Chapter 8 – A Peculiar Commoner
I’m Frederick Townsend. Third son of House Townsend, serving with the Royal Guard. When I’m dealing with nobles I keep the ducal face on, which is why people say things like ‘the strong and gentle young lord,’ and none of that is really me. With friends I’m easy around, I’m rough at the edges and far too curious, and the truth is I like the way commoners stand in relation to one another, nobody holding anything back out of deference.
That day I was on leave as usual and had gone out to the edge of the royal capital, thinking I’d get a meal at a commoner restaurant. I rode as far as the western outskirts, left the horse, and was on my way to one of the several rooms I keep around the capital to change into commoner clothes when I walked into a child.
I still had my light riding armor on, so I apologized and made to move along rather than frighten him. Instead the boy answered me in language no commoner child has any business using. Difficult, correct, polite speech. There is no possible way the son of a restaurant family out on the edge of the capital talks like that.
More than that. Among commoners, the only ones who can speak that way at all are in the great merchant houses that deal directly with the nobility.
I let him think his excuse had satisfied me, and privately I marked him down as suspicious, possibly an agent of another country. If that was what he was, then failing to catch him early was dangerous, so I had the boy looked into. If he was a spy, I reasoned, then even at that age he would have been given an education.
The war ended a bit over ten years ago and we hold to a ceasefire with our neighbors, but there is never any shortage of people who would like to see us brought down. Better too careful than not careful enough. I used the ducal house’s shadows and had it done thoroughly. The result: the father, the mother, and the little sister were entirely ordinary commoners, and the boy Leon had nothing particularly suspect about him either. Born and raised in that house, by every sign.
Which makes no sense. In that case, where did he pick up that speech? So I had them check whether anyone from a fallen noble family or a great merchant house lived close enough to see Leon often. Nobody of the kind.
Less and less sense. I was on the point of deciding to go to the restaurant and talk to him directly when I ran into Leon in the central district of the royal capital. I was escorting Princess Martine on one of her incognito outings. Running into him at that particular moment sent my guard up sharply. It was possible he had aimed for that collision.
If Leon was an agent of another country, then he meant to harm Her Highness, or to take her, or simply to gather what he could. Whichever it was, I swore on the spot to protect her. I dealt with him on that footing, and I was careful to keep my manner exactly as it had always been, so that he would never see he was suspected.
And while I was handling him with every ounce of care I possessed, Her Highness showed no tension whatsoever. She is ordinarily a far more guarded person. Your Highness, why must you open your heart so far, today of all days!? That child may be an agent of a foreign power!
My inner voice failed to reach her, and for reasons I still cannot follow Her Highness was asking Leon to be her friend. I had no idea what had brought that on, and I tried to head it off, and she pushed straight through me. It was hardly as though I could say I suspected him of espionage with Leon sitting right there. Nor could I very well say that I did not trust Master Marcel.
Why Master Marcel was with Leon in the first place had already surprised me a good deal. If Leon is an agent, he may be a very good one. Either way, tighter watch.
And then, somehow, the four of us were going to a cafe.
At the cafe, Her Highness went right on running off the rails. She heard that Leon’s family kept a restaurant on the outskirts and announced that she wished to see it. That one I fully intended to stop, and Leon’s quick thinking on the spot turned it into an appointment instead. That kind of mind is not something an ordinary commoner acquires. My guard went up again, and alongside it, a doubt.
For an agent, Leon’s face gives away far too much. You can read every thought he has as he has it. His manners at table are lovely as well, nothing like a commoner’s, which is exactly wrong for a man infiltrating as one.
A spy disappears into the part. If you were slipping in as a commoner child you would play one flawlessly, and he isn’t doing it. A spy avoids being noticed, too, and Leon does nothing but draw the eye. He has drawn mine, plainly enough, and there are reasons enough to suspect him. And the strangest piece of it is that he doesn’t appear to realize he stands out at all.
Even supposing every bit of it is calculated, I cannot work out why anyone would choose to look suspicious. An agent capable of calculating all of that could get close to us far more neatly.
Set beside the clean report from the shadows, the odds are that Leon isn’t a spy. But if he isn’t, where did the speech and the bearing come from? He’s level with a properly raised noble child. And he reads and writes on top of it, or so I’m told.
He says an old man in the neighborhood taught him. No such person exists; we looked. How he came by any of it is a complete blank. The boy is nothing but mysteries.
He is certainly able, though. His mind moves so quickly that speaking with him was like speaking with a grown man. He may grow into a man of real use to the ducal house. If I can manage it, I want him where I can see him.
First, then. Deliver the study materials, learn a little more about him, and find out how much he actually knows. And before Her Highness’s visit, check the place over for anything dangerous. I’ll need to think about where to put the guards, too.
That reminds me: it might be best to have him attend the Royal Academy from our house. Leon is plainly able, and some part of him hasn’t noticed it. I dropped a few of the harder subjects into the conversation, economics among them, and he fielded them as though it were nothing, with no sign of knowing that this is abnormal in a commoner. Her Highness kept pace as well, but that is because the royal family is educated rigorously from a very early age. It is not possible in a commoner child. Master Marcel, sitting beside the boy, was by a wide margin the more rattled of the two.
This country has no shortage of dangerous nobles, and our neighbors still bear watching. That sort would snap Leon up in an instant, and a mind like his working for an enemy could become a genuine threat. And there is a second risk on top of that: let it get out that the boy is valuable to the Townsend side, and he may simply be removed. All the more reason to have him where we can watch him.
Better to put this to Father and Mother and to my brothers. I finished my escort duty and went straight on to the family house.
⁂
That evening I sat down to dinner with my family at the Townsend house for the first time in a long while. I live in the knights’ dormitory, so meals at home are rare.
At the table were Father and Mother and my second brother. As a rule, the nobility of this country spend the years from fifteen until their own child turns fifteen out in the domain, as head of the house, running it. So my eldest brother, the current duke, is out in the domain with his wife and children and isn’t here.
And once a man hands the headship to his child he takes up work at the royal palace, which brings him back from the domain to the house in the capital. Which is why Father and Mother are here.
Over the meal we talked about how everyone had been, and when it was finished and we were sitting with a light drink, Father gave me my opening.
“Well then, Frederick. You have something you wish to say, I take it.”
“Yes, Father. It concerns a commoner boy named Leon.”
Even within the family, and with Father above all, a noble is expected to speak properly. I envy commoners their family life, though as noble houses go this one isn’t strict about manners indoors, and we’re fond of one another. It’s a good house, and I count myself lucky to have been born into it.
“A commoner?”
“Yes. He is the eldest son of a family that keeps a restaurant on the western outskirts of the royal capital, and he is eight years old. I collided with him through my own carelessness while I was out that way, and that is how we came to know each other. At that first meeting Leon used flawless polite speech, of a kind no child of a restaurant on the outskirts could possibly have. That speech led me to suspect him of being an agent of another country, and I used the ducal house’s shadows to investigate him thoroughly. There was nothing suspicious about him whatsoever, and equally no sign of anyone teaching him. The reason is still unknown.”
A commoner using flawless polite speech struck all of them as suspicious, exactly as it had struck me, and they were listening far more seriously than when I began.
“And today, while I was escorting Her Highness, the boy I stopped from colliding with her was Leon.”
Father went a little pale at that.
“Then Her Highness is being targeted?”
“That was my own first thought, and I was on my guard accordingly. But Leon’s conduct is poor work for an agent. Everything he thinks appears on his face, and for someone supposedly passing as a commoner, his speech and his bearing are those of a noble. He looked thoroughly out of place. An agent would avoid being suspected in precisely that way. Taken together with what the shadows found, my own judgment is that he is clean.”
“Quite so. One could argue that the whole of it is calculated, but a man able to manage anything that sophisticated would avoid standing out and drawing suspicion.”
“That is my thinking as well. He is poor work as an agent, and as a commoner he is remarkably able. In truth he would stand out as exceptional even among nobles. After we met again today, we took a meal at a cafe, with Her Highness among us—”
“W-wait! That suspicious boy ate together with Her Highness!?”
Cut off right before the important part. Though, granted, anyone would doubt their ears. I did try to stop her. Today of all days Her Highness’s curiosity was running higher than usual and she was not to be stopped.
“Yes. The four of us ate together: Her Highness and myself, Leon and Master Marcel. Master Marcel appears to be acquainted with Leon, and they had come to the central district together. I intended to part from Leon at once and see Her Highness back to the royal castle, but for some reason Her Highness had taken to him and I was unable to refuse. Furthermore, she has promised to visit the restaurant Leon’s family keeps.”
“Wh-why did you not stop her! However low the chance that he is an agent, it is not zero. Visiting the restaurant is far too dangerous.”
“I thought so too, and Her Highness was so very insistent that in the end I could not stop it. The failing there is mine. If permission is refused, I will apologize to Her Highness in all sincerity. If it is granted, I will guard her with the utmost care.”
That settled him somewhat. He drank a little and spoke again.
“There is no use in dwelling on what is done. You will protect Her Highness. Absolutely.”
“As you command. May I return to the subject?”
“Yes. Forgive me for taking us off it.”
“Not at all. When we ate together after meeting again today, his manners at table were the equal of a well-raised noble child’s. I wove a few difficult topics into the small talk, and he understood every one of them and answered precisely, which surprised me. He is also, apparently, already able to read and write.”
“That is… past merely able. That I would call anomalous. If our own shadows have looked into him then there is certainly nothing suspicious to find, and yet how does a boy like that come by such a spread of skills…”
Father was thoroughly baffled, and by the look of them so was everyone else. I don’t blame them. I’m still baffled myself.
“On that point, Father. It seems Leon means to attend the Royal Academy. If his ability becomes apparent at the school and another camp or another country takes an interest in him, the loss to us could be considerable. I have promised to provide his study materials; should he be admitted, might we not have him attend from this house?”
“Hm. If he is a talent of that order, we ought to secure him early. He may well become a man who strengthens our camp. And keeping him near at hand makes it easier to act should anything happen.”
“Yes. And Lucien enters the Royal Academy in the same year as Leon, so we would know how the boy is faring at school. I think Leon would make him a good friend.”
Lucien is the eldest son of my eldest brother, and he sits for the Academy the same year Leon does.
“The same age as Lucien, is he. If this commoner Leon is as able as that, he will be a good friend to Lucien as well. Should Leon attend the Royal Academy, I will permit him to attend from this house. And bring him here sometime. I would like to meet him once.”
“Thank you, Father. I will arrange a time and bring him.”
“Do that. This promises to be entertaining.”
Ah. I’ve gone and stirred up Father’s curiosity. He does love a rare thing, or a new one. Well, I have what I came for, so today I’ll call it a win.
“One more thing, Frederick. Put a watch on Leon, to be safe.”
“As you command. I will assign one of the shadows.”
Since I can’t trust him yet, I had been wanting a watch on him myself, and Father offering first was welcome. When I first put the shadows to work it was investigation only, not a tail. I had meant to leave one man watching him, then the investigation came back all but clean and I let it go. Watching someone around the clock is heavy work, and we have only so many shadows to spend. With a watch on him now, we will learn what his connection to Master Marcel is as well.
I hope Leon turns out to be to this country’s benefit. That was the thought I carried back to the knights’ dormitory.