cooing, happily kicking its arms and legs about, as if an arrogant belief in its own invulnerability renders it immune to the treachery the Sun King has come to realize lurks behind every friendly face. Illuminated in a shaft of moonlight, the thing's eyes catch his as he peers down at it, and in a moment his steely
determination to act stands on a precipice—he's flooded with shame and remorse at his hatred of the little creature, he wants to take and hold the baby in his arms, feel its happiness enveloping him in a warm, beneficent, healing sphere of love and forgiveness. Feeling himself pulled inexorably into the monster's orbit where he's seen so many fall before him, at the last possible instant he tears his eyes away. Horrified to realize how close the thing has come to ensnaring him. For the first time fully comprehending the danger this evil genius presents.'
'No ...' said Doyle involuntarily.
'He picks up a small satin pillow, and he puts it over the thing's face, and he holds it there hard until the creature stops kicking its arms and legs and lies still. It never makes a sound, but as it dies, the mother awakes with a scream! How pernicious was its hold on her! It's had communion with the woman even as life took leave of its tiny body. The Sun King runs from the room:—his mother has seen him, he is sure she has seen him leaning over the cradle—but when she moves to its bed and finds the inert remains of his midnight work, her mind comes undone. Such a heart-stopping wail shakes the very walls of the house that if allowed to rise unimpeded into the night might shatter the gates of heaven. As the boy lies quaking in his bed, bis mother's cry drives a spike deep into the frozen reaches of his heart. It is a sound he will call upon the memory of for many years to come, and it gives him more pleasure than a thousand kisses.
'His mother collapses. The house is within minutes of her discovery awash in a sea of grief. To the king's surprise, he is smothered by the sympathetic comforts of his bereaved subjects, imagining, these stupid peasants, that he must be every bit as stricken as they. The bewilderment he offers in response tends only to confirm that conviction, and they clasp him ever closer to their heaving bosoms. His mother disappears again into guarded seclusion. This time the women are only too eager to bring him constant reports of her condition; she's had a setback today, the night did not go well, she's resting comfortably, she took no food again this morning. He rejoices at the fervor with which the woman appears to embrace her just punishment for his betrayal. A week passes, and his father returns from his distant overseas post; he had never even seen the usurper. His eyes are clouded with sympathy as he greets the young king, but after spending an hour behind the closed door of mother's chamber he goes directly to his son and takes him alone into his room. He doesn't speak. He holds the boy's chin in his hand and gazes at him for the longest time. It is suspicion with which the man searches the young king's eyes—so she did see him in the chamber, this look tells him, but there must be some uncertainty—suspicion, not naked accusation. The king knows well enough how to conceal the entrance to the place he keeps his secret. He shows his father nothing: no remorse, weakness, or human feeling. Blank opacity, open and un-reachable, the boy returns the look and sees something replace suspicion in his father's eyes. Fear. The father knows. And the boy knows his father is powerless against him. The man withdraws from the room. The king knows the father will never challenge his authority again.
'They bury the thing in a lavender box, adorned with garlands of spring flowers. The boy stands quietly, watching his subjects weep with abandon, allowing them to lay their hands on his head as they pass by the grave, atonement for their transgression, paying obeisance to their one, true master. After the funeral, when his mother reappears and they meet, formally, in a public room, he sees something has irreversibly changed between them. She never again looks upon him with the loving gaze that had been her custom before the pretender came. She hardly ever dares to meet his eyes at all. He is no longer allowed entrance to her private chamber. Over the following days, he overhears many tearful, whispered conversations between mother and father, brought quickly to an end when his presence is detected, but he's confident no overt action will be taken against him. His father leaves to resume his duties overseas in Egypt. The boy spends more and more time in contented isolation, pursuing his studies, feeling his powers grow, in solitary walks of peaceful contemplation. Over time, the shroud of silence spreads from his mother to overtake all the subjects of his kingdom. There are no more pretenses of affection toward him. The currencies of exchanges with his inferiors are reduced to their basest coin: power and domination. His storehouse is filled to bursting with both commodities. He has retaken his throne.'
'Good Lord ...' said Doyle softly, wiping a tear from his eye. 'Good Lord, Jack ...'
Sparks seemed singularly unmoved by the story. He calmly took a drink and then continued: a cold, dispassionate recitation. 'The next summer, the woman discovers she is once again with child. The news is kept from the boy, but as a precaution Alexander is packed up and sent away to boarding school the moment her condition becomes visibly self-evident, months before the child is expected. This proves no hardship to Alexander. He is more than ready to expand his sphere of influence beyond the confines of the garden walls. Fresh meat, he says, looking about hungrily at the new world that greets him; populated not just with adults, who he can already manage easily enough, but boys his own age, whole battalions of them, as pliant and malleable to his tools as uncut stone. And they are, none of them, parents or headmasters alike, witting enough to realize they have crowned the fox and set him up a palace in the henhouse. The next spring, hidden from his view and far from the reach of Alexander's grasp, a second son is born.'
This time Doyle's question was left unspoken.
'Yes, Doyle. My entrance onto the stage.'
'Did they ever let him near you?'
'Not for the longest time, for years, was he even aware of my presence, nor I of his. Alexander stayed at school through terms and all the holidays, even Christmas. Summers he was sent to stay with distant relations overseas. My parents paid a visit only once a year, every Easter week. My father, who had been serving all this time in the diplomatic corps, retired to stay close to myself and my mother. In spite of the damage done, I believe they were able to find some small measure of happiness in the home we made together. It certainly seemed that way to my unknowing senses; I was well and fairly loved. I suspected nothing of my brother's existence until I was near ready for schooling myself, when a man who worked in the stables, my confidant and favorite among the staff, let slip some reference to a boy named Alexander who'd ridden there years before. My parents had never spoken his name, but when I confronted them with my discovery of another boy riding at our stable, they admitted his existence to me. I did not interpret their reticence as having anything at all to do with their feelings toward Alexander— needless to say, no mention was ever made of my late sister—but once I learned that I had an unknown older brother, my curiosity became insatiable. After realizing my parents were not to be more forthcoming, I pumped the servants endlessly for news about this mysterious boy. They were clearly under orders to tell me nothing, and this blanket of silence surrounding Alexander only served to increase my eagerness. I ached to know him. I tried in vain to secretly gain his address so I might write to him. I prayed that God would soon acquaint me with the boy who I was convinced existed solely in order to serve as my companion, protector, and coconspirator.'
'They never let you, did they?' asked Doyle, alarmed at the prospect.
'Only after two years of relentless campaigning and six months of bargaining—I was never to write to or accept letters from him; I would never be alone in his company: I eagerly accepted every one of their conditions. That year we paid our Easter visit to my brother's public school together. I was seven. Alexander was thirteen. We greeted each other formally, shaking hands. He was a striking boy: tall, sturdy, with black hair and riveting eyes. He seemed to me the soul of comradeship. Our parents were not prepared to leave us alone even for an instant, but after a few hours in which he exhibited such polite and openhearted enjoyment of both my company and theirs, their vigilance relented as we walked back from dinner through the gardens. As we turned a hedge ahead of them, Alexander pulled me from view, pressed a note into my hand, urging me to conceal it from our parents at all costs and to read it only when my absolute privacy was secured. Along with it he gave me a black polished stone, a talisman, which he assured me was his most treasured possession, and which he fervently wished me to have. I accepted the terms of his offerings gladly and, for the first time in my life, willfully concealed an event of such import from my parents. The first wedge between my life and theirs had been driven, the narrowest gap opened that had never before existed, and it was of my brother's conscious design.'
'What did the letter say?'
'Predominantly innocent schoolboy chat—his daily rou-
tines recounted in prosaic detail, victories and tribulations in the classroom and on the playing fields, anecdotes about his colorful collection of classmates, what to expect of school myself, the clubby whys and wherefores of getting on with both teachers and chums—all in the confident tone of the wiser, worldlier brother advising a young charge on the eve of embarking on his own educational career. It assumed a comfortable
