THE SIGNATURE AFTER THE FACT

King Marcus

I admitted it alone in my study the night before the Rite, because there was no one left to hear me.

"I left the hairpin on my desk on purpose," I said out loud to the empty room. "I left it on the folded velvet cloth where Isabella would see it."

The study was quiet and the fire burned low.

"It was the only cowardly kindness I could manage, since I cannot say what I need to say aloud," I said. "I cannot tell her who her mother was. I cannot tell her what I signed. So I left the hairpin where she would find it."

I had kept that hairpin for twenty-five years. It was silver and shaped like a curling vine. Seraphine wore it the last time I saw her.

"I kept it because I was a coward then too," I said.

I stood up and walked to the window. From my study I could see the tower where my son lay.

"I visit his tower every midnight," I said. "I have visited his tower every midnight since the curse began. The healers think I do not go, but I go when the castle sleeps."

I thought about what I had seen in that tower.

"I have begun to suspect that the prince is not as senseless as the healers claim," I said. "A blanket folded too neatly when I arrive. A hand that seems to warm when I arrive and cool when I leave. His fingers rest differently after I speak."

"Are you listening, James?" I had asked him last night, when I stood beside his bed.

He did not answer. He lay still.

"If you can hear me, forgive me," I said to him. "I did not know how to be your father and a king at the same time."

"I have not tested it," I said now to my empty study. "I have not tested whether he can hear me, because I fear what I would have to confess to a son who might be listening. If he can hear me, I would have to tell him what I did."

I sat back down at my desk and opened the bottom drawer. I thought of the day I learned Seraphine was dead, and the decree I signed to make it lawful.

"The day they told me she was dead, I did not eat," I said. "I sat in this same chair and I stared at this same desk. They said she was executed at dawn for treason against the crown. They said it was done quickly."

"Who ordered it?" I had asked the council that morning.

"The law ordered it," a councilman said. "Her line was declared dangerous."

"Who signed the decree?" I asked.

"You will sign it, Your Majesty," another councilman said. "It is procedure to make it lawful after."

"For twenty-five years I have believed that paper ended her life," I said to the empty room. "I believed that my signature killed her. I believed that because I signed, she died. I have carried that for twenty-five years."

Tonight, prompted by a silver flower found pressed inside a council report, I took the decree from its locked casket and read it with suspicion instead of grief.

"Where did this flower come from?" I had asked my steward this morning when I opened the council report.

"I do not know, Your Majesty," the steward said. "It was pressed inside the pages. The maids said it was silver and it grew overnight on the third floor."

"A silver flower," I said. "Bring me the casket."

"Which casket?" the steward asked.

"The casket with the old decrees," I said. "The one I told you never to open."

The steward brought it and I unlocked it with a key I kept around my neck.

I took the decree out and laid it flat on my desk. I read it slowly.

"The signature is genuine and the seal is genuine, but the date falls the morning after the recorded execution," I said out loud as I read. "She was already dead, or gone, before I signed."

I read the date again.

"Executed at dawn on the fourteenth," I said. "Signed on the morning of the fifteenth. That is not lawful procedure. That is not how decrees work. You sign before, not after."

"He was already dead, or gone, before he signed," I said, correcting myself. "She was already dead before I signed."

I pressed my hands against my eyes.

"I remember now that I signed while sick with sorrow, and that the paper was placed in front of me at dawn by someone I trusted absolutely, whose hands did not shake," I said.

"Who brought it to you?" I asked myself, trying to remember the hands.

I closed my eyes and tried to see that morning again.

"Your Majesty, you must sign this to make it lawful," a voice said in my memory. The voice was calm and steady. "It is already done. This only records it."

"I do not want to sign it," I said in the memory.

"You must," the voice said. "If you do not sign, the council will question your loyalty to the law."

"Who are you?" I asked in the memory, but I already knew.

"When I close my eyes to see that face, it is Matron Vanya's," I said in my study now. "It was Vanya who placed the paper in front of me at dawn. Her hands did not shake. She looked me straight in the eyes and told me it was already done."

"Why would she do that?" I asked the empty room.

"Why would she bring me a decree after the execution?" I said. "Why would she tell me it was procedure when it was not?"

I thought about Vanya's face this morning when I saw her in the corridor. She looked tired and she avoided my eyes.

"Did you know she was already gone when you brought me that paper?" I would ask her if I had the courage.

"I cannot ask her," I said. "If I ask her, I would have to explain why I am asking. I would have to tell the council that I never ordered the execution. I would have to tell James that I let his mother die, or disappear, without questioning the date."

I put the decree back into the casket and locked it.

"I have never told anyone what I did or did not order," I said. "I told no one that I signed after. I told no one that I was sick with sorrow and did not check the date. I let everyone believe I ordered it."

I looked toward the tower again.

"Tomorrow is the Rite," I said. "Isabella will stand before the court and the temple sapling will read her mark. If she is Vine, the court will know she is Seraphine's daughter."

"Should I stop the Rite?" I asked myself.

"No," I answered myself immediately. "I decide not to stop the Rite. Stopping it would require explaining why, and he has never told anyone what he did or did not order."

Stopping it would require explaining why, and I had never told anyone what I did or did not order.