The Eyes of a King (30 page)

I couldn’t pray to God, so I prayed to Aldebaran. I prayed to him to take me to another place, as though he was an angel who could save me now. I concentrated all my mind on it, and all my powers. A long time passed.

An hour or more I must have sat there without moving. Perhaps I fell asleep; I could not tell. But next thing I knew, I was dreaming. I could see mist in front of my eyes. I was certain that I was dreaming—that it was not real—but I knew more than anything that I did not want to wake. Fog was drifting like smoke around me, and I fought to keep it there. And then I could hear voices speaking from a long way off.

A
ldebaran forgot what he was doing and gazed into the mist that was thickening over the English hills. “What?” said Ryan, beside him.

“Nothing,” said Aldebaran after a moment, bending his head over the engine of the old car. “Nothing. Try that again.”

Ryan turned the key. The engine gave a shuddering cough. He leaned against the side of the car and shivered. “It is growing colder. The middle of July and it might as well be winter.”

“English weather,” said Aldebaran. “It is very—”

But Ryan never heard what he had been going to say about the
English weather, because he frowned, still gazing into the mist, and then bent over the engine again. “It is unpredictable,” said Ryan. “Uncle, we are in the middle of the road; perhaps we should move the car.”

Aldebaran did not answer.

A few yards away, beyond the mist, Anna was walking toward them. She had been lost on the hill for half an hour when she heard the car engine coughing and started toward the sound. The fog was clinging to her hair in droplets and she tried to brush it off now, shifting her grip on the suitcase with her other hand. The headlights were cutting beams through the mist. She could make out the dark shape of the car and two people, a middle-aged man and a boy moving beside it. The man looked up as she approached.

“Are you lost?” he said. “If you need directions we can probably help you.” He went on looking at her thoughtfully, as though he recognized her.

An engine was approaching from somewhere. A motorbike appeared suddenly out of the mist and swerved to avoid the car, its tires screaming on the road. The man turned, startled, as it vanished again. “We should move the car. Ryan, help me.”

The boy put his shoulder against the side of the car. Anna put down her suitcase and went to the other side, behind the man. “You are very kind,” he said, turning to her. “Go carefully, and stop when I tell you. There is a steep drop a few feet farther on this side.”

Across the roof of the car, the boy’s eyes met Anna’s. His were dark as water, close to black. Even after the car was resting safely on the verge, their eyes remained on each other’s for a moment before they looked away. “You had best wait here for a while,” the
man told Anna. “Do not think about trying to go on. The road does not widen for a mile or more in either direction, and cars come up suddenly in this fog.” She nodded. They waited in silence while the man bent over the engine again. Somewhere beyond the mist, a bird sang a few high notes.

“Where are you going?” the boy asked Anna then, leaning on the side of the car and fixing his dark eyes on her. “You must be on holiday, with that suitcase.”

“No, I’m working. At Hillview Hotel, somewhere on the other side of the valley. My aunt runs it; I’m working for her.”

“The manager of Hillview is your aunt?” said the boy. “She is our nearest neighbor; we know Monica Bailey well.”

“Monica Devere,” said Anna, without thinking. Bailey had been her aunt’s married name and she never used it now.

The man straightened up suddenly and crashed his head against the raised hood of the car. “Monica Devere?” he asked her.

“Yes,” said Anna. There was a silence. “Why do you want to know?”

“No reason.” The man folded his arms and looked out into the mist, then turned back to her. “The Devere family have a history in this part of England, don’t they?”

“I suppose. That’s why Monica came back here: all our family used to live here.”

The man nodded, his eyes still on her, then adjusted something in the engine and slammed down the hood. “Should you not be in school?” he said. “How old are you?”

“Fifteen. It finished yesterday. It finished for the summer, so I came up here.”

“I am not at school,” said the boy. “My uncle teaches me at
home.” He ran a hand through his black hair. The way he did it was careless and nearly arrogant. He held out his hand. “I’m glad to meet you. Ryan Donahue. My uncle is Arthur.”

“Arthur Field,” said the man, taking her hand in turn. She shook his hand, then wiped the oil off her fingers. “Sorry,” said Arthur Field. “Anyway, I am glad to meet you.”

“But I have not asked you what your name is,” said Ryan.

“It’s Anna.”

“That would be Ariana originally?” said the man. He wiped his hands on a rag, then threw it into the backseat of the car and straightened up with a faint smile.

Anna was staring at him in silence. “How did you know?” she said eventually. “It’s only on my birth certificate.”

“Just a lucky guess.”

The boy touched her arm, making her start. “You must not let my uncle worry you,” he said. “He likes to pretend to be a mind reader. But where we come from, every Anna is an Ariana. It is one of the old names there.”

She nodded, but she was not entirely convinced. There was something about this man. He had turned back to the car, and they both watched him in silence. “It will work this time,” he said. “This will be the time.” He turned the key. The engine coughed, and coughed again, and rattled to life. “And the fog is clearing at last,” he said, leaving the engine running. He went to the edge of the verge and looked out into the expanse of white.

Anna glanced around. It looked as dense as ever, blurring even the wall at the other side of the road. And then suddenly it was drifting backward. A tree emerged, and a rock. And a few minutes later, the edge of a stretch of water was glinting far below them, and hills appeared against the sky.

Someone was hammering on the door of the bathroom. I raised my head from my knees and came back. It was raining hard outside. “Leo?” someone was calling. It was Father Dunstan’s voice.

I opened the door and blinked at him. “You look exhausted,” he said. “Were you asleep?” I did not know. I had been dreaming I was far away from here, but everything was coming back to me now. Stirling.

I caught hold of the door frame to keep myself steady. “You have not slept properly in days, after all,” Father Dunstan was saying. Grandmother was beside him, peering at me anxiously through the tears in her eyes. “Leo, listen. There is a man here—” said Father Dunstan.

“Is this the boy?” said someone else, whose voice I did not recognize. I looked up and saw that a soldier was standing at the edge of the yard. He approached me now, blinking against the rain. “Are you Leonard North?”

I nodded. “Sorry about this,” he said, turning to Grandmother, the priest, and then back to me. “You have been called up to report for military service.”

I
just looked at him, still confused. He was holding out a uniform, asking me to put it on, and trying to hand me a rifle. “What?” exclaimed Grandmother, panicking already. “What are you talking about?”

“Have you not read the newspapers?” he said.

We all looked at him in silence. “Due to the heavy casualties at the border, we have had to pull out all the troops we can
spare from elsewhere. As a result, we are obliged to bring in cadets from all major cities to fill in the vacant posts.”

“You cannot send children to fight your war for you,” said Father Dunstan. That was the only time I ever heard him outspoken about anything.

“No, no,” said the man. “You misunderstand me. None of the cadets will be fighting; they are only carrying out simple duties—guarding the gates, running messages, patrolling the city, and so on. I assure you, they will not see frontline action. And the only cadets we are bringing in are Ninth Year pupils, who are almost ready to join the army anyway. We need to free the privates who are currently carrying out these duties, so that they can fight. I know this is regrettable, but—”

“He buried his brother only this morning,” said Father Dunstan in an undertone. I still heard it. “Can you expect him to go now?”

The soldier tried to apologize to me, but I turned away. “If he speaks to the sergeant, I am sure he will be released,” he said to Father Dunstan. “We are not strictly enforcing conscription in circumstances like this. If Leonard puts this uniform on, just for formality, and speaks to the sergeant—”

It was too loud suddenly, and I didn’t want to hear any of this. I took the uniform from him and went upstairs to put it on. I could still hear Father Dunstan arguing with the private, but at least it was quieter in the apartment.

I put on the uniform. There was what looked like a bullet hole in the jacket. I wondered if they had taken it off a dead man. I didn’t care. Seeing Stirling’s christening bracelet where I had left it, I picked it up and put it onto my arm, sliding it up so that it lay beneath my own and the names Leonard Joseph
North and Stirling Gabriel North were together. It was all right, because I had been told to do something and now I was doing it. There was no choice about it, and no thought. It was still raining; I picked up my overcoat and put that on too.

They were standing in the hall when I went down. “Where are you taking them?” Father Dunstan was asking.

“I cannot tell you,” said the private. “This is a confidential operation; I cannot tell you where troops will be deployed.”

“The border?” cried Grandmother. “It is the border, isn’t it? You cannot take him! He will catch silent fever, and he will die. Please, keep him in the city.”

The private was trying to reassure her, but she went on wailing. “Sergeant Daniros will probably send him straight back,” the man said. “Come out and speak to him now.”

I went to the door and the man followed, Grandmother and Father Dunstan behind us. A group of soldiers were huddled against the front wall of the building, trying to shelter from the rain that gusted in all directions. There were about twenty—cadets, like me, but wearing privates’ uniforms. “Leonard North?” said a man—the sergeant—looking down at a soaked piece of paper.

The other soldier nodded. “That is him. Sir, this boy—”

“I want you to fetch the others and catch us up,” the sergeant interrupted. “We are running late. Go now. Here is the list.”

The private glanced at me, then hurried off through the rain. The sergeant turned to us. Grandmother was clinging to my arm, openly crying. “I will not let him go!” she told the sergeant. “I will not.”

“I really feel that Leonard would be better off here in the
city,” began Father Dunstan, stepping close to the sergeant. “The circumstances are such that—”

“I do not want to hear about your circumstances,” said the sergeant. “We have had these scenes at every bloody house.”

“But, sir—” began Father Dunstan again.

“Listen,” said the sergeant. “The boy is perfectly willing to come. If he does not want to join us, we can talk about your circumstances then. If he wants to come with us, there is nothing further to discuss. North, are you willing to join up?”