The Eyes of a King

by Catherine Banner

  “One more lap and then you can go in,” Sergeant Bane called as we passed him. I looked for Stirling in the crowd of younger boys and gave him a quick wave. He grinned back.

  “North,” said Sergeant Markey suddenly. “Come over here.”

  I stopped where I was. Stirling had stopped as well, but it was me that Sergeant Markey was talking to. “Come here!” he repeated. “Now.”

  I trailed over. I was coughing again, and I could not see his expression until I straightened up. He seemed to be smiling, but that did not reassure me.

  “I noticed that North was not making an effort,” he said, turning to Sergeant Bane. His voice was very reasonable. “So perhaps he can train for another hour and a half with my platoon. I will be very happy to supervise him.”

  “Given the state of his health …,” Sergeant Bane began, then seemed to change his mind. “Thank you, Sergeant Markey. Send him back in when he has finished.”

  After my platoon had gone back inside and Stirling’s had started running, Sergeant Markey turned to me. “You think you’re above hard work,” he said, very quietly. “You think you’re a bloody prince, North. This hour and a half will teach you better.” He stared at me for a moment, and I could tell he was trying to make me look away. I didn’t. “Thirty laps,” he said then. “Get that rifle above your head. If it comes down, you will start again.”

  I began running, still coughing as I went. “One!” he shouted the first time I passed him. Then “Two!” I tried to think of the story again, so as not to feel the sharp pains that were rising in my chest, but it did no good. I got to six, then stumbled and dropped the rifle. I bent over, trying to catch my breath.

  Sergeant Markey picked up the gun and put it into my hands, then pushed my shoulder hard so that I straightened up. “Are you going to give up now?” he said, his face close to mine. “I told you to run thirty laps and not to lower that rifle. Do you want to do some other training perhaps? Weights? Or just give up? Is that what you want?” I shook my head. “What’s that?” he said.

  “No,” I muttered.

  “No, Sergeant Markey!” he shouted, pushing my shoulder again.

  “No, Sergeant Markey,” I repeated. I spoke the word “sergeant” as if talking to someone insane who insisted on that inappropriate title. I should not have said it like that.

  He watched me for a moment. I stood there coughing and trying to breathe. Sergeant Markey turned to survey the younger boys. “North, run faster!” he shouted at Stirling. “You’re as lazy as your bastard brother! Do you hear?”

  He turned back to me. “This is your first lap now,” he said. “Start again.”

  I glared at him in silence. I decided suddenly to run the thirty laps even if it killed me to do it. I was coughing and gasping in air, but I started running again, keeping my arms locked straight above my head. They began to burn with pain, down to my shoulders, and the rifle grew so heavy that I had to slow to a jog. But I kept running. Every time I passed Sergeant Markey, he would stare straight at me, as though he was trying to put me off with his glare. My whole body was burning now, but my skin was cold with the rain and the sweat that was rising on it.

  On the twenty-first lap, I fell to my knees in the mud. He was shouting something again. But suddenly I could not hear. I saw Stirling turn and say “Leo,” and I could not hear his voice either. Then he ran to my side and caught hold of my arm. And after that everything went dark.

  Below me someone laughs, and I start and drop the book. My heart is beating fast at that faint sound. I get up and walk to the edge of the balcony. I must be losing my mind to start like that at such a slight noise far below in one of those lighted rooms. But I could not help it. I was far away and forgot that I was here at all. Perhaps that is crazy. You told me once that madness was a line, drawn only by humans and amounting to nothing more. But you know it as a theory. You have never been near that line.

  I was trying to tell you about my old life, the way things were. Perhaps I was too impulsive; perhaps I was too proud. But you have to understand that I felt trapped; I felt like I was being dragged in directions I did not want to go. And any response I got when I acted against this made me feel as if I was still alive. I drove Grandmother to exasperation and I argued with Sergeant Markey because I wanted more than anything to be free. I thought that no one could make me do anything. I used to look up at the stars and think, That’s Leo there, and no one can reach me. I don’t know if it was true.

  All those years, I thought I was unhappy. I don’t think anymore that I was. You told me something once that stuck in my head, about how thoughts are dangerous when you are in a bad situation. That if you let your thoughts console you and govern your life, you don’t know what is true anymore. You don’t see your life for what it is. You think that you’re happy. I see now that it can go the other way. You can think that you’re unhappy when you’re not. That’s what I did.

  Standing at the edge of this highest balcony, I can see the lanterns strung out through the trees of the roof garden, the lights swaying as the breeze catches them, and the people walking there, just shadows among the trees. I can see the few carriages that move in the city streets, a long way below. I think suddenly that I would give anything to go back to those days.

  I check the lamp, sit down against the wall, and open the book again. I will read the rest; I still have time. I cannot go back, but I can still read these words.

  The piercing blue of the sky was all that I could see when I woke. I lay and stared at it, thinking that I was in my bed at home. And then I heard a voice and saw that the windows above me were high and narrow, not the diamond panes of the window in the bedroom. “Leo, wake up,” Stirling was saying. I turned over and remembered what had happened.

  Stirling was kneeling beside me. He put his arm about my shoulders and made a sound like a sob. And it was, for when he drew back, I could see the tears in his eyes. “I’m all right,” I said, trying to sit up. When I did, the room moved unsettlingly, and I lay back down again and shut my eyes. “Where are we?”

  “The colonel’s office.” I felt Stirling take hold of my hand. Then another voice was speaking, close by. “North, can you hear me?” I looked up. It was the colonel.

  He knelt down beside me. “You passed out. You are not the first one to do this by any means. We brought you in here to recover.”

  “You were asleep for so long,” said Stirling, clutching my hand. “I was talking to you all the time, and you didn’t hear anything.”

  “It was only a few minutes,” said the colonel. “That is nothing to worry about.”

  Everything was still strange and distant. I managed to sit up, and leaned back against the cold stone wall. Stirling would not let go of my hand. “You will need to go home and get some rest,” said the colonel. He turned to Stirling. “You can take your brother home, can’t you?”

  “Yes,” said Stirling. “I’ll look after Leo.”

  “Good lad,” said the colonel.

  We sat there in silence. I was watching the sunlight on the papers that covered the colonel’s desk, and the four-pointed stars it made on the glass cabinets around the walls. It was strange. Everything looked different since I had woken up. I can’t explain it, but it felt as though I was in a completely different place. The world had changed. Or maybe it was just because the sun had come out. Stirling sat beside me and kept hold of my hand, and I let him. Then we got up and started for home.

  “Grandmother will be angry,” I muttered as we walked down Paradise Way. “Especially when she hears that I was being punished for not making an effort again.”

  But I was wrong. As soon as we stepped through the door, Grandmother started up from her rocking chair, staring at me with such intent concern that I was startled. I went and lay down on my bed while Stirling explained. “Tell me again—tell me exactly what happened,” Grandmother said, standing over me anxiously.

  “I passed out when I was running,” I said. “That’s all. I should
have stopped when I got tired, but I went on. I’m all right now.”

  She laid her hand on my forehead. “You don’t seem to have a fever. But that cough of yours has been getting worse.” She twisted her hands together. “I will get the priest to come and look at you,” she said. “Father Dunstan will know if this is serious.”

  “It is not serious,” I protested. “Grandmother, you don’t need to send for Father Dunstan.” But she was already hurrying out the door.

  She arrived with the priest about half an hour later. “I pray to God that this is not silent fever,” she said, hovering anxiously behind him while he took my pulse.

  He shook his head. “It is exhaustion. That is why Leonard passed out.” He turned to me. “Rest for a day or two. Get plenty of sleep. You have been training too hard for a long time, I think.”

  Grandmother and Stirling were still gazing at me in concern after Father Dunstan had left. I laughed at that. “I told you it was not serious. It’s stupid, really. Usually I can run thirty laps without trouble.”

  “You didn’t run thirty laps,” said Stirling. “You ran more like fifty. Sergeant Markey kept starting again from the beginning.”

  “I should have seen that you were tired, Leo,” said Grandmother, shaking her head. “I should have seen that all this army training was too much for you.”

  “It’s not too much,” I said. “It was that bastard Markey’s fault.”

  And then I looked to see that Grandmother was not angry that I had sworn. And I was glad that she was not, which was strange. She did not reprimand me, either for that or for calling Sergeant Markey just “Markey.” She only went on looking at me in that strange, concerned way and then tucked the blanket more tightly around me.

  “I thought you would die!” Stirling exclaimed suddenly, clutching at my arm. “When I saw you fall down, I thought you would not get up again. I thought you were badly hurt.”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “You don’t have to worry. I’m sorry if I scared you.”

  “He’s tough, our Leo,” said Grandmother. “Thirty laps of that yard must be several miles.” She took my hand, but her own trembled slightly. I could see the fragile relief in her face. She needed me, I thought, despite all our arguments. For a few minutes she had believed that I was very ill, and she could not have borne to lose me. The thought was comforting, because never before in my life had I realized it. We sat there, the three of us, talking as though we had not seen each other for days or years, while the sun came down through the window and lit up the whole room.

  That afternoon Grandmother went out to the market, and Stirling sat beside my bed and talked to me. “Help me get up,” I said after a while. “I’m going down to the bathroom.”

  “Now?” he said. “It might not be a good idea. I think you should stay in bed. What if you faint again?”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said. “I will go carefully.”

  “I don’t think you should go out in the cold,” said Stirling. “There’s always a bucket.”

  “I am not ill enough for that,” I told him firmly. “Anyway, it’s not cold. Look, the sun is shining.” It had not stopped since I had woken up in the colonel’s office and seen it slanting down through the high windows.

  “All right,” Stirling said doubtfully. “I’ll help you, then.”

  He held on to my arm while I stood up, though I was not dizzy. I put on my army uniform—the nearest clothes to hand. I did up half the buttons on my shirt and pulled my jacket loosely round my shoulders. “Sit back down,” Stirling told me, and he insisted on putting on my boots for me.

  “Don’t bother with the laces,” I said. He still had trouble with laces. He took hold of my arm again and we started for the door. As I passed the mirror, I saw that there was mud in my hair and on the side of my uniform, and my face was still yellowish. “I don’t look fit to be seen,” I said, trying to flatten my hair.

  “You’re vain, Leo,” Stirling told me, laughing. “No one’s going to see you.”

  Everything was still strangely distant, and my muscles were shivering now from running too hard earlier. When we neared the bottom of the stairs, I began to feel sick again and darkness seared into my eyes. I could hear Stirling’s voice, but over it was a painful thudding in the sides of my head. “Sit down,” Stirling was telling me. “You’re going to fall over.” He pushed me firmly down onto the step. “Put your head down.” I rested my head on my knees and shut my eyes. “I told you this was a bad idea,” I could hear him saying.

  After a moment my vision cleared and the blood flow in my temples lost its urgency. I stood up and we struggled down the last few steps. Stirling would not let go of me, even while he opened the door, and I was grateful for it. He held the door. But I started to feel dizzy again, and I couldn’t see. Nausea bubbled up in my throat. I bent over sharply, retching, and my stomach stabbed.

  Stirling did not let me fall. “You got up too quickly,” I could hear him saying. “You should have brought your head up gradually.”

  And then another voice said, “Is he all right?”

  “My brother’s sick,” said Stirling. And then, “Don’t worry, it is not catching. Unless exhaustion is catching.” And someone laughed.

  I leaned on the door frame, gasping in air, and looked to see who it was. Someone was coming down the stairs, and as my eyes cleared, I saw that it was a girl about my age carrying some sort of heavy bundle in her arms.

  The girl’s hair fell carelessly over her shoulders, but as if she had arranged it that way, pushed it back so that it would fall forward over her ears. As she came closer, the light from the doorway shadowed her long eyelashes into spider-leg patterns on her cheeks. The jewels in her ears were expensive, but they did not make her look plain in comparison like they would have another girl.

  There was something about her mouth that made me want to look at it. It was perfect. Her lips were parted slightly, self-consciously, as if she knew it made her look prettier but the action did not come naturally. I noticed I was staring at them, and looked away quickly. She was smiling. I tried to smile back.

  “Do you live here?” the girl asked. I opened my mouth. Hell, she was pretty! She was like an ornament that should be kept locked up, for fear of ruining it. I shut my mouth again.

  “Yes, we do,” Stirling was saying.

  “So do I,” said the girl. “Since today. We just moved into the top apartment.”

  “I’m pleased to meet you,” said Stirling. “I’m Stirling, and this is my brother, Leo. He’s ill. He was training and he passed out, but he’s all right now.” I tried again to smile, without success.

  “I’m Maria,” she said. “This is Anselm.” I realized that she was pointing to the bundle, and that it was a baby.

  “Anselm?” asked Stirling.

  “Yes, it’s after a saint. A legendary English saint.” She was standing next to us now. Stirling leaned over to look.

  “He’s sweet,” said Stirling. “He looks like you. Is he your brother?”

  “No, he’s mine.”

  “Your what?” I tried to jog Stirling’s arm.

  “Mine,” she said again, and she did not seem to mind. “My own baby.”

  “Oh,” said Stirling. Then he asked, “Are you married?” I clutched my hand to my head before I could stop myself. The girl looked at me. “Do you have a headache? How thoughtless—I’m keeping you standing here in the cold when you are sick. I am sorry.”

  “Do not trouble yourself,” I tried to say, without much success.

  “Can you tell me where the bathroom is?” the girl asked.

  “Out here,” said Stirling, pointing out the door. “Across the yard.”

  “Thank you.”

  We followed her through the door, Stirling still supporting me. She stood still and looked round the yard, frowning at the grimy walls and the tall houses that blocked the sunlight. “I’m afraid it’s not very nice,” said Stirling, as if it was his own living room.

  “S
ome plants would improve it no end, I daresay.”

  Then she realized we must be heading for the bathroom too. “You should go first,” she told me.

  “No …,” I said feebly, and wished we weren’t having this conversation.

  “Yes,” she said. “The quicker you get back to bed, the better.” I did not have the energy to insist. Stirling helped me across the yard to the bathroom door, and I went in alone. I could hear them still talking outside, and listened hard, in case they thought I could not hear.

  “Your brother would not let you go into the bathroom with him.” She was bold, for sure. “What if he was to faint again?”

  “Even if he was dying, I don’t think he would want to be helped more than he had to be.”

  “He is proud, then?” I could not hear Stirling’s answer. “But pride is not necessarily bad. It is a virtue in some ways.”

  “That was what I meant,” Stirling said. There was a short pause. The baby gurgled. Then Stirling’s voice again: “Are you married?”

  “No. Are you?” He laughed. The baby started to cry shrilly, and the girl said, “Shh.”

  “So is it just you and Anselm here?” Stirling asked when the baby quieted.

  “My mother also.”

  “Where’s your father?”

  “Fighting at the Alcyrian border. Where your brother will be before long, I suppose. I see by his clothes that he is a soldier.” I glanced down at what I was wearing, and remembered that my bootlaces were undone, and half my bare chest was showing, and there was mud in my hair. A fine soldier indeed I looked.

  “He’s in military school,” said Stirling. “Then he’ll have two and a half more years of training in the army.”

  “I thought by his looks that he was older.”

  “No, fifteen.”

  “Me also.”