That Sunday morning I woke early. I could not sleep for the weight on my heart. It was still pitch-dark. I was sure that I had dreamed something, but I didn’t know what it was, and it was gone as I tried to catch it. It was quiet as the grave that night, silent as the cool, lifeless earth deep down where no sound of the living can reach. It was so silent that I could not think. Then, slowly, the noise rising like the footfalls of a stealthy army in the dark, it began to rain.
That afternoon it was still raining hard. The streets were streaming with mud and almost deserted. No one would go out in such weather. Except soldiers. They were the only ones who passed. I sat at my bedroom window, watching the rain and thinking of nothing. There was nothing to do, and I couldn’t concentrate anyway. I would read the same sentence of the newspaper ten times, without understanding it. I could hear Maria and Grandmother talking in the living room, the low rise and fall of their voices, but I did not want to be with them either.
I thought I might visit Stirling’s grave. I put on my overcoat and went into the living room. “You are not going out in this weather?” said Grandmother, following me with her eyes as I searched for the keys. I nodded. “Where are you going?”
Maria was beside her at the table, her hand resting on Grandmother’s arm. “Here,” she said, and handed me a piece of paper.
The graveyard, I wrote.
“You will get ill, going out in the rain,” said Grandmother. “You will get very ill. And there are soldiers about even though it is Sunday; there must be something wrong. Leo, stay in the house.” Her voice was quavery and tearful. She caught hold of my arm. “Please, stay here.”
I shook my head and went to the door. “I think he will be all right, Mrs. North,” said Maria. “It is not cold outside, and it looks as though the rain will be stopping. Would you like me to build up a fire anyway, for when Leo gets back?”
Grandmother nodded and grasped Maria’s hand. While they were laying out the coal in the grate, I left. I hurried down the stairs and out into the street. It was something to do, walking, and it made the pain in my heart duller and easier to bear. And I would rather be standing in the rain beside Stirling’s grave than trying to read the newspaper again and again while the silence made my head ache.
As I started along the side of the square, two soldiers stepped out of a doorway. “Where are you going?” said one. I did not reply. “This area is closed for an important military operation,” he said. “Did you not hear the announcements? Did you not read the newspapers?” I made to carry on walking. They did this sometimes, but I was not going back home because they told me to.
They glanced at each other uncertainly; then one of them caught my arm. “Unless you are going directly back to your house, you should not be out here,” he said, struggling to keep hold of me. “If we see you again, you will be escorted back with an official warning.” He pushed my arm roughly and let me go. I could feel their eyes on me as I went on.
In the next street I met two others, and three more in the next. These three would not let me carry on toward the graveyard. They stood in front of me until I turned back the way I had come.
I was suddenly tired, and I did not have the strength to go on. I sat down in the doorway of a house and rested my head on my arms. A moment later someone was tapping on the window—a wealthy-looking woman, glaring at me for sitting on her doorstep. I got to my feet again.
I walked a couple of streets farther, then sat down under the high wall of the locked Royal Gardens. The rain was running down my face but I did not care. I sat and closed my eyes and wished for the hundredth time that Stirling was with me. Stirling would not stand for this desperation. He would have said something to bring me back. I could not tell myself those things.
Sitting there with my eyes closed, I began to see a hill where the sun was shining, and the girl Anna and the prince. I had been a hundred miles from thinking of these things, and they were suddenly in my mind, as though someone else had put them there. I stood up and looked around, then thought of the book and took it out of my pocket. It was in two halves now—two shabby leather covers with loose pages between them.
What was the use of fairy tales and dreams now that Stirling was gone? This book could not bring him back. I was suddenly angry with it, this book that had told us all kinds of meaningless lies about a country that did not exist. Aldebaran was dead; we had no English relatives; the prince had been shot ten years ago. And yet this strange story was still haunting me and I could not shake it off.
I drew back my arm and hesitated for a moment. And then I threw the book with the last strength I had, over the fence into the Royal Gardens. I heard the pages scatter among branches, with a sound like a bird’s wings, and then silence.
That was it; the story was gone. I turned and walked home.
Aldebaran was gazing out the window without seeing the English sunlight. His mind was on his homeland, and the rain falling there, and his English family, who he could barely see. And a black book. He did not notice that Ryan was gone.
Anna was cleaning one of the guest rooms when through the window she saw Ryan approaching. She left the bed half made and ran down to the yard. “You should not have come here,” she said, stopping in front of him.
“I had to see you.”
“Aldebaran made you promise to stay in the house. Ryan—”
He caught hold of her hands. “It will be all right.”
Monica was calling to Anna from somewhere in the building. Anna glanced at him, and they started across the lawn, away from the hotel, toward the waterfalls. “Even so,” said Anna. “What happened before to make you so frightened? Did you say they sent soldiers here?”
He hesitated, then spoke. “They came to the house; I don’t know how. Talitha must have arranged it. I was only a little boy. Aldebaran hid me out in the ruined chapel and told me to wait for him there. A day I waited, and half the night, before I went back. He was lying on the floor, very sick. I thought that he was dead. I thought that I had lost him as well….” He stopped. “I almost did. But the next day he was sitting up in bed, telling me that Talitha could never really harm him, and I chose to believe that. They worked together for thirty years in the secret service, years ago, before I was born. Perhaps it was true what he said. Perhaps he knew her too well to be defeated by the things she thought of.”
They started up the shaded path beside the waterfalls. “Why didn’t they look for you?” said Anna.
“It was a clever prophecy that Aldebaran wrote. Those who believe it will not risk harming me because Aldebaran said that the same harm would fall on them. And besides, the revolution is Aldebaran’s plan; he is the powerful man and the leader of the resistance. He is the one they want. I am just there to fulfill the prophecies he has written. Do you see what I mean?”
Anna was glancing back through the trees. “What is it?” Ryan said.
“I don’t know. I thought I saw something.” She shook her head and they turned and walked on. “But what did you want to talk to me about?”
He folded his arms and unfolded them, then ran his hand through his hair. “I wanted to speak to you without Aldebaran there,” he said, half smiling. “I hardly seem to have the chance now. Listen, Anna—”
She glanced back down the hill again. “Did you hear that?”
There was a silence. They could hear nothing. “Anna, are you listening to me?” said Ryan. “Here, this is what I came to give you. Take it.” He put something into her hand. It was a folded sheet of paper.
Anna turned back to him and opened it. On the page was a drawing. A portrait of her. She stared at it in silence, tracing the pencil lines. He was watching her carefully. “What do you think?”
“How do you know my face so well?” she said, looking up at him.
He laughed quietly, as though that was obvious. “Anna, I came here to tell you—” And then he stopped. There was someone standing on the path behind her, in the shadow of the rocks.
Anna
turned. In the silence of the English wood, Ahira and Ryan stared at each other. Another man stepped out of the shadows—the younger soldier from the square. The third was a stranger with bristly blond hair, also in blue uniform. All of them were armed.
“Ahira,” said Ryan, reaching for Anna’s hand but missing it. His eyes were on the soldiers. In another second, the man with the scar across his face had a pistol out.
“Don’t move,” he said.
Ryan moved anyway, suddenly, toward Ahira. The blond man shouted something. There was a thud. Then Ryan was on the floor, blood running from his forehead. Ahira stood still, the pistol still raised from bringing it down on Ryan’s head.
Anna dropped the picture and stumbled toward Ryan, but the blond man caught hold of her and bent her arm back so that she could not move. The youngest man fell to his knees. “What the hell did you do that for? Do you know who the boy is? If you’ve killed him—”
“Shut your mouth,” said Ahira. “Get up. Stop wailing and get up.”
“He’s just unconscious!” said the man who was holding Anna. He was tying her hands, and every time she struggled, he smacked her hard across the head. “If you make a sound, I will shoot you,” he said.
“What are you doing?” said Ahira. “Why are you tying her up? Darius, what—”
“This is the girl. She has the silver eagle.”
“Let go of her!” Ahira raised his voice. “Of course Aldebaran would not be so stupid—”
“ We will have to take her,” said the young man. “She will go to Aldebaran if we leave her. Sir, we should go now, while Talitha can let us back through. I do not like this place, and you should not have harmed the boy—”
“Go, then,” said Ahira, turning away from him. “Darius, take the girl with you.”
The man still had hold of Anna’s wrists. He adjusted something on his pistol and put it to the side of Anna’s head. “Do not speak, please,” he said. “Walk quickly. Do not look back.”
Aldebaran came back from his thoughts “Ryan?” he said. There was no answer. He got up from his desk and went to the door of the library. “Ryan, come here!” he called more loudly.
He was troubled suddenly. He went through the house calling Ryan’s name, then took his keys and started out along the road. He climbed over the wall and ran up through the wood, toward the waterfalls. By the time Aldebaran reached where Ryan lay, Ahira had gone. And the others were in the ruined chapel, quickly leaving England behind.
When I came back to Citadel Street, a carriage was passing, flanked by soldiers. The horses struggled and labored in the streaming mud. I stopped in full view of the soldiers and folded my arms and watched it pass. I did not care anymore.
Someone was struggling in the carriage. I stepped closer to it and saw who was inside it—Ahira himself, and two other military men. One of them, I thought I recognized—a man high up in the government who they called Darius. And a prisoner. A girl, bound and gagged. She struggled closer to the window and met my eyes for a second. And in that second, I recognized her.
I had thrown away the book; I had tried to drive the dreams out of my mind. And no sooner had I given up on the story than I had come back home to find Anna in the real world, a living girl—a prisoner of Lucien on her way to the castle. I stepped toward the carriage as it stopped at the point in Citadel Street where carriages could go no further. Then soldiers were in front of me, pushing me back so that I could no longer see. “What are you doing?” one was saying. “You should be in your home.” I struggled, but it was no good. Ahira and the other two were mounting horses—the girl too, still tied hand and foot, was bundled onto Ahira’s horse—and in another moment they had vanished.
“Where do you live?” the soldier was demanding, pushing me roughly. I pointed to our building and he let me go. “We will keep an eye on you,” he said. “And make sure you get there safely.”
Grandmother was alone in the apartment, but the fire was lit. “Come in and take off that wet coat,” she told me cheerily, though there were new tears still lying on her face. I moved as if I was dreaming. I went to the window and leaned far out. I could see the horses moving slowly up the castle rock. Was it because Stirling was gone that I had lost hold of my mind? I had not seen that girl; it was impossible.
But in another few minutes, I had stopped caring about it. I was thinking of Stirling again, and Grandmother was crying with her face in her hands, and someone needed to get the dinner but neither of us had the strength. And whether she was real or not, that girl was a hundred miles away from anything that mattered to me now.
“If you ask me, we should have shot Aldebaran,” said Darius as they marched Anna through the castle. “The boy is nothing without him.”
“No one asked you,” said Ahira shortly.
“You cannot shoot a great one,” said the young man.
“Why not?” said Darius.
“You just can’t. It’s like shooting a priest.”
“I’d kill a priest if he stood in my way,” said Darius with a laugh.
“And account for it in hell,” said Ahira darkly. “Now shut your mouth.”
They walked on in silence, along the torch-lit corridors underneath the castle. The youngest man lit his cigarette from one of the torches as they passed, and Ahira frowned at him but did not say anything. He marched ahead, and the younger soldiers glanced at each other. “Over there are the dungeons,” said Darius to Anna, tightening his grip on her arm. The shadows leapt and wavered. There was a sudden wailing noise, and Anna started. “See?” said Darius. “That is a traitor to the king. He is a dangerous maniac, of the Unacceptable Class. He is to be executed as a public example tomorrow.” He pushed her up to the door. Inside the cell was an old man, crying.
“Do you want to know how they execute them?” said Darius, pulling her on along the corridor.
“No,” said Anna.
“I’m going to tell you. Ten bullets—just like that—and not one of them misses. They stand you out in the yard, and they count down to when they shoot. From thirty—very slow. You should see them. They go whiter with every count. Piss themselves, some of them. Some of them throw up. It’s strange, what it does to the mind.” His hushed laugh echoed around the corridor. “Some of the women pass out. We shoot them anyway. I have executed countless traitors.”
“Stop telling her,” said the young man. “She is not your girl, that you have to boast to her. And she does not want to hear.”
“It may interest her,” said Darius. “It may yet be what happens to her.”
The young man laughed uneasily. “Darius—”
“I’m serious. She is part of the prophecy. If Ahira believes in it, then it makes as much sense to shoot her as to bring back the silver eagle. Sir?” He raised his voice and Ahira turned.
“What is it?”
“I was just remarking that perhaps it would be wise to kill the girl.”
“I think that the king and Talitha know better what is wise and what is not,” said Ahira. “Stop trailing behind. I’m not a bloody schoolteacher. Darius, come here and tell me what Talitha told you in the square.”
“Aye, where were you?” said Darius, leaving Anna with the younger man and jogging to catch Ahira up. “Ten minutes we were waiting in the carriage before you appeared back in the real world.”
“It is nothing to concern you,” said Ahira, raising his hand to his head. “Tell me what Talitha said.”
“Aldebaran has been stirring up trouble. Revolution is imminent.” Then he lowered his voice so that Anna and the young man could not hear.
“ We have cleared half the city and taken Talitha away from the battlefields for a day or more,” said the young man, as if to himself. “ We should have been certain that we were bringing the silver eagle back at least.” Ahira glanced at him and he fell silent.
They started up a dark staircase, in the heart of the castle now. After another few minutes the young man spoke again. “Sir, you should not have hur
t the boy.”
Ahira did not ignore him this time. “Will you shut your mouth?” he shouted, making Anna start.
“I’m sorry,” the young man said. “I’m sorry.” His hand on Anna’s arm was shaking.
“The boy will be all right,” said Ahira very quietly. As she struggled up the stairs, her hands tied behind her, Anna began to pray that it was true.
They came up in a wide hall lined with carved panels. Guards opened a door for them, and Ahira pushed the younger soldiers through, then hesitated for a moment. “Listen,” he told Anna, lowering his voice. “Do not be afraid.” He was looking at her so strangely that she stopped still. “Go on,” he said then, in a different tone. “Hurry. The king cannot wait forever.”
Unsteady light was jumping over the walls of the low room. The firelight and the candles dazzled Anna’s eyes, and she looked up and saw that they were reflecting off a golden throne. A tall man sat there, leaning back casually with his arms behind his head. He was wearing a crown. But he had two guns in his belt. He sat up and looked at Anna in silence, and she stared back at him.
She was staring because this man looked like Ryan. His features were almost the same, except for his eyes; even from here, she could see that they were a clear blue. But he had a kingly air about him that Ryan did not have at all. He stood up now, and the three soldiers bowed. “Curtsy to the king,” whispered Darius. Anna hesitated, and he hit her across the head. She bent into an automatic curtsy.
The Eyes of a King Page 29
