The Eyes of a King (15 page)

O
n Thursday morning I woke late. It was Stirling’s occasional coughs that eventually jolted me awake. “Hurry, Leo, or we will be late!” he said then, and I sat up. He was beside my bed, already dressed and putting on his boots. “It’s past seven-thirty,” he said.

“Why did you not wake me?” I said.

“I thought you would be tired after walking such a long way yesterday.”

“I’m not tired,” I said, though I was yawning as I spoke. I hurried down to fetch the water.

We ran half the way to school, but we were still two minutes late. Sergeant Bane did not much bother about lateness.
Sergeant Markey did. “He will keep you in again,” I told Stirling as we ran through the gate. I was out of breath and coughing with some of the old violence that had faded.

“If he does, you go home by yourself,” Stirling said, turning to me.

“I will wait for you,” I told him.

I had fully intended to, but a cold drizzle started just as school finished, and I was tired, and I ended up leaving without him. “He will only be half an hour,” said Grandmother. “And the evenings are light now anyway.”

I was sitting on my bed, reading the newspaper, when Stirling got back, more than an hour later. He came trotting into the bedroom. “Sorry I didn’t wait,” I told him, folding the newspaper.

“I don’t mind,” he said.

He took off his boots and put them down by the side of his bed, in line with each other exactly, and trailed the laces out to the sides so that they didn’t touch each other. “Why do you have to do that?” I asked him. He’d always had to put his boots like that, ever since he was small.

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I don’t like the boots to stand on the laces.”

I laughed at him. He sat down on my bed. “Do you know what Sergeant Markey made me do as punishment? I had to run around the yard five times, with weights—”

“That is hardly a punishment,” I told him.

“No, then he hit me. Look at this.” He held out his hand and laughed to hear me gasp.

I could make out the stripes of a stick on it, but there were
so many that it was impossible to distinguish any unwounded flesh. It was red—raw meat red—and shiny, and blood seeped in the palm lines. “How can you laugh at that?” I said, alarmed. “Does it not hurt?”

He shook his head.

“But it hurt when he did it?”

“No.”

“When he actually hit you, I mean.”

“No. I promise it didn’t hurt. That’s what is funny. I never felt it. I knew it would hurt, but it didn’t, and I sort of smiled because it was strange. And he looked scared. I was humming a tune, and he shouted at me to stop it.”

“You were humming a tune?” I said, taking hold of his hand and staring at the stripes crossing it.

“The hymn we sang at Mass yesterday.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know many other songs except hymns.”

“No, I mean why were you humming?”

“I didn’t notice I was doing it.”

“A hymn.” I let his hand go but went on staring at it. “He probably thought that you were a prophet, come to send him to hell.”

“Do prophets send people to hell?”

“I don’t know; he probably thought God was helping you or something.”

“Stirling!” Grandmother exclaimed from the doorway.

“Yes,” he said, turning to her, his bloody hand gleaming grotesquely in the light from the window.

“What happened?” she asked, hurrying over. “Why did you not show me?”

“It was Sergeant Markey.”

“That man! My poor baby!” She clutched him to her.

“I’m not a baby, Grandmother. And it didn’t hurt—don’t be so worried.”

“That man!” she said again. “I must report him to the headmaster. I should have done so much sooner, only with Leo getting ill I forgot. He is a vicious bully. I will go to your headmaster tomorrow.”

“Don’t do that,” Stirling told her.

“Stirling, something must be done about him,” she said. “And this is not the only time he has been so cruel.”

“No. But I don’t think he will be again. It scared him, because he couldn’t hurt me.”

“He couldn’t hurt you?” said Grandmother. Stirling explained.

“Perhaps Stirling has powers,” I said to her.

“No,” she said. “I hope that he does not.”

Grandmother bandaged Stirling’s hand, and he sat frowning at it while he drank his tea. “Does it hurt now?” I asked him. He shook his head. “Have you completely lost your sense of feeling?”

“Punch me; see if it hurts.”

I hit his arm, just hard enough that he should feel it slightly. He didn’t even move. I punched him harder.

“I can’t feel anything,” he said.

“Stop that, Leo,” said Grandmother, coming in from the kitchen at that moment.

“It didn’t hurt,” Stirling assured her. She regarded him anxiously.

That evening Maria came back from church with Stirling
and Grandmother. She had Anselm with her. Stirling told her all about the incident, the three of us sitting around the table in the living room, Maria holding the crying baby. We had to shout to be heard, though we were barely two feet apart.

“Perhaps you will grow up to be a saint, and this is your first miracle,” Maria remarked.

“You shouldn’t joke about that,” Stirling told her.

“I was being serious,” she said, laughing at his earnestness.

I noticed that he was clutching his bandaged hand. “Is it beginning to hurt?” I asked. “Are you getting back your sense of feeling?”

“I think so.” He unclenched it. “Yes, it hurts for sure.”

“I’m glad,” I said.

“You’re glad that my hand hurts?”

“No—only that you’ve got your feeling back. It was strange when it didn’t hurt at all. Unnatural.”

In the silence that followed, I held up the newspaper, which I had been reading until they came in. “Look at this.” I turned to the front page and read the first few lines: “ ‘The Alcyrians must be crushed. We will not retreat until we have taken back the land that is ours. Those who are truly loyal to our country would count the casualties a small price.’”

“Who said that?” said Maria.

“Ahira,” I told her. “Who else? Does he seriously think that we will win this war?”

“No,” she said quietly. “I … don’t suppose he does.”

“He came to our school once,” said Stirling. “Ahira. He gave a speech.”

“Oh yes.” I laughed. “He said, ‘Boys, you are soldiers of new Malonia.’ Things like that. I tell you, the teachers bowed to him
as if he was God himself. He shook all of our hands. And when he came to me, what I thought of him must have been written on my face, because he nearly broke my wrist.”

“There’s something about him,” said Stirling. “Something that makes you—I don’t know—scared of him but you have to listen to him.”

“Compelling,” I said. “He’s a strange man.” And then I saw Maria’s face. “Anyway, what about this picnic?” I said.

And we talked no more of Ahira. We told her that we had been to the graveyard and seen the hills from that side of the city. “We should go that way when we walk out there,” I said.

Anselm was still wailing. “Is it sensible to bring him?” Maria asked.

“It seems unfair to leave him here alone, when we are having fun,” Stirling remarked, stroking Anselm’s head. “Shh,” he told the baby, and Anselm stopped crying. But only for a moment.

“Babies don’t find that sort of thing fun,” said Maria. “They like sleeping and eating and … staring at things. I can’t think what else, to be honest. They don’t like being carried about for miles; it just makes them miserable. And being in the sun all day will annoy him, and he will need changing all the time, and feeding.”

“It is a bad idea to bring him, really,” I said.

“I should leave him with my mother.”

“Will he mind?” asked Stirling.

“We can go on plenty more picnics, when he’s older. He will not be a baby forever; soon he will be able to do things like that. We can take him around with us then.”

“It still seems unfair,” said Stirling.

“People probably left you behind when you were a baby,” Maria said. “That’s just the way. He would prefer to stay at home. He likes it at home.”

“Well, I suppose,” Stirling said. “ We will have to make it up to him, though.”

She laughed. “Remember that, Stirling, and in a couple of years we will take him on a picnic and tell him it is because you said so.” Anselm looked up at us, silent for a moment, as if he knew that we were talking about him.

“I won’t forget,” said Stirling.

O
n Friday evening Stirling was coughing again. “Are you cold?” Grandmother asked. She felt his forehead. “No, you are warm. I hope you don’t have a fever.”

“I’m fine,” Stirling said, and insisted that he was well enough to go to Mass.

“I hope you aren’t coming down with something,” said Grandmother as they left for the church. “I think we have had enough of illness in the family for one year.” Watching him skipping down the stairs, she laughed suddenly. “Perhaps I am too anxious. Ever since Leo’s incident in training, when you came home so dramatically, I have been worrying too much about you boys.”

“That cough will be gone by tomorrow, I’ll guess,” I told her.

I met Maria down in the yard that evening, and we stood at the gate and talked for a while. When I eventually turned to the door, she caught my arm. “Is Stirling all right now?” she said.

“His hand is hurting him,” I said. “Why do you ask?”

“No reason.” But she did not let go of my arm. “I was just thinking—a lot of illnesses begin with loss of, you know, faculties. I was reading about it in the newspaper….”

“Loss of sight or hearing,” I said. “Not feeling. And you know what that newspaper is like.”

“True,” she said, and laughed, but she didn’t sound convinced. “You know, we can always go on that picnic another weekend.” Then the kids from the first-floor apartment came running out into the yard, banging the door, and she let go of my hand and smiled. “It is nothing to worry about, I suppose. It was just that he was coughing and I wondered if he was feeling all right now.”

“He will be fine tomorrow,” I told her. “You’ll see.”

And he was. When he woke, even the cough was gone. I could tell that Grandmother wanted to keep him at home, but he was determined to go. “I feel fine,” he insisted, skipping about the kitchen as we got the food ready for the picnic. We had some bread, a small piece of cheese—all that was left—and some apples that were slightly too old. It was hardly a feast.

“Use the cloth to polish those apples, Stirling, not your shirt,” Grandmother said, hovering distractedly in the kitchen doorway. “Are you sure you are well enough to go?”

“I’m sure.”

Grandmother opened her mouth to speak again, but at that moment there was a rap at the door. “That will be Maria,” Stirling said, and ran to open it.

Maria had brought a basket with a lot of fruit and vegetables but not much else. Still, we had plenty of bread, and the apples she had brought were better than ours. Maria and I sat
talking while Stirling and Grandmother finished wrapping up the food. “Come on, let’s go,” said Stirling then, dragging us both out the door.

“Take care,” Grandmother called after us.

Walking down the stairs, we smiled at each other as if we were little children going out alone for the first time. It was strange to be leaving the building with Maria. “I keep thinking that you have forgotten something,” I told her as we went out the side door.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Anselm.”

She laughed. “Yes, it’s strange to be without him.”

Maria looked like a sophisticated lady, carrying the basket on her arm. The way she walked, too, was elegant; I had not much noticed before. She was wearing fairly ordinary clothes—a long-skirted dress with a tight bodice and a colored shawl—but she wore them as if she knew she was pretty, and it made them into more than what they really were.

Stirling walked ahead, humming. He was always humming, but it didn’t annoy me like Grandmother’s humming did, because he had a sweet voice. Maria suddenly linked her arm with mine. I started, and she laughed at me for it. But I soon got used to the weight of her arm on the inside of my elbow. And with Stirling walking ahead and Maria holding my arm, I fell to imagining that we were married, Maria and I, and Stirling was our little boy. It was a stupid thing to imagine, but I imagined it anyway. I was a soldier, on leave for the weekend. Stirling was … better make him about five or six years old—no matter, he was small. He could be our son Leonard, named after me. And we were—