The Eyes of a King (8 page)

“Yes, we do,” Stirling was saying.

“So do I,” said the girl. “Since today. We just moved into the top apartment.”

“I’m pleased to meet you,” said Stirling. “I’m Stirling, and this is my brother, Leo. He’s ill. He was training and he passed out, but he’s all right now.” I tried again to smile, without success.

“I’m Maria,” she said. “This is Anselm.” I realized that she was pointing to the bundle, and that it was a baby.

“Anselm?” asked Stirling.

“Yes, it’s after a saint. A legendary English saint.” She was standing next to us now. Stirling leaned over to look.

“He’s sweet,” said Stirling. “He looks like you. Is he your brother?”

“No, he’s mine.”

“Your what?” I tried to jog Stirling’s arm.

“Mine,” she said again, and she did not seem to mind. “My own baby.”

“Oh,” said Stirling. Then he asked, “Are you married?” I clutched my hand to my head before I could stop myself. The girl looked at me. “Do you have a headache? How thoughtless—I’m keeping you standing here in the cold when you are sick. I am sorry.”

“Do not trouble yourself,” I tried to say, without much success.

“Can you tell me where the bathroom is?” the girl asked.

“Out here,” said Stirling, pointing out the door. “Across the yard.”

“Thank you.”

We followed her through the door, Stirling still supporting me. She stood still and looked round the yard, frowning at the grimy walls and the tall houses that blocked the sunlight. “I’m afraid it’s not very nice,” said Stirling, as if it was his own living room.

“Some plants would improve it no end, I daresay.”

Then she realized we must be heading for the bathroom too. “You should go first,” she told me.

“No …,” I said feebly, and wished we weren’t having this conversation.

“Yes,” she said. “The quicker you get back to bed, the better.” I did not have the energy to insist. Stirling helped me across the yard to the bathroom door, and I went in alone. I could hear them still talking outside, and listened hard, in case they thought I could not hear.

“Your brother would not let you go into the bathroom with him.” She was bold, for sure. “What if he was to faint again?”

“Even if he was dying, I don’t think he would want to be helped more than he had to be.”

“He is proud, then?” I could not hear Stirling’s answer. “But pride is not necessarily bad. It is a virtue in some ways.”

“That was what I meant,” Stirling said. There was a short pause. The baby gurgled. Then Stirling’s voice again: “Are you married?”

“No. Are you?” He laughed. The baby started to cry shrilly, and the girl said, “Shh.”

“So is it just you and Anselm here?” Stirling asked when the baby quieted.

“My mother also.”

“Where’s your father?”

“Fighting at the Alcyrian border. Where your brother will be before long, I suppose. I see by his clothes that he is a soldier.” I glanced down at what I was wearing, and remembered that my bootlaces were undone, and half my bare chest was showing, and there was mud in my hair. A fine soldier indeed I looked.

“He’s in military school,” said Stirling. “Then he’ll have two and a half more years of training in the army.”

“I thought by his looks that he was older.”

“No, fifteen.”

“Me also.”

“I’m eight,” said Stirling. “I’m in military school too. But neither of us like it. Especially my teacher—his name’s Markey. Sergeant Markey, that is. He’s really mean. I don’t want to be a soldier when I grow up, and Leo doesn’t either. He could be a—”

I opened the door hastily, and the girl said, with the faintest smile, “I see by your brother’s face that he thinks you have said enough.”

She pushed the door open with her free hand and looked in with disdain. “The bathroom’s not very nice either,” Stirling said apologetically.

“Never mind. At least there is a mirror, and a shower and a sink.”

“Cold water, though.”

“Ah, well.” She shifted the baby higher up her arm.

“Would you like me to hold him for you?” asked Stirling.

“Your brother will be wanting to get back to bed.”

“No, no,” I told her. “I’ll just sit here.” I sat down and leaned against the wall.

“Thank you very much,” said the girl, and she handed the baby to Stirling. “Keep your hand behind his head.” She waited a moment to check that Stirling would not drop him.

When she shut the door, the baby began to cry. “Shh,” Stirling said, the way Maria had, and jiggled him up and down, but he went on crying. The crying grew so insistent and so mournful that Stirling called, “Is he all right?”

“I think he’s just hungry,” Maria called back.

“I’ve got a sweet in my pocket.”

“Don’t give him that. He’s still on milk.”

“Oh. All right.” Stirling went on jiggling the baby and put out his finger for him to hold. Anselm caught onto it and stopped crying long enough to draw breath, but then resumed his wailing louder than ever.

I was beginning to feel dizzy again. And my vision was going strange. My head and the back of my neck prickled sickeningly hot and cold. I looked at the ground, concentrating on the cracks in the paving stones to keep my sight straight. “You all right, Leo?” Stirling asked. I nodded.

I heard the bathroom door open, and the baby’s crying subsided to a discontented grizzling. “You don’t look well,” Maria said. She was talking to me. I tried to lift my head. “Your face is very white,” she said. “Oh dear. I am sorry to have kept you down here so long.”

Stirling held out his hand and helped me up. I swayed and caught onto the wall. I held tightly to Stirling’s shoulder as we struggled to the door. Maria held it open for us.

I could not see clearly where I was putting my feet, especially entering the dark hall suddenly after the yard. But I put one hand on the rail, and Stirling supported the other arm, and I managed to get up the stairs slowly. Maria followed us all the way, saying, “Sorry I can’t help.” And she really sounded sorry.

When we finally got to our apartment, Stirling had to get out his keys. I attempted to support myself while he did it, but the wall seemed to be sliding away. “Here, hold on to me,” said Maria. She shifted the baby up to her elbow and held her other arm out. I tried to take it gently, but she slid it right around my waist and pulled me in to her suddenly. “I won’t let you fall,” she said. She was strong. I could not look at her face so close, but she was looking at me. I was painfully aware of her fingers, tight on my ribs, and her side, pressed right against mine, so that I could feel every breath she took.

Eventually Stirling got the door open and I moved over to him, still leaning heavily on his shoulder. “Goodbye, Maria,” said Stirling. “Goodbye, baby Anselm.”

“Goodbye,” she said. “Wave goodbye, Anselm.” She lifted the baby’s hand into a wave, and he gurgled at us, dribble stringing from his mouth. And then, suddenly formal, she said, “It was nice to meet you.”

“You too,” said Stirling, and I managed a curt nod.

“I hope you get well quickly, Leo,” she said, and went breezing up the stairs, but carefully, so as not to drop the baby.

I
slept for the rest of the day. It was evening when I woke. I could hear hushed voices from the living room and something hissing over the stove. Stirling was standing in the light from the window, leaning on the back of the sofa and talking to Grandmother. I sat up, and he heard me and turned and came to the door. “You are awake, finally,” he said, and sat down on the end of my bed. “Do you feel better now?”

I nodded. “I don’t know why I passed out. Sorry to scare you, Stirling. I feel fine now.” It was almost true. And when I got up, I was no longer dizzy. I dressed quickly, then followed him back into the living room.

Grandmother smiled at me from the kitchen. “I’m making you some soup,” she said.

“You must be hungry,” said Stirling as we sat down at the table. “It’s broccoli soup, with potatoes in it and meat fat—”

“All right!” I said. “Please don’t tell me about it.” I was still feeling sick after that morning. “I’m sure I will feel hungry once I see it,” I said.

Stirling had the newspaper in front of him, and he bent his head now and began trying to decipher the headline. After a while, he gave up and closed it. “I saw Maria again,” he said, looking up. “I helped her carry some of her boxes up to the apartment.”

“Oh yes?” I turned to him.

“She’s like a princess,” Stirling said. I nodded. “She’s friendly, though,” he went on. “Very pretty. Nice baby.” It sounded as if he should be counting these out on his fingers as he said them. But he wasn’t. “She was holding on to you close, wasn’t she? This morning, when I was trying to open the door.”

“Yes,” I said cautiously, and then added, “Quite close.”

“You should have seen yourself. You went bright red.”

I was alarmed. “Did I?”

“I don’t think she noticed. She didn’t say anything about it this afternoon. She most probably thought it was just a fever.” I laughed. “Did you think she was pretty?” he asked.

“Well, I suppose …”

“Who?” said Grandmother, setting the bowls down on the table.

“The girl we met today,” said Stirling. “Maria. She has moved into the top apartment. She was very kind. She helped Leo when he was feeling ill, so I could open the door.”

Grandmother sat down and began ladling out the soup. “Someone nice in the building—that will be a change after the last few.”

“Can we invite her round here one day?” said Stirling. “ We should invite her whole family round, to welcome them.”

“Certainly,” said Grandmother, quite unlike her usual self. “Who else is there? Her parents?”

“Her mother,” said Stirling. “And her baby. His name is Anselm. He is very sweet, though he cries a good deal.”

“Her baby?” said Grandmother. “How old is this girl?”

“Fifteen, same as Leo.”

“And where is her husband?”

“She doesn’t have one.”

Grandmother raised her eyebrows. “I’m surprised she told you that so freely.”

“But I did ask her.”

“Stirling! You asked her if she was married?” Grandmother turned to him, frowning. “That was very rude! Do you know
how rude that is, to ask someone if they are married? Especially if it turns out they are not.”

“I didn’t know she was not. That was why I asked. Anyway, she didn’t mind.”

“Well, perhaps not, but …”

“Leo.” He turned to me. “She didn’t mind, did she?” I shook my head.

“She seems a brazen sort of girl,” said Grandmother cautiously. “Not to feel ashamed at—”

“Oh, Grandmother!” I exclaimed. “Don’t be so old-fashioned.”

We were all surprised at that. “You are right,” said Grandmother after a moment. “You are right. Sorry, Leo. Some of the people we have had here—respectable when you look at them, certainly, but so unfriendly. And I do not know the circumstances. I think that we should invite her round sometime. I would like to meet her.”

I
had thought that I would rather be at home than at school, but by Tuesday evening I was growing bored. I was laying out my uniform ready for the next day when Grandmother came to the bedroom door. “Listen, Leo,” she said. “I want you to stay at home at least until the end of next week.”

I was surprised. “I thought you said Monday or Tuesday.”

“There is a lot of silent fever in the city. It’s too dangerous for you to go out when you are weak.”

“Well, I’ll be all right; I’ll stay away from anyone who looks ill. I have not caught it yet, have I?”

“I am not worried about you. It says here that they think it
might be carried by people who have been ill or exhausted, and then passed on to others.” She held up the newspaper.

“They have said that before.”

“Aye, but they are proving it now. In the hospitals at the border. Listen to this.”

She sat down and opened the newspaper. “ ‘A report from the doctors at the hospital at Romeira …,’ ” she began. She read slowly. I could hear when she got to the end of a line, because she paused while she found the beginning of the next. “ ‘… states that most silent fever cases occur in soldiers who … have been in contact with those returning from the … hospital, or those diagnosed with exhaustion…. These convalescing or exhausted soldiers often have low … immunities, and so carry the disease and pass it to those … who are healthy. This is further proof of the generally … accepted theory that people who are unfit, especially those … recovering from illness, carry silent fever and pass it … directly to people they come into contact with. People with … low immunities are susceptible to the germs … which then pass remarkably easily to healthy people.’ ”