“Oh.”
“I cannot believe you just used that word. You think we fucked?”
I quickly saw my error and tried to backtrack, but he was having none of it. He clenched his jaw. “But you are right in a way. We were arguing, and then we… fucked. Yes, perhaps that’s exactly what did happen. So we never… fell in love, did we?”
“Love?” Of course I did not mean to make that sound like a question: this, love? Of course I did not intend the little splutter of incredulity. No, I meant more you speak of love now when it is snowing and I am hungry and we have a demon child trussed up in a cart and perhaps a dangerous lunatic stalking us?
I don’t think Aleksey got this, though.
His lips went a little pinched. “Perhaps in that case we should take a step back from… fucking… and fall in love first.”
“What? No, Aleksey, look—”
“After all, would that not be appropriate? Courtly love for a king?”
“What?” Repeating myself wasn’t helping, but I had a ghastly vision of him making me wear stockings or play the lute or, worse, compose an ode or something.
“Yes, we can begin tonight.”
“Begin what? What are you talking about?”
He smiled, looking at me for the first time since we had begun this awful conversation. “You can woo me this time.” He suddenly swung Boudica around and began to head back toward our companions. I copied him.
“Woo? Woo?” (This word does not improve upon being repeated; trust me.) “What do you—Aleksey!” But he resolutely continued going in the wrong direction, probably with a sorrowful yet brave expression upon his face.
“YOU APPEAR downcast, Doctor. Is your arm troubling you?” Major Parkinson kindly passed me some cheese, which I declined.
I saw a little glimmer of an opportunity, though, and said in a low, affected voice, “Yes, a little, I confess. I am concerned it may become infected.” I flicked my eyes up to gauge the success of my words.
Aleksey’s expression conveyed no particular distress at them, and he reached for the cheese himself. I sank back in my seat and muttered I might lose the use of my arm entirely. Aleksey began to peel an apple and commented thoughtfully, “I do hope that does not occur, Doctor, for I foresee you will have need of your arm for some while to come.”
“Well, yes, lunatics in the woods. Rum business that.”
I narrowed my eyes at Aleksey, ignoring the major. We had told our companions of Etienne’s warning during dinner, and the major was still brooding over its import. Aleksey took a bite of his apple.
“But do not worry, Your Highness, I have been burnt before—as you know. I must stop trying to save lives; it seems to do me no good.”
He chewed for a while, then swallowed. “I am only grateful that you had such a devoted nurse when you were so badly injured before, Doctor, or you would not have survived to reach the New World. Would you?” He took another bite.
The major tapped his glass with his spoon. “Hear, hear. I once had a pretty little filly nurse me through a bad case of gout. Devoted. Sweet little thing. Don’t recall her name now.”
I was staring at the apple. “I regret that devoted nurse is not with me now—and that I did not perhaps convey my thanks enough at the time. Or afterward.”
Aleksey smiled and continued eating his apple slowly.
The captain suddenly threw down his napkin. “Enough talk. Are we to find this raving man or not? I say we patrol out tonight. He has vital information, intelligence which we must have.”
Aleksey’s eyes brightened. “Yes, a night patrol, what do you say, Nik—Doctor?”
It seemed to me that with Aleksey in his current mood, I might as well spend the night out in the cold and dark on the back of a horse, for I would get nothing better from him. I shrugged. “I agree we should find him. But riding around in the dark will achieve nothing. He must be brought to us.”
FOR THE first time, therefore, I had some conversation with the trappers—as my plan was to lay a trap for this man and lure him to us.
This time spent in their company did not increase my confidence in them or my liking for them. Other than carrying their muskets with a swagger, they seemed to know very little about trapping. Perhaps I was in such a low mood that I misinterpreted their silences, and we confused each other. (Sitting here in my cabin now, with my parchment before me, it all seems so obvious, but at the time it was not. Hindsight, as they say, is a very overrated thing.)
They were both young men, possibly younger than Aleksey, and now I had time to speak with them, their accents were hard to define. This was not that unusual for the New World, as this land attracts to it men from all places in the Old World and men who had been here and there and forced to move around a great deal. My own father, Isaiah Hartmann, had been born in the Netherlands. His parents had brought him to England, where he had met my mother, and then they had come here. So I could not pin down some of the words these young men said, but then they were not open of speech or countenance and would not catch my eye when they spoke to me. They both, however, studied my body very carefully, and trust me when I say that this was not in the way other men have studied me. I have a sense for these things. I think they noticed the scars mostly. They proved utterly useless to assist in my plan to lure the man to us, so eventually I left them to their meal and returned to the officers’ table.
Basically, my plan was to encircle our current encampment with small cooking fires—five, at a mile or two’s distance from the center and each other. Each fire would be manned: the reverend and his oldest son at one, the captain and the second Wright brother on the next. The lieutenant I paired with the last brother. The two soldiers took the forth position, and the trappers I put together at the final one. Aleksey and I would move between them, keeping vigil and relaying relevant information. The major we left to guard our camp and the woman and child (although I would have left him some reinforcements had I not effectively put the creature out of action). Upon the fires, we would put the one thing I thought guaranteed to bring a cold, starving man to us, however mad he might be: bacon. What man can resist the smell of gently cooking bacon on a frosty night? The smell would travel for some distance in the still, cold air and lure him in. It would, of course, lure other things, and I warned each of our sentries to be wary and watchful for bears.
Again, I was surprised I had to warn the trappers of this danger and did not think they could be quite sensible men. What man who makes his living snaring animals in these vast woods has to ask what a bear approaching sounds like? What experienced hunter has to ask whether it is better to shoot a bear or run?
I was distracted that night by the thought that I would not enjoy the privileges I normally enjoyed with Aleksey’s body, and thus my misgivings about these men were ignored. How differently things might have turned out had I thought with my brain and not my cock that night.
ALEKSEY AND I planned to do our first circuit a couple of hours after the fires had been lit. Until then I had little to do but stare morosely at him across the camp table. I could have devised any number of more pleasurable things to do in those two hours, and he must have known this.
Finally he commented a little waspishly, “I have not seen much sign of wooing, Nikolai. Glaring at me is not doing it at all.”
“I am not glaring. I am composing something suitable in my head.”
“Oh, a poem? I hope I will like it.” He began to clean his nails with the tip of his knife. “Well?”
“I am stuck. I cannot think of anything that rhymes with arse.”
I expected him to throw down the knife and rise, furious, and that I could then appease his anger in my usual way, and we would then be able to indulge in those more pleasurable activities, but instead he replied mildly, “Farce. How about that? Farce seems very appropriate, does it not?”
Damn him. I nodded sourly. After a suitable juncture, I grumbled, “Then I need a rhyme for adore.”
He smiled. “Try abhor.”
I stood and made to go toward the horses, but he caught my arm, glancing to see if we could be observed. Then he realized he was holding my burnt arm and made a contrite face as he dropped it. “I’m sorry. I would like to hear your poem if it contains the word adore.”
“Well, I would not call it a poem, as such. I have not got much beyond that one word, for it seems to me to say all that needs to be said without further adornment.”
“Do you mean that?”
“That I have not got much further?”
He punched me, and we were back to normal. I would have pulled him into my arms, but we were too visible. Instead, I began to walk toward the river and down the bank to the water. It was very dark, of course, and we were soon out of sight of the good major.
I then pulled him into my arms and admitted hoarsely, “I am sorry I did not tell you about Etienne. But do you now see what he saw? When he called you my tether?”
“I have told you that I do not like that—”
“Hush. You are missing the point. There is no tether, Aleksey, except the one in my heart. I am like Faelan: a wild creature you bind to you by the force of your presence. Even burnt, even disfigured with the pox or some other disease that might leap upon you suddenly as you ride home to me, I would still be entirely bound.” He made a small snort of disbelief, but I added, “If you died, I would not find another. You are the end of all this for me.”
He held me off a little. “Do not say that! I would not have you live on alone. God’s teeth, why are we talking like this? I wish to heaven we had not come on this journey now! It was supposed to be fun, and instead we have had nothing but misery and confusion and sadness.”
He let my arms slide down to the small of his back, effectively pulling our hips together. “Then let us push back the darkness our own way.” I laid him down upon the bank, my hands moving—
“I am lying in a snowdrift.”
This was not going to be easy. Divesting Aleksey of any of his warm clothing, even a slight rearrangement to give me access where I so desired, was not going to happen lying on a freezing bank in the snow. Even I could appreciate that. “Fuck!”
He chuckled and accepted my hand to stand once more, brushing snow off the very place I had fixated upon. He had the nerve to push his icy hands down the front of my trousers to warm them. “You can always work on your poem.”
“There once was a king from Hesse-Davia, whose cock could not have been heavier; he—” I laughed as he hit me, and I caught the fist. “Shall we go check the traps?”
He nodded happily but pulled me close for a kiss. It took us another half an hour then to make it to the horses, for it occurred to him that there were pleasurable things we could do standing, even though it was so cold. We took it in turns to take the other out and hold hard, risen flesh in our hands, pulling and working it until the spills made melted spots in the snow. It was not what I had planned for us to do, but the pleasure of watching Aleksey’s hand upon me, his fingers strong and eager, was compensation enough.
As we were riding through the dark under the trees toward the first of the fires, Aleksey murmured sadly, “If we were married, I would not have to fear that you would leave me when so disfigured, for you would be tethered in law.”
I glanced over at him. “Married men stray, Aleksey. They abandon families—wives and children.”
“Yes. But it would be nice to know that I would then have recourse to law to have you bound in chains and dragged naked to the stocks—or some such thing. I will improve on that punishment later. I like thinking about you being naked and punished and do so often when you are asleep alongside me.”
I snorted. “The Powponi—am I allowed to tell a…? Ow. The Powponi do not marry, as they are not Christian, but they do celebrate the joining of two people just the same.”
“How?”
“Well, feasting, music, dancing—much the same as Christian marriage, I suppose.” I took a breath and glanced over at him. “There is nothing to stop us having a feast when we return—if you would like….”
He turned to me with an expression on his face I had not seen before. I think I had genuinely surprised him beyond his expectation of me. I felt a surge of warmth but also a tingling of guilt at how easy it was to make him happy and how much I had not really taken the time or made the effort to before. It was not my way or my inclination. I batted away his attempt to kiss me across our horses’ backs and made some comment about the danger we were possibly facing or some other thing that sounded hollow even to my ears. He knew now. He was completely happy and could not keep the smile off his face as we approached the first of our fires. Given what happened later that night, I am glad now I did give him that fleeting span of happiness. It is a good lesson to learn: live more in the moment. It was hard for a man like me to do, though. My moments up to meeting Aleksey (and then much of my time with him when in Hesse-Davia) had been frightening and terrible. Aleksey had once likened me to a dog that has been kicked once too often. Does such a creature live in the moment, relishing it?
The lieutenant rose to greet us and reported he had seen and heard nothing. The only difficulty they had was not eating the bacon. This small joke was repeated at the next fire by the reverend. The trappers were not at their allotted place but appeared from the trees some time after we arrived. They claimed they had been relieving themselves before the long vigil.
I mentioned my concerns about them to Aleksey as we rode off, but he was too consumed by some private thoughts to bother much with another mystery. I discovered what he was planning when we reached the next post. He told the soldiers to return to the main camp and that we would relieve them for the rest of the night. They needed no further encouragement, so mounted their horses and faded into the darkness.
We were alone.
ALEKSEY SHED all his clothing and stood entirely naked to my inspection in the firelight. I told him he should not—that we might be having a visitor. He said the man was raving already; what harm could possibly come from him witnessing anything? He was so beautiful that I could not resist him further. The flickering illumination played shadows upon his flawless skin. He had filled out since I had first met him at twenty-three, when he had still been more of a boy in many ways than a man. Since then he had not only been to war, but he had been living a life little better than a native in the New World, and his body was honed and hard, sinew and bone, and muscle where muscle should be. I loved the hollow of his shoulder joint, the strength of his arms, their steel-like hardness. His chest was broad now, like a man’s, not slim as it had once been, but it fell to a waist very lean and hips that cloth barely graced.
I knew every inch of this body, of course, inside and out, but there in the cold air in front of the fire after the words we had so recently spoken, this joining was a new commitment. I lay upon him, staring into his face, and recited once more my great love poem: adore. I told him that I worshiped him and that the only way he would ever find me missing was if I wandered into the forest and got lost one day. He laughed, as he knew this would never happen and understood what I was saying by this declaration.
When I entered him, it was as the first time all over again. Then I had been sick of body and heart, scared and ashamed, my manhood shattered along with a cabin door and some soldiers’ noses—and he had taken me and made me new in his body. He had the power to take me inside and make me a better man.
It was cold, but his body was warm. He lifted his legs and wrapped them around my back as I pressed into him. His hands cupped my face, and he pulled me down to kiss him, our tongues as eager to join and share as the rest of our bodies.
With great effort, I eased my face from his, took my mouth off his lips, and stilled my thrusting. Worried, he looked questioningly at me. I put my hand up and stroked his face, my thumb brushing over his cheekbone. “I can stop, if you want. I do not need this, Aleksey. I just need you. I would be with you even if you never wanted to do this again. If you just wanted to be friends. If you
were disfigured. If you were dead. Well, not that, obviously. You know what I mean.”
He turned his head and caught my thumb, drawing it into his mouth, then spat it out fairly quickly at the taste, wrinkling his nose. I snorted and brushed the wetness over his lips. He lowered his legs, and we lay joined, but content for a moment not to move more, to need more. I could feel him all the way along my body and encasing me where it counted.
He sighed. “But this is a big part of it, isn’t it? Men and women can have the world—friends, acceptance, an open life, children—we need for this to be more for us to make up for that lack. I did not choose you and then save your life and bring you to my new kingdom to not have your body whenever I want. I crave you, Nikolai; you must know that.”
I began to move very slowly inside him once again, and he groaned with pleasure. “Then I will reward you for that saving and be to you in this all things I cannot be otherwise: acceptance, and life with family and children.” He had his eyes closed, long lashes fanned upon his cheeks, his mouth open a little as he breathed with pleasure: small groans in a dark night. When I came inside him, it was the celebration I had promised him, the commitment I wanted to give him, and the pleasure washed from me and into him and started his release, to which he arched and cried out as a creature being wounded, so indistinguishable from pain is this great delight we share as men. We came down together, our hearts beating as one, our breath warming the other’s face. I began to ease my body from his, but he was having none of this and held me clamped tight. I tossed some more wood onto the fire to try and warm us, and then, joined as we were, we drifted to sleep. I suppose if a man can truly die happy, then I would have chosen that night to have drifted away, joined to Aleksey, lying upon him, his arms around me, and secure in the knowledge that for that one night I did not need faith in a life after this one, for I had my heaven there on the cold ground in that vast, wild wilderness.
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