by Mark Helprin
“Then how do you know?”
“Believe me, I know.”
“How?”
“I just know.”
“It’s a legend, perhaps. Did you make it up?”
“I did not make it up. It is no legend. It is the literal truth.”
“Mr Neil,” Freddy asked, thinking that perhaps the tide had begun to turn, “were you there? Did you see all this, thousands of years ago?”
“Look,” said Apehand, in a way that made Freddy think he was coming to help, “I just want to know what this is all about. What’s going on?”
“You, peasant,” cried Mr Neil, “with nose- and ear-hair like little straw brooms; you, porcine, flatulent, and pale; you, from a bog house with no candle; you shut up! What would you know about kings?”
“That’s just the point,” Apehand told him. “We’re surrounded here by kings, royals, and nobility, living and dead. Even though you’re obviously from some asylum, even you have that air. Pimcot is a distant cousin to the queen. I’m the only one here who’s not in on this, I’m the only sane one, and, I say, what the hell’s going on? I came here for a meeting to discuss him,” he said, pointing at the heir to the throne. “It’s all very nice and all about Baby Gershwin. Lovely. But let’s get down to business.”
Once again, Freddy was checked by the flow of things.
“You are correct, Mr Apehand,” the queen averred.
“Thank you, Your Majesty.”
“The subject,” she continued, “is Freddy . . . and Fredericka.”
“Me?” Fredericka blurted out. “What did I do?”
“This all began after Freddy married you.”
“It did not. What about when he ran through Chelsea wrapped in toilet paper?”
“I was trapped in a boudoir and had to escape without my clothes.”
“It had nothing to do with me,” Fredericka stated in triumph. “And, if you recall,” she told Freddy, “before our marriage you called Konrad Adenauer ‘a Blackpool drag queen before the age of cosmetic surgery,’ and then you had the nerve to stay in his hotels.”
“Those were the indiscretions of youth,” Paul said. “Now you are man and wife. Mr Neil, are you aware of the situation in which the Prince and Princess of Wales find themselves?”
“I’ve got the gist of it from the Italian papers. Have you ever read an Italian newspaper? I imagine it’s like being on drugs.”
“What shall we do?”
“Just like that?” Freddy asked. “You’ll put my fate in the hands of a lunatic, without even a minute’s discussion?”
“He knows what to do, Freddy. You must listen to him.”
“When they don’t listen to me,” Mr Neil said, “they go the way of Chuck the Second and George the Fourth.” He shook his head. “And worse: Elfredge, the idle king killed and stuffed by Hollanders; Vastain, the sumptuary king mistaken for a hog and butchered in his own palace yard; King Bullfinch, enamoured of. . . .”
“King Bullfinch?” Freddy asked. “Who was King Bullfinch? That’s not a pre-Arthurian name, or are you translating?”
“Not translating,” said Mr Neil. “King Bullfinch is a future king.”
“A future king?”
“Rex futurus.”
“Who will not follow your advice.”
“Correct.”
“How do you know?” Freddy asked.
“Frederick,” Mr Neil said, closing his eyes and then opening them, again and again, “you have much to learn about time, something of which you know almost nothing. You probably believe in the primitive concepts that allow frightened men to hallucinate a passage through time’s dangerous swirl. Your weakness compels you to imagine that it is a river, that it flows always forward and always straight. But it isn’t, and it doesn’t.”
“Really.” Freddy was stony.
“Really.”
“What is it then, Mr Neil?”
“It’s a storm, the most magnificent storm man has ever seen, a vast explosion of wind and waves—tresses, tori, whirlpools, crowns, spindles, pillars, falls, flumes, and foam. And yet, it is as still as a planet of absolutely clear ice. When you have reconciled these contradictory states, you will understand not only time but many other things as well. And, if you are lucky, what happened to the Thane of Rumpelstiltskin will not happen to you.”
“The Thane of Rumpelstiltskin?” Freddy asked, his voice dripping with contempt, his mouth curled like that of a pirate in the cinema. “Couldn’t you make up a better name than that?”
“I suppose so, but that was his name.”
“And where was he from, this Thane of Rumpelstiltskin?”
“I believe he was from Dorking.”
Freddy stared at the cool planes of stained glass that stood vertically to the light. Where they were blue, they were as blue as a cold and sunlit sea. Where they were red, they were as red as a tropical fruit. Where they were yellow and gold, they were like the harvest ground in a medieval miniature. All this was his, and always had been. To keep his tranquil life, he might have to suffer some sort of penance, but it would be worthwhile. Given what he had done, what could be asked of him? Were Mr Neil reasonable, as he might prove to be, the punishment for looking foolish on occasion when Fredericka had trapped him into it would have to be of a minor sort—turning in his Aston-Martin, a ten-percent reduction in his revenues from the Duchy, more charity work?
“What do you recommend, Mr Neil, as my penance?” Freddy asked almost impatiently.
“You think it will be a tap on the wrist,” said Mr Neil. “I know what you think.”
“I have no idea.”
“You think that, as formerly a knight who was unchaste was disallowed the use of his riding animal . . .”
“You mean horse?”
Mr Neil ignored him. “ . . . you will be disallowed use of a road engine, and that will be all.”
“They’re called motor cars.”
“Do not presume to instruct me in a language that you know only in its gutted, burnt-out, non-musical, desiccated remains. You idiot, you don’t even know what you have done.”
“What have I done?”
“You have betrayed your God, your country, your family, and your dignity.”
“I beg your pardon. How have I done that?”
“In being an ass. You are supposed to be a king, not an ass. Kings may not go through Chelsea wrapped in toilet paper. They may not run about Buckingham Palace in tar and feathers. They may not appear day by day in ungainly compromised situations, with horns atop their heads, in foolish costumes, speaking nonsense, falling over, laughing at hospital patients.”
“I can explain all that,” Freddy said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Mr Neil told him. “Your explanations are irrelevant and demeaning. A king is not a hapless idiot. He does not allow such things to occur. He does not allow himself to be the subject of misinterpretation or the butt of jokes.”
“Shall I have killed Psnake and Didgeridoo?”
“It would have been the honourable thing.”
“And all over for me. I would have been confined for the rest of my life to the royal cell at Froghampton.”
“It would have been over for you, perhaps, but better for the kings who followed. What is important is not you but what you represent.”
“I have told him that, Mr Neil,” the queen said firmly, “but on no account shall he kill either Psnake or Didgeridoo. I forbid it.”
“Of course, Your Majesty. He must do more than simply kill two old scribes.”
The queen nodded gravely. Freddy was alarmed.
“He must conquer! Like a real king, a king ex nihilo, someone who, though not born to royalty, puts his hands into the hurricane of time and shapes the rushing winds into a crown.”
“Mr Neil,” Freddy said earnestly, “I was born for that. All my life I have yearned for a moment such as my grand-uncle had in North Africa during the war. He stood on a verandah overlooking a beach where thousands of
troops were bathing in the surf. Recognising him, they ran forward like the tide, until he was surrounded, as they would soon surround the Afrika Korps. He did not know what to say. Nor did they, but they were fighting in his name, as of old. Because life and death contended through their days, they lived so intensely that in this desert they were as royal as he. In the silence, a lone voice began ‘God Save the King,’ which was then taken up by thousands, many of whom were soon to die. He understood at that moment, as the sun bore down and the waves crashed against the strand, the sacrificial glory of kingship, and so did they. That is the kind of moment I seek, and the kind of king I wish to be.
“I was born for such a thing, Mr Neil, but this fortunate time is hardly kind to kings. George the Second was the last British king to lead an army into battle, a quarter of a millennium ago. I wish I had been born into another age, but I will know only this one, misconstructed as it is in so many ways. My test is to hold myself back and learn the strange and dishonourable contentment that now we call success.
“For the monarchy is like an old mountain range, once sharp, high, and glittering with snow, and now worn smooth, now comfortable and quiet. Such evolution may be right and proper, but it does not match my temperament, and it is my temperament in these times that often leads me to be taken for a madman or a fool. Times that are bright and dangerous have come before, and they will come again, but I am destined to be king throughout a long and placid afternoon.”
“No, you are not destined to be king,” said Paul, “no longer. The succession is on hold: you will have to earn it.”
“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” said Freddy. “It’s impossible.”
“Sorry,” said Mr Neil, “it’s possible. Shall we break for lunch?”
“Just a moment,” Freddy commanded, rather tensely. “I don’t want to break for lunch. I’ve just been informed that the order of succession is on hold.” His voice was rising. “To hell with lunch.”
“You, young man!” Mr Neil shouted, gaining, it seemed, several octaves in depth and a foot in height. His eyes narrowed in anger. “You will eat lunch, and you will be gracious, and you will shut up. Shut up. Is that clear? Discipline. If you cannot summon the discipline to do such a small thing, then how will you conquer lands?”
“All right,” said Freddy, roping himself in like a man who, as he is burnt, is silent. “I shall say not a word during lunch, and will retain my composure. After you, Mr Neil.”
A lunch had been laid out in the narthex of the chapel. How it got there no one knew except perhaps Mr Neil, but neither Swinebert, Borlock, nor Chuffy the bastard of Sir Gavin de Mildrep was in evidence. In fact, no one was in evidence. A first-class table was set with fine china, silver, and crystal. Venison broth, Freddy’s favourite if made by Mrs MacGregor at Balmoral, as he assumed this was (it tended to follow him around England), steamed as alluringly as tea from a sunny orange cup, a sprig of cress floating almost unwilted upon its hot surface. On a plate near each individual tureen of soup were several thick slices of bread of a heavy, golden, continental type, its origins unclear. Then a perfect salad, a vin ordinaire as good as the finest claret, mineral water from Sweden, and the entrées—two Scottish smoked salmons with capers, dill, and three kinds of sauce; seared tenderloins of wild boar on wild rice; and an Italian pasta that Apehand regarded as if it were the Holy Grail. A dessert table held a large white teapot suspended above blue flame, many gold-rimmed cups of chocolate mousse, a plate of half a dozen cheeses, various fruits, lime biscuits, chocolate-covered cherries from Belgium, and some freshly baked rolls, as if whoever was responsible knew that Freddy would not eat sweets without plain bread.
He would eat silently and go through the entire meal before he learned of the changes in succession, because he was a soldier and could submit to discipline.
“What are you doing, Freddy?” Mr Neil asked incredulously.
“I’m sitting down at table, Mr Neil, for lunch, as you bade me.”
“Not you,” Mr Neil said. “Not you, or her,” indicating Fredericka. “As the rest of us eat, the both of you will stand over there in that patch of light.”
“Then why is the table set for seven?” Fredericka asked crossly, as Freddy led her to a patch of light shining upon the cold floor.
“Fredericka, pay it no mind,” Freddy told her. “Stand with me and show what you are made of.”
“But I’m hungry.”
“Fredericka.”
“Are we supposed to stand here like servants and watch them eat?”
“Get used to it,” barked Mr Neil.
The queen found this rather funny, and laughed as she spooned up her soup. And Paul said, seemingly to everyone, “It’s about time, you fat thing.”
“YOU SEE,” began Mr Neil, as those who were to eat eagerly awaited their lunch, “I know more about you than you think.”
“Who?” asked Apehand.
“Freddy, and everyone else, too, but now I’m addressing Freddy.”
“Then why don’t you look at him?” Pimcot asked.
“I don’t have to look at him: I can see him through the collarbone of time. There. There he is,” Mr Neil said, pointing at the tablecloth beneath a vase of yellow roses. “Freddy, you need not assume from my question that I disapprove of what you did, but why did you jump in mud puddles at construction sites?”
“You did what?” asked the queen.
“On one occasion, Maman”—he addressed her in French only when under great stress or delirious with fever—“I did swim in the foetid sink that forms when a large building begins to take shape and the rains are heavier than normal.”
“Why on earth did you do that?”
“Another officer and I were on a twenty-mile run in a pouring November rain. It was quite cold and we were soaked through to the skin, and yet our rushing blood and the heat of exertion made us perfectly warm, so we decided to take a swim. I like to swim in my clothes. And I like to swim in natural waters.”
“In a construction pit?”
“The mud was welcoming, as in Africa.”
“Bloody good that Psnake doesn’t have pictures,” Paul declared. “ ‘Prince of Wales Cavorts in London Mud Puddle.’ ”
“But he does,” Pimcot announced. “He has those pictures, and any others he might need.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying,” said Mr Neil. “It’s gone too far, and we’ve got to bring it back. That’s why you called me.”
“How?” asked Pimcot.
“When this kind of thing happens, the king or heir is banished from the kingdom and sent to conquer savage lands. That’s why England has an empire. Historians have it all wrong, because it’s a secret, as it must be, or the people would lose confidence. The Voyages of Discovery, the Conquests, all that remarkable stuff, were driven by royal decay.”
“They were?” asked Pimcot.
“Yes. The greatest and most courageous navigators, merchants, and generals, the spearheads into the darkness of the unknown, were all well disguised marginicidal kings.”
“What is the meaning of marginicidal?” Pimcot asked.
“Dehiscent by the disjunction of the united margins of the carpels,” Fredericka said, stunning everyone in the room.
“That’s right,” said Mr Neil. “How did you know that, Princess?”
“I read it in one of Freddy’s botany books, a long time ago, when we were driving up to Baldershot and he threw my copy of She out the window.”
“That book is a thousand pages long,” said Freddy.
“I thought it was very interesting,” she said. “Plants are cute.”
“Be that as it may,” Mr Neil continued, “your grand-uncle who abdicated, Freddy, was a marginicidal king who was sent to conquer, and failed.”
Freddy did not answer. He was not allowed to.
“King Tatwin the Seventh, for example, was dispatched to the summit of Cairngorm to smite the Dragon of Penrith, who had fled when fire was brought to England by the
sweet young girl who was the grand-daughter of what’s his name. What’s his name? You know, he was very unpleasant and he never paid back the money he owed you. Terrible cook, always burnt everything. Ah! Prometheus, that’s it.”
“King who?” Paul asked.
“Tatwin the Seventh.”
“I’ve never heard of him, have you, dear?” the queen asked Paul.
“No. Are you sure of such a person?” Paul asked Mr Neil in turn.
Standing still on his square of floor, from which the sun had almost entirely disappeared, Freddy had a look of vibrant disgust.
“Yes,” said Mr Neil, seemingly unsure and perhaps a touch senescent. “Was it Tatwin the Sixth? Let’s see. Tatwin the First was, well, you know. Ah, Tatwin the Second, yes, and the Third,” he mumbled. They couldn’t really hear what he was saying. It sounded like the noise that emanates from a beehive after an early August rainstorm.
“Right,” he said, getting back his energy in the way that a machine with a loose electrical wire will fade and then forge ahead. “Tatwin the Seventh was the bad one. Unspeakable. It was he who was sent, naked, as is the custom, to Cairngorm.”
Freddy silently repeated the word naked.
“And he,” Mr Neil continued in a hysterical sing-song, “and he . . . he . . . he was the one who was supposed to smite the Dragon of Penrith.”
“What happened?” Apehand asked. “Did he smite the dragon?”
“No,” said Mr Neil, wagging his finger, “the dragon smote him. And then ate him. Hence, no Tatwin the Eighth.”
Freddy was mumbling to himself. “Shut up, Freddy,” his father said almost reflexively.
“Why have we never heard of the Tatwins?” the queen asked.
“Oh,” said Mr Neil, hands fluttering like pigeons trying to fly from a closed coop, “in history are many gaps in time, bloodlines, chronologies, ladders, steps, and trees. Oxbows, as it were. They get fistulated. Besides, the Tatwins weren’t worth the candle. History lacks nothing in their omission.”
Freddy whispered to Fredericka, “I’m rather worried.”
“I should say,” Fredericka whispered back, “but you needn’t be. Whatever you have to do, I’ll send you things to make it easier, and I’ll be waiting when you get back.”