He didn't. He was forcibly changed. The night before those two days when he mysteriously went missing, he was shot with a sagitta. He spent the following two days in hiding, getting used to his new form. Meanwhile, he, his mother the queen, the rest of the royal family, and their trusted supporters worked out how to respond to this.
Grand Normandy was a tiny kingdom, at war, just thrown into a succession crisis by an attack by a very mysterious enemy. The first priority, they decided, was to resolve the succession crisis while maintaining maximum solidarity. Maintaining the appearance of solidarity was a necessary part of this.
Prince Hugh was already focused on forestalling any repeat of the Dessalonian attack. He had spoken of giving the Grand Norman centaurs, victims of the transformative attack, a chance at retaliation. That was the basis of the idea for the Dedicated Cavalry. Prince Hugh pretended his transformation was his own idea, an opening move in the creation of the Dedicated Cavalry. Knowing that the idea of a Centaur King would only deepen the succession crisis, he also threw his weight behind his mother's election.
Again, they didn't. They were forced. Prince Hugh was shot by Dominic FitzMichael, working with his brother Lucas. They tried to make the deed look like the work of an outsider, to be presumed a Dessalonian, but they were clumsy. Prince Hugh glimpsed his attacker's face in a reflection, and soon his wife and mother and their close circle all knew.
The royals and their circle decided on secrecy and bound themselves with geases enforcing this, but by the time they did so, word had leaked a little further. Lord Alistair Alain determined to take vengeance for the prince. He collected three supporters and a requisite number of sagittae. Under pretext of political negotiation, he gathered all the adult FitzMichaels at their own home, then held them at gunpoint.
He told them they had meddled with the royal succession, so, in punishment, their own succession would be terminated. But they had not killed the prince, only transformed him, so the same would happen to them. They could then take a geas of secrecy or have it be known that their family had assaulted the prince—which would of course disgrace their name and almost certainly get all of them, young and old, male and female, killed by one partisan or another. Into the bargain, it would endanger the stability of the whole kingdom.
They were shot and transformed. The males were shot first and became centaurs. When the first two female FitzMichaels were shot, nothing happened except wounds to the shoulder. When the third, Janine FitzMichael, was shot, she did not transform. Instead, an improbable amount of blood gushed from the wound and congealed into a mare. Everyone, attackers and victims alike, was dumbfounded. Alain and his supporters shot no more women.
All the adult FitzMichaels, centaurs and women, swore to secrecy. It was left to them to explain to little Gerald that all of the (former) men were going off to join the new Dedicated Cavalry and he could come too. Mercifully, he was delighted. And was duly shot and transformed.
Dominic FitzMichael, the one who shot Prince Hugh, is the one described by Fletcher as "cousin: committed suicide."
Lucas FitzMichael, his accomplice, is the one described as "cousin: the expedition came back without him, fate unknown."
Their father and grandfather, their uncle the Baron FitzMichael, and their cousin the baron's heir, along with young Gerald and the other FitzMichaels, male and female, were not involved at all. The men were transformed anyway, the women lost their men, Janine FitzMichael acquired a bond-mare she had to spend the rest of her life with, and all were bound to secrecy. The men went off to war; the women went into a long seclusion.
No one knows what the adult Gerald FitzMichael now knows or suspects.
All this, however, was done without the knowledge of the royal family, who were incensed. The retaliation was not Alain's to initiate, unjustly broad, and bound to bring suspicion on the royal family. Hugh would have sifted out the guilty and punished them alone, using their crime as blackmail material to control the rest of the FitzMichaels. Now that was impossible.
Alain and his accomplices were summoned to Normand House, the royal residence in England. The royals were further incensed to find Alain was now a centaur, transformed by his own hand. This had been the punishment Hugh had had in mind, and he was now forestalled. Alain was made to shoot and transform his associates and all four of them were sent into the Dedicated Cavalry, their lips bound by secrecy oaths.
To sort out the politics: It had nothing to do with the liberal/conservative divide. The FitzMichaels were, in their own opinion, a branch of the royal family and, again in their own opinion, ought to have been candidates for the throne. Dominic and Lucas FitzMichael shot Prince Hugh, knowing his transformation would make his election politically impossible. They hoped to renew their family's frequent claim to royalty and, in this extreme situation, get the baron, their father, elected and crowned. At the least, they hoped to see their family advance in rank nearer to the throne.
Alain and his accomplices shot the FitzMichaels in retaliation. The royals retaliated on Alain & Co. and bound everyone to secrecy to forestall a vendetta cycle of transformations that would probably soon escalate to murders, civil chaos, and the end of Grand Normandy. Thanks to Alain, the royals were suspected of squelching the FitzMichaels despite any amount of silence oaths. Nor would any subsequent royal favors to the FitzMichaels prevent that.
Captain Alain, Fletcher's opposite number in the French cavalry base at Saint-Eloi-sur-Mer, is the grandson of Lord Alistair Alain. He has no idea of his family history. Neither he nor Fletcher know any of this.
It may simply be that his conscience would not let him go that far.
Also, like every Grand Norman noble, he was geas-bound by a loyalty oath more strict and specific than the loose, general oath all Grand Normans take on coming of age. The terms of his oath would certainly have done something dire to him if he simply assassinated a prince and candidate for the crown—cause him to drop dead, possibly.
Geases can be undone, but the process is slow, expensive, and, in this case, a dangerous piece of espionage.
Transformation, on the other hand, cost FitzMichael much less in geased punishment. He knew it was not serious injury, and he did not yet know (no one in Grand Normandy yet knew) that the transformation was virtually impossible to undo. It was still an attack, and that did cost FitzMichael, in psychosomatic shock. He was willing to pay that price.
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Copyright © Earl Wajenberg, 2017