Aleksey's Kingdom (11 page)

Suddenly Aleksey squeezed my arm and gestured with a flick of his chin and a smile toward the horses. I had to smile too. It was a particularly affecting scene. The little boy, David, was approaching from the trees with his bow and arrow, trying to be stealthy as a native brave. He wasn’t doing a very good job, and he had not even seen us, which was unthinkable for a Powponi child of his age. Finally he gave up his game and approached Xavier with a large handful of grass. I ruefully shook my head. Xavier was anyone’s for a handful of grass. He bent his old, trusting head down to the tiny figure, and although I saw it happening, I did not believe it and therefore did not cry out a warning.

The child dropped the grass, seized the arrow, and stabbed it at Xavier’s eye. If shock can kill a man instantly, I would have dropped dead at Aleksey’s feet. Perhaps he’d have followed me down. I heard a strangled sound of horror from him, and then we were both moving.

We were too late.

There was an ear-piercing scream, and the child was on his back, one hundred plus pounds of snarling wolf standing over him. Faelan’s muzzle was retracted so far saliva dripped in a steady stream onto the boy’s terrified face. Screams didn’t upset Faelan one bit; he enjoyed them. Xavier was bleeding, but only from a tiny slice on the side of his face just below his eye. Faelan had taken the boy down before he could….

What the fuck?

I do not swear often in my head, for it seems a waste of my new curse, but what the
fuck
? I had never seen such a thing. But in the confusion that then immediately surrounded us, I had no time to think this through. The mother and father came running into the clearing. They saw the child pinned beneath a ferocious wolf and began variously screaming and shouting. This drew the soldiers, and Lieutenant McIntyre drew his sword and approached the child. Aleksey made a small gesture of his hand—I’m not even sure it was that much—and Faelan just suddenly wasn’t there. He slunk back into the dark forest, silent and watchful as he had been before.

The child ran to his mother and buried himself deep in her skirts. Well he might. I would have killed him, I think, had not Aleksey been there with a restraining hand on my arm. He took over, made apologies, said it had been an accident, a misunderstanding. I could feel my fury growing. And then I glanced over at the woman. A pair of eyes was watching me from the folds of her skirt: bright, amused eyes. I swallowed and felt a chill run down my spine. I gathered Xavier and Boudica’s reins and walked them down to the track to the better light where I could see his face. He was fine. He was a warhorse and prized his scars as much as I enjoyed mine, no doubt.

Aleksey soon joined me, and we mounted in silence and rode on to find the ford we needed.

Uncharacteristically I was the first to speak. “Did you see it too? Did that actually happen?”

He nodded, his face creased with worry.

“What?”

“Oh God.”

“What? Aleksey, what?”

He turned in his saddle a little. “Remember when I told you about them all, I termed him ‘odd’? I wish now I had told you what I had seen, but I thought it was a joke!”

“Aleksey!”

“In the colony, when they were closing up their house to make this journey that… thing, that… child… had a very young puppy. He was putting it into a tiny box, and I joked to him that it was too small for it to travel in, and he said it wasn’t coming, and I said then in that case he must give it to someone who would look after it, and he said he was going to hide it in the box because he wanted to know how long it would take to die without any food or water. I thought he was joking! I thought he was being like you when I ask if you have fed the horses and you say you have left their food outside the barn to see if they are clever enough to work out how to get it, or when I ask if you have seen Faelan and you say no, but you saw some wolf pelts with a trapper… you are always doing it to me!”

“Aleksey… calm down.”

“But—”

“If he did do that, then the dog would very quickly bark, no? He would be heard?”

He calmed a little but twisted around in the saddle to look behind us as if the little demon were there now, watching us. I confess the hair on my scalp pricked when I saw him do this. “Have you ever seen anything like that, Niko? You have seen more of the world than I, I know that.”

I thought about this for a while. I had seen all sorts of evil and much horror. Watching your mother tortured to death is not common for children, I suppose. Was there something similar in the inquisitive way the Powponi had prolonged my mother’s suffering to so many days, to the way the child had looked at Xavier? I did not think so. I could not articulate this to Aleksey, as his world was more black and white than mine, but I had lived with those same men and women and become one of them. Was it not entirely reasonable for them, being told of this great God who was all-powerful—more powerful apparently than their gods who ruled the heavens and the earth just so—that they put his followers to the test? They would expect nothing less of their own but that boasted prowess was proved by pain and endurance. So I did not think what we had witnessed was the same as I had borne as a child at all.

David was something other, but I did not know what. Finally I shook my head. “No, I have never seen anything like that.”

“I think his family knows.”

“Yes. I think they do.” I remembered back to the mother’s deception about her arrival in the New World—and her nonchalance about the boy’s welfare in the forest. Now it made sense. There was probably nothing in this vast wilderness more dangerous than her child. It was a sobering thought. Suddenly I laughed. Aleksey glanced over, surprised. I shrugged. “Maybe we will square him up with the bone-grinding cannibal and see who wins.”

He smiled too, which was unusual, as he did not like humor at other’s expense. I suspected he was still worrying about the puppy. I could guarantee that the first thing he would do upon our return was to go and enquire of its welfare. Faelan reappeared a few minutes later. I glanced at Aleksey. “What does he say about it all?”

Aleksey never knew if I was joking when I made these enquiries. I never knew if he was being truthful in his replies. He murmured calmly, “He promised the next time, he will kill it.”

My brows rose, and I looked at the wolf. We were in complete accord.

M
AJOR
P
ARKINSON
was flustered and embarrassed by the incident that day and told everyone many times that it was a rum do, very rum indeed.

Mary Wright, not unnaturally, wanted Faelan shot. The trappers, not unnaturally, volunteered to do it.

Fortunately, we had foreseen this, and Faelan was absent that evening. We had already decided that things were going to change.

It was a very strained atmosphere at the dinner table. Why did we not try to explain what we had seen? We both knew we would not be believed, and if we were, by the parents, who must have suspected if not seen such things before, they would clearly not concede easily to a stranger that they had a monster in the bosom of their family. The least vociferous in their condemnation of Faelan were the three older Wright sons. They, Aleksey and I both noted with great interest, were silent on the matter, but I saw glances between them, and I wondered what their lives had been like for the previous few months. We were not entirely outnumbered, therefore. Captain Rochester was also on our side, I believe. He was an old soldier and not much got past him. If his backing was more for Aleksey and less for Faelan, I let it go. We needed all the allies we could get, and Aleksey was prettier than Faelan, so I could not entirely blame the officer.

Fortunately the child did not make an appearance. He was tired, apparently, asleep, apparently. I thought it more likely he was lying in his tent listening to us, but I kept that to myself.

When it was time to repair to our tents, I told the soldier who was erecting ours in a favorable spot on a grassy bank by the river that we would not need it and to save his efforts. He rose with his mallet in hand and asked deferentially if in that case could he and another soldier use it—as all four of them were in one tent and it was very squashed. I agreed readily and left him to it. Aleksey and I had already decided to move our three horses to where we had told Faelan to lie up, and the six of us would sleep there. I had another plan I wanted to put to Aleksey, too, but knowing him as well as I did, I needed to do this at the right moment to have any chance of success.

We had left Faelan at the summit of a small rise some half mile away from the camp. Thus we had the high ground and the advantage on the enemy. It made us both feel a little foolish, having been soldiers in war, to see a small dark-haired five-year-old boy as the enemy, but nevertheless that’s what he now was. I think it had been the expression in his eyes as he tried to poke out Xavier’s that made the child loom larger in our minds than his stature should allow. There was none. Afterward, for sure, he had looked at me merrily, interest piqued to see how I was reacting, baby teeth visible between his lips as he smiled, but when he had actually done it, then there had been nothing there, as if something that makes up a man and is usually so strong and unfettered in children—for they have not had the knocks life gives you to squash you into the shape of an adult—was absent. I have seen more of this spark of spirit, soul if you will, in animals. I had seen it only a few days previous in the bears with their cubs: teaching them, nurturing them, enjoying the leap of the salmon, just as Aleksey and I were.

We tethered the horses securely and made a small fire. It was actually very pleasant, if we did not have the earlier event to consider. Another few seconds… Faelan busy elsewhere…. I shuddered. I have seen fields covered in dead and dying horses and can hear their terrified screams in my mind if I ever wish to conjure that horrible sound. I could picture only too well what Xavier’s fate would have been had that arrow taken his eye and possibly passed beyond….

Aleksey leaned against me, arm around my waist. “I have decided to speak with the reverend and tell him what happened. He cannot actually say that his adopted son is a monster, but he might privately believe in Faelan’s innocence and support us should that be necessary. He was not vociferous in calling for Faelan’s demise tonight.”

“I thought I might speak to the mother.”

He let me go and sat straighter. “Really?”

I shrugged. “She cannot keep her eye on the boy all the time. She believes nothing can hurt him in this forest?” I chuckled. “She has mistaken me for a civilized man, and I thought I would disabuse her of that notion.”

He considered this for a while, then leaned against me once more, sharing body heat. “Nikolai, do you believe that women can sleep with the devil?”

My brows rose, but I suppose he could not see this. “I do not know. Even if they did, would that necessarily make the resulting child evil?”

“What on earth do you mean? Of course it would!”

“Why? Are all children of evil men malevolent in their turn? Are all children of saintly men good? If that were true, trust me, I would be a very, very godly man indeed, and I am not, as you know.”

“But you do believe in the devil? You say you do not believe in God, but you curse him roundly enough when you hit your thumb with a hammer.”

I thought back to my dream of the Black Crow and their bodies lying white upon blasted earth. Did I believe in such a wrathful entity? It seemed as though he did walk the earth sometimes. I shivered.

“Are you cold?” He slid his chilled hands into my trousers, and I told him he had it the wrong way around and plunged my frozen ones into his, and we wrestled for a while, which was delightful and warmed us both up. It is interesting both being men in this activity, for I am sure a great deal more negotiation and argument and decision making and promises made and broken goes on between two men than it does between a man and a woman, for is it not obvious how their joining will be? It is not so for men, and it was always diverting for us to decide who was going to have the privilege of entering whom, or just go first. I particularly enjoyed it, for being bigger and stronger, I usually won. I soon had him beneath me, his breeches down, framing his firm globes in the moonlight, my hands upon him, stretching him open with just the tip of my cock engaged.

“Niko….”

God’s teeth!
“What?”

“I have been thinking. Are you listening?”

“I can only use one organ at a time.”

“Huh. Anyway, as I was saying, I have been thinking about us—well, not us, as in you and me specifically, but us as in men like us. Do you think there are many sodomites in the world?”

“What?”

“Men who like other men? Do you think—”

“I think there are two here! Shut up!
Come back!
Yes! I think there are lots of us!
Lie there
.”

“Well, exactly, that is what I thought. So what is a colony? That’s the next question that immediately follows, is it not? Niko? Isn’t it?”

“Ugh.”

“Well, I will tell you what it is, for you are busy. It’s a group of men who come together so they can live how they wish to live. And if there are enough men like them, then they can thrive, and none can say nay to their enterprise. Some of the colonies here in the New World do not prosper, but it is not because of their very odd ideas about God—ranting, shaking, hopping, I shouldn’t wonder—it’s because there are not enough of them. Don’t stop. I like that. So, and this is the important part that you do need to listen to, by the way—what if we filled our kingdom with other men such as us? There could be hundreds of cabins upon our land, for we have so much of it. We could then—”

“Aleksey, have you seriously just suggested I live amongst hundreds of men who would make it their only aim of every day to catch a glimpse of you? Speak with you? Smile at you? Because—”

“Why would they do any of that?”

“Because they would be men like me!”