All I knew of Aleksey’s uncle was that he had been visiting someone in the south. I’m not sure what I’d pictured—perhaps a slightly younger version of the old king on a tour of interesting ruins with a group of charming acquaintances.
Prince Harold had, in fact, been on a visit to the Vatican.
He was the papal representative in Hesse-Davia. Prince Harold was His Eminence, Cardinal the Prince Harold, head of the church.
I had an unfortunate first introduction to the concept of His Eminence’s return, which may have colored all our subsequent interactions.
I don’t know what Aleksey had in mind when he made me chief minister. I suspect he focused a little too much on the many hours we would necessarily spend sequestered together in small dark rooms, making policy. Making something, anyway.
I don’t think he really considered my suitability for the job. I was head of his government. IranHesse-Davia.
When he said to me one day, “My uncle returns at the end of this month. Will you arrange everything?” I replied with a grunt. I could not speak, given what I had in my mouth.
When, a few days later, he asked, “Are all the arrangements sorted?” I had murmured that everything was in place, for it was—inside him and very nicely situated.
So when he summoned me the day before the expected return to inspect and approve all my arrangements, he was somewhat nonplussed to find… nothing.
“Where are the plans?”
“Plans? For what?”
“Niko! For the banners? The parade? The jousts? The tournaments? The masque? The feasts? What have you arranged for this week of celebration? Where is everything?”
My eyes strayed to the bottle of wine I’d remembered to order—I thought the old man might be thirsty after his trip.
His gaze followed mine, and I saw him visibly pale.
So Aleksey wasn’t speaking to me when Harold returned, and this, I suspect, affected the way I viewed His Eminence from then on. When Aleksey wasn’t speaking to me, he wasn’t doing anything else with me either, of course.
It seemed to me at that time that I had all the disadvantages of being tethered with none of the advantages that should accrue from that possession.
Harold arrived home with five hundred retainers on a windswept day that would have made the banners spectacular had there been any. It was cold; a feast would have been very welcome too.
I watched him from the window of the council rooms as he descended from his horse and greeted Aleksey. It was not how I’d pictured a man greeting his new king. Whilst Harold had been absent, his brother, the king, had died; his nephew, the heir, had died; his country had won a spectacular war and gained a principality; and his nephew, Aleksey, had become his king.
So why was Aleksey kneeling to Harold in the snow?
Why was Aleksey kissing Harold’s hand?
We weren’t speaking, so I couldn’t ask him.
CHAPTER 28
OURNEWpalace would take many months to complete, but while it was being built, Aleksey decided that he would make the break with the castle and the court and move into the officers’ summer quarters. It only took a month for the builders to make this villa more suitable for a king’s residence. In the middle of February, therefore, he moved out of his dead brother’s rooms and into his new, airy, and spacious villa a mile or so from the capital.
I do not deny that it was mainly his association with me that led him to make this decision to leave the court. Our relationship was agonizingly difficult, for we both risked so much and seemed to have so little for it: the occasional kiss, the touch of a hand in passing, a secret message relayed in an innocuous comment. We both wanted a great deal more. Even in the summer villa, we had to be careful and discreet. A king is never wholly alone, for servants and guards are necessary features of his life, but there we could close and bar the door to his apartments whilst we held our ministerial meetings, and no one dared to disturb us. It was a wonder Hesse-Davia was not the best-run kingdom in the world, for we held many lengthy ministerial meetings that spring.
Aleksey was now twenty-four and I thirty-six. We had been intimate longer than not, and we knew each other very well. Perhaps, both being men, we had an advantage, for our desires sprang from the same source. We were wholly compatible in our passion for each other. He wanted me, I wanted him, and in this we excluded the rest of the world and created for ourselves the tiny kingdom of two that I had once promised him. Perhaps I should have had it foremost in my mind that he was aking, but I never thought of him in that way. To me, he was always just Aleksey, and I treated the rest of his life as an aberration. It helped him, as well, for me to treat his life like this, for then he did not let the stresses and strains of being king affect him. He no more saw himself a monarch than he had a prince or a general or a spy or a savage warrior. They were all roles he put on like a mask when he left our bed in the morning and then took off again when he returned.
If I had taken my duties as chief minister more seriously and not just seen them as a way to be closeted privately with my king whilst we conducted our own business, I might have seen the warning signs before it became too late.
I had created a bubble, our perfect little world, but we were two men sinning, and the world has a habit of seeking out its sinners and calling them to account.
THEFIRSTreal rumblings of discontent came when Aleksey passed a law forbidding the death sentence for condemned prisoners. This included condemned witches, traitors, murderers, and… sodomites. He had wanted to make sodomy legal, as he claimed that, being so pleasurable, every one of his subjects should enjoy it freely. I suggested he make it compulsory, but as we were both only joking, this law did not make it to the statute books. The abolition of the death sentence, however, did.
Within two days of it being made law, the cardinal, his uncle, summoned Aleksey to his residence in the city. I truly did not understand how Aleksey could be summoned by anyone other than me, but he said it was complicated, given Harold was his uncle and his spiritual father. I remembered the scene in the snow, and told him I was coming with him. As chief minister, it was my prerogative.
One cold April day, therefore, we rode from the villa toward the city. The building work on the new palace was coming along very well. Many men had been given good solid work on this project, and we enjoyed spending Saxefalian coin on their wages.
