by Gwynn White
Oswald waggled a hand back and forth. “Either Duncan Stuart—seen as being a strong leader, a useful quality if the sanctity crisis leads to war—or …” Oswald pointed at Piers.
Guy didn’t understand for a moment. When he did, his heart leapt. “Then he has to call Parliament!”
“But he won’t,” Piers said flatly. “He wants more money, doesn’t he? Our offer wasn’t good enough. How much, damn it?”
Oswald shook his head. “It isn’t money he wants. It’s his father’s sword. You don’t happen to know where it is, do you?”
“Of course I don’t. It’s a myth.”
Oswald sighed.
“I’m going,” Guy said. The suggestion—from Oswild Day, of all people—that Piers might be the next king had galvanized him. Of course that was the reason Tristan wouldn’t let Piers go. He probably planned to keep him here until he died of lung-rot.
So Guy would simply have to make the king let him go.
He barged out.
The upper windows of the keep trapped the last rays of the winter sun. The bailey lay in shadow. From the chapel came the murky hooting of the organ’s lowest registers. Guy edged inside, into dimness.
The chapel was packed. Jewelry caught the candlelight. Harmonies poured out of the organ. The standing-room crowd at the back blocked Guy’s view.
“Mind out.” It was Malcolm Stuart, a childhood friend he hadn’t seen in ages.
“Malcolm! How are you?” Guy whispered.
In the gloom, Malcolm’s unsmiling face looked hard, older. “I shouldn’t have thought you’d be here.”
“It’s the Bastard of Sauvage,” someone else rasped behind him.
Guy spun. “You do me honor, sir. I’d liefer be the Bastard of Sauvage than the trueborn son of any other House in the country.” He was looking into the amused face of Alec Northumberland, the legendary one-armed ROCK officer. The Coenobites were out in force, and not only the highborn component. A squat, short-haired knight pushed up to Guy, close enough that Guy could smell his rancid breath. “Who let the peasantry in?” Guy enquired faux-innocently.
“Harry Wessex was my fucking brother-in-arms,” the knight said. “And you’ve got a nerve on you, showing your face in here. Come to gloat?”
For the first time, it came home to Guy that some people really thought Piers had killed Harry. They believed the king’s lie. The realization dismayed him so much that he could not think of another repartee. He elbowed them aside, hurried up the aisle, and squeezed into the first row, acutely conscious of the whispers spreading behind him. Madelaine Wessex made room for him beside her. They’d been close as children and teenagers. Maybe she was on his side.
The king was in the middle of the row, separated from Guy by a row of Kent cousins, with Oswald on his far side.
Guy stole a quick glance back to see how many other enemies he might have here. Speak of the devil, there was Miles Kerry. Ordinarily detestable, the sight of Vile Miles triggered a powerful yearning for what Guy still thought of as his real life. He used to eat, breathe, and sleep tourney, even during the off-season. Now it had been months since he even set foot in the training yard.
God, he longed to face a worthy adversary again, with his lance couched and his destrier poised under him like a bomb, on that sliver of mud between the crowd and the blue sky where reputations were forged and broken. He felt lopsided without a sword on his hip, off-balance.
The rood door in the east end of the chapel slid open. A deacon processed in swinging a censer, followed by the bishop of London, a beaten-down little man whose vestments were the only grand thing about him. Altar boys followed, bearing the ends of the chains that vested the bishop’s upper body in an X.
Madelaine poked him. “You’re sitting on my sleeve,” she hissed.
“Sorry.”
The choir chanted the polyphonic start of the Mass. Madelaine hugged herself, her teeth chattering audibly.
When they were teenagers, Guy used to take Madelaine to tourneys and house-parties on the back of his motorbike. He had seen it as his cousinly duty to help her sneak out and have fun. In hindsight, he felt a bit ashamed of himself: those tourneys had been no place for a young girl. You’d end up off your face on lager and peppies, galloping across country, or zooming down the lanes, shooting at each others’ tyres. Or flying out towards the dawn on the Wide Sea, your dragon’s wingtips clipping the waves. Next thing you’d wake up on the floor of some draughty country church wondering how you got there. One memorable weekend, Guy had managed to break his back three times in forty-eight hours.
Guy hadn’t seen so much of Madelaine since she became a wife and mother, but that hadn’t stopped her from partying, apparently. No tabloid was complete without a candid shot of her stumbling out of a members-only nightclub or a Soho flat belonging to some artist. Gossips linked her with Jon Merryweather, a scribbler of mystical pamphlets who was known for his wild parties. But she didn’t look as if her lifestyle was making her very happy. In fact she looked sick.
They rose to their feet for the Rivelling. “Now his chains are broken,” the bishop intoned. “Now he has gone in peace, and left us the gift of himself.”
“Guy,” Madelaine whispered. “You haven’t got such a thing as a peppie on you, have you?”
Guy pretended not to hear.
“Guy, please… I’m afraid I’m going to be sick.”
“I don’t. Have. Anything. Maddie, we’re in church.”
The congregation sat down. The bishop delivered a homily padded with flowery encomiums to House Wessex. He was in Tristan’s pocket, of course. And this was the institution Piers planned to entrust his life to? No, Guy thought. My way is better.
The Laudation surged from the organ. The altar servers lifted the candles from their holders and raised them high. The bishop stepped up to Harry’s niche, leaned over the rail, and whipped the shroud off the prince’s …
… relics?
The congregation let out a collective mutter of shock. What stood in the niche was no feretory casket. A child-sized lump of coal, propped on its pedestal by brass rods, it had shapeless stubs for limbs. It looked like a giant cockroach half-melted by a flamethrower … except for the blackened human skull that had been reattached to its neck and fitted with staring blue glass eyes.
They had recovered his body … and plastinated it.
Saints alive, that’s disgusting!
“Sanctify the mortal remains of Harry Wessex, Lord, and make them for us a fount of goodly miracles,” intoned the bishop, obviously as shocked as everyone else, but clinging to the familiar routine of enshrinement.
Tristan rose, made his way out of the pew, and went forward. He faced the congregation. “A few words in memory of my son,” he began.
It was an unconventional addition to the service, but with the unveiling of that thing, convention had been laid aside, anyway. As Guy sat listening, he got angrier and angrier. Every word in praise of Harry the pure, Harry the brave, Harry the chivalrous, felt as if it were aimed straight at him. He felt like the accused, standing in for Piers, sitting in the dock.
So this is what passes for a trial here! He daren't call Parliament and so he uses this holy place to speak against us!
“And so I say to you: no more dead heroes,” Tristan perorated. “Ladies and knights, men and women and children, we are a great nation. Forty years ago, we stood alone against the might of Russia. The times have changed but our mission remains the same. Now it is the sanctity crisis that threatens civilization, and again Britain is called to stand as champion of all that is best in the world. The destiny of such a nation can only be death—or peace.”
Guy rose. He climbed over the rail and swaggered up to the king. “Peace at what cost, Uncle?”
“Up to you,” Tristan said, changing his diction but not lowering his voice. “Cowards live. Heroes die. Which would you rather be?”
The trap yawned before him. He heard laughter at the back of the chapel.
/> “How durst thou insult me, a true knight of Britain!” he exploded. Falling back on tourney argot, he immediately felt more confident. This he could do; this he had done a hundred times. The bloodthirsty bombast of the pre-tourney boast protected him like armor. “I’ll reward thee for this slight to mine honor. I’ll offer thanks to the saints of my House for encompassing thy fate in mine hands!” Instinctively, he turned to face the crowd. Always it was them you were really challenging, them you were really defying to do their worst. “Great Britain! Hearken! He says we are a nation of heroes. He’s right, and I’ll prove it on his carcass!”
He actually reached for the sword that should have been at his side. He had completely forgotten whom he was talking to.
“You arrogant little sod,” the king said. “It’s treason to threaten your liege lord. I could send you to the dungeon to join your brother.”
Guy's mouth went dry. “You forget, Uncle. You aren’t my liege lord. I have sworn fealty to no one. I am no one. I’m illegitimate.”
He reached into the pocket of his overcoat, found his old leather driving gloves, and flung one of them at Tristan's feet. It landed with a flop audible throughout the completely silent chapel.
“Well, well,” the king said softly. “A challenge. Oh my nephew, my liberty, what wilt thee?”
“A trial by combat,” Guy ground out.
Madelaine stood up. “Take it back!” she shrieked. “Take it back, Guy! He’ll kill you!”
Those words, of course, made it impossible for Guy to take it back, even if he had wanted to. He sneered, “Name thy weapon, name the place, and there I shall bury thee.”
Oswald stood up in the Wessex pew. “I’ll champion the king.” His eyes blamed Guy for forcing the issue. Guy didn’t care. I can beat Oswald, he thought, and: Piers is going to go ballistic.
“Oh no,” Tristan said. “Oswald, I can’t spare you, I’m afraid.” He peered into the congregation. “I need a true knight, a valiant knight. Is that Miles Kerry I see back there?”
“Uncle mine, would you insult me again?” Guy laughed loudly.
There was a disturbance at the back of the chapel where the ROCK knights were standing. “Sire!”
A knight broke free of his brothers’ restraining hands and charged up the aisle. He sank to one knee in front of Tristan.
“My blade is thine, Sire. As ever. I offer myself as thy champion, that Harry’s death shall be avenged upon the bodies of this miscreant—” he glared at Guy— “and his traitorous half-brother, who falsely call themselves thy leal knights!”
“Well,” Tristan said. His eyes danced. “I don’t see why not.”
“My life is thine, Sire.” Brant Yates-Briggs got up, breathing heavily.
Guy forced himself to go through the motions of bowing and shaking hands with Yates-Briggs. The ROCK knight has a fearsome reputation as a warrior. He suddenly felt a lot less confident than he had a few minutes ago.
Oswald vaulted over the rail. “No,” he said. “Don’t do this, Yates-Briggs. I’m begging—I’m ordering you.”
“I was there beside Harry when he died. I have to … atone.”
“Trials by combat go to the death.” Oswald shot a desperate glance at Guy. “You’re not dispensable.”
“No,” Yates-Briggs said. “I’m a better knight than he is.”
“All thou’lt best me at is dying,” Guy said, mechanically.
16
Vivienne
The Next Morning. October 18th, 1979
Vivienne had not been to bed. She stood on the verandah of Sixpoints as Guy swooped his sports car, scarcely under control, up to the front steps. He got out and hauled a woozy figure out of the back seat.
She flew down the steps and crushed Piers in her arms, grieving at the thinness of him, the prisoner-paleness. He smelt unwashed. “Tristan has not accorded you the treatment worthy of your station,” she said. “I’ll never forgive him.” She felt Piers’s forehead. “You’re feverish. Come, lie down. I’ll have your father’s relics fetched.”
“No. We need to talk. There are arrangements to be made. Is Uncle Francis here? The lawyers?”
Her crisis management team were already assembled in the ground-floor conference room. During the night, there had been an attempted burglary. The burglars had not been caught, but the incident heightened the tension.
Vivienne ordered breakfast. The morning sunlight reflected off the waxed surface of the conference table. Piers sat down at the foot of the table, in the COO’s seat that had been vacant for so many weeks— “I’m back,” he said. “But not for long. I have given my word to surrender my person to the Crown again before the trial. In the meantime, we must warproof the corporation. Is there any coffee?”
All the lawyers jumped up to fetch it for him.
“Thanks,” Piers said, shovelling sugar into his cup. “I’d like you to prepare the paperwork for Ran to sue me for all our entailed assets, and sound out the Dublin courts about getting favorable judgments to go into effect in the event that Guy loses.”
Francis Sauvage, Vivienne’s younger brother, leaned forward. His braids swung, the gold sheaths on their ends clinking, reminding everyone that he held multiple maester’s degrees. “That risk can be minimized.”
“What?” Guy demanded. “You don’t think I can defeat Brant Yates-Briggs?”
“Shut up and go away,” said almost everyone in the room. Guy went, swiping several breakfast pastries off the sideboard on his way out.
“I am not without resources.” Francis resumed. “We need not entrust your life to fate, dear nephew.”
Vivienne opened her mouth to rebuke her brother, but Piers beat her to it. “Fate? I trust, rather, in divine justice.” He blew his fringe off his forehead. “I know what you’re suggesting,” he admitted. “It’s tempting. But this must be a clean trial, or we lose the moral high ground, and become what they accuse us of.”
Vivienne smiled. She had groomed Piers to follow in her footsteps, seen to it that he learned financial trickery and corporate strategy ... but moral rectitude couldn’t be taught.
He is better than either of us, Wills. If only you were alive to see him.
But of course, if William was still alive, this would not be happening at all.
Three Hours Later
She called a break and left the conference room. Piers followed her through the house to the weapons room. Quizzically, he watched her unlock the sword cabinet. “Getting ready to kill all the lawyers, Mother? I admit I feel like it.”
“They’re merely trying to make the best of a bloody situation. I could kill Guy.”
She slid out the first rack of gleaming swords. There was the smell of oil and old sweat, and, she thought, old blood.
Piers yawned hugely. “Oh, Mother? If we all live through this, I am marrying Hanna.”
“The daughter of an Irish knight with known IRA sympathies? Over my dead body, darling.”
“Mother. Hanna isn’t political. Some people simply want to live, you know, to love and be loved.”
It took all her strength to slide the second rack out on its rails. It was double-sided, holding two rows of swords arranged by length and secured in place by metal cuffs. The back row had a gap in it, between the hand-and-a-halfer she herself had used in the days when she practised swordplay, and a misericorde with a diamond-studded pommel that Guy had won in some German tourney. She turned to face Piers. “You think I am a political animal, as hardhearted as any terrorist, a woman who would jeopardize her eldest son’s life to make a point.”
Unsmiling, he said, “Aren’t you?”
“Perhaps. But believe this: if I could have given Tristan what he wants, I would have.”
Piers hesitated. “According to Oswald, he wants the Worldcracker.”
“I know that.” She tapped the gap in the row of swords. “This is where it used to hang. The best hiding-places are in plain sight, so my father told me. And the Worldcracker is—was—a very undistinguishe
d-looking sword.”
Piers’s eyes went comically round with shock. “You mean it’s real?”
“How quickly people forget! Yes, it is real. And here it hung until 1972, as near as I know. I found it missing shortly after your father died.”
“But you don’t know precisely when it vanished, or who—”
“Took it? Would that I did.”
She pushed the heavy sword racks back into the cabinet. Piers made no move to help her. He leaned against the door, stunned. “Have you told Tristan …”
“That I do not have it? Yes. Again and again. He does not believe me, of course.”
Piers rubbed his face with both hands. “Then there’s only one thing for it.”
Vivienne nodded. “Guy,” she said quietly, “must win.”
17
Val
Five Days Later. October 22nd, 1979. Hamburg, Germany
Val flew into Berlin International Airport, collected his car from long-term parking, and drove a hundred and fifty miles south to Hamburg. Germany’s oldest seaport had had been the capital of the realm in the Middle Ages. Now Berlin had usurped that role, but Hamburg boasted a heritage of classic architecture that no other city in Europe could match. The IMF had taken over the old imperial palace and wrecked its beauty with concrete and quickstone buttresses.
The conciliation department was located in one of the new towers in the middle of the campus. On his way up the stairs, Val bumped into a cavalcade of security goons coming down. They wore sky-blue surcoats with a device of a dragon statant that clutched a misericorde in its claws: the arms of Haus Bismarck, the dominant House of BASI. A casual elbow sent Val reeling out of the way.
In the middle of the cavalcade, he glimpsed four people instantly recognizable to him and, probably, everyone in the world: Caspar, Leo, Klaus, and Anna Bismarck, the offspring of the Lord High Chancellor, all four dressed to kill in fashionable ‘armor’ suits, with shoulderpads the size of kettles. Reichsgräfin Anna wore a veil and gorget of faux chain mail. Klaus was being carried in a sedan chair by two burly servants. They smelt of money.