Testimonium Regis - Part 2 of 5

In his youth, Aldus was a mere mud-crusted yeoman to any passerby. He was picked for the position by the former Lord Surgeon, Phillip. On a country horse ride past the land Aldus worked, Phillip was shot through the face by a bandit’s arrow. The arrow flew fast and true and lodged itself in Phillip’s cheek just under the eye. Later, over ale, Phillip would joke that if he were ever shot again, he’d wish Aldus to be in attendance. The young Aldus, having seen Phillip fall from his horse, forfeited his rake and bounded over the field to where the Lord Surgeon lay. The thief had already made away with whatever valuables he could by the time Aldus reached Phillip. That, of course, mattered not while an arrow jutted from the Lord Surgeons’ face and blood and spittle foamed out of his mouth. Phillip moaned and writhed on the ground, balling his fists around sodden earth as he watched Aldus inspect the damage.

“Mother! Bring me cloth! Honey! Flour! Father’s horseshoe tools!” Aldus then shouted. He had treated injuries before, patching up the cuts, scrapes, lacerations and the occasional impalement on a rake or pitchfork that tormented his neighbors. With his mother as his assistant, running back and forth to their nearby homestead for more supplies, the young Aldus dug and prodded and cleansed and disinfected and extracted the arrowhead! All the while Phillip moaned and held still as possible, knowing now how his own patients must have felt at his own hand. The arrowhead scraped and wiggled against the bones of his cheek and sinuses. That day, Phillip was gifted a hideous scar and a still beating heart. That day was also the one where Aldus was spirited away to the castle to act as the new apprentice of the Lord Surgeon those sixty odd years ago.

“I must continue.” Aldus muttered, transported back to the present. He gestured Hugh to stand back from the slab and lifted the rib shears again. “Time is short.”

“Sir Aldus -” Hugh started.

“Please. I’m an old man. No more of this ‘sir’ nonsense.”

Hugh smiled. “Aldus. Please. Allow me to take the burden.” He placed a hand on Aldus’ gnarled fist. Aldus pulled away.

“No. This is my charge. You sit.” To make the point, Aldus clamped his shears around the next rib. He closed his eyes and applied pressure…No need to be strong now, my good king. Let go. Just…let…go…CRACK!

Hugh, assured of his master’s constitution, sat back down in his nearby chair. Aldus fastened the shears around the next rib, higher up the cage this time. He needed to focus lest his gaze turn towards…he’s still just a babe. He was looking upon the king’s face again. A sleeping babe. Like his father and grandfather and forefathers, the boy had blazing orange hair, a forest fire, dulled to embers only in death. He’d been wearing it long. Hadn’t they a barber over there? Maybe I should cut it for him. I am a barber-surgeon after all. Make him look nice. Make him look…what’s the point, Aldus? He turned his attention back to the chest cavity. This was his real job. Meat, bone, blood. Sickly-sweet and ghastly. He was to turn this flesh divine. The scores of people in attendance at the ceremony were counting on him. A kingdom was counting on him! They would have loved him. Golden heart or no. He would have been king and fair and wise and beloved. The people would have smiled every time they saw his face minted on a coin…had that been something he wanted.

The people had loved Jerome II, young Jerome’s father, well enough. Another secret Aldus wouldn’t admit out loud is that he found nothing exceptional in Jerome II or even Jerome I. Both warring, drinking despots in his opinion. Worse still, there were the eyes. That was something Aldus did notice that all kings seemed to carry: a certain deadness behind their eyes. That ought to be studied. The eyes gave an air to each king that suggested they thought that everyone they interacted with, every member of their kingdom from lord to beggar, was a chess piece to advance on their own mental board. An animal aloofness in their gaze that made it clear to those kneeling at the throne that the only thought rattling around in the royal head was “What do I want and how can I take it?”

That’s why, when Aldus attended Jerome III’s birth, he was struck by the babe’s eyes when they first opened. When the child first opened them to take in the sunlight through the window, Aldus was awestruck. These eyes, these new eyes, were inquisitive. They were intelligent and kind. Most of all, they were human! Aldus’ intuition, his ability to read someone from their eyes, had never failed him and it did not do so now. Jerome III’s eyes never lost that quality all while Aldus knew him. That is to say, all of seven years before the boy was sent away after the death of his father, Jerome II. As is custom, the boy was crowned - the boy! The child! What kind of people are we? - and sent to his mother’s old kingdom, an allied nation, to be tutored in the ways of the arts and history and athletics and ruling and war. The late king’s younger brother, Jerome III’s uncle, Howard took the throne in the interim as regent. Aldus missed the boy.

Before he could even walk or speak, young Jerome took a shine to Aldus, perhaps sensing in him a kindred, gentle spirit. It was discovered early on by the nursemaids that Jerome never seemed to cry in Aldus’ presence or, especially, in his arms which often cradled him to sleep. “Me, a bloody nursemaid!” Aldus once said with an incredulous smile on his face over a pint with the Lord Blacksmith, Will. The two of them, Lords and masters in their own spheres and co-conspirators in the Testimonium Regis, were natural friends. “Aye. Womanly and dainty as your hands are, it isn’t a surprise.” Will joked back.

Now the babe’s dead.

“Perhaps I’ll take another short break, Hugh.”

"Of course. But the time, it runs short and -”

“I know.”

Aldus took up the chair opposite Hugh, lowering himself into it with care. His arms wobbled as he gripped the armrests for support. He rested his aching, contaminated hands on his lap.

“Will we have to ask them to wait?”
 

“We damn well have to if we’re not finished by the time they come knocking.” Aldus said, void of conviction. He knew he could only stall so long. He looked down at his hands, stretching his fingers. These hands that have worked so much flesh still had work to do. As he traced the wrinkles and lines in his palms, he succumbed to another memory. This one he spoke aloud to Hugh. It was a time when the boy had only just recently mastered both walking and talking, perhaps five years old. The small hand found and insisted on being held by Aldus’ already withering one. It was a common sight around the castle to see the two hand in hand, young Jerome leading the old man around faster than he cared to go, though he wouldn’t dare dampen the boy’s enthusiasm. The memory took place in the great hall. A cavernous room adorned on both sides with likenesses of the line of kings. Resting in glass domes on pedestals in front of the portraits were the respective glittering hearts, once lifted from their respective chests, now polished and displayed for all who came to see. A reminder of their divinity, their purity, their sovereignty. Aldus, perhaps in vanity, favored to look upon the two hearts he had pulled himself thus far: Howard I and Jerome I.

“Look here,” Aldus said, pointing to the golden heart of Howard I. “This here was your great-grandfather, Howard the Wise. I knew him when I was young.”

Young Jerome ignored the heart, instead scanning the portrait.

“He had a big nose.” Jerome declared. Aldus stifled a laugh.

“He did, yes. But you wouldn’t have wanted to be caught by him saying so.”

“Why was he called ‘The Wise’, Aldy?” Aldy was a nickname that only Jerome III was permitted to use. 

“Well, he was prudent and renowned in his effective policymaking and diplomatic strategies. Not to mention, he expanded the territory of the kingdom more than any king before him, allowing our economy to -” He stopped. The boy had no idea what he was saying. He simplified. “Because he was wise, of course. He did right by his people and in turn he was beloved. It’s wise to strive for these things.”

“Why?”

“I’ve heard some say that a king is only as strong as their people.”

“I want to be wise.” Jerome admitted.

“And you will be, young one.”

“What about this thing?” Jerome asked as he pointed at the false heart of his forefather.

Has no one told him? Not even his father? Aldus swallowed the guilt of lying to the child and cleared his throat.

“This is the golden heart of your heritage. Every ruler in your line has one. Look around, my liege, you’ll see one for every portrait hung.”

“I have one, too?”

“You do.” Aldus smiled. He knelt and placed a hand over the boy’s chest. “Right here.”

“Did mother have one?” The queen had died a year prior of a fever that never broke.

“No, my liege. She did not. Only the rulers of this bloodline do. Your mother was of a different bloodline. A different kingdom. You’ll see her homeland one day, I’m sure.”

“Does everyone from our kingdom have a gold heart, then?”

“No!” Aldus laughed. The boy king frowned. Aldus felt his own smile break. He could see the child grappling with this information, digesting and rejecting it. “It is only the line of kings, young one. They were destined to rule. God has ordained it and bequeathed it to your line in the form of the golden heart.” A recitation from a yellowed scroll suddenly devoid of potency under the scrutiny of this child. Then the child said something curious.

“I think you have a gold heart, Aldy.”

“That is kind of you to say, my boy. Heretical for anyone else, but…kind of you. I can assure you, though, I do not.”

“Have you checked?”

Aldus laughed again. “No.” He admitted. “I haven’t. And I don’t need to. Only kings in your line -”

“Everyone should have a golden heart or no one should.” So declared the king in the empty hall. Aldus finished recounting this, never having looked up from his hands.

“The boy king really said that?” Hugh asked, gesturing to the boy’s corpse.

“Aye. He did. Can you believe that? A child saying something like that.” Hugh shook his head in incredulity, yet smiled. “I’ve no children myself, but I understand them to be like this. Strong sense of justice, I suppose. Perhaps that was just the innate sense manifesting.”

“Justice?” Hugh asked. “Justice against what?”

Aldus couldn’t find the words to respond so offered a shrug instead. Aldus was the child’s companion for about three more years after that conversation in the great hall. More conversations were to come along with joking and ball games, hiding and seeking, tutoring and the occasional light scolding. Jerome III’s insatiable curiosity and boundless energy were often overwhelming to Aldus, though he wouldn’t admit as much to his sovereign. Much to Aldus’ surprise, the boy too was not squeamish and often demanded to observe as Aldus performed various surgeries and dissections. By the age of seven he had seen more of the flesh and blood of humanity than most do in their lifetime.

In the tower, jailed in the present, Aldus ended his break and, trudging back to the slab, started to crunch through another rib. 

When the boy was seven, Jerome II, his father, slipped and fell down a spiral flight of stone tower stairs while drunk. His skull cracked open like an egg. He was found at the base of the steps by his young son who, after the moment’s shock wore off, rushed and shouted for Aldus. Jerome III was crowned king of the realm the next day at the age of eight. Nobles and dignitaries and the child’s broad-shouldered uncle all swore fealty to him. Though he was not permitted to watch the transplantation of the golden heart into his father’s chest, nor the cracking of his ribs, nor Aldus’ best efforts to cobble the skull back together, he did attend the Testimonium Regis. He looked on from a raised platform in the castle’s bailey as, from under a sheet, Aldus reached into the former king’s chest and pulled out the latest golden heart. It caught the sunlight as it was held aloft. As the merchants and nobles and lords and peasants alike basked in their reignited myth, Aldus stole a glance at the new king. His brows were knitted, his lips pouted. Perhaps he was puzzling something out. Perhaps he could sense something was amiss. Perhaps he remembered the conversation with Aldus in the hall and hated to see his anxieties confirmed. Perhaps he just missed his father.

As the crowds cheered and the shouts of “The King is dead! Long live the King!” fell on the distracted ears of the new regent, Aldus handed the heart to a vizier in attendance. They washed and dried it and prepared it for display under the dead king’s portrait. Jerome III would see his mother’s kingdom sooner than he expected as he was escorted there the following day. He was too young to rule a kingdom. One needs to learn these things, so they say, before one forgets it in favor of bloodlust and expanding lines on a map.

Though he cried and begged for Aldus to accompany him, his uncle, Prince Howard, assured him it was not possible. “You wouldn’t deprive our kingdom of its best surgeon, would you?” Howard asked.

“Yes, I would!” cried the young king. It was the only truly selfish thing Aldus had heard the boy say. Though his red heart ached, as any father’s or father-figure’s would, Aldus knew he could not intervene. The king needed to be brought up. Furthermore, there were some in the court, some in “the know”, who held his leash. He wouldn’t wish to interrupt the king’s training, but he wished to continue on as his tutor.

“What shall you teach him?” Aldus was asked by a vizier even grayer than Aldus was himself. “Of cutting hair? Pulling a tooth? Of anatomy? What good would come of this? Of a king, one of our kings, that questions the workings of his body?”

So it was that Aldus was commanded to stay. He worried that he wouldn’t live to see the boy’s return. Worried that the boy might return corrupted somehow without his guiding hand. Yet…he had hope for the kind of young man this boy would become. He seemed incorruptible, even at his age. The thought that Jerome III might end up on the slab in his lifetime was an impossibility to Aldus. As impossible as jumping out the window and flying. Yet here he was. Every time Aldus looked at the dead face, he cursed God