Aleksey's Kingdom (14 page)

“If that is true, then why did you tell me he was an old Jesuit?” He was exaggerating slightly here, you understand. If I
had
said this, it was by implication only.

I didn’t like being put on the back foot, so rejoined, “You did not tell me about the Christmas ball or playing
pulu
. Why did you not invite me to come and play? Hey, Aleksey? Are you bored with me and prefer your pretty young soldiers to play with?”

“You would not play such a childish game if I did invite you!” He was right, I would not, but I had now successfully diverted him from his accusations about Etienne. “And you are so stupid! I would have danced with young
women
at the ball—as you would have been required to! We cannot dance with each other, can we?”

“Perhaps we could initiate dancing lessons in Cockston.”

“No! I am not going to be distracted by your ridiculous humor. Why did you lie about Etienne? He is… he is…. He is not old, and he is… not the sort of person I would want you to associate with.”

“What? Because he is so beautiful?”

“Oh, you are so stupid. He has other temptations for you besides his beauty.”

I was silent for a while. “You are jealous?”

“No! Of course not! Yes! What did you think? Are you really such a simpleton? Oh, Nikolai, every time I return to our cabin I wonder, just for a moment, if I will find you there—if you have not finally decided that being
tethered
to me is too restrictive for you and that you have flown back to your own people.”

I stopped Boudica with a hand upon her rein, but I did not want the others to catch us up, so then immediately walked on, but keeping Aleksey’s horse close. In all my fear of losing him—after all, who can keep sunlight and air, these necessities of life, entirely to himself?—it had not occurred to me that he might feel the same. That he feared losing me. Did he not understand that I only existed now through him? Clearly he did not. But then had I not been at some pains to hide this dependence from him for fear that he found weakness in such need?

He nodded sadly as if I’d articulated these thoughts and added, “If I do tether you, and I cannot say I particularly like that term, then I am very well aware what binds you—and it is not my
company
, is it, Niko? Sometimes, worse than fearing you will not be there when I return, I fear that on my journey home I will be suddenly struck down by some disfiguring disease, or become burnt upon my face, which is more likely, obviously, as people do not suddenly… anyway, that is what I think as I am riding: what will he say now? Will he gaze upon my ruined features and find anything he wants now? And then I answer myself: no, of course he—”

“So you babble just as much to yourself in imaginary conversations as you do to me in real ones?”

He smiled sadly. “You do not deny what I say, though, babble or not.”

I pursed my lips. “Talking is not my way, Aleksey. You know this. You knew this when we met.”

“You murmur endearments to Xavier all the time, telling him what a fine horse he is and how brave and beautiful. To me you once said that if I wanted to hear an endearment I should learn to bend over faster.”

“Well, there you go. What more proof of my devotion do you need?”

“I sometimes think that is our problem. We went from you being angry and annoyed with me all the time to….” The color rose upon his cold-whitened cheeks, and he did not complete his thought. I did it for him.

“You think we fucked too soon? I remember it as an agonizingly long drawn-out wait.”

He bit his lip and played with Boudica’s mane. “You have an uncanny knack, Nikolai, of getting to the heart of the matter sometimes.”

“Thank you.”

“That was not a compliment.”

“Oh.”

“I cannot believe you just used that word. You think we
fucked
?”

I quickly saw my error and tried to backtrack, but he was having none of it. He clenched his jaw. “But you are right in a way. We were arguing, and then we… fucked. Yes, perhaps that’s exactly what did happen. So we never… fell in love, did we?”

“
Love?
” Of course I did not mean to make that sound like a question: this, love? Of course I did not intend the little splutter of incredulity. No, I meant more
you speak of love now when it is snowing and I am hungry and we have a demon child trussed up in a cart and perhaps a dangerous lunatic stalking us?

I don’t think Aleksey got this, though.

His lips went a little pinched. “Perhaps in that case we should take a step back from… fucking… and fall in love first.”

“What? No, Aleksey, look—”

“After all, would that not be appropriate?
Courtly love
for a
king
?”

“What?” Repeating myself wasn’t helping, but I had a ghastly vision of him making me wear stockings or play the lute or, worse, compose an ode or something.

“Yes, we can begin tonight.”

“Begin what? What are you talking about?”

He smiled, looking at me for the first time since we had begun this awful conversation. “You can woo me this time.” He suddenly swung Boudica around and began to head back toward our companions. I copied him.

“Woo?
Woo?
” (This word does not improve upon being repeated; trust me.) “What do you—Aleksey!” But he resolutely continued going in the wrong direction, probably with a sorrowful yet brave expression upon his face.

“Y
OU
APPEAR
downcast, Doctor. Is your arm troubling you?” Major Parkinson kindly passed me some cheese, which I declined.

I saw a little glimmer of an opportunity, though, and said in a low, affected voice, “Yes, a little, I confess. I am concerned it may become infected.” I flicked my eyes up to gauge the success of my words.

Aleksey’s expression conveyed no particular distress at them, and he reached for the cheese himself. I sank back in my seat and muttered I might lose the use of my arm entirely. Aleksey began to peel an apple and commented thoughtfully, “I do hope that does not occur, Doctor, for I foresee you will have need of your arm for some while to come.”

“Well, yes, lunatics in the woods. Rum business that.”

I narrowed my eyes at Aleksey, ignoring the major. We had told our companions of Etienne’s warning during dinner, and the major was still brooding over its import. Aleksey took a bite of his apple.

“But do not worry, Your Highness, I have been burnt before—as you know. I must stop trying to save lives; it seems to do me no good.”

He chewed for a while, then swallowed. “I am only grateful that you had such a devoted nurse when you were so badly injured before, Doctor, or you would not have survived to reach the New World. Would you?” He took another bite.

The major tapped his glass with his spoon. “Hear, hear. I once had a pretty little filly nurse me through a bad case of gout. Devoted. Sweet little thing. Don’t recall her name now.”

I was staring at the apple. “I regret that devoted nurse is not with me now—and that I did not perhaps convey my thanks enough at the time. Or afterward.”

Aleksey smiled and continued eating his apple slowly.

The captain suddenly threw down his napkin. “Enough talk. Are we to find this raving man or not? I say we patrol out tonight. He has vital information, intelligence which we must have.”

Aleksey’s eyes brightened. “Yes, a night patrol, what do you say, Nik—Doctor?”

It seemed to me that with Aleksey in his current mood, I might as well spend the night out in the cold and dark on the back of a horse, for I would get nothing better from him. I shrugged. “I agree we should find him. But riding around in the dark will achieve nothing. He must be brought to us.”

F
OR
THE
first time, therefore, I had some conversation with the trappers—as my plan was to lay a trap for this man and lure him to us.

This time spent in their company did not increase my confidence in them or my liking for them. Other than carrying their muskets with a swagger, they seemed to know very little about trapping. Perhaps I was in such a low mood that I misinterpreted their silences, and we confused each other. (Sitting here in my cabin now, with my parchment before me, it all seems so obvious, but at the time it was not. Hindsight, as they say, is a very overrated thing.)

They were both young men, possibly younger than Aleksey, and now I had time to speak with them, their accents were hard to define. This was not that unusual for the New World, as this land attracts to it men from all places in the Old World and men who had been here and there and forced to move around a great deal. My own father, Isaiah Hartmann, had been born in the Netherlands. His parents had brought him to England, where he had met my mother, and then they had come here. So I could not pin down some of the words these young men said, but then they were not open of speech or countenance and would not catch my eye when they spoke to me. They both, however, studied my body very carefully, and trust me when I say that this was not in the way other men have studied me. I have a sense for these things. I think they noticed the scars mostly. They proved utterly useless to assist in my plan to lure the man to us, so eventually I left them to their meal and returned to the officers’ table.

Basically, my plan was to encircle our current encampment with small cooking fires—five, at a mile or two’s distance from the center and each other. Each fire would be manned: the reverend and his oldest son at one, the captain and the second Wright brother on the next. The lieutenant I paired with the last brother. The two soldiers took the forth position, and the trappers I put together at the final one. Aleksey and I would move between them, keeping vigil and relaying relevant information. The major we left to guard our camp and the woman and child (although I would have left him some reinforcements had I not effectively put the creature out of action). Upon the fires, we would put the one thing I thought guaranteed to bring a cold, starving man to us, however mad he might be: bacon. What man can resist the smell of gently cooking bacon on a frosty night? The smell would travel for some distance in the still, cold air and lure him in. It would, of course, lure other things, and I warned each of our sentries to be wary and watchful for bears.

Again, I was surprised I had to warn the trappers of this danger and did not think they could be quite sensible men. What man who makes his living snaring animals in these vast woods has to ask what a bear approaching sounds like? What experienced hunter has to ask whether it is better to shoot a bear or run?

I was distracted that night by the thought that I would not enjoy the privileges I normally enjoyed with Aleksey’s body, and thus my misgivings about these men were ignored. How differently things might have turned out had I thought with my brain and not my cock that night.

A
LEKSEY
AND
I planned to do our first circuit a couple of hours after the fires had been lit. Until then I had little to do but stare morosely at him across the camp table. I could have devised any number of more pleasurable things to do in those two hours, and he must have known this.

Finally he commented a little waspishly, “I have not seen much sign of wooing, Nikolai. Glaring at me is not doing it at all.”

“I am not glaring. I am composing something suitable in my head.”

“Oh, a poem? I hope I will like it.” He began to clean his nails with the tip of his knife. “Well?”

“I am stuck. I cannot think of anything that rhymes with arse.”

I expected him to throw down the knife and rise, furious, and that I could then appease his anger in my usual way, and we would then be able to indulge in those more pleasurable activities, but instead he replied mildly, “Farce. How about that? Farce seems very appropriate, does it not?”

Damn him. I nodded sourly. After a suitable juncture, I grumbled, “Then I need a rhyme for adore.”

He smiled. “Try abhor.”

I stood and made to go toward the horses, but he caught my arm, glancing to see if we could be observed. Then he realized he was holding my burnt arm and made a contrite face as he dropped it. “I’m sorry. I would like to hear your poem if it contains the word adore.”

“Well, I would not call it a poem, as such. I have not got much beyond that one word, for it seems to me to say all that needs to be said without further adornment.”

“Do you mean that?”

“That I have not got much further?”

He punched me, and we were back to normal. I would have pulled him into my arms, but we were too visible. Instead, I began to walk toward the river and down the bank to the water. It was very dark, of course, and we were soon out of sight of the good major.

I then pulled him into my arms and admitted hoarsely, “I am sorry I did not tell you about Etienne. But do you now see what he saw? When he called you my tether?”

“I have told you that I do not like that—”

“Hush. You are missing the point. There is no tether, Aleksey, except the one in my heart. I am like Faelan: a wild creature you bind to you by the force of your presence. Even burnt, even disfigured with the pox or some other disease that might leap upon you suddenly as you ride home to me, I would still be entirely bound.” He made a small snort of disbelief, but I added, “If you died, I would not find another. You are the end of all this for me.”

He held me off a little. “Do not say that! I would not have you live on alone. God’s teeth, why are we talking like this? I wish to heaven we had not come on this journey now! It was supposed to be fun, and instead we have had nothing but misery and confusion and sadness.”

He let my arms slide down to the small of his back, effectively pulling our hips together. “Then let us push back the darkness our own way.” I laid him down upon the bank, my hands moving—

“I am lying in a snowdrift.”