Neither of them was claiming that this was one of the ones that had risen from the depths of the ocean to allow an infant Jesus to walk safely to Cornish shores, ofcoursenot, but it was odd that it was here, right in the middle of the lake alongside the remains of the monastery of St Nicholas, which had reputably established its reputation for healing by having one of these very relics.
Most of the Church’s ridiculous tricks and fraudulent artefacts had been stolen by Cromwell and his thugs during the dissolution of the monasteries, but Aleksey believed one smooth, flat stone might have been easily overlooked. Buried on the tiny island to hide it?
Whatever.
As Lord of Light Island with his faithful Second in Command (Keeper of the Kibble), they were entitled to view the stone any way they wished. Radulf was the one who’d dug it up, so now it wasRadulf’s Stone. The old boy certainly seemed fascinated by the thing and liked scrabbling around it, digging and snuffling. There was an impressive hole now where he’d done his excavations.
Aleksey didn’t believe in ghosts, but he did, as he’d said to Ben, think there was more to the human brain than was currently understood. He also thought, although this belief he usually kept to himself, that places could hold memory—or rather they absorbed energy. He couldn’t prove this, obviously, but he had experienced it. He’d been to a few buildings where atrocious things had taken place and he had been able to sense the horror permeating the air. Sure, a vivid imagination could think up all sorts of things to fit prior knowledge, but sometimes he had only discovered the foulness of the activities which had taken place in these buildingsafterhis hackles had risen.
He’d experienced this same sensation on battlefields. When he was twelve, he’d spent a few days during the Christmas holidays with Sergei in Volgograd, and to keep him busy while his father had done whatever it was he was there to do, a young officer had been ordered to give him a tour of the city. Everyone in Russia was taught about this place, and a few hours being driven around in a heated limo had been more than acceptable to him—he’d bargained with the devil, after all, and wanted to reap his rewards. It had been December, so the river was frozen solid, just as it had been nearly fifty years before when two million men had died either defending or attacking the place.
Both he and his escort had felt them.
Perhaps it had just been the intense cold as they’d stood outside the steaming car alongside the grey ice on the snow-covered bank. Maybe it was the knowledge of what his father was probably doing while he stood there. It could have been the surreal contrast of the twinkling Christmas lights from the buildings lining the frozen Volga, but he would never forget that visit toStalingradand the spirits of two million dead men speaking to him from the ice.
He was shivering even now, remembering all this, but it was September and he was wet, and so he just dragged Radulf away from his treasure, pushed him back into the water and they swam across the lake once more.
PB was sitting on the bank watching them with a frowning scowl. For one moment, Aleksey saw him as if he sat on snow beside a frozen river.Husky.
He probably just needed a holiday.
He heard voices and the dogs immediately turned to the sound and shot off together. He followed and discovered the moron in the garden, introducing Tim to Harry. All three dogs had apparently reunited very happily and were mooching together in a pile of weeds in one corner.
The humans all nodded to him as he came forwards and shook Harry’s hand. It was calloused and deeply ingrained with earth and, looking around at the work that had already been done, Aleksey could see why this would be so. All the old growth had been cleared, and new soil had been dug over and mulched. The glass of the greenhouse was clean.
The shed was the main difference, but he liked to think he’d had a little something to do with this. When he’d bought the furniture for Guillemot, he’d purchased matching items for Harry, and the old man now had a caramel-coloured, soft leather sofa too, but his was a sofa-bed. He had a reading lamp and table, a small book case and a rug for the floor. In one corner was a deep, plush dog bed and this had a few toys and treats scattered around it. A little free-standing oil radiator was plugged in, Aleksey was amused to see, alongside the dog’s bed.
Some new blankets were folded neatly on top of a small fridge.
In addition to the interior furniture, he’d purchased a large barbeque that ran on gas bottles, and a set of outdoor furniture—beautiful Adirondack chairs of teak, with a table. The place was entirely transformed. He almost fancied living there himself.
Tim and Harry wandered off to talk about the wall for some reason, and he was left standing with the moron. He glanced over. Squeezy was watching some sausages sizzling on the grill, presumably Harry and Snodgrass’s breakfast.
Squeezy shook his head. ‘I really hate you.’
Aleksey smiled, pleased. ‘I know.’
‘You are so…fuckingly annoying.’
‘That’s what Ben says. Although usually without the swearing.’
‘Oh, he swears about you when you’re not there. Trust me on that.’
This made Aleksey laugh. Squeezy quirked his lip. ‘When he was Flag Officer, Plymouth, we lived in Admiralty House in Mountbatten. You know it?’
Aleksey nodded.
‘I think he prefers this.’
Aleksey glanced around at the garden and cast his mind back to all the places he had lived in his life. ‘So do I.’
Squeezy toed the ground, apparently deep in what counted with him as thought, and Aleksey took the opportunity to say, ‘The thing you found in the attic—inmyhouse.’
Squeezy’s brow rose. ‘You doing that night in the asylum then, boss?’
‘No more than you are, I suspect—I also sawyourexpression when you emerged. No, I would like you to just give it to me.’ It was the first time he’d allowed the moron such power over him: admit he couldn’t bully him into doing something, so please just do it anyway. He felt it as more of a seismic shift in their relationship than he supposed it was, but in a way it was as if little Aleksey was finally coming to understand that by saying no, no, no to everyone and everything, he had in fact just been saying please, please, please when no one had ever listened to him.
Squeezy pursed his lips, looked up at the sky, toed the ground some more, and then watched his boyfriend for a while. When Harry picked something off one of the trees, reverently handing it to Tim, he nodded and shrugged. ‘No biggie. If you want it.’
