Chapter 98: Return to homeland
The Scottish ship that was taking Prince Henry to his homeland had long since passed the maritime territories of the Gulf of the Channel belonging to France.
Another time luck had been on his side, since once again none of the English ships had dared to attack them.
He had to dock at the port of Dunkirk, on the narrow borders with the kingdom of Belgium, which still had not claimed its independence from France.
Dunkirk was one of the ports that led to the deepest and most ancient history of France.
It was like London for the British or Edinburgh for the Scots, Cardiff for the Welsh and Dublin for the Irish.
It was like for the Isle of Man and its Kilkenny, for Orkney its Kirkwall, although not being on par with Paris, Dunkirk was for France the centre of the history and art of the whole nation.
Although that place, due to its strategic position with the English Channel and its British neighbors, had been disputed for years between the Dutch, English, Spanish and French, it had become a neutral region in 1713, thanks to the Treaty of Utrecht.
Henry was eight years old when the treaty was signed.
The prince thought back to that treaty, to those years following continuous conflicts between the English and the French, to the death of his mother.
He missed her immensely.
He had taken little from her, unfortunately, nothing more than the nose and the lips.
For everything else, the color of his eyes, the golden blond hair, he had inherited it from his father.
He wanted to look more like his mother than father, but his genetics could not be chosen and he was so lucky to have inherited his mind and intelligence from his mother, as well as sanity.
The sea, blue and bubbling again, hurled itself against the wood of his ship, ending up in small droplets on the pale and gaunt face of the prince.
For the journey he had put the white wig over his blond hair, he had dressed well again, composed, like a prince, that was too big an event, he was returning to his family, to Kara, to his son Philip.
His child would miss him so much, he felt it, he was only six years old, but he already understood many things.
Although Philip's guardians sometimes complained that the child did not seem to possess a strong ability in primary subjects such as mathematics or geography, Henry in his heart knew his son was very intelligent.
He had recently learned to read and although he still barely did it he loved to do it, he loved to invent stories, talk and converse, he was very open. Like any child of his age, Philip enjoyed playing with his pages, he had fun with little and with simple things and even if he was not the best in school, he was not stupid.
He was simply himself.
When Henry was a child, under his father's command, his tutors and instructors were much harder on him.
They had taught young Henry posture by forcing him to stand, walk and follow the line of the wall and when he did not do it well his instructors were allowed to beat him on the back with the cane, until the young man learned to walking composedly like a lord.
The prince was very good at mathematics, he had quickly become, because his indulgent professors demanding absolute precision were allowed to hit his knuckles with a wooden ruler.
Certainly his upbringing had been much less harsh than that of any commoner, where much greater penalties were imposed for much lesser mistakes.
But as far as the noble education of his younger half sister was concerned, he remembered it was not at all hard as his.
Their father had forced the daughter to be given far fewer lessons than him, and in fact due to her lack of logical intelligence, Isabelle was not good at accounting or literature.
Her studies were more focused on culture, composure, care for new born and also on certain courses on sex education.
Henry had always envied his younger half sister, because she was their father's favourite and because she had to lead a much simpler life than he had led.
Then Thomas was born, two years after Isabelle and immediately something unexpected happened in the story, that boy at the age of seven was hired as the king's cupbearer.
However, this was quite the opposite of the unexpected, since Thomas was the king's son and an illegitimate child and as such he could not fail to play an important role.
Henry had always known, of the true origin of the young Cross, but in all those years he had thought well not to tell Isabelle, thus saving his life longer.
Until the age of twelve, where Isabelle, having discovered the boy's true identity, had brutally thrown him out of the window of her study, from 20 meters high, Thomas was dead.
The prince saw that the harbour was getting closer and closer.
The people, there waiting for him, were no longer indefinite dots, but now every detail of their faces, eyes, clothes seemed to become increasingly clearer at the sight of man.
And clearer was the figure of Philip, who in a whirlwind of impatience could no longer wait to hug his father again.
Kara held their child's hand tightly, she loved him, she cared for him, more than she could ever be attached to any other person, because that was their son.
But unlike the little prince, the woman's face seemed much more reddened and full of anger than of impatient emotion.
He understood what his wife was feeling towards him at that moment, he perceived it, like a child disobeying his parents' orders, Henry at that moment was almost afraid to touch the ground, as, mostly waiting for a negative reaction and pure anger by Kara.
As the ship docked at the harbour in fact, the first to joyfully greet his father was, as expected the young Prince Philip, who immediately upon Henry's arrival run away from his mother to celebrate his father's return to homeland.
The young lord was jumping around him full of joy and happiness.
But on the other hand, Philip was only six years old and for him, still too young to understand what the real duties of a prince were, it seemed to him a miracle that his father had returned home after almost a week of absence.
The princes had the task and duty to always respect their father, bow to him and sometimes they did not address their father with the real name of "father" but more elegantly appealed to them true and properly "his majesty".
It was so strange to hear French again.
In those days he had only spoken English to the council.
Kara did not seem so enthusiastic about her husband's return, so much so that she, unlike her son, did not hesitate to leave a strong and powerful slap on his cheek, which left a red mark.
It was all so strange, feeling that emotion, anger, sadness and pain, all imprinted in such a simple gesture.
-What did you think you were doing Henry?! Run away or something? You risked your life! You are a fool!-.
Henry knew he did it for her but some things weren't so easy to explain.
The prince felt the arms of his wife tighten around him, felt her tears, fall and wet his precious jacket.
-Promise you will never do it again, promise you will never run away from me again...-.
But no matter how painful it might seem, the prince could not promise.
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