He chuckled. “You have yet to learn, Nikolai, how powerful friends can help you.”
“I do not think I would like your kind of help.” My voice was not steady.
I heard a low laugh. “I can assure you that you would. Come, Niko—may I call you Niko? We both know what we want. I can guarantee you complete discretion. I think you would find it very pleasurable. I know I would.” I rose from the table, but his hand shot out and pulled me back to sitting. “You do not leave a prince, Doctor. Questions would be asked. Sit down and enjoy the entertainment. You are a sad disappointment.” With that he waved to the servant and proceeded to get very drunk indeed.
My heart was racing. I felt slightly nauseous. I closed my eyes and pictured the scene. Not my room, for sure, with Aleksey next door. The garden? The stables perhaps? There would be no need for words or tender revelations. It would be a transaction of need. I would bend him over and take. It was revolting and yet made my head spin with desire at the same time. I was the starving man offered meat—rancid meat, but sustenance all the same. What choice was left me? What choice was left any man like me? I wanted what all men want, to love openly and joyously, but this was denied me. I felt a strange sensation in my chin. I swallowed desperately, about to disgrace myself with tears. Was this what my life was going to consist of—unwelcome advances from disgusting men accepted to alleviate extreme and painful loneliness? I wasn’t a saint. I needed something,anything, just to feel alive and wanted, if only for a transient, illusory moment.
The entertainment had begun: dwarfs riding pigs, men dressed as women and women as men. The music and heat and stench of the food and people were intolerable. I debated rising again and leaving, facing the consequences of my actions the following morning. But then I felt a hand on my arm. I looked up into Aleksey’s pale face. He leaned in between us and unexpectedly turned to his uncle and kissed him lightly and playfully on the cheek. John preened, delighted, charmed. Who would not be? Aleksey stroked the back of his uncle’s neck with his thumb.
“I have to steal your dining companion, sir. There has been an accident in the kitchen, and his little fool of a page has been burned.”
I stood up immediately. “Is it bad?”
Aleksey tapped my arm with an affected air. “We do not know. That is why we needyou, Doctor. Uncle”—he pouted coquettishly—“may I have him?”
John laughed and took the opportunity to place a hand on Aleksey’s backside. “Take him, nephew; he is a great disappointment to me.”
Aleksey chuckled, bent and kissed him again, then took my arm and virtually dragged me away.
We hit the cold night air; he turned and hitme. I reeled back, a hand to my cheek over the burning slap. “What was that for? Where’s Stephen?”
“Stephen is tucked up in bed where all good babies should be. What the bloody hell, Niko? Are you a complete fool?”
“What? Have you gone mad?”
“Why do you have to be so bloody…?” He waved his hands around, as if trying to pluck the description of what I was from the cold night air. He turned, exasperated either with his lack of fluency or me, and began to pace away. Then he spun back and jabbed a finger into my chest. “Stubborn. Stiff. Proper. Obstinate. Inflexible.” He switched to German and added a few more synonyms.
I was furious. Outraged. I flung him a list of words too.
He cut me off and seized the lapels of my shirt. “You sat there and angered one of the most powerful men in this kingdom for the sake of your propriety. Yourmodesty.”
“What! What the hell are you talking about? What was I supposed to do? He wanted to…. He tried to….” I could not say what he had tried to do. It said as much about me as about John. He had pickedmeto proposition. That was no coincidence.
Aleksey obviously understood my hesitancy. He pushed me off with an exasperated sigh. “Oh, Niko, he tries it on witheveryone. You should have played along and laughed, enjoyed the evening, and left. He would not even remember in the morning. He never does.Nowhe will remember you, though. You have insulted him in the worst possible way.”
I saw my error, my terrible mistake. John had not deliberately picked me, but my own inclinations had led me to understand more than he had intended from his advances and be disgusted. Another man would be… confused? Amused? Another man would join in the ridiculousness and forget about it in the morning.
Angry with myself, I took it out on Aleksey. “I prefer insulting him to your whorish way with him. You practically lowered your head to his lap and—”ThisI could not finish. It would betray me entirely if he were to realize I knew such things. “I’m sorry. You were only trying to help.” I bowed and began to walk away.
He caught me up and walked alongside me. Finally he sighed deeply and commented in a quiet voice, “It is still early. Don’t return to your rooms so bitter, Niko. Come….” He did that tiny pinch of my sleeve thing again.
I couldn’t stay cross with him. It was beyond my power. I followed him.
CHAPTER 12
IHADnever been in an army barracks before. I had imagined they would be places of regimented order and discipline. Not so—or not that night anyway. Aleksey’s arrival was greeted with glee. We interrupted the celebratory party in one of the messes, the sergeants below the salt, according to Aleksey, which meant nothing to me. I had thought relations between officers and soldiers to be very strict and formal. Again, how wrong I was. They called him sir, to be sure, but other than that, they were extremely free and easy with him and he with them. The party was well underway when we arrived.
The men treated me with great interest, firstly for being foreign and talking funny (their words not mine), and secondly because I was a quack (again, their word). Of course, then I was presented with a stream of complaints and ailments and one or two actual boils and burns and breaks to inspect. The drink flowed very freely indeed, and it wasn’t long before I was inspecting things in places one shouldn’t when drunk, but everyone found it extremely funny. We played billiards for a while, and then cards, and then it got really wild. We played strange games of physical prowess, which seemed to have no aim except for damaging someone as badly as you could and not injuring yourself in the process. Easy rules, then. At one point I think we went outside to a courtyard, and I was given a lesson in sword fighting.
My demonstration of knife fighting was the most popular lesson of the evening, though. They had all thought themselves pretty good with knives until they met me. And I was holding back: I didn’t actually scalp anyone. Where was Aleksey in all this? He was right there by my side the whole night, drinking, laughing, bleeding, and not once did I feel lonely, sad, or longing for something I could not have. That night I had everything. Well, almost. But drunk and happy, the ache went away for a while. I told myself I had it all.
It was a slightly different story the next morning. I woke wondering if someone had poisoned me. I turned over, vomited, and then realized I was in someone else’s bed. I decided I’d think about this later and willed myself to return to a place where nothing hurt. I did, after retching once more.
The next time I woke, it was bright in the room. I was still in the barracks, lying on a straw pallet. At least I was dressed and alone on the bed. There had been a few times in my life when I had woken similarly confused but neither dressed nor alone. I sat up very carefully and saw that Aleksey was sprawled on a pallet next to me. The only thing separating us was a pool of drying sick. We were a very attractive couple after our first night together, I must say. I saw a pair of standing legs and let my eyes travel slowly up them, squinting at the brightness when I reached the face. Colonel Johan. We regarded each other for a moment.
He flicked his eyes across to Aleksey. “Is he still alive?”
I nodded but regretted it immediately. He sighed, stretched out a hand, then pulled me to my feet and held me up. “You arenotgoing to vomit on me. Do you understand?”
