by Dan Abnett
They were all too busy looking at the foreigner on the horse-less wagon.
"Good day," said Giuseppe Giuseppo with a warm smile, rising from his seat. "I am Giuseppe Giuseppo, late of La Spezia. I must apologise for my unseemly mode of transport, but I am in haste, and must be in your fair City of London with all despatch. Is this the road?"
"What business have you in London?" asked the Mayor, coldly, the pitchfork shaking in his hands.
"Nothing less, in truth, than the life of Her Majesty, your Queen."
"Get the bastard!" squeaked the Mayor.
The Baker pitched forward, overbalanced by the weight of the shear. The Butcher pretended to trip, and accidentally drop his pig stick, and cursed profusely. The Mayor lunged at Giuseppe, who ducked. The pitchfork smacked smartly into the side of the wagon.
"Demon!" declared the Mayor, running out of breath and pitchfork handle at precisely the same moment, and therefore hitting the side of the cart with stunning force.
"Are you all right, sir?" asked Giuseppe Giuseppo in concern.
Then a cooking apple on a piece of string struck him soundly in the face.
Dazed, Giuseppe fell backwards off the cart, his head glancing off the edge of the off-side front wheel. By the time he hit the ground, he was unconscious.
The Baker helped the Mayor to his feet. The Butcher looked at the Landlord, who shot him a wide, cocksure grin that quite belied his astonishment.
"Very impressive," said the Butcher.
It bloody was, wasn't it? thought the Landlord of the Cat and Stoop, but he didn't say anything.
Bells had started ringing across the City. As it had been decreed that all the belfries of London should mark the festival at six in the evening, the cacophony was a little premature. The most likely explanation seemed to be that parish bellringers in north London had decided to get in a little last-minute practice, and their peals had set the whole place off in a frenzy of not-to-be-outdone ringing. Even the Sisters of the Justified Madonna had got out their tambourines. Under a table in the Rouncey Mare, Boy Simon awoke, and couldn't believe how loud his hangover was.
On Thames Street, de Quincey led Mother Grundy through the seething crowd and the campanological onslaught. According to a clerk at New Hibernian Yard, Lord Gull was due to inspect the Militia watching the bridge.
En route, de Quincey and Mother Grundy had been forced to abandon their carriage at Wafer Lane due to the congested traffic, and they hurried along on foot, pushing their way through the press, ignoring the hundreds of attempts to sell them flowers, flags or fireworks.
"Not today!" de Quincey told the umpteenth hawker with a sprig of nettles. Up ahead, he could see the Militia post. There were six men there, each holding a halberd and a sprig of nettles. As they saw de Quincey approach, they tried to hide the sprigs in embarrassment.
"Where's Lord Gull?" snapped de Quincey as he made it through the crowd.
The men shrugged.
"Where is he?" de Quincey repeated with more urgency.
"He's gone," said one of the pikemen. "He was here, but he went, not five minutes ago."
"He took a wherry down Richmond," said another, kicking his sprig out of sight discreetly behind a box of firecrackers on the kerb, "for the Masque."
De Quincey spun around, lost for words.
"Then what now?" asked Mother Grundy with astonishing calm.
"Richmond," replied de Quincey.
There wasn't a waterman in sight on Three Cranes Pier. A queue of hopeful passengers stood on the boards, having their names taken by a young girl, who occasionally turned and wailed "Oars!" futilely at the empty river.
"Oy!" they said as de Quincey pushed past.
"Police business," de Quincey growled back. He reached the girl. "How long?"
"Name?" asked the girl, her pencil poised above her fares book.
"How bloody long?" screamed de Quincey.
"Twenty minutes, at the very least," she said, "It's a busy day. It's Masque Saturday."
De Quincey took off his cap, then jumped up and down on it.
"No need to be like that, I'm sure," said the girl, moving on.
"De Quincey!" His name rang out across the pier. De Quincey stopped jumping and looked. Mother Grundy stood beside a battered old dorey, which was up-turned on the pier like an exhausted turtle, an exhausted turtle with holes in its shell. "Give me a hand with this," she ordered. Her words were as sharp as a rapier thrust, and just as chilly.
De Quincey left his trampled cap, and hurried over. "What good's this?" he whimpered. "It's got holes in it, and there are no oars."
Mother Grundy fixed him with a look that had driven three generations of Ormsvile Nesbit children to school, no matter how brilliant their acting.
"Do you always go to pieces in a crisis, Mr de Quincey?" she asked.
"I don't know. I haven't been in many."
"Help me with the boat."
"But-"
"It's got holes in it, and there are no oars. I know. Complain in the rain and you just wet your head."
"I'm sorry?" asked de Quincey.
"It's a saying," Mother Grundy explained, "and not a popular one in this City, I'll be bound. Perhaps this one will be easier to understand: find a way, not a fault."
De Quincey looked down at the dorey, and almost grizzled for the first time since his sixth birthday, when a horse had eaten his new kite.
"My mother used to say that," he admitted. "I never knew what it meant."
"Then learn, Mr de Quincey," said Mother Grundy.
Together, they overturned the dorey and slid it down into the water. It began to sink, quickly.
"Get in and bail," Mother Grundy instructed.
"Okay," said de Quincey, meekly.
"Hey!" cried the girl on the pier.
"Is for horses," Mother Grundy told her. The girl frowned and looked around at the queue, who all shrugged.
"My feet are getting wet," said de Quincey, bailing for all he was worth.
"Then bail harder," Mother Grundy hissed, climbing in beside him. The dorey went down another three inches.
"Oh God," said de Quincey, soaked by the spray he was making. "If I'm bailing, I can't row, and I can't row anyway because there aren't any oars!"
Mother Grundy just stood in the stern. She said something quiet and complicated. The boat sank a little more.
"Hmph," said Mother Grundy, "it works all right on the millpond back home. Perhaps the spirits of the Thames are a little hard of hearing."
She said whatever it was again, louder.
De Quincey fell over as the dorey suddenly began to move. It shot away from the slip like a skimming pebble, bouncing off and through every wave of the river. A foamy wake sprayed out behind them.
"Uh uh" said de Quincey, struggling up in the violently shaking boat, but he was too wet to do any better.
"That's more like it," smiled Mother Grundy.
"By Our Lady," breathed the girl on the pier. The queue all nodded in agreement.
Upstream, in mid-Thames, Gull consulted his notebook itinerary. Facing him, the two watermen heaved on the wherry's oars.
"Fast as you like," said Gull. "I have many things to attend to."
Both watermen felt like exchanging rude remarks, but their fare was a big man, and he wore his sword like he knew how to use it. They nodded instead, but there was deep and multiple meaning in the nods.
"Begging your pardon, sir," said one of them, suddenly catching sight of something astern.
Gull raised himself from the bench seat and followed the waterman's gaze. Three hundred yards behind them, de Quincey was approaching the wherry in an oar-less dorey with only a thin, grinning old lady for company. De Quincey wore an expression that was part child's glee and part complete bemusement. There was no obvious motive power for the dorey, but it was coming at them as if it had been shot from a cannon, skipping the water like a porpoise.
"Easy oar," said Gull in astonishment, getting to his f
eet. Both watermen had already forgotten they were meant to be rowing anyway.
The dorey hove alongside and stopped abruptly, causing de Quincey to sit down again hard. Its sudden lack of forward motion was met by a resumed downward motion.
"Permission to come aboard," said de Quincey, a glazed, inane look on his face.
Gull and the watermen helped de Quincey and the old lady to hop across onto the rocking wherry.
The dorey sank.
"Mr de Quincey. Please explain everything," said Gull sternly.
"Mother Grundy can do that," said de Quincey, flopping into Gull's seat, and emptying his boots over the rail. "Mother Grundy can do anything. Lord Gull, Mother Grundy."
Gull turned to the old lady, but she waved him back, peering intently after the bubbles that marked the dorey's departure from active life.
"In a moment, Laird of Ben Phie," she said, before sprinkling the water with a handful of flowers from her purse. "Father Thames, I thank you for your aid. Flow softly on in peace."
"What are you doing?" asked Gull.
"Being polite," she replied.
"You won't get a straight answer out of her, chief," said de Quincey. "I haven't yet, and I've been with her for hours. Careful now, or she'll issue you with a saying."
Gull wasn't listening.
"When you've finished being polite to this body of water, try being polite to me," he said.
"There isn't time," said Mother Grundy, turning to the Captain of the Royal Guard. "We have a nation to save."
THE NINETEENTH CHAPTER.
At Richmond.
Murmuring armies choked the fields and lawns around Richmond Palace. It was nearly two in the afternoon.
Better than twenty thousand people were converging on the splendid Palace from all compass points. Fifteen hundred of them were invited guests: ambassadors, clergy, nobility, foreign potentates and senior military staff. A further three thousand were the augmented Palace staff: full-time retainers, huscarls, militia men, ladies-in-waiting, maids, gentlemen-ordinaires, stewards, chefs, servers, musicians and a large number of temporary helpers-out.
The balance were Londoners, spilling from the City in gaggles of extended families, clubs and works outings, dragging with them carts of food and drink, explosives and makeshift musical instruments. None had been invited, and none would get any closer than the meadows beyond the Palace walls, but that was close enough for them. Simply to be within a mile of the Queen as she celebrated her coronation filled them with a sense of pride and place, and of patriotic importance. Besides, Her Majesty's fireworks were bound to be the biggest, the best and the most "ooooohhh!"-worthy in all the land. They trampled down the grass, dug in, lit fires, and popped corks. All any of them could see was other people doing the same thing, except for the really lucky ones, who could see other people doing the same thing and the Palace wall. Everyone assured everyone they were with that they had definitely got a good place.
People carpeted the area. They covered the twenty acre Green and, beyond Trumpeters' House, could be seen right up Richmond Hill. The Shene was covered with them, and the towpath, and they were beginning to intrude on the Deer Park and Richmond Park itself. Some were even clinging to the branches of the one hundred and thirteen elm trees on the Green.
High above, on the flat roof of the Palace's East Wing, Cardinal Woolly lowered his spyglass, and stepped back from the parapet, handing the instrument to the waiting steward.
"More than last year," mused the steward, cheerfully.
"More than ever," reflected Woolly. He glanced along the length of the roof, noting the huscarls patrolling at regular intervals. Each carried a Swiss crossbow fixed with a telescope spotter. Woolly nodded to himself.
"When Lord Gull arrives, conduct him to my presence immediately," Woolly ordered. "I want to go over the security arrangements again."
"Of course, your Reverence," answered the steward, following the cardinal back over the roof walk to the tower stairs.
Three deacons from the Curial Office stood waiting for him at the base of the tower flight, in a corridor packed with men moving mahogany pews. There was a lot of groaning and grunting, and "down your end"-ing. The corridor looked like a log-jammed river.
Deacon Spench sashayed through the wooden tide, and made it to the cardinal's side. He carried a leather clipboard, complete with a purple silk place-marker, which he consulted regularly.
"We've all but cleared the upper auditoria and the Green Rooms," he said. "The Head Housekeeper thinks there may be some more benches in the storeroom of the Addey Camera. They may need a bit of a dust-down, but they'll have to do." He consulted his seating plan carefully. "Either that, or the parties of Viscount Hailsea, the Earl of Slough and the Sardinian Ambassador will be on canvas chairs at the back of the third file."
"Find them proper seats, Spench," the cardinal told him. "We don't want to go to war with Sardinia. Or Slough, come to think of it."
They began to jostle down the crowded passageway.
"Items ninety-six to one hundred and three are ready to be dealt with in your suite," Spench told him.
Woolly's suite was thick with knots of waiting men and pipe smoke. Woolly took a minute or two to issue lists and back-stage medallions to Messrs Holbein, Bailey and Blake, the official portraitists of the occasion, who stood near the door next to a pile of easels, smelling of turps.
"Approved sketching only, gentlemen," Woolly cautioned them, "no cartoon opportunities, please. I don't want to see candid vignettes of pie-eyed nobility appearing in the broadsheets on Monday."
The artists nodded and collected up their clattering equipment.
"The players," intoned Spench, leading Woolly across to a second group, "Gaumont of the Swan, Flitch of the Rose, Huntingdon of the Mermaid, Trobridge of the Oh, and Baskerville of the Lord Chamberlain's Men."
The player-managers got hurriedly to their feet, from the chairs they had been lounging in, and ignited professionally competitive smiles of adoration. Except Huntingdon, who cast a nervous, involuntary glance of guilt at the un-stoppered decanter of brandy on the cardinal's desk, and hoped that his breath wouldn't give him away.
Woolly noted it all. It would have made him smile if he hadn't been in such a serious, businesslike mood. He noted the way they jostled for position to be in front, to smile broadest, to look relaxed and reliable, despite the sneaky elbow-prods and shoulder-barges each was giving the others. It might have been a mistake to try to involve all of the City's theatre companies in one blockbuster presentation. They were the most competitive, jealous bunch of people in London. Still, Woolly could well-remember the outrage and back-biting that had followed his choice of Chamberlain's Men to stage last year's entertainment alone. Anything was better than that, even this.
"Thank you for attending, gentlemen, I know you all must be busy with last-minute preparations," Woolly began, cordially. He knew there was nothing better than a good bit of simpering when it came to getting on the right side of thespians. The quintet launched into a chorus of "Don't mention it"s and "Not at all"s and "Heavens! Compared with the work you have on your shoulders, your Reverence?" Woolly acted up his best smile and allowed the hubbub to die away.