by James Philip
From the ship starting to move to her coming to rest, on her starboard side slowly sinking into the relatively shallow, muddy bay could not have taken more than thirty seconds. In that time over half the men onboard her – Polyphemus’s launching crew – some forty men and as many lining the slipways had been killed and perhaps two hundred others injured, many severely.
In less than a minute the cruiser’s stern had settled on the bottom, her bow and port side proud of the lapping waves.
From her vantage point in the stand behind the launching platform Victoria Watson had watched the tragedy play out with numb horror.
She had seen the King take his wife in his arms; yell at his bodyguards to: “Protect the Queen!”
And then the Royal couple had been hustled away.
Now she stared in stunned disbelief at the sinking wreck little more than four hundred yards away and knew that her life would never be the same again.
She was married to the man they would never forgive for having allowed this to happen.
It was cruel and unjust but it was the way of the World.
Her good life had just come to an end and right then it felt as if the sky was about to fall on her head.
She gasped as a sharp pain doubled her over.
Suddenly, the other wives were all around her.
“Vicky, are you all right?”
Chapter 15
Leppe Island, Montgomery County, New York
The spring floods had piled a stony beach at the northern end of the island and Abe, Kate, Tsiokwaris and his nephews had sat around an open fire eating the fish the boys had caught that afternoon and talking in low tones long into the evening. It was a special night for they all knew that tomorrow their worlds would begin to change forever.
‘Tomorrow is Empire Day. The White Man’s most holy day,’ Kate’s father had prognosticated sagely. ‘When better to begin to be invisible?’
Abe had mulled this over.
“You went very quiet, husband?” Kate asked as they picked their way back through the trees to their tent.
Other than his brother Alex, nobody knew where Abe was. The men with whom he shared lodgings in downtown Albany knew he was away until the middle of next week; they thought he had gone home to Long Island. There was no particular reason to leave for Canada now, or even in a year’s time; except that he had already lived too long in a country in which his soul and his mortal conscience would forever be unquiet.
“We can never have the life we want or deserve in this land,” he murmured, squeezing her hand. “Black Raven is right. We should go now. Not wait for another few days. We’ll only get frightened again and put it off.”
They had talked of leaving many times.
Planned for that day.
Even this time they might have lost their courage.
“Tomorrow we start our new life,” he said.
Once he was formally awarded his Diploma permitting him to practice medicine in the Colony of New York-Long Island he would be indentured to the Colonial Office for five years in payment of his tuition costs. He could be sent anywhere. In the event he obtained a post-graduate position his indentured service would simply be deferred, extended by another two years. Whereas, if he left now the Colony had no legal recourse, other than to add his name to the Colony’s ‘Draft List’ for service in the militia, and he sure as Hades was never going to go fight for the oil men trying to steal the black gold of West Texas from New Spain.
That was what the Border War had always been about.
Oil, and whatever gold and silver was buried in the mountains of California, not to mention the lumber of the forests of the Oregon Territory and the great natural port of Sammamish, New England’s one Pacific-facing city port. All those things had only ever mattered to the Colonies, not to the great men of Empire back in England - to whom Vancouver and the coasts of British Colombia was gateway enough to the Pacific - which was probably why the Border War with new Spain had never spread beyond the Americas.
If Abe was being cynical about it, the fact that the Colonies voluntarily maintained a large standing army to threaten the Spanish on their south western borders saved the exchequer in England untold millions of pounds ever year in garrisoning costs the British taxpayers probably did not want to pay.
Whatever…
He had no intention of becoming involved in that particular imperial game!
So, they would leave now.
“Good,” his wife whispered.
They shed their clothes in the warm darkness beneath the canvas and squirmed into each other’s arms. Kate giggled and reached down for him as she rolled onto her back.
“We don’t need to be careful anymore,” she sighed in a way that instantly trebled the blood supply to his already engorged member and incited his libido to spontaneously combust.
Careful was a thing they had always been apart from the first time they had coupled. That had been a frantic, needful thing when they had both been only fourteen which had scared the living daylights out of them when the red heat of the moment had passed. They had been very lucky. Thereafter they had been very, very careful; abstaining from penetrative intercourse other than at ultra-safe times of the month – Kate’s aunts were a font of sound advice on such things when she was younger – and Abe, for his part had tried his best to withdraw at the ‘right moment’ although sometimes he got carried away…
In the Crown Colony of New York-Long Island it was illegal to sell condoms to persons under the age of twenty-one; and several religious groups were actively lobbying to ban their sale altogether. So, getting hold of ‘French letters’ had always been problematic. The First Thirteen colonies stuck together on most things but none so righteously as the ‘contraception issue’ and ‘abortion’, meaning that there were an awful lot of illegitimate, unwanted children in orphanages up and down the East Coast.
From Abe’s medical training he knew that the ‘condom problem’ – that is, the restricted availability of the same, was one of the main causes of sexually transmitted diseases in the general population, second only to men either carrying, or suffering from STDs returning from ‘the border’ and from other service with the militia ‘out of colony’.
The trouble was the religious bigots always had the last say whenever anybody put a rational public health case before the Colonial Legislature supporting colony-wide limited ‘birth control’ and rational ‘public sexual health’ measures. It was ridiculous. Back in the old country they had had rigorous legislation in force for over a century mandating health checks on everybody entering the country, and basically, adopted a liberal approach to questions of population demography – a code word for birth control – and the right to life issue, in other words, regulating abortion not banning it outright. Overall public health in the old country was therefore, not unsurprisingly better than it was in new England with average life expectancy in England, if not in Wales and Scotland – being five to six years higher than in the East Coast Colonies.
Anyway, he and Kate had always tried to be very careful.
But they did not have to do that anymore.
She moaned softly as he sank into her.
They kissed, wetly, lazily.
She wrapped herself about him as he rose and fell on her; clung to him when he was spent, gloriously impregnating the woman he loved with every exquisite spasm.
Chapter 16
HMS Lion, Upper Bay, New York
The Governor of the Crown Colonies of the Commonwealth of New England, Edward Philip Cornwallis Sidney, 7th Viscount De L'Isle, who used his full title ‘The Lord De L'Isle, Dudley and Northampton’ in his annual appearances in the House of Lords to make his customary report on the year just completed in the Americas, was still attired in his full ceremonial regalia. Minus his plumed hat which he had thrown down on the table in the King’s stateroom shortly after his arrival onboard thirty minutes ago.
The King had politely detached himself from his travelling court –
about a dozen advisers, retainers and ladies in waiting who together formed the Royal couple’s peripatetic ‘kitchen cabinet’ – after having taken general soundings about how the day’s events impacted on tomorrow, and the coming weeks’ engagements.
Decisions needed to be taken.
“Bertie,” the Governor of New England appealed in exasperation, “this is absolute madness. Some bloody ‘patriot’ with a long sniper rifle took several pot shots at you while you were having your morning cigarette on the quarterdeck this morning,” he went on, pacing irascibly.
Fifty-nine-year old De L'Isle still cut a lean, albeit stiff figure of a man in his ceremonial finery; very much the former, athletic sportsman who had rowed victoriously for Oxford in the Boat Races of 1937 and 1938, and served with immense distinction in either three, or four – the King forgot the exact number, and knew his old friend probably had too – small wars with the Grenadier Guards before laying down his sabre and signing up with the Colonial Service.
“Eleanor, can’t you talk some sense into Bertie?”
De L'Isle was not only a life-long friend to the King and Queen, he was family also. He was a second cousin to the King and first cousin to the Queen, whom he had known since they were both very young children.
Eleanor’s parents had been horrified when Philip De L’Isle had married the younger daughter of a General, a mere ‘honourable’, out of ‘love, for goodness sake!’ They had had high hopes of a match between the gallant young cavalry officer who had inherited his father’s ancient titles at the impossibly young age of twenty-two while still unmarried, and Eleanor’s older sister, Antoinette.
De L’Isle’s wife, Elizabeth, by whom he had sired a brood of four sons and two daughters – of whom all bar Henrietta, the baby of the family, were now dispersed across the length and breadth of the Empire, true sons and daughters of Albion - was greatly troubled with arthritis these days and rarely ventured far from Government House in Philadelphia.
Henrietta, the unfairly regarded as the plainest and rightly judged the brightest of the De L’Isle siblings – in Eleanor’s opinion – had largely assumed her mother’s role as hostess for official functions and often accompanied her father on his travels acting officially as his personal secretary, and unofficially, as his ‘fixer’.
Back in Government House in Philadelphia, where Henrietta worked on the staff of Sir Henry Rawlinson, the Governor’s Chief of Staff, De L’Isle’s daughter was often referred to as her father’s ‘road manager’…
The Queen realised she had been wool-gathering.
She met the Governor of New England’s eye.
“Seriously, Philip?” She retorted, softening the question by quirking a wan half-smile. Although she was determined to hide it she was still more than a little bit shaken by the events of the afternoon. Like her husband she felt awful about being spirited away when so many people were injured.
The Governor shook his head and sat down.
King George groaned. It had already been a long day and it was not over yet!
There was a knock at the bulkhead door.
“Lady Henrietta has arrived aboard, Your Majesty,” an immaculately uniformed Lieutenant reported bowing.
The King shook his head.
Bloody precedence and protocol!
“Wheel her in directly please.”
Eleanor was proud of her husband’s life-long implacable disinclination to vent his impatience upon a subordinate. His father had been a positive tartar and everybody around him had felt like they were walking on thin ice, or sometimes barefoot on broken glass.
Everybody got to their feet when the Governor’s twenty-three-year-old youngest daughter made her entrance.
Henrietta De L’Isle halted briefly and bowed respectfully to the King.
“Your Majesty,” she murmured, and: “Ma’am,” to Eleanor before hands were being held and pecking kisses on cheeks exchanged. From earliest girlhood the newcomer had only known the King and Queen as her parents’ close friends and even now it was very hard for her to think of King George and Queen Eleanor as anything other than Uncle Bertie and Aunt Ellie. The King and Queen both still entertained hopes that their third son, twenty-five-year old James – Prince James, Duke of Cumberland – would do the sensible thing and propose to Henrietta. Problematically, he was having such fun pursuing his career in the Army, with the Blues and Royals, that it was probably far too optimistic to expect him to settle down just yet. And besides, Henrietta had a full-time job in New England at the moment.
“Every time I see you,” Eleanor beamed, “you remind me more and more of your dear mother when she was your age, my dear.”
“Thank you, Ma’am.”
“Your Uncle and Aunt won’t hear of cancelling any of tomorrow’s engagements, Hen,” the young woman’s father complained.
“I’ve had Colonel Harrison of the CSS bending my ear again,” Henrietta reported, her tone indicating she was a little dubious about what she had been told. “He says he has evidence of a conspiracy organised by a group called the Sons of Liberty to mount a series of what he calls ‘outrages’ tomorrow. I asked him if he knew all this why he hadn’t done something about it already? He went red in the face and started treating me like a naughty schoolgirl after that.” She smiled tight-lipped and glanced to her father. “Sorry about that, Daddy; he’ll probably be writing another letter of complaint to you…”
The Governor of New England rolled his eyes.
“The blasted man ought to go through channels like everybody else. These bloody Security Service people cry wolf so often you can’t take a thing they say at face value!”
The King was thoughtful.
“Somebody sabotaged the launch of the Polyphemus today, Philip,” he remarked sombrely.
A steward entered and began dispensing pre-dinner sherries.
“We didn’t know if you were going to be able to join us for dinner, my dear,” Eleanor apologised to Henrietta De L’Isle.
The young woman pulled a face, blushed. She tended to make a point of dressing ‘as the people dressed’ because it gave her a certain anonymity within her father’s entourage that enable her to get things done and to ‘not be so intimidating’. She was therefore, wearing a stylish but plain blue day dress and her hair was tumbling unrestrained on her shoulders.
“I’m not dressed for…”
“Tom Packenham,” the King assured her, “will understand. After today we won’t be standing on ceremony at dinner. More to the point your Aunt and I would much rather catch up on your news over dinner than endlessly rehash ‘official’ business with your misery guts father!”
The Governor chuckled and put his arm around his daughter’s shoulders.
“I think that constitutes a royal command, Hen.”
In the event it was just Rear Admiral Packenham, his Flag Lieutenant and the four of them in the Squadron Commander’s stateroom for dinner.
“We will change tomorrow’s schedule,” the King decided. That afternoon and evening’s engagements had been cancelled pending a reassessment of the security situation. However, tomorrow was Empire Day and he was the bloody King Emperor and nobody was going to tell him what to do in his Empire!
He looked to De L’Isle.
“I want to visit the injured in hospital. Can that be accommodated without completely messing up everything else, Philip?”
The Governor of New England thought about this for some moments before turning to his daughter.
The main Empire Day events centred around the Fleet Review and a late afternoon parade at Battery Field. If the weather permitted there was to be a grand reception to be held on the quarterdeck of the Lion for as many as a thousand colonial civil servants and worthies in the evening.
“Most of the injured will have been taken to Queen Mary’s Hospital in Brooklyn,” Henrietta explained, her brow furrowing, “or to the new Army and Navy Hospital at Flatbush. That’s the more modern of the two, I think that’s where the most serio
usly hurt will have been taken. Security wouldn’t be such a headache there, either. Daddy’s Staff will already be finalising things for tomorrow, if we want to do this we need to get working on it now, sir,” she put to the King. “The easiest thing would be to arrange an early morning visit. Literally, at the crack of dawn. Assuming the visit was over and done with by about ten in the morning the rest of the day’s events could kick off as planned at eleven o’clock, sir,” she reported to the King, her manner that of a practical, very respectful staffer-courtier rather than a favourite honorary niece.
“Philip?” The King asked, looking to his old friend.
The Governor of New England had accepted that his recommendation to drastically cut back, or better still, cancel the Empire Day celebrations had been rejected. Now, it was his job, not to mention the small matter of his duty, simply to ‘get on with it’.
“If satisfactory arrangements can be made I have no objection, sir.”
“That’s settled then. The Queen and I shall visit the Royal Military Hospital at Flatbush first thing in the morning before the Fleet Review,” the King declared.
ACT II – EMPIRE DAY
Sunday 4th July 1976
Chapter 17
Brooklyn Admiralty Dockyard, Wallabout Bay, King’s County
The Colonel had been sitting in John Watson’s office when he got back from St Mary’s Hospital at one o’clock that morning. Nobody really knew if Matthew Harrison of the Colonial Security Service was actually a colonel, or even how rank structure of the CSS was organised. Everything about the CSS was smoke and mirrors, myths, rumours, legends. The only thing an honest citizen really needed to know about the CSS was that he, or she, never wanted to have anything to do with it.
By then John Watson was so far beyond the end of this tether that not even finding the most secretive man in New England chain-smoking in his office gave him additional pause for thought.