Aleksey's Kingdom (A Royal Affair #2)(54)

He then spat upon his doll.

The foulness of the child crept once more into my heart. I had somewhat forgotten about him over the difficulties of the crossing and the revelations Aleksey and I had experienced on the shoreline. To be honest, I think I was almost beyond rational thought at this point. The hollowness I had felt days earlier had not been filled either by rest or good food. I was ill and my thoughts confused, but once again the child loomed far larger in my mind than his tiny stature should have allowed. I did not want him behind me and so swapped my position with the captain, letting him take the lead. Aleksey stayed by my side. I think Etienne had at least been right about the game. I saw no animals at all in the place. This absence only added to the sense of wrongness.

But nothing prepared us for the palpable sense of offense when we discovered what we did: as far as we could ascertain with our thorough search, the island was entirely deserted.

We had all seen the woman.

Aleksey and I had seen another.

But the island was now unoccupied.

Can I be blamed for my mind wandering once again to a blasted clearing and a people lying down without a single trace of how they had got there and why they had been so killed? It was as if the woman we had seen here had been plucked into the sky by the same god that had destroyed the Black Crow nation. We were totally at a loss.

We were more so when we returned to the shoreline and discovered our ropes gone.





Chapter Thirteen


I FIND it hard even now at this little distance to describe the sense of horror we felt at discovering we were marooned upon this accursed piece of land with no obvious means of escape. It was as I had foretold—although I had not the heart to point this out: none of us were to return to the world.

We could see the short ends of our ropes dangling from the trees along with those of the poor colonists, who it seemed had been lured also into this trap. For trap we now saw it to be. I could not tell at this distance whether the ends of our ropes were cut, but they must have been untied from our side, for not a trace remained upon the tree where I had tied them.

But the island was deserted.

We could still not yet see where the trap lay. All we could do was move in the direction we were being driven, as if a leaf upon that awful current, with no more ability to control events than that leaf had to change its course. It was an apt analogy, I discovered later.

We could see no sign of Lieutenant McIntyre or the three Wrights we had left to prevent the very thing we were witnessing. I turned to speak to the reverend. He was not there. Aleksey, the captain, the major, and I were alone upon the shore. And for once, I did not feel the child’s eyes upon me.

We searched for them just as we had for the naked woman, but they were gone.

We were utterly broken down in body and spirit by this time.

It was beginning to get dark. When I tell you that I was close to offering to attempt to swim the river just to get away from this place, you will understand how desperate I had become.

Aleksey was the one to find the doll and to then discover that it was not a toy at all.

It would have been a horrifying revelation in any circumstances, but upon that lifeless island, trapped, cold, and hungry, it was one of the most terrifying discoveries he could have made.

The child had made a small representation of me.

He had used the sleeve of my bloodied and burnt shirt, with which I had fixed his restraint in the cart, to form the body: arms, legs, and a crude head had each been shaped by the deft application and tightening of thread. He had put yellow hair upon it made from a gold tassel cut from one of the officers’ sashes. It had one burnt-off arm. It was soaking wet, but what most turned my stomach was the thorns, which had been dipped in some dark foul-smelling liquid, that pierced its eyes, mouth, and genitals.

Aleksey held it in his hand, his eyes wide as he stood mute, appealing to me to tell him what it was, what to do. I took it from him. It was a poppet. I had inhabited the world of poisoners. I had seen these before. Very carefully, I removed the thorns and placed them upon the ground. Did I believe that the poppet had been making me sick? Why could it not, if looking upon green wallpaper could kill a man? I do not think any entirely rational and scientific man who had been through what we had would doubt the power of the unseen that day.

Whether the poppet was potent or not, I began to feel a great deal better once I had removed the thorns. I do not think the child had intended to drop his delightful toy, but there was no clue as to why he had, here, close to where the island fell away alongside the falls.




WE COULD not even light a fire. Everything was wet from the breath of the falls, and we had nothing to light one with. Although I occasionally impressed Aleksey with some of my native skills and sparked fire from nothing more than sticks, I could not this night. It was bitterly cold. I was without boots.

We were in a bad way.

We discussed various ideas for escape for some time until we became too frustrated to continue. Gradually and cautiously we then began to talk about the mysteries that seemed to surround us. Listening to the other three casting their theories and speculating, I finally told them the idea that had been forming in my mind since Aleksey and I had stood upon the beach and seen the colonists’ rope cut. It seemed to me that we had been deliberately lured to this place. That far from us mounting a rescue mission, we had been brought here. It was no longer a spooky coincidence to me that the very things we found at the fort—strange messages in blood upon the walls, missing people, no disturbance—were exactly what had been predicted in the rumors and gossip in the colony. In other words, the suggestions had been planted deliberately, and I did not need to tell my companions who I thought had done this. Mary Wright had not come to the New World upon the ship from Southampton as she claimed. She had latched on to the reverend and his family when she had discovered they were to come to the outpost. This all seemed clear, but I could not put the final pieces of this dreadful picture together.