The grand duke was looking through a pile of documents he needed to sign on his desk when the prime minister dropped in.
“I see you’ve received a fair deal of paperwork too, Your Grace,” said the prime minister.
“Yes, it’s hard work just looking through it all.” The grand duke, who’d been wheezing as he worked through the documents, picked up his cold cup of tea with a look of exasperation. “With His Majesty away, all the decisions fall to me. Normally, the minor things should be sent to Elliott, but he lets the paperwork pile up, so even those minor things end up coming to me.”
“The prince really is a handful. He’s a grown man, yet he still shows no aptitude for work. I don’t see how he can be invested as crown prince like this.”
“I agree entirely. Thanks to him, I’ve had to approve a grant for the harvest festival, a number of business permits, and all sorts of other things that shouldn’t be my job. If we let Elliott inherit the throne, who knows what will happen in the future?”
Those sorts of decisions were usually left to the bureaucrats, but they had ended up coming to the grand duke. Between the king’s absence and Elliott’s troubles, people didn’t know where to send the paperwork.
Just then, a chamberlain rushed into the room. “I have something to report. Just now, in front of the inner gate, the knight commander and two of his knights were thrown from their horses and injured when they rode into a hanging rope!”
The grand duke and the prime minister looked at each other.
“What do they think they’re doing?” the grand duke moaned. “They go down that road to work every morning. How could they get in an accident like that?”
The cause of said accident had already run away.
The grand duke continued, “He just lost his son to that madwoman too. Has the knight commander gone soft recently?”
“Riding into a rope like that due to his own incaution. What is Lord Abigail doing?” the prime minister wondered.
With deep, deep sighs, the grand duke and the prime minister rose to their feet. The knight commander, a member of the cabinet, getting into a work-related accident at the palace? The grand duke would have to inspect the scene, or he’d have trouble explaining when the king returned.
“Why have there been so many incidents like this recently?” the grand duke asked.
“Nothing good has happened since Prince Elliott broke off his engagement,” the prime minister replied.
The pair followed the chamberlain out of the room.
A slight breeze blew into the now-vacant office. Haley pushed the window open and entered with his basket on his back. Looking around the empty room, he let out a small cry.
“Ook...”
It appeared the old man was away. Go figure. He looked dim-witted, so it probably took him a long time to gather food.
Haley climbed onto the desk like always and laid about half of his harvest there. The basket was little enough that Haley could carry it, so half of the fruit only amounted to five or six apples, but it was still enough for a meal. No, given how fat the old man was, maybe it was only a snack.
As Haley was about to leave, he noticed the papers under the apples. He knew what these half-written papers were. The mistress and her daddy were always signing them. You just signed at the bottom and they were done. And Haley could sign.
One time, when Rachel was signing a big pile of documents, he’d tried to imitate her. He’d gotten his signature to look a lot like hers too. His mistress had told him, “Don’t go signing things without permission,” but that slow old man might have trouble getting through all these.
Haley took up a pen that had been left behind and looked closely at the old man’s signature so that he could imitate it. Haley only understood letters as a series of shapes, but when he put his next to the original, they looked pretty similar.
Good.
Haley kept moving the pen, relocating the signed documents into the “finished” pile. Once he’d done four or five, he was satisfied. Now that guy would have a much easier time.
Helping was hungry work. It was time to find somewhere outside with a nice breeze to eat. Haley reshouldered his basket and went out the window.
For some reason, requests to back events like the “main street nudist parade” and the “first national gross-food competitive-eating tournament,” which the grand duke had dismissed at a glance, ended up proceeding with his permission.
A smell was coming from the first floor of the building where the blond idiot, Elliott, lived. Haley peeked in through the window. There were a number of people in white clothes working hard with tools to make a variety of things. Haley had looked all around Rachel’s house, so he knew they were making food.
“We don’t have much time before His Highness’s lunch break! Hurry!” yelled the head chef.
There were a number of young men following the elderly man’s directions and working on a bunch of different tasks simultaneously.
One of the men brought the most delicious-looking plate to his boss and asked, “For the main dish, sausages with brown sauce, the recipe calls for liver sausage...”
“Oh, His Highness detests liver, so it’s fine to substitute frankfurters.”
“All right.”
Hearing a woman’s voice, the head chef left to deal with her. Most of the chefs left the room carrying pots and other containers as their turn came around, then the last of them headed off to the storehouse in another building to fetch some missing ingredients.
Haley’s diet consisted mainly of fruits and vegetables, but monkeys are omnivores. If he could get his hands on them, Haley would happily eat steaks and sandwiches too. Recently, however, Rachel would only give him fruit, so he hadn’t been getting any meat. That was why Haley was sneaking into the deserted kitchen.
Haley looked at the plate the young chef had been asking his superior about before. The weird thing shaped like a banana looked incredibly tasty. His mouth watered. He snatched up a steaming hot sausage and took a bite out of it. It tasted meatier than he’d expected. It had more flavor packed into it than a steak, but strangely, it wasn’t hard at all. It wasn’t half bad.
Haley got absorbed in eating the sausage, and before he knew it, both of the plated sausages were in his tummy. He tried the white mushy stuff that sat beside them as well. It tasted like potatoes mashed together with milk. It was so good he licked it up. The next thing he knew, the only things left on the plate were the sauce and a small amount of vegetables.
As Haley rubbed his full belly, he had a sudden realization. Couldn’t he get in trouble for this? Even he knew stealing someone else’s food was wrong, and that included the blond idiot’s meals. Stealing food was something bad boss monkeys did.
Haley, uncharacteristically flustered, looked around. If he didn’t do something, Rachel might scold him. He searched the work table and found a pot with a similar sauce and a pot with a white mass in it. If he dressed these up, all he needed were some of those banana-like things that had been in the center. He looked around, but there were no bananas.
He needed to hurry before the people who made it came back. Suppressing his desire to rush, Haley opened a little door and spied a number of similar things hanging there.
Good! These would do. He felt that these were darker in color than the ones he’d eaten, but he sniffed them, and they smelled similar enough. Besides, he didn’t have time.
Haley tore off two fake bananas from the hanging bundle and hurriedly put them on the plate. Yeah, they were about the same size too. He laid the blood sausages—uncooked—that he’d gotten from the cupboard beside the liver sausages—also uncooked—and ladled sauce over them.
Look, it was practically identical to before. He felt like the white mass was softer than what he’d eaten, so he dumped some of the white powder sitting next to it in and mixed until it was about the same hardness. Okay, that was that sorted too. He added the white sauce he’d thickened with lots of flour to the arrangement.
Now that the evidence had been eliminated, the monkey hid himself just as the chefs returned.
“Huh?”
“What’s wrong?” asked the head chef.
“The main dish seems cold for some reason?” the young chef answered.
“His Highness can’t handle hot food anyway. It’ll probably be fine. Now hurry up!”
“Gotcha.”
Once the chefs were gone again, Haley came out from the gap in the shelves where he’d hidden.
Thank goodness. He didn’t know what he’d have done if his mistress had found out.
Haley opened the door with the meat bananas and snatched a few more to throw into his basket. Now that he knew they were here, he’d come back when he wanted more.
Haley left with his souvenirs to head back to Rachel. He’d had a lot of adventures today.
As the sun shone down on the courtyard, he tottered back to the dungeon fully satisfied. He had no idea of the effect he’d had on those around him.
As Haley lay there, dozing lightly, Rachel looked around, troubled.
“Where did he find blood sausages?” she wondered. “I don’t even have a pot to boil them.”
“Shall I bring them back with me, young mistress?” a maid asked.
“No, Haley needs to see me eating them or he won’t be satisfied. Bring a pot with you next time.”
As he sleepily listened to their conversation, Haley imagined the adventures he’d have tomorrow as he drifted off to the land of dreams.