"You?" asked Doyle quietly.
Sparks shook his head. "A sister. It even has a name. Madelaine Rose. The Sun King is wise enough to recognize that when an enemy holds a superior position, his best course is to withdraw and marshal his forces to fight another day. He smiles and offers no protest to this hideous affront, understanding only too well the danger he is facing. He conceals his disgust that such a puny, feckless creature could wield enough influence to threaten the life of his glorious reign. How could this vile incubus have so unequivocally mesmerized the woman, who had never demonstrated anything but the greatest good sense to worship him without end or reservation? The boy leaves that room with his map of the world cracked to its foundation. He lets no one see the slightest hint of his humiliation. His instinct for survival tells him the safest strategy against this unprecedented challenge to his absolute rule lies in letting his subjects continue to believe that nothing in the kingdom, or within their king, has changed. He waits a week, two weeks, a month, to see if his mother's deranged infatuation with the pretender will break like a fever. He examines his adversary dispassionately, satisfying his curiosity as to its form and evident weaknesses, giving his mother to believe that he finds the repellent, sluglike bundle as irresistible as she does. He endures the collective enslavement of his subjects to the monster's hypnotic allure—these stupid women want nothing more than to prattle on about it incessantly with him! He lets them chatter, watches his rival bask in their affections, and all the while formulates his revenge. He insinuates himself into his mother's confidence, encouraging her to talk with him about the thing, hoping to find the key to its terrible appeal. He familiarizes himself with the demon's routine—-sleeping, waking, crying, eating, shitting—all it seems capable of doing, what a dim mystery the source of its magnetism remains. The contempt that knowledge brings serves only to multiply his determination to take action: decisive, swift, and merciless.
"Not long after, late one warm summer night when the house is at rest, he creeps silently into his mother's chambers. She is in bed, sound asleep. The monster lies in a cradle, on its back, awake, smiling a toothless grin, cooing, happily kicking its arms and legs about, as if an arrogant belief in its own invulnerability renders it immune to the treachery the Sun King has come to realize lurks behind every friendly face. Illuminated in a shaft of moonlight, the thing's eyes catch his as he peers down at it, and in a moment his steely
determination to act stands on a precipice—he's flooded with shame and remorse at his hatred of the little creature, he wants to take and hold the baby in his arms, feel its happiness enveloping him in a warm, beneficent, healing sphere of love and forgiveness. Feeling himself pulled inexorably into the monster's orbit where he's seen so many fall before him, at the last possible instant he tears his eyes away. Horrified to realize how close the thing has come to ensnaring him. For the first time fully comprehending the danger this evil genius presents."
"No ..." said Doyle involuntarily.
"He picks up a small satin pillow, and he puts it over the thing's face, and he holds it there hard until the creature stops kicking its arms and legs and lies still. It never makes a sound, but as it dies, the mother awakes with a scream! How pernicious was its hold on her! It's had communion with the woman even as life took leave of its tiny body. The Sun King runs from the room:—his mother has seen him, he is sure she has seen him leaning over the cradle—but when she moves to its bed and finds the inert remains of his midnight work, her mind comes undone. Such a heart-stopping wail shakes the very walls of the house that if allowed to rise unimpeded into the night might shatter the gates of heaven. As the boy lies quaking in his bed, bis mother's cry drives a spike deep into the frozen reaches of his heart. It is a sound he will call upon the memory of for many years to come, and it gives him more pleasure than a thousand kisses.
"His mother collapses. The house is within minutes of her discovery awash in a sea of grief. To the king's surprise, he is smothered by the sympathetic comforts of his bereaved subjects, imagining, these stupid peasants, that he must be every bit as stricken as they. The bewilderment he offers in response tends only to confirm that conviction, and they clasp him ever closer to their heaving bosoms. His mother disappears again into guarded seclusion. This time the women are only too eager to bring him constant reports of her condition; she's had a setback today, the night did not go well, she's resting comfortably, she took no food again this morning. He rejoices at the fervor with which the woman appears to embrace her just punishment for his betrayal. A week passes, and his father returns from his distant overseas post; he had never even seen the usurper. His eyes are clouded with sympathy as he greets the young king, but after spending an hour behind the closed door of mother's chamber he goes directly to his son and takes him alone into his room. He doesn't speak. He holds the boy's chin in his hand and gazes at him for the longest time. It is suspicion with which the man searches the young king's eyes—so she did see him in the chamber, this look tells him, but there must be some uncertainty—suspicion, not naked accusation. The king knows well enough how to conceal the entrance to the place he keeps his secret. He shows his father nothing: no remorse, weakness, or human feeling. Blank opacity, open and un-reachable, the boy returns the look and sees something replace suspicion in his father's eyes. Fear. The father knows. And the boy knows his father is powerless against him. The man withdraws from the room. The king knows the father will never challenge his authority again.
"They bury the thing in a lavender box, adorned with garlands of spring flowers. The boy stands quietly, watching his subjects weep with abandon, allowing them to lay their hands on his head as they pass by the grave, atonement for their transgression, paying obeisance to their one, true master. After the funeral, when his mother reappears and they meet, formally, in a public room, he sees something has irreversibly changed between them. She never again looks upon him with the loving gaze that had been her custom before the pretender came. She hardly ever dares to meet his eyes at all. He is no longer allowed entrance to her private chamber. Over the following days, he overhears many tearful, whispered conversations between mother and father, brought quickly to an end when his presence is detected, but he's confident no overt action will be taken against him. His father leaves to resume his duties overseas in Egypt. The boy spends more and more time in contented isolation, pursuing his studies, feeling his powers grow, in solitary walks of peaceful contemplation. Over time, the shroud of silence spreads from his mother to overtake all the subjects of his kingdom. There are no more pretenses of affection toward him. The currencies of exchanges with his inferiors are reduced to their basest coin: power and domination. His storehouse is filled to bursting with both commodities. He has retaken his throne."
"Good Lord ..." said Doyle softly, wiping a tear from his eye. "Good Lord, Jack ..."
Sparks seemed singularly unmoved by the story. He calmly took a drink and then continued: a cold, dispassionate recitation. "The next summer, the woman discovers she is once again with child. The news is kept from the boy, but as a precaution Alexander is packed up and sent away to boarding school the moment her condition becomes visibly self-evident, months before the child is expected. This proves no hardship to Alexander. He is more than ready to expand his sphere of influence beyond the confines of the garden walls. Fresh meat, he says, looking about hungrily at the new world that greets him; populated not just with adults, who he can already manage easily enough, but boys his own age, whole battalions of them, as pliant and malleable to his tools as uncut stone. And they are, none of them, parents or headmasters alike, witting enough to realize they have crowned the fox and set him up a palace in the henhouse. The next spring, hidden from his view and far from the reach of Alexander's grasp, a second son is born."