The Eyes of a King

by Catherine Banner

  The coffin bearers slowed when we reached the steep hill that led down to the Victoire Bridge. The coffin slanted, and I thought of Stirling, in the dark inside it, sliding down. I wished I could tell them to be careful.

  At the bottom of the hill, beside the Zenithar Armaments factory, two young soldiers stood talking and laughing. They stopped abruptly, taking off their hats and pressing them to their chests, casting their eyes down as we passed. I suddenly hated them so much, because they were like me but their brothers were not dead, and they could laugh like that as though the world was still ordinary.

  One of the soldiers looked up, the smile still fading from his face, and I realized that it was Seth Blackwood from school. It was another five minutes before I wondered why he was dressed in a private’s uniform, on guard duty for the army, but by then we were far past them.

  Stirling was buried farther round the outside ring of the graveyard than the other coffin that we had seen buried before. I thought of that day, when he had spelled out “Aldebaran” and stamped on the grave to hear a coffin echo. And when he asked me if I was scared, and pressed close behind me when the priest came through the arch, like I could protect him because I was his big brother. That was Stirling. That was who we were burying. Not the peaceful, dead Stirling, who looked like he was sleeping, but the living, breathing, laughing Stirling—the one who wanted to be a priest and tried to teach himself to read from the newspaper.

  At the head of the pit, there was already a small wooden cross, marked Stirling Gabriel North. That’s his middle name. Gabriel. Was his middle name. And the dates below it—only eight years, and already in the past. This was the end. His life was cut off here, like a story that stopped in the middle, and it would never continue, and Stirling North would never be on this earth again.

  I wanted to cry like I had out in the hills, uncontrolled and wild. I wanted to cry so hard that I could not think, until all the sadness was out, but I could not. I just stared silently, dry-eyed, while Father Dunstan spoke a prayer over the coffin, and Grandmother and I stood alone at the side of the grave. He read from the scriptures, but I did not listen to the words. Then the coffin was lowered into the ground. Grandmother cast a handful of earth into the grave and motioned to me, and I did the same. The lumps of soil burst and scattered on the new wood of the coffin, and the grave was filled in swiftly as the procession returned to the church and dawn rose. But I remained where I was.

  “Come, Leo,” said Grandmother as the rain started. It began suddenly, without warning. The grave digger had left, the grave was compacted and covered with turf, and everyone had gone. I was thinking of nothing, just staring at the grave and the cross with Stirling’s name on it. “Come, let us go home.” But there was no home without Stirling; there was nothing without him; he was the only one I cared about in this world.

  I could stay here beside the grave forever. Until I died of tiredness or thirst or starvation, and then I could be buried here too, in the next grave, and I would never have to leave Stirling. But all flesh rots away, and graves are sometimes moved, and who could tell what would happen to this graveyard in the future? And even if I was buried in the cold, dark earth beside him, he was not here. I could never reach him. But still, I felt as if he was. And I didn’t want to leave him here in the dark by himself.

  An ache that was too much to bear was rising in my chest. I looked around, and Nothing was coming up over the walls, like the hands of ghosts, and the rain in the air was shivering, and the ground was tipping so that there was nothing that could stop me from falling off. I dropped down onto the grave and began scrabbling in the earth, as if to dig it up.

  Then Grandmother had hold of me, trying to pull me to my feet. “Leo! Leo, please. I need you. Don’t lose your mind.” The ghosts vanished, and the earth righted itself, and the rain fell so hard that it hurt. I turned and followed her.

  As we got farther and farther away from the graveyard, I felt that a cord was being stretched taut—a cord that ran between my heart and Stirling’s grave. The farther away we got, the tighter it grew, and the more painful. I could actually feel it—real pain aching in my chest. I never understood until then what people meant when they said their heart was breaking.

  When I came upstairs from the bathroom later that morning, Grandmother looked up from her sewing and called out, “Stirling?” I walked into the range of her searching eyes. “Oh, Leo,” she said. “But where is my little one? Where is my Stirling?” I wouldn’t talk. I just looked at her. But she wasn’t looking at me. “Dead and buried?” she said, though I had said nothing. “What—has it been six years?” She was talking to someone in the space between me and her, but there was no one there.

  Then her eyes caught me, and she came back from wherever she had been. “It’s barely three hours,” she murmured. Tears brimmed from her eyes. “Oh, Leo, I forgot—how could I forget? I don’t know what happened.”

  She was clutching at something that was lying across the arm of the chair. I went to her side and looked at it. “For little Stirling’s First Communion,” she said, holding it up. It was a patchwork quilt, nearly finished, and she was sewing in the last square. The outside squares were embroidered with a pattern of birds and leaves, and the central ones with stars. That was what the squares of material had been, the ones I had seen her sewing all this while. “Oh, Leo!” she wailed. “How will we survive? How can we go on without him? How can we?” She crushed the quilt down in her lap and sobbed, rocking back and forth, her eyes unfocused. I walked around the room. I walked in circles, holding my breath each lap. That was all I had done since we had returned from the graveyard. I was losing my mind; I knew it. We both were.

  Father Dunstan found us that way later: Grandmother still rocking and crying, me still pacing, though I broke off to open the door for him. The rain sheeted down behind the broken window. He’d had to leave to attend the service; it was the twenty-first of July, the day on which Stirling should have made his First Communion but instead was buried.

  Father Dunstan arrived about one o’clock, and he cooked us some soup. Neither of us ate any. He spoke quietly with Grandmother, and I went on walking about the apartment. I could not concentrate on anything. I tried to look at the clock, but I couldn’t tell what time it was from it. I tried to sit and look out the window, but I started up again and went on pacing. I couldn’t do anything else.

  I had been avoiding the bedroom, but I didn’t want to talk to Father Dunstan, so I marched in there. Grandmother had laid the patchwork quilt on Stirling’s too-neat bed. His Bible was on the cupboard next to it, and his army uniform was folded on the chair, next to mine. And his boots, at the end of his bed, stood exactly in line with each other, with the laces trailed out so that they didn’t touch. His things looked just the same. But all their life had flown away with Stirling’s spirit. The boots would not be worn, and the uniform would stay neat and folded, and the Bible would never be opened.

  I sat down on my bed, picked up Stirling’s gold christening bracelet, and traced the letters with my finger: Stirling Gabriel North. Stirling Gabriel North, eight years, eight months, a week, and two days. That was it. He could never be anything more than what he was then. As if he was frozen where his life ended. I cried then, for who he would never be. But I didn’t cry for long. I couldn’t. I lay on my bed and turned the bracelet around in my hands. And then I could not stay in the apartment any longer.

  Grandmother called after me as I went down the stairs, and Father Dunstan said quietly, “Margaret, let him go.” I did not know where I was going. I met no one on the stairs. The yard was deserted, except for the falling rain. I crossed to the bathroom and bolted the door behind me.

  It was half dark already in there. I sat down on the grimy edge of the shower and rested my head against my knees. The rain outside was like a mournful tune, sounding different notes as it fell on the roofs and the mud and the rusted water pump and the old window ledges with the paint peeling. I could hear the baby from
down here; he was repeating the same angry wail over and over. I shut my eyes. I sat there and wished with all my soul to be somewhere else. I could not stand any longer being Leo North; it was too much. I was scared that my heart would break, really break, if I thought again about Stirling.

  I couldn’t pray to God, so I prayed to Aldebaran. I prayed to him to take me to another place, as though he was an angel who could save me now. I concentrated all my mind on it, and all my powers. A long time passed.

  An hour or more I must have sat there without moving. Perhaps I fell asleep; I could not tell. But next thing I knew, I was dreaming. I could see mist in front of my eyes. I was certain that I was dreaming—that it was not real—but I knew more than anything that I did not want to wake. Fog was drifting like smoke around me, and I fought to keep it there. And then I could hear voices speaking from a long way off.

  Aldebaran forgot what he was doing and gazed into the mist that was thickening over the English hills. “What?” said Ryan, beside him.

  “Nothing,” said Aldebaran after a moment, bending his head over the engine of the old car. “Nothing. Try that again.”

  Ryan turned the key. The engine gave a shuddering cough. He leaned against the side of the car and shivered. “It is growing colder. The middle of July and it might as well be winter.”

  “English weather,” said Aldebaran. “It is very—”

  But Ryan never heard what he had been going to say about the English weather, because he frowned, still gazing into the mist, and then bent over the engine again. “It is unpredictable,” said Ryan. “Uncle, we are in the middle of the road; perhaps we should move the car.”

  Aldebaran did not answer.

  A few yards away, beyond the mist, Anna was walking toward them. She had been lost on the hill for half an hour when she heard the car engine coughing and started toward the sound. The fog was clinging to her hair in droplets and she tried to brush it off now, shifting her grip on the suitcase with her other hand. The headlights were cutting beams through the mist. She could make out the dark shape of the car and two people, a middle-aged man and a boy moving beside it. The man looked up as she approached.

  “Are you lost?” he said. “If you need directions we can probably help you.” He went on looking at her thoughtfully, as though he recognized her.

  An engine was approaching from somewhere. A motorbike appeared suddenly out of the mist and swerved to avoid the car, its tires screaming on the road. The man turned, startled, as it vanished again. “We should move the car. Ryan, help me.”

  The boy put his shoulder against the side of the car. Anna put down her suitcase and went to the other side, behind the man. “You are very kind,” he said, turning to her. “Go carefully, and stop when I tell you. There is a steep drop a few feet farther on this side.”

  Across the roof of the car, the boy’s eyes met Anna’s. His were dark as water, close to black. Even after the car was resting safely on the verge, their eyes remained on each other’s for a moment before they looked away. “You had best wait here for a while,” the man told Anna. “Do not think about trying to go on. The road does not widen for a mile or more in either direction, and cars come up suddenly in this fog.” She nodded. They waited in silence while the man bent over the engine again. Somewhere beyond the mist, a bird sang a few high notes.

  “Where are you going?” the boy asked Anna then, leaning on the side of the car and fixing his dark eyes on her. “You must be on holiday, with that suitcase.”

  “No, I’m working. At Hillview Hotel, somewhere on the other side of the valley. My aunt runs it; I’m working for her.”

  “The manager of Hillview is your aunt?” said the boy. “She is our nearest neighbor; we know Monica Bailey well.”

  “Monica Devere,” said Anna, without thinking. Bailey had been her aunt’s married name and she never used it now.

  The man straightened up suddenly and crashed his head against the raised hood of the car. “Monica Devere?” he asked her.

  “Yes,” said Anna. There was a silence. “Why do you want to know?”

  “No reason.” The man folded his arms and looked out into the mist, then turned back to her. “The Devere family have a history in this part of England, don’t they?”

  “I suppose. That’s why Monica came back here: all our family used to live here.”

  The man nodded, his eyes still on her, then adjusted something in the engine and slammed down the hood. “Should you not be in school?” he said. “How old are you?”

  “Fifteen. It finished yesterday. It finished for the summer, so I came up here.”

  “I am not at school,” said the boy. “My uncle teaches me at home.” He ran a hand through his black hair. The way he did it was careless and nearly arrogant. He held out his hand. “I’m glad to meet you. Ryan Donahue. My uncle is Arthur.”

  “Arthur Field,” said the man, taking her hand in turn. She shook his hand, then wiped the oil off her fingers. “Sorry,” said Arthur Field. “Anyway, I am glad to meet you.”

  “But I have not asked you what your name is,” said Ryan.

  “It’s Anna.”

  “That would be Ariana originally?” said the man. He wiped his hands on a rag, then threw it into the backseat of the car and straightened up with a faint smile.

  Anna was staring at him in silence. “How did you know?” she said eventually. “It’s only on my birth certificate.”

  “Just a lucky guess.”

  The boy touched her arm, making her start. “You must not let my uncle worry you,” he said. “He likes to pretend to be a mind reader. But where we come from, every Anna is an Ariana. It is one of the old names there.”

  She nodded, but she was not entirely convinced. There was something about this man. He had turned back to the car, and they both watched him in silence. “It will work this time,” he said. “This will be the time.” He turned the key. The engine coughed, and coughed again, and rattled to life. “And the fog is clearing at last,” he said, leaving the engine running. He went to the edge of the verge and looked out into the expanse of white.

  Anna glanced around. It looked as dense as ever, blurring even the wall at the other side of the road. And then suddenly it was drifting backward. A tree emerged, and a rock. And a few minutes later, the edge of a stretch of water was glinting far below them, and hills appeared against the sky.

  Someone was hammering on the door of the bathroom. I raised my head from my knees and came back. It was raining hard outside. “Leo?” someone was calling. It was Father Dunstan’s voice.

  I opened the door and blinked at him. “You look exhausted,” he said. “Were you asleep?” I did not know. I had been dreaming I was far away from here, but everything was coming back to me now. Stirling.

  I caught hold of the door frame to keep myself steady. “You have not slept properly in days, after all,” Father Dunstan was saying. Grandmother was beside him, peering at me anxiously through the tears in her eyes. “Leo, listen. There is a man here—” said Father Dunstan.

  “Is this the boy?” said someone else, whose voice I did not recognize. I looked up and saw that a soldier was standing at the edge of the yard. He approached me now, blinking against the rain. “Are you Leonard North?”

  I nodded. “Sorry about this,” he said, turning to Grandmother, the priest, and then back to me. “You have been called up to report for military service.”

  I just looked at him, still confused. He was holding out a uniform, asking me to put it on, and trying to hand me a rifle. “What?” exclaimed Grandmother, panicking already. “What are you talking about?”

  “Have you not read the newspapers?” he said.

  We all looked at him in silence. “Due to the heavy casualties at the border, we have had to pull out all the troops we can spare from elsewhere. As a result, we are obliged to bring in cadets from all major cities to fill in the vacant posts.”

  “You cannot send children to fight your war for you,” said Father Du
nstan. That was the only time I ever heard him outspoken about anything.

  “No, no,” said the man. “You misunderstand me. None of the cadets will be fighting; they are only carrying out simple duties—guarding the gates, running messages, patrolling the city, and so on. I assure you, they will not see frontline action. And the only cadets we are bringing in are Ninth Year pupils, who are almost ready to join the army anyway. We need to free the privates who are currently carrying out these duties, so that they can fight. I know this is regrettable, but—”

  “He buried his brother only this morning,” said Father Dunstan in an undertone. I still heard it. “Can you expect him to go now?”

  The soldier tried to apologize to me, but I turned away. “If he speaks to the sergeant, I am sure he will be released,” he said to Father Dunstan. “We are not strictly enforcing conscription in circumstances like this. If Leonard puts this uniform on, just for formality, and speaks to the sergeant—”

  It was too loud suddenly, and I didn’t want to hear any of this. I took the uniform from him and went upstairs to put it on. I could still hear Father Dunstan arguing with the private, but at least it was quieter in the apartment.

  I put on the uniform. There was what looked like a bullet hole in the jacket. I wondered if they had taken it off a dead man. I didn’t care. Seeing Stirling’s christening bracelet where I had left it, I picked it up and put it onto my arm, sliding it up so that it lay beneath my own and the names Leonard Joseph North and Stirling Gabriel North were together. It was all right, because I had been told to do something and now I was doing it. There was no choice about it, and no thought. It was still raining; I picked up my overcoat and put that on too.

  They were standing in the hall when I went down. “Where are you taking them?” Father Dunstan was asking.

  “I cannot tell you,” said the private. “This is a confidential operation; I cannot tell you where troops will be deployed.”