The Triple Goddess

by Ashly Graham

  And then more of the modern stuff: Squeak fiddle-dy squeak, fiddle-dy squeak squeak, while the singers went, ‘Aah-ah-aah-aah-ahh, oo-eee, ee-ooo, eee.’

  On the morning of the fourth day, by which time everyone in the Tower was tympanically wounded or insane, two of the inmates had thrown themselves from the walls of the Outer Ward in despair, and the remainder had been driven up the Inner Ward’s walls and were gibbering on the ceilings. Although technically the tally was nine to three the statistic was meaningless.

  Arbella surrendered. She threw in not just one towel, but every towel that the members of her staff could lay their hands on, most of which were conveniently turbaned around their heads for jettisoning below.

  ‘I give up!’, she cried, Tosca-like on a crenellation, as a white sheet was run up a flagpole by a delirious Eye-Tie, and the Cavaliers tore off their headphones to hear what she had to say. ‘Stop it, please, stop it, anything to stop it!’, she cried; and as in Tennyson (from “Home they brought her warrior dead…”), “like summer tempest came her tears--”. ‘I can’t stand it any longer!’ she sobbed. ‘What can’t I do?’

  ‘She can’t stand it any longer!’ came the joyous shout from below.

  When the Lord Chamberlain raised one side of Jugs’ headgear—the King was taking a sixty-second power nap—and bawled into the chambered nautilus beneath that Arbella was hurling, not a weapon, but her concession speech, Jugs was instantly and refreshedly awake. Reluctantly—the soloists and orchestra were about to embark on his Compost Chorale—Jugs signalled to the conductor by drawing a finger across his throat that the music and singing should cease; whereupon the conductor, after tying things up most professionally at the end of a bar, toppled face first onto the sod.

  But although the breathless and arm-weary players had downed tools, and although the mouths of the singers were closed, even when everyone had stopped music-making it was not apparent to those in the Tower whether the overlaying strains had ceased, as wave upon wave of equally deafening silence crashed upon their ears like combers on a beach.

  Arbella disappeared from the roof of the White tower and shortly thereafter emerged from the Tower at the head of her train of defeat, crestfallen, wild-eyed, tear-streaked, haggard, and—one must say—soundly beaten. Of her once-flaming defiance not an ember remained. As the defeated staggered about the grass clutching their heads and moaning, the Marrow Splungers easily rounded them up.

  The crowd roared, strangers hugged and kissed, and the elderly danced like young fauns. The King’s household, the musicians and singers, and all the general public and media representatives tossed their headphones in the air and cheered, singing ‘“Rule Britannia! Britannia rule the waves!”’ (the music critic mouthed ‘airwaves’, sniggered, and made a note to include the analogy in his review).

  The singers, too, were pleased: by holding up for the full thirty-six hours without being replaced, they had demonstrated that size did indeed matter. So dedicated had they been to ensuring they could hear their own voices over everything and everybody else, that they had had no need of earphones. After a few days of rest, which they would spend replacing the thousands of calories that had been used up in the patriotic cause, they would be able to resume their normal concert schedule, and tell their agents to up their fees because of their increased fame…or notoriety, it made no difference.

  The media quickly spread the glorious news throughout the Kingdom, and the story, if not told in Gath nor published in the streets of Askelon, was retailed in Bath and on the boulevards of Basildon.

  King James, gathering the diaspora of his wits, had the Marrow Splungers march the criminals in ignominy up and down the moat as if they were so many dead Hectors being dragged by Achilles about the walls of Troy—though he was generous enough as to order it done three times only and not over the course of the nine days that the vindictive Achilles had hauled Hector’s corpse about—to the accompaniment of the National Anthem, directed by the Monarch himself, now that there were no more conductors left.

  Arbella was loaded with chains and taken back inside the Tower: this time into a different place that was as formerly advertised dark, verminous, and rank; a place without any modern comfort or convenience, tapestries, art or furnishings except a rack that was designed, not to hold wine bottles as in her former accommodation, but to effect greater spinal traction than any orthopaedist would recommend. Worse than any thought of that were the continuing Oom-pa-pas and Ta-da-dahs and Ay-ee, ay-eees that haunted her as, manacled to the wall, she banged her head against the stone.

  Surrounded by his courtiers and an admiring mass at a respectful distance, King James—nobody would call him Jug Ears, or Toby Jug, behind his back again—composed his features. People all around the country, glued to their televisions, for the first time were struck by his kingly mien.

  Though he was tempted to express his jubilance by fluttering and dancing like a daffodil in the breeze, J…the King restrained himself, took a restrained bow, and stood before the cameras with one arm akimbo, a leg forward, and his chin up as if he were posing for a full-length portrait by Kneller. When the sound of noise-makers had abated, he agreed to make a statement for broadcast to the nation, and an entropic forest of sound booms lowered over his head.

  His stammer had disappeared. ‘We are, well...quite pleased. Though of course, we are most grieved for the plant and the bird. They shall not be forgotten. Suitable obsequies will be performed and their ashes interred at the Abbey. I will design a suitable plaque, and the Royal Mint—it used to be at the Tower, you know—will at my command strike a commemorative Raven and Rubber Plant twenty-two-carat gold proof sovereign coin Brilliant Uncirculated with a portrait of us on the obverse.

  ‘The Marrow Splungers, too, and the tuba player, we will not forget them.’

  From somewhere in the crowd came a Cockney voice, ‘Waggle yer ten-speeds for us, Your Majesty! Waggle yer King Lears, yer Lords and Peers!’ And all around the cry was taken up by the people: ‘Yes, sir, please sir! Just this once, do it for us! Waggle your ears!’

  His Royal Highness King James the Third paused, frowning. Then he laughed and complied with the request—not once but four times, to the north, east, south and west. The crowd applauded and roared its appreciation, and the King cupped a gracious hand in airy acknowledgment.

  The next day Arbella was paraded onto Tower Green. In the normal course of events drums would have rolled, the axe would have swung, and the head and torso would have been removed to be hung on a gibbet in Whitehall as a warning to any would-be republicans who might get ideas about mounting a similar insurgency.

  Instead, the executioner, before withdrawing the axe from concealment in the straw at the base of the block, and upon asking in the traditional manner for forgiveness, received from Arbella a mighty clip round the lughole. Grabbing him by the goolies, she twisted them as hard as she could, and, when he bent over noiselessly screaming with pain, felled him with a karate chop to the neck. The blow was so forceful that this essential linkage was broken with rough justice similar to that which the headsman was accustomed to meting out to his victims.

  Then Arbella caught up the axe and, displaying astonishing strength for one so slight, severed her bilboes—the sliding shackles on an iron bar that confined her ankles—and scythed a path through the Marrow Splungers, who were already breaking out the hipflasks that all but one of them had rescued from their old uniforms.

  The weapon, which she used as club and stave as well as cutting edge, was razor-sharp, and much blood was spilled as fingers, hands, arms, and a leg or two were sliced off.

  When she had done sufficient bodily pruning to achieve her liberty, the King watched helplessly as Arbella vanished in the direction of Traitors’ Gate, having entertained the world to a live dramatic variant conclusion with an exciting twist to Donizetti’s opera Anna Bolena, the first titular role in which was taken in 1830 by the soprano Giuditta Pasta (sic), and which was performed so memorably by Maria Ca
llas in the 1957 Milan production directed by Luchino Visconti.

  At the Upper Pool of London between Tower and London Bridges a frigate was waiting to bear Arbella across the Channel to France. There she settled down to a life of great peace and contentment, eating snails, drinking champagne, flirting with the Dauphin, and doing her famous impressions of King James…in French.

  Exeunt omnes, finis, farewell…

  …and Good Morning. Awoken from her dream by the clock radio at her bedside, Arbella jumped, for the first time since her early teens on a Christmas morning, from under her duck-down duvet. On Classic FM the Band of the Coldstream Guards had been playing a march by John Philip Sousa, Transit of Venus.

  A second later the radio was shattered and strewn about the floor in many pieces.

  Chapter Twenty

  The following day Arbella went up to Lloyd’s early in an agony of anticipation to see Carew. As she peeked around his pillar she was relieved to see that he was at his box and alone, sorting through a mound of fur and feathers and showing no sign of distress. He was wearing a three-piece heather-mixture suit, such as one might put on when one was only going to put in half a day’s work before going fishing. A daring yellow silk handkerchief spilled from his top pocket.

  She approached him cautiously from behind, but Carew must have sensed her because he turned, smiled, and motioned her to the seat opposite. ‘My apologies for leaving you in such a hurry yesterday, it was rude of me. I do hope you didn’t get too wet. I was soaked to the bone when I got back here. Fortunately I keep a change of clothes in the Members’ cloakroom.’ He busied himself putting his materials away.

  ‘Don’t mention it. It was the worst weather. I was able to get under shelter pretty quickly. More importantly, how is your foot?’

  ‘Much better, thanks. It was the shock, mostly. The nurse treated the wound and there’s some swelling, but it’s going down. Can I offer you a cup of coffee? On me this time.’

  ‘That would be nice. Where will we go, the Captains’ Room?’

  ‘No need.’

  Carew ducked his head under the box, and there were the sounds of a cupboard being opened and running water. When he reappeared he was holding an earthenware jug. ‘I had the box plumbed in,’ he explained; ‘there’s an aquifer below the Yellow Submarine which no one knows about, and the quality of the water is excellent with a good balance of minerals, and no chemicals, of course.’

  Arbella was too taken aback by this extraordinary fact, if fact it was, to say anything.

  The Yellow Submarine was the overflow underwriting room that had recently been created to accommodate newly formed syndicates. Because it was a windowless basement underneath the marine floor, the walls had been painted a bright yellow to compensate for the absence of natural light.

  Carew pushed the jug across to her, and pointed to a row of inkwells that were set into the desk on her side, beneath the bank of drawers with brass retainers for alphabetic identification that, at any other box, would contain record cards of all the slips that the syndicate had written, and the empty shelves that ordinarily would be filled with Registers of Shipping and marine reference books.

  ‘Ignore the first, which is Indian ink, and pour the water into the second inkwell from the left. No, sorry, the third, the second is encre de Havane. No again, it’s the fourth; the third is a dye I mixed for a new fly pattern I’ve designed. It used to have brandy in it, which may or may not improve its effectiveness. Pour it into the fourth, if you wouldn’t mind.’

  After Arbella had done so and watched the water glug away, Carew took back the jug and replaced it in the cupboard underneath the box. Then he lifted the top of the seat next to him and pressed a button in the storage compartment. There was a rattling and grinding noise, followed by gurgling; and a smell of freshly ground coffee, so powerful that it seemed it would attract even the distant brokers, permeated the air.

  Next, the underwriter delved into another cupboard and brought out a silver coffee-pot with a long curved spout, a silver tray, a couple of porcelain cups and saucers, two rat-tail spoons, a small bowl of muscovado sugar so dark that it was almost black, a hand-painted cake-plate, a tin, and two napkins. Placing the tray on the desk next to the inkwells, he arranged everything on it except the tin, from which, using a pair of pliers from a drawer of fishing tools, he extracted two macaroons half coated with chocolate, and laid them on the plate with the napkins.

  When the gurgling stopped he took the earthenware jug from underneath the box, poured the steaming coffee into the silver pot, put on the lid, returned the jug to its place of concealment, served the coffee, and passed a cup to Arbella.

  As he did so she noticed that he was wearing a pair of worn gold links in his double cuffs, one of which had a cameo of a lion’s head on it and the other a unicorn.

  ‘I do apologize, I forgot the milk this morning—I hope that doesn’t make it too strong for you. Please...help yourself.’ Carew motioned to the plate.

  ‘I prefer it black anyway. Thank you.’

  They drank the coffee and ate the macaroons in silence.

  ‘The coffee’s delicious,’ said Arbella, ‘as is the macaroon.’ She dabbed her lips with the napkin to remove a smear of chocolate.

  ‘If I know nothing about anything else, I know about coffee. When I owned a shipping company I used to have cargoes of the best beans in the world shipped to London from Colombia. A certain Edward Lloyd worked for me at the time, as an apprentice clerk. Part of his duties was to make coffee to serve to the merchant seamen and ship owners who visited the office on business.

  ‘We were quite successful and there were so many of them that young Edward himself became a caffeine addict…and that’s not too strong a term, for he drank about thirty cups a day at my expense. Edward had always been a restless and talkative lad, but from then on he hardly slept and greatly annoyed the other office workers with his incessant bobbing and jiggling about.’

  ‘Edward Lloyd?. That’s a coincidence, having the same name as the founder of the Market.’

  ‘No, it’s the same chap. In the end, because he was such a terrible clerk and always messing up the ledgers—he worked round the clock—and since he made very good coffee, I suggested that he might like to make a career change and start a coffee house. Edward went for that like a shot of espresso and opened his first place, Lloyd’s, on Tower Street, using seed money I gave him to get started.

  ‘I kept Eddie supplied with coffee beans, and encouraged everyone to go there to support him, to ensure that he made a go of it and never needed to ask for his old job back.

  Arbella gaped; which, uniquely for her, did not make for an attractive expression. That did it, she thought: the man was nuts. She resigned herself to failing to score an underwriting line from him. The only consolation would be that she had been right to disbelieve the legend that he was an easy touch.

  She looked at her empty coffee cup and thought of asking for more, but decided that it was time to accept defeat and withdraw.

  But Carew carried on, ‘Our Edward distinguished himself by devising a process for roasting the beans, grinding them just before they were needed, and brewing the granules quickly in a special system that used very hot water, just under the boil. It’s the same method followed by modern baristas.

  ‘Eddie had ideas as strong as his coffee, which he would expound upon at great length to anyone he could buttonhole. But as much as he spilled the beans to potential competitors about how they should be stored, temperature- and light- and humidity-wise, he never had to worry about his competition once word got around about how successful his business was and coffee houses started opening everywhere.

  ‘Customers poured in to Lloyd’s from all over the City, and once they were hooked kept coming back, often several times a day. The smell of roasting beans was the perfect advertisement, and it wasn’t long before Lloyd’s Coffee House had a permanent queue winding down Tower Street, one that was longer than Bullion Bill Goldsack’s
. There would be people waiting for the shop to open in the mornings, and Edward had to extend his business hours, starting earlier and closing later. Within a few years he moved to a bigger space, in Lombard Street.

  ‘Eddie always ensured that the best tables were reserved for me and my shipping associates and clients, and in return I gave him discounts on the beans he ordered from me in increasingly larger quantity. He considered those from the Blue Mountains of Jamaica superior to any other. However much I imported, he always wanted more, and would be on tenterhooks every time a shipment was due, turning to frantic if a vessel was late or reported missing. I swear Eddie could smell the coffee in a hold when it was still thirty leagues off the Lizard.

  ‘Because there’s nothing like a jolt of caffeine to stimulate the brain, and I was as susceptible to it as anyone, while I was sitting in Eddie Lloyd’s Coffee House one day I hit on the idea of a subscription arrangement whereby we ship owners might share our risks of loss and damage. My insomnia had nothing to do with the amount of coffee I was drinking, so long as I knocked off drinking it early enough in the day, and I knew that I should sleep better at night if I wasn’t hazarding my entire investment every time a ship left port.

  ‘My nerves were on the way to being as shot to pieces as a frigate’s rigging by grapeshot. As an island Britain’s dependence on ships for trade had always made us vulnerable to bad weather, plus we had the depredations of the Spanish across the Atlantic, and pirates and privateers up and down the English Channel, to contend with. And the infamous Bermuda triangle in the Caribbean.

  ‘My risk-sharing idea was a success from the start, as a means whereby the losses of the few might be shared amongst the many. Soon I was taking so many partial interests every day in the safety of other people’s ships and cargoes, and they in mine—marine trade around the world was growing in size and importance every day as demand increased for an ever-increasing variety of commodities—that I sent a round robin letter to all my colleagues identifying the principle of Uberrima fides, or Utmost Good Faith, that I thought it essential we adopt if we were to continue making such arrangements with each other. We already had more than enough hazards to contend with without having to worry about each other’s probity. Our word would be our bond, and anyone who deviated from the strictest standards would be ejected by peer pressure from our circle and seriously hampered in their ability to do business.