In the rear garden, an elderly man in fine clothes was walking with a younger man still in his prime. They were the grand duke and the prime minister, of course.
“I heard all about it. The potter promised to make you a new jar to replace the one that was broken the other day,” Prime Minister August said.
“Yes, he was sympathetic when he heard what happened,” Grand Duke Vivaldi replied. “It seems he’ll be prioritizing it over his other work. I was having trouble sleeping after that, but I feel a little better about it now.”
As they were talking, they came to the pond. The grand duke looked up to a tree planted close nearby.
“Oh, the fruit’s ripened,” he observed. The big tree was full of little red fruits the size of a child’s fist. The grand duke’s eyes narrowed happily at the sight of this bountiful harvest. “I planted this crab apple tree about ten years ago, here by the waterside where the birds gather, in the hopes that its fruit would bring more of them.”
“Your Grace, I’ve heard crab apples taste awful. Do the birds eat them?” the prime minister asked.
“You’re talking about the type used for pollination. All small apples are called crab apples, you see. I planted a number of representative species, and... Yes, I think they should be ready to eat this year. I can see some have been bitten already.”
“Is that right? Ah! Is there something up there?”
The grand duke looked up to where the prime minister was pointing.
“Oh, what lovely white fur.”
“It’s a fluffy white...monkey?”
They glanced at each other, rubbed their eyes, and looked back up at the tree. At the very top, a monkey leapt from branch to branch. Soft, white fur covered almost all of its body, which was thirty centimeters long with a tail of roughly the same length. For some reason, it was carrying a little basket on its back. It would pick the sun-ripened fruit and throw them into it.
“That is a monkey...yes,” the grand duke uttered.
“It certainly is,” the prime minister replied. “I’ve never heard of a monkey appearing at the palace before.”
It had tools, so it had to be a pet. Still, someone was keeping a free-range monkey on the palace grounds.
As the monkey harvested the best fruits it could find, it nibbled away at some too. It had finished the good part of one apple and was about to throw away the core when it noticed the two of them.
The men looked into the monkey’s eyes, and the monkey looked into theirs. Then it snatched some nice-looking fruit, one after another, and threw five or six apples at the two men.
“Whoa?!”
“What?!”
Having thrown them a handful of fruit, the monkey grinned, winked, and gave them a thumbs-up. Its face seemed to say, “You’re hungry, right? Here. They’re on me, so dig in.”
With its basket now full, the monkey bounded from branch to branch as it came down from the tree.
“Oh, gosh. That monkey... He’s so manly,” Grand Duke Vivaldi mused.
“Goodness, my heart’s racing for him,” Prime Minister August murmured as if he might start swooning.
The grand duke and the prime minister watched to see where the monkey would go now that he was on the ground. He ran on all fours to the barred window Enrique had disappeared through. They heard the voice of a young lady inside the prison.
“My, Haley. You’ve picked me so many. What a good boy you are. Thank you.”
The grand duke and the prime minister looked at each other.
“He seems more reliable than Elliott, I’ll say,” the grand duke commented.
The prime minister nodded in agreement. “Miss Rachel’s caught herself a good man.”
Elliott was raging.
“Damn it! I couldn’t protect Sykes!”
Elliott’s followers were in tears as they gave a report.
“I went to see him off yesterday,” Wolanski said. “He looked soulless, like a cow that knows why it’s being sent off to market. Oh, I’m crying now...” He cast his eyes up to the ceiling, his face overcome by sadness. “If only... If only Miss Evans were flat, Sir Sykes could have been at peace.”
“No way,” one of Elliott’s hangers-on replied.
Elliott angrily pounded his desk. “This is all Rachel’s fault! Calling in Martina... It’s not fair! Does she realize how much damage she did to the palace and the knights? And they all act like it’s our fault...”
They all fell silent, unable to cope with the injustice. A hanger-on who couldn’t contain himself began sniffling.
During their moment of painful reflection, a chamberlain came to Elliott’s office with an urgent note from the grand duke.
“What could His Grace the Grand Duke want?” a hanger-on asked.
“It’s Rachel again,” Elliott muttered.
“Go figure...”
When he finished reading the letter, Elliott threw it down on the desk and slapped it with his open palm. “That wretch. This time she’s after the fruit in the back gardens. She’s using a monkey to harvest it!”
“Come again...?”
Hearing the familiar sound of Elliott’s irritated footsteps, Rachel looked up from the book she’d been reading while lying back in her reclining chair.
“Why, Your Highness! You’re here awfully late,” Rachel remarked.
“Because of you!” Elliott shrieked. “Hey, a prince is here to see you?! Would you get up and show me the proper respect?!”
“I’d love to, really, but I have this little guy here with me.”
Rachel seemed more short of breath than usual, so Elliott peered into the prison. There, on top of Rachel’s belly, was a little monkey. Using his mistress as a mattress, he mumbled comfortably in his sleep. Elliott didn’t mind that part so much, though.