The Eyes of a King (50 page)

With a great effort, I wrote,
I do.

“Can I tell you everything? You won’t mind? Only I feel as if I’ll go mad sometimes, not telling anyone.” I nodded, to tell her to go on. I wished she would talk about herself, not me. I think she realized it.

“It’s just …” She took a gulp of air. “I’ll try to explain. I feel so ashamed, Leo.” She took another gasping breath. “I used to have such a beautiful life. I didn’t have to worry about anything, and I had a pony, and a lovely house, and my mother and father were always happy. I was a completely different person. I used to look at places like this and think the people who lived in
them just weren’t real. I told you already about how I was rich, before.” I nodded. “But I think when I told you, Leo, I gave the impression it was a long time ago.”

She shook her head. “You know, when you have a beautiful life, you think it will last forever. And I wasn’t just rich, I was happy. But I can see now that no one’s happy for very long. Something spoils it.” She wiped the tears from her face with her palms, but they went on falling. “I’m all right; things aren’t so bad now. I know there are other things besides being happy. Other things to live for. There have to be, otherwise how can you bear it?” Then I realized she wasn’t only talking about herself.

“I know that, but sometimes I just wish everything was simple like it used to be. I used to go to balls and parties with all sorts of rich and famous people. And I’d meet young men, and flirt with them, and see my father looking sort of embarrassed and pleased at the same time, you know, and I used to dream about marrying a rich man. All I worried about was what I would wear or whether I would remember to curtsy. I worry so much these days. And I know it’s my own fault, but … Can I tell you about Anselm’s father?” I nodded.

“I met him at a ball, at his house. We danced together. That was when I was fourteen. I was such a silly, frivolous girl; I didn’t really think about anything, and I didn’t consider who he was or whether I liked him. I just liked dancing. And he led me out of the ballroom, and I just thought we were going out to the balcony. And I went along with it, because I liked the way he looked at me, like he really loved me, and I liked the way everyone else talked about it behind their hands.

“And he led me farther, away from all the guests, and I
knew why—of course I did. I must have done.” She stared intently at her hand clasped in mine. They were both shaking, and I could not tell whose had started it. “I was pretending to myself that I didn’t realize what he was thinking. I don’t know. And he took me to his bedroom. I should have just run away, but I was afraid because he was so important. An important man in government, and my father always said that you should be careful of those. And anyway, I thought maybe I loved him. I was quite wild. Several boys had asked me to marry them, and I’d come close to it with some of them. But it’s different with boys your own age.”

She was shaking as badly as I was. “Oh, Leo, it was such a terrible mistake. Sometimes I just go over it in my head and I think I’m falling, and I imagine that I ran away, but I didn’t. As soon as he locked the door, I realized it was a terrible mistake. I was too scared to say anything, and then it was too late and he wouldn’t listen even when I did. And now I’ve ended up here.

“I used to worry that my father would die out at the border and it would all be my fault. When Anselm’s father found out I was pregnant, he asked me to marry him, but I couldn’t. I hated him. I hated him as soon as he locked that door. And I was frightened of him. I said I’d marry him, but I got so ill with worry that my father just wouldn’t let me. My mother said I should, but my father swore he’d die before I married that man. And so Anselm’s father got angry, and he told Lucien, and Lucien made my father lose his job at the bank and have to become a soldier. And I was terrified to tell anyone, in case he might have my father killed. So no one knows who Anselm’s father is except my mother and father
and me. And I just can’t bear my own baby being half a man I hate.”

She was still sobbing. “I thought I’d got over all this, but then my father came back from the border and I heard that Anselm’s father was dead, and now I’m so confused I don’t know what to think. It’s just brought everything up again. And I’ve been going almost mad, unable to talk to anyone about it. I feel almost as if I loved him, and I feel guilty for not marrying him, but I don’t know why. I hated him.”

Then I remembered something. I started shaking harder than ever. I picked up the paper and scrawled desperately,
Who was Anselm’s father?

“Oh, Leo, I can’t tell you. I can’t tell anyone. I just can’t.” She looked at me with pleading eyes, and I knew then that she was going to. And I wrote suddenly,
Don’t.

I was shaking badly, and she was shaking too, and she put her arms around me, and we both cried. Like two lost children, and no one to comfort us. “I know you must despise me, Leo,” she sobbed. “I can’t bear Anselm being that man’s son. I thought I’d be glad to see him dead, but I just feel so guilty. He was killed …” She pressed her face to my shoulder. “He was killed early on, the first night when the rebels were fighting the soldiers in the streets. A lot of government men were killed that first night.”

I tightened my grip on her arm. She pulled away from me, tears still falling down her cheeks, and picked up Anselm. The tears fell like jewels onto the baby’s face. “Leo, listen,” she said. “I have just read that newspaper. Everything is changing again.” She was still sobbing while she spoke. “I don’t know what I think anymore. But it’s true—the king is coming back. Lucien is dead. They are calling it a revolution.”

M
uch later, when she had stopped crying enough to speak properly and my fit of shaking had subsided, she told me everything that was in that newspaper, as well as she could. I would not believe it. Then she led me to the window and opened it wide and pointed up to the castle. “Didn’t you recognize the flags?” she said. “Orange, like they always used to be, until we were five years old. Don’t you remember?”

I had blotted out most of my childhood after my mother and father had gone away. But standing there by the window—leaning out to glimpse a sliver of a distant tower with a flag flying from it in the moonlight—standing there and looking up, I remembered.

I thought I was going to tell her then. I thought I would tell her about Ahira. But I could not. I picked up the paper she had handed me, and hesitated. And then I wrote instead,
Let me tell you something. A story, about something that happened before Stirling was gone.

It was strange how the words I wrote could sound so measured and sane while the tears were running down my cheeks and my heart felt as though it was broken. I was trying to take us both away from that dismal room, to another place. I prayed that it would work and started telling her, in writing that shook as badly as Grandmother’s, about the book that I had found. About how the story had appeared, and the words that Stirling and I had read. And all of it—even that I had torn the book in half and thrown it away. And that it was me who had written those words all the time.

“You have powers?” said Maria, the tears still breaking up
her voice. “I knew. I think I always knew.” She cried harder. “If I was like you, I would stay there all the time. I would dream I was in England for the rest of my life, rather than have to live here.” She gripped my hands. “Can you see England now?” she said. “Tell me about it—please, Leo.”

But I could not. So I put my arms around her instead, and she hugged the baby to her, and we waited for it to get light.

T
he moonlight glinted in the tears on Ryan’s face. Anna sat up and looked at him. The light was what had woken her, running out across the lake, over the lawn, and in at the window, so that the room grew pale as ice. She could not tell how many hours had passed. He had been watching the stars from her window as she had fallen to sleep that night, and now here he was crying. “What is it?” she said.

He started and turned. “I thought you were asleep.” He brushed the tears off his face hastily. “I don’t know, Anna. I seem always to be reduced to tears these days. My uncle would never stand for this behavior.” He tried to laugh but could not quite bring himself to do it.

She sat on the edge of the bed and watched him. “What was it that made you cry?”

“It was what Aldebaran wrote about being back at home.” He had a book in his hands, but he closed it now. “It made me want to go back to my country. It made me remember. I have been here so long, I started to think this was my place.”

He put down the book and blinked the tears out of his eyes. “And you dancing this evening. Perhaps I drank too much at dinner.
Maybe that was it. Does Monica always celebrate expensive bookings like that?”

“She does now. Things have been bad here for a while, and then a group booking for September—it might be what carries us through.”

He nodded, still brushing the tears from his face. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know why I was crying.”

“I understand,” she said. “You don’t have to tell me. I know that you must miss your home.”

He caught hold of her hand. They sat in silence. “I suppose you have finished making up that dance,” he said then.

“Yes. Tonight I finished it.”

He wound his fingers through hers, frowning as though he was concentrating only on that. Then he let go of her hand and closed his eyes and said, “Anna.”

Out across the lake the clock chimed two. The stars had grown brighter and closer outside the window, but neither of them noticed. “Ryan, listen,” she said, and touched his shoulder lightly. But she did not go on.

He put his hand to the side of her face and looked at her for a moment. Then he drew back again and shut his eyes. “You know how I feel,” he said. “Maybe I should go. It is late.”

“Don’t go.”

He turned his back to her and sat on the edge of the bed. She put her arms around his shoulders suddenly. Her cheek was against his, and she could feel his jaw move as he swallowed. She thought about stepping away from him. Instead, she kissed the side of his face.

And then he turned and he was kissing her, saying, “Anna. Anna.”

The moonlight caught them in its beam. “Tell me to leave,” he said. “Just tell me and I will.” She shook her head.

The light was as solid as water, turning his face to silver, and her own arms around his neck looked like someone else’s in that light. Then she was lying beside him, and he watched her face for a moment without moving. “Anna, do you love me?” he said.

“Why are you asking me?”

“Because I have to know, otherwise—”

“Yes,” she said. “Of course I do.”

He laughed quietly, as though he could not believe her, and then looked up and met her eyes. “I am going home,” he said. “Tomorrow maybe, or the next day. I didn’t know how I could tell you—Anna, I love you. I honestly do, and I would far rather stay, I swear—” He stopped and shut his eyes. “I don’t know if I should be here. Should I leave?”

“Stay here,” she said. “Don’t say anything else, just stay.”