A Royal Affair (10 page)

“Please, my apologies, sir. I believe His Royal Highness Prince Christian has an unfortunate sense of humor. So, a hut. It does not require gothic arches.”

“Good. I hate the buggers.”

To my astonishment, the lodge was built within a day, and the following morning, I was riding with Aleksey to inspect it and to take provisions for our stay. I was still not too clear whether or not he was intending to join in my exile. I wasn’t too sure how I felt about this either way. I could see both advantages and disadvantages to his presence, pleasures and difficulties. My professionalism was telling me that I needed to concentrate on my patient. I could not seem to concentrate on anything else but green eyes when Aleksey was present.

The House of Lust (as I had translated and insisted on calling the officers’ summer residence) was perfect. Situated on the sunny side of a small bluff overlooking the sea and with airy rooms, it reminded me of the villas built by ancient emperors of Rome for relief from the hot southern summers. Aleksey assured me that it did get very hot in Hesse-Davia in the summer months. This was late September, and the days were beginning to chill noticeably.

I think Aleksey’s change of mind about accompanying me coincided with the moment I told him I would be bringing no servants and we would not actually be living in the house. He had genuinely not thought that when I said I had to be alone with the king I meant
alone
: no courtiers and no servants. Master Mason had done me proud with the sweat lodge. The walls were built of new straw and sweet-smelling cedars, which I had requested. The central pit was stacked with wood, and he had even covered the floor with furs. They were not bear or cougar, as the Powponi had used in their sacred lodges, but they were good enough.

When I turned, Faelan was lying on one of the skins, staring at me with his unnerving amber gaze. He didn’t growl, which I think was a first. I smiled at him. “You want to come? Sit naked and sweat with me?”

“Yes, please.” I jumped, and Aleksey swept aside the door covering, chuckling. “I did not realize this endeavor involved nakedness. I don’t think I have ever seen my father naked.”

“And isn’t that something every son should be able to say?”

He nodded absentmindedly and sat on the ground cross-legged, for all the world like the Powponi chiefs he so resembled. “Tell me how this works.”

I debated how best to explain it and sat down across the fire pit from him. “The poison sits in the body the same way salt does. You know how sweat tastes?” He gave me an odd look but nodded. “That’s the salt being washed out of the body when we become too hot. It will work for the poison as well. Eating certain foods helps the body heal itself; liver and shellfish are particularly effective, although I don’t know why. As the poison goes, you replace the bad humors with water. In particularly bad cases, you have to keep doing this for weeks.”

“Oh.” He picked up a twig and began to draw little pictures in the dirt between the hides. “Where did you learn to be a doctor?”

This was a tricky question. I usually let people assume I had attended one of the new universities teaching medicine. No one had ever come out and asked me directly before. “I was apprenticed to another who practiced medicine.” I was very pleased by this reply, as it skated close to the truth but said nothing truthful at all. He nodded, not listening anyway, intent on his own thoughts. Suddenly he blurted out, “If he dies—if my father dies—damn it, if he dies, I’m going to smuggle you out of the country. It’s all arranged.”

“What! Why? Your brother has agreed to this! He must understand it comes with risk.”

“What he understands now and what he will choose to understand when he is king are two different things. You must see that, Nikolai! All kings begin their reign by sweeping out the old rushes… sweating out the poison, if you will. He will be no different. He will take the opportunity to rid himself of anyone who has threatened or displeased him and make his excuse our father’s murder—whether they are guilty or not.”

“But I am not his enemy!”

“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.”

A
FTER
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 split 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….