The Book of Kings

by Cynthia Voigt

  “A soldier came into the room,” Joachim told them, and they nodded as if this was what they’d expected.

  “He said something, short, sharp. He took out a notebook and a pencil. The mother shook her head. Two, three times he said it and each time she shook her head, until at the end she said something and waved her hand, as if to say, See for yourself, and he wrote something in his notebook. The old woman just watched him and so did I, and I didn’t have to pretend to be afraid. He looked—he looked like the kind of man who might do anything, anything he wanted at any moment. And he was just one of the ordinary soldiers,” Joachim said.

  “Oh my.” Max’s grandmother put her head into her hands. “Oh my oh my.”

  “Then what?” Tomi asked.

  “Then he went away. Angry, I think, and we stayed where we were, listening to be sure he didn’t come back.”

  “How long?” Colly asked.

  Joachim shook his head, he didn’t know. “Then they let me get out of the bed. The children came back. I wanted to help, but she couldn’t understand what little Spanish I remember, so—so I gave her the sketch pad.”

  “She can draw?” Grammie asked, wonder in her voice.

  “Anyone can draw. Well, enough to show a stick-figure child belly down on what had to be a horse, pinned there by the rider. I asked, using signs, pointing at the picture, pointing at the door, if the rider was that same soldier. She said no, but she might not have understood me because she spread out her arms, as if she was trying to be a bird on the hunt, which makes no sense.”

  “Taking children? Kidnapping them? Why?” Colly asked.

  Tomi’s question was more practical. “Taking them where?”

  “I think the mines. At least, she pointed in that direction when I asked— Well, I shaded my eyes like a portrait of a mariner peering into the distance and she seemed to understand. Then they shooed me off,” Joachim concluded.

  “You’d be a danger to them,” Grammie said.

  “We didn’t see any children today except for really little ones,” Tomi remembered.

  Then Grammie reported to Joachim and Colly on the scarcity of goods offered in the plaza—a few yams, a few eggs, a bowl of cornmeal—and the contrast of that with the well-stocked shelves at Stefano’s store, with its supplies of vegetables and canned goods, French soaps and bolts of silk cloth. “The women who waited on us were all smiles. They didn’t speak a word, but their smiles never left their faces.”

  “They were very friendly,” Tomi agreed.

  At his tone of voice, Colly, who had not gone with them to the mercado, wondered, “But?”

  “But maybe too friendly?” Tomi answered. “As if they were afraid not to smile. Afraid of us? Or someone I couldn’t see, watching? Afraid of one another?”

  “They didn’t take our coins, they kept saying Balcor, Balcor,” Grammie reported. “Is the General paying our bills?”

  “What is going on in this country?” Joachim wondered.

  —

  Golden-haired Elizaveta Maddalena Antonetta Carrera y Carrera turned wide-set, velvety brown eyes on the Envoy, who her father said was a Baron in his own land and was, besides, a handsome man, if you didn’t mind dark red hair. Then she modestly lowered her attention to her soup plate so that he could appreciate her long eyelashes, and reflected that she preferred dark-headed men, next to whom her golden beauty appeared to more advantage. But she knew what her father expected of her and she asked the Baron the kinds of questions an eager girl should ask about his long sea voyage. Shyly, she confided that she hoped someday to take such a voyage as her honeymoon, and let him see how much she enjoyed imagining the pleasures awaiting her. “Did the ladies have new gowns for every evening? Did everyone take part, all the gentlemen and ladies, in the morning promenades? Did the chef present dessert soufflés? Was there not also an orchestra?”

  The Baron stubbornly refused to flirt with her. Instead, he told her the plain truth and asked straightforward questions. “Often the ladies sat in deck chairs, to read books from the ship’s library. Do you think your Queen would have done that?” or “The orchestra was an array of stringed instruments, plus a piano. I’m sure your King has many more skillful musicians at his command?”

  He was always trying to talk about the King, she complained to herself, or the Queen. She told him, “The King does not dance, I have heard. There have been no coronation balls. Not even a feast,” and she smiled so that he could admire her perfect teeth.

  “Perhaps when summer has arrived and the weather is fair, the King will offer a feast and a ball. For I think he must be happy in his good fortune?”

  Elizaveta detected in his eyes the hope to be here for that occasion and especially the hope to dance with her. He might be a Baron and he might come from a more civilized country, but was he not a man? She lowered her eyes again, as if to conceal her thoughts from him so that he could hope that she, too, longed for a chance to waltz in his arms.

  She might even think of marrying him, if her father wished her to. In any case, new faces at the table were welcome, and this embassy offered not only this Baron but also a businessman of some sort and a secretary for her sisters. Since the army had arrived to save them, it was the Captain her father had seated her beside—a man of crude manners and conversation who either relentlessly praised her beauty or endlessly boasted of his prowess in battle, in duels, in any conflict; a man, also, whose long, spidery fingers made her skin crawl as she watched them wrap around one of the heavy silver forks. Only once had she been placed next to the General, who was the most important man in Andesia and widely traveled, besides. On that occasion, the General had advised her to study hard at her English. “It is good for a young woman to be educated,” he said. He had called her a woman and not a girl, and he had seemed confident that she was capable of learning. “Educated in languages, of course,” the General said, “but also in history. If you know something of history, you will be better able to understand the things that happen in the world, and the people who make them happen.” He had spoken seriously but not sternly, and he had seemed interested in her, Elizaveta, not in her beauty. For this reason, Elizaveta had never been able to fear the General, as the others did.

  She had followed his advice, and was proud of having done so even if she had not yet been able to display her achievements to him. But perhaps now, when he returned and there was this visiting party to be entertained, she could hope to talk with him again. Sometimes she did not want to be her father’s beautiful daughter—although, to be honest, even less did she want to be one of her mother’s ordinary daughters. Her sisters, that evening, were seated far down the table with the Secretary between them. Elizaveta did not care for the Secretary, who was not handsome or even interesting to look at, and apparently had nothing to say for himself, since she could see how her sisters were chattering away and he only listening. The eyes of this Secretary made her uneasy. They were an odd stone-and-earth shade, the colors of the high mountains that walled her in, she sometimes thought, and kept her safe, as she thought at other times. Elizaveta Carrera y Carrera longed to cross those mountains, and feared that she might not find her way back. And that she might not wish to find her way back. The mountains made her uneasy, so she turned her attention away from the Secretary, and his eyes.

  The businessman, on the other hand, was like the jolly father in an English story. Her own father was not at all jolly, even less so in these days than before, and Elizaveta might have been beautiful but that didn’t mean she was silly, or blind. She wondered what it was about this embassy from far away that had her father so worried.

  At that moment, her father was smiling with satisfaction as the businessman talked earnestly to his quiet little cousin Juan Antonio, presentable enough now that he had changed out of the rough clothing he had worn for his day’s overseeing of the mine operations. How could her father not be happy tonight, Elizaveta thought, with his long dining room lit by heavy crystal chandeliers and wide silver can
delabras? This was a room where the guests were served elegant foods on white porcelain plates edged in gold, where the silverware had been forged from the output of their own mine, heavy forks and spoons and knives, each incised with an ornate C. The entire Carrera y Carrera family was present: both cousins and all their children, except for the boys of eight and more years, who were off at one school or another, and those children judged too young for the company; all the wives, in richly colored, many-flounced satin, displaying costly jewels; and the three mine owners in bright cummerbunds and silver buttons. Two guitars played softly in an anteroom…How could her father be anything but happy?

  “Perhaps there will be a ball to honor you,” she said to the Baron, looking up at him through thick lashes, flirtatiously, for everyone to see and admire, like the foolish, careless beauty they were all so sure she was.

  —

  “I feel sorry for her,” Ari said when the evening had at last ended and soldiers had escorted them back to the guesthouse, where they could share news of the evening with the whole party.

  “Her father is all pride and does nothing, as far as I can tell,” Mr. Bendiff said. “He’s lucky he’s got those cousins to keep things in order. He doesn’t understand anything about running a business.”

  “They certainly live well,” Ari said.

  “Expensively,” Mr. Bendiff agreed, adding, “None of them will talk about the bomb,” before he asked, “What did you boys learn?”

  Max reported first. “Soldiers aren’t allowed inside the Carrera y Carrera compound. Malpenso often dines with them, but he’s a captain, not a soldier. El Capitán, the sisters call him, and I don’t think they like him, although, since he’s always left to Elizaveta, they don’t worry about him. The one time the General came, only Elizaveta was allowed to be there. Her sisters had to dine in the nursery with the little children that night.” He took a minute to think. He hadn’t learned much, but maybe there was something to add. “They haven’t had a governess or word from beyond Andesia—except for monthly letters from the brothers and cousins at boarding schools in Peru—since the army arrived. They’ve never talked with the new King, or his Queen, and only seen them from a distance. I didn’t dare ask them about the bomb.”

  Colly and Tomi had wandered the city late in the afternoon, to find out whatever they could, which was little enough.

  “People stopped talking as soon as they saw us,” Colly said. “Soldiers followed us.”

  “Even when we were buying chupallas—we got you one, too, Eyes—they’d barely even look at us.”

  “They wouldn’t take coins,” Colly said.

  “Coins are useless in a barter economy,” Mr. Bendiff pointed out.

  “They pushed away our hands,” Tomi said, “and all they said was Balcor, Balcor.”

  “It would seem that the General is paying our bills,” Mr. Bendiff said.

  “So what have we learned?” Ari asked.

  “They’re poor,” Joachim announced. “Hungry, too. I can’t imagine where they got the strength to rebel.”

  “They’re afraid of us,” Tomi said, but Colly didn’t agree.

  “More wary than afraid, I think. It’s the soldiers they’re afraid of.”

  “Nobody will talk about the King,” Max said, and added unnecessarily, “or the Queen.”

  Mr. Bendiff was thinking his own thoughts. “Would you buy me a poncho?” he asked Colly. “The next time you’re in the plaza. Or two would be better. Where did you find ponchos?”

  “We can’t buy anything,” Tomi reminded him.

  “In Stefano’s store,” Colly told him. “There are plenty more there.”

  “There’s a lot of wealth in Andesia,” Ari remarked. “It wasn’t just that dining room. Did you notice the furnishings in the salon? Uncomfortable, with those spindly legs, but elegant. Very expensive,” he added thoughtfully. “It’s huge, that home, and there are two others, just as large.”

  “We were certainly entertained in style,” Mr. Bendiff agreed. “I wonder how they display their wealth when there are no strangers to show off to?”

  Max could answer that. “They invite Stefano, and the doctor. Stefano has two daughters, the sisters told me, although they assured me that Stefano’s daughters were not being nearly as well educated in everything a girl should know as the Carrera y Carreras. Also, they are not so pretty. They thought I would like to meet Stefano’s daughters,” he added, and smiled, pleased with the success of his performance as the unimportant Alexander Ireton. “But hasn’t anybody else noticed?” he asked.

  Six puzzled faces looked at him.

  “Noticed what?” Grammie asked impatiently.

  “Where are the young men? And the boys, has anyone seen any boys over eight? Or men under—I can’t tell, I think they must age quickly with the lives they lead, so men under maybe forty?” Max asked his question again: “Where are the men and boys?”

  “Can they all have been taken by soldiers?” wondered Joachim.

  Which made Ari wonder, “Without men or boys to make things difficult, why are there so many soldiers?”

  Balcor

  Slowly, slowly, the next two days passed. The first morning, it rained, a cleansing spring rain, but that night, as Max stood in the kitchen doorway, the moon shone bright onto the dark tower. The second afternoon, a sun-warmed breeze blew through the valley, smelling of moist earth and new grass. There was no word of Balcor. There was no word from the King.

  Grammie marketed and cooked and supervised Devera and Suela in the work of keeping the house clean and the clothes laundered, the wood chopped and stacked beside stove and fireplaces. And she fretted.

  Joachim wandered the hills to sketch plants and flowers, the terraced slopes, the herds of alpaca, the steep, enclosing mountains. He saw not a living soul, except for that first woman and her small family when he made a return visit to the little homestead. He was pleased to leave the guesthouse in the morning, to spend a day sketching whatever caught his eye, and to return in the evening to a good meal and good company.

  Tomi and Colly, when they weren’t needed for one chore (peeling potatoes, stirring corn pudding) or another (taking notes as Mr. Bendiff paced his room, back and forth, having ideas), liked to disappear into the city streets. The book-Spanish they had studied did enable them to understand much of what people said, and since it was assumed that they, not only strangers but also young, would not understand, people spoke freely in front of them. Often people spoke of things the visitors were not supposed to hear about.

  Ari and Mr. Bendiff were kept busy meeting one Carrera y Carrera or another, talks that decided nothing and revealed nothing but took hour after tedious hour. Max sat beside Ari, listening and taking notes. And fretting.

  Every midday, rain or shine, they were required to be at the parade ground to watch the soldiers drill. Joachim, off in the hills with his sketch pad, avoided the duty, but Juan Carlos had made it clear that the rest of them had no choice. Everyone in Apapa was expected to attend, the only exceptions being those few soldiers left to guard the palace, those protecting the mercado, and the one detail charged with rounding up anybody in the streets and in the houses who tried to stay away. During the midday hour, the city emptied onto the parade ground, from the youngest and least important child up to and including the three Carrera y Carrera families and their array of serving women.

  When the bells rang out from the palace tower to announce the noon hour, the visitors left the guesthouse, in two groups. Grammie and the boys went first; Max, Ari, and Mr. Bendiff a little later, as befitted their higher status. A raised platform had been erected on one side of the parade ground, with benches on it to seat the Carrera y Carreras and the three important visitors, but everybody else stood, spread out along the perimeter, to admire and applaud, to be the audience.

  Balcor’s army consisted of four companies of soldiers, which rotated assignments every month. Two companies had their headquarters at the mines, one to stand guard ther
e while the other accompanied the wagons that made the twice-monthly round-trip to Cúcuta, carrying copper and silver down to the coast, bringing back foodstuffs, fabrics, furniture, and whatever else was needed to stock Stefano’s store, as well as the rare letter. The other two companies, almost three hundred soldiers, each man armed with rifle and pistols and sword, stood ready to protect the royal couple, the Carrera y Carreras, and the city—as if the native Andesians, armed with hoes, spades, pitchforks, and hunting knives, represented a constant danger. Since the soldiers on duty in the city had so little to occupy them—feared as they were by the Andesians and disdained as they were by the Carrera y Carreras as landless mercenaries, unfit companions for even the servants of their haciendas—the parade drills made a rare source of entertainment for them. Every soldier wore a freshly laundered black shirt. All weapons shone with polish, all caps were stiffly creased. The parades were, as Max could see, well-rehearsed performances, filled with the drama of sharp drumbeats and the thud of feet marching in unison, with orders snapped out and instantly obeyed, the guns fired, one after the other, down entire lines of infantry.

  Only the Captain was on horseback, a lean, narrow-eyed, unsmiling man in a dark green uniform, astride a leggy gray stallion that seemed to require both tightly held reins and sharp spurs. The horse was fretful, his hooves dancing, his mouth pushing against the bit, but Captain Malpenso was its master, and he could both control his mount and direct the drill with the same unsmiling authority. The Captain reviewing his troops on parade was like an orchestra conductor, who needed only the slightest gesture of a gloved hand to instruct his instruments. He sat straight in the saddle and his boots gleamed as brightly as the sword he held up, unsheathed. When that sword fell, his men moved in perfect formation, forward or back, left or right.

  Max couldn’t help himself. Once he’d gotten over the sharp disappointment of seeing—again—the two empty thrones at the center of the dais, he enjoyed the show. This was good theater. His heart beat in time with the drums, his eye savored the ballet-like precision of the marchers. Even the third day of the same performance didn’t bore him. He might, he suspected, have been the only person who felt that way. Although each maneuver was answered by loud applause, cries of “¡Olé! ¡Olé!” and sometimes gasps, Ari and Mr. Bendiff took advantage of an occasion for private conversation, and Max was not surprised when Grammie, Colly, and Tomi, who had stood among the crowd, reported that this was not only a forced attendance but also a forced enthusiasm, and a forced applause.