Home.

To Bash, his home was his bedchambers. Even after years nurtured by his mother within palace walls, hatred and betrayal lurked in the shadows. A home is not a place for such things, regardless of how comfortable it may seem. Regardless of how much food he was served, the warm bed he slept in quiet twilights, or the joyous occasions where the queen held balls, royal dinners, and parties.

As Jean-Michel, son of the second most fortunate family in France, spoke with his father, the king, Bash could not help think why he would leave the palace after such a short amount of time. He assumed that Adèle, his supposed to-be-betrothed, was to leave as well, since she seemed so dependent on her brother. Bash quietly left the throne room as queen Catherine tried to prevent the king from bursting into his infamous rage. The king was discussing Jean-Michel’s leave as calmly as he could, but his wrath burned in his eyes. Bash would be vexed too, for one of the richest nobles of France, who seemed so comfortable in French court, asked to leave the castle only after two days. As he imagined, the king would spend a number of days thinking of various untold reasons as to why a noble did not enjoy their time in the king’s home.

Bash entered the halls outside the throne room expecting servants and staff lingering outside the doors, and they were. The only sound in the hallways was the sounds of the whispers of servants, chambermaids, and kitchen staff and their predictions of the days that were to come.

“The king will fire one of us,” whispered a young chambermaid. “He will think that one of us may have done something so that his guests found life in French court unsatisfying,”

“He won’t fire anyone. He’ll chop of their heads,” a male servant spoke next.

Bash grew weary of their whispers, and so left scurrying through the massive crowd before the throne room’s doors looking irritated. He wanted to run back to his bedchambers, lock his doors, and doze off on his bed until he was to continue his duties in and outside of the castle, but someone who he had not intended to meet, stopped him from doing so.

“Lady Adèle,” Bash said. “I did not expect you outside of the throne room.”

Her expression indicated an empty reaction. It was obvious she was not impressed by Bash at all, nor she would ever be, he assumed. “I’m going to the stables to ride to the lake near the castle. I need some time to think, that is all,”

“You are not packing for your return?” asked Bash.

“No, my brother and I have agreed that I shall stay in the castle until the trouble back home is dealt with. Meanwhile, I will find things to do and hopefully not bore myself. Although, that is unlikely,”

“Why don’t I join you? Stepping outside of the palace grounds is dangerous,”

Adèle gave a soft chuckle. “What danger is there? It is a body of water sitting on an empty field of grass,”

“If you need to know, I need to speak to you in private.”

“Is it of great importance?”

“You could say that,” spoke Bash.

“Very well.”

Bash followed Adèle as she paced through the hallways, through the kitchens and then finally reaching the stables. As the afternoon sunlight bathed her skin, Adèle could not help but smile in front of Bash. They both thought in unison that the great outdoors were their true home, not inside the castle where they were entrapped by tedious, yet important matters. Adèle chose the horse that she regularly rode with, the large steed for which she has affectionately named Midnight. She immediately charged off to the courtyard and into the verdant fields, leaving Bash to race her from behind. He repeatedly asked her to slow down, as Francis and Bash did too. It came to Bash’s mind that Adèle was not a timid woman at all, but an adventurer at heart, a chaser of the sun.

Adèle stopped near the lake, dismounting herself quickly and ran into the waters of the lake as she laughed. Bash came and followed, and did not mind that his leather clothing soaked in water, as did Adèle’s dress. They returned to the edge of the water fully drenched in water, walking in a very strange manner as they tried to keep their bodies steady. She sat down on the grass, panting and breathing in excitement. She dried her hair first, then fixed her dress, and then she finally seemed in her calmest state. Adèle blushed when she realized she sat all wet from the waters of the lake in front of a man whom she barely knew.

“So what is it that you want to speak of with me?” Adèle asked.

“I advise that you do not become angered when I tell you this, but my father asked me that I offer you my hand in marriage,”

“Why?” she gasped, looking startled.

“He hoped for a union that will bring two most influential families together. A union between you and me,” he replied. “I have thought about this union, and but I prioritize your opinion towards our potential union first.”

“Oh God,”  she said. It was too much, she thought. An offer of marriage only two days after she left for French court? “What kind of madness is there in French court?”

“Don’t pretend you haven’t heard of tales of women wedded and bedded to strangers before. It happens all the time, Adèle, and I assume that my father makes the wisest decisions in all of France. After all, he is the king,”

“But he can’t force me, I can’t.. I’m too young,” she frowned. “Does he want to make me a slave to marriage and domesticity?”

“You are a French subject and he is the king of France. I cannot force you to marry me and if I did, I would take no pleasure in doing so, but he is the king, Adèle. It is best that you avoid angering him,” Bash warned.

“Perhaps there is another way,” she replied. “Perhaps you can marry another noblewoman, someone with title instead, yet still as rich.”

“Marry a titleless bastard to a titled woman? My father would go mad!”

"He is already mad, Bash. Do you think I do not notice the madness that’s overpowering him?”

Bash became startled by her response. “How can you possibly know that? That is just a mere assumption, a hypothesis that remains unconfirmed,”

“I see it in his eyes, Bash. It is corrupting him each second we speak and has left every moral he has left to wither away slowly,”

But Bash did not yet reply. If his father’s madness were to slip out of her mouth by accident, there would be an endless unrest. His father would be forced to resign from the crown, and so will him and his children, including his bastard. They will have to flee the country, possibly leave for somewhere where no one knows their name or whatever position they held before their new life. Although the luxuries of court life was never something Bash indulged in; it brought him comfort. It was what made him rest easily each night; the knowledge that even though he was a king’s bastard, he had a roof over his head, meals to eat, and also, he did not possess the great responsibility of potentially taking care of a whole nation like his half-brother, even though he was the eldest between the two.

To be separated from court life and to leave France forever and sentenced to exile would mean giving up his comfort. Bash cleared his mind and said to Adèle: “You have to leave court. Immediately.”

“No, my brother insisted that I stay here to maintain my family’s ties with yours. To leave would mean to disappoint both my brother and my parents, Bash, and I have no desire in becoming the family disappointment,” Adèle frowned.

“You say that you do not want to be the family disappointment yet here I stand before you, France’s greatest family disappointment,”

“I did not mean to offend you,”

“I know you didn’t,” he said. “So do you accept my offer of leaving court for a short amount of time until this matter this taken care of.”

“Why do you want me to leave anyway?” asked Adèle. “Is my own viewpoint unnecessary to this potential union? I will talk to your father myself if I need to. Besides, I know that he does not want to irritate one of his nobles,”

“There are reasons that you are able, and unable to know, Adèle. Reasons that include unrest in the villages regarding the religious battle between Catholics and Protestants, forces of evil that take away lives of the innocents, my dark past returning to me, and so on and so forth. I do not want to unnerve you with the things that I encounter that will surely put you in danger. It is too much for you to bear,”

“I have seen the pain that my parents and my brother have endured. Nothing is too much for me to bear,” Adèle put on an irritated expression on her face.

“Whatever pain they have endured is nothing compared to the people I have encountered and associate with.”

“My mother was a protestant,” Adèle stated, almost yelling at his face. “When she fell in love with my father she sacrificed everything to marry him, Bash. She was robbed of her fortune, her virtue, her title.. and her family abandoned her within the blink of an eye as soon as she claimed that she grew fond of a Catholic nobleman. My brothers and me have Protestant blood running through our veins,”

“That is why you do not want to marry me,” said Bash, after his sudden realization. “You are worried that a union between a Catholic and a woman born to a once Protestant will anger my father. There is no need to worry, Adèle. Your mother has changed her faith, and even though you possess Protestant blood, you are not a Protestant.”

“That’s it then. I am not leaving French court. One more question: aren’t you more frightened of the fact that I might tell my parents of Henry’s illness if I leave court?”

“You will not say a single word,” said Bash. “Please, Adèle. Return to your home where you are safe. Return to your brothers, and there you will have more than enough time to think of Henry’s proposal of marriage between us. When you return, French court will be safer for you to rest here, and I will abandon my past to serve you and our future king, my half-brother.”

Adèle nodded, indicating him that she had agreed to his proposal to return home while Bash. Whilst he knew in his heart that she still had small worries that seemed to unnerve her, Bash did not say another word.

Both of them knew that the biggest worry that seemed to disturb the two was an obvious lie that Bash had said to her. They both knew that French court, no matter what Bash or Adèle does, whether it is marry or go separate ways, will never be safe.