Aleksey's Kingdom Read online

  We were both very brown, as even his pale skin, exposed to so much sun and activity naked outside in the daylight hours, had darkened over the very hot summer we had just enjoyed. I would have been taken for one of my Powponi brothers had it not been for the intense lightening effect of the sun on my hair, which was now the color of gold dust dredged and shiny from a river. We were both very lean, too, living as we did on a diet of mostly fish and meat. And, of course, we had no home comforts other than those we provided for ourselves.

  If we wanted shelter, we had to build it. If we hungered, we had to catch and kill something. If we fancied luxuries like saddles or boots we had to trap for furs, which could be traded. The activity all this necessitated had contributed to our leanness. Even during the war, neither of us had felt so well, so vitalized. Maybe it was other things making us so vigorous and alive. Relief from torture and death can do that to a man.

  It had taken me many months to recover fully from the torture I had endured in Hesse-Davia. I often found it hard to watch a branding iron being heated on a fire and still could not smell boiling flesh without nausea assailing me. The sound of a bone breaking when we cleaned a carcass produced an odd stab of pain behind my eyes, as though my body were expecting a consequent follow-on of agony. My scars were ferocious upon otherwise tanned, smooth skin. I did not mind them too much. Who does not secretly like to be scarred and fearsome with evidence of a life lived as a man? Aleksey spent many hours tracing my wounds, trailing his tongue and fingers around them, roused, I suspect, by the thought of possessing and taming the violent nature they betrayed.

  Other than the scar on his belly, won before I met him, Aleksey was as flawless as the water in the lake when the light struck it just right. His nature more than balanced out this apparent perfection in being so infuriatingly annoying, as evidenced in the lake that evening. Whilst I was taking the opportunity to laze and relax my muscles, as I had been exerting myself from first light with domestic chores, he decided I needed to be punished. He never needed a reason to decree this, as he claimed my whole demeanor to him was an outrage, given he was a king and I was nothing more than a deserter from his army, a fake doctor, and a sodomite. Three death sentences. I would have preferred the scaffold to the dunking and splashing and constant torment he subjected me to in the water. Fortunately, being stronger and quicker and just better than him, I was able to dunk him more than he could me and thus make his life an equal misery.

  We were both shivering and exhausted from laughter and swallowing lake water when we finally emerged to check the fish we were grilling over a fire on the lakeshore. It was done to perfection, and both of us being starved, it tasted better than any meal prepared by chefs and servants in Europe. It was as he was picking flesh from around the bones that Aleksey suddenly blurted out, “Oh, guess what has happened.”

  I swallowed and replied dryly, “One of the soldiers has got you with child?”

  “No, surprisingly, though, for they have all tried.” He flicked me a cheeky look that told me no bad temper on my part was believed now. “They have lost contact with the colony outpost. Isn’t it odd?”

  Our land extended to the north a day’s ride from the junction of two big rivers, which dominated this region of the New World. Where they joined, the waters merged and tumbled over a vast fall, then ran as a wild, rough tumult impassable to man for many, many miles. On the junction above the falls, an offshoot of the colony on the coast had been established a little over a year ago, and consequently a contingent of soldiers had been posted there as well—north of the falls was French territory.

  This tiny colony facing the papists was a good week’s ride, if not more, from me, so I was unconcerned at its presence. But unfortunately we lay as the shortest route between the larger coastal colony and this outpost, and thus we occasionally saw a troop of soldiers moving between them with supplies or replacement men, and one or two families joining the enlarging falls group. Aleksey, needless to say, found all this fascinating and appeared to know schedules and duties and names and ranks—things he tried to interest me in. Once or twice, he had even mentioned illness or injury within the families, trying to spark my abeyant interest in medicine. It was very dormant, trust me—unless Aleksey had a vague ache needing warmed oils and the application of my hands to relieve…. Soldiers, abscesses, boils, and the pox did not concern me.

  The fish was good, though.

  “Nearly thirty people! Soldiers and officers, Niko, and the families—men, women, and children. They have all disappeared. Is that not strange?”

  “How does anyone know they have? It is ridiculous, Aleksey. If I do not hear from Johan, I do not assume he has disappeared. Eat your fish before it gets cold.”

  “They know because… well… everyone just does know. You should hear what has been said—that the place is entirely deserted with no sign of damage or a struggle, but that there is food still warm in bowls upon the tables; that—”

  “Oh, and you join in with this gossip fit only for servants, do you?”

  “Why are you in such a sulk? Is this not the most interesting thing that has happened for ages?”

  I was not in a bad mood as such, but his words had sparked an unfortunate memory that I was at some pains to conceal. Aleksey was bad enough when he had no fuel for the fires of his imagination….

  “I apologize that your life here with me, Your Majesty, bores you so.”

  Aleksey threw down the remains of his meal and stood, then walked over to the lakeshore and began skimming some pebbles angrily. “You are so…. You ruin everything!”

  I rose and went to stand behind him and slid my arms around his waist. “Everything?”

  He relented, sagging back against me. “No. Nothing—of course. Except my stupidity and horrid temper. I’m sorry. But it is such a good story—so mysterious.” He sighed theatrically. “There is probably a message written in blood upon the walls….”

  I chuckled; I could not help it. I tightened my hold upon his slim form. I had been outmaneuvered by my love for him—I wanted him to have his spooky story by the campfire in the dark.

  He turned in my arms, eyeing me with a surprised look. “What? You know something about this, don’t you?”

  I shrugged and went back to my meal—if I was going to spin a story, I wanted it to be to a very eager audience, and playing Aleksey was one of my chief amusements.

  After a few moments, I laid down my platter. “My people—”

  “Oh God….” He had followed me back to the fire and was sitting cross-legged across the low embers, his face illuminated as a saint’s painted in a chapel in a distant land. “They were not your people, Niko! They murdered your people!” My life with the Powponi was a constant source of friction between us since we had arrived here in the New World. Although I avoided our European neighbors as much as possible, I spent a great deal of time with the local tribe, the Mik’mac, whose hunting lands merged somewhat with ours. It seemed only pragmatic to me to live in harmonious accord with them. Aleksey’s kingdom was easily big enough for all of us. Aleksey’s resentment of the Mik’mac stemmed from his belief that I hovered too uneasily between my old life and this new one. He wanted me firmly rooted in his life. I hope that is what he was thinking, anyway. Perhaps he was just jealous of the time I spent with seminaked, beautiful warriors. Actually, I hope he was thinking that as well.

  I occasionally harbored my own doubts about my desire to live my life more in accord with the peoples native to this land. After all, my introduction to their life had been sudden, savage, and terrifying. Ought I not, therefore, fear these local tribes rather than seek them out? But I knew this would be as ridiculous as meeting one group of Europeans and ever after fearing all such men. Aleksey saw only the differences between us and them. He could not see that amongst themselves the native tribes were as different as he was from an Englishman. I did not try to explain myself to Aleksey. To do so would force me to speak of my childhood. I do not know if I was protect
ing Aleksey or myself with this reticence. Probably a little of both.

  But I was distracted now and not particularly wanting to continue a brewing argument—as much as we both enjoyed bickering. His story had indeed stirred a remembrance of the past: a memory of a place entirely abandoned, as if people could leave this earth whilst still eating or sleeping.

  I plucked another fish off the grill and pulled pieces of the succulent meat from the tiny bones. Aleksey was watching me closely. Eventually, unable to contain himself, he threw a pebble at me. “And? What? Are you going to sit there all night, brooding?”

  “I am not brooding. I am remembering.” In truth, I was trying to decide just how much of the story to tell him. Some, I could not. I could not think about some of it myself, let alone tell someone else, even him. Had I known what was to come for us in the following weeks, I would have done, if only to have the comfort of knowing that now two of us knew of this horror. I had shared my past like this with Aleksey before and had felt distinct relief, as if laying down a physical burden.

  It was tempting to do so again, but my impatient boy threw a pebble at me—again. “And?” and thus the decision was made to tell him a version only of the story.

  “The Powponi—do you want to hear this or not?” He stopped the eye roll he’d been making and produced a face like an eager schoolboy listening to a wise master. Aleksey had missed a vocation upon the stage. “We used to winter in the south by a huge lake. It was so big it had waves and a tide, and you could not see the far shore even from the—”

  “I don’t believe you. How could a lake be so big?”

  “Well, it was fresh water so could not have been the sea. Although I suppose there might be freshwater oceans…. I had not thought of that.”

  “Whatever. You wintered there and…?”

  “Another tribe, the people of the Black Crow—I do not know how to translate that better—lived permanently at the water’s edge, and we used the winter months to trade with them, but when we came to the lake one winter, they were gone. The tepees were there; the fires were still warm; the dogs and horses tethered and not yet starving or dead. But no people.”

  “Oh goodness, just like the colony! Why did you not say so at first? I wish they could hear this back at the colonel’s house. They laughed at my—anyway. Go on. You do have fun stories. So, where were they? I know, they went swimming, and it was very cold, and they all drowned…?”

  “I do not remember, exactly, but there were over a hundred in the Black Crow nation—women, old people, and babies too—so a jolly swimming excursion is not all that likely, is it? And we would have then found their bodies.” I pursed my lips, frowning, staring at the flames. I thought this coincidence of his story of the colony and my memory very odd, but wanted Aleksey to be the one to wonder and speculate about it, as I knew he would.

  “So, where were they? What had happened to them? They must have told you where they had been.”

  I think he missed the point. “They never were discovered. That is the point. The village was empty, as if they had been plucked from the earth, and no trace of them was ever found again.”

  “What?” He was aghast. He had seemed to like speculating about his little mystery at the outpost, but clearly he expected to find a perfectly rational explanation. This did not please him as much. “What did everyone say—the Powponi? When they found this place? Did you release the dogs and take them with you?”

  I smiled. “Yes, Aleksey, we saved the dogs and took the horses, although we did not touch the blankets and tools or anything else.” I stared morosely into the fire for a while. I was on tricky ground now and didn’t want to stray into the territory of things I did not want to speak of. “No one talked about it. It was accepted as a part of the world—real—but I think they assigned it more to the unreal world with which we communed only in dreams.” Then I conceded, “But I did not understand this way of thinking at all and wanted to know why the place was deserted, where everyone had gone. I had particularly wanted to meet up with some of the boys I had known the previous—”

  “Seriously. You are going to sit there and tell me another story of how you could lie down in plain sight with boys and men and—”

  “I was nine, Aleksey, or thereabouts. I wanted to go fishing with them.”

  “Oh. Well, all right, then. I will allow you to have a previous life fishing. So what did you do?”

  “I started to look for them.” I rubbed my nose, remembering more than I wanted to. “Anyway, I was retrieved, beaten, and then we moved on.”

  “Oh. That is a bit disappointing.” He stared into the fire, poking it with a stick and then watching its tip flare to life. “But in another way it is excellent, is it not? Now you can do it properly and find the missing—”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Niko! You are so dumb sometimes! I’ve told you—the outpost is deserted, so we are raising a party to go there and find everyone. We are mounting a rescue! I told you this!”

  I didn’t argue with him; I began to walk back to the cabin.

  There was only one thing I was planning to raise, and it wasn’t for anyone else’s relief.

  I could feel the waves of his fury washing over me. I suppose, being a king, he just could not tolerate the idea that someone would blithely walk away from him when he was speaking.

  The light had fallen now, and it was icy—too bitter for me to sit out in lake-damp clothes and with only a small cooking fire. I still did not like being cold.

  I stoked up the fire in our small cabin, although it was already quite warm. I was still hungry, but there was nothing to eat. Aleksey came in. He would either badger me or sulk, neither of which I was looking forward to. He surprised me, therefore, by asking quite rationally, “What do you think happened to the missing tribe? You must have thought about it, even if no one would talk about it.”

  I sat down in front of the flames, picking up a stick to poke it idly, just as he had been doing earlier, and he sat close, our knees touching. His shirt was as damp as mine, and I pulled a little piece of the fabric toward me, rubbing it between my fingers. “I wondered at first if they had been raided and taken for slaves—that was very common amongst the people. We had many slaves, but they always died easily and had to be replaced.”

  “You also have some truly horrible stories, Niko.”

  “Oh, and you did not have slaves, I suppose?”

  “No! We most certainly did not!”

  “And yet you let your old people starve on the streets if they had no family to care for them when in their dotage? Our elders were treasured and respected, so do not judge me.”

  “I’m not…. For God’s sake. So… raided?”

  I wrinkled my nose. I knew I’d been unreasonable, but something was telling me the plan to relieve the outpost was not forgotten by any means; he had only gotten stealthier in his ways of winning my compliance. “Yes, but there were no signs of a struggle at all, and I also concluded that looters would have taken the horses at least. And the encampment was full of very valuable items—surely they would have taken them too?”

  “Gold! Jewels?”

  “Oh yes, Aleksey, of course. Wonderful artworks too, and I believe a piano.”

  “Huh. It must have been hard to hang the paintings on the tepees. They would not be… straight.…”

  “No, the slaves were employed to stand there all day and night, holding them just so…. I meant knives, axes, and some very fine bows. They had all been left as if the owners had merely stepped into the forest to relieve themselves for a moment.”

  “Perhaps they had. A mass tribal shit?”

  That was too much provocation, and I pounced upon him, which is what I think he’d wanted anyway. I lay heavy upon him, feeling his chuckling vibrate pleasantly against me. I eased his damp shirt open as far as the laces would allow, admiring the prominent collarbone and smooth, hairless flesh. Pushed slightly to one side, the opening revealed one pebbled pink nipple
. I fastened my teeth upon it, working it, feeling him swell beneath me. I moved to the other nipple and enjoyed that one for a while as well. He was running his fingers through my hair, which was still as short as I had made it when we first met.

  He had grown his somewhat longer, not long enough to tie back, as is the norm for all men, but long enough for me to hold like reins when I mounted him (although I had not actually articulated this thought to him for fear he would be contrary and shave it off once more). He seemed to like my short hair well enough, and it was the best-combed hair in the New World, although it rarely saw actual instrument. He fastened his fingers in it now and used it to tug me off his chest, lifting my face to his. As we were kissing, he rolled us. Closer now to the fire, Aleksey upon me, I could feel my shirt steaming and smell the drying material. It took my mind back to the story I had been telling him, and although I was kissing Aleksey, I was walking once more between the tepees and standing at the edge of the great forest, peering into the never-ending darkness and wondering….

  “So…?” As ever, the annoying one appeared to be able to read my mind—when it suited him. “What was your conclusion? I know you must have thought about it until you had solved the puzzle. That is how your mind works. What was your explanation? You know how I love your theories.”

  He was chastised for his cheeky comment for some time. It is a pity his punishment and pleasure were always so closely linked. One day, I must think of something he doesn’t like me to do to him and discipline him more effectively. Releasing his cock and letting its head rub up and down the inside of my throat was clearly not a very effective sanction. Pulling off just before he could complete was more amusing, and I smirked at his outrage as I stood up and said I had to check the horses before bed.

  I knew what he was planning then. I saw the mutinous look for a moment, so seized him and turned him over onto his belly, pulling his hands behind him. “Niko, no!” He actually sounded genuinely angry. Good. I tied his hands.