"Her majesty will see you now," a lady-in-waiting said and Ulysses Quicksilver was admitted to the high-ceilinged Throne Room.
Ulysses kept his head bowed as he approached the dais at the end of the ornately decorated audience chamber. Everything gleamed or sparkled, the crystalline light of the Throne Room's magnificent chandeliers reflecting from the gold leafed surfaces and polished marble.
The top tier of the dais, from where Queen Victoria had once received royal guests in person was now cordoned off from the rest of the room, surrounded by a curtain of scarlet velvet drapes.
There was a hazy quality to the air of the chamber and an all-pervading smell of pomanders and lubricating oil. Flunkies stood to either side of the dais, each of the automata-drones decked out in a footman's finery.
Ulysses looked up at the dais. The lady in waiting ushered him forwards and then disappeared behind the curtains herself, before emerging again and returning to Ulysses' side without saying a word.
Ulysses waited, standing to attention. He certainly didn't look out of place in top hat and tails, the sombre tones of the suit set off by a striking gold silk cravat embellished with a diamond pin and a red carnation buttonhole. In his right hand he held his bloodstone cane. His left arm was held tight to his chest in a black satin sling.
He cleared his throat nervously, recalling the last time he had met his monarch. A week had passed since the dramatic events surrounding the celebrations to mark the Queen's 160th jubilee year. If a week was a long time in politics, the political world had never known a week like the one just passed. Despite the Thames being trawled Jago Kane's body had not yet been recovered and he appeared to have disappeared from the face of the planet once again. At least the breakout from the Tower of London had been contained and work crews were already affecting repairs to the aging prison facility.
"Good morning, Mr Quicksilver," a voice like an old gramophone recording crackled from speakers standing either side of the drapes.
"Good morning, your majesty," he replied.
"Mr Quicksilver, we are informed that we have you to thank for the happy resolution of Prime Minister Wormwood's disgraceful rebellion."
Ulysses considered the hundreds who had died during the course of the Queen's jubilee and the terror attacks on the capital leading up to it. He would hardly have called it a happy resolution himself. But, "Thank you, Ma'am," was all he said.
"It would appear that you are following in a long-established family tradition, keeping the realm and the monarch safe from the predations of those who would see Magna Britannia fall."
"Just doing my bit, Ma'am."
"Well you are to be congratulated for your sterling work, and rewarded."
With a hiss of compressed steam one of the flunkies suddenly lurched into life. As it strode up to him, Ulysses saw that it was bearing a small tasselled cushion before it. Resting on the cushion was a piece of crimson ribbon, attached to a gunmetal-cast cross, bearing the motif of a crown surmounted by a lion, and the inscription 'FOR VALOUR'.
"We are awarding you the Victoria Cross for the valour and gallantry you demonstrated in selfless devotion to your Queen and Country, in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds." The Queen's lady-in-waiting stepped forward and, taking the medal from its cushion, pinned it to the lapel of Ulysses' jacket. "Congratulations, Mr Quicksilver."
"Thank you, Ma'am. I am deeply honoured."
There was a moment's silence, Ulysses waiting to see what else the monarch might have to say for herself, not certain whether it would be decorous to say anything himself without being spoken to first.
There was a crackle of static and Queen Victoria addressed him again. "That is all. You may go now."
"The Victoria Cross, very nice. I bet that would be worth a bob or two," Bartholomew Quicksilver said, eyeing up the medal as Ulysses descended the palace steps to the waiting Phantom.
"Yes, I expect it would. But it's not for sale," Ulysses said, smiling grimly at his incorrigible younger brother.
"Congratulations, sir," Nimrod said, beaming with paternal pride.
"Thank you, Nimrod."
"So, what did she say?" Barty pestered.
"Not a lot really."
"Not a lot? You have an audience with Queen Victoria herself..."
"After a fashion."
"... a privilege very few ever receive, and when asked what her royal highness said, all you can say is 'Not a lot really'? I would have thought you would have memorised every word, every syllable."
"You perhaps, Barty. It was quite underwhelming really."
"Well, I suppose anything would be after what you've been through recently."
Barty was much more his old self now. He was making a good recovery from the bullet wound he had received thanks to Kitty Hawke's botched assassination attempt. His near death experience had apparently given him a new lease of life.
"Look, I'll tell you all about it over luncheon," Ulysses sighed with mock weariness, giving his sibling an affectionate slap on the back. "What I need right now is a stiff drink. My last dose of painkillers is starting to wear off and I simply can't face another day of press interruptions and well-wishers without being at least a little bit tipsy. Nimrod, the Ritz, if you would be so kind?"
"Yes, sir. The Ritz it is."
As the two brothers settled themselves in the back of the automobile Barty turned to Ulysses. "Now that you're by royal appointment, as it were, think of the future, Ulysses!"
"That great unwritten adventure you mean?"
"Absolutely!"
"Well, when I was plummeting towards the dark waters of the Thames a week ago I didn't even think I had a future. So I'm living for the now. Here's to the present! The future can wait."
Elsewhere, behind closed shutters and heavy drapes, in an inconspicuous room in an equally inconspicuous building within the comforting anonymity of shadowy gloom, the Star Chamber met.
"I call this meeting of the Star Chamber to order," said a voice almost smothered by the enshrouding semi-darkness, a commanding baritone in the mote-shot quiet of the hidden chamber.
The warm gloom was permeated by the gentle ticking of a clock, accompanied by the gurgle and splash of a cup of tea being poured.
"So, Wormwood failed," said a second voice, this one a rich claret, smooth and well rounded with age.
"Does that matter?" asked a third, crisper in tone and more pernicious, like the bark of a snapping terrier.
"No, it is enough that he tried. The Empire has become complacent," the first replied. "If it is to survive it must be tested, it must be challenged."
"And Quicksilver has a further part to play in this?" asked a fourth, aristocratic and sharp as a rapier's blade.
"You should know the answer to that better than most," said the second.
"Indeed."
There was the ching of a silver teaspoon ringing against the finest bone china and the sound of tea being stirred.
"So what is next in store for Mr Quicksilver, our agent of destruction?" asked the second.
There was the slurp of hot Earl Grey being supped. "Time will tell, gentlemen," said the fatherly tones of the first. "Time will tell. But rest assured we will be there, watching, every step of the way. After all history needs a helping hand every now and again, does it not?"
"Indeed it does," agreed the fourth, with a heavy sigh.
There were murmurs of assent.
"Then, for the time being, we are done, gentlemen," declared the first. "Let us be about our business elsewhere. I declare this meeting of the Star Chamber at an end."
Dusty silence returned to the room, other than for the rattle of a cup being returned to its saucer and history resumed its predetermined path.
THE END
Jonathan Green has been a freelance writer for the last fourteen years. In that time he has written Sonic the Hedgehog and Fighting Fantasy gamebooks - including the much-anticipated Bloodbones - atmospheric colour text for a variety of Games Workshop
products, and numerous short stories for the Black Library's Inferno! magazine. To date he has written six novels set in the worlds of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000, which have been translated into five languages. The co-creator of the world of Pax Britannia, Unnatural History is his first novel for Abaddon Books. He lives in West London, with his wife and two young children, where he spends his nights behind a computer keyboard and his days working as a teacher.
Extract
Indicia
Title Page
Prologue
Act 1 - The Darwin Code
Chapter 1 - On the Origin of Species
Chapter 2 - The Inferno Club
Chapter 3 - The Scene of the Crime
Chapter 4 - An Unexpected Visitor
Chapter 5 - Galapagos
Chapter 6 - A Meeting with Methuselah
Chapter 7 - Terrible Lizards
Chapter 8 - Overground
Chapter 9 - Evolution Expects
Act 2 - Survival of the Fittest
Chapter 10 - Wormwood
Chapter 11 - The Missing Link
Chapter 12 - Going Underground
Chapter 13 - His Waterloo
Chapter 14 - A Bad Day to Die
Chapter 15 - On Evolution and the Modern Man
Chapter 16 - A Night at the Opera
Chapter 17 - Revelations
Act 3 - Theories of De-Evolution
Chapter 18 - Death of a Dandy
Chapter 19 - Prisoners of the Tower
Chapter 20 - The Limehouse Connection
Chapter 21 - Unnatural Selection
Chapter 22 - State of Emergency
Chapter 23 - The Importance of Being Simeon
Chapter 24 - Unnatural History
Epilogue
Bio - Jonathan Green
Table of Contents
Indicia
Title Page
Prologue
Act 1 - The Darwin Code
Chapter 1 - On the Origin of Species
Chapter 2 - The Inferno Club
Chapter 3 - The Scene of the Crime
Chapter 4 - An Unexpected Visitor
Chapter 5 - Galapagos
Chapter 6 - A Meeting with Methuselah
Chapter 7 - Terrible Lizards
Chapter 8 - Overground
Chapter 9 - Evolution Expects
Act 2 - Survival of the Fittest
Chapter 10 - Wormwood
Chapter 11 - The Missing Link
Chapter 12 - Going Underground
Chapter 13 - His Waterloo
Chapter 14 - A Bad Day to Die
Chapter 15 - On Evolution and the Modern Man
Chapter 16 - A Night at the Opera
Chapter 17 - Revelations
Act 3 - Theories of De-Evolution
Chapter 18 - Death of a Dandy
Chapter 19 - Prisoners of the Tower
Chapter 20 - The Limehouse Connection
Chapter 21 - Unnatural Selection
Chapter 22 - State of Emergency
Chapter 23 - The Importance of Being Simeon
Chapter 24 - Unnatural History
Epilogue
Bio - Jonathan Green
Pax Britannia: Unnatural History Page 26