The Eyes of a King

by Catherine Banner

  “What has happened, Leo?” you said. “I have been away a long time. I should have been here; I did nothing to help you. And Stirling—”

  You ran your hand over your face and kept it there. And then I wrote, I have done a very bad thing. Please let me tell you. I can speak to no one.

  You looked at me in silence. I was startled at what I had written. I did not want to tell you this; I closed my eyes and prayed that I would not. I had swallowed this secret, and it had become unreal, because the days had passed and I had not told it. I was afraid of what would happen if I told a single person what I had done. But I had to, suddenly. I picked up the pencil again and wrote.

  You sat looking at my words for a long time without speaking. And then you glanced up at me, and I thought I saw the same fear in your eyes that must have been in mine. You shook your head. “Leo, I—” And then you handed the paper back to me. “Tell me everything from the beginning. I cannot understand; Leo, explain to me why you did it.”

  I did not take the paper from you. I opened the book instead. There were gaps in the writing—there had always been—enough pages to begin to explain. Without knowing what I was doing, I started to write on the first page. I began when I thought all this began: with the snow. Four months back—that was all it was. You watched me write. Then, after a while, when I could not see how to go on, I put the book aside.

  “I had no idea how you were suffering,” you said. “I was so far away from the real world that I could hardly see. Leo, the struggles you must have had, both of you, since Stirling—”

  It is not your fault, I wrote in the margin of the newspaper. We cannot blame you for being exiled.

  “I blame myself,” you said. “I was always in a dangerous situation; I got what had been coming to me for a long time. I never thought Margaret would be left alone, or that you would …” You looked at me as though I was your own son. “If only I had been here. If only—”

  Then I did not want to talk about that anymore. Tell me about the book, I wrote instead.

  You went to the window and spoke to me from there, without turning. “Those stories,” you said, “the stories you wrote in the book—they were the things I tried to show you. I was far away, but I thought you and Stirling would like to see into another place. An English fairy tale, if you like. I wanted to speak to you.” You shook your head then, sadly. “Perhaps it was useless. I have failed you all; I should have been here. All I could do was try to show you what my own life was like. And I did not give you the words. The words are your own.”

  I opened the book and looked at the handwriting properly then. It was half mine and half someone else’s. It cut deep into the paper like my own had, long before, when I used to go to school, but it sloped forward also. “Here,” you said, and wrote a few words yourself on the margin of the newspaper. The slope of the letters was yours.

  Why did you throw it away, Leo? you had written.

  I thought about that. What did an English fairy tale mean to me anymore? I wrote eventually.

  And then I thought of what Maria had asked me. Was it real? I wrote. Did these things really happen in England?

  You shook your head. “I don’t know. It is hard to explain. Doesn’t anything begin to look like a dream after it is past?”

  I shook my head at that. Not to me. To me what was past was still here. It was not dead and gone. The night when I shot Ahira, the moment when I came back and Stirling was lying there so still, Grandmother crying and crying with mud on her face. All those things were real. And the days before that, the days when things were still all right. When we walked to your false gravestone and the sun shone on the east of the city, or that day with Maria and Stirling and the baby when they thought we would go on a picnic. These things were still real.

  After you had left, when darkness fell, I picked up the book again and went on writing. You had asked me to explain, and I had started something now that I could not set aside.

  Maria goes to confession every week. She told me once that I should go. She did not know what I had done, but she knew there was something. She could always tell. Anyway, I never went there, to kneel in the darkness of the church and repent of my sins. But I wrote in the book; I went on until it was quite dark, and rose again the next morning and went on writing. I went on even after the winter set in, and through the spring, and into the next summer. Every time I ran out of space, I would skip forward to the next blank page. I didn’t read what I had written. I just went on. I counted the days by the words I wrote, and learned to survive.

  I went on writing even after you had lost all hope of an explanation and stopped asking me, even after everyone had accepted that I did not speak. Everything found its way into the book—the old words that I had read to Stirling, the recent dreams that I had to write again from memory, my own life. Aldebaran’s story, Anna’s, the prince’s, and mine.

  I stopped thinking about England after that day you came back, Aldebaran. In the end, it did not matter to me anymore. I could no longer find the magic that had once surrounded that place. The prince’s return passed me by. Whoever ruled the country, Stirling was still gone—Ahira too. But I did not say that to you.

  Because I knew it like a theory: things had changed. Even if the revolution came too late for me, it altered things. Maria’s father returned from the border. His leg was damaged forever and he was no longer smiling, but he is alive now, not buried out there in that graveyard at Ositha. Anselm goes to Sacred Heart Infant School rather than the West Kalitzstad Military Academy—and even if they have bullet marks in the outside walls and too few books, he will learn to read and write, not fire a gun. They closed down the high-security schools and sent the children with powers home. If I had wanted to, I could have trained in magic. Grandmother grew frailer, but no one came to take her away. She cannot walk far now, so sometimes we carry her old chair down to the yard. It is still a dark place. The yard has not changed; nothing about this building has. They say when the king returned, he planned to put running water in all the houses. He has not done that yet.

  And they opened the Royal Gardens. People who are better at living than me, better at forgetting, go there for picnics.

  Reading this now, I see that I did not explain why I did it. I did not explain it at all. The more I tried, the less I understood. For a second I wanted Ahira dead, but I willed the bullet to miss. How can I explain why I did something evil? Why I did something that would ruin the rest of my life with guilt? There are many reasons, and there are none. I don’t want to make excuses, Aldebaran. I made a mistake. I’ll pay for it the rest of my life. It will never go away. If only someone had taken the rifle from me; if only Ahira had followed a different route that passed Citadel Street by …

  But what else can I say? There is nothing.

  I finished the story today. It has taken me five years. I am twenty now. Today I spoke again, for the first time. And I planned to show you the book, but I didn’t. I couldn’t when it came to it. You didn’t ask me to. Instead, you asked me to go with you to the castle. A ball for the king’s guests, you said it was.

  I thought I would refuse. But I suddenly said, “I will go with you.” My voice surprised me. It was not how I remembered it sounding when I was fifteen.

  That’s where I am now. At the castle. As soon as I arrived, I wished I hadn’t come. I never much cared about parties and dancing, even when I knew how to smile, and laugh, and talk. But I came to please you, Aldebaran, because there are other things besides being happy. Other things to live for.

  So I tried to stand in the room and speak to those strangers. But I suddenly thought I was falling. I really tried, Aldebaran, but I couldn’t. I thought I was going to burst out crying. I went and stood in the roof garden, where it was quiet. The music and the light were still spilling out the open door. I stepped away, into the shadow, and looked up at the stars.

  They name the great ones after the stars, don’t they? Those trained in magic, who take a new name, tak
e it from the stars. But I was already named after a star. Leo is a star; in England it is a whole constellation. When I looked at them from that roof garden, I didn’t know which one.

  I remembered then that I used to want to see the view from the top of the castle. It seemed to me stupid to remember it, that I would care about seeing a view. How often I used to think about it. But I could see the highest balcony from where I was, and I could see the steps that led to it. I crossed to them and began to climb.

  As I came through the door, I almost collided with a man with a dagger drawn in his hand. The king. “Forgive me,” he said, with something like fear in his eyes. “Those stairs …”

  “I came to look at the view,” I said. It concerned me nothing that he was royalty. He could see it.

  “Leonard North?” he said. “Aldebaran’s great-nephew?” I nodded. He held out his hand. “Cassius. I have been wishing to meet you.”

  I took it. “King Cassius,” I said. He laughed at that.

  The final chords drifted up, resolute, on the violin, and then scattered clapping. “ You are not dancing?” he asked me. I shook my head. “I am not either,” he said. “I would rather stand up here and watch the stars.”

  I nodded and looked out over the parapet again. You can see everything from there—every place I’ve ever been in my whole life. Below are the treetops of a walled roof garden; below that the towers drop to the yard, and the rock, down into the city. The city, farther on, drops to the river. “This is the highest point for miles,” said Cassius. “The stars are closer here.”

  “They say the stars are the same in England.”

  I don’t know why I said it; perhaps I was thinking about his story in that old book. He turned to me then but did not speak. “ Yes,” he said eventually. “ Yes, they are exactly the same.” He looked out over the city. “I always saw it as a kind of sign. Perhaps I am foolishly romantic.”

  I just shrugged at that. Then I said, “People expect that of you. You know what this country was like under Lucien.”

  “I don’t know. I never did.” He smiled, though he looked tired. “It is a disadvantage, and I don’t mind telling you.”

  We stood there for a while in silence. Then he turned to leave. “Do you think that they will miss me? I will be back by one.”

  I shook my head, though I did not mean anything by it. Then he turned again, and was gone. I heard his footsteps fading down the stairs, and then silence.

  A while later you came and spoke to me. I thought about giving you the book then. But after you had gone, I decided that I would read it again, from start to finish, one last time. So I sat down there beside the lamp and began.

  Standing here, on the highest tower, I realize that a lot of the things I have said or thought have been wrong. I shut the book. I’m not going to show it to you now—not yet. It’s too difficult. And there are some things that don’t need to be explained. I wrote this book for you, Aldebaran, but I wrote it as if it was for a stranger. When I thought of you reading it, I couldn’t write at all. And I’m frightened to show it to you, because you’re the only relative we have left, and I don’t want you to think ill of me. I hope if you read it someday, you’ll understand.

  I said that Stirling’s life was like a book—a book cut off in the middle. But maybe it’s not cut off. Maybe he’s only skipped ahead to the next chapter. That’s what I think now. Because how could that be the end of it? Even in this world, he is not entirely gone.

  I want to make this an ending, Aldebaran. I’ll write all of this into the book—all that I’ve thought now when I read it—and I’ll show it to you one day. So what is it in the end, my story? Shall I call it a happy ending or a tragedy? The sad endings are the real endings, where everything finishes and Nothing rises up like mold into what was once beautiful. The happy endings are not endings at all but beginnings—beginnings of something better than what came before. And this is both, because this isn’t a book, it’s my life. I can’t say my life’s not sad. I’ll still cry. I’ll still wish I was somewhere else. I’ll still count the days sometimes. Only I want to go on. I want Stirling to look down on me as the brother he knew. To be the same Leo, for better or worse, that he left behind.

  And I look up into the sky, the wide sky and the high, silver stars. And I can see the star called Leo now—I can see it clearly. It is the one that is shining the brightest of them all. That is what I think, just for a second.

  The sun is rising in the east and all the guests have gone home. A maid is collecting empty glasses from the roof garden, and their quiet clinking is the only sound. Clouds are rolling over the sunrise, so that the balcony is troubled by their shadows. I can hardly expect them not to pass over me. But perhaps it is something to accept that they always will.

  I said that the clinking of glasses was the only sound, but there is a small bird too. On the parapet, close by, this bird is singing. It’s been singing for some time, but I didn’t notice. I think that I’d notice only if it stopped. I reach out my hand to touch it, but it flies away just before I can. But only a second before, and it doesn’t fly far.

  There are a lot of things in my head, and some of them don’t make sense, but it doesn’t mean I’m losing my mind. I’m not happy like I was before. But happiness isn’t everything. The stars are fading. I know which one is Leo. I thought, only a couple of hours ago, that there are some things that you just know. You can never prove them. Perhaps uncertainty makes you all the more certain. And proof was something created by humans, but it’s easy and natural to know things in your heart.

  I also thought that there was no magic in the world. And I think that now, perhaps, the magic is harder to find than it was when Stirling was here and Ahira was just a face on the newspaper. But sometimes I glimpse it. Times like now I glimpse it. Just for a second.

  I wonder if the magic is beauty, or truth. Or the little bird’s song. Or happiness. Or maybe it’s love. One of those distant things. I wonder as I go down the stairs. I wonder as I walk through the deserted streets. I wonder as I go into the church. I kneel down and pray. “Forgive me, Ahira,” I whisper. Perhaps it’s stupid, but I imagine that he does.

  When I get back to the dismal apartment, I can feel the magic slipping away again. I brush some of the dust off Stirling’s overcoat. It’s funny, because that coat is the size of an eight-year-old, but he’d be thirteen now. But really, he’s beyond thirteen. He’s beyond an overcoat. He’s not in this dimension anymore. He’s beyond these calculations we place on things to keep ourselves sane.

  The rain is falling like steel. I open the window and watch it. Then I think that the magic is all those things that I thought of, and more than that. The magic is heaven. It’s beyond my explaining. I used to think that beyond meant far away. Unreachable. But it’s not. It’s over a stream that can be jumped, or through a doorway into the next room. That’s all beyond is. Beyond is a line—like magic, like madness. That’s all.

  Because heaven’s not high above us, beyond the stars. It’s everywhere; it’s close; it’s all around us. All around us, in another dimension. And in some places the barrier wears thin.

  A woman sits at her dressing table, leaning her head on her hand. She stares in the mirror at her own blue eyes, at the tired bulges under them, and at her forehead, which is creasing already. Then she winds her fingers through the chain of her necklace and watches the light glitter on the single jewel.

  A boy runs into the room, holding out his arms. Anna lifts him onto her knee. “Your dancing was lovely tonight,” he says, looking up at her.

  “Did you think so, Ashley angel?”

  “Yes.” His face is serious. “You’re the best dancer in the world.” She laughs at that. He holds out a newspaper to her. “Grandma read it to me. She said to show you. You’re in the newspaper, Mam!”

  It’s only the village newsletter, but he wouldn’t know. Anna takes it from him and reads the headline. “ ‘Local Hero’?”

  “That’s you,” A
shley says, grinning up at her.

  She runs her finger along the lines as she reads. “ ‘After the repeat performance on Saturday, Miss Ariana Devere is planning a tour with the Royal Ballet.’ ” Before the laugh has escaped her lips, she sighs instead.

  Ashley looks up at her. He has his father’s eyes, she thinks. It has become a habit, thinking that, and she hardly notices it. “Mam, can we go for a walk?” says Ashley.

  “It’s late! You should be in bed, Ash.”

  “I’m not tired.”

  “You won’t be able to get up early tomorrow if you stay up late tonight.”

  “I don’t want to get up early tomorrow. I want to go for a walk.”

  “No. It’s too late.”

  “Please.”

  She shuts her eyes. “A short walk, then. Where do you want to go?”

  “Up to the stones on the hill.”

  “All right. It won’t take long.”

  “I used to want to be a dancer once, you know,” she says as they walk.

  “You are a dancer,” says Ashley.

  “No, only for fun. But I used to think I would be a famous dancer. I even started at dance school, for a few weeks.”

  “You could be famous, like the newspaper said.”

  “It’s a joke,” she tells him. “It’s because people wouldn’t expect me to be good at ballet—because I work in a hotel, you know. And because of how seriously everyone takes the village talent show.”

  “I don’t understand. You are good at dancing. You won it. You could be a famous dancer. You are good.”

  “Not good enough,” she says.

  “Why don’t you practice, and get good enough, and then be a famous dancer?”

  “I don’t have time.”

  “Uncle Bradley said you should. He said so yesterday, on the phone. He said you can always find time.”

  “Uncle Bradley says a lot of things that he really shouldn’t.”

  “How can you find time? How can you lose it? It doesn’t make sense.”