by Wol-vriey
He offered her his arm. “Come Alice, the queen’s expecting us.”
Alice was by now very confused by his behavior towards her. He was clearly no longer angry that she’d come here to kill him. He was disappointed, that much was clear.
Still, he wasn’t about to just let her go unpunished either. The aging chemical he’d injected her with made that clear; and yet here he was, offering her his arm, treating her like a lady, and not the gutter trash he clearly thought she was (a point on which she’d have to agree).
By an effort of will, she restrained herself from crying. No point messing up her makeup during this once in a lifetime opportunity to meet the Queen of New York.
***
Their transport was a trap driven by a frog chauffeur. Lord Busybody handed Alice up into the carriage, climbed in himself, and motioned the driver off.
They took a longer route to the palace, the direct way being blocked off by the rubble of yesterday’s battle. Looking back through the rear carriage window, Alice saw March hares still hard at work, hopping about furiously, shifting blocks of masonry with massive steam cranes and looking for survivors.
Within the richly upholstered carriage, Lord Busybody gave Alice her final instructions.
“Remember – you’re Marie now, not Alice. Some may call you the Duchess Vain; respond to that as well – it’s Marie’s hereditary title on her father’s side. And I’m ‘Dudley darling’, not ‘Lord Busybody’.”
“Okay, Dudley darling.”
“Good. Remember this as well. Marie is snobbish to everyone except the queen and Prince Jackson, our nephew. She was once unable to stand the brat, and then suddenly it became ‘Jackson this’ and ‘Jackson that’, while he began doting on her as if Marie were his surrogate mother.”
“Yes, Dudley darling.”
“Leave the ‘darling’ out occasionally. Also, you’re saying it too lovingly. You’ve met Marie. Remember how she talks – like she knows she’s better than you and can’t be bothered to hide it.”
Alice added a little sarcasm. “Yes Dudley . . .”
“Much better. Remember – you want everyone to realize that you wear the pants in our home, that the immovable object of my penis is totally dominated by the irresistible force of your vagina.” He delivered this last line with great bitterness.
***
By now they’d journeyed about a mile from the Busybody mansion, and were presently approaching St. Peter’s Cathedral.
“Er, what’s that sound?” Alice asked, swearing she had heard something odd.
Lord Busybody waved his hand dismissively. He pulled a pair of gloves from his hat and began slipping them over his fingers. “Most likely someone’s boiler malfunctioning. Now about this job I want you to handle for me . . .”
He never got to finish his sentence.
With an accompanying explosion, a large chunk of masonry was loosed from the church up ahead, falling directly into the middle of the road. Their trap just barely screeched to a halt before hitting it.
The pair of them stared first at the crashed gargoyle, and then at each other.
“Damn it all!” Lord Busybody shouted, “Not again!”
Confirming his worst fears, a fusillade of cannonballs blew the roof off of St. Peter’s. Priests and worshippers alike ran helter-skelter in all directions as the church was reduced to rubble over their heads.
Their horse clopped the street restively, alarmed by this sudden bedlam. Lord Busybody stuck his head out the side door and yelled up at the driver. “It isn’t safe to remain here, knave. Go go go!”
Yet the carriage didn’t move. It only took Lord Busybody a moment to figure out why – half of the frog-driver’s body lay splattered across the road, crushed beneath the same chunk of rock that had sliced it in two. Suddenly, it started raining.
The first metal spider leg stomped down just then, streaming river water in great torrents that threatened to flood the streets. Another soon followed, then the bulk of the iron arachnid, towering over all seeming existence. Steam spouted like visible fury from its pipes, and smoke poured from its chimneys as if they were the nostrils of Satan. Its Texan cow-skull emblem resembled the face of Lucifer himself.
The spider’s banks of cannons whirled from side to side, discharging its shot in all directions. It fast reduced what remained St. Peter's Cathedral into a pile of rubble garnished with corpses.
So close to the war-spider this time around, Lord Busybody felt his bowels clench tight with fear.
“Hold on tight!” he yelled at Alice, dropping out through the carriage door.
Scared stiff, she stuck her head out after him. “And just where are you fucking going!?”
“Got to drive this thing – just hold on!” He scrambled up into the driver’s seat, and, without even bothering to roll the frog’s lower half out first, picked up the reins and lashed the horse into motion.
Lord Busybody curved the carriage around the gargoyle blocking their path, then drove them as fast as he could towards the royal palace. He drove standing upright, like a madman, while all around them the street became a nightmare of whirling cannonballs and flying masonry. The range of the Texan cannonballs well exceeded what Lord Busybody thought normal for such projectiles.
Inside the carriage, Alice was flung right and left as it bounced over rubble and corpses. She winced as they raced past destroyed homes with dead people hanging from their windows. One horrible image in particular stuck in her mind – a man who’d leapt from the second story, only to be impaled upon a rusted lamp-pole. He was flailing, still alive, but with no hope of being saved. Intestines spilled out from the hole in him like ropes, which he tried in vain to climb like a spider.
Carnage, carnage, and yet more carnage everywhere, until Alice was fighting the urge to retch – holding back mainly because she was on her way to meet the queen, and didn’t want to do so in a soiled dress.
Ahead of them, another war-spider slowly pulled itself out of the Hudson. It stomped through the houses in its path, its metal top swiveling with agility unheard of in a machine of its size. It too began its bombardment of everything in sight.
With the street itself disintegrating, Lord Busybody steered the horse and carriage around the spider’s massive legs. So close did the carriage graze one metal pillar of death, Alice could’ve reach out to touch it. The car skidded and almost overturned. Lord Busybody fought with the reins till it righted itself.
He swung them round a street corner, heading for the palace while cannonballs continued to smash everything in their path.
By some miracle, they made it safely through the cannonball rain – in the sky up ahead, a swarm of military airships were racing to meet the attackers.
Behind them, the world had dissolved into a nightmare. A total nightmare.
When a stray cannonball suddenly hit a nearby home, the entire building disintegrated, spraying the street with bricks. The horse raced over this new obstruction, but the carriage rode up on a pile of rubble and went momentarily airborne.
It landed with a jolt that Alice felt in her teeth. With a terrible wrenching force, the right carriage wheel broke off and bounced through someone’s front window. The car itself smashed to the ground on that side, juddering along on its axle. Soon, the left wheel broke off as well.
Inside the coach, Alice was bouncing up and down like a jack-in-the-box, wishing for the nth time she’d never met Marie Busybody, never came to New York. Lord Busybody fought to rein in the horse, which, disconcerted by the chaos all around, was now in full panic mode. It stumbled to an unruly halt. The carriage slid across the road and smashed into a fence, throwing Lord Busybody into the lower branches of an almond tree.
Hitting the trunk, Lord Busybody felt something snap in his chest. Damn, he thought, my ribs!
After a stunned moment, he quickly regained his bearings. Gritting his teeth from the pain, he climbed down out of the tree. Checking to see that his spectacles weren’t broken as well, he cen
tered them on his nose and went to help Alice.
She was all right, though dazed by the shock of impact.
“If you’ve not already guessed by now, I’ll tell you what it is I want you to do,” Lord Busybody huffed as he helped her out of the overturned carriage. “You’re traveling to Texas to assassinate my sister Anna for the good of us all. I’ve had more than I can stand of her.”
Alice was speechless.
Lord Busybody pointed back the way they’d come. Alice shuddered at the sight of the four metal spiders towering over the landscape, trailing black smoke and raining death indiscriminately all around. Adding further to the destruction, their own military airships were now engaging them in battle.
“This has got to stop,” he spat through gritted teeth.
He unhitched the horse from its carriage. He then pulled a saddle and bridle out of his hat, saddled the horse, and mounted it with Alice. Together they rode the remaining distance to Central Park and the royal palace beyond.
Alice remained speechless.
She? Assassinate Queen Anna of Texas?
Book One: Oldwoman Girl in New York
Part Three: Prince Jackson
Chapter 1
Victoria Busybody, ruler of the queendom of New York, was a tall plump woman with a regal, but jolly, face. Her moniker ‘the Queen of Hearts’ came from her clothes, which were never without a heart design of some sort, in this case a white robe with red heart patterns all over it. Her crown was also patterned with hearts. The crown was a constant – she never changed it from day to day like she did her clothes.
At the moment, however, the Queen of Hearts was not in a jolly mood. It was only with great restraint that she kept herself from yelling ‘off with his/her head’ at each passing frog/hare/cat/badger/human she came in contact with. Losing one’s head (and causing others to lose theirs) would solve nothing in this matter, she realized.
She heaved a sigh of relief when she saw her brother Dudley rush through the door. Then her black mood returned when she noticed that Marie was with him. Her bad day looked about to get worse, if such a downturn of fortunes were even possible.
“Jackie,” she called. “Where are you?”
“Coming Mother,” Prince Jackson dutifully replied.
However, apparently he was taking his time showing up.
“Jackie, your aunt Marie’s here!”
The crown prince appeared at the top of the stairs moments later, a grin almost as wide as a Cheshire’s on his face. “She is? I’ll be right down!”
***
Alice liked Queen Victoria. The woman radiated warmth and kindness. She was in her fifties and matronly, but fashionable. Alice disliked frumpy queens.
Also, the queen’s lips were shaped like a heart when she shut her mouth. Her pink lipstick made them look like sweets. In an odd way, except for the avaricious glint permanently illuminating the brothel owner’s eyes, the Queen of Hearts reminded Alice a bit of Madame Lola.
***
About to smile warmly at her majesty, Alice remembered her ‘husband’s’ instructions and grafted an expression of intense aloofness onto her face. Pouting like her mouth was full of prune juice, she curtseyed to the queen.
“Your majesty,” she said, speaking like she was recovering from the worst flu ever.
“How is Chicago, Marie? Are you having any success with its women of dubious repute?”
“So so, your majesty. They all maintain that while they wish to be wed to good Christian men, the feeling isn’t often mutual. Maybe your majesty could consider suggesting to Chicago’s Archbishop a series of sermons instructing single male parishioners to seek life mates from the brothels as wells as the pews? It would make my work so much easier if there was reciprocal enthusiasm.”
Her majesty laughed. “Good to see you’ve not changed a bit Marie.”
“You too, your majesty,” she replied. Like she’d noticed Marie do, Alice punctuated her remark with an affected sniff. “The capital’s certainly changed, however, and not at all for the better. We had a little insect trouble on our way here . . .”
Alice ignored Lord Busybody’s horrified glance (screaming at her not to overdo it) before adding “. . . Texan ones at that. I think the fumigators have grown either complacent or incompetent and should be beheaded.”
The queen turned almost purple with rage. Damn, now she’s done it, Lord Busybody thought.
The situation was saved by the appearance of Prince Jackson.
Alice was surprised. The crown prince was of average height, brown haired and handsome. He had deep blue eyes and full lips. He had an artist’s face – sensitive but miserable, as if concealing some emotional torment.
“Auntie!” he shrieked upon seeing Alice, his face exploding with delight. “How are you?”
He rushed over to give her a hug. “Oh how I’ve missed you so!”
It occurred to Alice that Jackson was hugging her somewhat too warmly. More like a lover than an aunt.
How odd . . .
Her ‘husband’ and the queen noticed nothing; apparently this was the prince’s normal behavior with Marie.
“You know Marie,” Queen Victoria said, “now that you’re back in town, I’ll appreciate your giving me a hand with finding poor Jackie here a wife. It’s a damn shame. At his age, and not a girlfriend in sight! Not even a servant girl put in the family way. I’m becoming bothered – tongues are starting to wag.”
Alice gently pushed the clinging Jackson away from her, holding him at arm’s length while still doing her best to regard him fondly.
On second appraisal, there was something rather effeminate about the crown prince. It wasn’t anything obvious, though, like with the homosexual queens at Madame Lola’s in Chicago. His clothes were foppish, a yellow silk shirt and soft plaid trousers, with a wide belt of woven red leather and a purple cape, but they weren’t anything that out of the ordinary – all pampered aristocratic children dressed in this same peacock fashion. Even the six-shooter he wore at his waist in a cowboy-style holster was excusable.
No, there was nothing obviously wrong with him. It was just that, based on her extensive experience in dealing with men, Alice could tell that Prince Jackson wasn’t assembled right emotionally.
***
Lord Busybody coughed. “Now that we’ve gotten the family reunion out of the way, Marie was right – we’ve major insect trouble to contend with.”
Prince Jackson reluctantly stepped away from his ‘aunt’.
“Whatever we call it, since it concerns Aunt Anna, it’s still family business,” he said unpleasantly. “Though she does tend to overreact to things . . .”
“Don’t talk about your aunty so disrespectfully!” Victoria snapped, rising from her throne.
Jackson ignored her. He slipped his arm into Alice’s and steered her after his mother and uncle, who were already leaving the room.
***
They took an elevator (wheezing and howling like the steam engine powering it) to a rooftop garden, where tea had been laid out in advance of their arrival. Cakes and lemonades and candies were set out on trays that seemed to move on their own, though this was clearly a trick of the light.
In the background, the battle between their airships and the Texan war-spiders raged on. The sky was painted with a mixture of black smoke and reddish orange-yellow flame from the nonstop explosions. There were intermittent flashes, which seemed to reach almost from horizon to horizon, and billowing clouds of dust from all the demolished buildings.
Rather than being disgusted by the lavish spread set out for their pleasure, while in the background men and hares fought and died for the city’s safety, Alice appreciated the gesture. It would never do to give the impression that the nation’s leadership had been fazed by ‘a little insect trouble’, as she had put it.
She was additionally pleased to notice the NYT reporter standing by to take pictures of and write a story about their tea. Alice could just imagine the headlines:
<
br /> Queen of Hearts shows Heart of queen in face of Adversity
***
They took their respective places at the table. The queen sat at its head, with Lord Busybody on her left. Alice and Prince Jackson sat side by side a few seats further down.
Once seated, Alice had a better look at the dishes and cutlery before them. Realizing she was supposed to have been there before, she did her best to hide her surprise.
The ‘trays’ were live tortoises with hollowed-out shells stacked with cakes.
The ‘cups’ were birds with wings fused together to form handles. Alice’s cup was a flamingo. It nuzzled her hair while she filled it with lemonade. Dudley’s cup was an owl, the queen’s a miniature peacock, and Jackson’s a hawk.
The bird-cups were extremely restive. One had to keep watch to ensure they didn’t walk away during conversation, or spill their contents all over the delicious food before them.
In addition, there was the concern that they might poop in the food. Fortunately, the bird-cups kept a team of frog and badger butlers dreadfully busy shooing them away and mopping up their shit before it registered on the royals’ senses as something alien to the dining table.
The bird-cups were of varying temperaments as well. Alice’s flamingo cup was playfully affectionate, while beside her, Jackson’s hands were already speckled with blood from his hawk cup pecking him between sips.
“Get me a hood for this cup,” he growled at a servant. This was clearly a common occurrence, Alice decided. After the hawk had been hooded, eating and drinking and talking resumed, punctuated only by the distant booming of cannons and airship rockets.
They ate facing the conflict, so it seemed they were spectators at a show.
***
“Your majesty sent for me,” Lord Busybody said with a grimace. He was now certain that he’d broken several ribs colliding with that almond tree, and the wound had been further aggravated by riding the horse sans carriage the rest of the way to the palace.
He could feel the blood plastering his shirt to his body. It hurt like a prelude to death whenever he moved. Still, it wouldn’t kill him, not yet at any rate.