Afternoon Tea with the King of Hearts

Nissa Harlow | Issue 2.4

His wife was having tea with the king, and he was completely unaware.

To be clear: The king was unaware. The husband most certainly was not, and the knowledge caused him a great deal of consternation.

The king was young.

The king was handsome.

The king was also dead, and had been for three years, a point that most seemed content to overlook.

“But why,” the bemused husband had asked, “would you want to have tea with a corpse?”

His wife had looked at him as if a second head had sprouted from his shoulders. “It is a great honour to be invited. Perhaps I’ll be selected as one of his courtesans.”

He didn’t know if his wife was joking or not.

“He chooses a new one every month,” she continued.

“I wasn’t aware of your desire to become a courtesan.”

“It would be a great honour.”

“What need has a dead man for courtesans?”

“He’s the king,” she’d said simply, and had proceeded to finish stitching more lace to her best dress.

Only women were permitted into the tearoom, so all the husbands sat at home and scratched their heads, wondering how an inanimate body could possibly be a decent host. Mostly, though, they wondered if it was a bad sign that their wives preferred to spend time with a cadaver.

At first, the king’s body had held up remarkably well, even as it was placed in coaches and palanquins and moved from palace to palace. Within a few weeks, though, it had become clear that something needed to be done. Master embalmers were brought from across the realm to try to solve the problem of the rotting regent. It was a wizard’s apprentice, though, who had put an end to their woes. Nobody was quite sure what he had done, but the result was that the king’s body had stopped deteriorating. Even better, the decomposition began to reverse itself. Three years after the king’s untimely death, he looked fresh and dewy and ready to steal the heart of every lonely woman in the kingdom.

“Magic,” the husband grumped as he stomped about his empty home. “Bah!” He strode to the window, which gave him a good view of the palace. He couldn’t see his wife, or any of the other women who had gone to enjoy the royal afternoon tea with her. No matter. She would be back soon enough. He just had to put up with her chattering stories until she calmed down and life resumed its monotony.

But the sun set, and his wife did not return.

He made himself a meagre supper (not as fancy as a royal tea, but good enough). He used the latrine. He went to bed.

In the morning, he awoke to an empty space on the bed beside him. His wife had still not returned.

He got up. He made himself a meagre breakfast (not as fancy as a royal tea, but good enough). He used the latrine. He stood by the window and stared at the palace. And he waited.

The sun climbed high in the sky, and still his wife did not return. He went and fetched the invitation to tea. Though he couldn’t read very well, he could still make out most of the elaborate scribbles on the paper’s fine, creamy surface. He frowned as he read:

His Majesty requests the honour of your presence

for tomorrow’s afternoon tea.

There were no obvious clues that the husband could see. No reason why his wife would have gone to tea and not returned.

Unless. . . .

He returned to the window and stared toward the castle, thinking about the king’s miraculous return to vigour. It was unnatural. But then, magic often was.

Abandoning the window, he left his home and walked the streets until he came to the bakery. His wife had been so excited to receive the invitation to tea; it meant she could compete with the baker’s wife, who had received her invitation a month earlier.

“Good day,” the husband said. The baker looked up from his kneading with sad eyes.

“Good day.”

“May I speak with your wife?”

The baker shook his head and lowered his gaze as he tried not to cry into the dough. “She’s no longer with us.”

The husband stood in shock for a moment. Finally, he managed to loosen his tongue. “My condolences. Was she ill?”

“No.”

“Was it a sudden demise?”

“I hope so.”

The husband frowned. “I wanted to ask her about the invitation to tea.”

The baker slammed his fist into the dough, which released a little cloud of flour. He fixed a devastated glare on the man standing before him. “Then you must ask the king.”

“The king is dead.”

“So they say.”

“I don’t understand.”

The baker shook his head and looked down at the dough as though he were watching a pained creature die right in front of him. “My wife went for tea and never returned.”

The husband nodded. “As did mine. Perhaps they were chosen as courtesans.” Even as he said the words, though, he didn’t believe them. His wife was not exactly what one would have considered a handsome woman.

“Have you ever wondered,” the baker said, apparently choosing to ignore the uncomfortable subject of courtesans, “why our dead king seems a little less dead after every royal tea?”

The husband had not wondered. But he was wondering now.

“There are rumours,” the baker said.

“I don’t put much stock in rumours.” The husband stepped toward the baker’s table. “What kind of rumours?”

The baker placed a floury hand on his chest as if he were making an oath. “Some call him the King of Hearts.”

“Why?” the husband asked.

“Can’t you guess? With each tea, he grows more alive. After each tea, one of our women does not return.”

“They were chosen,” the husband said slowly. He was beginning to regret not trying harder to dissuade his wife from attending.

“Some say,” the baker continued, his voice almost a whisper, as if he were afraid someone else would hear him, “that only the king eats during the tea.”

“Eats?” The husband blinked. “How does one eat if they’re dead?”

“He’s fed, then.”

“Fed what?”

“A heart.”

The husband’s gaze drifted to the window display of cookies in their wicker basket. They came in many different shapes, though he was partial to the heart-shaped ones that sat prominently at the front.

“No,” the baker said. “You don’t understand.”

But the husband did.

—

Nissa Harlow lives in British Columbia, Canada where she dreams up strange stories and writes some of them down. She is the author of a number of novels and novellas, all embellished with a touch of the fantastic. You can find her online here.