May We Feed the King

The novel alternates between two narratives: a present-day curator who arranges historically accurate replica scenes in medieval buildings, and the story of a reluctant King she reconstructs from archival fragments. Neither the curator nor the King is ever named.

The curator, with twenty-two years of experience placing replica food and furnishings in historic houses, receives a commission to create six scenes inside a former palace celebrating its 750-year anniversary: the King's chambers, the kitchens, the Queen's parlor, an attendant's quarters, a medical display, and a feast in the great hall. The palace possesses extensive on-site archives, which she considers nearly unheard of. She alludes to recent personal upheaval, noting only that she is ready to immerse herself.

Her guiding principle is that every scene must appear as if the people have just left the room. She traces this conviction to a childhood moment in a furniture superstore, where she squeezed a plastic grape in a display and felt transported into someone else's life. Since her circumstances changed, her work has sustained her when people could not. Small details suggest the loss of a partner: the empty chair at her dining table "where we used to sit" (39) and the acute silence of her home each evening.

At the palace, she maps the building and walks the corridors alone. She meets the archivist, who waits in a dim room wearing white gloves, and discovers ledgers spanning five centuries, along with recipes, feast accounts, remedies, letters, and poems. The archivist delivers photocopied records to her room, and their rapport deepens. On her fifth day, the curator discovers her King: a single page dedicated to his reign, cluttered with marginalia, footnotes, and strike-throughs accumulated over centuries. She weeps, calling it a reduction of a life, and refuses to reproduce the entry in full.

Her attachment to the King and to the archivist shifts her personal life. She takes photocopies home and spreads them across her dining table; the empty chair opposite starts to feel like simply a vacant seat. She stops at a bar to read a translated letter describing the King as looking "like a man, just as any other, but quite lost" (49). She begins dreaming of the King so vividly that she wakes sensing his presence. Her awareness of the archivist intensifies: she recalls them removing their gloves one finger at a time and realizes she had stopped breathing at the memory. On a Sunday evening after the palace closes, she walks to the King's chambers, opens his door as if it were her own, and the feeling is instant: "a whole world" (58).

Part II shifts to the historical narrative. The King's young Attendant takes a break from his watch at the dying monarch's bedside. He recalls the King's wedding night, when he stood outside the bedchamber holding a silver bowl of water and rose petals. The Queen had arrived from another country in brutal winter, turned in on herself, and slowly brightened by spring. She has been dead for two years, having died during pregnancy. After her death, the King barely ate.

Each day a lady-in-waiting ascends from the kitchens to ask whether the King will eat. The plates return untouched. On a morning of bright, cold sunshine, death comes almost silently: The Physician confirms it, and the Attendant cannot believe death can enter and leave a room so quietly. He rushes past the lady-in-waiting, returns to his room, and cries.

The new King, the dead monarch's youngest brother, is thrust into a role he never anticipated. His eldest brother, violent even as a child, reigned only a year before dying overnight. His second brother ushered in a golden era before a gruesome decline. The new King was always the third child, permitted to roam freely and become odd, never in the direct line of sight. He describes himself as "not the wood or the worm, but the hole that spoke of its presence" (86).

His new Queen has been in love with the Assistant to the Royal Physician for two years; the King and Queen share a marriage of mutual respect rather than passion. Pressured to demonstrate authority, the King signs a warrant to execute a father and son imprisoned for treason. The execution is botched, and he believes he will think of this decision for the rest of his days. He refuses to assemble men for battle. His Chief Advisor grows increasingly aggressive, once spitting on the King's sleeve. Seeking a precedent for abdication, the King reads the ledger of the Apple King, a predecessor who fled, was captured, and was beheaded. He realizes his mistake, knowing everyone at court is in someone's pocket.

The arrival of the King's cousin's wife transforms the court. A King's daughter from overseas, she is unaccompanied and unapologetic. The King is heard laughing at dinner, a sound so rare the court compares it to a blood moon. He walks the gardens with her daily, eats with increasing appetite, and visits the kitchens for the first time. When the Chief Advisor dispatches the army to quash an island uprising without royal approval, the King gives the only order of his reign: mercy and retreat.

He threatens the Chief Advisor with death if the army is ever again deployed without his command. Salacious rumors engulf the court. The Attendant observes the King's transformation: no longer fearful, but assertively refusing his council's demands. After dinner one evening, the Queen dismisses the staff and whispers in the King's ear. In subsequent meals, the three lean together conspiratorially.

One bright autumn morning, the first frost, the court discovers the King, the Queen, and the cousin's wife are gone. The council scrambles, dispatching riders and manning gates. No one says "gone." Contradictory theories circulate: the Chief Advisor poisoned the King and installed the cousin; the King secretly passed laws granting himself the right to abdicate; the Royal Physician suspects the Queen orchestrated everything. The Chief Advisor stays oddly quiet. The court fragments into paralysis.

Years later, the former Attendant lies dying, tended by his daughter. The King's reign was never spoken of in their household; the years that followed were dark and bloody, filled with pretenders to the throne. She recalls a children's story about a nobleman who found the skeletons of the King and Queen in an abandoned barn. On his deathbed, the old Attendant says, "I know the King" (239). In his final lucid exchange, his daughter asks for news. He replies: "I saw him. He is gone, into another life" (243).

Part III returns to the curator. She delivers a lecture on the anniversary weekend, telling the story of Garnier Valletti, who rendered replicas of all 286 varieties of apple growing in 1800s Italy, preserving their appearance but not their taste. The archivist, sitting in the front row, offers the answer she most values: the replicas force us to confront what we have lost. She projects the King's ledger entry and argues that his greatest gift is the lack of an ending. She reveals that she brought the archivist into the scene-setting process, asking them to make opposing or concurrent decisions for every piece she positioned.

The novel describes each completed scene: the kitchens with abandoned preparation; the Queen's parlor with an unfinished embroidery and a needle suspended above the floor; the attendant's quarters with papers sealed by the King's mark; the medical room with one bottle absent, betrayed by a dried oil ring; the King's chambers with singed papers reading "WARRANT TO EXECUTE" and a blank signature line, a fruit bowl with one empty space, a purple silk cloak barely visible through a cracked wardrobe, and an apple mostly hidden by the curtain hem; the great hall with a restrained feast for three and a flickering orange glow in the darkest corner.

In the epilogue, palace staff question the curator's choices. She negotiates to take her replica items home. Four weeks later, she unpacks the boxes and arranges items in her own house: candlesticks on the dining table, the King's book marked with a bay leaf, singed papers in her fireplace grate, a fruit bowl of apples and pomegranates. She leaves the final apple on the corner of the table, in readiness for the archivist. She picks up the unfinished embroidery and begins stitching once again at the arm of the King.