Significance is something that soars above judgments scribbled down by selfish mortals. A shining songbird wings outstretched and serene. It is these moments of significance that make us more than men. I was always true to myself and to your future. At times, a future is only sated by the sword. We were soldiers of a kind, standing by the principles of our fathers. Networks, others selected for the moment, such ones singularly lockstep in purpose, summoned onward. We sowed the seeds for such a life as we envisioned; that same one you now enjoy. Peace, splendor. A sigh of something new. Yet here arrives, like a streaming mote of sunlight, the time I had foresaw. To call it the final sacrifice would be succinct. I am sorry.
Still I shall endeavour to explain to you some small part of my story. Some of this you have learned in school, a version of it so to speak. Lies, all lies. In sixteen-sixty-six, your second year spinning along stomping in the earth’s soft mud, silently (as these things always happen silently), the personal baker of Charles the Second, who supplied the spoiled monarch with sundry sweets, set his kitchen and subsequently most of London, ablaze. Invisible hands had selected him. It was a September steeped in ceaseless sorrow. A haze gray Sunday morning. I had kissed you goodbye and swelled with fervor at the sight of you. Churchgoers sang and selected simple outfits with which to pay honors to God.
Panicking, highborns and peasants alike shook to their sinew. Rumour spread as quickly as the flames. “It’s the Dutch,” a sad man said. Said another: “It’s the French, those homeless French! I saw seven Frenchmen just yesterday swaying like drunkards shaking sticks at the sky.” Ordinary things, these suspicions that pull at the harness of our minds. And most importantly, in the way they sharply tug the reins, these thoughts are sure distractions. Distractions that allowed Sir Thomas, our esteemed Lord Mayor, to discretely stunt the progress of the firefighters. Special care was required yet all was softly surrendered to the inferno. No firebreaks were made to slow the blazing path, and in the reserves a sudden lack of water supply. Plans, these macabre schemes hiding just beyond our visions, are seldom as selfless as ours, yet sadly they must always necessitate a sweeping collateral.
When I saw the fire stretching past the ruins of the Roman’s wall, reaching out to St. Paul’s Cathedral, subsuming it, nearly lapping at the tyrant’s own steps, I smiled. That was my first instinct. I stole away down windswept alley after alley, street by street. “Bless this wind,” I thought to myself. As the winds once carried Scef, a righteous king (an idea still scaly and cold to me I must admit, all but smote from our minds then), in his meager skiff to shore, siring us all, so did this wind shuffle me along twisting sideways cobblestones. So too did it solidify the fires with red-orange succor.
My thoughts raced faster than my feet. They were of you. I had underestimated my speed, and suddenly I was standing straight, shoulders slanted back, gazing upon the designated entrance to this hallowed place. My heart sank. Is it fair to say I faltered even if mere seconds passed? Questions that have since been impossible to escape. I made short work of the stairs, bounding them in stride. There were no guards in sight save for the pair outside his chambers. When they saw me they solemnly nodded and sauntered away. Silver and shillings enough and suddenly a guard is not a guard, he is instead a person, as fallible as the rest, as beholden to himself and to his progeny as any. Inside the room was an outside view of this pretender’s heart. Gauche, slave to sinful arrogance. Stunted; a boy. He slept soundly. He slept as flames surrounded him. His famous penchant for sleeping in. I was struck. Who was this sleeping boy that held our fates? Was it this one that decided Sarah’s life must end? Heresy, it was said. Do not sustain the idea for a millisecond. Sarah was near saintly, as anyone who knew her would attest. Small minds scared of strength. She was true to the last, your mother. Seeing him, I must admit I lost composure. To take lives. To sleep. To sleep, this cretin. To sleep and sweet dream peacefully. Slumbering, secure. Why should it be his? Why should all others live in fear to simply speak? Billows of smoke just without his windows painted the skyline smoldering grey. The spirits, victims of his twisted “justice,” spied down sullenly upon me from the corners and cobwebs.
Slowly, I unsheathed the saber. My hands death steady. Its tip suspended over his squared chest. A catch of saliva stuck in my throat. Cold sweat single file swam its way down my face, pooling around my lips. I had used three coats of nightshade. It was swift, no struggle. Precisely striking where I had spent countless hours on the dummies, one great slamming down was all it took. He could not summon the spine to curse me, to gasp, yet his eyes shot open, seeing me, seeing his security dissolve like sugar in tears. Screams from his subjects were the last sounds to grace His Majesty’s ears. I saw his soul sizzling on its way. It was blood red, the shades above me arms opened, embracing it. A magnificent scene, really, so impossible to forget.
All this, for you. For your future. For, despite its slumps and valleys, our home. You must never experience how shallow life was then. How base he had made us all in such short time. Wars, scars, domestic strife. So, so many gone forever. Our Sarah gone forever, and I do hope by this fell deed that surely she had seen, that she had felt relief wash across her ghostly, sunken chest.
Why then, son, should I saddle you with such a secret? Because you deserve to know it as it was. That your parents were always sincere. Never shrunk from our fates. These standards you will surely signify, passed from us to you. And your countrymen, too, standing bestride history, shouting against a mad king’s terrors: “This now stops!”
Yet this sordid business has a price. Our cause now needs a graceless fall, for all of us. I will be slandered in the papers. Regicide, and all shall despise me. Promise you will understand my actions when you read these words. You will grow to see the sun, spared a despot king’s shadow. For this proposition I would send myself headlong into my same decision, every time. Simon, promise me that you will understand that this was the greatest show of love that I could ever muster. Promise me. Stand by your grandparents. Please forgive me.
Yours sorrowfully and stalwart,
Your Father
Sir Raleigh Sincaid
-- Bio? Really? What can one say? What is a bio? A bio is an arrogant thing, a sore on the ass of a piece. Death to bios. @JohnBiron90196 on Twitter.