A Royal Affair (16 page)

Whatever the reason, I followed the man meekly enough to the king’s council room.

I recognized many of the faces present, the courtiers who habitually surrounded the king like flies on carrion.

More to the point, I recognized one particular face. A pale one with freckles. Fifteen, to be precise.

I knelt and awaited my sentence.

The king bid me rise. He was smiling. Aleksey was grinning like a fool, but I ignored him.

“Doctor, as you are aware, we are at war. We are eternally grateful for your services over these last few months. What say you, sir, to now putting your skills to work with our men at arms?”

My brows rose for a second before I swiftly composed my features. The loon was grinning even wider, but I was not going to give him the satisfaction of seeing that anything he did caught my notice or interest.

The king, clearly not used to refusal, took my confusion and silence as consent to his plan and thrust a rolled parchment at me. When I didn’t examine it, he waved imperiously at one of his minions. “Surgeon General. Commission and rank accordingly. See the colonel has all he needs.”

I was outside the council room, parchment in hand, before his words made sense. I felt a nudge to my elbow, knew who it was, so began to pace away down the long gallery.

I was followed.

“Well, is this not excellent,
Colonel
Hartmann?”

I made no reply, but the parchment got a little scrunched in my fist.

“I shall have to teach you to… salute.”

He could try.

“I shall have to teach you to salute…
me
.”

I gritted my teeth and swerved toward a staircase descending who knew where.

I heard an amused snort, and he was at my side again with the grace of a dancing partner executing a complicated step.

“You will look so fine in your uniform. I can’t wait to admire you.”

Uniform? This was something I’d not considered. “Will it be the same color as yours?”

If there was another amused snort, I ignored it.

“Of course. Not so much gold braid, though.
You
are only a colonel.” He stopped and caught my arm. “Tell me you like this plan of mine, Niko, for it was the very devil to persuade my father that soldiers need care in battle—more than kings in peace time, if truth be told.”

I looked down upon the fingers holding my arm. I felt that touch in every part of my body and was set afire. I acquiesced with a nod. He took it as capitulation to his plan. He did not realize that it was very much more than this.

T
O
BE
fair to me, I was less seduced by the rank and uniform than by the prospect of being responsible for the health and well-being of so many men. Men of my profession knew very well the opportunities war offered. Warfare advanced knowledge in every sphere, and medicine was one of the most fortunate in this regard. I wanted the chance to see wounds and injuries I had never seen before, the opportunity to devise new strategies and methods of healing. This war was just too good to miss. That I would ride into battle in a splendid new uniform alongside the object of my desire did not, of course, factor into my decision making at all.

I accepted the position. I was immediately moved from the rooms in the castle to rooms in the barracks. These were in the officers’ mess, and I had a room across from Colonel Johan. I immediately discovered that my rank had not been merely an affectation on Aleksey’s part (or a ruse to see me in uniform). The rank gave me the authority to carry out the preparations I wanted to make. I had complete autonomy over medical issues, mainly because—compared to swords and lances, horses and flags—sick men were considered very boring. No one was concerned with what I was doing, therefore, and I took advantage of this free hand to do as I pleased.

Men often died in battle because help for them was too long in coming. A wounded man who had to be carried off the battlefield, loaded into a cart, and jolted over rough ground amongst similarly injured men, often did not survive the journey despite not having received an initially fatal wound. Treatment for these soldiers needed to be immediate, appropriate, and close to the action. The cleansing of wounds when soldiers had arrived back to medical help could save other lives. The less badly wounded, those who needed some respite from the fighting before they could steady their nerve and return,
did
need to be removed from the sounds and sights of the war. I wanted to establish two medical stations, therefore, one that traveled with the front line of the army, where I would be, and one that remained in the rear for the less critical injuries.

I soon realized that my plans would fail entirely unless I had some help. I thought of Jules Lyons. He was a good man, trustworthy and not resistant to new ideas. I consulted him, and he agreed to my proposal. I had not known he was already a particular friend of Colonel Johan. They had been companioned once on a royal visit to a spa in Germany for the king’s health and had discovered a mutual love of chess. Jules too was commissioned—Captain Jules Lyons. I had my first officer in my small medical corps. It was quite exciting, and we celebrated our joint venture by adding a small white band to the sleeves of our red jackets to represent a bandage and thus make us easily identifiable to soldiers. I thought we would be laughed at, but everyone liked the idea, and soon different colored bands were appearing on all uniform sleeves. It became very much easier, therefore, to recognize who was responsible for what.

Jules and I could not hope to equip our two planned medical stations from the limited supplies we had available in the capital. We were fortunate, therefore, that many foreign ships had been caught in the closure of the borders. Ships in those days often carried surgeons and well-stocked apothecary stores. We requisitioned all their supplies. A scarlet uniform and sword carried the day. It never ceased to amaze me the power of a little bit of gold braid.

I did not personally step foot upon a single ship. I could not. Even the smell of the harbor and the sound of the wind in the rigging of moored ships made me ill. Nothing alleviated the sense of nausea I experienced approaching lowered gangplanks. I had to leave the boarding of the ships to my newly appointed captain and our small troop of soldiers.

Jules suggested I suffered from an extreme form of the malady that overtakes many men upon discovering the rolling motion of the sea, and I did not disabuse him of this notion.

I returned from each of our scavenging expeditions bitter with anger at my own weakness. I could not help but compare this evidence of my diminishing with the growth I began to see in Aleksey.

I had never truly appreciated what kind of a man Aleksey was until I became one of the officers in his army. Whereas I had one captain and one concern—ensuring medical provision—Aleksey commanded everyone and was responsible for everything. All his officers looked to him for decisions and money and approval of their plans. Everything had to be coordinated through him. It was no good me buying hundreds of yards of cotton to provide clean sheeting for injured soldiers if we had no carts to carry my provisions to war. No one could speak directly with the officer in charge of wagons (incidentally now wearing a green band), or he would have had dozens of such approaches. I never quite knew how Aleksey did it, but three weeks after the initial declaration of war, we had an army assembled and ready to march to Saxefalia. He was only twenty-three. I thought it incredible that not only could he achieve this impressive feat, but that he did it with a never-failing cheerfulness and enthusiasm that kept us all in his thrall.

Of course, he didn’t have to work hard for me to be in his thrall. I had admitted to myself that I was totally in love with Prince Christian Aleksey.

This private confession was painful and unpleasant and added to the bitter anger I felt then toward much in my life. When the confusing sensation first twisted my gut, I actually put it down to the aftermath of the raiding expedition we had that hour returned from.

It was early morning. We often carried out our raids—visits—before sunrise so that we had enough time to thoroughly search the ships in good daylight. In this case, the supplies had been handed over without complaint, and so we were returned before breakfast.

I was stabling Xavier.

I heard a commotion from the yard and peered out of the door.

The explosive noise of a barrel dropping off the high back of a wagon and breaking open on the cobbles had badly spooked a horse. Several men were attempting to catch the rearing animal and calm it, and right in there amongst them was the general, the prince—Aleksey. He was wearing only his trousers and open shirt, as if he had heard the commotion whilst dressing and rushed out before considering his attire.

Surrounded by confusion, shouting men, and a panicked horse, it seemed to me that the sunlight suddenly bent to shine upon him alone. Time slowed down as I watched the events unfold. I feared I was finally overcome by the sickness that had plagued me at the harbor. The strange illumination of Aleksey’s hair, the brilliance of his white shirt, the way he turned his head to seek me, slowly, as if through a dense medium that had sprung up between us—all this I assigned to my earlier weakness and did not recognize the symptoms for what they were.

When he caught the horse, as he inevitably did, he handed it off and came over to me rapidly. “Are you unwell?”

I turned away and went back into the gloom of the stable.

I did not understand what I was feeling, but whatever it was, it was worse when he was close.

Aleksey rarely did as anyone told him, and I knew he would not leave if I made my anguish known.

Predictably, he followed me into Xavier’s stall, leaning on the wall, watching me as I removed imaginary pieces of straw from the dark mane. I felt Xavier shift in recognition of the scent of the wolf at Aleksey’s side.

“Are you finding your new duties tiresome, Colonel? I ask not as your friend, but so I might help my new officer. This is not your country nor your language, and you have not been brought up to soldiering.”

I managed to mutter that all was well. I think I would have gotten away with this lie if he hadn’t come and leaned against Xavier’s warm flank. I groaned, and he caught at my waist, perhaps thinking I was about to fall.

He smelled of new sweat in freshly washed linen.

His hands were warm, his fingers strong, squeezing my sides, and through those small touches he ignited my entire body.

I
burned
and did not know how he could hold me so and not suffer this conflagration.

Things might have taken an unexpected turn for both of us had not a fellow officer entered the stables at that moment to seek Aleksey’s counsel on a matter of some urgency regarding tents. Aleksey swung away from me quite naturally, as if he stood that close to all his officers, and went to the other man, questioning him. Aleksey laid his hand upon the man’s arm as they spoke.

Then I knew.

The intense stab of jealousy that followed Aleksey’s switch of attention from me to this other poor man was not the irritation of withdrawn friendship.

I was sick with envy because he laid his hand upon another man.

All was clear.

I was filled with searing, bitter, exalting, joyous, but awful knowledge that I loved Aleksey. I loved him as a man should love a woman. I wanted him as a man should want a woman.

But love, in my experience, was something that left you weak and vulnerable and near to death. During the next few weeks, I repressed any outward betrayal of my feelings and kept our friendship to just that: the brotherly, slightly flirtatious friendship that we enjoyed. I quickly came to see that, when amongst his own kind, his officers, Aleksey flirted with everyone. Not in the unpleasant way I’d experienced with Prince John but more as if a ribald secret was about to be shared, a private joke bound you to him. They all adored him. My more intense, painful love, therefore, was hidden in this universal Aleksey worship. I thought my secret was safe.

I discovered that on the two-month march to Saxefalia, I was to share a tent with Aleksey.

So much for keeping my secret safe. My resolution to keep to our mutual, backslapping friendship dissolved with a splash of hot water to his naked body as he washed that first night on the march.

A
LEKSEY
HAD
been right about the army and its love of nudity. In the evenings, after the long marches, naked men wandered everywhere—thoughtlessly, happily. Freed entirely from the presence of women, they were only too glad at the end of every day’s forced march to cast off hot uniforms that chafed and rubbed raw and walk unfettered to wash in streams. Being in the army was extremely physical in ways I had not anticipated. I had lived for some years now in a world where the physical was denied: bodies covered, bodily functions never discussed, euphemisms used where a good honest word would have done better. But here everything was raw and basic and honest. The soldiers were coarse: everything related to cock or arse.

I once rounded a corner between some tents to find a ring of men standing around watching one man suck another’s cock. Apparently a challenge had been given, money was on the table, and all were cheering the outcome. To say I was confused would be an understatement. I was mortified, shocked—not by the act. After all, it was not something I was unfamiliar with. I was bewildered by the fact that not one of these men would have considered himself a man like me: one who preferred men to women in all things. Such an act done between men was punishable by death, as I knew only too well. So how could these soldiers do it openly in a field surrounded by cheering fellows? I was confused and dismayed. I saw many such examples of this… double standard. If you did these things as a joke or for a bet, it was acceptable. If emotion came into the equation, God forbid love, then that meant death. How could this be? A senseless act done to ribald and obscene encouragement was better than one between two men who wanted to express affection?