I didn’t know, and I wondered why she had called me Harold. I looked about me, turned over, and felt the grass beneath my back, printed in my shape, and the flowers crushing out pollen under my head. I sat up. I must have fallen asleep on Stirling’s grave.
“Why are you not in school, Harold?” she asked. I just looked at her. She stared back at me as if she didn’t know me.
She turned away as I stood up, and placed a new bouquet beneath the wooden cross. She arranged the flowers and began to hum and cry at the same time. I stood awkwardly behind her. The notes were high and out of tune, but I thought it was a hymn that she sang. She stood back and regarded the cross for a moment, her eyes losing their focus. I touched her arm.
She started and turned to me. “Leo?” I nodded. “You startled me. What are you doing here, Leo? Where did you come from? I did not see you arrive. Did you come in from the gate while I bent to lay down these flowers?”
I did not answer. “So late, though …,” she said, and she was not watching me. “So late to return. I thought you were dead. It’s been six years.” I was frightened. This was like a nightmare, when nothing makes sense. I shook my head fiercely. She watched me for a moment, then turned away again.
“Oh yes. It’s six years. How the time has raced by for you, Harold. You said you would contact me. A letter—a message with a friend—anything. Two words would have been enough. But you did not. And your son Leonard hates me because I would not let them come to you in Alcyria, and Stirling cries for his mother, but what else could I do? I would not risk the lives of your boys when I had no word. Why did you not contact me?”
I almost spoke. But it was like a promise, and I would not break it. She stared at me blankly. Then she looked at the grave, and when she turned back, she seemed to see me properly again. She reached out and put a hand on my shoulder. “You are back,” she said quietly, continuing from where she had left off. “Oh, I have been so worried, Leo. You are back to stay now?” I nodded, and she gripped my shoulder tighter. “Thank heavens.”
She stepped back and looked at me then. “Why are you so dirty? And you look pale; have you eaten since Saturday?” She put a hand to my face. “What happened, Leo? I thought you were going to the border. Did you decide to come back?”
When I made no reply, she took my arm. “Come, let us go home.” It reminded me so suddenly, and so exactly, of Stirling’s burial that for a moment I was back there, in the darkness and the dismal scuttling of the raindrops, beside the new grave.
“Come, Leo,” she said, and I followed her.
We reached home about seven o’clock. “I have missed you, Leo,” said Grandmother. “I was so lonely. I have lost Stirling, and I had lost you. Nothing but my thoughts, and no one to talk to—no one to share the burden of Stirling’s death.” Then she began to cry. I wished she would not talk about it if it made her cry. “Talk to me, Leo,” she said. “Say something to comfort me.” I could not have done, even if I had been willing to speak again.
She clasped my hands in her own trembling ones, and they felt frail and bony and weak as paper. “I try to forget Stirling’s death, but how can I?” she went on. “Everything here reminds me of him; everything reminds me that he is dead. And what is there for me to do? I cannot work; I have no friends; even Father Dunstan cannot be here all the time. Church is my only comfort. I can’t bear to sit here alone, crying and thinking of Stirling.”
Then she tried to smile and put a false cheeriness into her voice. “But it will be better now you are here, Leo. You know how I suffer; I know you are suffering too. We can help each other to bear this.” I nodded, trying to pull my hand away. “Look at you, Leo,” she said, in a different tone, brushing the tears from her face. “You look unwell. Go down and take a shower, and I’ll make you some soup.”
I took a shower, then folded that uniform, put the pistol underneath it in the windowsill chest, and put on my ordinary clothes again—black ones. Grandmother was wearing black also. It was the custom to wear black for a month. I vowed then that I’d wear black forever. Anyhow, I thought dismally, a month was as long as forever when it had been only three days. From the bedroom I could hear Anselm’s thin wail and the sound of shouting—Maria and her mother arguing again.
“You look like you need a good hot meal, Leo,” Grandmother said when I opened the door. She was cooking onions in oil; the juice in the air caught at my eyes. I felt sick to think of Grandmother saying cheery things and cooking so soon, as if she had already forgotten. I wished I was back in the hills, sweating and stumbling, where at least my life reflected the pain in my heart.
“I’m going to have to look after you now,” Grandmother said. I did not ask, “Now what?” but she said anyway, “Now I do not have Stirling to look after, that is,” and began crying. So did I. I tried not to, because I did not want her to comfort me, but it was no use. “Come here, Leo,” she said, holding out her hand, but I shook my head and went into the bedroom and shut the door.
“Leo!” I heard her calling, in a tear-choked pretense at jollity, a few minutes later. I got up from my bed and went out, though I didn’t feel hungry.
We ate silently, on two sides of the table, with Stirling’s empty chair between us. I stared straight down at the vegetable soup as I shoveled it into my mouth. I ripped a large piece of bread and crammed it in defiantly, the food pushing out of my too-full mouth, and the tears pushing out of my eyes. I felt guilty, eating so greedily, but I did it anyway. I willed the tears not to brim over.
“I think I forgot something,” mumbled Grandmother. “This soup doesn’t taste quite right.” It was true—it tasted different from how she usually made it—but I did not care. “It is different, is it not?” said Grandmother. “And I burned the onions. Sorry, Leo.” I went on shoveling it into my mouth and shrugged.
“Father Dunstan might call round this evening,” said Grandmother after a moment. “He has been very supportive.” I went on eating. “He would like to speak to you. He is worried about you.” The words dropped into silence again. I took another piece of bread, wiped it round my empty bowl, and pushed it into my mouth. “He has been very helpful to me,” she said. “I hope you will talk to him. Would you like some more of that?” I nodded. Eating was something to do, and I set myself about it with a ferocity.
“I spoke to Maria yesterday,” Grandmother said, setting down another piece of bread and another bowl of soup in front of me. I began eating again. “She asked after you. She’s a very nice girl. Apparently that baby of hers has been ill.” I didn’t look up. “Nothing serious,” Grandmother said anyway. “Only a cold or something like that. She seemed quite tired out; apparently he has been crying without pause.”
The silence came down again. “So, did you get to the border?” she asked. “How is the war going?” I shook my head. “You did not reach the border?” I shook my head again. “Why did you come back?” I shrugged. I could not explain that without words. “You did not do something bad, that they sent you back?” I shook my head. They did not send me back; that at least was true. “Ah, well …” She drifted into silence again.
A couple of minutes later there was a knock at the door. Grandmother got up to answer it, evidently relieved, and the tight atmosphere broke. It was Father Dunstan. “Hello, Margaret,” he said. And then, catching sight of me, “Leo. You are back from the border? I did not expect to see you so soon.” I gave him a curt nod. There was deep sorrow in his voice. I wished he wouldn’t pretend to be sad when he wasn’t the one who should be sad. He wasn’t the one whose brother had died. He barely even knew Stirling.
“It’s kind of you to visit, Father,” said Grandmother.
“It is no trouble.”
She shut the door behind him and motioned to the sofa. I noticed then that there was still a green fist-shaped bruise on his face where I had hit him. The window that I had broken was boarded. He had probably fixed that, and the table too. “How are you coping, Margaret?” he asked her as she sat down in t
he chair opposite him.
“Oh …,” she said lightly. “Well … quite well … thank you, Father.”
“Good,” he said. “I am glad to hear that.”
“It will be better now that Leo has returned,” she said, smiling at me. I turned away from them.
Father Dunstan began talking about arrangements for the memorial service, and I started toward the bedroom door, but Grandmother said, “Leo, I want you to be part of this too.” I turned to them. “ We chose the words for Stirling’s cross without you, and I felt guilty for that.”
“Come, Leo,” said Father Dunstan. “Come and sit over here.” Reluctantly, I drew a chair over to them and sat down.
“Now,” said Father Dunstan. “I have made all arrangements for the service to be on Friday at twelve o’clock, as is usual.” I thought about that and tried to work out what day this was. It might be Sunday, or more likely Monday. I gave up. When I listened again, Father Dunstan was talking about hymns and Bible readings. “Do you want to choose them?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” Grandmother looked worried, close to tears.
“Perhaps I could suggest some,” said Father Dunstan.
“Yes. That would be best. Thank you.”
They did not need me here. I got up, and they did not try to stop me.
It was growing dark outside. I sat on my bed and watched it. I felt strange and distant, removed from everything. If it had been an ordinary week, we would have been at school all day; we would have been laying out our uniforms now as darkness came down, while Grandmother built up the fire and lit the lamps. Instead, all that life was gone completely. I watched the sky darkening, and realized that I had no assurance that the sun would rise. Nothing was certain anymore if Stirling could be gone and I could do nothing about it. I closed my eyes. I could not see my life before me anymore. I prayed for something—a sign or a voice to tell me I was dreaming. No sign came. I could not even conjure those stories about England that had carried me through the hills. My mind was empty.
It was dark in England also, and the first stars were emerging, and Anna and Ryan were standing on the shore of the lake. The fences of the big house ran down to the water, so Anna could not cross into the grounds. “We will have to speak low or my uncle will hear,” Ryan was saying across the fence. “I’m supposed to be studying astronomy.”
“Your education is strange,” she said, glancing toward Lakebank, where a single window was lit. “These things your uncle makes you learn.”
“I know it. When he first came to England, he read about the noble gentlemen who lived a long time ago and what their sons used to learn. And it seemed to him a good kind of education to give me.”
“So it’s because you’re landed gentry that you learn these things?”
He looked up. His eyes were blacker than the darkness. “Who told you we were landed gentry?”
She shook her head. “No one did.”
“We’re not,” he said then. “We came into some money—my uncle did—ten years ago. It is almost gone now.”
“So you just live here running down your money?” she said. “What will happen when it runs out? You will get a job?”
“Not me. My uncle might, because he is trained as a butler and he has the false—well—” He stopped then and looked away.
“False what? False papers?” He shook his head. “You were going to say false papers.” The darkness made her bolder. “I will never understand you, Ryan,” she said.
“Probably you won’t.”
She glanced at the book in his hands. “What’s that?” she said. “What is the other book, inside the astronomy one?”
“Oh, that one is Shakespeare.”
“Is that part of your education too?”
“No. My uncle would be angry if he thought I had been reading this instead of studying the stars. He thinks Shakespeare is a waste of my time.”
“Why is that?”
“It is not my culture. And my uncle does not have much time for half the things Shakespeare writes about. He thinks grand plans are more important. I used to agree with him, but now—”
She met his eyes in the darkness. “Now what?” she said. He did not reply. The silence drew on and neither of them broke it. Then a door slammed in the house, and they both started.
“Now nothing,” he said. “I should get back. My uncle will be watching to see that I complete the work.” He turned. “Here he comes now.”
“Shall I leave?” she said.
“Wait for me. I will speak to him and come back as soon as I can. Please stay.”
Anna walked a short way off into the shadow of the trees and then turned back. She could still hear their voices.
“What is this?”
“What, Uncle?”
“This book.” There was a silence, then an impatient cough. “Reading this English poet again. What will that teach you? Nothing. He writes about love.”
She could not hear Ryan’s reply. Then they were closer to the fence, and his uncle was talking again. She stood still. “Ryan, you must not forget your duty,” the man was saying. “You have done no archery for near a week. You have done no history, no geography, no fencing. Nothing. At least, you have done none of it properly. You have been halfhearted about everything.”
“Why can I not have a holiday?”
“You know why. A thousand times I’ve told you, damn it. Listen to me.” Their voices were rising.
“I am listening. Uncle, you have been strict these past weeks and I’m tired.”
“You have a limited time to learn these things, and you have to learn them. You have a duty to others. You are not allowed to think of yourself. You cannot go running off to see this girl.”
“It is barely two days since I met her, Uncle. Do you really think—”
“I do not know what to think. It has been two days without useful work. You have been there four or five times. You were looking for something to distract you from your work even before she appeared—”
“That is not true.” There was a pause, then he spoke more earnestly. “She has my heart and soul.”
“Ryan, with your games of romance, you are risking a deal more than your own heart.”
“You make it sound like a mortal sin to do what I want. All I ask for is one friend. Do you want me to be lonely?”
“Listen to me, Ryan.”
“I said I’m listening.”
“There is only one girl you should be involved with. That is the one who has the silver eagle, and—”
“It’s been ten years, and you act as if it will be tomorrow. Your grand plans, Uncle—you even order who I must love. Or what if she is the one? You did not think of that.” There was a silence. “Or what if she really is a relative of your brother, as you say?”
“It makes no difference if she is. That is in the past now. You do not need to spend all your time with her. What you need to do is fence, study the stars, and practice archery. And you need to know everything about your country that you can possibly know, or else—”
“Or else what? What Malonian gives a damn if I’m not the world archery champion or I don’t know who won the Battle of the Eastern Fields, or—”
“Cassius Ryan Angel Donahue.” There was a pause, and then the man laughed, but half exasperatedly. “I am serious, though. Do you have any idea what it is like in Malonia under Lucien’s rule? Do you? Because I have been trying to tell you but you do not listen.”
“But, Uncle—”
“But what? The people want a king who can dance, make patriotic speeches, ride a horse, fence. They don’t want someone new or different or unique. They want someone safe. Do you understand? Until you are certain you can meet your responsibilities, no more going to see this girl.”
“I never asked for—”
“It makes no difference. You cannot choose your duty, and you would do well to accept it.”
“But listen—”
“Enough.” His footsteps were fa
ding across the gravel of the beach. “The discussion is finished. Map the positions of the major constellations, and think about the significance of these patterns for those who are expecting revolution. I will be in the library, working.”
There was a silence. Then the door of the house, far away across the lawn, banged shut. In the darkness, Ryan said, “Anna?”
She came out from the trees and walked back to him. “I thought you might have gone,” he said.
“You told me to wait.”
“Did you hear—”
“Yes.” He did not reply. “Ryan, what were you saying about me? That I am a relative of your uncle’s?”
“You should not have overheard that,” he said. “But I will explain. It is only fair to explain.”
She twisted her fingers through the chain of her necklace. He watched the moonlight glinting on it and frowned slightly, as though he was thinking of something else. And then his eyes changed. “What is it?” she said.
“I never much looked at it before, your necklace. Is it a bird? Let me see.” He caught hold of it. “And that jewel has always been missing?”
“Yes. But, Ryan—”
“Tell me where you got this,” he said.
“My Nan gave it to me when I was a baby.”
She turned away. He caught her arm. “She is the lady in the photograph, isn’t she? The one who looks like you? And she gave you this necklace?”
She did not answer. “Please, Anna,” he said. “Tell me about her.”
She hesitated, then turned back to him. “There isn’t much to tell. She was the one who brought me up when I was little. And then—she passed away. It was a car crash, near here. I was in it as well, and—”
“But tell me where she got the necklace from,” he interrupted.
For a few seconds neither of them spoke. Then she said, “I should go….” She raised her hands to her face.
“I’m sorry, Anna. I see I have upset you; I did not mean—”
“I hardly know you, Ryan. I don’t want to tell you about my Nan any more than you wanted to tell me this afternoon about your parents.”
The Eyes of a King Page 25
