by Gwynn White
Well, there was nothing she could do about it. Desperation had its own logic: no money, no backup, no choice.
She fell on the sandwiches she had taken advantage of Pod to order. “So what’s the state of play?” she said with her mouth full of tinned ham and tomato. “Any good jobs in progress?”
“Not really. No intel coming in. We’ve not had much of a part to play in the general drama, stuck up here. And now everything’s on hold on account of this railway strike.” Pod tipped milk into his tea and stirred. “What about you? What’re you up to these days?”
“Gone freelance, like.”
Fiona dropped her bottle on the floor. Pod grabbed it, wiped the teat on his jeans, and gave it back to her. “Googly goo,” he said, tickling her under the chin. “Who’s an angel then?” He straightened up. He was still smiling, eyes still twinkling, but something in his face gave Leonie pause.
She picked up her knife and cut the crusts off another sandwich.
Pod’s left hand went into his jacket and came out, after a moment of fumbling, with a packet of cigarettes. “What d’you need?” he said quietly.
He’d switched off his wire. Leonie suppressed the smile trying to spread across her face. “Just the gen,” she said. “Anything odd lately?”
“Where d’you want me to start? Oswild Day’s cleaning house from top to bottom. Not that it didn’t need it. He’s a right ‘un at heart. But I hate being used.”
When were we anything but used? Aloud, she said, “So have you lot been sitting with your thumbs up your arses? Letting the boyos go on their merry way while you wait for London to get sorted?”
“Course not!”
“Well, then? I’m asking because I’d lay money there’s been some unusual activity lately.”
“Funny you should say that. Remember our old friend from Armagh, Alyx O’Braonain?”
“Don’t I just.” Leonie’s heart started beating faster.
“Well, she popped up yesterday. She was seen in a known pub on the Shankill Road. She’s stopping in town. We followed her to an address in the Aching Head.”
“Where? Come on, Pod, tell me where.”
“You’re not going to do anything daft, are you?”
“Of course not,” Leonie said, leaning down to help Fiona with her bottle. “I’ve got my little niece to look after, haven’t I?”
46
Oswald
At The Same Time. Lancashire House, London
There is our king,” Kim Lancashire exclaimed, dramatically pointing at Michael. “To swear fealty to him is neither cowardice nor shame—it is our duty, Father!”
“Did he convince you of that?” Lord Murdo said, jerking his chin at Oswald. “Or have you convinced yourself of it? You always were weak. So different from your brother.”
“He’s right about that, anyway,” whispered Alec Northumberland, who had come in with Kim Lancashire as his escort.
Oswald nodded.
Kim Lancashire had come to him this morning with news of a plot to oust Michael, requesting mercy on the pretext that he did not want to sacrifice his men’s lives. He had never wanted to overthrow Oswald, he said. He had merely been acting on orders from his father.
All in all, it was a relief. Oswald had been holding his breath for the inevitable spasm of aristocratic resistance, and this was nowhere near as bad as he’d feared it might be.
It was not over yet. Guy Sauvage and the Overwhelm were at large somewhere in Wales. But when they did not receive their looked-for help from Lancashire, they’d slink home to Ireland, Oswald was sure of it.
“Father, we all mourn Philip! But sulking isn’t going to bring him back …”
Kim was not likely to get anywhere with his father. But they had to give him a chance to try.
Oswald examined the model railway. There was the Great Trunk Line and the branch lines curling off it, forking to their respective termina, which were represented by models of famous landmarks associated with each town. The tracks ran through a flat world ornamented with foil rivers and pretty little plastic trees. No tunnels excavated at the cost of scores of lives per hundred yards. No viaducts or bridges that cost a fortune to maintain. No bombs on the line and no barricades. A green and peaceful land.
The model did have one thing in common with reality, though: nothing was moving.
Give the railway workers a pay raise, that’ll do the trick, Oswald thought with an inward sigh. And then the other public monopolies will want the same, and we can forget about reining in inflation this quarter.
“Papa! Look at my train.”
“What a marvelous train,” Oswald said, smiling.
“It’s all automated. I’m trying to work out how it switches on,” Malcolm said, fiddling with the control box.
“He’s a qualified military pilot,” Oswald whispered to his son. “That’s why he’s so good with electronics.”
“Get stuffed,” Malcolm said, grinning.
Michael let out a peal of laughter.
Kim Lancashire said to his father, “At least call off the railway strike! Half the country is paralyzed.”
“And my railwaymen are not of that part. They wish to see an independent inquiry into the death of the king. Their protests are perfectly spontaneous and uncoordinated. I cannot ‘call them off,’ I’m afraid.” Lancashire smiled smugly.
It’s a game to him. He doesn’t give a damn about the country, or about anything except winning atteints against me.
“Can’t you work the trains, boy? I’ll show you.” Lancashire shuffled over to the model railway. Michael fell back, round-eyed.
“‘Boy? Your Majesty,” Alec Northumberland rasped.
Lancashire ignored him. “It won’t work without the key, you see, which I have here.” He motioned Malcolm away from the control box.
In the split second it took Murdo Lancashire to fish a tiny key out of his pocket, Oswald realized that the control box was actually a bomb. He started to move—
—and Lancashire turned the key and the points went clickety-click, and all over the railway, the carriages Michael and Malcolm had placed on the tracks started to move.
Oswald breathed out, his head spinning.
“Oh, super!” Michael cried. Then, remembering his manners: “Thank you, my lord!”
“There is no other model railway like this in the country. Perhaps in the world,” Lancashire said. “It has taken me twenty years to build. Most of the rolling stock is custom-made: one of a kind. You have put too many engines on the track. You must switch that one onto a different line.”
“How, how?”
“Look out!” Malcolm shouted. “Collision imminent!”
Barely had he spoken when Michael’s train crashed head-on into another locomotive. Both fell off the track. Some of the more delicate carriages broke, pieces spinning across the green flat world and knocking London down. Michael wailed in horror. Malcolm fell about laughing.
“For Heaven’s sake, Father,” Kim Lancashire said. “That set is worth thousands!”
“And you shall not have it, nor anything else that I have the power to dispose of. I can’t stop you from inheriting the title and the entailed assets, worse luck, but as of this morning, my personal fortune is going to the Church.”
“Oswald!” One of the ROCK knights left on guard outside the attic rapped on the door and stuck his head in. “Phone.”
Lancashire said, “You insist that I accord the boy a title he has not yet formally inherited, but you allow your men to call you by your given name?”
“It’s the Coenobite way,” Oswald said.
Leaving the room with Alec, he ordered the guards into the attic. The two were Ben Flint, a ROCK knight of few words with the build of an ox, and Jem Northumberland, Alec’s half-brother. Both carried short swords and P&K semi-autos. No harm would come to Michael as long as they were there.
The phone call was from Rhys Llywelyn in Wales.
The news was devastating.
&
nbsp; His mind a ferment, he went back upstairs. Malcolm met them halfway. “Quick!”
Impatience flaring into urgency, Oswald climbed the stairs three at a time. They passed Jem Northumberland and Michael on the landing. Incoherent shouts came from within the solar. Oswald burst into the room, closely followed by Malcolm and Alec.
Kim and Murdo Lancashire were wrestling, reeling back and forth. Ben Flint watched them with one hand on his weapon. A table and chair had been knocked over, strewing papers across the floor.
“I’ll not—not let you—” Kim appeared to be trying to pull the signet ring off his father’s hand.
Murdo Lancashire broke free. He clutched his fingers as if they hurt, and turned a gaze on Oswald that was suddenly the cloudy, uncomprehending stare of an old man.
Oswald hit Kim on the shoulder. “Out.”
The door closed. Oswald faced the man who had once owned him—who by right of law owned him still. “Swear fealty to my son. There is nothing else left for you.”
“Go to hell, you filthy peasant.”
“Then I’ll leave it up to you.”
Oswald took his revolver from its holster, checked that it was loaded, held it out to the old man.
“Out, out!” he shouted at the other knights.
An age later he reached the door.
They clattered down the stairs and halted on the landing. “You bloody maniac,” Alec said devoutly.
Michael was crushed among the men’s legs, white-faced and looking very small. Oswald picked him up and thumbed a smear of chocolate off his cheek. Jem Northumberland had been feeding him sweets again.
“Papa?” Hiding fear behind grabbiness. “I want a train set like that.”
“You shall have a better one.”
“How did you know he wouldn’t shoot you in the back?” Malcolm said.
Before Oswald could answer, they heard a single shot from behind the closed door at the top of the stairs. Oswald reflexively pressed Michael’s head into his shoulder.
“Because he was a knight,” he said wearily. “Because he was a man of honor.”
“Because he was a selfish old cunt,” Kim Lancashire said, his thin face red with emotion. At long last his formality had crumbled. “You read him aright, Oswald: he preferred to die rather than live to see his will thwarted.”
“Well, he’s dead now,” Malcolm said. “What’s going on, Oswald? You looked pretty rattled when you came back upstairs.”
Oswald started down the stairs again, carrying Michael. “Guy Sauvage has blown the Craig Goch Dam. The river is sweeping away towns and villages as we speak. I’ll have to go myself. it’s not enough just to deplore such a catastrophe, I must be seen deploring it.”
He turned to the Northumberland brothers, Alec and Jem.
“Which means you will have to take care of Guy.”
“My pleasure,” Jem said, grinning.
Alec rasped, “On the bright side, if this doesn’t sway the Crown Army solidly behind Michael, nothing will.”
“Let’s hope.”
47
Leonie
That Evening. Belfast
Crumlin Road was a besieged and decaying royalist island among the estates of North Belfast. Leonie had dropped Fiona off here after her meeting with Pod. She had spent the afternoon fruitlessly observing the address Pod gave her. Now she was back for the night, carrying a meager bag of groceries, as well as the Myxilite and the ammo-less Z4 in Madelaine’s voluminous black leather handbag.
The rain had turned into wet snow, splattering the terraced houses. She turned a corner and came to a larger building, sooty brick, with a weak lamp over the embrasured door. A sign said: Crumlin Road Shelter for Women. By Mercy of His Sovereign Majesty Tristan Wessex.
The shame of staying at a Mercy shelter settled on her like a cold, wet, piss-smelling blanket as she went in. It got heavier as the warden ticked her off for missing curfew. It smelled worse with every step she took down the hall.
The lights of the Mothers & Children dorm were still on, too dim to read by, too bright to get to sleep easily. They stayed on all night, as if this were a prison not a shelter, which wasn’t far wrong. Unlike in the single women’s dorm where Leonie had been assigned a bed, the mothers and children had cubicles made from cloth screens on castors, such as you saw in your better class of hospital. Little prisons, fourteen by seven.
A baby was crying. Day or night, there was always at least one—they seemed to take it in relays. Women stuck sleepy heads out of their cubicles, smiled at Leonie or just stared in alcoholic boredom. She slipped around the screen with Travis, Mrs. E. & Fionet (9 Mos.) printed on the card in the clip-on holder. She’d given out to the warden that she and Ella (Madelaine) were sisters. She’d been living with Ella, who’d married an Irish freeman, but the husband had started abusing Ella, so they’d taken the baby and run. Didn’t even stop to take their papers, sorry, sir. Her genuine desperation had borne out the story. No one had looked at her shoulder. She no longer looked like the sort of woman who might be bonded to a Great House.
Madelaine’s eyes opened when Leonie entered the cubicle. Leonie ignored her, went straight to the wobbly bassinet at the foot of the bed. Fiona was asleep, with tears and snot still wet on her cheeks …
And a great blue lump on her temple.
Leonie felt as if she were made of cellophane these days, and her rage was the match. If she caught, she’d go up and that would be that.
She smoothed the blankets over Fiona. “I can’t leave her with you for five minutes,” she whispered. “And she’s your daughter!” She knelt by the bed, dug in the cache of plastic shopping bags that held all their worldly goods. Some of these knacker bitches would steal anything that wasn’t nailed down. Madelaine probably wouldn’t even notice. Panic: it’s gone—then her fingers closed on linen, slippery over hard curves of nose and forehead.
She made sure the screen was all the way closed before pulling Queen Adolfina’s head out of its virtue-proof bag. Gold hair tumbled over her arm. Leonie held the relic by its silver base. She had nothing wrong with her, thank God, so she didn’t want to accidentally touch the relic and go to sleep.
Madelaine strained higher on her pillow. “The paper! I borrowed it. I have to give it back …”
“I told you not to talk to anyone!”
Madelaine made a limp gesture as if to say, What does it matter? But her eyes said something different. “Read it,” she whispered.
Leonie tucked the relic into the bassinet with Fiona. She felt bad as she did it, even though it was justified this time by the lump on the baby’s head. She’d put Fiona to bed with her dead granny too often in the last few days. Back at Oughterard, she’d told Madelaine off for it, and now she was doing it herself, just to keep the poor little mite quiet.
“How’re you feeling?” she asked Madelaine when she’d tucked Fiona up. “Is your head better?”
“Never mind my head, the paper …”
An evening edition of the Ireland Herald was slipping off the foot of the bed. Leonie caught it, saw that it was folded open to the puzzles and games page. The acrostics and the crossword had been completed in an elegant hand. It hurt for some reason to think of Madelaine lying here, doing these stupid little puzzles.
She turned to the front page. Flood in Wales Kills Hundreds. Acting Regent Oswald Distributes Largesse to Victims. “Cor, that’s tragic.”
“Not that!” Madelaine said. “Page three. About the airport!”
Shutdown At Heathrow. Leonie squinted at the newsprint in the bad light. All flights in and out of Heathrow International Airport, Great Britain’s second-largest aviation hub, had been cancelled as of noon. A spokesman explained in a telephone interview that the closure was for security reasons, but did not elaborate. Meanwhile, troops stationed on the airport access road turned away all vehicles. Although the checkpoint commander refused to speak to a reporter, and the troops wore no identifying colors, a mobility vehicle to the rear of the check
point was observed to bear a green logo with a white emblem, consistent with unconfirmed rumors that the Overwhelm, the regiment of House Sauvage, has taken an active role in the Crown’s ongoing security operations …
“He’s taking Oswald’s side,” Madelaine whispered. A tear broke loose from the corner of her eye.
“Who is? Oh—Sir Guy.”
Maybe the news was significant. If House Sauvage came out in support of Live-Long Day’s regency, the other Great Houses couldn’t be far behind. But if that was the case, why not announce it openly?
“The traitor. Oh, it’s so shaming. It’s—”
“Will youse pack it in?” a woman’s voice boomed from the far side of the room. The crying baby fell silent; so did Madelaine. Fiona, on the other hand, squeezed her face up, then opened her eyes and mouth, getting ready to wail. Leonie snatched her out of the bassinet. She oughtn’t to have been awakened by the woman’s shout. The cure hadn’t taken effect yet. Or maybe the relic was no longer working.
“Hush, hush, ducky.” She padded back and forth alongside the bed, rocking Fiona. She had to keep moving or she’d panic. Queen Adolfina’s head was the only valuable they had left. She was counting on flogging it, eventually, to buy Madelaine’s passage out of the country. It couldn’t have lost its virtue. “Sssh now.”
“He’s the only man I’ve ever loved.” Madelaine had not eaten much of anything for two days. She was starting to look grotesque, her heart-shaped face collapsing along the lines of her skull. “And now he’s turned on me!”
Who? Oh, right, Sir Guy. “He doesn’t know he’s turning on you,” Leonie said wearily. “He thinks he’s taking your side, too. Everyone thinks you’re still in London with your husband.”
“Even so, he’s betraying Daddy’s memory. He would never do that if he cared for me. But he doesn’t, of course. He never has.”
“I daresay not,” Leonie muttered.
“Hundreds of men would give their souls for a smile from me. And he prefers that common little cow, Dierdre Argent. Of course there’s nothing wrong with being lowborn. But she’s married; she’s at least forty!”