“Ah. Yes, I see. Trusted with—”
“Yes, damn you. I know he is privileged and entitled, superior in every way, but he is also very young, inexperienced, andscared. He will not act forhimself. He seems entirely in awe of the savage, afraid that if he speaks it will—I don’t know! Give me bloody horses any day. So, your opinion, Doctor.”
I was about to leave, my confusion so great I could hardly breathe, when Jules murmured, “He is the warrior angel, sir—or that is what the men call him.”
“The men say that?”
“They do.”
“I have rarely known soldiers be poor judges of the officers set above them.”
“Nor I. I take it as an indication of their extreme approbation.”
I heard them approach the spot where I was concealed and stepped out as if I had just arrived. They both looked taken aback, and I was incoherent in my stumbled greeting.
We passed the moment off and conversed on neutral subjects, but I could not remember later what we had actually said. My mind was very far from that place of tents and mud.
I could have no doubt who had been the subject of their conversation. I was not committing the sin of vanity in this acknowledgment—quite the contrary in fact. I had spent the last few years constructing a façade in order to divert men’s thoughts from my countenance and bearing and onto my erudition, my skills as a doctor. I presented myself to the world as a learned man of science to hide my true nature—that of a man who loves other men and has the power to win them with features so perfectly aligned that few had resisted when I exploited their innermost desires and bent their desperation to my will.
I was that man no longer.
So it was not with glee or vanity that I heard these words.
It was with a deep sense of horror that I was being discussed so, that I was the subject of some kind of weighing in the balance.
Could I be trusted?
I could not tell them. That was a question I had yet to answer for myself.
THEFACTthat my carefully constructed façade was now the subject of open discussion between men I had thought fooled entirely almost paralyzed me with indecision. Aleksey continued his exhausting contrariness toward me, one minute haughty and dismissive and the next hesitant and confiding, and I walked around as if reanimated—moving, talking, but terrified that by one slip I might reveal the answer to the question they were asking. Could I be trusted? We must have been a pretty pair, rarely speaking, writhing in tense silences when we shared the tent at night, and avoiding each other as much as possible during the day.
However, there were one or two moments on that long march when we almost crossed that divide that separates desire from action. One, midway through our second month, sticks in my mind particularly. In all this time we had only touched each other once: that one time when I had ministered to his minor abrasions and we had been interrupted by my near arrest for witchcraft. Our chance to touch again came about, once more, through my role as doctor and his need to be my patient.
All armies suffer from lack of information. Generals cannot make plans when they do not know what is happening around them. Aleksey had tried to bring in an effective method of passing information by using his little flock of boys as runners. They carried messages back from the front of the line to the wagons in the rear, from Aleksey to his captains, and from them to the sergeants, and so on. Even though information in Aleksey’s army flowed freely, it was not always accurate. The little idiots often embellished the information they carried to bolster their own importance. They mixed it up in their minds so some people got some of the message, some the rest, but no one the whole story. Even though Iknewthis, I did not remember it when I began to hear hysterical cries from all around me one day. “The prince is dead! The prince is dead!”
We only had one prince with us, soIheard, “Aleksey is dead.”
I was riding at the back of the line at the time, speaking with some of the veterans who were jogging along in a wagon. I was trying to discover what their role was, as Johan had been completely unable to explain why Aleksey insisted these old or wounded soldiers should still be paid and still accompany the army. They were hardly more forthcoming. According to them, they provided vital intelligence to the general, but they could not actually tell me what this information was.
So I heard the cry and I believed it. The blood rushed from my head. The sensation was frightening for its suddenness. All went gray around me, and I slumped to one side in the saddle. One of the veterans pulled me back to the moment, snapping gruffly, “Get up there, man. Check the body. These fools wouldn’t know signs of life if stuffed up their arses where the light don’t shine.” I didn’t even try to untangle this. I spurred Xavier to life, and we galloped wide of the column to flat, clear land and flew like the wind. Lying low over his broad back, one with him, I have never ridden anywhere so fast. The frosty ground chipped up behind his hooves, wind streamed my eyes, and I could hardly see the head of the column four miles in the front.
We reached a scene of chaos, with men standing around shouting. One of them was Aleksey. I circled the group, calming myself. Aleksey must have seen something in my expression. He broke off his argument, giving me a quizzical look. I managed to say, “The word down the line is that you are dead.”
He cursed roundly and declared to his captains that he needed to ride the line and show himself. He had to be helped onto his horse. He waved them all away and nodded for me to ride alongside him. After a moment, when we were out of hearing of anyone, he said in a gentle tone, “I am not dead, Niko. You can breathe again.”
I tried to laugh, but it was a very weak attempt. “What happened?”
“We were playing—”
“Playing!Playing! Playing? Is that what you spend your time doing at the front of the line? I had—”
“We wereplaying,” he repeated, with a patience that belied his irritation at my outburst, “a new game called pulu. It’s really good. We all ride around hitting this little ball between us. It’s very good training for my officers.”
“It is hardly new, Aleksey; the Powponi trainedbabieson horseback with such games.”
“Oh, I’m sure the damnPowponido everything better than me. Do you want to hear my story? Or are you going to stay cross with me all day becauseyoumisheard a simple—”
“I did notmishear. Your—”
