“Oh, stop being so stupid, Niko. How can he claim there was regicide if you were not ensnared in the plot? Who will listen then to your ideas of sweat and liver? No one. There will be suspicion and paranoia and torture. Everyone confesses under torture. You will confess. So we are going to take you out by—”
“No! Where would I go? My reputation would be ruined. I could never work as a doctor again!”
“The devil take your reputation, Niko, this is your—”
“Don’t call me that! I won’t go.” I stood up, as if he were trying to seize me there and then and bundle me onto a ship.
He stood too. “Oh, you will. You are but one man, and I am….” He frowned. “Well, I’m only one too, but what I mean is—”
I began to laugh at his confused expression. He looked up sharply, and then the laughter overtook him as well. He hung his head for a moment. “I think it would be best if you just cured the king, and then we will not have to put your stubbornness to the test.”
“Or your ability to pilot a ship?”
He pouted a little. “You think I would accompany you on this flight to exile?”
I left a little pause. “Yes. I think you would.”
He gave a rueful huff, as if my knowledge of his intentions was superior to his own. I noticed, however, that he did not deny my supposition. I stepped past him into the fresh air. “So, I go cure a king?”
He put a brotherly arm over my shoulder and agreed. “Yes, you go cure a king.”
CHAPTER 8
AFTER THREE weeks in a sweat lodge eating raw liver, I might be forgiven for being slightly… tetchy? That period was one of increasing hope and decreasing mood, if those two are possible at the same time. The king was not the easiest of companions. But then neither was I, and you do need to be fairly companionable when you sit naked all day with someone. Of course, in sweat lodges of my youth, we mainly sat in comfortable silence. I have never known another race that was as completely unable to sit content within their own thoughts as the races of Europe. They must always be talking or getting you to talk so they do not have to actually think.
The king was no different. By the end of the first week, I had exhausted every topic of conversation I could think of. But to be fair to the man, he was ill, and he was not used to being treated as I was treating him. He had never had to do one thing he did not want to do, and he did not want to be naked, and he did not want me scraping sweat off him or feeding him raw things he couldn’t stomach or forcing endless water into him. But he also did not want to be sick, and he did not want to die. These latter considerations outweighed the former, so he tolerated me. But he wanted entertaining and keeping his mind off the regime, so I told him stories of the Powponi and their legends and of England and some of my cases there. I even talked a little about my impressions of his country, but I noticed he always decided he needed to rest whenever this topic was introduced.
By the end of the first week, however, I had a less sick man on my hands. I had a man who could sit up for most of the day, who demanded some food that wasn’t raw, and who wanted his royal comforts. I reminded him that his royal comforts had been trying to kill him, which sobered him for a while. By the middle of the second week, we had progressed to first names—well, he called me Nikolai, and I called him Your Majesty. He was then well enough to go for short walks, and we walked down to the beach (dressed now—I wasn’t that cruel) and skimmed stones into the waves. It was at that moment, watching him cheering his stone beating mine, that I knew I’d won. I grinned and turned my face to the weak October sun. I felt him come closer and opened my eyes. The discoloration of his skin had gone, and his eyes were bright. He breathed deeply. Suddenly a wave broke over our feet. He looked down, astonished. I laughed at his outrage and bowed to him. “King Canute.”
He looked puzzled for a moment, then laughed too. “He couldn’t keep back the waves either. He was said to be a fool.”
I eyed him boldly. “But he wasn’t.”
Toeing the sand in a gesture that reminded me so much of his youngest son, he agreed. “He was proving a point to those who thought he was all-powerful.”
“That all men have to obey the higher laws?”
“Yes, that God is master of all.”
“I didn’t mean God. I meant science and the laws that govern the world around us. These waves have been pounding upon this shore since Canute was king here and will pound upon them long after you have gone. Their power dwarfs yours.”
“As does God’s.”
“God does not wet my feet. I prefer to believe in what I can see and feel.”
“You are a heretic, Nikolai.”
“I am a heretic who appears to have a very tired patient. Come, you must rest. And eat some more liver.” He groaned, and thus my rather horrifying indiscretion was passed over. I had genuinely forgotten, being closeted with the man for so long and so intimately, that we were not colleagues or friends. He could have me put to death for my heresy. I hoped he felt he needed me for a while longer.
By the end of the third week, we were riding together for short spells along the coast or up into the forests. We were very easy in each other’s company by then. His return to health from nearly half a year of being very ill had, needless to say, cheered him considerably. He was not yet hale and hearty, as a man his age should be, but he was no longer dying. It proved my theory that poison was to blame for his condition. This, obviously, was a subject that never ceased to interest us, and I had by now heard far more about the court and the various personalities there than I was ever likely to remember. He genuinely seemed unable to name a suspect. Whether this was from some kind of delusional belief that he was universally loved, or whether he was a genuinely good judge of character, I couldn’t tell. I suspected the former. His son had inherited much of his arrogance and self-belief. In Aleksey, given his relative youth, it was amusing or occasionally annoying. In this man, it was a more dangerous trait.
Aleksey, of course, was much featured in our conversations. I have to confess that I encouraged the old man to talk about his youngest son. I learned a great many interesting things about Aleksey that I was sure he would not appreciate me knowing. I learned, for example, that he had been taken and held as hostage by a rival state when he was eight. Saxefalia, lying to the east of Hesse-Davia, was a rich and powerful country, owing to very favorable trading agreements with its other neighbor—Russia. The Saxefalians had kept Aleksey for two years, until his father had paid his ransom. When he returned, he had forgotten his own language—apparently. Everyone suspected he pretended not to remember to emphasize the point that it had taken two years for him to be considered worth redeeming. I learned that he did not attend mass, but whether this was from lack of conviction or pure laziness, his father was not sure and had not inquired.
I got the distinct impression that His Almighty Princeliness Christian Aleksey had been allowed to do very much what he liked when he liked with no one telling him different. When he was fourteen, he had nearly died in the Cretian Wars when he had taken a glancing sword blade to the stomach. So much for his tale of alehouse brawls. He had found his dog in the woods, an orphaned wolf cub, and had brought it home with him. When his brother had put the cub in a sack and thrown it off the battlements into the sea, Aleksey had jumped in after it. It was a drop of over forty feet, enough to knock a grown man to unconsciousness, but Aleksey had survived it and emerged from the water with his bedraggled cub. The next day, the cub had miraculously been discovered to be a rare breed from somewhere unpronounceable in the north and thus spared death. He had rejected seven eligible princesses until he had met Anastasia, and then within a day had agreed that they would marry when she was old enough. He had, until recently, had long hair that fell well below his shoulders, but then in a drunken game with his soldiers one night he had shaved it all off for a bet. Apparently it was still growing out from this unfortunate escapade.
I was mulling over some of the things the king told me as I sp
lit some kindling for the fire. I studied the hatchet. On impulse, I grabbed a hank of my inconvenient hair and sliced it off, then tossed it in the fire. It felt incredibly satisfying, like lancing a boil. I did it again. Then I shrugged and hacked it all off to within about an inch of my scalp. Without a mirror, I’m sure the result was a little uneven, but it felt incredibly good. No more lank hair; no more worry over lice. It was liberating. It felt great to rub my hands over. The king was less impressed than I and said I looked like a heathen. The heathens I had known had possessed the most beautiful hair, of raven black without curl or kink, but I did not contradict him. I had gathered by now that by heathen he tended to mean anyone who did not agree with him. The king’s world held a great many heathens.
I wanted to know much more about his intriguing youngest son, but the old man was unable to tell me the sorts of things I longed to discover. He knew his son on the periphery of his life. I wanted to know the real Aleksey, and I envied his friends.
By the end of the month, I think we were both sick of each other’s company, as very old friends can be. I grumbled at him, and he grumbled at me. He had more cause to be grumpy than I; I was not easy to live with by now. It was a side effect of my cleansing treatments that, at the end, I always became very… healthy. Sharing this hut with the king, I was now very lean and fit and consequently suffering from repressed urges. I had begun to dwell unnaturally on memories I thought myself free of. I longed to feel again smooth flesh beneath my fingers, to arch to pain and pleasure, to taste another’s skin and share warmth. My dreams were full of corrupted memories, people I had known then confused with people I knew now, things I had done then mixed up with things I longed to do now. I had to spend more and more time alone, walking on the beach or riding Xavier until I was exhausted. The king grunted that I should find a wife, that it was unhealthy for a man to suffer so without relief. I flushed and informed him in my best professional voice that weakness of the flesh was merely a sign of good health. He replied that a man could be too healthy, and maybe I should take a swim in the ocean….
I took his suggestion to heart, and he became that day my doctor and I his patient. Freezing northern water did the trick, and I slept more soundly that night and rose with a clear head. He was looking particularly well too. We looked at each other and knew it was time to return. We both realized neither of us was addressing an obvious concern: he was well because he had been removed from the reach of the poisoner. This enemy was still hidden from us, but he was back where we were heading—and presumably awaiting our return.
To be honest, I’m not sure which of us was dreading the return more.
CHAPTER 9
AT LEAST I now felt the king was well enough to be somewhat responsible for his own continued good health. He had agreed not to eat or drink anything that had not been tested by a number of people. I had already demanded that all his bedding be changed, so I felt confident that he was safe for me to leave for a while, so I could return to my own apartment and make myself respectable.
Stephen was waiting for me, as the guards had alerted him to our return. I dispatched him for some hot water and stripped off my filthy clothes. I was startled by my own reflection. I was extremely lean and, with my new shorn hair, almost a stranger, even to myself. I heard the door and turned, expecting Stephen and the water, to find Aleksey striding toward me. He swept me up in a hug and kissed hard onto the side of my head, as if I were a beloved brother returned from far longer than a month’s exile. He immediately held me off, considering my new look with astonishment.
“What have you done to your…? Are you entering a monastery? Taking holy orders?”
I huffed, grabbed my shirt, and pulled it back over my head. The tails hung just low enough for decency. “Your father accuses me of being a heathen. Why are we discussing my hair? And remember—we agreed about the knocking thing?”
He laughed and punched me on the arm. “You’ve cured my father. I’ve just seen him. He looks… almost as good as you.”
I was very grateful to be compared to an old man who had only just survived death and told him so, but he was clearly in too good a mood to be deflected from it by anything I said. I caught some of his excitement. Indeed, I had my own excitement enough from his hug and kiss, and turned my back to him as he paced around. Fortunately Stephen arrived with the requested water, which gave me a legitimate excuse to keep my back to the room as I shaved.
I had expected Aleksey to leave, but he seemed to find my ablutions fascinating—or he was too bored to actually bother to go. Instead he flung himself on my bed and proceeded to ask many questions about my month away. He managed to make it sound as if I had been to a spa for my health, and I quickly disabused him of this notion, telling him some of the agonies involved in the removal of poison. At the first mention of the more messy aspects of the cure, he paled, became noticeably squeamish, and quickly changed the subject. I asked him, smiling privately, what he had been up to while I had been away. This subject clearly interested him much more, and I was treated to an excited declaration. “We’ve been at war!”
“War!” I turned, my razor in one hand, a finger of my other hand over a small bleeding nick. “What do you mean?”
He rose from the bed and held out his hand. “Here, give it to me.” Then, not waiting for my compliance, he took the razor from me. “I learned to do this for men when I was no older than Stephen. You have been spoiled, sir.” I frowned but allowed myself to be seated on the edge of the bed. He straddled my thighs, eyeing me up with a ludicrous expression he thought resembled one a barber might make. He put his free hand to my cheek, smoothing it wide over my warm skin then grazing the razor edge lightly across the stubble. I pulled the bedcovers across my lap. It was cold in the room, and I was dressed only in my shirt.
Oblivious to my discomfort, he shuffled closer, the insides of his leather-clad thighs tight against my naked ones.
I closed my eyes. “I am not spoiled. I was raised by men who did not grow hair on their faces until they were almost old men.”
I felt his hands still, whether from astonishment that I had volunteered some information about my past or from considering this odd fact, I do not know. It did sound unbelievable retold in this place. He carried on with his work, silent and thoughtful for a while.
I needed distraction from my increasingly obvious state. “Tell me about your war.”
At this he laid a finger across my lips to prevent me speaking more as the razor scraped along my chin. I don’t know how I managed to resist drawing that finger into my mouth. It seemed I was good at dissembling, for Aleksey sensed nothing of my desire from his touch and appeared to read nothing from the clenching of my fists upon my lap and my shiver of need.
“There was a raid across our borders on our grain stores. Very boring. We raided back; then we were invaded. A vast mounted army of twenty with some attendant hangers-on. My men were roused to great deeds of heroic valor, mainly to gain access to the hangers-on who, I’ve been reliably informed, are now hanging on to my men instead. We repelled the invasion, and Hesse-Davia is safe to limp its way out of the Dark Ages for another day.”
However much I questioned him, I could not untangle this odd story and make any truthful account from it. I had learned from the lesson of the belly scar that Aleksey liked to play down his achievements, and so I could not tell on this occasion where the truth of the events lay. He seemed to enjoy my skepticism. He made a theatrical cross over his heart in a particularly childish manner and then pouted when I continued to disbelieve him.
Eventually he declared himself done. Quite why, therefore, he continued to stand straddled over my naked thighs, I had no idea. I pushed him off and stood, pulling on some clean breeches, my back turned. Still he did not leave.
I said, a little more testily than I intended, “Do you not have somewhere else to be? I have much to do, as I wish to leave before the snow comes.”
I cursed inwardly as I swapped to a clean shirt. I had not
thought about leaving until those unguarded words left me, but as they did, I knew it to be the truth. My job was done, and I had a very long way to go to get home. I realized Aleksey was still there, sitting now on the bed. He was turning my razor in his hands, running it idly over his skin. I went close and plucked it carefully from him.
He held on to my hand. “The bruising has gone.”
I had not realized that he had noticed my bruised hand. I wondered if he had been told how I received the injury. His hand was warm. I smiled faintly as I saw his nails still needed a good scrub. He had little injuries all over, bruises and nicks, as if, indeed, he had been in a battle. I switched the hold slightly so I had his arm in my hands and turned it, inspecting more damage. I went into the next room and returned with a small jar of ointment. I eased a finger full gently into each cut and graze. He did not speak. I did not either. I watched his lowered head as I stood over him. I felt the warmth of his skin under my fingers and tried to embed the sensation into my deepest memory so I would be able to recall this moment anytime I wanted, relive it when I no longer had it. He pushed up the sleeve of his shirt, and I saw a deeper cut on his bicep. Silently I eased his shirt from his waistband and pulled it up over his head. As I suspected, his torso was equally abused from his little war. I cupped him around the back of the neck, his short black hair rasping under my palm, easing him forward so his forehead lay warm against my belly. The curve of his pale, lean back entranced me.
“Lie down.” He looked up at me, my hand still at the back of his neck. I had given the prince an order. I think we both knew I had not given it in the spirit of a doctor to a patient. He eased back on the fur covering laid across the bed for winter warmth, his chest pale against the rich softness of the hide. After dipping my fingers into the ointment once more, scooping out the mixture, and warming it in my hands for a moment, I touched a finger to a cut that lay hot and red across his ribs. He closed his eyes, his long black eyelashes fanned upon pale cheeks. He had a light scattering of freckles on the bridge of his nose. I took the time to count each one. It was new and wondrous to me that a man could have such beauty.
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