Page 1 of Baron in Check
CHAPTER 1
Kirby Place, London. Greg’s home.
Greg followed three rules in life and chess alike. First, never give up. Second, never move unless you know the next three variations in your opponent’s strategy. Third, only attack when you can follow through.
Rules two and three had faltered every time he played Fave Pearler, one of his two best friends—Fave’s cousin Arnold was the other—but Greg wasn’t willing to break rule one. It was a matter of choice: defeat or forfeit. And if he’d learned one painful lesson from having the love of his life stolen from under him, literally, it was that he’d never be able to stomach forfeit again.
It happened just over five years ago now, but his broken heart hadn’t healed. Whoever said time heals wounds didn’t know true heartbreak. Instead, it had become a blistering open wound that oozed with longing for her.
Greg, known as the Black Knight, played black, as usual. “What a horrid position.”
“Your opening, the pieces, or life in general?” Fave said, the never-do-wrong golden boy, even though he’d turned into quite a man and was more deserving of a nickname that compared him to a stallion than Greg.
“It’s everything.” Greg rubbed his eyes, but when he opened them, the pieces on the board were just as defenseless as he was. “You know Hermy’s brother died?”
“I heard you the first five times. I’m still sorry. Have you expressed your condolences to her?”
“Good riddance would be more apt, but no, I have not. Her solicitor sent me the note.”
“Isn’t it odd that he informed you of Steven’s demise personally? Nobody could have missed the obituary in the paper.”
Greg leaned back and folded his arms, stretching his long legs under the armchair. “Didn’t you or Arnold receive a note?”
Fave shook his head.
Odd indeed.
“Something is not right, hm?” Fave had opened with e4, which was not an unusual opening. The chessboard’s 64 squares, labeled a-h for columns and 1-8 for rows made each square uniquely identifiable and Greg kept track of his moves to analyze his game later.
Greg responded with e5, putting his pawn right in front of Fave’s, who then brought his knight to f3. Greg pushed the next pawn to d6, and Fave brought his bishop into the game on c4.
“Hah! Trouble might be on its way,” Fave said. “A hippogriff!”
“Are you still speaking about chess?” Greg asked.
“Perhaps my opponent?” Fave winked but then looked back at the chessboard.
“I’m a mystical creature already? Dead?” It wasn’t for naught that Greg was known as the “Black Knight” among chess players,although he felt more deserving of a nickname for mellow livestock—perhaps a black sheep.
“No, you’re strong like a horse and a precise hunter like an eagle. Hippogriffs symbolize love because they make the impossible combination of eagle and mare viable.”
“I’m the embodiment of the impossible.” The irony wasn’t lost on Greg. He would have been a Jew with a clean bloodline had his father not converted. When his father had converted, he’d committed treason on the family, his family tree, and his heritage. All their ancestors’ sacrifices, worship, and traditions were gone, just like that. The crime lay in forsaking one religion for another, not in the choice of either—just as it would be to divorce one woman to marry another. It was a moral offense Greg never quite understood. As close as the Pearlers were to him, he hadn’t grown up in a Jewish family. Still, they were good people, his best friends. And all he had left now. He could never have more, since Steven had made it abundantly clear that Greg wasn’t good enough for Hermy and that her life spent locked up in the country was better than sullying his bloodline with a baptized Jew.
If he hadn’t fallen so deeply and irredeemably in love with his classmate’s little sister, Hermy, he might have kept his wits about him and already had a family. He wouldn’t be so lonely then. But that little two-letter word had blocked his path, and Greg had used his uncanny talents to unblock the hurdles, unlock the doors, and secretly seal his infatuation with Hermy. And how could life have turned out if—there was that pesky little conjunction again—they hadn’t been caught? Perhaps he wouldn’t sit alone on his throne; Baron Stone had a seat in parliament and nobody with whom to share his privilege. Everything his father had done was to pave the way for Greg—to do what, exactly?
“Are you moving the queen yet?” Greg asked after several minutes.
Greg’s father had relinquished Judaism and adopted the Anglican Church with much fanfare so everyone would know he could accept a title. And he did just a few years later, just in time for Greg’s birth. When Father died, Greg ascended to the title. His family had risen in station and acclaim, and the business prospects were more akin to fireworks, ready for Greg to rise and shine once he’d applied himself. But their religious virtues, well, they dwindled away along with their Jewish customs and were only replaced by societal and materialistic endeavors. And as it turned out, without faith and structure, heartbreak and loss became unbearable.
Instead of moving his queen, Fave inserted an explosive check at Greg’s Achilles heel, f7, his weakest square diagonal from the king.
The eighth move came and went. Fave put his bishop on f7, and Greg moved his knight to e7. Fave’s queen finally came out and took at f6, but Greg’s black king took back on the same square.
In just the twelfth move, Fave’s knight mated Greg on c3, blocking every possible move for Greg’s black king.
“Very funny, Fave. What a sense of humor you have.”
“My knights steadfastly do their jobs, don’t they?”
