Ryan caught her eyes and started to say something, then stopped. Aldebaran put his hand on her shoulder. “I will remember you, Anna,” he said. “You have been caught up in strange times these past days. We all have. But I am proud to have a niece like you. One day you will be a great dancer.”
“How do you know?” said Anna.
“I know,” said Aldebaran. “I can always tell.”
Anna was staring at him, but he turned briskly to Ryan. “I will be waiting for you. Come quickly.” He took his hand from her shoulder. “Goodbye, Anna.”
Aldebaran turned and marched up through the trees. They watched him pass from shade to sunlight and back again, between the dense branches. Up by the chapel, against the sun, he turned and looked out over the valley. A moment later he was hidden from view. She thought she could see him again, briefly, at a window, but they watched for a long time and he did not appear again.
Ryan turned back to her. “Here,” she said, taking off her necklace. She forced her hands to clasp it around Ryan’s neck, but for a moment they would not let it go.
“Perhaps one day we will be married,” Ryan said. “We should be together.”
“Maybe we should.” She could not even take his hand, her heart was aching so badly. She folded her arms and watched the ground under her feet.
“Anna, last night,” he said. “I was not thinking. I should have—” He stopped and began again. “What if you—”
“It’s all right,” she said.
He looked as though he wanted to continue, then gave up and shook his head. He took something out of his pocket. It was his own necklace, with the jewel that was missing from Anna’s. “Keep this one,” he said. “It will make no difference if I give it to you. Anna, I would promise to be faithful and come and find you years from now, but I don’t know what things will be like after I go back. I don’t know anymore.”
She took it from him in silence. “Anna, listen—” he began, but she put a hand on his shoulder and he did not continue.
Then she started and looked up at him. “Do you have a bulletproof vest on under that shirt?” she demanded. He took hold of her hand and wound his fingers through hers, but she kept her eyes on him. “Ryan, do you?”
“I will not need it,” he said eventually. “It is just a safety measure. Aldebaran insists, that is all.”
“But will you be all right?”
He gave her his nearly arrogant smile. “I live a charmed life. I’ll always be all right.” And he laughed, but shakily. “Come,” he said. “We should start up toward the chapel.”
Her hand was still on his shoulder. They started up through the trees. Then he was walking faster, and Anna tried to keep pace with him, taking hold of his wrist. “Ryan, wait,” she said. They were struggling through dense branches and thorns, and she lost hold of his arm.
The clouds raced over the sun and a few raindrops fell. Anna struggled up toward the chapel. Ryan vanished between the trees and then appeared again farther up. The rain was falling quickly now. She ran toward the edge of the clearing and the chapel door. But when she reached it, he had walked farther on. And then she could not see him anymore.
Aldebaran was kneeling at the altar. Ryan walked up behind him silently, hearing the rise and fall of the thousands of voices outside. “Uncle?” he said, and put his hand on Aldebaran’s shoulder.
Aldebaran turned. “We are home,” he said. “And England already looks like just a dream.” He stood up and ruffled Ryan’s hair, as though he was his own son. “Shall we go out?” he said.
They walked side by side. There were flowers over the church doorway, and leaves were laid on the ground—a pathway from the door out across the square. Orange flags were flying on the castle towers. The square was packed with people; the crowds stretched halfway up Citadel Street. The girl closest to the door—a pretty brown-haired girl with a baby—was crying. A few others had seen Ryan approach the door, and a tentative cheer rose.
Ryan tried to turn, but Aldebaran caught his arm and led him onward. Then they stepped out into the sunlight, into the cheering that burst like painful screams from the crowd, into the falling flowers and the triumphant music. Ryan had wanted to turn back because he had thought that he heard Anna calling after him to wait. But a moment later he had stopped thinking about that.
In the English wood, Anna could almost reach them. She heard faint voices in the air and started toward them, but they vanished. She thought she could see Ryan again for a second, a long way off now and about to turn. And then there were crowds moving like spirits around her—thousands of people there, though she could not quite see them. She took hold of the jewel around her neck, as Ryan had done when he had said that he could almost see Malonia. But it came no closer. Even the traces she had seen drifted away from her. The wood was silent.
As Anna crossed the lawn past the deserted house, someone was running to meet her: Monica, waving a few sheets of paper and shouting something. “What is it?” said Anna.
“Did you know Ryan and Mr. Field were leaving for good?” shouted Monica. “You never said! Anna! He left me this letter! He left me this! I only found it when I went back to the kitchen just now. Anna, did you know?”
“What?” said Anna again. Monica stopped in front of her, breathless, and laughed, then held out the papers, but her hands were shaking too much for Anna to read them.
“They have all the right signatures,” said Monica. “I’ve just checked with the lawyers. These are valid documents.” Monica glanced up at the house. “Where is Mr. Field? I have not missed him?”
Anna nodded. “They have left.”
“Did they leave in a taxi? I passed one on the road, but I would have thought they would take the car. Then it’s too late to speak to him?” Anna nodded. “What are you doing here?” said Monica. “I thought you came to say goodbye.”
“I was just walking. Tell me what that paper is, anyway.”
Monica laughed out loud again and put the pages into Anna’s hands. “Look, I don’t know what the hell he did it for. I told you he was eccentric. Anna, Mr. Field has given me his house.” She spun around, taking in the acres of forest and the wide lawns. “All this.”
“He gave it to you?” said Anna.
“If this is valid, which the lawyers say it is,” said Monica, “it means that you can go home and practice all you want for your audition. I’m going to Lowcastle now to talk to the lawyers about it.”
They walked back together. After Monica had left, Anna began sweeping the floor of the dining room. The guests were passing the door, dragging suitcases and shouting to their children as if it was an ordinary day. After a long time, Monica returned and danced around the room, without caring anymore about damaging the floor. She was telling Anna about the new hotel she would open at Lakebank, the biggest hotel in the valley. Anna listened. Then she put down the broom. “I think I should practice for the audition,” she said. “I want to go home.”
Monica stopped dancing. “You’re a good girl, Anna,” she said. “I’m lucky to have a niece like you. Mam was always so proud of you. Go home and practice; I can get a temporary worker. And if you don’t get this scholarship, I will sell some land and pay for you to go to dance school.”
Darkness had fallen completely when the bus slowed at the edge of the playing fields. Thunderclouds were thickening over the towers of the city. Raindrops began to fall. The bus driver hummed along to the radio, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. Anna picked up her suitcase and stepped out in silence.
The lights of the tower blocks were brightening. After the bus had vanished, Anna stood on the corner of those old familiar streets and looked up. The window of her flat was lighted, and she could see her mother crossing the room. She started across the playing fields, under the light of the streetlamps, then up the stairs and along the walkway to her door. After it closed, England was silent, except for the heavy raindrops that were falling like beads of glass, and cars gaining speed around some corner far away.
That was all.
“Do you think it was real?” Maria asked me once. “What you dreamed about England—do you think it was real?”
I did not know. I had wondered about it once, I remembered. Stirling and I, walking home from school, had talked for a long time about whether England was real. And when I had read that book to him, when he had been so ill and frightened, he had believed in it. I suppose it passed the time. It was a story. And now the book was gone, anyway.
Maria wiped the tears from her face then, and got up and boiled water for tea. She was talking about the prince’s return, about how the newspaper called people to come to the square that morning and see it. I did not hear all of what she said. I was wondering how she could do this—cry so desperately that night and, when the morning came, force herself to get up and make tea. She moved across the lighted kitchen like Grandmother did, like someone many years older than she was.
The baby murmured, and she called quietly, “Leo, will you hold him?”
I picked the baby up. He blinked at me and stretched out a hand. I felt stunned and tired, like someone who has been too long in a battle and wants to lie down and rest. But I picked the baby up because she told me to.
I have no right to hold this baby, I was thinking all that time. I could hardly stand it. But she was busy in the kitchen and I could not call to her, and there was no one else to take him. So I did not let him fall. Is that how you put your life back together? Because you have no choice about it, in the end.
When I look up, I can see the gray light beginning along the eastern hills. It is an unforgiving light; it draws everything slowly out of the darkness—the city, still sleeping; every stone of the castle; and my own hands on the book. My story is almost finished. There was hardly anything left to tell after that point.
Maria saved me in those first desperate weeks. Grandmother was growing frailer, and sometimes her mind drifted for two days at a time. Maria was the only one who could help her. Often I sat with the baby sleeping in my arms while she talked Grandmother back into the real world. And she stood by my side when I thought I was going to fall and disappear into Nothing. I was so frightened in those days. Fits of shaking came over me when I thought about Ahira.
Stirling and I used to talk about Anna, our English relative whose story came to me. I don’t know if I really spoke to her in the hills, or if it was just another dream. But I would have gone through with it otherwise and pulled the trigger if she had not been there. I think it was right to go back. I’ve done so many things wrong, but I think now that killing myself would have been only another mistake. It would not have canceled out the others. I don’t think it would even have taken away the pain.
Once, a long time after, I dreamed of Anna again. I could see her in the English city, traveling somewhere, light crossing her face and then darkness. That was the last time I thought about England. I wrote them here, the last things I saw.
Anna was turning the jewel around on her necklace as the bus edged through the streets. From the window she could see the evening star, and she wondered if Ryan could see it too. Then she stopped thinking about that and closed her eyes.
The bus stopped not long after, at the edge of the playing fields. She got down slowly. “Anna!” said someone from the shadows. A boy’s voice. She turned.
“Bradley,” she said. “You made me jump.”
He grinned and came to meet her. He was one of the friends whose names Ryan, far away, was already struggling to remember. “I saw the bus and came down,” he said. “I wanted to talk to you. I have hardly seen you in the last couple of weeks.”
“It’s this new school,” said Anna. “I get home late.”
“I am only one floor up from you. And I have been missing you—we all have.”
She linked her arm with his. Bradley lit a cigarette and they started back toward the building. “Look at your uniform!” he said. “It is a change, this school. What do you think about it?”
“I can hardly believe I am there sometimes,” said Anna. “ We dance four hours every day, and you should see the studios. And there are nine dance teachers. But—”
“But what?” Bradley was watching her closely. Anna shrugged and sighed. “This is what I wanted to talk to you about,” he said. “You seem distracted, Anna. You seem different. You have been talking about going to dance school since we were five years old. And now—I don’t know—you are acting strange.”
“I’m not acting strange …,” began Anna, without conviction.
“Is it this boy, your Ryan that you told me about? Are you missing him?”
They walked in silence up the stairs and along the walkway to Anna’s door. “I haven’t been feeling well, that’s all.”
“You’ve been ill?”
“I don’t know what it is,” Anna said. “I just feel sick and strange these days. This morning, I was sitting there putting on my shoes and I had to be at the barre for the register. I knew I had to be there, but I felt too sick and I couldn’t get up.”
He turned to her, about to speak. And then he stopped. Anna looked at him.
“I should go in,” she said then. She unlocked the door and hurried inside, without meeting his eyes. Bradley was still standing there as she crossed the hall to her bedroom and closed the door behind her. “Ryan,” she said quietly. The silence did not change.
A long way away, Ryan looked up from his desk. He stared out into the dark, his hand on the silver eagle at his neck. Then he let it go again. He bent his head over the page and signed his name, Cassius Donahue, above the capitals HIS MAJESTY KING CASSIUS OF MALONIA. The ink glittered. He pushed the pile of letters away and again stared out over the city.
Aldebaran had said he would forget England soon enough; everyone did, once they left it. And England had blurred to him already, like a memory from his childhood or a familiar dream. But that was not the same as forgetting. He could not forget.
I was trying to strangle someone. I could not see his face; he was just a soldier. We were struggling on the ground, and in a circle around me were faces I knew—Grandmother and Stirling, Maria, Father Dunstan, even Aldebaran—all of them shouting at me to stop. And I wanted to stop—I was trying to—but my hands would not release him. I could not force them to let him go. Then I was trying desperately to wake up. I knew that if I could wake myself in time, I would be able to stop myself from killing him. But my eyes would not open either. Ahira’s face was close to mine, bleeding white and staring at me lifeless.
I woke suddenly and almost threw up with fear. I would not sleep again after that dream. I got up and stood in front of the window. There were still stars in the lightening sky, and the moon was weak and pale. Everything was silver outside. The first frost of autumn had come that night, creeping onto the roofs of the city and into the shadows of the houses. I stood at the window until the sun rose.
I had dreamed of the same thing many times and would dream about it many times again. But I remember how I woke that morning, because that was the day you came back.
There was a knock on the door soon after the building began to stir. I had not heard anyone come up from downstairs; I had been thinking and had forgotten that I was here at all. Grandmother was sleeping, so I went to open it. Standing on the step was a gray man. He smiled, and when he did, he looked like a skull. “Leonard? You must be Leonard.” I didn’t answer. “The last time I saw you, you were hardly more than a baby.”
I just looked at you. Then you took a book from your pocket and said, “Is this yours?”
The smile and the formal greeting were just a pretense. You knew about us. I stared at the book in silence. A black leather book, shabby and scratched now, and fastened together roughly down the spine with glue and steel staples. “I tried to put it back as it was,” you said. “But even the great ones cannot mend what is broken.”
I took it from you and turned over the pages. They were all there, some of them faded now and others muddy and torn. “Do you want this back?”
you said. “Should I have brought it?”
I did not answer, but I let you in. In the next room I heard Grandmother stir. A moment later she was hurrying through the door, still in her nightdress, saying something about Harold and Arthur in the same distant way she always did. Only this time it was not madness, because you were really there. “Margaret,” you said, and then she was crying and throwing her arms around you, and you were saying, “It’s all right. It’s all right.” But she would not let you go. You said, “Margaret, it’s all right. I’m back to stay now.” And I think you were crying too, but I am not certain. I understand why you were crying, Aldebaran, if you were. Grandmother is the same to you as Stirling was to me.
When Grandmother had gone to lie down, much later, you turned back to me. I was still clutching that book in my hand; I had not put it down since you had given it back. You sat down at the table and called me over. I put the book down and sat awkwardly opposite you. “I have missed too much,” you said. “I have missed your whole life. Leo, tell me what has happened here since I have been gone.”
The voice in my head was shouting. But I didn’t really answer. I just stared at you. Then I realized you could hear that voice.
“What is it?” you said. I shook my head. “If you will not speak, write. I want to know.”
You got me to write. Maybe it was because I was scared of you—I don’t know. Maybe you used your powers. I hated you for it then. Everyone was trying to save me: Anna, who had sent me back home from the hills; Maria, picking me up from the floor when I cried; even Grandmother, as much as she could. And you. Were you the Voice that spoke to me across the worlds, that brought me back from Ositha and told me stories of another place? Aldebaran, you never confirmed it, but I am almost certain that you were. And now you had searched the Royal Gardens for every page of that story and gathered them and put it back together. You knew about me, even if only faintly. You always had.
The Eyes of a King Page 36
