“The whisky isn't in this thing long enough to be poisonous,” he retorted, without any anger. “Kim, I'm grateful for the support. One of the worst nightmares has been the thought of your condemnation. Justified condemnation. This is partly why I've avoided you, except on Christmas, when we were safely in public. I was too much of a coward to look into your eyes and see the judgment that I deserve. And the other part isâ”
“I know. You said you didn't want to drag me into the gossip.”
“I don't give a damn about gossip,” he said roughly. “That's just talk. When judgment is passed, I didn't want to drag you down with me.”
He stood there staring at the cabinet like it was his lifeline, and I thought,
You do care. Too much.
I took a step toward him. “Alec, I'm not saying that this isn't serious, and that you shouldn't feel the way you do about Ruli's death, but when's the last time you slept?”
He made an impatient movement. “I catch a nap wheneverâ”
Another step. “Alec. When is the last time you slept?”
“I can't sleep.” He turned away. “There is too much to be done, and every time I close my eyes I'm sitting on that cliff watching the smoke rise from the wreck below.”
But that two-handed engine at the door/Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.
The poem again.
The tension in his hands, the pained blue gaze, brought back that dead, flat voice:
I second it
.
He made an effort and faced me again. “Until the trial I can keep myself busy making things ready for whoever replaces me, because the most important thing, more important than individual concerns, is a peaceful transition to a government all can accept.”
His mouth was white with pain. The blood-sport spectacle of a trial didn't matter to him. The important thing was that in his own mind, he was already tried and convicted.
He was waiting for judgment not from the Councilâto him that was foreordainedâbut from me.
“Let's go somewhere warm and talk.” I crossed the last of the space between us and slid my hand around his arm. “There was steam on some of those upstairs windows, so I know you've got some heating somewhere.”
His muscles tightened, but he did not pull away. “Can't go there. Not her rooms.”
“We don't have to be in her space,” I said. “This is a palace. You've got a zillion rooms.”
“The only warm ones are our suite. I'm being a fool. We'll go there.”
“Good. If I stand here any longer, my California blood will freeze me into a corpsicle.” I slid both arms around him and hugged him tightly against me, which I'd been wanting to do for an eternity in the time measure of the heart.
Swift thoughts streamed through my mind, carried by sarcastic laughter at the idea of myself being so proud of accepting him and his baggage of imminent crown princedom. Now, with it all on the verge of being stripped away, there was a steadying sense of balance. We were two human beings. And I loved him.
With that came the clarity of a paradigm shift. I'd spent all that time trying to decode “Lycidas,” looking for hidden clues, when all along it was the poem
itself
that was the clue. Until this past three months, poetry had been his emotional safety valve, just as it was Milo's.
“Lycidas” was not just Alec's favorite poem, it was also his father's. Alec's furniture was his father's, his job was his father's. His
name
was his father's, as was his fame. Though Alec loved what he didâhe was passionate about Dobrenica, he'd told me during our last argument along the Adriatic coastâwhat was the cost of having your entire life decided for you from birth, as you strove to follow in the footsteps of a hero?
I hugged him tight, breathing when he breathed. “Think you'd like the endless summer of L.A.?”
“Kim,” he whispered, and rested his brow against the top of my head.
But time cannot be suspended, even in happiness.
“Let's go.”
I took his hand, and his fingers gripped mine as we left the office. The inner door led to a nicely furnished waiting room with a plug-in heater, now shut off, as well as one of those big ceramic stoves that someone had obviously let go cold.
Beyond that was a hall and a stairway. Alec hit a switch that killed all the lights in that suite. There was a single light at the top of the landing; the shadows were sharp-edged and long, making me wonder what it had been like for my ancestors, lighting their way up with a candelabra. Except that they were royalty, and someone would have gone before them to carry the candles.
Upstairs was marginally warmer, the old-fashioned radiator set on low. Alec touched the light control and looked around. His manner was wary, not at all that of a man coming home.
There was a museum feel to the rooms. I recognized modern settings in the way the furnishings were placed, that is, in squares or circles, rather than along the perimeter in order to accommodate a crowd of courtiers. Other than that, the only modern touches were electric wall sconces. The furniture was all simple, elegant antiques of the Sheraton sort, exquisitely carved, with rosewood inlay and satin upholstery.
This was obviously the Statthalter private suite, though a less homelike atmosphere would be tough to find.
Alec stopped then looked around, clearly in pain. “I haven't set foot in here for days.”
“We can go away if you don't want to deal.”
“No. I'll have to . . .” He made a gesture that could have meant anything. “Want coffee?”
“Sure.”
“I had an annex put in.”
He led me past two more salons. The biggest one reminded me of Wedgwood dishes, all blue and white, beautiful but killingly formal.
The last room gave onto a short hall with a small kitchen off it. “We put this in for Magda,” he said. “The palace kitchens are downstairs, and Magda complained bitterly about the long walk. Ruli hated the food arriving cold.”
As he spoke, he set about filling the kettle and lit the stove, which seemed to be hooked up to a butane container. He took out a small ceramic jar that, when he opened it, filled the room with the heavenly aroma of ground coffeeâthough I don't like to drink the stuff, I love the smell.
He gazed at it, brow furrowed, then said, “You prefer tea, don't you?”
“I can drink coffee. If you have milk.”
“Plenty. Though I don't know if it's still good.”
The very homeliness of the task seemed surreal, as we stood there in the little kitchen in the center of a palace, snow falling so heavily outside that there was nothing visible but white framed by the long palace double window.
The milk was good enough for coffee. Soon we each had a mug, and I followed him through the kitchen into another room, which was a kind of den, with a big screen TV and DVD/VCR player, and a solid wall of DVDs.
Beyond that, to a bookcase-lined study, where he stopped short. I nearly bumped into him. My coffee sloshed.
His head lifted. “Someone's been in here.”
He walked past the desk to an old-fashioned wooden file cabinet. The middle drawer was not shut all the way. He opened the file drawer. Then another.
He looked up, his expression bleak. “Someone's gone through everything.”
“Servants doing some cleaning, maybe?”
“I had these rooms shut up right after the accident. Nobody has been in here but me.”
“What could a searcher be looking for?”
“I don't know. There's nothing private here. That is, everything here has carbons in both my offices.”
“Carbons. Wow.”
He smiled. “We do have a few computers, but as yet, they're only networked between offices in the same building. Cables running everywhere.” He indicated the file. “That middle drawer has a broken latch. You have to lift the drawer and depress the latch to make the catch hold. Milo taught me the trick. It was his father's cabinet.”
He demonstrated, and the drawer clicked into place. Then he stepped back and looked around again.
“Let's go,” I said. “That gives me the creeps, the idea someone's been sneaking around. Though I'm sure they're long gone. Whoa. That reminds me. I was told that vampires are like shadows. Did you know that?”
“I've never seen one.” Next was his bedroomâa beautifully decorated space, with nineteenth-century antique bedstead and matching wardrobe and bureau. It was as impersonal as a hotel room.
“How much time have you spent in here?” I asked as we crossed it.
“Probably a week all told. If that.”
“This suite is enormous. How long a hike from one end to the other?”
“It's actually not that large. That is, it's built in a square. See?” He unlocked a door on the opposite side of the bedroom, which opened onto a short hall with a guest bath, and beyond that was the big formal salon. “Ruli's rooms are there.” He indicated another closed door. “On the other side of the den with the television. Through that door there is the formal entry, leading down into the state chambers. We came up the back way.”
“Where in the palace is this suite located?” I asked as we entered an informal salon he'd pointed out when we began the tour.
“We're in the residence wingâthe central bar, if you see the building as an E with a bent spine. We're directly above the old royal suite.”
On the far side of the informal salon was a couch, covered in smooth raw silk the color of dull gold. I tugged him to that. “Ever sat on this thing?”
“Once. Ruli preferred to hold entertainments in the state chambers downstairs.” His smile was rueful. Bitter. “Those huge marble fireplaces were actually pretty good at heating the rooms. At least during autumn.”
I plopped down and pulled him next to me, still almost delirious with happiness, though I knew I shouldn't be. There was too much wrong, too many mysteries, but oh, to find ourselves in rhythm again! “Too nice a piece of furniture to be so neglected.”
I turned his way. He sat there, the untouched coffee cradled in his hands, his profile tense. Some of my joy diminished.
I said, “Where is home for you, anyway?”
“Not here.” He cut a glance around the quiet, tastefully decorated room, then lifted his chin. “Home was . . . here.” The same word, but his tone had changed, a higher note, reflective, and I knew before he said it, that he meant his homeland. “Dobrenica.” He stared down into the cup. “It sounds facile, I suspect. But it was true, from the first time my father brought me.”
Lycidas
. “Go on.”
“You know Ysvorod House was occupied in those days? My father and I shared a roomâa cell, reallyâwith the Dominicans.”
“A cell?”
“Not a dungeon cell, if that's what you're thinking. The Dominicans are an active order, and so they're not often in their rooms. A bed, a trunk, a plain table. Small, austere, but comfortable. I had a sleeping bag on the floor. But my father and I spent our happiest hours ranging about the country, then talking our day over in the long summer evenings. The Germans had left the Dominicans alone, and after a few rough years the Soviet commander, and the MGB, considered the Dominicans too boring to cause trouble, and so never bothered them with searches. Later, when I began coming to Dobrenica alone, or with Tony and Honoré and some of the others, we sometimes camped out in our cell, eating food we'd smuggled up, the lighting a single candle, as we gassed on about how we were going to chuck the Soviets out of the country.” He stopped and shrugged.
“Go on.”
“Not much more to say. By the time I got my house back, it felt like just another stopping place. When I became Statthalter I had three offices, two official and one unofficialâa cubby in the Council building, which was so old and badly heated the Soviets only used it for storage. They ignored that part of the city except for gatherings in Sobieski Square, or as they called it then, the People's Square. Not that the people ever used that name, except derisively.”
“Oh, yes, that huge hammer and sickle. Not very well painted out.”
His smile flickered. “It was quite thoroughly obliterated after the Soviets left the city, but the paint has gradually worn away. That's an ongoing debate in Council, actuallyâthose who want to reflag the entire square, and those who want to leave it as is, as a memorial to our eventual triumph.” He paused, staring sightlessly into his cooling coffee. “Here's the funny thing. After I'm chucked out as a murderer, I'll miss those debates.”
He said it lightly, as if it really was funny, and not heartbreaking.
I blurted, “You did not murder her.”
“Driving drunk is the same as picking up a weapon, if someone dies as a result. That means murder,” he said to the coffee, as snow thudded against the glass and the wind screamed.
I wanted to argue, to defend him, but I could tell from his tone that he'd already had this argument before, over and over, inside his own head.
“What will happen if they decide against you?”
“Ridotski is determined that it will be exile, though I am willing to sit in prison if that's for the best. But I don't know what's best. Except that everything go according to law. The problem is, which law? We are in the middle of so much change.”
“You have prisons, right?”
“Yes. That is, historically, common people convicted of crimes were put to work. We didn't have an underclass to force into the work no one else wanted to do, so our convicts built the railroad. Certain capital crimes put you on the chain gangs to do tunnel blast work, and everyone knew it. But aristocrats were exempt from those laws. They were subject to the king.”