Aleksey's Kingdom

by John Wiltshire

  I could see him now, passing around a bottle of rum he had liberated from our table.

  It did not bother me. He could sit and drink with whomever he liked.

  Left without my buffer, however, I was forced to participate more in the conversation around the table. The reverend fortunately did not return to his previous topic of his early acquaintance with me other than to comment obliquely that he was not surprised I did not remember him, for his son, David, did not remember his real father either—although the man had died upon the ship bringing him to the New World. He confirmed what I already knew: he had married the young widow, Mary, only a few weeks ago. This somewhat explained the complete lack of interest the three older sons gave the woman and the child. Indeed, they often seemed to go out of their way to avoid riding with her or sitting with her at mealtimes. They had their tent pitched well away from their father’s in the evening. I had already observed it was not a blest marriage, and the journey had led me to believe they were not a happy family. I wondered whether the fact she had lied about recently arriving in the colony on the supply ship had anything to do with this antipathy. She had not sailed from Southampton—unless Southampton had stolen Plymouth’s lighthouse, of course.

  How much the family knew of her deceptions was debatable. Perhaps the reverend’s sons just disliked the new wife and her child on principle. Even now, it was the young lieutenant who was engaging the child’s interest: making him a bow and fashioning some arrows for it. When it was ready, the boy seized it gleefully and ran off into the trees. His mother seemed to relax a fraction and closed her eyes, leaning back in her chair. I glanced slightly anxiously at the tree line. This was not an English wood—a place where, in this day and age, little harm could come to a child. But this sort of thing was Aleksey’s job. He would by now have sensed my concerns and voiced them as his own, and he would be listened to. Eventually, however, I murmured to the boy’s father that it were better the child stay in sight. Mary Wright smiled, her eyes still closed, and said very boldly for a modest, godly wife, “No harm can come to him. Leave him be.”

  The stepfather gave a weak smile and helped himself to some more cheese.

  I DID not allow the normal two hours for this midday break. I had lost my pleasure in the day for some reason and wanted to be moving on. I took my position in the front and rode some way ahead—there was no reason the cart could not make this journey, but it did necessitate some more careful planning of the route on my part. When we were on our own, Aleksey and I swam the horses across the large river we were now approaching. This time we would have to wind our way down the bank until we came to a shallower place and then pick up the route once more on the other side. It gave me something to think about.

  I turned around and rode back to Major Parkinson and told him to stay with the river on his right hand until they came across me again—that I was going ahead to scout for a suitable fording point. I swung Xavier away and let him have his head for a while. We both needed the exercise. I heard hoofbeats and increased my speed but mindful of injuring our horses, slowed again. He soon caught up. He was silent for a while, as was I. I then noticed Freedom was not with him, and he said, as if I had asked out loud, “I tied him to the wagon. He is very cross with me too.”

  “I was not the one who angered and flounced off, if you remember.”

  “If you use that word again, I will do it again.”

  I said nothing. It seemed to me that given all the disadvantages of my position—that I could not love openly, that I was in constant danger of losing my life or liberty—I should have the advantage of not having to be nagged as if I were married. I was tempted to point this out but decided discretion was the better part of valor.

  Finally he turned to me and snapped with some very genuine annoyance, “Did you mean what you said?”

  This was tricky. I tried to work out which of my various pronouncements had angered him this time, but he must have seen my expression and added, exasperated, “I cannot believe that you think the only reason I do not return to Hesse-Davia is because I am afraid of hurting Stephen’s feelings. Are you really so stupid, Niko?” He hit me. “Niko? Are you?” His questions were always rhetorical; I had not realized I was actually supposed to answer this one.

  “What? No. Yes? Sorry, what was the question?”

  “Oh, you are—I could return to Hesse-Davia whenever I want, Nikolai. My uncles are dead. Stephen would release the throne to me willingly. I do not return because of you! Hesse-Davia is no longer my life—you are. Is this really news to you? Seriously, tell me that you had worked this out by now, being the great doctor and man of science and reasoning I once thought you were.”

  “Once thought?”

  “Niko!”

  “Yes! I know that!” I paused and added in a low voice, “You would make it clearer, of course, by occasionally sitting with me at mealtimes.”

  “Oh, did my poor colonel have to open his mouth and join in some conversation?”

  “Yes.”

  “I had a better idea how I was going to show you—I have joined you on this… spying mission… have I not?”

  I was about to point out it was a recce and not a spying mission but then got it. I grinned and headed Xavier off into the tree line. Boudica followed.

  ALEKSEY PUSHED me against a tree, possessing my mouth—possibly to prevent me speaking more. It seemed like forever since I had enjoyed him close like this in the sunlight that filtered down from the heavy canopy above us. The horses cropped contentedly close by. Faelan slinked off into the gloom on one of his patrols, and all seemed very right in our kingdom again. Aleksey nuzzled into the skin beneath my ear, which always made me laugh. “One day I will take you seriously, Nikolai, and then you will be sorry for the way you treat me.”

  I held him off a little. “I was being serious. Johan has hinted you could return if you—”

  He thumped me back against the tree. “Stop it! What would I have there that I do not have here?”

  “Friends?”

  “Well, all right, besides friends.”

  “Luxury in a palace?”

  “This is one of those conversations where you actually can list a huge number of things I do not have, isn’t it? Oh, Niko, I call you stupid all the time, but I do not really mean it, for you are oddly wise for someone who looks as you do. But now I have to say that you are a complete simpleton and be entirely truthful. I don’t need friends. I have you. I have everything I need—is that not the very definition of luxury? Now, turn around, for your backside is the main indulgence I enjoy in my new kingdom. Ah”—he thrust in hard and deep—“is that not the very manifestation of the riches of our new life here together? Would I trade this tree for a throne? That sunlight upon the gold of your hair for a coin of real gold? Would I trade you for all the friends or subjects I had there? You do not have to answer that, by the way.” I do not think I could have. Standing up like this was always so good for me. He had now brought me to a place where I could think of nothing except the overwhelming sensation growing in my body. It was like rushing along held in a current, waiting for a great plunge, perhaps a great lifting—and there it was. I used my hand to spill against the tree as Aleksey released inside me, his teeth fastened to the back of my neck as if I were his hunting prize. Perhaps I was.

  He slid his arms around me when we were done, still both leaning against the tree, our clothes spilled around us. He was still in me. Neither of us wanted to move. I could smell the sharp, evocative scent of the conifer against my cheek, the even more evocative essence of our passion, musky, salty. It made my mouth water. He was playing idly with my cock, his body heavy and warm against my back as his fingers stroked me, then wandered onto the hard warmth of my belly, and combed down, twisting hair into little curls.

  Eventually, knowing our time was nearly up, he eased out with a grimace, and we dressed reluctantly. We could both hear the sound of voices coming to us from the track.

  Suddenly Aleksey squ
eezed my arm and gestured with a flick of his chin and a smile toward the horses. I had to smile too. It was a particularly affecting scene. The little boy, David, was approaching from the trees with his bow and arrow, trying to be stealthy as a native brave. He wasn’t doing a very good job, and he had not even seen us, which was unthinkable for a Powponi child of his age. Finally he gave up his game and approached Xavier with a large handful of grass. I ruefully shook my head. Xavier was anyone’s for a handful of grass. He bent his old, trusting head down to the tiny figure, and although I saw it happening, I did not believe it and therefore did not cry out a warning.

  The child dropped the grass, seized the arrow, and stabbed it at Xavier’s eye. If shock can kill a man instantly, I would have dropped dead at Aleksey’s feet. Perhaps he’d have followed me down. I heard a strangled sound of horror from him, and then we were both moving.

  We were too late.

  There was an ear-piercing scream, and the child was on his back, one hundred plus pounds of snarling wolf standing over him. Faelan’s muzzle was retracted so far saliva dripped in a steady stream onto the boy’s terrified face. Screams didn’t upset Faelan one bit; he enjoyed them. Xavier was bleeding, but only from a tiny slice on the side of his face just below his eye. Faelan had taken the boy down before he could….

  What the fuck?

  I do not swear often in my head, for it seems a waste of my new curse, but what the fuck? I had never seen such a thing. But in the confusion that then immediately surrounded us, I had no time to think this through. The mother and father came running into the clearing. They saw the child pinned beneath a ferocious wolf and began variously screaming and shouting. This drew the soldiers, and Lieutenant McIntyre drew his sword and approached the child. Aleksey made a small gesture of his hand—I’m not even sure it was that much—and Faelan just suddenly wasn’t there. He slunk back into the dark forest, silent and watchful as he had been before.

  The child ran to his mother and buried himself deep in her skirts. Well he might. I would have killed him, I think, had not Aleksey been there with a restraining hand on my arm. He took over, made apologies, said it had been an accident, a misunderstanding. I could feel my fury growing. And then I glanced over at the woman. A pair of eyes was watching me from the folds of her skirt: bright, amused eyes. I swallowed and felt a chill run down my spine. I gathered Xavier and Boudica’s reins and walked them down to the track to the better light where I could see his face. He was fine. He was a warhorse and prized his scars as much as I enjoyed mine, no doubt.

  Aleksey soon joined me, and we mounted in silence and rode on to find the ford we needed.

  Uncharacteristically I was the first to speak. “Did you see it too? Did that actually happen?”

  He nodded, his face creased with worry.

  “What?”

  “Oh God.”

  “What? Aleksey, what?”

  He turned in his saddle a little. “Remember when I told you about them all, I termed him ‘odd’? I wish now I had told you what I had seen, but I thought it was a joke!”

  “Aleksey!”

  “In the colony, when they were closing up their house to make this journey that… thing, that… child… had a very young puppy. He was putting it into a tiny box, and I joked to him that it was too small for it to travel in, and he said it wasn’t coming, and I said then in that case he must give it to someone who would look after it, and he said he was going to hide it in the box because he wanted to know how long it would take to die without any food or water. I thought he was joking! I thought he was being like you when I ask if you have fed the horses and you say you have left their food outside the barn to see if they are clever enough to work out how to get it, or when I ask if you have seen Faelan and you say no, but you saw some wolf pelts with a trapper… you are always doing it to me!”

  “Aleksey… calm down.”

  “But—”

  “If he did do that, then the dog would very quickly bark, no? He would be heard?”

  He calmed a little but twisted around in the saddle to look behind us as if the little demon were there now, watching us. I confess the hair on my scalp pricked when I saw him do this. “Have you ever seen anything like that, Niko? You have seen more of the world than I, I know that.”

  I thought about this for a while. I had seen all sorts of evil and much horror. Watching your mother tortured to death is not common for children, I suppose. Was there something similar in the inquisitive way the Powponi had prolonged my mother’s suffering to so many days, to the way the child had looked at Xavier? I did not think so. I could not articulate this to Aleksey, as his world was more black and white than mine, but I had lived with those same men and women and become one of them. Was it not entirely reasonable for them, being told of this great God who was all-powerful—more powerful apparently than their gods who ruled the heavens and the earth just so—that they put his followers to the test? They would expect nothing less of their own but that boasted prowess was proved by pain and endurance. So I did not think what we had witnessed was the same as I had borne as a child at all.

  David was something other, but I did not know what. Finally I shook my head. “No, I have never seen anything like that.”

  “I think his family knows.”

  “Yes. I think they do.” I remembered back to the mother’s deception about her arrival in the New World—and her nonchalance about the boy’s welfare in the forest. Now it made sense. There was probably nothing in this vast wilderness more dangerous than her child. It was a sobering thought. Suddenly I laughed. Aleksey glanced over, surprised. I shrugged. “Maybe we will square him up with the bone-grinding cannibal and see who wins.”

  He smiled too, which was unusual, as he did not like humor at other’s expense. I suspected he was still worrying about the puppy. I could guarantee that the first thing he would do upon our return was to go and enquire of its welfare. Faelan reappeared a few minutes later. I glanced at Aleksey. “What does he say about it all?”

  Aleksey never knew if I was joking when I made these enquiries. I never knew if he was being truthful in his replies. He murmured calmly, “He promised the next time, he will kill it.”

  My brows rose, and I looked at the wolf. We were in complete accord.

  Chapter Six

  MAJOR PARKINSON was flustered and embarrassed by the incident that day and told everyone many times that it was a rum do, very rum indeed.

  Mary Wright, not unnaturally, wanted Faelan shot. The trappers, not unnaturally, volunteered to do it.

  Fortunately, we had foreseen this, and Faelan was absent that evening. We had already decided that things were going to change.

  It was a very strained atmosphere at the dinner table. Why did we not try to explain what we had seen? We both knew we would not be believed, and if we were, by the parents, who must have suspected if not seen such things before, they would clearly not concede easily to a stranger that they had a monster in the bosom of their family. The least vociferous in their condemnation of Faelan were the three older Wright sons. They, Aleksey and I both noted with great interest, were silent on the matter, but I saw glances between them, and I wondered what their lives had been like for the previous few months. We were not entirely outnumbered, therefore. Captain Rochester was also on our side, I believe. He was an old soldier and not much got past him. If his backing was more for Aleksey and less for Faelan, I let it go. We needed all the allies we could get, and Aleksey was prettier than Faelan, so I could not entirely blame the officer.

  Fortunately the child did not make an appearance. He was tired, apparently, asleep, apparently. I thought it more likely he was lying in his tent listening to us, but I kept that to myself.

  When it was time to repair to our tents, I told the soldier who was erecting ours in a favorable spot on a grassy bank by the river that we would not need it and to save his efforts. He rose with his mallet in hand and asked deferentially if in that case could he and another soldier use it—as all
four of them were in one tent and it was very squashed. I agreed readily and left him to it. Aleksey and I had already decided to move our three horses to where we had told Faelan to lie up, and the six of us would sleep there. I had another plan I wanted to put to Aleksey, too, but knowing him as well as I did, I needed to do this at the right moment to have any chance of success.

  We had left Faelan at the summit of a small rise some half mile away from the camp. Thus we had the high ground and the advantage on the enemy. It made us both feel a little foolish, having been soldiers in war, to see a small dark-haired five-year-old boy as the enemy, but nevertheless that’s what he now was. I think it had been the expression in his eyes as he tried to poke out Xavier’s that made the child loom larger in our minds than his stature should allow. There was none. Afterward, for sure, he had looked at me merrily, interest piqued to see how I was reacting, baby teeth visible between his lips as he smiled, but when he had actually done it, then there had been nothing there, as if something that makes up a man and is usually so strong and unfettered in children—for they have not had the knocks life gives you to squash you into the shape of an adult—was absent. I have seen more of this spark of spirit, soul if you will, in animals. I had seen it only a few days previous in the bears with their cubs: teaching them, nurturing them, enjoying the leap of the salmon, just as Aleksey and I were.