It has been very cold the last few days, and now I sit cross-legged beside the fire to finish. I had been about to relate my reaction to seeing Aleksey woken from his long, drugged sleep. Trying to recall in my mind what I had been thinking, a hand had suddenly landed hard upon my shoulder.
“What are you doing all this time? You have been here for hours. Are you crying?”
I did not turn but covered slightly the page I’d been working on. “Don’t be ridiculous. My eyes are watering from the cold. I have been writing.”
“Well, yes, I can see that. I’m not blind. What is it? A story? Is it about me?”
“It’s about a prince I once knew who became a king.”
“Huh, well I am not a king, so it cannot be about me. How boring. What happened to him?”
“I thought that he had died, but he had not. And that is why I wanted to write about him.”
“Because he didn’t die? You are very strange sometimes.”
“Because his death is still with me, and it colors every day that I live here. I return to this house and think it will be empty and that I am alone—that I deserve to be alone. I cannot breathe sometimes for fear. There, are you happy now? Leave me alone, please, and let me finish, and then maybe I can put this horror behind me for good.”
“Let me see some of it. I will help you.” He snatched up some of the papers and wandered away to read them out of my reach, for he knew I would snatch them back if I could. “This isn’t very interesting. It’s all about you and nothing about the prince. He sounds like a much more interesting character, if you ask me.” He came casually back to the rough desk where I was writing my narrative, ran his fingers through my hair to distract me, and took the rest of my work. This rather belied his claim that he found it boring. I let him keep it. There was no use fighting him in this mood. Besides, I wanted him to read it. I had always intended for him to read it, for wasn’t that the real reason I had started it, not to assuage the horror for me but to confess to him my great sin, so that I might be forgiven?
I turned and watched him read. He had curled up in a chair, his eyes scanning the pages quickly. Every so often he laughed or shook his head and commented on something. Finally he came to the last page and looked up at me expectantly. “Well?”
“Well what? You interrupted me, and that is why it is not finished.”
“What were you going to say? That he was quite well, remembered nothing of his time under the opiate…?” He trailed off and scratched distractedly at some mud upon his boots.
“Go on. What did he remember?”
“I suppose he might have remembered a very bright day and sun in his eyes confusing him and a very beautiful man telling him he loved him.”
“Well, I am pleased he remembered that, although I do not recall being too beautiful that day. Maybe I should go back and add it in. I was a little distracted at the time, being lifted onto a spike, so what he was thinking escaped my notice. Give it to me now, for I want to finish it.”
He pouted, still holding it. After a time, he asked softly, “So you thought I’d believed them? Before you knew I was drugged—you thought that I believed them and that I had ordered your arrest and torture and a sham execution? You believed I would do that to you. After everything….” He swallowed and looked up at me.
I nodded. “Yes, Aleksey, I did.” For it was he, of course.
I went and sat on the arm of his chair and put my arm around his neck, then pulled him close and kissed his hair. “I did, and I did not. I believed in you, but I did not believe in myself, do you see?”
“No.”
“I think I wanted to believe that you had not kept faith with me, for what was the alternative? That you knew me innocent but were too afraid to save me? And besides, there was no saving to be done, was there? I was a sodomite.”
“You still are—thankfully. So, this is what it has all been about? The sulking and the sighing and the nightmares still, and the—”
“I have not been sulking, and you have not heard me sigh once. But I do have nightmares, as you know. I think I have some cause, given I was tortured, nearly impaled, believed you dead, and then found you entombed and near to death, and then had to carry you across the mountains and the sea—”
“Stop exaggerating, I was perfectly able to ride after the first day, once I returned to my senses. You were the one who needed aid, if I remember correctly.”
“Well, I had been tortured, so I have some excuse.”
“You have not written much of that.”
“No, I have not written much of that.”
“Or of the men on board the ship you killed. Why am I finding all these things out now, Niko?”
“Because you are just a baby, and I do not want you to have nightmares too.”
“No one should have nightmares here.”
AND HE was right. Our new life was like some men must imagine heaven. We left Hesse-Davia. We left Europe. We returned here to my home in the colonies, although this is actually a long way from the Powponi lands and farther north, where very few settlements have reached. We rode around a vast tract of land, cutting trees, and said here, this place, and then again, here, marking the outermost limits of our land. We own a vast acreage of forest now, which amuses us, for we do nothing with it except declare it our kingdom. Aleksey lied when he said that he was not a king now. He is. He is the king of our new land and I his only subject.
We have a cabin by a lake, and I have taught him to hunt and fish, as I promised. People come across our land, and all are welcome, so long as they obey Aleksey’s laws. He has not actually made sodomy compulsory, but it is certainly not punished, should anyone wish to enjoy it. Nothing is punished in Aleksey’s kingdom but intolerance. Anyone who comes here thinking they will preach anything to us is removed. Sometimes we demand reparation too. We increase our small stock of horses this way, for Xavier and Boudica can only do so much, and their foals are few and far between. Xavier blames the long sea voyage I inflicted on him when we discuss these delicate issues. Boudica keeps her thoughts to herself, as well she might, being the royal horse of such an important king.
Perhaps I do not need to finish my narration after all. Aleksey burst in upon the end of it as full of life and light and love as he burst in at the beginning. I loved him then, and I love him now. His only comment on my lack of faith—the guilt haunting me that I had thought he betrayed me? He said that as I had finally admitted I loved him, albeit when he was drugged and could not appreciate it fully, then he’d better say it back to me. He did. He said it that night and for the next three days, which is why my tale was interrupted. We have no courtiers, no royal duties, no one else at all in our kingdom, so when we want to talk about love and make love, in the many ways we enjoy, we do. We stayed in bed for three days. But I have left him asleep for a while to return to this and finish it, for what it is worth. My body aches from Aleksey’s love, so in many ways its lack of ending speaks for itself.
IF I were to finish, I would relate how Stephen now reigns in Hesse-Davia, just as Aleksey wanted, for we do have letters from Johan occasionally. Sometimes a very young heart with nothing but good intentions and kindness will do better than all the wisdom in the world. Johan plans to join us here one day and bring his young bride, Anastasia. I do not believe this, but Aleksey assures me that it is so. Apparently the old soldier was not in awe of her at all, and all the silences and long looks during our reforming meetings had an entirely different provenance. I think I was a little too preoccupied with the subject of my great passion to notice Johan’s.
John? Did his hair stop thinning dramatically one night? Did his nose ever hang from Xavier’s bridle? Xavier will tell you that it did, but you are most probably a man of science and do not listen to horses boasting. And Harold. Well, Harold may have discovered that it is a very bad idea to anger the head of an army. He may have discovered that the rousing of hornets is not advisable, unless you can run very far and very fast, as could Aleksey
and I. Hornets, once stirred, are indiscriminate in their venomous attacks. All fall prey.
SO, ALEKSEY brought me and Faelan and our horses and his royal blood to his new kingdom in the Americas. He demands and orders and commands, as he always did. As he demands of me things I am more than willing to give, orders me to do things I would do anyway, and his commands exactly coincide with my designs, we rub along very happily together.
I suspect we will for a very long time to come.
About the Author
JOHN WILTSHIRE spent twenty-two years in the military, perfecting the art of looking busy whilst secretly writing. He left as a senior officer when his tunnel was ready for use. He is now living in New Zealand until he can raise enough money to leave. Although he has no plans to return to the army, he can occasionally be caught polishing his medals.
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: http://johnwiltshire.co.nz
A Royal Affair Page 30
