“Think nothing of it, Sir Thomas. I had no desire to upset you, but I am not at all offended. Murder is a touchy subject when it strikes as closely as this one has. Perhaps we had best discuss something else.”
“No, no, please. Not on my account, I beg you.”
“My dear Sir Thomas, I insist. All evening, I have been wanting to ask Lord John Quetzal questions about Mechicoe, and you have given me the perfect excuse for doing so. Murder is my business, but if I am not engaged in solving a given crime, discussing it begins to pall. So—
“My lord, if my memory of history has not betrayed me, the first Anglo-French ships touched the shores of Mechicoe in the year 1569, and the members of that expedition were the first Europeans your ancestors had ever seen. What was the cause of the superstitious awe with which the Europeans were regarded?”
“Ah! That’s an interesting thing, my lord,” the young man said with enthusiasm. “First you must understand the legend or myth of Quetzalcoatle …”
The first few minutes were a bit awkward, but the young Mechicain’s enthusiasm was so genuine that both Sir Thomas and Lord Darcy were actually caught up in the discussion, and it was going full blast when the Dowager Duchess came down. An hour after that, all four of them were still discussing Mechicoe.
Lord Darcy did not get to bed until late, and he did not get to sleep until even later.
7
Lord Darcy’s resolve to keep his hands off the Zwinge case, to allow—or rather force—his cousin the Marquis of London to use his own resources to solve it, was a firm one. He had no intention of getting himself involved, even if that required that he bottle up his own intrinsic curiosity, seal the bottle, and sit on the cork. It was fortunate that he was not forced to do that, for Lord Darcy’s curiosity was capable of generating a great deal of pressure. Any resolve, no matter how firm, can be dissipated, abolished, negated, removed, by changing circumstances, and the circumstances were to change drastically on the following morning.
On that morning, Thursday, Lord Darcy lay in his bed, drowsing, his mind still in a semi-dreamy state, his thoughts wandering. There was a quiet knock on the door of his bedroom.
“Yes?” he said without opening his eyes.
“Your caffe, my lord, as you ordered,” said a low voice.
“Just leave it in the sitting room,” Lord Darcy said drowsily. “I shall be out in a few minutes.”
But he wasn’t. He drifted off to sleep again. He did not hear the bedroom door open; he did not hear the nearly silent footsteps that crossed the thick carpet from the door to his bed.
Suddenly, someone touched his shoulder. His eyes came open instantly, and he was wide awake.
“Mary!”
The Dowager Duchess curtsied. “Your servant, my lord. Shall I bring your caffe in, my lord?”
Lord Darcy sat up. “Ah! Capital! A Duchess for a serving wench! Indeed, yes! Bring the caffe in immediately! Hop to it, Your Grace!” He chuckled softly as the Duchess went out again, a soft smile on her lips. “And by the by!” he called after her, “will you have My Lord Marquis polish my boots?”
She came back in, pushing a wheeled serving cart upon which sat a silver caffe pot, a spoon, and a single caffe cup with saucer.
“Your boots are already polished, my lord,” she said, still keeping her voice in the proper deferential tone. “I took the liberty, my lord, of having your lordship’s clothing brushed and pressed, and hung in the clothes cupboard in the sitting room.” She poured his caffe.
“Oh, indeed?” Lord Darcy said, reaching for his cup. “All done by a Bishop, I presume?”
“My Lord Bishop,” said the Duchess, “had other, more pressing, business. However, His Imperial Majesty the King is prepared to take you for your morning drive.”
Lord Darcy paused suddenly, the cup not yet touching his lips.
Bantering is all well enough, but one must draw the line somewhere.
One does not jest about His Most Sovereign Majesty the King.
And then Lord Darcy realized that his brain was not as completely awake as he had thought. He took a sip of the caffe and then returned the cup to its saucer before he spoke again.
“Who is His Majesty’s agent?” he asked quietly.
“He’s waiting in the hall. Shall I bring him in?”
“Yes. Wait! What o’clock is it, anyway?”
“Just on seven.”
“Ask him to wait a minute or so. I’ll dress. Fetch my clothes.”
Seven minutes and some odd seconds later, Lord Darcy, fully dressed in proper morning costume, opened the door to his sitting room. Mary, Dowager Duchess of Cumberland, was nowhere in sight. A short, spare, melancholy-looking man, wearing the usual blue-gray drab of a cabman, was sitting on one of the chairs. When he saw Lord Darcy, he came politely to his feet, his square cabman’s hat in his hand.
“Lord Darcy?”
“The same. And you?”
From his cap, the smallish man took a silver badge engraved with the Royal Arms. Near the top a stone, polished but not faceted and looking like a quarter-inch bit of translucent gray glass, was inset in the metal.
“King’s Messenger, my lord,” said the man. He slid his right thumb forward and touched the stone. Immediately, it ceased to be a small lump of dull gray glass.
In the light, it gleamed with the reddish glow of a ruby!
There was no mistaking it. The stone was magically attuned to one man and one man only—the man whose touch would cause that red color to shine within it. A Royal Badge could be stolen, of course, but no thief could give that gray, drab stone its ruby glow.
The brilliant Sir Edward Elmer, Th.D., had designed that spell more than thirty years before, and no one had solved it yet; it was a perfect identification for Personal Agents of His Most Dread and Sovereign Majesty, John IV. The late Sir Edward had been Grand Master of the Sorcerers Guild, and it was accepted that he had outranked even Sir Lyon Gandolphus Grey as a sorcerer.
“Very well,” said Lord Darcy. He did not ask the man’s name; a King’s Messenger remains anonymous. “The message?”
The Messenger bowed his head. “You are to accompany me, my lord. By His Majesty’s request.”
Lord Darcy frowned. “That’s all?”
Again the Messenger bowed. “I have delivered His Majesty’s message, my lord. I can say no more, my lord.”
“I see. Will there be any objections if I come armed?”
A wide smile broke over the face of the King’s Messenger. “If I may say so, my lord, it would be most expedient. His Majesty gave me a further message to your lordship, to be delivered only in case your lordship should ask that question. A message to be delivered in His Majesty’s own words, my lord. If I may?”
“Proceed,” said Lord Darcy.
Closing his eyes, the Messenger concentrated for a moment. When he spoke, the voice was cultured and clear; it had none of the patois of the Londoner of the lower middle class. The timbre and intonation had changed, too.
The voice was that of the King.
“My dear Darcy. The last time we met, you came armed. I should not expect a man of your caliber to break a precedent. The matter is most urgent. Come with all haste.”
Lord Darcy suppressed a desire to bow low to the Messenger and say: “Immediately, Sire.” The Messenger was, after all, only an instrument. He was completely trustworthy, else he would not carry a Silver Badge; even his ordinary messages were to be honored. But when he delivered a message in His Majesty’s Own Voice, even he, the Messenger, did not know what he said. When he murmured the key spell to himself, the message in the Royal Voice was delivered. The Messenger had no memory of it either before or after the delivery. He had submitted willingly to the recording of that message, and he had submitted willingly to its delivery and erasure. No sorcerer on Earth could pry that information out of him once it had been delivered, since, in his mind, it no longer existed.
Before it had been delivered, of course, it could be pried o
ut, but not from a King’s Messenger. Any attempt to get such a message from the mind of a King’s Messenger without authority would result in the immediate death of the Messenger—a fact which the Messenger realized and accepted as a part of his duty to Sovereign and Empire.
After a moment, the King’s Messenger opened his eyes. “All right, your lordship?”
“Perfectly, my good fellow. Are you a good cabman?”
“The best in London, my lord—though I say it who shouldn’t.”
“Excellent! We must go without delay!”
During the ride, Lord Darcy mused upon the King’s words. When he had asked the Messenger whether or not he should go armed, it had been a simple question that any Officer of His Majesty’s Peace might have asked. Lord Darcy had had no notion that the Messenger was actually taking him to the Royal Presence; he had asked about arming himself purely in the interests of his official duties. And now, as a result of a perfectly ordinary question, he found himself among the small handful of men who were permitted to be armed in the Royal Presence.
Traditionally, only the Great Lords of State were permitted to remain armed in the King’s presence—and they only with swords.
In so far as he knew, Lord Darcy was the only person who, in all of history, had been given Royal permission—which amounted to a command—to appear before His Majesty armed with a gun. It was a singular, a unique, honor—and Lord Darcy was well aware of it.
But those thoughts did not distract his mind for long; of far more importance at the moment was the reason for the King’s message. Why should His Majesty be personally interested in an affair which, although it had its outré elements, was, after all, a rather ordinary murder? At least, on the surface of it, it seemed to have no connection with Affairs of State. However …
Suddenly Lord Darcy smote his forehead with the palm of his hand. “Fool!” he muttered sharply to himself. “Dolt! Moron! Idiot! Cherbourg, of course!” This, he thought, is what comes of allowing one’s emotions to be distracted by Master Sean’s plight when one should have them under full control for analyzing the problem at hand. The thing was as plain as a pikestaff once a competent mind came to focus on it.
Therefore, Lord Darcy was not in the least surprised, after the cab had swept through the gates of Westminster Palace, past the armed guard who recognized the vehicle and driver immediately, to find that a Naval officer wearing the uniform of a Commander was waiting for him in the courtyard. In fact, the lack of such a person would indeed have surprised him.
The Commander opened the door of the cab, and, as Lord Darcy stepped out, the Commander said: “Lord Darcy? I am Commander Lord Ashley and your servant, my lord.”
“And I yours, my lord,” said Lord Darcy. “Your presence here, by the by, confirms my suspicions.”
“Suspicions?” The Commander looked startled.
“That there is presumed to be a connection between the murder of a certain Georges Barbour in Cherbourg two days ago, and the murder of Master Sir James Zwinge yesterday in the Royal Steward. At least, Naval Intelligence presumes a connection.”
“We are almost certain there is a connection,” said Lord Ashley. “Will you come this way? There is to be a meeting in Queen Anette’s Parlor immediately. Just through this door, down the hall to the stairway and—But perhaps I am taking a liberty, my lord. Do you know your way about the Palace?”
“I have made it a point, my lord, to study the floor plans of the great palaces and castles of the Empire. Queen Anette’s Parlor, where the Treaty of Kobenhavn was revised and signed in 1891, is directly above the Chapel of St. Edward the Confessor—consecrated in 1633, during the reign of Edward VII. Thus, it would be up this stairway, left turn, down the hall, through the Gascon Door, right turn, fifth door on the right, easily recognizable by the fact that it still bears the gilt-and-polychromed personal arms of Anette of Flanders, consort to Harold II.” Lord Darcy gave Commander Lord Ashley a broad smile. “But to answer the question as you meant it: No, I have never been in Westminster Palace before.”
The Commander smiled back. “Nor have I.” He chuckled. “If I may say so, I find myself somewhat taken aback by this sudden soaring into a rather rarified atmosphere. Two men whom I had never met are done in—something which happens all too frequently in Intelligence work—and then, without warning, what seemed a rather routine killing is suddenly catapulted to the importance of an Affair of State.” He lowered his voice a little. “His Majesty himself will attend the meeting.” They went up the stairway and turned left, toward the Gascon Door.
“Tell me,” Lord Darcy said, “have you any theory?”
“As to who killed them? Polish agents, of course,” the Commander said. “But if you mean do I have any theory as to who the agents may be, then—no, I don’t. Could be anyone, you know. Some little shopkeeper or tradesman or something of the sort, a perfectly ordinary appearing man, is one day told by his Polish superiors, ‘Go to such-and-such a place, where you will find a man named thus-and-so. Kill him.’ He does it, and an hour later is back at his regular business. No connection between him and the dead man. No motive that can be linked personally to the killer. No clue of any kind.” They passed through the doorway and turned right.
“I trust,” said Lord Darcy with a smile, “that your pessimism is not generally shared by the Naval Intelligence Corps.”
“Well, as a matter of fact,” said the Commander in a slightly apologetic tone, “I believe it is. If the killers can be found, so much the better, of course, but that will be merely a by-product of the real business, you see.”
“Then the Navy feels that there is something more dangerous going on than murder?” The two men stopped before the door with the gilt-and-polychrome arms that marked Queen Anette’s Parlor.
“Indeed we do. The King views it with greatest consternation. He’ll give you any further information.”
Lord Ashley opened the ornate door, and the two men went in.
8
The three men seated at the long table were immediately recognizable to Lord Darcy, although he had met only one of them before. Lord Bontriomphe was looking his usual calm, affable self.
The erect, silver-bearded old man with the piercing eyes and the magnificent blade of a nose could only be Sir Lyon Grey, in spite of the fact that he wore ordinary morning clothing instead of the formal pale-blue and silver of a Master Sorcerer.
The third man had a highly distinctive face. He appeared to be in his late forties or early fifties, although his dark, curly, slightly disarrayed hair showed only a few threads of gray, and then only when one looked closely. His forehead was high and craggy, giving his head a rather squared-off appearance; his eyes were heavy-lidded and deep-set beneath thick, bushy eyebrows; his nose was as large as Sir Lyon’s, but instead of being thin and bladelike, it was wide and slightly twisted, as though it had been broken at least once and allowed to heal without the services of a Healer. His mouth was wide and straight, and the moustache above it was thick and bushy, spreading out to either side like a cat’s whiskers, each hair curling separately upwards at the end. His heavy beard was full, but was cut fairly short, and was as wiry and curly as his hair, moustache, and eyebrows.
At first glance, one got the impression of forbidding ruthlessness and remorseless purpose; it required a second, closer look to see that those qualities were modified by both wisdom and humor. It was the face of a man with tremendous inner power and the ability to control and use it both wisely and well.
Lord Darcy had heard the man described, and the uniform of royal blue heavily encrusted with gold merely clinched the identification of Peter de Valera ap Smith, Lord High Admiral of the Imperial Navy, Commander of the Combined Fleets, Knight Commander of the Order of the Golden Leopard, and Chief of Staff for Naval Operations.
A fourth man, standing near the Lord High Admiral, seemed about the same age, but his hair was noticeably gray, and his features were so commonplace that they paled into insignificance in comparison.
Lord Darcy did not recognize him, but the uniform he wore was that of a Naval Captain, which suggested that he was connected with Naval Intelligence.
When Commander Lord Ashley performed the necessary introductions, all of Lord Darcy’s tentative identifications had proved correct, including the last; the man was Captain Percy Smollett, Chief of Naval Intelligence, European Branch.
Of the three Navy men, Lord Darcy noticed, only the Lord High Admiral wore his dress sword; he alone of the three was so permitted in the Royal Presence. Lord Darcy was suddenly intensely aware of the pistol on his right hip, concealed though it was by his morning coat.
Hardly had the introductions been completed when a door to an adjoining room opened suddenly, and a man wearing the livery of the Major Domo of the Royal Household entered.
“My lords and gentlemen!” he said firmly. “His Imperial Majesty the King!”
The six men were on their feet. As the King entered, they bowed low rather than genuflecting. This was a nice point of etiquette often misunderstood. His Majesty was dressed in the uniform of the Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Navy. Had he worn full regalia or ordinary street clothes, a genuflection would have been in order; but in Army or Navy uniform he was wearing the persona of a military officer—an officer of the most exalted rank, true, but an officer, nonetheless, and no military officer rates a genuflection.
“My lords and gentlemen, please be seated,” said His Majesty.
John IV, by the Grace of God, King and Emperor of England, France, Scotland, Ireland, New England, and New France; Defender of the Faith, et cetera, was the perfect model of a Plantagenet King. Tall, broad of shoulder, blue of eye, and blondly handsome, John of England was a direct descendant of Henry II, the first Plantagenet King, through Henry’s grandson, King Arthur. Like his predecessors, King John IV showed all the strength, ability, and wisdom that was typical of the oldest ruling family in Europe. In no way but physically did he resemble the members of the wild, spendthrift, unstable cadet branch of the family—now fortunately extinct—which had descended from the youngest son of Henry II, the unhappy Prince John Lackland who had died in exile three years before the death of King Richard the Lion-Hearted in 1219.
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