Ages of Gold

“Mother, I implore you, listen to me,” Nathaniel holds his hands out in earnest supplication towards the woman who birthed him, sat primly on her favored chair in the drawing room. “We have an opportunity now like never before – nay, a duty, to pursue peace with the common people. With the tyrant gone, we can –”

“Speak not ill of your King, Nathaniel,” she interjects harshly. She gestures gracefully with one arm to draw his attention to the room, large and ornate, coloured the deep red of rubies on every wall. Gold nuggets are interspersed among the corners, quietly bragging of the wealth of the house. Grandiose paintings cover every available surface, depicting the previous monarch and the newly-crowned king in various parts of the country, hunting or in meetings, as is the usual. “It is through his grace and generosity that we have a standing such as ours. Do not dishonour yourself.”

“Dishonour?” Nathaniel refrains from scoffing, but only just. “Mother, the entire reign of the previous king was a travesty, do you honestly believe he would raise his offspring any different?”

“Have you no shame?” her shrieking pierces through the walls and ears alike.

“Mary, darling, what is it?” a deep baritone voice inquires as they step into the room. “You haven’t sounded so distraught since the picnic last year.”

“Edward, our son insists on speaking ill not only of the dead, but of our King!” Mary sobs into her hands until her husband hands her a delicate cream handkerchief.

“Come now, my dear, dry your tears,” he soothes. “We’ll get to the bottom of this, worry not.” The large Englishman turns to his son, stern eyes narrowed upon his smaller frame.

“Father,” Nathaniel starts.

“Silence, boy,” his father snarls. “You dare treat your own mother this way, in her own home? What have we done, for you to treat us this way?”

“Father, I have done no ill towards Mother, nor you,” Nathaniel tries again. “I have merely spoken upon the current politics, and how I believe we can best help during these tumultuous times.”

“Oh?” Edward scoffs contemptuously. “And what, pray tell, is the advice of one such as yourself? One whom has barely reached legal age, and has no experience nor political backing? What can you say that can remedy our current political climate?”

“Father, I have done much reading, and –”

“That hogwash from overseas?” Edward interrupts. “I have told you time and again, do not concern yourself with the politics of inferior lands, they can give us naught but blasphemy and discord. Such things would tear our land apart at the seams!”

“Seams which are already torn!” Nathaniel bursts, raising his own voice. “The people are suffering, Father, and have been for years! Look beyond the courtyards and see the people upon who this country rests upon! They have no food, no money, they cannot afford even basic necessities. Yet the oh-so-noble people here continue to host lavish parties and throw food and money away as if it means nothing! It would not mean nothing to Stephan and his family –”

“Stephan!” Edward bellows. The china shakes in its cabinet at the volume. “Stephan! I ought have known that waif was still putting this nonsense in your head –”

“He is not a waif! He is a young man trying –”

“Do not interrupt your father, you incorrigible –”

“– to survive! He’s working as hard as he can, but it’s not enou–”

“Enough!” The silence is so sudden, it presses upon their ears.

“Enough of this disrespect,” Edward growls. His eyes narrow menacingly, his face turns red and veins pulse in his neck. “Speak clearly and honestly, Nathaniel. Are you in allegiance of this country’s king, or not?”

“The king is gone, Father,” Nathaniel sighs despondently. His mother gasps. He runs a trembling hand through his brown hair. “The king is gone and will remain in exile for the remainder of his life. It is the people who will decide what comes next. The people rule now.”

“Get out,” Edward states, voice clear and commanding as the Lord of the Stansfield House. Mary rises to stand regally beside him, face set in a stern frown and showing her clear support of her husband. “Get out, until you can respect this house, and respect your King.”

“Father –”

“You are no son of mine. Until such a day you come to your senses, you are no longer associated with the Noble House of Stansfield.”

“Pack your bags, Nathaniel,” Mary intones grimly. “You may take two. Any more, and we will call the guardsmen.” An elderly maid gently but firmly ushers the young man out and guides him to his room, where she stands at the door.

Nathaniel looks about the room in shock. He and his parents have argued before, many times, but they have never so much as mentioned disownment. A quiet knock at the door helps him out of his racing thoughts and he sends a grateful nod to the maid.

Numbly, he grabs the two small travel bags he keeps in the base of his wardrobe. He sets them on his comforter and ponders what he would need.

Disownment would bar him from other noble houses, regardless of personal feelings. The few acquaintances he had in the higher political circles would not help him as their relationship is not a close one. That makes it simple to disregard all his flashy and gaudy clothes. He pulls the three simplest clothes he owns, one of which is a formal suit, the other two a simple trouser and jacket pair. He grabs four plain white undershirts as well.

Clothes decided, he turns to his dressing table. Nathaniel ponders his vanities and selects his most basic of grooming supplies: a small straight razor and comb and a small vial of hair powder. He tucks those amongst his clothes. Then he turns to the locked drawer of his dressing table and takes the key from around his neck. From the drawer he pulls a simple wooden box, approximately thirty centimeters in length and seven centimeters in width, and tips it open.

A small, rather ornate flintlock pistol lays within a velvet lining. It was gifted to him on his twenty-first birthday by the Lord of the House of Abyrford, his uncle. His mother was horrified but could not decline the gift from a Lord to an Heir. His uncle has always been of an odd sort, eccentric to most of the nobles, but none could deny the weight of his House within the social and political circles. Personally, Nathaniel was of the opinion that such a gift was the most practical and thus appreciated it greatly. It certainly appealed to his sensibilities better than the horridly uncomfortable formal wear his cousins sent.

He placed both box and weapon within his bag and then moved to his shelves. He chose three select books, one that could help him in his quest for a better way to govern the people, one that emphasizes the formations of republics and democracies around the world – things that are far different from the monarchy they have suffered for so long – and ones that debate the merits of equal wealth and other such economic issues. Books his father has tried to bar him from, with little success. Next on the shelf is his personal jewelry box.

Nathaniel carefully lowers the heavy box onto the dressing table. For the first time since entering his room, Nathaniel’s heart drops uncomfortably to his feet. Within the box is not the typical jewels of the nobleman, though there is much of that, but there are special trinkets that he has kept from his youth. Pseudo gems, old metal, and dried flowers are scattered amongst precious stones and gold and silver jewelry, trinkets found and kept during adventures beyond the courtyards when his parents weren’t looking.

He tenderly holds the sparkling rock from one of his first jaunts into the realm of the poor folk many years ago. It is not precious by a Noble’s standards, but it is so very precious to him. It is a token of the adventure he, Stephan, and Isabella had among the forges and stables in the farmer’s land. They had frolicked for hours within the crops, hiding from the workers as they played. He had several such trinkets, from their time playing in the farmer’s lands before they were caught and forced away, then from their excursions into the smithies and forges. Every adventure earned a keepsake they found along the way, stones and flowers and nails were each treated with the care such memories deserved.

There were also trinkets from the times in the villages. When they were older, they would notice ailments of the people, and would assist where they could, and sometimes where they couldn’t. There was a cracked bit of wood from the wheel they had fixed on Richard’s wagon, and the broken handle from the trowel they used to fix the wall of Margaret’s property, Stephan’s elderly neighbor.

Such items, though garbage to most, mark times more important than any social gathering, political party, or marriage interviews his parents and other nobles have forced him to attend.

Nathaniel looks about his room and compares the feeling of these trinkets, these memories among rubbish and refuse to the stuffy and pompous expectations of his home and the status of nobility. He considers how vastly different the experiences among the elite and the poor are, and how he is treated by the people in each world.

While he wants for nothing and has all the luxuries of life in one, he is destitute and miserable. While he feels a swelling in his heart and contentment in his soul among the poor, he has seen the struggle, the odd hunger in the eyes of his friends that he has never seen in higher circles, never experienced himself. His parents have given him everything he could ever want, yet he feels so hollow in this palace of greed and wealth.

Understanding of such that has never occurred to him before lightens every corner of his mind, and Nathaniel is filled with the sudden, yet familiar desire to get out.

Not only for the afternoon, not only while his mother entertains her gossip girls for tea, not only for when he is listless and needs to find something real, but now. This instant, and forever. Gone from the overbearing and egotistical expectations of the nobles, of his status, of his “birthright, to be above even nobles as the greatest benefactors of the King.” Gone from it all!

Nathaniel abruptly snatches the most meaningful of trinkets – the twisted nail from the smithy and sparkling rock from the lake – and places them in his bag. A brief thought has him grabbing his signet ring – the family crest, as one of the highest-ranking nobles has a great weight on the right documents – and stuffing it in one of his pockets. His coin purse goes in next, as well as a few precious gems, hidden among the clothes and pockets. Two of his smaller blankets fill the last of the space within his bags, and he exits the room.

“I am ready, Lady Agatha,” Nathaniel says politely to the maid. She gives him a kind smile, eyes still directed to the polished floors as is required, and walks him silently to the door. They do not pass anyone else, no servants or butlers or nobles, not even his parents. It is just him and the maid who has been by his side since his birth at the front door of the Stansfield Mansion.

“I wish you luck, Heir Stansfield,” she murmurs under her breath.

“I am no longer a Stansfield, Lady Agatha,” he mutters back. “You heard my father.”

“Yet he is still your father, and I am still no Lady,” she gives the young man a sly grin and wink. Nathaniel grins back.

“Perhaps to these fools, but I would have to be blind to see you as anything less.” They share a quiet laugh at their secret joke, then fall into a comfortable silence. Nathaniel takes in a deep breath and takes his first steps out of his parent’s home, and their shadows.

“Be the change you want to see, Heir Nathaniel,” the elderly maid says firmly, and the doors echo closed behind him. Regardless, he continues on his way without a look back, through the courtyards and onto the farmlands. He keeps walking, even past the poor homes until he reaches the lake shore. He stares out onto the horizon where the lake eventually meets the great sea.

He thinks on his books, and on this country. He thinks of the exiled king and the terrible things he and his predecessors have done to this land. He thinks of the nobles and how they sit content to wait for the king to return or a new one to rise. He thinks of the change he wants for the people, the ones without the luxuries, without the money, without the options and opportunities that the wealthy are granted.

He thinks, and slowly, he decides.

2 years later

“Are you ready, Nate?” Stephan, now 16 years old, stands stalwartly beside his long-time friend. The wind plays in their hair and along the sails, adding the now familiar sound of moving canvas to the cry of the gulls and rolling waves. Salt from the sea sprays their faces as the bow of their ship rises and falls with the gushing waters. Nathaniel gazes across the waters to the shore coming into view before them and takes a deep breath.

“Remind me again, Stephan,” he implores softly, sadly, so the crew behind them can’t hear.

“For the people, Nate,” the young man responds, just as sad. “For me; for you; for my mom; for Johnson’s family, and Eddy’s and Elizabeth’s and all the others. For Isabella.”

“For Isabella,” Nathaniel echoes, rage and sorrow at war within his heart. Their first mate Henry walks up to them.

“What are your orders, Captain Epoch?” he asks gruffly. Nathaniel squares his shoulders and turns to face his crew, men and women of all ages picked up from the poor villages all across the coast. People who were on their last morsels of food, who were on their last legs of life. People he picked up and invited into his crew to encourage the reform of society.

They look up at him with faces grim and jaws set, determined and ready for his orders. Hands grip whatever weapons they have on hand, stolen or brought along when they were picked up; pitchforks, flintlocks, and pikes are most common. He sees their gaunt faces, malnourished and dirty still, even with months of regular meals. Nathaniel lifts his chin and nods at them all.

“Load the cannons.”