Prudence's Fall: From the Shadows of Chess
Note: This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, events or entities is purely coincidental.
‘Bring me their scalps, Killer!’
The game was six minutes away from starting when Prudence Dawn Sinclair was about to open the door to the playing hall. When she withdrew her phone from her pocket to switch it off and read those five words, she felt a wave of warm confidence come over her. Oh yes, she thought. Bloodbath coming up.
As she walked through the door, the entire playing hall fell silent. All eyes were on her, and she knew why. Everyone was hoping to witness a sensation first hand, both the haters and the fans; mostly the haters, and she had plenty of those. Ever since her previous entry to the Swindon Youth Chess Circuit (SYCC), she had suffered the wrath of much of the regional and national world of chess. People would be writing about this, no matter what the result. But today was not the day to worry about any of that. Today was the day to take care of the past and settle the score once and for all. This was her most important tournament to date, and she was determined to give the audience exactly what they were looking for: a day they would never forget.
She handed her phone to the arbiters, and submitted to the body scan before sitting down at her board. Her opponent was already there. Prudence had seen her opponent's scornful face so often that it no longer had any effect on her. She had to laugh internally. I’ll happily collect your scalp, you sanctimonious minger.
Prudence enrolled in chess five years prior, almost by accident. She learned to play chess through an activity in her primary school. Twice per year, once in November, once in April, the school organised a games event that the whole school attended. One of the games that she was curious about was this board game called chess.
It was love at first sight. Those pieces all looked so nice! Those towers that looked like real castles, and those horses with their carved-out faces and manes! This was so much better than Mensch ärgere Dich nicht, with its monotonous pegs and that stupid dice that always caused people to cheat against her. But Chess! Even the name sounded curious. Something to the point, strong, and still a touch of danger and mystery to it. Chess! Such a beautiful name for an intriguing game!
She didn’t know how the game went yet. But what she did know was that from that point on, all she wanted to do was play chess. Only chess. For the rest of her life, if it was up to her.
“How was it today, Dawn?” her mother asked at the end of the day. Family and friends all called her Dawn. “Did you play any nice games?”
“Do you know how to play chess?” Prudence asked.
“Chess?” The smile on her mother’s face started ebbing away a bit. “Not really, no. I always found it a bit dull. I do know draughts...”
“No, Mom! I want to play chess! It’s a beautiful game with towers and horses and they all look so beautiful and cool and elegant and real! Do we have a chess set?”
“Let’s ask Dad when we get home, shall we?”
When they arrived home, Prudence went into the study and looked at the family tree on the wall. Richard, Edward, Charles, George, William, her father Henry, her mother Anne... All names that coincided with kings and queens of the British royal family. Only her own name was a little bit out of place, but her mother had explained this difference away: “Dear Prudence” had been the song to which her parents had shared their very first dance.
The Sinclair family had always carried themselves with the majestic dignity that the naming of the heirs in the male line implicitly required, and Prudence knew why. The family had lived in Normandy until the French Revolution caused panic among the French nobility. Her ancestor Richard Sinclair, who had sensed the brewing political unrest, chose to emigrate to England and proceeded to reside in a manor on the eastern outskirts of Swindon. He had founded, established and consolidated his heritage within the English culture.
Now, almost 250 years after Sir Richard's move to the Island, the family still lived in the same manor. From a very young age it was impressed upon Prudence that to be a Sinclair meant to be the Pride of the Nation. Prudence had some shoes to fill. And what better way to do it, she thought, than with the ultimate pursuit, the game of games, the royal game! She would become the Queen to rule them all!
Ever since that day that she discovered her ‘One True Love’, Prudence had been dreaming about participating in a real tournament with real opponents. And this Saturday in February would be the day for her. It was a tournament from the youth circuit. Although she was completely new to the circuit and uncertain of protocol, she was very determined to make a good introduction.
She looked around to see how people carried themselves, and whether there were some people that she could socialise with. There in the corner were a boy and a girl talking. They seemed her age. Maybe they’ve been on the circuit for a longer time. Perhaps she could befriend them and learn a thing or two about how things worked. She set out to walk up to them, but as she reached them, the boy turned around and walked right into her.
“Watch out where you’re walking, you slob!” he shouted at her as he stalked off.
“Sorry,” Prudence said, as she felt her cheeks turning red.
The girl started to giggle, which turned into a sneer when she looked at Prudence. “What are YOU here for? Cleaning up the vomit from the floor?” Prudence felt her eyes burning as she watched the other girl walk on. The girl greeted a group of other girls, turned around, pointed at Prudence, and all started laughing at the same time.
My oh my, this wasn’t as Prudence had expected it to go. And the first game hadn’t even started yet!
The first round saw Prudence paired up against someone named Sophie Morton de Verley. Hopefully not one of that group of girls, Prudence thought. She sat down at the board, waiting for her opponent to arrive. And to her horror, it was the girl that had been sneering at her only moments ago.
“So you’re Prudence Sinclair, are you?” Sophie said with no uncertain hints of loathing in her voice and flared nostrils. “I’ll be calling you Prude if you don’t mind.”
Prudence looked at her in utter disbelief. “My name is Prudence.”
“Yeah? Well then, be honoured that I even bother to speak more than 50% of your name. Not even Tim received such gracious preferential treatment.”
“Tim?”
“Timothy Harcourt,” Sophie said. “Esquire.”
“Is he...”
“Yes. And you stay away from him. Understand?”
The chief arbiter announced for the round to begin. Sophie stretched out her hand. “You’re supposed to shake hands with the opponent,” she said.
“And what if I refuse?”
Sophie’s hand rose in the air. One of the arbiters came round. “She doesn’t want to shake my hand,” Sophie said.
“But you have to shake hands,” said the arbiter in a friendly manner. “It’s good chess etiquette, and the rules require it. Have you heard of the Corus Chess handshake incident between Short and Cheparinov in 2008, in which the Bulgarian refused to shake hands with his opponent and received a loss by forfeit?”
“So I win, then?” Sophie asked loud enough to disturb the boards immediately surrounding them.
“No,” the arbiter said. “But I have to insist that you shake hands, or I will have to forfeit the game.”
Reluctantly, Prudence extended her hand, and Sophie couldn’t resist squeezing her grip rather much harder than necessary. The game was a disaster.
At the table next to theirs, Timothy was seated. He glanced over at their board and snorted just loud enough for Prudence to hear it.
“Mind your own business,” Prudence hissed at him.
“It’s Sir Timothy for you,” he snarled back at her. “Esquire.”
Prudence played a few more moves when Sophie said, “Why don’t you resign, toddler?”
“D-do I have to?”
“In this position: yes. You don’t stand a chance!”
With tears in her eyes and trembling hands, she laid down her king.
“Only people from the Victorian age would still resign like that,” sneered Sophie. “How old are you, 200? 201?” She heard that Timothy started laughing. “Hurry up, Tim,” she said. “I want to get ice-cream.”
The day left Prudence positively queasy. The words that Sophie had uttered in the hallway about cleaning up the pools of sick, those sounded almost prophetic now. This first tournament should have been a magical experience. Instead it turned out to be the most painful deception of her life.
Yet...
“You only fail by giving up.”
After Prudence came home and shared the story of her atrocious introduction with her first chess tournament with her parents, her father comforted her. “Esquire is a title that only posh people use to sound more important than they are,” he said. “It’s just empty bubbles.”
The following day, Mr. Sinclair put Prudence in contact with Emory Sherwin, a childhood friend and former County of Wiltshire chess champion who had been in the running for a place on the national team but chose to pursue the Doctor of Law title instead. Emory had never lost his love for chess, and he agreed to help Prudence with her game from that point onwards.
Emory started with clearing up some of the rules. “There are no rules that force you to resign your game at any point or under any circumstances. And you’re allowed to spend your clock-time as you wish. It’s your allotted time.”
Their trainings always followed the same structure. They would start with an endgame study, then proceed to study opening strategy and the middlegames that would emerge from them. They studied everything with 1.e4 and started playing the mainlines of the Open Sicilian. Emory would litter the lessons with funny anecdotes and good lessons to draw from lost games. Prudence’s favourite quote that he gave was “Losing a game of chess is like a phoenix bursting into flame: the ashes of one’s defeat prepare for a glorious rebirth.” The lessons were a lot of fun, and they rekindled the spark that Prudence felt when she saw her first chess set.
Her second edition of the SYCC was a lot less disastrous than the first, and with 2/6 she hadn’t been doing too badly. The sneers remained, however, and she suffered a painful loss in the final round against Megan Johnson, one of Sophie’s girl squad. The position had been favourable for Prudence at one point, but a host of girls started talking right next to the table to distract her. Sophie, who had finished her game, was even talking with Megan from a small distance, looking at the board from time to time. Prudence couldn’t find her concentration, and after she had lost the game, she went on to complain to the chief arbiter. But she had no proof, it was her word against her opponent’s, and the game was already over, so the arbiter had no choice but to overrule the complaint.
Sophie and her girls showed no mercy after the game. They unleashed a cascade of bullying that was so. Prudence ran off to the bathroom to lock herself in there. “Dear Prudence, won’t you come out to play?” the girls sang behind the bathroom door, as a taunt.
She didn’t know for how long she had been there, but after what seemed to have been an hour she heard a firm knock on the door, and a familiar voice said, “Dawn?”
Still with a face soaking wet, Prudence flung open the door and ran into Emory’s arms. All of the girls were still standing there. “Are you Sophie Morton de Verley?” he asked the tallest of the group, who nodded. He said with a very warm smile: “I knew your father from back in the day.”
“Were you friends with my dad?”
“Let’s say that we had a suiting nickname for him. Will you pass my regards to him? Emory Sherwin.” As all turned up dumbstruck, he said, “Come on, Dawn. Let’s go home.” They walked off when the taunting singing continued: “Look around, round, round, round.”
“Do you really know her father?” Prudence asked after they got in the car.
“Oh yes,” Emory said.
“Were you really friends with that-that hag’s dad?”
Emory began to smile broadly, and said: “We used to call him ‘The Defendant’.”
Three years after her first acquaintance with the Wiltshire chess circuit, Prudence had become quite a respectable chess-player indeed. She had won several unexpected victories in tournaments against players that appeared on the surface to outclass her. She had managed to not lose several of her games against Sophie and was better able to withstand the sneers. Sophie still pulled the strings with the girls, however, and she made sure that Prudence never really had a friend within the local scene.
It was round 7, the final round of the tournament. If Prudence would win this game, she would overtake Sophie and win an unshared third place. It would be her first trophy ever. She’s never been this close.
After 22 moves she had to go to the restroom. As she was sitting there, she overheard two girls talking about the game. “Prude has a better position against Sophie.” “Yes, maybe, but she will fumble. Like she always does. You can give her a +20 position and she will find a way to mess it up.”
Was she really up by that margin? Was that...? Could she...? She shouldn’t, but, would anyone ever know? What harm could it do? It would just be to wipe that arrogant smile off that awful hag’s face, right? Justice at last... But how would people respond? Would anyone ever find out? Would she be interviewed? What would she say? Would Emory still trust her and defend her in front of everyone? Would he still train her? Even if it was just this once? One time? She could just blame it on those girls who had been talking about the game, right? All the hatred, the bullying, it all rang inside her head. The scorn, the hatred. The family honour. Her ambitions. The glory. The look on Sophie’s face...
When she emerged from the restroom and sat down at the board again, she felt very differently. All the loathing that had befallen her over the past two years, all the glory that she had been chasing, it all felt like it no longer mattered. Prudence continued the game thus:
When she emerged from the restroom and sat down at the board again, she felt very differently. All the loathing that had befallen her over the past two years, all the glory that she had been chasing, it all felt like it no longer mattered. Prudence continued the game thus:
Prudence won the game, and took third place in the final rankings. When she received her trophy, a wave of applause went through the hall. People were applauding for her, shouting her name, wanting to shake hands with her in congratulations. But Prudence only wanted to leave. She felt positively sick. And when she walked outside, Sophie’s very first words hit even more true than ever before.
Prudence’s mother walked up to her. “Hey! There’s the winner! Cong—What’s wrong, Dawn? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”
“Please take me away from here,” Prudence said in a paper-thin voice.
“Will you please tell me what’s the matter?” her mom said as they were driving. “You just won a prize, didn’t you? That’s amazing, right? That’s what you worked so hard for! Why aren’t you happy?” No response. “I’ve called Emory. He will come over tonight to have dinner with us, and then you can—”
Prudence burst into tears. Her mom pulled the car over.
Emory walked into the living room of the Sinclair manor to find Prudence sitting on the sofa, looking expressionlessly at the trophy in front of her. “I think I know what happened,” he said softly to Prudence’s parents. “Let me take care of this.” Then he walked over to the sofa next to Prudence. “Dawn?”
Prudence hesitantly looked at her trainer, then quickly looked away again.
“Can I sit down?” Prudence shrugged. He sat down beside her and kept quiet. For minutes they sat still. No-one said a word.
After seventeen minutes that seemed like five hours, Prudence finally broke down. “It’s okay, Dawn,” Emory said, offering his support. “It’s okay.”
“I didn’t want to do it,” she said with a trembling voice. “I feel so bad!”
The whole story flooded through the living room. Prudence had overheard the conversation between the two other girls as she realised that she had her phone still in her pocket. One moment, in which all the deep hatred for Sophie that had boiled up in her over the last two years, the bullying, the names, the scolding, the public humiliations, the violating of the rules by giving her opponents live tips on their positions, the anger, the frustration; all that Sophie had done to sabotage Prudence. In one moment of utter despair, she wasn’t able to resist the temptation.
“I wanted so badly to win this trophy!” she sobbed. “But now it just doesn’t feel right. It’s like one shiny embarrassment. And every time I look at it, I see that. I see that I only got this because I-I-I broke the rules!”
Prudence’s father wanted to say something, but Emory gestured against it. “Did you throw up?”
She nodded.
“Was it a nice big fat pizza? One that people would slip over and fall into with their face first?”
A short chuckle escaped from Prudence’s mouth.
“It’s okay, Dawn,” Emory said. “It’s okay.” And after another pause, “Do you want to keep this trophy?”
“No,” Prudence said.
“Okay,” he said, “Here’s what we’ll do.”
Sophie and her father came bursting in the meeting room of the Sherwin Lawfirm at exactly 9:30 a.m. next morning. She looked around the room and saw three people seated in the room: the chief arbiter, Prudence, and that coach. Her eyes landed on Prudence, and she said with an unmistakable expression of disgust: “You?!”
The tournament’s chief arbiter stood up, nodded “Mr. Morton de Verley, Sophie. Glad you could make it.”
“What is it we’re here for?” said Mr. Verley, who looked suspiciously at Emory.
“We’re here to set an injustice straight,” replied Emory, and gestured towards two empty chairs at the other side of the desk. “Please, sit down.”
As they sat down, Emory asked Sophie: “Do you know how many ways there are to cheat at a game of chess, Sophie?”
She looked taken aback at Emory, then directed her most hateful gaze towards Prudence, as if to say, ‘Is that what we’re here for, Miss Goodie-Two-Shoes?’
Emory proceeded: “There are many more ways to cheat than you can imagine. Normally you’d think about getting outside help, like people telling you which moves to play. But cheating also involves taking moves back, intimidating people, and talking about your game with somebody else.”
Sophie’s face turned indignant. She looked bewilderedly at her father, who said: “Are you accusing my daughter of cheating?”
“I’m not accusing your daughter of anything, Mr. Verley,” said Emory. “However, there was an instance of cheating in her game against Prudence yesterday in round 7.”
“I don’t understand,” said Sophie. “What cheating? I didn’t cheat in that game at all! How could you—”
“I did,” said Prudence.
Silence fell in the room. All looked at Prudence.
The silence felt like a gunshot.
“I-I did,” Prudence repeated. “I cheated in my game against you.”
“I knew it!” Sophie said with a condescending smirk on her face. “I knew you couldn’t beat me in a normal game! Who caught you?”
“Prudence has reported herself,” said the chief arbiter. “There was nothing abnormal about her games that would raise our suspicion, so under normal circumstances we wouldn’t have found out at all. She is here of her own accord and has taken the bravest step that anyone in her position has ever done.”
“People will hear from this,” sneered Sophie.
“They already do,” said Emory. “Before you arrived here, Prudence uploaded a video with her full confession. She will accept all the consequences of her actions without fail. All that remains to be done now is to make right what’s wrong. Prudence?”
Prudence reached for the bag that was standing at her feet and lifted the third-place trophy from it. “This belongs to you,” she said with a trembling voice as she extended the trophy to Sophie.
Sophie looked taken aback. Whatever she may have expected, this certainly wasn’t it. She took the trophy and looked at it with a hint of pride.
“And?” Emory urged Sophie.
Reluctantly and tonelessly, Sophie uttered a quick “Thanks,”
“Is there anything else?” Mr. Verley asked.
“That will be all,” Emory concluded. “But it must be said that Prudence showed real bravery and character by coming here today,” Emory said.
The chief arbiter agreed. “Let’s hope that more people will grow the spine to admit their own mistakes.”
Sophie blinked twice, and said, “Come, Dad. I want to get ice-cream.”
Prudence was sanctioned an 18-month suspension from any over-the-board chess events, and her results for the final tournament would be nullified for rating mutation. Because she had no fair-play antecedents, she was allowed to make a full return after her sanction had ended.
Together with her coach, Prudence prepared for her comeback from the day she handed over the trophy to Sophie. Prudence agreed to never look at anything that would happen revolving the incident on social media. No interviews, no public statements, no fuel for the media fire. Just complete silence. “If they cannot reach you, they cannot touch you.”
When she entered the Swindon Town Hall to participate in the Wiltshire regional championships after her ban, she was no longer the shy introverted girl with the dark bangs. That Coco Chanel quote that said that a woman who cuts her hair is about to change her life, that was definitely true for her.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket just before she was about to enter the playing hall. It was a text message from Emory.
‘Bring me their scalps, Killer!’
It so happened that in the very first round she was once again paired against her good old friend Sophie Morton de Verley. As she sat down behind the black pieces, she looked into the face of her long-standing rival, who still had that air of contempt. But Prudence felt confident. ‘The days that you could intimidate me are over, clown.’
Sophie extended her hand and squeezed Prudence’s as usual. Prudence didn’t flinch. She maintained eye contact and patiently waited until Sophie would let go and play her opening move.
It was the most satisfying win that Prudence had experienced in her entire life. She had done it. She had beaten her rival, with Black, and in style.
With another two wins and two draws, Prudence found herself at 4 points out of 5 going into the final two rounds. Timothy was on 4½ points, just like former Wiltshire youth champion Jason Moore, who already sported both the National Master and the Candidate Master title. Jason and Timothy had faced off in the fifth round and drew, but Jason’s tie-break was better. As such, he was to play Prudence for round 6.
In their preparation, Emory and Prudence had found a few of Jason’s games online and used them to devise their battle plan against him. They knew that he liked grabbing space and pawns, and they had prepared a setup that would allow him to do so at his own peril.
Although Jason Moore had been the opponent that Prudence was most nervous to face before the game started, she never felt uneasy during the entirety of the game. She was so locked in that she hadn’t even realised that flocks of people had gathered around her board. Right before she delivered the checkmate, she saw from the corner of her eye that Timothy strolled off.
Since Timothy had also won his game, Prudence would have to battle Timothy directly for first place. She was playing with the black pieces, and she found herself in a must-win situation. Timothy was playing with White and only needed to draw the game in order to win the tournament.
As Timothy extended his hand, the rest of the spectators began to applaud. And to Prudence's surprise, one of the people who began to applaud was Megan.
Following her tournament victory, Prudence was asked to give a winner’s speech. This was not something she had prepared, but she breathed in and delivered a monologue without any stammering.
“When I arrived fresh to the Swindon chess circuit five years ago, I was a dreamy little kid. I had dreams of making the game of chess come alive for me, and I hoped that I’d be among like-minded people when I entered my first tournament. It was on that day that my dream was shattered. Chess was much more fierce and competitive than I had imagined, and people were much better at it than I was. I scored no points, and made no friends. I came home sick that day, and I never wanted to feel that way ever again.
“The easy way is to just never try again, and for one moment I thought about that. But I never really wanted to quit. My coach told me that you only fail if you quit, and my mom said that quitting isn’t the family tradition.”
Some people laughed. Others stayed silent.
“Now, this is difficult for me to share, but I feel that I have to do this anyway. Last year, in trying to up my game and accelerate my path, I did the one thing that I should never have done. I cheated in my final round. It’s something that I can never take that back and have to live with for the rest of my life. I’ve never felt worse than after receiving that trophy I didn’t deserve. I betrayed the trust of the tournament, compromised my personal integrity, but most of all I had robbed someone else of the trophy and the applause from the audience that she rightfully deserved. And so, if you all would, please give a big hand to Sophie Morton de Verley, who should have been up here last year.”
The audience gave a big applause to Sophie, who looked startled. Upon meeting eyes, Prudence nodded expectantly. Sophie hesitated for a few seconds, then nodded back at Prudence and returned a warm smile that for the first time contained no traces of animosity.
“I don’t want to know how my life would have turned out if it wasn’t for my coach Emory Sherwin. He showed me what could’ve happened if I’d walk further down this path. Not knowing what the truth is anymore. Keeping up the lie and the façade all the time. Having such a flexible morality that believing that it’s justified to bend the rules just for my own personal gain.
“No. No prize, no admiration, no personal issue is worth sacrificing your personal integrity over. The honourable thing is always to carry yourself with dignity, no matter what the result. It’s better to lose honestly than to win by cheating. And if you must fail, then fail magnificently.”
At this point, Prudence looked to the side to search for Timothy and Jason, who both nodded in support.
“It's been an honour to play here in the Wiltshire championships, and I'm very grateful for the chance that I've been given to get myself together, greet the brand new day, and come out to play. In that spirit, I’ll finish with my favourite quote from my coach: ‘Losing a game of chess is like a phoenix bursting into flame: the ashes of one’s defeat prepare for a glorious rebirth.’ Thank you.”
Under the accompaniment of a loud applause, Prudence shook hands with the tournament director and Timothy and Jason, who shared second place. As she stepped off the stage, she saw Mr. Verley and Emory shake hands. She heard Megan sing “Dear Prudence,” but this time it was not in a taunting way. It was affectionate. Encouraging. Empowering, even.
She walked to the exit beaming like the sun when she heard a voice behind her. “Hey, Prude!” Prudence turned around and saw Sophie standing there. Fidgeting for a second, Sophie extended her hand. “Congratulations!” Megan walked up to them and did the same.
“Well, thanks!” Prudence said. “And please, call me Dawn.”
“So, erm, we cool?”
Prudence’s face lit up. “Come on,” she said, “let’s get some ice-cream.”
