The King's Artist

Ch 19: A Distracted Mind

Henry's rescue party had been riding for the majority of the day to the exhaustion of the horses. With nightfall only a few hours away, the company of soldiers unanimously decided to give the horses a quick break to recuperate. There were still several hours left to travel, and the rescue party was beginning to feel the worry and stress at the possibility of not making it in time. The fatigue was also wearing on them just as heavily as it was on the horses.

Jasper and Adelaide were noticeably the most panicked of the group. The soldiers were doing a good job at hiding their apprehension and were resting alongside the horses, but Adelaide and Jasper both seemed unable to sit still. They paced around the grazing horses and continuously exchanged anxious glances at one another that were not helping the stress of the situation.

The only person who seemed unbothered or at least relaxed despite the strain and heavy atmosphere was Kayden.

It seemed now that Kayden knew his suspicions about Arthur had been correct and not just a figment of his imagination, he couldn't stop himself from staring at the other boy. Girl, he corrected to himself, Arthur is a girl. A girl whose name is Adelaide. The name seemed to put him in a daze as it rang through his head like the chimes of a church bell. It was such a fitting name, in Kayden's mind, for someone so pretty. He couldn't stop himself from repeating the name over and over in his head. He wanted to say the name out loud, hear it on his lips, but, more than that, he wanted to call out to Adelaide using the name. He wanted so desperately to see her reaction, maybe catch her off guard by whispering it to her when no one else was around. The image of her blushing face when he had complimented her name earlier was still so starkly etched into his mind that it made his heart race. He longed to see that sort of expression on her again.

Kayden thought about hitting himself to get his brain to focus.

After all, the inappropriateness of his train of thought was driving him mad. Here he was paying more attention to Adelaide than to the task of rescuing Henry. Despite his efforts, though, Kayden couldn't seem to stop his fantasies or redirect his attention away from Adelaide. It didn't help, too, that the traveling party had been entirely silent since their departure. Without the distraction of conversation, Kayden was left at the mercy of his thoughts, thoughts that were gradually making him more and more uncomfortable.

He was just thankful that no one seemed to have noticed where his attention was directed. His frequent glances towards Adelaide went unnoticed by the others giving him plenty of silence to take in her blonde curls and soft, angelic features. It really was a miracle that no one else had figured out she was, in fact, a girl all these years. Henry, especially. Having spent so many years together, it seemed odd that the second Tudor had never noticed or even suspected Adelaide's gender didn't match with her appearance.

Through the silence of the half hour they rested, Kayden further found himself querying how Adelaide was going to continue her life from now on; whether she was going to continue living as Arthur or if she would go back to being Adelaide.

Kayden figured it would all come down to whether or not they managed to rescue Henry. He guessed that if the young boy was safely recaptured, Adelaide would continue by his side as Arthur. However, if Henry wasn't rescued, Kayden wondered if Adelaide would even have a reason to stay with him. Them, he practically shouted in correction, them meaning Jasper, not me. He felt himself blush as he fought with his chaotic and embarrassing consciousness.

Again, though, no one noticed Kayden. The party had, instead, began to gradually pack their things and reequip the horses for the rest of the journey. Without further delay, the party resumed their pace north, following the tracks from Henry's kidnappers' horses. The hoove markings, though, had begun to fade, and if it wasn't for the deep impressions from what looked like a carriage, Kayden wasn't sure if they were still going in the right direction.

Before Kayden's mind could humiliate him further by resuming the topic of Adelaide, an abrupt distraction came in the form of bitter and freezing rain. The group didn't stall their efforts or slow their pace, but their vision decreased considerably, and Kayden's thoughts were successfully drowned out of his head. For the moment, anyway.

It took only seconds for all of them to be soaked.

Kayden shivered uncontrollably as his teeth chattered loudly and painfully, the sound echoing in his head. He considered calling for a stop again, to just wait out the storm, but when he turned to look at the faces of his companions, he felt his blood go cold, and his chattering ceased immediately. Even threw an obscured haze, Kayden could see the determined glare to his comrades' gazes, the determined tightness of their shoulders, and the desperation pouring over their face and body like an illness. With a quick glance backward, Kayden could make out a similar expression on Adelaide's face that had his lips pressing into a fine line and turning white.

He felt his body stiffen as he took in the site of those he rode alongside. Everyone in the party had only one thought on their mind: rescuing Henry.

Kayden felt his pride as a solider shatter and crumble under the weight of his own incompetency. He wanted to blame it on Adelaide, redirect his guilt to the startling disclosure of her gender, but he couldn't do that. Jasper had learned the truth the same time he had, yet the older man was stern and cross as he rode. His line of sight straight ahead and not swayed at all by the hostile coldness that was sweeping through every bone of his body.

Kayden's shame made him grow stiff.

Years ago, Kayden had sworn to protect Henry with his life. He had trained for years to be able to serve the Tudor family and, through his training and efforts, he had been hand-picked to serve and protect Henry as one of his personal guards at the young age of seventeen. Furthermore, Kayden had been part of the team to fairy the young thirteen-year-old across the waters to safety, away from Yorkist Edward IV. Subsequently, Kayden had also assisted in training Henry as he grew. Teaching him everything from necessary self-defense to horse-back riding to sword fighting.

With a cold stare, Kayden's attention realigned and hardened. The images of Adelaide's blushing face and the sound of her name faded from his mind and were replaced, instead, by the face of a young, scared boy whose world was crumbling down around him.

Kayden's mind didn't stray from Henry for the rest of the journey. His sole thoughts were on the young, brown-haired kid who had been shuffled onto a stolen boat complaining of hunger and chill, who barely seemed to grasp, at the time, that a King wanted him dead.