A Royal Affair

by John Wiltshire

  After the compromise with the death penalty law, we’d had some notable success with our plan for the army. Each town now had a small garrison, and the officer in charge, usually a major, administered the law. Of course, each major had an experienced garrison sergeant major to assist him. Priests were constrained to taking confession and mass and other church duties. His Worshipful the Cardinal—I never did bother too much with these people’s titles—could hardly complain about this, for Aleksey assured me the rule book did not say that Christian priests got to decide the law. In fact, he told me with some amusement that, as far as he was aware, there were no Christian priests in the bible at all, something that clearly told me he hadn’t actually read it. After all, how could there not be? So, for the first time in Hesse-Davia, ordinary men and women could present themselves to an authority with a complaint and hope to receive justice. I do not pretend that all our officers were wise, grizzled old war veterans with hearts of gold, out to right the wrongs of injustice. Clearly they were a mixed bunch, like all men. But they were a damn sight better than the priests they replaced, that I do know. And of course, most importantly, they all answered to Johan and ultimately to Aleksey, which the priests had not.

  Effectively, we diverted the torrent of power. It had flowed from its source, the Pope, through Harold and then to the priests. Now it flowed from Aleksey through Johan and down through the army to the people. I actually saw this as a visual thing in my mind: previously foul water being diverted, clean and fresh and wholesome. Of course, I was something of a specialist in the relief of poison.

  I had just created my biggest sweat lodge.

  CHAPTER 29

  IT WAS a miracle, really, that Aleksey and I got to spend as much time together as we did, for even in our new villa, we had to have servants and guards, and Aleksey had to constantly travel the short distance to the castle to carry on the business of the state. We’d tried to reduce the number of servants who had direct access to us, but this was often inconvenient. Neither of us was at all domesticated, and I doubt any king in the whole of Europe sat on his throne in hastily donned breeches from a night of debauchery. My clothes even seemed to go missing, and I would have accused him of taking and wearing them had we not been different sizes.

  So we had to have servants, and I knew they suspected what was happening. Why did the first minister come out of the king’s apartments clutching his shirt in his hand? Why did the king have finger-shaped bruises upon his derrière quite so often? What they made of his sheets in the mornings, I have no idea. I was only glad I did not volunteer, as I had once intimated that I would, to be the master of the royal bedchamber. I was very content being the one messing up the king and not the one who had to consequently tidy him.

  I ignored the inner voice that told me we were living in a fool’s paradise and that it was all about to collapse around us. I was high on a ridgeline in the sunshine, Aleksey by my side, with an excitement for the charge, the plunge through still, cold air with my lance erect, that nothing could curtail. I knew I should see the fog and chaos of life, the turning to mud and the disillusionment. I knew this, but still I allowed myself those moments of pure, unadulterated lust for life, for brotherhood, for love.

  ALEKSEY DID not return to the summer villa for a second night. The first night I had been told by a courtier that his majesty was attending a state dinner for a visiting official from France and that he would, therefore, spend the night in his old rooms. Initially this surprised me. I had not been informed of the visit. As chief minister I assumed such things would form part of my duties. Then it occurred to me that Aleksey had deliberately not told me to spare me what I would inevitably term boring nonsense. Or perhaps he wanted to spare himself having to coax and cajole me into a good mood after I had suffered tedious greeting ceremonies and a meal where I could not sit alongside him and pass him wine in novel ways. I was not alarmed, therefore. I was put out, though, for I had rather got used to Aleksey in my bed and in my body, so I was in a very bad mood and did not sleep well that night—on my own. So when a second courtier arrived the following evening to announce that the king was in conference and likely to be absent once more, I determined to ride to the castle and see what was happening. I thought Aleksey was probably being bullied by his uncle into signing things he did not want to sign, and to avoid having to confess this to me, he was avoiding the palace.

  I was arrested as soon as I dismounted from Xavier.

  They had been waiting for me, castle guards I did not recognize and in force of numbers I could not resist. I was taken straight to a dungeon, which is enough to quail the heart of any man, however brave he thought himself. As the door clanged shut behind me, I had a very vivid image of it never opening again. Who knew I was here? Who would come for me? My second and better thought was for Aleksey. What was happening to Aleksey? I wasn’t so worried at this stage that I thought he was in a dungeon too. He was the king. Even in Hesse-Davia, kings were not thrown unilaterally into dungeons. Were they? The first minister just had been.

  JOHN CAME to me the next day. He was not so stupid that he came inside my cell but stood outside the door, peering in through the little window. “Hello, Niko. May I call you Niko? I’m not sure we ever decided that—the night you were so appallingly rude to me.”

  “The night I wouldn’t fuck you?” I came up close to the window, intimidating him even in my unfortunate position. He actually had the nerve to dab effeminately at his nose with a clean handkerchief. “What is this about? I want to see the king.”

  He smiled, and I could tell immediately that I’d handed him a perfect cue, and like an actor upon a stage, he took it, saying with a flourish, “Ah, but the king doesn’t want to see you.”

  This was ridiculous, and I wasn’t in the mood to play his games. “Where is he? What is this all about?”

  “About? About…. Good question, sir. That is exactly what poor little Aleksey said when we told him what you have been up to.”

  I darted my hand through the window to grab his throat, but he was just that little too quick and the angle wrong. I only ended up with a bruised shoulder. He watched me rubbing it, his head cocked to one side like an inquisitive bird. “Don’t worry, Niko, it will be a lot sorer soon. Is sorer a word? Why am I asking you? You are a savage, and your German is hideous. Anyway, as I was saying…. My apologies, what was I saying?”

  He was enjoying this. I was still mulling over his comment about my shoulder, which I didn’t like at all. I said nothing, so he continued, “He had to be told. But when one is a young man and in love, these things—”

  “Tell me what this is about and stop pissing around.”

  He winced and dabbed his mouth, but I could tell he was amused. “You have been a naughty boy, Niko, playing with another naughty boy, and we had to tell Aleksey. He is very upset, poor boy. I think he loves you!”

  I snarled and tried to reach him again. “What have you done? Who? This is all shit. Let me speak to him!”

  “Why would I do that when I have gone to all this trouble to isolate you and keep you apart from him? And he would not see you now, even if he could save you from your fate. Which, of course, he can’t—as he signed the law himself.” He giggled. God help me, a grown man giggled. “He is so angry with you. I wish you could see it.”

  “You are pathetic. Is this the best you can come up with? He would not believe you, even if you showed him proof. Who have you paid off to tell these lies?”

  “Why no one, you fool. That is the beauty of it all. I just had to confess, you see. It was preying on my mind, given how we have been betraying my dearest nephew, he being my king…. So I went to my brother, the cardinal, confessed all our dalliances, and have been given absolution. I was very believable; trust me. But then… I’ve imagined us fucking so many times that I actually believed it myself.”

  I felt a chill wash over me but then a sense of utter elation. “You! You? You’re the fool! Aleksey would never believe I would betray him with
you! I detest you. You make me feel sick when I—”

  “Then perhaps you should not have left your shirt in my bed, Niko.” I’d angered him by my rant, and now he’d taken very effective revenge.

  I licked my lips. “Let me speak to Aleksey.”

  He dabbed his nose once more, and I made a vow to myself there and then that if I ever got out of this cell, I would cut that nose off and wear it slung from Xavier’s bridle. His hair was thinning and would not make much of an adornment, but I would take that off too. Of course it was all very well making such vows when imprisoned and helpless. They would come to nothing and only roused the blood to self-harm, as I did that night, punching the walls until my knuckles bled. I did not know if Aleksey would believe this lie or not.

  I wavered unpleasantly between two alternatives: he did believe it and had forsaken me; he did not believe it but was as helpless to save me as he had been to change the law. After all, I was guilty of sodomy—only not with John. And that was the perfection of their scheme. To prove beyond doubt I had not been in John’s bed, Aleksey would have to admit whose bed I had been in. To be a credible witness, Aleksey would have to implicate himself. He too would have to be imprisoned for his perversion, and he too would face death. After all, he had signed the law. So perhaps he did know it was a lie but was too afraid to help me. Not helpless to save me but too afraid to try. That was my third alternative and the one I tried not to listen to. But that was not Aleksey. He was fearless in all things and followed his own inner voice to the detriment of his own safety, as I had witnessed many times already. He would not forsake me. So that left the only alternative: he believed them.

  I tried to put myself in his position. He knew I was a man of huge appetites—when it came to this, at least. I could easily take him three or four times a night and still want more upon waking. I wore him out, and he was almost twelve years younger than I. Would he believe that I had needed more than he could give me, that I had strayed? There were nights, of course, where he had been absent, days when he had been too busy to meet with me. There had even been times when he had been too tired to want me, and I had not been all that accommodating to his wishes. I now cursed every time I had teased him about finding a younger lover, made a joke about other men that he did not get, implied things I’d done that were not true. I wished I’d been the perfect lover, the perfect man, and swore I would be now if only given the chance.

  I had nothing in my cell except a straw pallet and a bucket. I asked for writing materials. I demanded to see a priest. I had no intention of making confession—I wanted the priest to convey my distress to Aleksey. All requests and demands were ignored.

  The hours passed in slow misery.

  My thoughts were the worst companions I could have.

  At one point I discovered myself twiddling pieces of straw from the bedding. I had made a tiny man—head, legs, arms. It resembled a straw soldier my mother had made for me in another time and upon a distant shore. I could not see this little man well then and pressed my face to the pallet so my distress was not audible to the guards.

  But I made another man and lay them together entwined under the pallet where they would be safe.

  Those days in the cell were very miserable, thinking Aleksey thought so of me. I looked back upon them rather fondly once my torture began.

  I SUPPOSE, like a lot of men, I was tortured for no good reason. They didn’t seem to want me to confess anything, as they had already determined my guilt. They didn’t want me to name names. Prince John, they told me, had made a full and honest confession, was in seclusion and likely to be exiled. Which was odd, considering he came to visit me and watch.

  I had once lived with a people who saw torture as a way to project power over their adversaries. If a man is unhinged by fear before you attack him, your victory is assured. The settlers were so afraid of the Powponi and their methods that fear was palpable in the air when we attacked. Also, if you torture your enemy, you test his mettle and raise the value of your own victory over him. Why these semicivilized Europeans were torturing me, therefore, I have no idea. I did not need to be more afraid before my execution, and I did not raise them up in their own estimation by my resistance. I angered them more than anything else because I would not speak or give them satisfaction. I think they were just men who enjoyed the infliction of pain. Suffice to say that for many days I did yearn for my quiet, pain-free time in the cell when all I had to worry about was if Aleksey still loved me.

  It does not help a man stay sane to hear his own scaffold being erected outside his cell, but in my case it was a relief. At least I knew the pain was going to end soon.

  The day I was dragged out into the sunshine was one of the most perfect summer days I could remember. I smelled new-cut grass, and the ocean was so blue I could hardly bear to look at it. Not a breath of wind stirred the pennants that hung limp and lifeless along the walls.

  The scaffold had been erected up on the ramparts, right against the battlements, so I would be in full sight of everyone who had come to witness my death. And they had all come. Once my eyesight adjusted to the light, I could see a temporary grandstand full of people. I kept my eyes averted for a moment, then looked more closely. He was sitting up front and center.

  At that moment, I was glad to be on my way. I mounted the scaffold and faced the spike. I needed assistance, for my legs would not support me, more from my recent treatment than from the fear of what I was approaching. Fear almost unmanned me, however; I could not deny that. I wondered how this was going to happen. The guard who had mounted the platform with me cut the bindings fastening my wrists. He pulled my shirt off and let it fall. I watched it pool at my feet. It was better than looking at the spike, which drew the eye as forcibly as if it were beautiful, which it was not. They had built it tall. Perhaps I should not have told my hanging story to amuse, for it had clearly been listened to and the Saxefalian fault rectified: my feet would not touch the ground this time. Perhaps my legs would not need to be broken. I was considerably heavier than the young man I had tried to rescue, and I thought my own weight was well sufficient to lower me, slowly, onto the agony.

  I looked over at Aleksey, wondering if these thoughts were going through his mind too: how long it would take me to die; how much pain he thought I was owed for betraying him so. He was staring at his boots. I almost laughed but looked away, my vision suddenly fogged. I turned to blink and clear my sight. I could see right out over the bay now, and it was incredibly beautiful. A little boat rocked gently on the azure water, fishing nets strung out behind the sunflower-yellow hull.

  The guard was undoing my laces now and wanted me to step out of my breeches. I wobbled, as I was not very steady, and I felt the platform beneath me shake. It seemed fitting somehow that everything was so uncertain, so unstable, for I now saw just how shaky my life with Aleksey had been. We had been so innocent, so naive in our belief that we were inviolate in our little affair, our royal affair. This was more like it: naked, broken, wobbling. This was how we had really been.

  Suddenly a priest was at my side. I had not seen him approach, for I had been watching the little boat. He told me this was now my opportunity to repent my sins. He told me I could save my soul and my life, and his hand hovered, waiting for me to say the words that would see me taken off the scaffold, the words that would save me from the spike.

  Was this what Aleksey was waiting for? Was this what it had all been about? He knew if I repented, I could save myself. He’d signed the revision to the law, after all. Perhaps this was his intention, to punish me by this hideous humiliation. I’d go into “exile” like John. I would become a wraith, drifting around the castle, pretending all was well, broken in spirit. And then he would… revive me—offer me pitiful love in return for my submission. It amazed me how much went through my mind in that second, staring at him, at a face I thought I’d seen in every contingency: passion, ecstasy, grief, pain—love. But I had never seen this Aleksey, the one who hated me and sat lik
e stone, staring at his boots.

  I opened my mouth. I wanted to say the devil take you all, but it seemed a waste, somehow, to have those be my last words. Instead I said, “I repent of nothing. I did everything I did deliberately and would do so again. Love is not love unless you hold fast even unto death, and I have loved that much.” At that, Aleksey lifted his face for the first time and looked for me. He seemed to have trouble finding me, but then his gaze settled, sure and fixed.

  I took a sharp breath, so sharp it hurt my ribs, which had been damaged during the torture. Aleksey’s eyes were the tiny pinpricks of a man deep under the spell of laudanum. It was like looking at him again as he had sat upon his camp bed during our march: loose, malleable. I wanted to stroke my finger over his eyelids again and tell him that all would be well and that he should sleep—but I could not. And I could not cry out, for who would listen? Who would believe me?

  I saw it all then, the plot that had defeated us. Aleksey separated from me and drugged to acquiescence, my arrest and torture, done without his knowledge, my execution—with him as witness. I began to struggle, which I had not done until that point. The guard seized my arms and attempted to drag me to the spike. The executioner mounted the platform hastily upon seeing his difficulties. The thumping of his heavy footsteps upon the hollow structure sounded as a child’s nightmare, and I could not now stand unaided. Fear and horror were defeating me. He needed me standing, so two more guards were summoned. They trooped up after him. How was I to be got up onto the spike? They wrestled and manhandled me, and another guard was called forward. Finally they thought to bring a box for me to mount.

  At the end, therefore, six of us stood upon the scaffold: the executioner, three guards, the priest, and me. But the great collapse did not happen until they tried to lift me, for it was only then that they all stepped toward the back where the spike was—and then everything tilted. The whole platform swayed toward the battlement. Unlike the Saxefalian grandstand, my scaffold had not been built to support people. It had been built to collapse when too much weight was put upon its rear supports. So we did not sway back and fall like a pack of cards; we carried on tipping. All of us—executioner, guards, priest, and I—tipped right over the wall and plummeted forty feet or so into the sea below us.