The Eyes of a King (12 page)

That evening Grandmother got back from church before Stirling. I went to the door to meet them. Stirling was coming along behind, talking to Maria. She waved when she saw me, and came jogging up to our door. “Listen, sorry I didn’t come round earlier,” she said. “Anselm just would not settle, and …”

“I understand,” I said, because she wanted me to.

“Thank you, Leo,” she said. “I knew you would.” She looked far less harassed now without the baby as she went tripping up the stairs.

About five minutes later the shouting began. Shouting has to be really loud to be heard through the ceiling. I stood still and listened. “I am not your child-minder!” Maria’s mother was yelling. “If your baby can’t get to sleep, you stay home with him.”

“You always want to tell me what to do, but when it comes to helping me with one small thing, you complain!” Maria shouted.

“Aye, one small thing! You’re trying to lead a double life, Maria! Thanks to your own stupidity, you now have a responsibility to look after a baby. And yet every day I’m minding him while you go to visit one of your friends, or to the market, or—”

“Or to church! To
church
!”

“
I
wanted to go to church, and
I
have not been stupid enough to deserve to have to look after a baby day and night!”

“Stupid? Are you saying it was my fault?”

“Yes!” Anselm’s crying rose into uneven, raucous screams.

“My fault? Are you—”

At that moment Stirling came into the room. “Leo, what are you doing?” he said sternly.

“Just … er …” I crossed to the chair and picked up my jacket from it, as if I had only just come into the room to get it.

“You shouldn’t listen to their argument. It’s not your business.”

“All right, preacher.” I followed him out to the living room, where the shouting could not be heard. “Happy now?” But I could not help smiling at him. The way he always tried so earnestly to be good, to do the right thing. “You’ll make a good priest, Stirling, I swear.” He took it as a compliment.

I was restless all that evening. “Why don’t you read something?” said Grandmother, looking up from her sewing.

“If there was anything to read, I would.”

“Have the newspaper,” she said. “I have finished with it.”

I did not much feel like reading the newspaper, but I did not
argue. I took it back to the bedroom and read the reports of the war at the border. The shouting above had subsided now, though I could still hear the baby crying.

I was reading the casualty figures when Stirling came running in, took something out of his chest of drawers, and pushed it into my hand. It was a book. “What’s this?” I asked him, turning it over.

“The book that Aldebaran wrote,” he said. “Remember, we were talking about it. The prophecy.”

I glanced toward the living room. “It’s all right,” said Stirling, grinning. “Grandmother is downstairs visiting Mrs. Blake. Will you read it to me? You said you would.”

I
put the newspaper down and examined the book. It was very thin, bound like
The Golden Reign
—like a book that would sell many copies. They used to print all the books like that—even these great prophecies that they printed first like Bibles, for rich people. There had been thousands of different books printed every year when I was small. My father had listings and charts of the titles on the wall above his desk, I remember. “Leo, will you read it?” Stirling said.

I came back from my thoughts. “All right. When will Grandmother be back?”

“Not for an hour.” He sat down beside me.

I began to read. “ ‘A prophecy of the lord Aldebaran, written in the sixth year of the reign of Cassius the Second.’ ” Stirling listened in silence. Most of the text was background information, a long introduction that discussed the context and
the meaning of the prophecy. “Who wrote this?” I said when I finished reading that section to him. “It is like Father’s style.”

“Is it?” said Stirling, leaning over my shoulder though he could not read the words. “Could he have written it?”

“He could. They always used renowned writers to interpret the prophecies.” I began turning the pages of the old book. It was the custom to leave out the name of the author; I knew that, but it didn’t stop me searching for his name.

“Grandmother will be back soon,” said Stirling. “Go on reading, Leo.”

I gave up looking for my father’s name. “All right.” I turned to the end of the introduction, where the actual prophecy began. It was no more than a few lines. I began to read. “ ‘I, Aldebaran, witnessed these things, in the sixth year of the reign of King Cassius the Second, and I wrote them faithfully, without elaboration or reduction or alteration—’ ”

“What does that mean?” said Stirling.

“It is required by law. It means he didn’t change what he saw.”

I read on. “ ‘I dreamt, and I saw myself beside a lake in a strange country, and I heard these words in the darkness:

‘And I, Aldebaran, swear that this is a faithful record of what I saw.’ ”

I put down the book. “That does not mean anything to me,” I said.

“It means the prince will come back,” said Stirling. “It said he would not be killed. It said he would return. I told you, Leo.” He picked up the book and traced the letters with his fingers, as though they were magical symbols. “It means the prince is coming back.”

“Stirling,” I began, “just because Aldebaran supposedly wrote this book …” Then I gave up. Why shouldn’t he believe it? I watched him tracing those letters, every so often spelling a word or two of the text aloud.

“Leo?” he said then, looking up. “Can you see into the future like Aldebaran can?”

I was startled. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. My powers are nothing like his.”

“Try,” said Stirling. “Shut your eyes and try to.”

I shut my eyes and concentrated all my willpower. But I couldn’t see anything. I opened my eyes again and laughed. “Nothing,” I said. Maybe it was because I didn’t really believe that I could. I didn’t really believe that anyone could. But the strange thing is that prophecies come true. People really can see into the future, and you can deny it no more than you can deny that the earth is round or the stars are fire.

At that moment we heard Grandmother’s key in the door. “Quick—hide it!” whispered Stirling. I shoved the book back into the chest of drawers, and when I went into the living room, Stirling was talking innocently to Grandmother about some incident at school. I could not help smiling at that. For all his goodness, he could be very like me.

W
e had just started dinner when there was a sharp rap on the door. Grandmother went to open it anyway. “Ethan Dark,” I heard. “Truancy officer.” I turned in my chair. The man was standing right on the threshold, glancing from me to Grandmother behind those reflective glasses. “Are you the legal guardian of Leonard North?” he demanded.

“Yes.” She wasn’t, but she said it anyway.

“Are you aware that he has failed to attend school today after a previous warning?”

Grandmother tried to explain about the incident the week
before in training, but he waved it aside. “Yes, I know about all that. So why is he still at home?”

“There is a lot of silent fever about,” Grandmother said. “I don’t want him to catch the germs. They say that if you are suffering from exhaustion—”

“Mrs. North,” the man said wearily. “We are all in difficult circumstances. But we cannot just hide in our houses. There is a war going on, and there are more profitable things that I could spend my time on. I do not wish to come here again.”

“But the headmaster of Leonard’s school has said—”

“That is of no consequence. As another member of staff pointed out to us, Leonard has failed to obtain a doctor’s note.”

“But there are no doctors to obtain a note from.” That was outspoken for Grandmother. I got up and went to stand behind her, and Stirling followed me.

“Then I suggest he gets himself back to school with all due haste,” said Ethan Dark. “He has been warned already. If I receive another complaint from the military academy, there will be serious consequences. Last year we expelled over a hundred boys for consistently failing to attend military training. They have lost all chance of a career in the army now. But when they reach eighteen, they are still going to be called up to fight at the Alcyrian border as civilian soldiers. Evidently not where Leonard wishes to end up.”

“Very well,” she said after a moment. “He will be in school tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” the man said, and turned and marched down the stairs.

While we were all still standing at the door, Maria came
jogging down with what looked like baby sick on the front of her dress. “Look what Anselm did, bless him,” she said through gritted teeth, holding up a slimy hand. “Who was that?”

“Ethan Dark, truancy officer,” I recited. “He loves saying that.”

“Shh, Leo,” Grandmother said, but the man was already gone.

Maria laughed, and when she did that, I saw suddenly that she had been crying. I could see it in the way her smile faded and the glitter of her eyes. “I suppose you will be going back to school, then,” she said to me. I nodded.

“You will have to,” said Grandmother. “You could be expelled, Leo!”

“Don’t listen to him,” I said. “It’s only Sergeant Markey stirring up trouble.”

“You were getting bored at home anyway,” said Grand-mother.

“Now that I have to go to school, I don’t want to,” I said. “I’d sooner stay at home.”

“Ah, well,” Maria said. “At least you are not stuck at home forever with a demon baby.”

“True. But he will not be a baby forever.”

“That’s also true.”

“And there is the picnic to look forward to,” I said.

“Are you coming?” said Maria. “You didn’t seem very keen before.”

“I’ve come round to it,” I said. She smiled at that.

“What is this about a picnic?” asked Grandmother when Maria had gone on down the stairs and we had returned to the cooling dinner. Stirling explained.

“I don’t know,” said Grandmother. “The soldiers march through there on the way to the border. What if they practice shooting? Or what if stray explosives fall there?”

“The war is miles away,” I told her. “We are not going to go far. We will just go through the graveyard and beyond that a short distance. Explosives cannot travel fifty miles through the air.”

Stirling looked relieved when I said that. Grandmother put down her spoon and frowned into the soup. “But what if the soldiers don’t let you back into the city? Remember last time, when you thought it would be so smart to go walking along the river, and then when you tried to get back in, you were nearly shot.”

“I wasn’t nearly shot,” I said. “And that was years ago. It’s different now. There are barely any controls on the bridges anymore; you’ve read it yourself in the newspaper. Lucien pulled his men back to the castle and now he doesn’t care.”