Aleksey's Kingdom (A Royal Affair #2)(63)

I do not know, and he has never told me, whether he talked this way as we crossed beneath the water because he had genuinely not been unmanned by thinking I had gone over the falls and died, or that it was because he had been more than that but that he knew how I must have been affected by this apparent parting of ours and was showing, in this, the great depth of spirit that he had.

I know which I believe. It was his way.




I CONFESS I could not enter the stable.

Aleksey had to do it for me.

They were not there.

They were not anywhere.

I gave a great bellow of despair and helplessness, and then I heard him.

He had been gorging himself on blueberries, as far as I could see, and amusing himself with his family, wild in the woods without my supervision.

I think the final kind act of the lieutenant had been to free the horses. When he had seen the horror descending upon him and the boys, and knew that he could not guard the crossing, he had thought of the horses and freed them. The other horses had fled into the forest, perhaps, less trained, less… attached.

Xavier and Boudica, her colt by her side and her foal safely inside, had stayed. We were together again.




WE FOUND no bodies. We assumed they had all been put into the water, even those he had used to try and repair his ravaged features. I did not tell Aleksey what I had found in the backwater at the base of the falls, neither the bodies nor the… gold.

In that still pool, churned perhaps by the vast tumult it had been through for so many miles, the silt had finally given up its treasure. Gold had lain in abundance in the grit, large nuggets as big as my fist, and so many chunks of good size that as I had lain there, facedown, floating in that horrible soup, they had shone even through the murk of the decay.

I think the Jesuit had found the gold and that initially he had wanted the colony and the fort cleared out so he could stake a claim to it and take it. Perhaps he had also wanted tales of such horror to surround the place that it would be haunted and thus none would ever venture near.

But then his madness and sickness had increased as the disease had taken him, and he had confused his greed for this with lust for sacrifice. I don’t know. Perhaps he just wanted to be healthy again to enable him to get the gold and enjoy its power. Perhaps he did not know of the gold, and I am surmising all this in the safety of my cabin on our little lake in the forest. One thing is for certain: I cannot ask him now.

Of our whole party, the colonists and the soldiers in the fort, only Aleksey and I survived to return home. They are all dead. At least… I assume they are…. I saw the devil dead. I saw the demon child dead. The witch? I cast her over the falls. But I managed to survive it, and I believe that in some ways our histories were the same. She was a survivor….





Chapter Fourteen


WE DID not leave the area immediately, which may sound strange given how much I hated the place and the associations it now had for both of us. Although, truth be told, the falls retained no fear for me now, other than that they would hold for any sensible man—respect for their power, awe at their remote beauty. But we needed some days to prepare for the return journey and to indulge a very pleasant activity—eating!

Although we indulged our other favorite pastime too.

We did not stay at the abandoned colony or the fort—that was too much association for either of us. We wound down through the forest some miles from the falls and then turned back to the river below and camped on the grassy bank upstream from where I had washed up, where the water was pure and crystal clear. The river here was still wild and tumultuous, but now it was merely wondrous to watch as the light played upon it. We erected one of the tents, and then we set about the process of healing—minds, spirits, and bodies. All needed some care. We stripped and examined each other. Remarkably, considering what I had been through, I was relatively unscathed. My burn had healed to pink scar tissue. I had the usual assortment of bruises and cuts that come from fighting, and I was very thin. I had a graze across my shoulders, which I told Aleksey was from falling to the ground when I fought the trapper. I did not remind him of my being pressed like a splatter upon the rear wall of the tunnel. The cut I had made upon my hand had healed. It had been joined, however, by a painful hole from the stick, which Aleksey occasionally regarded with awe and a papist gesture. It was going to be an interesting scar.

Aleksey was virtually unmarked, which amused him no end. The stick had only pierced the skin of his shoulder. This seemed incredible to me, for had I not seen it emerge like a demon’s finger from his very core? Aleksey said I was very stupid if that is what I had thought, and that my adornments and body paint must have quite gone to my head. He was very thin, though. He had no fat upon him to start with, but now the V-line of muscle holding his abdomen was pronounced. It pointed delightfully toward his cock, which I was very glad to see was still long and beautiful. He told me then as we were squatting naked by our fire, waiting for water to heat, that the child had tried to poke the sharpened stick into him before I had arrived so spectacularly from beneath the falls (he did not use the word spectacular, that is mine. If he objects when he reads this, which he inevitably will, I will suggest to him he write his own account of our pleasant trip to the falls, and then he can use a different word).

With his eyes downcast, he admitted the imp had almost managed to remove his breeches, trussed as he was and helpless, and push the stick into him. This unnoticed by his mother or the devil, who had both left the child with Aleksey unsupervised, not anticipating, perhaps, that he would attempt to ruin their perfect sacrifice. To be more evil even than a devil anticipates is some achievement. I hope the child’s last thoughts were contemplation of this before he hit the rocks. I doubt it, though.