Neville

What had your life become? England in the seventeenth century was a country that wore a crown of gold over a body full of rot. The nobles dined beneath chandeliers while children starved in alleys. Streets in the cities overflowed with mud, waste, and sickness. The smell of sewage mixed with smoke and stale beer, and every winter carried away hundreds who had simply been too poor, too weak, or too unlucky to survive it. Disease moved faster than rumor. Men died in taverns, women in childbirth, infants before they had learned to speak. Even those wrapped in silk knew no true comfort. There was no clean running water, no understanding of medicine, no certainty that tomorrow would come kinder than today. Life was short, harsh, and ruled by birth. England was built on order—or so they claimed. At the very top stood the king, chosen by God if one believed the priests. Beneath him came nobles with old names and older greed, then gentry, merchants, landowners, craftsmen, laborers, beggars, and those considered beneath even pity. Every person was assigned a place, and stepping beyond it was treated like a sin. The poor were meant to remain poor. The rich were meant to remain powerful. And those born unwanted were expected to disappear quietly. You were not allowed even that much grace. You were what they called a Gypsy. The word itself was born from ignorance, a corruption of Egyptian, because Englishmen once believed your people had come from Egypt. They had not. Your blood traced much farther back, through generations of movement and exile, through roads and firesides, through songs passed from parent to child. But truth had never mattered much to those in power. Truth rarely survived long where prejudice was useful. By blood, you were Romani. By law, that could be enough to destroy you. What mattered was that your kind were distrusted. Feared. Blamed. By law, simply existing as Romani blood could be enough to condemn a person. Romani people were accused of theft when nothing was stolen, blamed for unrest they never caused, and hunted for simply moving too freely in a world obsessed with chains Families were broken apart. Men were jailed or hanged. Women disappeared into servitude. Children were left to fend for themselves. Some were sold into forced labor and shipped across seas to colonies as if they were livestock. Those who remained learned how to survive on the edges of society. Horse trading. Metalwork. Basket weaving. Fortune telling. Seasonal labor. Music. Performance, making people laugh long enough to forget they hated you. Charm became currency. And no one spent it better than you. You had inherited quick hands, quicker wit, and the kind of presence that made people look twice even when they meant not to. But unlike many before you, you had chosen stillness over roads. You had the smile of a performer and the instincts of a hunted animal. But unlike many before you, you had tried to live quietly. You owned a bakery. A modest little place tucked into the heart of the village, inherited from the woman who raised you after the death of your family, after the world had taken everything else. Warm ovens, wooden shelves, sugared pastries, fresh loaves cooling by the window. The smell of butter and yeast drifting onto the street each morning was enough to lure farmers, widows, merchants, even the occasional noble servant sent to fetch better food than their masters deserved. Your bakery was beloved. Children pressed coins into your palm for honey buns, some came in groups and begged for sugared pastries. Housewives lingered too long at the counter just to hear you tease them. Widows praised your pies while pretending not to stare too long at the handsome young man behind the counter. Men laughed too loudly at your jokes. Travelers remembered your name.. And so did a prince. Prince Neville, heir to England’s throne, had discovered your bakery by accident during one of his escorted rides through the village. Pale, polished, and draped in wealth, he should have looked down on the place. Instead, he stared at your pastries like a starving man. Soon enough he returned. Then again. Then again. At first under escort. Later with fewer guards. And sometimes he came without an entourage when he could, cloaked simply, claiming he wanted fresh bread. Yet he always lingered too long. Asked unnecessary questions. Watched your hands knead dough as if it were some holy art. Refused palace pastries in favor of your rough village tarts. He preferred your bread to palace feasts. He preferred your laughter to court musicians. He preferred watching you juggle apples for children outside the shop and then "magically" spawn candies from being their ears, play instruments in taverns to other poorer ranks that enjoyed the simple things life had to offer, or make coins disappear from noblemen’s pockets only to return them to some noblewomen with a dramatic bow while the applauded. Sometimes you had seen him in taverns too, hidden in corners while you performed. He laughed hardest at your jokes, applauded loudest at your songs, and blushed whenever you bowed directly to him. You were everything the palace was not. Alive. For a few years, life almost resembled peace. Then England remembered itself. It happened quickly. Such things always did. A nobleman’s wife lost jewelry and accused a servant. A servant blamed a traveler. A traveler mentioned seeing “Gypsies” near the market road. By the end of the week, guards were marching through town searching wagons and homes alike. You were seized at your own counter, wrists bound in front of fresh bread. You laughed when they accused you. Not because it was funny. Because rage had nowhere else to go. They dragged you through the streets as villagers watched from windows. Some pitied you. Some looked relieved it was you instead of them. No one intervened. And then you were thrown before the king. The royal court glittered with silk, jewels, polished marble, and cruelty. Lords whispered behind gloved hands. Ladies hid their fascination behind fans. You stood in chains on the floor below them all, flour still clinging faintly to your sleeves. The charges were vague. The verdict was not. Your blood made you suspect. Your tongue made you insolent. Your existence made you inconvenient. Unlawful heritage. Suspicious conduct. Disturbing public order. Deception of decent people. In truth, they needed no reason beyond what you were. The king ordered you hanged with the remaining prisoners at dawn. You did not beg. You knelt because soldiers forced you to, but your spine stayed straight and your chin remained lifted. If they meant to kill you, they would do it while you looked them in the eye. That was when another voice cut through the chamber. “Father, no.” The prince had risen. The room stilled. Neville, heir to the throne, stood with one trembling hand clenched at his side. He was dressed in velvet and silver, pale as candlelight, beautiful in the soft way expensive things often were. But his eyes—those clear, wounded eyes—were fixed entirely on you. He argued that you had committed no true crime. That you worked honestly. That your bakery fed half the village. That once, traveling Romani performers had entertained noble houses and been paid gladly for their gifts. That mercy was not weakness. The king dismissed him. Neville did not sit. The queen, weary-eyed and sharper than she appeared, spoke next. Quietly. Enough to shift the room. The king’s patience wore thin. But in the end, he relented. The king sighed as if inconvenienced. “Very well,” he said. “No hanging.” You would not die. Instead, you would serve. When summoned, you would entertain royal guests—music, foolery when nobles demanded laughter, stories, entertainment at feasts, whatever amused them. On less festive days, you would work wherever ordered: stable work when servants were short-handed. Grooming horses. Shoveling filth. Any degrading task they pleased, all dressed as royal mercy. If the crown spared your neck, it would use your hands. It was humiliation wrapped as mercy. You smiled at the king when it was announced. It unsettled him more than pleading would have. Because alive men can still scheme. And dead men cannot bake. So life became strange. Some weeks you were left alone entirely. Other weeks you found yourself in palace halls playing lute while drunken lords demanded bawdy songs,danced mockingly enough to amuse queensmaids. Sometimes you juggled fruit for ladies who laughed too loudly. Sometimes you mucked horse stalls while stable boys mocked your heritage. And sometimes, when no one watched too closely, Prince Neville visited you once you visited the palace. Sometimes he slipped you coins. You gave them back. Sometimes he tried to apologize. You laughed in his face. Yet he kept returning. You teased him mercilessly. He kept coming back. And then it started, at first it was polite questions. Was the work too hard? Did you need anything? Was the bakery still open? Then it became conversations stolen in corridors, in gardens, beside kitchen doors. Neville confessed he hated court dinners, loved common music, envied anyone who could walk through a city unnoticed. Still, you never trusted it. Nobles were born wanting things they did not understand.

Then one morning the prince vanished. The kingdom erupted. Some said he’d been kidnapped. Others whispered murder. Servants swore he’d gone mad. Riders were sent across counties. Posters nailed to tavern walls promised rewards. You found the whole affair mildly entertaining. You cared only enough to lock your till and keep baking. Royal disasters did not pay for flour. Until dusk, your bakery door burst open. A cloaked figure stumbled inside, breathing hard. Hood low, mud on expensive boots, gloved hands shaking. He dropped a leather pouch onto the counter. Gold spilled from the loosened tie. You stared. The hood fell back. Prince Neville looked pale, frantic, and more human than you had ever seen him. “Please,” he said. “Take me away. I’ll do anything.” Before you could answer, pounding sounded outside. Without dignity, the prince vaulted over your counter and crouched behind it at your feet, clutching the hem of your coat. You looked down. “How royal,” you murmured while grabbing the bag of gold, hiding it behindthe counter. Guards stormed in moments later. They demanded to know if you had seen the prince. You widened your eyes, offended. Asked if their royal brat often hid among your flour sacks. Suggested perhaps they check brothels if they wanted missing nobility. They nearly arrested you out of habit. That tongue, that Gypsy tongue, you smiled innocently at them while they glared. After several tense moments, they left to harass someone else. Silence filled the bakery. The moment the street quieted, Neville slowly rose from behind the counter, cheeks burning, sweat dripping down his face. You crossed your arms. “You bowing for something? A dance?” He straightened. “I was...strategizing.” “You were trembling.” “I was crouching.” You laughed right at his face. It was the first honest laughter he had heard in weeks. You should have thrown him out. Instead, you sighed and pointed toward the back room. You let him stay in the small room behind the bakery—the one you used during busy seasons when sleep was more convenient than going home. It held a narrow bed, a small bathroom, a fireplace to warm the place, and little else. To Neville, it was paradise. No servants entered without knocking. No one watched him eat. No tutors corrected how he sat. No father summoned him like property. He stayed one night. Then two. Then four. He should have hated everything about it. The cramped walls. The smell of yeast. The rough blankets. The morning noise of customers demanding rolls before sunrise. Instead, he seemed transformed. He laughed more in those four days than you had seen in four years. He ate warm bread with his hands. Helped sweep floors badly. Fell asleep to the sound of rain on the roof instead of servants whispering outside his chamber. He was freer in your back room than in the palace built for him. You told yourself you were repaying a debt. He had saved your life. You were merely returning the favor. So when you finally said he must leave, you expected gratitude. Instead, Neville froze as though struck. “You’re sending me away?” You had palace duties soon. Suppliers to meet. Customers to serve. Hiding royalty was poor for business. “I’m saying I cannot hide a prince forever,” you replied. “I have work. And enough trouble already.” You escorted him outside the next morning, promising some sympathetic widow or farmer would shelter him for enough coin. He followed you. Through the market. To the mill. Back to the bakery. Silent. Persistent. Like a lost dog too proud to admit it was lost. By nightfall you let him back inside with a groan as he stood helplessly outside the backdoor to the room. God, nobles were exhausting. Then, at night, while you were resting on the couch, laying on it while playing mindlessly on a mandolin, eyes half open, gazing at the ceiling, he suddenly walked out the room you spared him... and then almost awkwardly, he proposed terms. He would earn his stay. He would work for lodging. Cleaning. Serving customers. Helping bake. You looked him over slowly with half-lidded eyes as if the offer meant little to no value to you.. Then you stopped olaying and lazily held out your hand. He frowned. “What?” “Payment.” “I said I would work.” “And I say you can work after payment.” With offended dignity, he removed a jeweled ring and a emerald brooch he always wore and dropped it into your palm. You bit back a grin. By week’s end you possessed enough royal accessories to fund a second bakery. By month’s end, you possessed something far more dangerous. The prince had become part of your life. He stood beside you at dawn kneading dough while your hands covered his, guiding his movements. He pouted when village girls flirted with you. He glared at men who touched your shoulder too familiarly. He listened whenever you played music alone after closing, sitting nearby in reverent silence. At night, in the cramped room behind the bakery, the air between you changed. Long glances. Brushed hands. Shared breaths. The prince who once stood above you in court now looked up at you like devotion itself. And you—who had survived kings, roads, hunger, chains, and loneliness—found yourself most endangered by a soft-eyed runaway in your spare room. Because kingdoms could be escaped. But love? Love was far harder to outrun. But in a bakery warm with bread, where a hunted man and a runaway prince slowly learned that freedom might look a lot like each other.