Aleksey's Kingdom (A Royal Affair #2)(52)

I limped over to the tree line, trying to untie the rope. Obviously, it had been very securely fastened, and with my fingers now utterly frozen, I had some real job to undo it. That my eyes kept raking the tree line and the darkness beyond and not the knot I hardly need to relate. The devil was on this island, and I had no intention of meeting him by myself.

Finally I had the rope off me and on the tree. I only had to secure it—they would tighten it at their end. It looked good. It stretched across the crossing rocks at man height. Easy then to cross back!

In the end, I did not touch the rocks at all, or the water. I tried to stand and use the line to aid my way, but it was impossible. The current just whipped my legs from under me, and I was left time and time again dangling from the rope. So I just lifted my legs and crabbed along—very easy for a man with my strength and lean body, but impossible, I reckoned, for a woman or child, who would not have the necessary muscle in their arms or shoulders (or poor Major Parkinson, come to that, who had a slight disadvantage in all physical endeavors. Well, not slight, I suppose). I would have argued more for the witch and her offspring staying by the fort had it not been for the horses.

Once I returned, it was relatively easy for the second rope to be got across and secured. Captain Rochester copied my method and shinnied over with the second rope around his waist, and then he tested the route back. Now with two supports, one under each arm, he was able to walk on the submerged rocks and hop across the gaps. Just.

Aleksey and I watched his progress one way and then watched him come back the other way. I was shivering very badly, and Aleksey handed me my coat, which I had left with his unconscious body. I wished I’d left him my boots, upon reflection.

We did not speak at first. There wasn’t much to say. I had only hit him twice in our relationship. I would argue that both times were for his benefit, but I could understand that he might not see it this way. Sometimes I tried to get inside Aleksey’s head, to see the world, and me, through his eyes. I think he saw himself as something far above most other people and most other things, which makes him sound a vain and arrogant man, but he was not—far from it. Perhaps this seeing was more as the wolf would view a spaniel, a warhorse behold a donkey. The superiority was so evident that it did not make the superior one arrogant to acknowledge it. He knew he was beautiful beyond the ordinary. He knew he was intelligent. He was educated. As he had so recently pointed out, he and I were the only people we knew, all these in our group included probably, who could read. Not only was he all this, but he was a king. His bloodline went back to Canute and beyond into history that was told now only as legend. He actually had a sword in our cabin that he claimed King Canute had used (I doubted this myself, but he insisted it was true). He had led an army to war, captured a whole nation, and reformed his own country for a while. He was all this, and yet I had hit him and knocked him unconscious. I twitched my nose, wondering what he would say.

He kept staring out over the water, and when he eventually spoke, he could not have picked any words that would have surprised me more. “You do have a very unfortunate way of showing that you love me, Niko. But, upon reflection, I prefer it to your attempt to woo me, which was rather pathetic.” He smiled, not looking at me.

As I have said, Aleksey was not arrogant or vain in thinking himself so superior to ordinary men. He was far above them all. I felt humbled. For a moment. I soon recovered.

He punched my arm. “You were not gobbled by the nasty water monster, then?”

“I never said there was a nasty water monster.”

“Oh yes, you did.” He chuckled. “And I am not going to let you forget it. Now we just have the devil to defeat.”





Chapter Twelve


WE ALL crossed.

Eventually the captain took the child on his back (I was the more suitable to do this, but he wouldn’t have made it across if I’d taken him… a little slip… a tip….) and Mary Wright made it by the clever addition of a sling added to the two ropes in which she could sit and be pulled from the other side. It looked very insecure, and I wouldn’t have been surprised or too upset if she went into the river too. Unfortunately, the whole group made it safely to the other side.

Neither Aleksey nor I had mentioned what we had seen pulling the naked woman into the trees. Neither had we had an opportunity to discuss it ourselves. Again, it was a hard decision whether to tell what we knew or not, for does it not sound incredible, fanciful, to say you saw the devil and that he was dressed in the skin of a man but for all that was still the devil beneath? I wasn’t going to say it, and I guessed Aleksey didn’t want to either. I don’t think now, reflecting upon this decision, that it would have made any difference to the eventual outcome of this venture if we had enlightened our companions. We found the devil soon enough—he found us.

We had told the depleted group left on the mainland that we would stay on the island only until light began to fade—whether or not we had completed our mission.

Aleksey was standing on the shore staring back thoughtfully at the lieutenant and the brothers. I stood alongside him, my feet so cold I felt every stone like a knife in them. “I am thinking about the ropes.”

“They worked. It was a good plan.”

“Not our ropes. Theirs.” He turned to face me. “Why were their ropes cut? And why were they cut on that side?”

I thought about this for a while. The ropes had been cut. It had not struck me at the time, nor had I put any significance to the short lengths left in the trees. Someone on the other side, clearly, must have cut them. Aleksey shrugged. “I am glad we left guards on that side, although I wish we had not lost our soldiers, for they would have been better…. What?”