I felt two cold hands grab my ankles. I struggled furiously as the vice-like grip sucked me down underneath the surface of the water and into its freezing depths. I gasped furiously, shooting back up to the surface as the two hands released their grip.
"Jocelyn!" I yelled, flinging water into her face with my hands.
Up until that point I had been taking my time to slowly lower myself into the frigid, flowing stream but Jocelyn had obviously decided that I was taking too long. I swam furiously, trying to keep myself warm with the motion. The stream was crisp and cold and other than the few pieces of debris and soot from the fire, it was nice and clean. This was the kind of experience you didn't get often in the modern world.
"Are you two actually looking for anything or are you just splashing around like children?" Freya chided, watching fully dressed along with Helga from the grassy shore.
"Both?" I said, a smile spreading across my face.
In my previous life, I didn't have any siblings and eventually, I didn't have a mother or a father also. This life, although it did have its own difficulties, was giving me something I had never experienced before. Family.
Guilt overwhelmed me for a moment as I wondered about what had happened to the real Joan. Did she just cease to exist, did she die? Or was she now in another place at in another time? I hoped that wherever she was, she was happy and experiencing things that her life in this time didn't allow her to do or see.
I shook my head, trying to clear my troubled thoughts away. "I'll search upstream for a while, Jocelyn you search downstream."
She nodded like an eager puppy and then set off, I swiftly did the same in the opposite direction. I swam slowly and leisurely to ease my muddled mind.
As I cruised my way upstream, I caught sight of a pair of feet, wiggly and distorted under the water. I shot upwards, surprised. The person in the water started in alarm, their blue eyes wide and shocked.
"P-prince Arthur." I stammered, trying to attempt some pathetic curtsy under the flowing currents.
His face blushed beet red, his neck and face so pink I wondered if he'd badly caught the sun. And then I realised, even though we were both pretty much fully dressed by modern standards, we were both technically in our underwear.
"Sorry, Your Highness! I didn't think anyone else would be out here." I apologised, turning myself around in the water so as to spare him the embarrassment.
I could hear him behind me scuffle onto the grassy verge and ask someone for his cloak.
"That's alright Lady Joan, neither did I." He reassured me softly.
"Lady Dudley, I have another cloak here for you to use." The voice was different and distinctly deeper. Josiah Gleave?
I swivelled my head around and surely enough, the tall, rugged guard was standing with a cloak draping from his hands. Reluctantly, for I had been enjoying my time in the stream, I climbed my way out of the water and stepped into the cosy fox-fur lined cloak. Josiah draped it around my shoulders, tying the cord at the front with his calloused fingers. I blushed, feeling uncharacteristically shy.
"What brings you out here?" Prince Arthur asked, sitting by the edge of the stream and dangling his feet into the river.
He looked so regal sitting on the side of the stream with the dappled sunlight bouncing off his bright blonde hair and his long, red and gold embroidered cape trailing out behind him. I supposed it made sense that he would look princely considering he was a prince. But Prince Damian, even though he looked similar in appearance, didn't carry himself with the same poise or dignity that Arthur did.
I felt oddly starstruck as I moved to sit down beside him, "Me and my sisters wanted to swim in the stream."
"Why would you pick a stream full of soot to swim in?" He questioned, turning to face me. I tried not to gawk at the ugly patch on his face where the graft weed was trying to integrate with his skin in the streaks where it had been torn away. It made his skin look bumpy and scarred.
I didn't know what to say, should I tell the truth? I decided honesty was probably the best policy. "To tell you the truth your Highness, I don't think the dragon was real. I came here to confirm my theory."
Arthur smiled softly and nodded his head. "I also am here for the same reason."
"You are?" I said, shocked. I'm not sure what I had expected him to say but I certainly didn't expect him to be so forthcoming in admitting the fallacy.
"I feel unsettled by it." He confessed, folding his slender hands delicately in his lap.
"Why?" I asked, not sure why he looked so distressed. Was he like Prince Damian, did he not want to be King too?
"I don't feel comfortable getting the crown as a result of an elaborate ruse. I always wanted to earn the people's respect by my own merit."
His voice was so soft and yet firm, it carried a royal weight, and I sensed within him an unwavering principality. To put it simply, my respect for him skyrocketed.
"Do you know who arranged all of this to happen?"
I asked the question secretly hoping he wouldn't know, for it would be so boring to figure out the mastermind in this mundane way. Luckily for me, he shook his head.
"I thought perhaps it could be Prince Damian, for he hates the idea of being a ruler, but the night of the dragon attack I saw him intoxicated out of his mind before I retired for the night. Besides, he's not the scheming, calculating type. If he was that desperate not to be crowned, he would just do something indecent in public and embarrass our father into passing the title onto our youngest brother. No, the person who planned this wants me specifically to be King." He reasoned objectively.
I leaned backwards, nodding my head as I processed his reasoning. Prince Damian wasn't completely ruled out by his speculation, for as myself and my sisters had discussed, he could've used a servant to implement his plan. Although Prince Arthur's reasoning was sound in the matter of the execution, why would the perpetrator go to such lengths to ensure it was Prince Arthur specifically that was given the title?
"I wonder who it was then... You don't remember how you got that wound on your face? Or how you ended up near the site for my father to carry you back?" I questioned adamantly.
Arthur leaned forwards, thinking, "I don't remember a thing after retiring for the evening. I was completely unconscious until I was roused disorientated on the grassy verge. My assumption is someone drugged my tea before bed."
"That would be a fair assumption to make." I huffed, also letting my thoughts run off ahead of me.
Prince Arthur sighed deeply, looking into the flowing water alongside me.
"But hey, you'll probably get to be King now!" I cheered, slapping him on the back.
He stared at me with shock plastered across his face. I may or may not have forgotten myself for a moment.
He rubbed at his back, a sad smile tentatively growing across his face. "I want to be King, but not in this way. But if I admit that I never killed any dragon then I'll go back to being the demon processed prince who lacks the competency to rule."
"Don't look down on yourself like that! If you shrink under their accusations, you just make them think they're right!"
"Are they not correct?" He sulked, his eyes hooded and melancholy.
"You think you're really demon possessed?" I asked, my mind blown.
Prince Arthur clenched his knuckles until they whitened and tremored with emotion, "Then why do I inexplicably become overwhelmed with fear? Why does my body tremble and shake, and my chest feel like it's about to collapse? Is that not evidence of an evil spirit living within me?"
My heart shattered, and I felt immensely privileged and burdened by my modern knowledge yet again.
"Prince Arthur, sometimes if you've been through something dreadful; something that has endangered your life or broken your heart. Your mind knows that you don't want to experience such a thing again, so your brain makes you afraid to save your life and emotions. Sometimes however, it can take things too far and make you feel more scared than you ought to be." I explained.
"How do you know this?" He asked, his blue eyes gleaming with hope.
I smiled a toothy grin, "I was taught about the human mind far away from here. Secretly I might add, so you mustn't tell anyone."
He gawked at me like I was some kind of medical wizard and I wondered if I'd just interrupted the stream of time Back to the Future-style by telling him all those things.
"Your theory would make sense." He breathed, leaning backwards to think. "For I did have a terrible, life-threatening encounter many years ago when I was just a young child.
It was back in the first year of my father's reign, when I was just a young boy unfamiliar with the world. The King was newly coronated and like most kings his ego was inflated by his new title. He wanted to celebrate and engage in festivities for weeks on end. You were probably just a babe in arms at the time.
I can still remember the meaty and exotic smells of all the imported delicacies brought into the castle for the endless feasts and banquets we partook in. I tasted things that I had never tasted before, nor would I ever taste again.
I went to sleep every night with a full belly, I never knew what it was to be hungry. But it turns out during that time, while we lived in our haven of lavish parties and rich meals, the people outside of the castle's walls were wasting away until they were just skin and bones.
Rage was boiling in amongst the common people, like a stew bubbling over the fire. And I was ignorant of it all. One day, when we went out to address the people, we were herded by armed guards onto a wooden platform where the King was supposed to receive adulation and praise from the common people due to his recent coronation.
It was an opportunity for the people to lay eyes on the monarch and express their undying loyalty for him. However, that day didn't exactly go to plan. The people were infuriated that while they had been starving, the new King had done nothing but feast inside his luxurious castle, importing food from foreign lands just for his own satisfaction.
They rushed the wooden platform in a mob of faces distorted with anger and desperation, their scrawny hands and spindly arms reaching forward for just a morsel of revenge. The guards rushed in a panic to protect the King. But they neglected to think of me, small and defenceless as I flailed around in fear.
A pale hand reached for my robes and with a tight fist, latched on the fabric of my garments sending me slipping into the crowds where I was swallowed up by the angry people. They immediately began taking out their discontentment on me; spitting, kicking and punching at me. I remember crying out desperately for them to stop but no one listened.
They beat me so bad that one of my eyes became swollen shut and my left arm hung limply by my hip from where it had been pulled out of the joint. The fear was paralysing, the lack of any escape terrifying and the countless pairs of eyes watching me demoralising.
If it had not been for my mother that day, storming through the streets valiantly with her private guards to rescue me, I may not have survived. She was furious, but not with the people. She loathed the King's incompetence and his lack of regard for me.
But that is the story. From that day onwards, crowds of people and being under the scrutiny of many eyes has left me frozen with fear, my mind straying back to that fateful day."