The gunshots rang in the air. The ducal army, with arms poised forward, swiftly collapsed as the revolutionist forces advanced from the rear. It did not mean that there was no resistance, however. With each scream and groan, torrents of blood erupted into the air, along with its distinct odor of metallic tang. Someone, then the next someone, kept holding on to Jean from his back, but he did not stop. He shot anyone who dared to hinder his advance, and he did not look who it was. He could not look, for his eyes only held one person.
“Maximin...!”
As if in a deep nap, steeped in slumber, the prince sat askew in his chair, so very askew. Had it not been for the blood in the coat and the leather, Jean might have believed the prince had merely been asleep. Jean hurriedly took off his own coat.
“Maximin, open your eyes, please.”
Jean cooed, wrapping the coat around the prince’s chest, the flesh on it blown and diminished. No response came back. Maximillian seemed to be deeply asleep.
“I have come, Your Grace.”
Could he not hear amidst all the raucous? Jean brought his lips right before the prince’s ear. He drew his face near to feel the prince’s breath, but alas, only the dreadful silence enveloped the prince. Jean’s hands were shaking. He pressed his cheek against the prince’s. It felt cold.
“I...”
The prince had always been cold, after all.
“Maximin, your Montespan has come.”
Jean clasped Maximin’s hand, intertwining their fingers. It seemed that at any moment, he would grasp Jean’s hand in return, as he had done the night before. Or at the very least, at any moment, he would inch his eyes open and return Jean the gaze. But Maximillian made no answer. He was simply sound asleep, as he had always done.
“Jean! Jean?”
Someone shook him. And along with him, his hand that held Maximillian’s shook as well, but the prince stayed still yet. Jean defied the grasping hands that sought to drag him away. Maximin. Jean called out, but the heartless prince only returned silence. Jean shook his head.
When Jean pulled Maximin, he came along so easily, yet so heavily. Jean brought him down from the chair and held the prince tight in his arms. The coat he had swathed around the prince felt dense, burdened by the weight of the blood it had absorbed. Jean lifted the body, along with the garment. No sound of life came from the prince.
“Why?”
It took Jean a long while before he could inquire.
“...Why?”
It was a question that none were able to answer. Jean found the surroundings silent. Gunshots could still be heard, though they now rang from a distance. His brethren who had been dragging him were also gone. All that remained was the sprawled corpse of the Grand Duke and the stillness. Jean felt the prince’s face. Even as he kissed the forehead, his entire body rattled.
“Why!”
Unanswered questions raged in him. Why was the prince here? Why had he not gone? Why had he said naught of his sight? ...Why had he sworn his promise to Jean, and why had he sought Jean out the night before, only to make this choice? Resentment pursued each of his questions. Wrath commingled with grief, yet even so, Jean held the slumbering prince tighter in his arms, for he feared that the prince might forsake him once again, his very presence slipping from Jean’s grasp for all eternity.
“Maximin.”
‘I ought not to have visited you this day.’
The murmured words rippled in Jean’s memory as though they were spoken by the man whose eyes were closed. Jean recalled the manner in which the prince had asked, his tone akin to one that spoke of love. Did he not ask for forgiveness? Aye, he had asked Jean to forgive him.
“Did I not beg you? Your Montespan pleaded with you...”
‘You need not seek forgiveness, Your Grace.’
He was a fool to have said those words.
‘For every sin and folly, I shall bear the burden.’
He ought to have denied the request. He ought to have declared that never would he forgive the prince should anything go awry. At least then, the prince would have entertained doubts regarding his decision. Jean ought not to have helped alleviate his guilt, not that way, not even if it was what the prince dearly sought.
“Your catamite...”
Jean could speak no more. He simply held Maximillian to his chest. He held him so close, so tight, as though to crush him within his embrace. That the prince had embraced him just the same way the night before felt like a dream. Indeed, Jean would have greatly preferred it to be a sweetly woven dream, conjured after his mortal surrender to the long, bitter night of frosting winter.
“Your catamite has been a fool once again...”
Then, he could dream anew. Then, he could tell the prince that he shall forgive nothing.
“And trusted you once again...”
And Jean shall whisper his love. He shall whisper his love a thousand times so that it would be the shackles that bound the prince to this life.
Footsteps dotted the silence, echoing across the quietness of the space. Jean did not lift his head to see who it was. Perhaps his comrades had come back after leaving him alone prior. He cared not whether they had returned to blast his head from his shoulders. He simply pulled the prince closer in his embrace. Jean was ready to depart with him.
“Jean Erhardt.”
However, what he heard was no gunshot but a voice. Jean looked up to find the face of someone he had not anticipated to see. The man looked down at Maximillian as he lowered himself and reached out his hand. Jean pulled Maximillian closer, shielding his prince behind his arms. The man let out a brief sigh.
“His Grace has tasked me with the care of his mortal remains.”
Instead of responding, Jean picked up the gun on the floor and aimed at the speaker. The man showed no change in his countenance. He was merely indifferent, as though facing a circumstance he had well foreseen.
“Should you stay in your state, your brethren shall return, and hang him in the square. Is that what you want?”
“Why? Why did you not take him?”
The two stared at each other. Neither had responded to the other’s question. The face of the man holding the gun was stained with tears, and the face of the other appeared distant, though shaded with darkness.
“His Highness wished for another to be brought to safety.”
The speaker’s usual demeanor of politeness was nowhere to be found, yet his current manner of speech suited him better than anything else, and so did the hardened look on his face, which had been wiped of his customary soft smile.
“He was a man of keen intellect. Even as a child, he was astute, bright.”
“...”
“’Twas an honor to serve him as my liege. It was such a privilege, and he was such an honorable man that I was beside myself when he appeared with your hand in his.”
Jean slowly lowered his gun. Liege. It was a word perhaps too outdated to be spoken by a member of the revolutionaries.
‘Jean. My men already guard me. They are simply concealed, not visible to your eye.’
Jean suddenly recalled the words Maximillian had said to him long ago, along with the memory that Cornell was particularly quick in recognizing Maximillian’s identity.
Cornell, Jean tersely spoke the name of his comrade, as though he was seeking confirmation through the action. Cornell, who was kneeling on one knee, did not make any answer but simply beheld Maximillian in reverence.
“The tides of history are fated—”
He lifted the limp hand and brought his lips to its back, kissing it.
“—and all that the leader of a despondent nation could do is to bow before that destiny, striving to reduce the shedding of blood.”
“...”
“’Twas the words he spoke upon his realization of his fading vision, after having thought for a long, long while.”
Cornell said, as he pulled the prince’s body toward him. Jean did not let go, however. Cornell shook his head, and their eyes met. Before he knew it, Jean was crying out loud in anguish.
“He knew everything?”
Cornell did not respond, for there was no need. That the man, who had dwelt among the brethren of the cause, had acknowledged Maximillian as his liege, sufficed as an answer. Jean simply did not want to believe.
“He... everything... from the beginning...” muttered Jean to himself.
He recalled the prince, strolling with his own hands clasped behind him and jestingly calling Jean’s name. Jean recalled the vile words that had forced him to climb onto the prince’s bed, the hands that touched his body, the humming tone in which the prince spoke—everything returned to him with such vividness that it was agonizing.
“When I bade him my last farewell,” Cornell began.
“I met him in the passage by the hill.”
His voice was low and dark. Jean recalled at once the place the man was speaking of.
“He was surprised.”
It was the passage of blackness into which Jean had entered, holding onto Maximillian’s hand.
“And he seemed greatly saddened that you did not bar the passage.”
Jean said naught. He could not. He remembered how Maximillian had come to him and led him to that place. It was Maximillian’s way of giving Jean a chance—the chance to serve his cause. The chance to block the path, bar the prince’s escape, and bring glory to himself.
“...He made the wrong judgment.”
You brought me to the place and showed me the way to kill you. Alas, realization dawned upon Jean.
“It would have served you better to have never met each other—for you, and for His Grace.”
Cornell was right, for it was not the way to slay the prince that Jean had learned at the end of that path. At the end of pervasive, blinding darkness, he came to realize only his own emotions. The love he wished to harbor and nurture, even at the cost of many an excuse and rationalization.
“He knew... who I was?”
After much time had passed, Jean finally spoke, his mind having pondered and deliberated extensively.
“Before he even met me?”
Jean’s mouth was parched dry, and in that instant, he perceived discomposure in Cornell’s eyes. Jean’s entire body began shaking like a twig caught in the whirl of a tempestuous storm.
“How?”
Jean asked, and no response came back. Cornell merely lowered his hand and made another attempt to take Maximillian. And Jean asked once more, steadfastly refusing to release his prince.
“How!”
At that very moment, from a distance, the sounds of footsteps and voices carried through the air—people were proclaiming the words liberty and freedom. Cornell’s eyes shook apprehensively, and Jean did not relax his grip on the prince until finally, Cornell parted his lips to tell his tale.