The Eyes Of A King Part 23

"But, sir-" began Father Dunstan again.

"Listen," said the sergeant. "The boy is perfectly willing to come. If he does not want to join us, we can talk about your circ.u.mstances then. If he wants to come with us, there is nothing further to discuss. North, are you willing to join up?"

They all looked at me in silence. I glanced from Grandmother, tears and rain running together down her face, to Father Dunstan, who still looked as if he would argue. I turned back to the sergeant and he took it for consent. "Good," he said, and clapped his hands. "Then let's go. Come on, boys."

I hesitated, then followed them. Grandmother was wailing behind us, and some of them glanced back, avoiding my eyes. At the corner I turned for a moment, and she took a few steps toward me, reaching out like a child. "Hurry, will you?" shouted the sergeant. I followed him.

Perhaps I should have spoken to him. Perhaps I should have refused to go. But the private, when he reappeared, seemed to have forgotten it. And I would not speak. I could not. So there was nothing I could do. That was why I left. I had no choice.

Morale was low in the small group. We did not even march in file, just walked in a dejected trail. I lagged some way behind. The other boys were apprehensive. The sergeant and the private were edgy. We walked around the castle and out across the North Bridge. The river was heaving with milky brown water, and for a second it made me feel as though I was going to fall. And then I stopped thinking about that. Outside the city, the sergeant stopped and surveyed us. "Boys, I will not lie to you," he said. "We are going to the Alcyrian border."

The others muttered and glanced at each other, but I felt nothing. They resumed their dejected walk, and I followed in silence. I had prayed to be somewhere else. And here I was, on the road to the border.

We must have walked for hours, because when I looked up, the sky was growing dark. The clouds were still low, and the copper light and the heavy atmosphere made my head ache. After a while the clouds began to roll away, back toward the city, and we caught up with the weak evening sunlight. The rays were cutting down onto golden fields. I had never seen a cornfield until that day. I remember that part of the journey. Nearly all the rest has gone forever.

I was thinking of nothing. I stared ahead and saw only what was there and made nothing more of it. It was the way to survive. I could pretend that I was someone else, because I had nothing that reminded me of who I was; I was walking through a landscape I had never been in before, with none of my belongings and no one I knew or had ever met. Only the weight of the extra bracelet on my arm reminded me that I'd ever had a brother called Stirling, or that I had ever been Leo North, or that I had a grandmother at home who might wonder where I was.

At some point while we were walking, I began to cry. I had forgotten for an instant that Stirling was dead, and when I remembered, suddenly I was so frightened, and it seemed so real. More real than it had before, even when I had seen him lying in the coffin.

The boys sneaked embarra.s.sed glances at me, turning their faces hastily away and whispering to each other. I went on crying, and they pretended they couldn't hear. But then one of them, a boy with a silver tooth, dropped back from the group and fell in beside me. The tears in my eyes made his tooth glint like a star. "Are you scared about going to the border?" he asked. I shook my head wearily, looking away from him. He was silent for a moment while I tried to stop crying and he tried to think of something to say. Then he was asking if I was tired or ill. I did not reply. "Do you speak?" he said. I shook my head. "Are you a mute or what?" I shook my head again. He did not question it. "I guess we will reach Ositha soon," he said. "It is getting late."

I had thought that we were going to the border, but I realized then that it was too far to walk in one day. The sound of the explosions and gunfire was still faint. It was growing darker. The sky, patterned in shreds of dark blue and pink, was lying reflected in the puddles along the road. The reflections looked more real than reality, and the puddles were so close together that it was like looking at one large picture through windows in the ground. I imagined that I was looking into a different world-into heaven, where Stirling was. Maybe I'd catch a glimpse of him through one of the windows.

But they were just puddles. I marched straight through them, and the light in the water vanished. When I looked up, the boy was walking ahead again, and he didn't look back.

At first I had just wanted to get away. Away from Grandmother's crying, and Stirling's empty bed, and sanctimonious Father Dunstan. And I had got away from those things, and I was glad of it, but what I hadn't got away from was the ache in my heart. Still, I was glad to be walking. I began to think that just walking would stop me from falling or realizing that Stirling was gone. I wished we could go on all night, but the gray lump of the barracks was in sight already. Then I grew tired and I stopped thinking. A strange sort of calm fell.

A line of carts came up over the crest of the road. We stood to one side to let them pa.s.s, and I thought at first that they were filled with sleeping people all piled on top of each other. But then I realized that they were dead-dead bodies, still in their uniforms.

"Silent fever," I heard the sergeant say. "It's the only thing that's killing them. They sit in the mud all day waiting to catch it. It's not a war. A hundred men shot a week, and most of them by accident. We don't need the cadets. b.l.o.o.d.y waste of time bringing in kids."

I listened. It was something to fix my mind on to stop it from drifting. "If you ask me," said the private, "Lucien is only pulling the cadets out of the cities for fear they will revolt. They are the ones who are not being paid for their obedience to the government. And with these revolutionary groups gaining strength ..." He must have gone on, but I did not hear.

We walked a way farther. The sun had almost set. The private was telling the sergeant that if he was Lucien, he would get out of the country. "Last time there was an atmosphere like this, the king ignored it," he said. "And next thing, he was dead."

My mind was drifting away. I tried to force myself to listen rather than think. "People are hauling in that old prophecy again," the sergeant said. "The atmosphere is full of rumors. Is that what you mean?"

"The lord Aldebaran is communicating with the revolutionaries," said the private. "It is not just rumor-it is fact."

And then I was back with Stirling, walking through the snow that day when we had talked about Aldebaran and the prince. And I started to realize that things would never be like that again. Tears were rising in my eyes. I willed them not to fall, and went on trailing after the others. We were in the town now. We pa.s.sed through an empty square where cannons were standing in rows, then a waste ground turned into a shooting range with half a house still standing at one side. The wind was wailing through the gutted building.

There was an atmosphere of disquiet in that strange town. Horses shifted and puffed steam in the damp evening air, and the men who walked around did not talk or smile. There were Malonian flags everywhere, grubby and damp, and they flapped like sickening birds against the buildings. Reaching a small house, we stopped. "All right, boys," said the sergeant. "You will stay here tonight. We will be at the inn down the road." He pushed the door open and led us into the deserted room. The floor was covered in dust, which was swirled all around where people must have lain before. I traced those shapes in my mind while the sergeant was talking.

Time must have pa.s.sed, because darkness had fallen completely and the sergeant and the private were gone. The others were spreading out blankets on the floor. I stood still at the back window, and the other boys paid me no attention, except for casting uneasy glances at me from time to time. Someone lit a candle. I watched the reflections in the gla.s.s. The boy who had spoken to me earlier, his silver tooth glinting in the dusky room, was showing off a pistol that he had brought. A couple of the others lifted their rifles and aimed them at each other, laughing, then tried to fire at the wall, only to find they were not loaded. They had not given us bayonets either; the sergeant was evidently more thoughtful than he seemed. "This is loaded," the boy a.s.sured the others, holding the pistol sideways along his palm. They looked suitably impressed.

He slept with the pistol in his hand. The candle had run down to the ground and it was too dark to find another. Eventually the last whispers died away, and when I turned from the darkened window, I saw that they were all asleep. I had not even taken my rifle off my back. I shivered in my damp clothes. I stood there and watched the stars come out.

The heavy silence, and the coldness of the stars, and the dismal, shadowy room were dispiriting. But at least I was alone. I stood at the window and cried, not madly but silently, and partly because of those cold white stars, and I felt quite calm. As if I could cope. As if I could already see the way forward.

It was stupid to think it. I turned, and the sleeping boys reminded me of Stirling sleeping at the other side of the room at home. And then I really cried. Not for who Stirling might have been, or who he used to be, or the part of me that was lost, but for who he was-Stirling, my brother. Because I felt so desperate, and more than anything I wanted someone to comfort me, and the one who I wanted was Stirling. He was so far away.

My breath came in fast sobs that shook my whole body, and I pressed my hand to my mouth and sunk to the floor. I sat slumped against the wall and cried, letting out wavering wails like an animal. I didn't care how stupid I sounded or if any of the other boys would wake. I think you can quickly get to a point where you're so unhappy you just don't care about anything anymore.

If only I had run faster. Why had I not run faster? If only I could go back in time and run faster; I could have, but I had thought I was safe. Then, in the dark room, I realized that no one is ever safe. I could have run faster, and I didn't. If only, if only I had. Why had G.o.d not warned me to run faster? But there wasn't a G.o.d. And Stirling wasn't there to tell me that there was.

He was nothing but gentle and good, all the days of his life. And I never told him that he meant anything to me. I never told him that I loved him. I was a poor brother to little Stirling. Alone in the darkness, I remembered every cruel thing I'd ever said to him. I hadn't thought of him dying before I could take them back.

Tears coursed down my face, over my mouth, and onto the collar of my coat as if they would not stop. Even when I pressed my eyelids tightly together, they ran through my eyelashes and went on falling.

Stirling was so good, and I was so bad, and now I was left while he was gone. I wished that I was the dead one. Or else that I was dead too. Then maybe-maybe-we could be together. And even if we were not together, perhaps I could stop being and just lie there in the earth. Perhaps I could stop thinking. That was the only thing I really wanted. I could see nothing else in my bleak future.

When I stopped crying, it was beginning to get light. My cheeks stung with the bitter tears that were still lying on them. A dismal calm had descended on me; it was worse than wild grief, because it would endure forever. I could feel it in my stomach, in my head, in my very bones. I was too tired to move. I looked at my reflection in the window, a stranger looking back from the gla.s.s.

I had not stopped crying for any reason I could understand. The sadness in my heart was no easier to bear than it had been before. It was strange, because I suddenly felt so weary of being unhappy. I wished that I didn't have to cry. I wished that I could laugh. I wished that I could worry about inconsequential things like whether I had to be a soldier. I wished that I could flirt with Maria. I couldn't understand it exactly, only that the old Leo-the Leo who was dead now-wanted to do all those things, but the ghost that was left behind didn't have the heart or the strength to do anything at all. I would never be doing those things now. I felt far removed from everything I used to be. And then I remembered that it had been less than two days, and I felt so desperate I wished I was dead.

Very quietly, I moved. My muscles were stiff from standing so long in wet clothes, but I managed to limp across the room to where the boy with the silver tooth lay. I knelt down beside him and watched him breathing slowly in and out, and my breathing slowed to match his. Then I put my hand on the gun. It was a Delmar .45-the army pistol.

I prized it from his fingers, took off the safety catch and c.o.c.ked it, then got up and went back to the window. I stood with my back to the light and pointed it at each of the boys in turn. I don't know why I did that. Then I closed my eyes and imagined dying-pain for a moment, and then nothing; escaping from this, from everything, into white silence.

I held the gun to the side of my head. I was not frightened. And the weight had lifted off my heart, and I didn't feel as if Stirling was dead anymore. I felt as if I was fighting against G.o.d-against G.o.d and his plan for my life. And then someone spoke. It was me, but it sounded like someone else, and I couldn't tell if it was out loud or in my own head. "Even if you're dead," said the voice, "Stirling still will be too." But I won't know it, I thought. I won't know anything. There will be nothing. "h.e.l.l comes after death," said the voice. But I didn't believe in that.

And then I saw Grandmother crying as I turned my back on her and walked away into the rain. And suddenly I changed my mind.

Someone pushed the door open. It was the sergeant, looking the worse for his night at the inn, clutching his head and carrying a bag of food. He caught my eye, and I caught his. Then, slowly, I took the gun from my head and pointed it at him.

He stared at me silently. He dropped the bag and made the slightest move for the pistol at his side, identical to the one in my hand. I made a move, even slighter, with my head, to tell him not to. He stayed still. I gripped the gun more tightly, with both hands, so that it would hold steady. He didn't believe I would do it. If he had, he would have gone for the pistol. He thought I was joking. I thought I might be too-I was not sure.

There was irritation in his face, but also a hint of what was almost amus.e.m.e.nt. As if I was a child dragging a game out far too long. It reminded me of how my father had looked one time when I was about five years old, when I stole his expensive watch and ran round with it, sick with laughter, while he got later and later and didn't know whether to laugh or shout or chase me. I was angry because he had to go out to an interview almost every day that month, when The Sins of Judas The Sins of Judas was published. I kept running, because once I'd gone so far with the game, I couldn't go back. And then my mother gave him her watch and he jogged off down the street, and when he turned to wave, I saw that he looked tired and he wasn't smiling. The laughter died in my throat and I wished I'd given it to him to begin with. was published. I kept running, because once I'd gone so far with the game, I couldn't go back. And then my mother gave him her watch and he jogged off down the street, and when he turned to wave, I saw that he looked tired and he wasn't smiling. The laughter died in my throat and I wished I'd given it to him to begin with.

I came back abruptly from my thoughts and tightened my hold on the pistol. Then I think the sergeant realized I was serious.

We stared at each other. Then, "Put that down," he breathed, quiet as ice. I pulled the trigger.

The gunshot surprised me with its loudness, and the recoil made me stumble. The other boys woke at once, shouting out. I opened my eyes and saw the sergeant again and expected him to sway and go down like a felled tree. He looked as if he expected it too. But he didn't move. A lump of plaster dropped from the wall, and I saw where the bullet had really struck-three or four feet wide. I was not used to firing this type of gun; I would not have missed with a Maracon rifle.

There was silence in the room while everyone stared at me and I went on grinning stupidly. "I could get you imprisoned for attempted murder," said the sergeant, his voice high. "Do you know that?"

"The h.e.l.l you could," said the loud voice in my head, "while I still have the gun." But I didn't say it out loud. I walked toward him without lowering the pistol. They were trained to get to their weapons quickly. I watched for a sudden movement. But everyone was still. It was like walking through a gallery of statues.

I was within a few steps of the sergeant, and I nodded to him to move away from the door. He did it. I went out, and then I lowered the gun, turned, and walked off. He could shoot, and I knew it. I braced myself for a bullet in the back of the head at every step, but none came. "He took my pistol," I heard the boy with the silver tooth complaining in the house behind me.

"Shut your mouth," the sergeant growled. "I swear to G.o.d, the blood of whoever he takes it into his head to shoot now is as much on your hands as his."

"He's sick," the boy said. "There is something mentally wrong with him. He's possessed by a demon."

Then I realized what I had done. I started laughing, feeling the fear rise like a p.r.i.c.kling current in the air from the house that I had left. I laughed and laughed, falling down on my knees in the street. Men pa.s.sed me, staring, but I could not see them properly.

When I opened my watering eyes, the sergeant's voice came quickly behind me. "Don't move." I tried to turn anyway, but he fired a shot. "The next will be in your head, so stay still if you value your life." I didn't value my life, or I never would have tried to shoot him. But there is something frightening about a gunshot, something that makes you freeze automatically. He stepped forward and kicked the pistol from my hand. I did not even try to catch it as it fell.

"Pick up the gun," the voice in my head was shouting. But I couldn't. It looked like a dead insect lying there on the ground, with its shining black barrel and the crisscrosses on the b.u.t.t, like a fly's wing case.

"Stay where you are," said the sergeant. He was tying up my hands. I tried to turn. "Don't move," he told me warningly, and pressed the gun to my back as he pulled the knot tight about my wrists. "Stand up," he told me then. I did it.

Footsteps were approaching behind us. "What's going on here?" It was the private.

"He tried to shoot me," muttered the sergeant. The private laughed incredulously. "It is not a joke." The sergeant bent and looked into my face. "You will be in prison for this. You do understand that? You will be imprisoned for this crime."

I did not answer. I had heard about the military prison in Ositha.

"Perhaps you are being too hard on him, sir," said the private. "Perhaps he did not mean to shoot. He is probably still in shock. I was surprised you brought him at all."

"In shock?" said the sergeant.

"You know," the private said, lowering his voice. "After what happened with his brother."

"What did happen with his brother? Because this boy has not told me."

There was a silence between them. I looked at the floor. Then the private was explaining.

"Hey, don't cry," he said, turning to me. My nose was running, but I couldn't do anything about it because my hands were tied. "He should be with his family," said the private. "This is a misunderstanding, and I am partly to blame."

The sergeant forced me to meet his eyes. "You should have told me," he said. "I wouldn't have made you come if you'd told me."

I looked away. They went on arguing, but I did not listen. Then the sergeant was speaking again with his face close to mine. "Listen. Whatever the circ.u.mstances, you are guilty of attempted murder. That is final. I'm sorry."

I did not know what that meant. I sat down on the floor and closed my eyes. "Watch him," he told the private quietly, and went to get the other boys ready to leave for the border. The boy with the silver tooth was still complaining that I had taken his gun, but the sergeant ignored him.

It was then I realized that the pistol was still lying at my feet. I opened my eyes.

The sergeant was inside the small house, with his back to me. I glanced at the private. He was sitting on the doorstep of one of the deserted houses, studying his clasped hands. I wondered if he was paralyzed with guilt because he had forgotten to tell the sergeant about what had happened, or if he was thinking of something else entirely. I moved slightly. He did not look up. And then I decided to escape and get back to Kalitzstad. And the weight lifted from my heart.

I was remembering a trick I used to practice when I was a little boy. I clenched my fists and imagined the ropes dissolving from around my wrists. I concentrated so hard that for a moment I could not see. The knots loosened. I went on forcing them outward. I stopped thinking of anything but getting my hands free. I could move my wrists now. I stopped and breathed again.

But once I had stopped, I felt suddenly as if I would fall. I remembered that Stirling was dead. I was so frightened of falling into Nothing. I told myself that if I got back to Kalitzstad, everything would be all right, and was only faintly surprised when I began to believe it. I shut my eyes and tried to stop my heart from beating so quickly. Then I held my breath and snapped every knot. The rope loosened, but I held it so that it did not fall.

The private glanced up. "Look," he said, in a low voice, "I really am sorry. I don't know what to do about this." I did not answer. He got up and paced away from me, down the street, and raised his hands to his face. In that moment, I moved. I picked up the gun.

The sergeant, suddenly at the door, shouted, "Saltworth, I told you to watch him!" He swore and took a step toward me.

This time I aimed properly. I shot the gla.s.s out of the windows of the house. The sergeant threw up his arms to cover his face, and the other boys were shouting and jostling to the door. I turned and ran.

I could hear them shouting behind me, but I did not listen. I raced down a side alley, then cut across the yard of an inn and came out on a different street. I went on running. Soldiers turned briefly as I pa.s.sed them, but they were all preoccupied and no one stopped me. I fought my way through an old barbed-wire fence and across a stretch of waste ground, and then I was running through the narrow streets again. Somewhere ahead a church bell was chiming. I could see the cross on the tower suddenly, and hills beyond that, and I ran in that direction. For some reason I could not get my arms and legs to work properly. I stumbled and fell more than once. But every time I stopped, I thought I heard shouting voices behind me, and that drove me on. could hear them shouting behind me, but I did not listen. I raced down a side alley, then cut across the yard of an inn and came out on a different street. I went on running. Soldiers turned briefly as I pa.s.sed them, but they were all preoccupied and no one stopped me. I fought my way through an old barbed-wire fence and across a stretch of waste ground, and then I was running through the narrow streets again. Somewhere ahead a church bell was chiming. I could see the cross on the tower suddenly, and hills beyond that, and I ran in that direction. For some reason I could not get my arms and legs to work properly. I stumbled and fell more than once. But every time I stopped, I thought I heard shouting voices behind me, and that drove me on.

I came up to a fence, and beyond it was the churchyard. Soldiers were filing in at the gate, but I ran past them and dropped down on a stone seat beside the door. I could no longer hear shouting. I breathed out. My hands were bleeding from climbing through that barbed wire. I rubbed the palms against my trousers and shut my eyes.

When I opened them again, a young private was watching me with what looked like faint amus.e.m.e.nt. The other soldiers had gone into the church; he was the only one left. He lingered in the doorway. "Ma.s.s is about to start," he said. "You are not coming in?" I shook my head.

A hymn began inside, and it made me think of Stirling humming on the way back from church. And I realized that even if I got back to Kalitzstad, nothing would be all right again. I wished I had let them put me in prison. Sometimes physical hardship makes you forget to think. "Are you all right?" said the soldier, still watching me. "You seem troubled by something. You must be one of these cadets that they have called up suddenly."

The hymn finished and he glanced into the church but did not move from where he stood. "You are not religious?" he said, turning back to me. I shook my head again. "I'm not," he said. "But I'm going to the border. I want to go to Ma.s.s before I leave. Maybe that is bad religion." He shrugged. "I have a brother at home about your age," he went on. "He would be fifteen. He works down in the harbor. He promised to take care of my wife and my little girl."

I did not answer. My heart was beating so loudly that some of the time I could not hear him. He did not seem to notice. He hesitated, then sat down on the bench beside me, searching in his pocket. He took out a sheet of paper and smoothed it carefully. "My little girl drew this. She's only three but she can draw. Look." He began pointing out what the picture was supposed to be. I went on watching him in silence. I could barely follow what he was saying to me, but I did not want him to leave me here alone either. He traced each line of that child's drawing, then folded it and put it back into his pocket.

The psalm had started by the time he got up to go into the church. He looked at me for a moment then, frowning as though he had only just seen me properly. "Is that your gun?" he said. "They are giving the cadets pistols?" He frowned again, then shrugged. "To be honest with you, nothing would surprise me anymore, with this war. Let me see that."

He took the gun from me silently and examined it, then adjusted the safety catch. "Did they not teach you?" he said. "Leave that on. You don't want to have an accident." He handed it back. "Goodbye, then. I am glad I spoke with you." Then he turned and went into the church.

I waited for my heart to slow, but time pa.s.sed and it didn't. Then I got to my feet and crossed the churchyard. I could see, beyond the fence, the lines of war graves, row on row of them, all identical. They stretched across the hills for a mile or more. I stopped at the fence, where the summer flowers and the long gra.s.s ended abruptly, and looked out over those endless graves. And then I looked beyond, across the cornfields and the marshes and the edge of the eastern hills. Kalitzstad, a hazy red island, was visible in the distance. I thought about climbing over the fence and walking back there.

And then I was on my knees in the gra.s.s, with the tears pouring down my face. The pain in my heart was so bad that I thought I was dying. I wondered if I really was. You can die just by wanting to be dead. We had a dog, when I was about four years old, that died like that. My parents sold its only puppy, and it just lay like a stone on its rug until one day it didn't wake up. That's what I felt like. As though if I let myself think about Stirling being dead, my heart would just stop beating.

And then someone spoke, close by. I turned. But I was alone. It was the Voice, speaking quite differently from how it had before. "If you get back to Kalitzstad, things will be all right," said the Voice. "If you get back to the city. You'll see." I was not even surprised at how loud it sounded. I did not care.

My legs were shaking, and I could barely keep hold of the gun, my hands were growing so weak. I don't know why I didn't let myself think about Stirling, but forced myself to get up, still crying, and climb over the fence and begin walking. For the same reason I froze when the sergeant fired that shot. Not because I valued my life, but because life still had possession of me.

As I stumbled across the open country, I asked the Voice to protect me, to take me somewhere else so that I did not have to think. I remembered that dream-the English mist, the girl, the prince, and Aldebaran. I wanted to go back to a time before Stirling was gone, or a place where none of us existed-not Stirling, or Grandmother, or the sergeant I had shot at, or even me, Leo North. I concentrated all my mind on it. And maybe it was because I was so tired, but I began to see things. Aldebaran, at a desk in that other country, leafing through papers. The prince standing beside him. The girl, Anna, dancing.

"Ryan, you are not paying attention," said Aldebaran, pushing back his chair.

"What?" Ryan turned.

Aldebaran shut the book and went to stand beside him at the window. "What are you looking at?" he demanded.

"Just the hotel." Ryan pointed to the white stone building, a quarter of a mile away, along the sh.o.r.e of the lake. "I was thinking, Uncle. I'm sorry."

"Shall I read that to you again? I was going over the messages from our allies. I wanted your opinion on whether we should condone a campaign of sabotage or tell them to wait until your return to the country is imminent."

"Uncle, whatever I say, you will do what you yourself think best."

"That may be so, but I want your opinion. The time will come when you will have to rule alone. Ryan, you are not listening again."

"That girl we met ...," Ryan began. "Anna."

"What about her?"

"Why did you look at her like that? As though you recognized the name Devere."

Aldebaran sat down again and examined the pen in his hand without speaking. Then he said, "If I tell you, you will not pa.s.s it on to her. I know you have been there and spoken to her."

"I was pa.s.sing on the road this morning, that was all."