The Eyes of a King (27 page)

“You can go,” I said. “I will stay with him.”

“No—I’ll not leave him.”

“Father Dunstan prays for Stirling at every service,” I said.

“I know, but … please, Leo … please go …” She took my arm.

“Every service,” I said. “Morning and evening.”

“I want one of us to be there.”

I was too tired to go, but I was too tired to argue. So I went.

I did not hear a word of the service. It seemed as if there was a wall of glass round about me that filtered every normal sensation and made it strange and distant and dreamlike. After the service had finished, I remained where I sat. Gradually, everyone else left.

“Ah, Leonard,” said Father Dunstan when he emerged from the vestry. “I was meaning to come and see how Stirling is getting on. Shall I see you back at your house?” I nodded without focusing my eyes on him, and it was five minutes after he’d gone before I realized what he had said.

I walked to the back of the church slowly and stood looking at the rack of candles burning there. Through my tired, watering eyes, the lights made diagonal crosses, which stretched in the breeze from the open door. A storm was blowing up outside. The wind was snarling in the narrow streets and snapping newspapers against the empty fountain in the square. The door rattled open and shut again, banging against the frame.

The wind lulled for a moment. I took a candle, lit it, and put it in the rack, for Stirling, apart from the rest so that I could tell which one it was. I knelt down beside the candles, judged the distance wrong and crashed my knee against the floor, and had to bite back a curse. I bowed my head in guilt.

“Please, God, please let Stirling live,” I whispered, so quietly that I could not tell whether I had really whispered it or just thought it. “Please. I know that I am evil, but should he be punished for it? I promise that if you let him live, I will never swear again. I will come to church every day. I will read the Bible morning and night. I will give anything. I would have my arms and legs cut off, if that was the only way Stirling could live.” For a moment I was uneasy, as if this bargain was final and it might actually happen. And then, kneeling there, I was paralyzed with guilt that I valued my arms and legs over my own brother.

“Please—I will do anything,” I went on whispering. “Let me catch silent fever and die if someone must, only spare him. He is the good one. He is too good to die—do you not see?” I was speaking out loud now: “Do you not see?” But there was silence. God was too far away to hear. “Only do not let him die to punish me.”

The door swung and crashed against the wall in a sudden gust of wind. The candle flames bowed low and rose again in unison. Except for one. Stirling’s candle, the youngest and the tallest, separate from the others and closest to the door, went out. A narrow thread of smoke coiled upward, and then the wind snatched it away. I stared at the space where the flame should have been, then stood up and ran out the door. I believed in bad omens. Truly, I did, and there was no point in pretending not to.

H
itting my elbow on the front door frame in my haste, I slammed the door shut and clattered into the bedroom. Grandmother and Father Dunstan turned to look at me. Stirling lay still.

“He is unconscious,” said Grandmother.

I stood there and looked at him, panting and clutching absently at my numb elbow. “Come and sit down, Leonard,” said Father Dunstan. “Do not be alarmed. This is a normal stage of the illness.”

I had thought that Stirling was dead, just for a second. But I knelt beside the bed, put my hand in front of his mouth, and felt the breath there. “How long?” I said.

“This will probably not be over quickly,” said Father Dunstan. “All we can do is wait.”

We sat there in silence, watching Stirling. Stirling’s body, that is—for wherever his spirit was, it was not there. There was a strange calm about him that made me think that he was dreaming. Whenever he moved the slightest amount, Grandmother would leap up with a cry, only to sit down again when he fell back into stillness.

For some reason I was not worried. The calm of Stirling’s breathing made my breathing slow also, and I could hear Father Dunstan’s watch ticking and my own heart beating, but nothing else. My mind wandered to other things. I began to wish Maria was here. But she had brought some shopping earlier; she would not call round again that day. She would not want to see me, anyway. Why had I said that to her? Why?
How could I have said that? I screwed up my eyes and pressed my fists into them at the thought of it. How could I have said that?

When I opened my eyes, I saw that Father Dunstan was looking at me. I stopped grimacing. He smiled kindly. “All right, Leonard.”

I felt so guilty then that I made myself imagine that Stirling was dead. Gone forever. I would walk to school on my own. Grandmother and I would go to church on our own. If someone asked me if I had a brother, I would have to say no. His bed would be empty, and his place at the table, and his desk at school taken by someone else.

I imagined myself looking out the classroom window one day, seeing Second Year Platoon A training in the yard. I would see that one whose front teeth had been missing for a year, and the colonel’s nephew with the orange freckles, and the one who was smaller than the rest and always started fights—as usual, I would see them all—but I would not see Stirling, no matter how long I looked, because Stirling would not be there. Stirling would never be there; he would not even exist, except as a memory.

My heart was rattling against my ribs. I looked quickly to see that he was still breathing. Slowly but regularly, he was. I pressed my hand to my heart, and after that I did not take my eyes off him.

Father Dunstan stood up to take Stirling’s pulse at midnight. We were sitting in the dark, and it had been dark for two hours, but it was only then that I noticed. No one made a move to light a lamp. “How is he?” asked Grandmother.

“It is hard to tell,” said Father Dunstan. “It is very hard to tell.” And he sat down again, and we went on staring silently at Stirling.

After about half an hour, my eyes grew heavy. It hurt to keep them open. I pushed fiercely against the heavy blinks. Could I not even stay awake one night for the sake of my own brother? What if he died while I slept?

But it was no good. I was falling asleep, and no one made a sound to stop me; the stillness in the room was lulling me into sleep, and Stirling’s slow breathing, and the darkness, and I just could not keep my eyes open.

I
woke up and saw Stirling lying there, and started to my feet. “Grandmother, why didn’t you wake me?” I demanded. “How is Stirling? Worse?”

“The same,” she said. He was lying still, just as he had been before. Her chair was drawn up close to his bedside, and she was pressing a cold cloth to his forehead.

While I had been asleep, I had forgotten that Stirling was ill, and my heart was beating fast again now. “Where is Father Dunstan?” I asked.

“He went to take the eight o’clock Mass,” said Grandmother. “He thinks that Stirling may lie like this for a couple more days without changing.”

“And then what?” I said.

“I don’t know,” she said. “For now, we have to be patient. Sit quietly, Leo.”

But I couldn’t sit quietly. I had gone to sleep resigned to
waiting and watching in silence. I had woken up and could not wait anymore. Overnight I had lost whatever calm I’d had. I began pacing about the room. I tripped over my boots on the floor, and Stirling’s forehead furrowed for a second. “Leo, why don’t you go to school?” said Grandmother.

“School? How can I go to school?”

“I think it would be good for you. Or else go down the road and buy some bread; we are out of food, and neither of us have eaten since yesterday lunchtime.”

“What if Stirling gets worse while I am gone?”

“I will send Maria to fetch you. She will do that; she has said she will. Why don’t you get ready to leave at least, then you can decide?”

I was already in my uniform; I had fallen asleep in it the night before. I splashed some water on my face and hurried back into the bedroom. “Maybe he is worse,” I said, looking at Stirling. His face was flushed with fever, but then, it had been like that before. “Father Dunstan is coming after the service,” said Grandmother. “He will be able to judge whether Stirling is worse or not.”

“Grandmother, I don’t know why, only I’m worried. You know I have powers. If I am worried, there may be a reason.”

“But Father Dunstan said—”

“Does Father Dunstan have powers?” I demanded.

“Leo, what use are your magical powers to Stirling? What use is anything that you can do? What can you possibly do to make Stirling well? He may lie like this for days before he wakes up, and all we can do is wait. Sit down or go out for a while, but will you please try to be calm and sensible?”

It made me suddenly almost cry with anger that she could be
so unreasonable. “Grandmother, why are you trying to pretend everything is normal?” I began. “Do you seriously think—”

“There’s nothing you can do, Leo,” she repeated.

But there was. There was something I could do. I could not sit here waiting, but I could do something. So I left.

I
ran. That was all I did, just ran—out of the city and through the graveyard. There were no soldiers at the gate to stop me. I went on. Something was driving me out into the hills to search for the Bloodflower again. If you have powers, you cannot ignore them.

I did not stop running. Even as the hills grew steeper, I kept up the same pace, pounding on uphill and downhill, toward the horizon. I ran straight through a stream, and water soaked my boots. I raced from valley to valley, trying to find some clue that would tell me where to look. But there was nothing, and in desperation I searched everywhere.

My eyes began to ache with hunting for a flash of red petals that was not there. I looked more and more meticulously. I ended up circling about the same patch over and over, snatching impatiently at the grass stalks. I stopped still and realized there was nothing there at all. And suddenly I was sick of this place; I wanted to get out. I ran up the nearest hill.

I could see a long way from there. I turned and looked back; I had come several miles. My bones were aching, and my head was throbbing from too little sleep. I collapsed where I was and stared upward.

The sun was overhead and the sky was artificial blue, like
dye, thick and dazzling with color. It hurt my head to look at it, and I shut my eyes, putting my hand up to my face to shield it from the brightness. My forehead was running with sweat, though I had not realized it.

I did not have the energy to get up again. And suddenly I did not want to either. Everything was in control while I lay still. If I did not move, nothing else would. I lay there, irritated with the heat and the grass stalks pressing against the backs of my arms, until I began to drift away.

I opened my eyes, and I did not know whether I had slept or not. A bird was singing close by. Looking upward, I found it, a dark shape against the sky. It flew ever higher, until it was no larger than a dust speck, and then it was gone. Had it gone right out of the atmosphere? Or were my eyes too weak to see it? It could have gone right into heaven, for all I could tell.