“Not out loud, no, but you have been deafening me and the horses with the whining going on in your head.”
I chuckled at that, for it was true. “I have a theory about it, if you would care to hear it.”
“Oh, yes, I love your theories.” He held up one hand. “See? Clean nails.” He smirked. “Just in case I should touch you today. So, tell me another of your theories. I am aquiver with excitement.”
“I shall not speak at all for the rest of the day if that is thereception Iget.”
He nudged me, and I relented. “It is something to do with the heart and how much blood people have in their bodies. Heat is carried by the blood, is it not?”
He frowned. “I suppose so.”
“If you pour a little hot water over a large surface it cools more quickly than the same amount put in a small vessel, yes?”
“My head is hurting. I have no idea. If you say so.”
“So, it is thespreadof the thing that cools it. I have a lot of skin because I am so tall and possibly very little blood, so I cannot keep warm. There, that is my theory.”
He appeared to be thinking deeply about this, then ventured, “I am almost as tall as you and thin as well, so your theory does not work. But you might have less blood; that I grant you. I suppose we will never know. Ihopewe never know. In my experience, being able to gauge how much blood a man contains is never good for the man.”
“No. Perhaps one day we will look at men when they are dead and explore their bodies more, and then we will know these things.”
“That is the most disgusting thing I think I have ever heard you say—and I sat in a sweat lodge with you for a day watching you vomit. Who would want to poke about in a dead body?”
“At least they would be silent when you poke them.” He looked at me, and we both laughed at the same time. “I did not mean that in quite the way it sounded.”
“That is fortunate, for it did not sound well.”
We were quite comfortable again with each other now, and I felt the warmer for it. Perhaps some of my shaking had been from repressed tension and anger. It had dissipated now in the warmth radiating from his body and from the pleasure of having almost every part of my body close and touching his. On impulse I took his hand on the pretext of approving his cleanliness. He let me hold it on the same pretext, perhaps, then murmured, “What do you see in my hand? Can you read it and its lines?”
“I am not a mystic; I am a doctor. I was looking to see if it was clean. Which it is, for once.”
“But what can you see in the lines? Am I going to have a long life?”
I sighed and turned his hand over, looking at his palm. After a moment, I let it drop. “It is superstition. Next you will have me trying to perform alchemy or necromancy.”
He seemed not to have noticed my change of subject on seeing his lifeline. He took my hand instead. “We had a gypsy come to court one Christmas and read all our palms. My father did not ban her, and so the priests could say nothing. You have a very deep line here. What is this?”
“The heart line. Leave it, Aleksey. It is not scientific, and people only want to hear good things anyway. I could as well toss some bones and read your future in them as I could from lines formed in flesh. Your future is written in the things you do today.”
“What do you mean? Is this another theory? I like your theories.”
“You fell off your horse and broke your rib. That affected what happened to you for the next few days. If you had not fallen off your horse, you would not be here sitting with me now. You would be somewhere else, doing something else. We should all make careful decisions about what we do, and think about the consequent ripple from those decisions before we act.”
He thought about this for an inordinately long time. I was very content sitting there warm against him and with the weak winter sun on my face. Finally he roused himself slightly and asked in a deceptively even voice, “So you are saying that every action has a consequence.”
“Yes. It is not magic or superstition that cause things to happen. It is men and the things they do.”
“So if I decide to do something, I should think through all the possible consequences and weigh them in balance.”
“Yes, exactly.”
“And even if I can foresee bad consequences, I am still justified in making the decision to act a certain way, because I will be acting withconscious willagainst my better judgment?”
“I suppose so. But I do not see why you would ever foresee unfortunate consequences from an act butstilldo it.”
He turned to me, caught my face in his hands, and kissed me.
CHAPTER 17
