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times.”
    “No, Aleksey, they are not. Not in most other places I have lived.”
    “You live here now.”
    “Until I have helped your father, yes. Then, trust me, I intend to return as quickly as I can to somewhere else. Anywhere else.”
    He appeared a little put out by my response. I think I wanted him to be more put out by it, and because he wasn’t, I added spitefully, “You and the rest of your family would not be subject to such punishment. I assume you reserve the harsh laws of your country for those of lesser station?”
    He looked more frankly at me. “Then you assume wrong. We are all subject to the same law.”
    I felt a chill wash over me. “Even the torture I witnessed on my journey? The burning? The… impalement?”
    Still watching me with that maddening intensity, he nodded. “Any man caught in such a compromising embrace would be punished according to the crime, yes. You would think that such a law would put any man off such perversion, would you not?”
    He was telling me something here of great import. I desperately wanted to be away from him to think it through, but Father Cavil made another unfortunately timed appearance. “His Majesty has graciously agreed to see you, sir.”
    I swallowed a retort that, as I was trying to save his life, the king’s graciousness was superfluous. Aleksey turned on his heel and began to stride away back down the long waiting room.

CHAPTER 6
     
     
    L ATER THAT evening, I sat in my study with a pen and small notebook, trying to order my thoughts. I had given my patient an incredibly detailed examination. In complete privacy, except for the presence of Jules Lyons, I had made the king strip. I examined him closely. I took some samples of his blood, which I planned to look at under the microscope, and I examined his stools and urine and hair. I had no doubt that he was being poisoned, but I was no further forward with determining by whom. I had questioned him more closely about his habits and routines. It was an impossible situation: people surrounded him all the time. I began to suspect that the prayer ritual was more to gain a little peace and quiet for a few hours than it was for devotions. He could not say where his food came from. Even when ordered that it was to be prepared under strict observation, it passed through many hands before it got to his mouth.
    Basically, anyone could be poisoning him. I could not, as I had so easily with Lord Salisbury, identify a culprit and isolate him from them. I made a list of suspects. It turned into a list of everyone I had met since I arrived in the castle, with a number of dashes added to represent servants and other people I could not name but who all had unlimited access to my patient. He even had one servant apparently responsible for collecting and replacing his chamber pot on the hour, every hour. Some people’s lives did not bear thinking about.
    Beside each name, I noted my thoughts about this person: whether I felt they had any motivation to kill a king. It was depressing. Everyone in some way or other benefited from his death. It was inevitable, I suppose, given he owned everything and controlled everything. It was like my observation at luncheon; the king absent allowed everyone to move up a place at table, metaphorically and otherwise. Assuming, of course, that people wanted to eat closer to the seat of power…. Perhaps they didn’t. What if someone didn’t want the increased responsibility of moving up or out of a comfortable niche? Aleksey, for example….
    Why did my thoughts always return to him? Perhaps because I could hear him at that very moment in the room next to mine. It sounded like he was bouncing a ball off the wall, but another explanation for the rhythmic thumping had occurred to me. Aleksey, then. If the king died, he would become heir to the throne, a position much more agreeable to some than being second in line, as he currently was. Did he have that much ambition for power? Had not