Read The Future King: Logres Online
Authors: M. L. Mackworth-Praed
The Future King: Logres
THE FUTURE KING
LOGRES
Volume
one: book one
M. L. MACKWORTH-PRAED
Copyright ©
2015 M. L. Mackworth-Praed
M. L. Mackworth-Praed asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
This novel is entirely a work of
fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s
imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Any reference to historical persons in this novel is for the benefit of the narrative and is entirely for fictional purposes.
All rights reserved.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
For Kristof
The Future King: Logres
She always liked
to
watch the rain.
The pregnant clouds split open to douse the earth below, cleansing
the air with fresh scents that leaked through the gap in the passenger window.
She inhaled deeply and bit the skin away from her fingernails, the smell of
leather upholstery sickly as it mingled with the damp. Past the pane of glass,
distorted by racing droplets, figures hurried towards swinging doors. The
familiar clipping of boots caught her attention. Her mother strode towards
the car under the protection of a designer handbag.
‘This will be good for you, Gwen.’ A short hard slam of
the car door, and her mother was adjusting herself in the driver’s seat.
‘You’ll see. I’d have loved the chance to go to a new school. Make new friends,
meet new people…’ The keys were implanted into the ignition with surgical
precision. ‘Besides, it’s all set. Your father’s starting his new job today.
Here. I got you your timetable.’ The sheet of paper hovered between them until
her mother abandoned it in her lap. ‘Everything’s arranged. You just need to go
and find 44B. The receptionist said it was upstairs.’
Gwenhwyfar examined the alien sheet. The paper scraped over her
half-polished nail. ‘Where upstairs?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. You’ll just have to ask someone. I’m supposed to
be at the hairdresser’s at half past nine.’ Her mother smiled briskly as she
released the handbrake. ‘It’ll be fine, trust me. Just be yourself.’
With one kiss on the cheek Gwenhwyfar clambered out of the car into
the rain, tugging at her new skirt in a conscious effort to make it longer. Her
mother offered a wave with a flick of her short blonde hair as the four-by-four
glided over the soaked tarmac. Gwenhwyfar turned to the building with the
bitter rain pricking her skin. The windows gaped at her until she pushed her
way through the stiff double doors. A shrill bell sounded as the morning rush
greeted her.
‘No pushing in the corridors, Miss Knight!’ someone proclaimed, his
voice straining to be heard above the din. ‘Miss Morte! Miss Woods! I said no
pushing in the corridors!’
Gwenhwyfar stumbled as the students barged past her. The teacher
shouted again, but the culprits were already halfway down the corridor,
sauntering along as a tight-knit trio. Gwenhwyfar consulted her soggy
timetable. The teacher hurried by. This was her chance.
‘Excuse me—!’ The thin man seemed to deliberately walk faster
as she attempted to gain on him, her short legs hindering her progress. ‘Sir? I
was wondering—’
They nearly collided. He looked straight over her head at first, but
eventually his eyes found their way down to hers.
‘Sorry,’ Gwenhwyfar stammered, ‘but could you tell me where room 44B
is?’
He didn’t quite seem to hear.
‘Forty-four B? It’s upstairs, but I don’t know where.’
The teacher’s shoulders snapped back like the wings of a bird in
landing. ‘Ah yes! You must be the new student. Gwenhwyfar?’
She always had to correct people. ‘Gwen.’
‘That’s right, of course! Gwen.’ He pointed a bony finger after the
three girls. ‘Just take the second staircase; then go left. It’s at the end of
the corridor by the toilets. Can’t miss it.’ He sent her a brief smile that
might have been reassuring had he not used it as an excuse to vacate her
company. As he left, an onslaught of students streamed past her. Doing her best
to ignore the curious attention she found herself receiving, she made a beeline
for the second staircase, at the end of the whitewashed hall.
Logres wasn’t as charming as her old school. It felt bare and
clinical and had thin discoloured carpets. She wondered why her parents had
chosen it for her, but guessed it was for convenience. It was within walking
distance of their ugly new townhouse, a large building misplaced in a small
cul-de-sac in the suburbs of Surrey.
She scaled the stairs far too soon for her liking. Forty-four B was
dingy and poorly lit, with the once-white walls now yellowed to cream. Tables
were clustered, not in rows, and as various friend groups claimed their seats
she realised that there was nowhere she could sit that wasn’t in plain view of
the rest of the class. Quickly she chose the only empty table. A blonde girl on
the table nearest to hers eyed her; then whispered with friends. The three
girls who had pushed into her strode into the room. Gwenhwyfar’s stomach
dropped the moment their eyes homed in on her.
‘You’re in my seat,’ was the comment that she got, her first
student-to-student contact of the day. ‘Move.’
Miss Knight watched her with contempt, her bag strap choked in one
hand and her blazer pocket distended with the other. Her lapel was crested with
the standing sword and rearing dragon of Logres. Miss Morte and Miss Woods took
up positions behind her, like actresses trained to stand on their mark. Both
had tried to mimic Miss Knight’s every characteristic, from her carefully
applied smoky eyeliner, to the arrangement of her brown hair into a
self-conscious and meticulous bun.
Miss Knight swooped closer. ‘Do you not speak English or something—?’
Her supporting actresses giggled. ‘You—are—in—my—seat.
Move
.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t know.’ As soon as Gwenhwyfar vacated the chair, Miss
Knight was sitting in it, checking her appearance in a pocket mirror. Miss Morte
and Miss Woods followed suit, using the fourth chair as a bag dump.
It was the whispering blonde girl who came to her rescue. ‘Hey!’ she
called. ‘Come sit with us!’ As Gwenhwyfar edged towards them the blonde girl scooted
over and offered half her seat. ‘You’re the new girl, aren’t you?’ She was
petite, perhaps a little taller than Gwenhwyfar, and had blue eyes with
arching, scrupulously plucked eyebrows. The blush in her cheeks was a powdery
rose pink. ‘I’m Emily, and this is Hattie and Charlotte.’ The two offered a
friendly smile. Hattie was almost as blonde as Emily, while Charlotte’s
defining characteristic seemed to be the overuse of black mascara.
‘I’m Gwen. Thanks for letting me sit with you.’ She hunched her back
as they had done earlier, and immediately all three girls bent towards her
curiously. ‘So what’s her problem, then?’
‘Viola’s?’ Emily lowered her voice. ‘She’s just angry with the world
because her dad ran off with another man.’ Hattie and Charlotte sniggered as
Gwenhwyfar failed to conceal her surprise. ‘She still lives with him, though.
Him and his boyfriend.’
‘I was in the cafeteria the other day, and I heard Rhea saying some
pretty nasty stuff about Emily,’ Hattie murmured. ‘She said that she was a
snob.’
This was news to Emily. Her outraged gasp was proof enough of that.
‘She didn’t!’
‘She did.
And
she was
spreading rumours that you were secretly going out with Gavin.’
Emily’s disgust only seemed to magnify at this horrific news. ‘Eww!
Gavin who?’
‘You know! Gavin Miles. The one who always hangs around with Tom and
people.’
Gwenhwyfar looked to Viola Knight’s table. The three girls were
touching up their make up. ‘Sorry, but which one’s Rhea?’
Charlotte nodded in the direction of Miss Morte. ‘The fat one: with
the squashed nose. The one with long hair is Rebecca.
She
accused Emily of prank-calling her sister, and got her into a
huge fight about it. I mean, if Emily
had
prank-called her sister, why would she have left her name?’
Gwenhwyfar inspected the two. Rhea looked no fatter than Rebecca, and
in all honesty, neither of them seemed bigger than Charlotte herself.
‘I heard Rhea left that message and just pretended it was me, because
she thinks some guy she likes fancies me,’ Emily smirked, glancing to the other
table again. ‘How pathetic is that?’
‘Pretty pathetic,’ Hattie agreed. Gwenhwyfar hadn’t noticed that a
teacher had entered the room, and was trying to get the class to quieten down.
‘Then again, you can hardly blame her. No guy could possibly like her. She’s
vile
!’
‘Viola doesn’t even like them.’ Emily was sitting straight now,
inspecting her perfectly painted nails for blemishes. ‘She just lets them
follow her around for her own amusement. I mean it’s not like you ever see her
with them at lunchtime—’
‘Emily Rose, I said quiet!’ The shock of being scolded hit home for a
moment, but then the three girls were snickering again.
‘Sorry miss,’ apologised Emily, though the smile quirking her pink
lips told Gwenhwyfar that she wasn’t. Rhea and Rebecca were glaring at their
table with suspicion, trying to pick up the tail ends of the conversation that
had obviously been about them.
Registration was quick, though Gwenhwyfar had enough time to scan the
room and learn a few names. She picked out Morgan Faye, a milk-skinned, doe-eyed
girl with chestnut curls. There was a moment of horror when the teacher, Miss
Ray, singled her out as new, but no introduction was asked of her and she was
spared the embarrassment of stating where she was from and what she liked
doing. The heavens wept outside, complementing Gwenhwyfar’s sense of rising
dread. People her age were like hyenas, and in this instance, involving alpha
female Viola especially, Gwenhwyfar felt much like a limping gazelle.
The repetitive chime of the bell disrupted her thoughts. Emily stood
up, forcing Gwenhwyfar to do the same.
‘So where are you from, Gwen?’
‘Swansea.’ Viola’s glare of contempt had just managed to subdue hers.
She swept her chocolate-brown hair away from her eyes. ‘You know, in Wales?’
‘Wales?’ Emily frowned at her. ‘You’re not one of those rebels, are
you?’
‘Rebels?’
‘You know,
separatists
.’
‘No, of course not,’ Gwenhwyfar replied, insulted. ‘Swansea’s
pro-union.’
Emily’s frown vanished. ‘So why did you move?’
‘My dad got a new job.’
‘Won’t you miss your old school? What was it like?’
‘All right. Everyone knew each other. There were only two hundred students.
It was pretty exclusive,’ she added. Maybe Emily was the right hyena to hang
around with, the one that would protect her, the gazelle, from the rest of the
pack. ‘This place is huge compared to it.’
‘Really?’ Emily seemed bemused. ‘Logres isn’t even that big. St.
George’s across town is almost twice the size.’ They paused in the corridor,
where Emily parted from Hattie and Charlotte with a quick conversation
identifying where they would meet for break time.
It was hard to keep up with Emily as she weaved through the massing
students, daunting in their hordes. The year sevens looked like mere children,
too young to be in secondary school, and from year eight to year ten it
appeared that ties became shorter and attire scruffier. The year elevens wore
their uniform with an obvious amount of pride, and though Gwenhwyfar failed to
conform to their generous tie length, her peers didn’t seem to notice. The
occasional sixth-former pushed through the crowd in their own clothes, their
relaxed dress envied by others. Gwenhwyfar was doing her utmost to avoid
pushing into any of them, though such a task became difficult as people began
to congeal around doors.
‘Any idea what room you’re in first?’ Emily called to her.
Gwenhwyfar pulled her crumpled timetable out of her pocket.
‘Twenty-seven H?’ All these room numbers sounded so alien.
‘History?’
‘Looks like it. Where’s that, then?’ She dodged a group of young boys
loitering by the windowsills.
‘That’s in the other building.’ Emily paused a moment to allow
Gwenhwyfar to catch up, her ponytail swishing. ‘I can walk you, if you like.
It’s on the way to my lesson. I’ve got Chemistry with Mrs Brolstone.
Vile
.’
‘Who’s Mr Caledonensis?’ Gwenhwyfar checked her timetable once more,
just to see if she also had a teacher who was ‘vile’.
‘Mr who?’
‘Mr Cal-e-don-en-sis,’ she felt her way around the name again. ‘Is
that how you say it?’
They passed through double doors into the rain. Emily produced a pink
umbrella to protect their hair. ‘I think so. He’s a bit strange. Most people
just call him “sir”.’ The umbrella opened, and Emily raised it above their
heads. Gwenhwyfar moved close and followed her across the grounds.
