A Royal Affair (4 page)

I couldn’t help smiling at this. I’d met a lot of yellow, hunched colleagues too. He gave me a look, clearly pleased at my reaction, but before he could speak, the scarred man snapped at him in German, “We have to go. It’ll be light soon.”

The leader nodded but was watching me still. He murmured thoughtfully in English, “You understand German, I see.” He was incredibly observant. I didn’t think I’d made any sign I understood. I nodded.

“My name is Aleksey, by the way. That is Gregory.” He indicated the large man currently gnawing unattractively on a piece of meat. “This is Johan.” Possessive Johan. “And… what is your name again?” The boy laughed. Clearly this was a private joke between them. He mumbled Mark, and Aleksey nodded sagely. “Ah, I had forgot. Mark. However can I remember? So, we are all introduced, Doctor Nikolai. You have not answered my question. Why are you in my country?”

It sounded so ludicrous, claiming the whole of this godforsaken country for himself, this bandit thief. I decided to impress him and tell him I’d been summoned by the king but suddenly thought better of this. Held captive in the woods for ransom was not an attractive prospect, despite the attractiveness of my would-be captor. “I am a doctor. Do I need a particular reason to be in a country seemingly without access to modern medicine? Or reasoned thought, come to that?” I felt, after last night’s events, that I was owed a little rudeness.

He shrugged. “It seems a long way to come to find a people without hope or thought. I would think there were such people even in your lovely England, no?”

I knew he was only chafing at my rudeness, so to change the subject I asked him about the wolf. He frowned theatrically, then laughed and said in German to his friends, “He thinks Faelan is a wolf.”

The big man, Gregory, mumbled gruffly, “So do we, fool.”

That made Aleksey grin even wider, but he turned to me and said seriously, “He’s a Tamask from a land far to the north of here. A
dog
.”

“There’s somewhere even farther away than here? And trust me, that’s a wolf.”

Mark clearly understood English, for he chuckled at this, eyeing Aleksey’s reaction. The green eyes widened for a moment. Then he clicked his fingers, and the dog-wolf came over to his side. Before he could defend his pet, however, Johan said brusquely in German, “If this gladiator claims he is a doctor, Aleksey, where are his instruments? One saddlebag? I don’t think so. He’s a soldier, a
mercenary
if you ask me. Look at him! Look at his damn muscles. Doctor, my arse.”

Aleksey flicked one eyebrow up and said in an amused voice, “He speaks German, friend, and you have now told him more about our impressions of him than you have learned about his intentions. Well done.”

Johan rose angrily. As if to stave off a confrontation, something he seemed wearily used to doing, the giant, Gregory, lumbered to his feet, chucking the remainder of his meat to the wolf, which the animal gladly accepted. “Come on, Aleksey, lover boy is getting… impatient.” He ruffled Mark’s hair with a fond smile, much to the boy’s annoyance.

Johan had already stormed off. Mark followed the giant. They faded back into the forest, leaving me alone with Aleksey. We eyed each other over the fire. I had no idea what he was thinking. He was able to mask his thoughts from me completely. We rose uncertainly and continued eying one another as I rode slowly away, and he faded equally slowly back into the concealment of the surrounding forest.

I
ARRIVED
in the capital city of Zadworna a few days later. I had crossed the high mountains and wound my way down the northern slopes toward a coastline that awed me with its beauty. I had been given the option, of course, to travel to Zadworna by ship from London, but I had personal reasons for not taking a ship for a longer voyage than the necessary one across the Channel.

I arrived in Zadworna by horse, therefore, and all I wanted to do was to find the house of Lady Caroline’s sister and stop traveling for a while—and wash. I was looking forward to some hot water I did not have to heat myself and then use sparingly.

My first impressions of the capital, once I’d stopped being distracted by the coastline, were not ones to write home about, had there been anyone there to write to. It was another squalid place, only a little better than the towns I’d traveled through for the last month since leaving civilized Europe behind. But then, I reflected, London was not all that auspicious if you entered it from certain directions. I vowed not to be too judgmental and pressed on to find a likely looking person from whom I could ask directions.

Madame Costain, as Lady Caroline’s sister was now called, ran a large establishment as befitted her rank of wife to one of Hesse-Davia’s ministers. I was admitted to the drawing room, where I felt incredibly uncomfortable, given my poor state from over three months of traveling. I need not have worried. I was expected and welcomed. Mme. Costain appeared to fall as quickly under the spell of my presence as all women. Her misplaced desire got me a suite of rooms fit for a far more important visitor, servants bringing tubs of hot water, and the promise of a fine dinner.

Later that evening, therefore, dressed in one of my finest suits, which had arrived with all my other possessions in a trunk aboard a ship many weeks before I had managed to complete the journey, I was more than pleased to escort my hostess into the dining room to meet and greet some dear friends she had invited expressly for the purpose of meeting me, a visitor from England. Indeed, more, a doctor with renowned skills. Mme. Costain proceeded to boast of my miracle cure of her dearest brother, Lord Salisbury. I suspected she just liked dropping his name into every conversation. I tried to ignore my unease about my patients being discussed with such unfeigned relish. Mme. Costain left nothing wicked out of her description of her sister-in-law. If this had been England, I think Mrs. Hannigan might have had recourse in law for slander. Still, it made for good dinner-table gossip, and as we were thousands of miles from England and in a land that appeared to have little concern for law, I allowed Mme. Costain to embellish my skill and bolster my ego.

I was eager to find out more about my duties at the palace. I was quick to learn from the laughter that followed my innocent question that it was far from a palace. The king lived in little more than a fortress, although it was ancient and extensive. That, then, had been the castle I had viewed on the headland as I’d descended into the valley. They were right. I would not have taken it for the home of a king. King Gregor had no queen. She had died giving birth to their youngest son, His Royal Highness Prince Christian. The heir, His Royal Highness Prince George Charles Willheim, had been ten when his mother died. He was said to have a rocky relationship with his younger brother, whom he blamed, not unnaturally perhaps, for his mother’s death. His father, King Gregor Alexander Philip Mountberg, blamed everyone but himself for her demise, and so the family, according to my hostess, limped along with no love lost between any of them.

When she began to recount the names and various ranks and appointments of the king’s brothers, I drifted away into my own thoughts. The king had been ill for many months before I was summoned. As I had taken three months to travel to this remote place, he was now very sickly indeed. Everyone whispered poison. No one had the courage or means to back their suspicions by action. They needed proof. They needed me, apparently.

I had no real desire to help any of these people now. I’d lost something of myself when I’d let that young man slip from my grasp. I was in a country hidebound by superstition, and I wanted to return to England and the life I had made for myself there. I was a doctor, though. A doctor’s reputation was as easy to lose as it was for Mme. Costain to create. I could not afford
not
to attend the king—and then save him.

I lay awake for a long time that night, despite the comfortable bed and my full stomach. I was anxious for the next day, of course. I had never met a royal person before and did not particularly want to now, but it was more than that. I felt again that sense of dread that had so overtaken me before entering the village. But I was a man of science, and I did not,
would not
, allow my own superstitions to control me.

If my thoughts also drifted to the strange meeting with the four men in the forest, then I should not be blamed too much. It had been unnerving, following so closely after the horror I had suffered. But more than that, it had been intriguing. I could not forget the young man’s eyes. I had never seen anyone with eyes that green before. He had also, now that I thought about it, not followed the fashion in either hair or dress. His hair was short for a man, too short to be tied back. It was natural color, not powdered, a pure black, although it was hard to tell exactly for he had been filthy. Yet under the filth, his skin was not that of a man who lived habitually a victim of harsh weather. His teeth fascinated me. It was rare to see good teeth on anyone, let alone someone of his age. He must have been in his early twenties, a time when most people’s teeth were well into their first rot. Once more I was reminded of the Powponi I had lived amongst. When Aleksey smiled it was like watching a Powponi brave laugh, the light in the eyes and the wide mouth of perfect teeth. Perhaps it was more the indefinable something in his air:
my
country,
my
land,
me
. He had an arrogance born of entitlement—that is what I had sensed.

Whoever the young man had been, he clearly had a very high opinion of his own worth. And yet, and yet…. Had he not also had a sweetness about him? Or was I merely projecting my desperate need to find something good in this place onto a random stranger who had not actually tried to kill me, as I had immediately feared he might? Was I misreading the smile in his eyes when I’d called his dog a wolf? Was I misreading my own reaction to him? I’d done that with men before. I wasn’t running to the rim of the civilized world for my health. I was running scared, scared of myself and terrified of the demons I could not shake. That thought inevitably dragged my mind right back to the village and the man I had helped to kill. “
He liked it well enough fornicating upon another man’s cock
.” Had that really been the man’s crime? Was it true? Was he any more that than the old woman had been a witch? Where was the other man, and why wasn’t he punished there as well if, as the mayor claimed, they had been caught together? What did outside jurisdiction mean? Questions with no answers kept me awake until the small hours, and then the stirring of the household took over.

I lay awake listening to housemaids and stableboys, wagons and street vendors gradually bringing the world to life. I might have dozed off a little, but a maid coming in with hot water for a wash and shave soon woke me once more. She curtseyed and informed me that breakfast was in half an hour and that the carriage had been ordered for my visit to the castle. I replied that I would ride. She curtseyed once more and took my cast-off clothes, presumably for laundry.

As I shaved, I regarded my appearance for the first time in three months. My hair was very golden from the traveling I had done through the summer. Similarly, my skin was a striking brown. I had not been this brown since I left the Americas. I looked at my teeth as I cleaned them with a routine I had learned from the Powponi, using a brush of bristles and paste made from cleansing herbs. They were as white and even as the green-eyed man’s. I frowned at myself. I did not like the overall effect. I was supposed to be a learned man, a man of science and deep thought, a man whose skill would impress and whose erudition would astound. Perhaps I should stop cleaning my teeth and shaving. I squinted, imagining the effect. Perhaps I should stop thinking so much. I agreed with myself and dressed. I left my hair unpowdered, as was my custom, tied it loosely, and wondered idly whether Aleksey’s short hair would suit me. Berating myself for foolish vanity, I went to find Xavier. He was looking pretty good too.

I needed an uglier horse.

T
HE
CASTLE
dominated the headland, imposing its austere strength on both the ocean churning in front of it and the valley behind. I presented my credentials and letter of introduction to the guards, who promptly ignored them and ushered me in, returning them to me with cold hands. I presented them again to the man who came to meet me as Xavier clattered over the cobblestones of the courtyard. He actually read them, said, “At last,” and hastened a young boy over to take my reins as I dismounted. I was then led with some urgency through numerous rooms, my papers being handed from one attendant to another as we ventured closer to the inner sanctum. Finally we were outside the bedroom of the king. I was given strict instructions how to address him—what to say, what not to say—and the doors were opened. I had fully intended on calling him Your Majesty and only discussing matters of his health. Therefore, rankling somewhat from the unnecessary lecture, I wasn’t taking in as much as I usually would on a first visit to a new patient. Perhaps I can be forgiven. It’s not every day you meet a king.

King Gregor was indeed very ill. That I could see immediately. The rest of my observations of the room and the other occupants were hazy, as I could only focus on the poor man propped up on the bed. He so closely resembled Lord Salisbury that I had a strange sense of having been here before, doing this before.

I approached the bed and bowed deeply, as I had been instructed. “Your Majesty.”

When there was no response, I looked up. I wondered if the man was too ill to reply. Perhaps he wasn’t used to having to reply to servants. I ignored the slight, whether it was intentional or not, and asked him if I could examine him. As with Lord Salisbury, he was indifferent to my request and to my careful removal of the bedcoverings. His body was sadly wasted and showed very much the same effects of poisoning as had my previous patient’s.