based on his talent for picking apart and breaking such curses, although, again, The Curse wasn’t much of a priority issue, as great-grandfather had devised the naughty stool.
And the peasants quite like the results of the stool, and so they felt, Prince Augustin had delicately been led to understand, that it rather turned the Curse into a Blessing, and therefore His Glorious Majesty Father should really work quite hard at other curses, and leave the family curse quite well alone.
Augustin would pay any sum for Berte to leave the entire situation at hand quite well alone!
He was writhing on the stool, and Feste had begun to choke and splutter, as well as sob, and to apologize, when he hadn’t done anything!
Prince Augustin hated this part the very most, when Feste was lost to all reason and sense and quite willing to do exactly as Berte wished forevermore.
Because Berte didn’t seem much to care about the bottom presented to him, when Prince Augustin was meant to be learning his lesson, and learning it well.
But if Augustin protested, if he tried to reason with the brute, to explain he did, in fact, understand quite well his lesson, then it’d be the switch, next, for Feste, for trying to stop the punishment.
If he collapsed into tears too soon, the brute declared them dramatic and therefore lying during a punishment.
If he bellowed and yelled at the man to leave off already, a switching was guaranteed.
When Prince Augustin had complained to his eldest sister, the Princess Royale after their older brother, the Heir, she had rolled her eyes and said, very uncharitably, “Be thankful you don’t have a naughty Conscience, as I have.”
Which was true.
Feste was the sweetest boy, and Augustin’s very best friend, and he never tattled and he tried so very hard at his lessons, and even though he was scared of the horses, he rode pillion and only clutched Augustin’s sides a bit too hard!
So it was a hard thing to actually judge, when to allow himself to whimper, and so mostly Augustin left it up to his own nature to decide, suppressing all his anguished noises until he simply lost control.
Three more measured strikes, until the stool felt so hot it was like a brand on his backside, and the dam within him burst.
First he sobbed, and then he gasped, and then he rested his head on the wall and let himself have a good cry, his whimpers and sobs no match for Feste’s loud wailing.
It simply wasn’t fair!
Feste shouldn’t have to be punished, to make Augustin into a good boy!
It should be Augustin under each of the belt’s crisp cracks of leather to flesh!
But they’d tried that, his family, in the days before great-grandfather.
And it hadn’t much worked.
Beating boys and girls only made them learn that might made right, his Gracious Majesty Mother had explained. And allowing princes and princesses to learn that lesson led the family straight into the worst of the Curse, and so they hadn’t been able to beat their princes and princesses, for several generations!
But that had led to dissolute, spoiled brats, according to his Glorious Majesty Father, who always grinned when he declared that. People who were a different kind of tyrant to the purposely cruel other type, and therefore also looped back into the worst of the Curse.
It had been seven generations since the Curse, in fact, of a Royal Family given to misdeeds and tyranny, infighting and tearing itself apart, all kinds of exciting things like civil wars and poisonings and stabbing each other in the back, until great-grandfather had the unfortunate luck to be the best curse-breaker in his generation, and therefore sought after by Augustin’s great-great-grandmother, to marry her son.
Which he had done.
And then, having married the man, he invented the naughty stool, and the Conscience to go with it, for their heir.
And it had worked.
Grandmother had been a very Gracious Majesty, indeed. She had been slow to anger and quick to think, and known for her very precise grasp of justice no matter the complexity of the case put before her.
Her siblings- all eleven of them- had likewise benefited.
In a single generation, the Curse of their nation had been turned into a very distinct Blessing, from the point of view of the average citizen.
Augustin, sitting with his head against the flocked wallpaper of the wall, sobbing, his chest and his royal bottom both hot and tight and uncomfortable, and his eyes and nose both aching and dripping, very much hated everything to do with his great-grandfather’s spell, and very much wished his Glorious Majesty Father would in fact find the final words of the Curse and untangle them entirely, casting it off into the ether and freeing him from the damned naughty stool altogether!
It took quite a long time to realize Feste had calmed quite a bit, and therefore Berte must also be done.
He would have been embarrassed, for a prince who was almost at his majority didn’t very much burst into tears over a few licks of his guard’s belt, but Berte was so particular about how a punishment should go, and so Augustin had no choice!
A punishment ended in tears, and so he had to cry!
Not too soon, but if he never let the tears out, Feste wouldn’t be able to walk!
He got himself under control as fast as he could, the tutor supplying a lace handkerchief to blow his nose and wipe his eyes, from the hoard the silly man kept in the desk.
“Go sit,” Berte told Feste, and the boy released the runes, standing up very stiffly.
Abruptly, the pain in Augustin’s backside disappeared, which made life on the stool- or anywhere- much more comfortable.
He slid into his hard desk chair with a very apologetic grimace at Feste, who was lacing his hose closed which trembling fingers and giving Augustin his own shaky grin, which Augustin knew was somewhat a false grin.
Feste was a very good friend, though, and never wanted him to feel bad about how Feste would carry the beating for both of them, the remainder of the day.
“Have you learned your lesson, Your Highness?” demanded Berte quite rudely, Prince Augustin felt.
“I have,” replied Augustin in a very firm voice. “We may not put anything into Our guest’s drinks, even if it won’t harm them, because they may get ideas.”
“Good enough,” declared Berte. “Write the letter to Her Gracious Majesty.”
Which gruff order Augustin did not need to be reminded to carry out! He’d already been reaching for quill and parchment!
“Ooh, a letter,” said the tutor, leaning in excitedly. “What an excellent idea!”
“I shall help Feste,” said Augustin, tossing his head a bit and patting the seat beside him, so that the other boy could slide in, hissing at the pain Augustin remembered very clearly, from his time on the stool. “And you may, of course, advise us,” he let the tutor know graciously. “But don’t correct him too precisely, he’s only just nine and still learning how to form his letters and make words. It won’t do to discourage him too very much.”
Which the tutor said had been exactly his own assessment of the situation, so that was all right.
“Gracious,” muttered Augustin to Feste, when he’d helped the boy plan out what he’d say and they were practicing forming the letters on his slate before putting nib to page, his own quickly-drafted letter of apology already sanded and drying on Feste’s empty desktop, “is spelled G-r-a-c-i-o-u-s. No, Feste, the G is- yes, that’s better, with the big swoopy- yes.”
Feste had the worst time with which words to use, and his Gracious Majesty Mother’s Conscience had been a peasant so very long ago, that she wasn’t used to hearing- or especially reading- the rude words peasants used, when they apologized for what they’d done.
When Augustin was a grown man, and he was raising children, and they had Consciences, he’d remember that peasants oughtn’t be punished for their language, which wasn’t their own fault, but the fault of their parents for not teaching them better words.
But he was teaching Feste better, anyway, even though it wasn’t Feste’s fault he had rough language.
He had a responsibility to his Conscience in that way- to make sure the boy didn’t earn them any extra whippings.
The whippings Augustin earned them were plenty enough!