Whispered in the palace courtyard, three wild rumours about the reclusive young Emperor. 

           The first had it that he was, as they say, a child of nature, or, to do away with niceties, a simpleton, an idiot, incapable of speech or understanding, one who smiles at moonbeams and could not give offence if he tried. As such, he had to be protected from a world that would be incomprehensible and even dangerous for him. More importantly, the defective heir was a shameful secret. 

           According to the second rumour, he was either dead or very near death, victim of a terrible illness, and the palace was keeping the fact tightly under wraps. Of course, no one had seen a doctor arrive, but he must have been admitted secretly and had never left, perhaps beside the sickbed even now. 

           The third and most outrageous rumour held that he was not a child at all but a demon assuming that form, perhaps seizing the opportunity of stillbirth, an empty vessel. The malice of the creature could not be dispelled, so it must be contained. The demon tried all manner of ruses and tricks to obtain release from its appointed chamber: only a small cadre of the most loyal servants were said to have access to him, all of them with ears blocked and strict regulations about basic and limited interactions, delivering meals and the like. 

           Those who don’t know talk, 

           And those who talk don’t know. 

           Even I, a man fit only for minding horses, had heard these stories. All words eventually trickle down to the stables: it’s a law of nature. The horses hear everything. Stately animals committed to their physical moment, hearing but needless of such words; none of which is true of me. 

           The arrival of the first snow lured the old man, the heir’s maternal grandfather, out to see it fall, the first time anyone in the inner circle, as it were, had dallied in sight of all. His habit of staring long in the distance suggested to some that he was wise, to others an imbecile.  

           It is truly impossible to know the thoughts of another, I once heard someone foolishly say. But the best horses know what course their driver will take. 

           The old man, as all of the servants called him, not without affection, stood for nearly an hour that morning watching the snow. It was early and the fallen snow was pristine and undisturbed until, a bit ruefully, I had to take some of the horses out for exercise. Sharp Wind needed especial care and coaxing because of the cut to his right foreleg. 

           The old man’s emergence on this occasion was subsequently absorbed as complementary notes into the respective melody of each of the rumours. Overcome with shame or grief or vexation, he had to break free of the silent enclosure and come to look at the wider world. He was penitent or furious or dabbling in dark forces. And so on. 

           Sharp Wind’s breathing clouded the air, but his injury did not seem to be bothering him. On our third circuit of the courtyard I looked up to see, to my amazement, that the old man was striding directly toward us. One of the maids paused in an errand to gape in disbelief: a high lord going out to a lowly groom in the snow. 

           When he reached us, the old man disregarded my clumsy bow and assessed the horse. So far as I knew, he had never before shown any particular interest in the animals, but he stroked his nose thoughtfully before turning to me. His face was the very picture of fatigue, but his posture and his eyes together spoke of a resolve not to relent to that feeling. At length he said

           You are the one the other servants call Daoshi, I believe. 

           I bowed again, lower, to hide my blushes. It was no secret but to hear a high lord utter that nickname, refer even obliquely to that expulsion, was shocking. What is a secret, really? Past lives, he said. Let us not deprive this fine animal of its constitutional. We can walk and talk. 

           This we did. At first, the only sounds were those of our paces, four and four, in the snow. Then the old man spoke at length and without hurry. He told a story, or at least that’s what I think he was doing, and I of course listened attentively. The whole story took three revolutions of the yard, or at any rate that was when he stopped speaking. Once more he stroked the horse’s nose and once more I, far from certain what else to do, bowed. Then he walked back the way he had come. 

           When I brought Strong Wind back to the stable, there were two servants anxiously waiting. They stared but knew, without asking, that I would say nothing, because I never did. Still, perhaps every instance of silence has its own reasons. 

           The next morning it was announced that the high lord, the Emperor’s maternal grandfather had died peacefully in his sleep. In the period of mourning that followed, the inner circle remained out of sight.  

           None of the servants referred to him as the old man after that: the name died with him. And nothing of what he had said as we walked together in circles, I confess, made any sense to me. Naturally the horse understood it better.

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_{(Flash Fiction from The Hemlock’s Issue 6, Winter 2024)}

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