The Eyes of a King (51 page)

I
n the silence of the early morning, when the hotel lay dark and still for a few hours, Ryan said, “If I go back home …”

“Yes,” she said, her head against his chest, listening to his heart beating. He ran his hand along her shoulder thoughtfully.

“If I go back, what about you? I will stop believing in this place. I will think England was just a fairy tale. And how can I, when you are here? You will probably be a famous dancer, and I will never see it.”

“I don’t know about dancing anymore,” she said. “It’s you now, all the time.”

They lay in silence. She began to drift into sleep. “I wish we were married,” said Ryan suddenly.

“What?” she said. “Are you still awake, Ryan?”

“Yes.” He turned to look at her. “I wish we were married. I seriously do. Then nothing would separate us. I’m asking you now, Anna—”

“What are you asking?”

“If you will marry me.”

She reached up and ran her hand through his hair, then let it fall again and closed her eyes. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I will.”

“Anna, are you serious?” he said. She did not answer. He nudged her, then laughed quietly and stopped. Anna was already asleep, but Ryan lay still, wide awake, his arms about her, and watched the dawn rise over the lake.

A
nna woke early and suddenly. Ryan’s face was resting against hers. His left arm was under her head, and his right arm was about her. She moved it carefully. She picked up her clothes and went to the window. In the darkness, everything had been enchanted. Now, in the morning light, it seemed faintly stupid. Birds were darting through the trees beyond the window, their singing sharp as ice in the still air. Anna leaned her head on the window frame and looked out.

Ryan stirred and opened his eyes. He raised his head and looked at her, then fell down again onto the pillow and covered his face with his hands. “I’m sorry,” he said then. “I honestly am. I don’t know—I should have left when I said.”

“You shouldn’t have left,” she said.

“Come here,” said Ryan, sitting up and looking at her. She crossed the room and sat beside him. He regarded her cautiously. “Are things still the same between us?” he said.

“Of course they are.”

And then she caught sight of the photographs on the table behind him, her own copies of the pictures Monica had downstairs. Her father’s open smile seemed suddenly the highest judgment on her. She didn’t look at her Nan. She caught hold of her necklace and went back to the window. “What?” said Ryan.

“Things get out of control,” she said. “You don’t mean to do anything wrong, but they go too far….”

“Who are you apologizing to?”

“I don’t know. Ryan, I don’t think we should have—”

“All right,” he said. “So we both drank a bit, and you were tired from finishing your dance and working all day, and I was homesick. If that was how this happened, all right. But it does not alter how I feel. What about you, Anna? Does it change anything?”

She watched the sunlight on the floorboards. “I have to talk to you,” he said quietly.

They dressed in silence. It was just past five o’clock, and the building was still. Anna stood at the window and watched the mist drifting across the lake. “Anna, listen,” Ryan said. “You know what you said last night?”

“What did I say last night? I said a lot of things.”

“When we were talking, just a couple of hours ago. When I asked if you would marry me.”

She turned to him, but she could not read his expression. “You never asked me that.”

He turned away from her and began making the bed. “Ryan, are you joking?” she demanded.

“Don’t say that!”

“Ryan—” She snatched the sheet from him so that he had to look at her. “We’re fifteen years old.”

“The law is different in my country. Fifteen, you can get married.”

“Did you really mean to ask me that, Ryan? Or were you half asleep and talking about nothing?”

“Of course I meant to ask you.”

“I thought you said that you were going back home. How can you do that if you marry me?” She stopped then. “You mean come with you.”

“Yes, that’s what I mean.”

She sat down on the bed and looked at him. “I tried not to sleep last night,” he said, walking to the window. “I was lying there wishing that the sun would never rise because suddenly I didn’t want to be anywhere else except there with you. And then I thought, why not? Why not go together? You have seen the city. You are partly Malonian. Why not?”

“The city,” she said. It only made her think of Talitha’s strange young face, and the soldier called Darius, and the blood running over the stone of the castle. They were like pictures from a dream. “What would I do there?” she said.

“ We would be together. Anna, I have been wishing I was back there my whole life, but it means nothing now if I won’t see you again.”

“It’s easy for you to think about going back, Ryan,” she said. “You are just taking up a place that is already there for you.”

“What—because I am the prince—the king? Because it is supposed to be my destiny?” He shook his head. “It is nothing like that. Someone made that phrase up—‘the eyes of a king’—and everyone hung on to it, and it just stuck. Maybe it was Harold North who first wrote it—I don’t know—one of those influential writers. And next thing, the nation was trying to fit me into Aldebaran’s prophecy, and he was here in England working out his grand plans
for my life. Everyone wanted it to be my destiny—that’s all. It has become my duty to go back, certain. But that is not the same thing. It is something I have to do out of responsibility, not because I am anyone great.”

“Only the other day you were telling me I had to be a dancer. Did you mean that?”

“You can dance anywhere, Anna.”

“That’s not true. And everything I have ever had is here. How could I leave to go to a place that I don’t even think of as real? I don’t know if I could even stay there. I think I would wake up back in England.”

“But I can’t stay here with you,” he said. “Come with me. My heart will break.”

“Will you please talk seriously?” she said. “Sit down and talk seriously to me.”

There was a silence. “Maybe you said you loved me and never meant it,” he said then. “But where I come from, if you love someone and tell her so, she doesn’t become just some girl you left behind. If what happened last night happens between you, you are going to marry her. You stay together and are never parted, not for anything. But maybe you never meant what you said.”

“I never said anything I didn’t mean,” she told him, raising her voice.

“And what, then? Tell me what to do.”

“Ryan, if you were an English boy, I would wait three or four years and then marry you. But this is not simple.”

He opened his mouth to tell her that love was simple. And then he changed his mind. “We have not known each other long,” said Anna. “You have to leave; I have to stay. I don’t see how we can change it.”

They watched the sun rising higher. He ran his fingers down the cut in her cheek, which was already healing. “Anna?” he said. “Tell me how your life will be after I leave. I want to know that.”

So they stood by the window and she told him. In the years afterward, he would try to imagine those things: the flat she lived in on the edge of the city; the playing fields below, where she practiced dancing in the early mornings; her oldest friends and where their own flats were—next door, or a floor above, or in the building opposite. “Keep telling me,” he said. “I am trying to remember everything you say.”

But she stopped then. Someone was approaching on the road. Ryan turned to look. A tall figure, striding toward them at a steady pace. Across the lawn, Aldebaran stopped and looked up at the window.

Then someone was knocking on the bedroom door. “Anna, are you awake?” Monica said. “Come and help me start the breakfast.”

Ryan glanced at Anna. “I will get my things and leave,” he whispered. “You go down and help Monica. We will wait for you at Lakebank.”

T
he house was locked and silent when Anna crossed the grounds. Then someone called her name, and she turned. Ryan was coming down through the trees toward her. She stopped in front of him. He studied her face. “Are you leaving?” she said eventually.

“I cannot go anywhere without that necklace of yours.”

She put her hand up to it and almost laughed; then her face grew serious again. “I forgot about that. With everything else.”

“Everything else,” he said. “Yes. Last night—”

She shook her head. “But why are you wearing these clothes? Are these Malonian?”

He nodded. “They are almost like my English ones. I will get used to them.”

Then Aldebaran was beside them. “We will leave in a few moments,” he said, turning to Ryan. “I have made strict arrangements to avoid trouble. The army is not yet so experienced as I might wish.”

Ryan’s eyes were still on Anna’s. Aldebaran turned to her. “Our people have been here already and taken everything we need. Since I will not see you again—”

“Won’t you?” she said.

“I will not come back. There is nothing for me here. For either of us. Ryan will have to put England out of his mind now.” He glanced at her. “Not entirely out of his mind. But we will not return.”

Ryan caught her eyes and started to say something, then stopped. Aldebaran put his hand on her shoulder. “I will remember you, Anna,” he said. “You have been caught up in strange times these past days. We all have. But I am proud to have a niece like you. One day you will be a great dancer.”

“How do you know?” said Anna.

“I know,” said Aldebaran. “I can always tell.”

Anna was staring at him, but he turned briskly to Ryan. “I will be waiting for you. Come quickly.” He took his hand from her shoulder. “Goodbye, Anna.”

Aldebaran turned and marched up through the trees. They watched him pass from shade to sunlight and back again, between the dense branches. Up by the chapel, against the sun, he turned
and looked out over the valley. A moment later he was hidden from view. She thought she could see him again, briefly, at a window, but they watched for a long time and he did not appear again.

Ryan turned back to her. “Here,” she said, taking off her necklace. She forced her hands to clasp it around Ryan’s neck, but for a moment they would not let it go.

“Perhaps one day we will be married,” Ryan said. “We should be together.”

“Maybe we should.” She could not even take his hand, her heart was aching so badly. She folded her arms and watched the ground under her feet.

“Anna, last night,” he said. “I was not thinking. I should have—” He stopped and began again. “What if you—”

“It’s all right,” she said.

He looked as though he wanted to continue, then gave up and shook his head. He took something out of his pocket. It was his own necklace, with the jewel that was missing from Anna’s. “Keep this one,” he said. “It will make no difference if I give it to you. Anna, I would promise to be faithful and come and find you years from now, but I don’t know what things will be like after I go back. I don’t know anymore.”

She took it from him in silence. “Anna, listen—” he began, but she put a hand on his shoulder and he did not continue.

Then she started and looked up at him. “Do you have a bulletproof vest on under that shirt?” she demanded. He took hold of her hand and wound his fingers through hers, but she kept her eyes on him. “Ryan, do you?”

“I will not need it,” he said eventually. “It is just a safety measure. Aldebaran insists, that is all.”

“But will you be all right?”

He gave her his nearly arrogant smile. “I live a charmed life. I’ll always be all right.” And he laughed, but shakily. “Come,” he said. “We should start up toward the chapel.”

Her hand was still on his shoulder. They started up through the trees. Then he was walking faster, and Anna tried to keep pace with him, taking hold of his wrist. “Ryan, wait,” she said. They were struggling through dense branches and thorns, and she lost hold of his arm.

The clouds raced over the sun and a few raindrops fell. Anna struggled up toward the chapel. Ryan vanished between the trees and then appeared again farther up. The rain was falling quickly now. She ran toward the edge of the clearing and the chapel door. But when she reached it, he had walked farther on. And then she could not see him anymore.