Avalon

by Stephen R. Lawhead

  Cal was there, cooking bacon and chips. “Where’s Embries?” asked James as he came into the kitchen. The helicopter was gone, and there were no other vehicles parked outside.

  “How’d it go with Jenny?” Cal grinned as he gave the pan a shake over the flame.

  “Progress,” replied James. “Is Embries here?”

  “They went to London. Collins called and they dashed off — something to do with some documents.” He prodded the chips with a fork, and regarded James with such an air of expectation that James grew quickly irritated.

  “What?” he demanded. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  Cal smiled and shrugged good-naturedly. “No reason.”

  “Then stop it.”

  “Do I have to call you ‘Your Highness’?”

  “Stop, all right? This isn’t funny.” James yanked out a chair and sat down at the table.

  “Second thoughts?”

  “Look,” said James sourly, “I hate to pop your balloon, Cal, but an awful lot of details have to fall into place for me to even begin to think about becoming King. The Government’s about to abolish the monarchy for one thing. And even if they handed it to me on a silver platter…”

  Cal nodded understandingly. “You and Jenny had a fight, huh?”

  “No, we didn’t have a fight,” snapped James.

  “You’re acting like you had a fight.”

  “Look, we didn’t have a fight. There’s been a slight misunderstanding. All right?”

  Cal went back to prodding the chips. After a while he said, “I couldn’t find any beer. You want some toast?”

  They ate at the kitchen table in companionable silence, and then decamped to the living room to watch TV. A little after seven o’clock the phone rang, and Cal returned to the kitchen to answer it. “Sure,” he nodded, “he’s here.” He turned in the doorway to look at James. “Not too good, apparently.” He paused. “Right, I’ll tell him. No problem. G’bye.”

  He hung up the phone and said, “That was Embries. Something’s come up in London.”

  “And?”

  “He’ll call back and let us know the situation as soon as he can.”

  “What kind of situation?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “Anything else?” James inquired, unable to keep the irritation out of his voice.

  “He wanted to know how the wedding plans were proceeding.”

  “He asked that?”

  “Not in so many words,” allowed Cal, “but that’s what he meant.”

  Fed up with the tenor of the conversation, James stood and tossed the remote control to Cal. “I’m going to bed. I assume you’re staying here tonight?”

  “I’m no supposed to let you out of my sight, laddie buck,” he replied. “Orders from headquarters.”

  “Fine,” replied James. “See you in the morning.” He went to his room and got ready for bed. It was early yet, but he was knackered; he shuffled woodenly through his nighttime routine, undressing, brushing his teeth — he felt like a tin robot running on the last dregs of dry-cell energy. Even so, sleep was a long, restless time coming. His mind kept replaying an image of Jenny and Charles holding hands over a candlelit table, plighting their undying love while nibbling fragrant parcels of rice and lemon chicken.

  In the end, he succumbed to a fretful dream-filled slumber in which hundreds of horses coursed in wild, swirling herds over empty moorland hills beneath black storm clouds, while men in chain mail shorts ran behind with flaming torches, setting fire to the summer-dry grass.

  The Prime Minister switched off the late news and picked up his shoes from beside the leather recliner. He started for his bedroom at the back of the interconnecting suite of rooms which formed his apartment at Number Ten, when a knock came on the heavy, bomb-proof outer door. Thinking it was the duty officer, he turned back, wondering what fresh hell awaited him on the other side.

  “Yes, Bailey, what is it?” he said, swinging the door open to reveal not the thick, squared-off form of the Downing Street night duty security officer, but the graceful curves of a flame-haired young woman dressed in a tight-fitting sheath of pale, glimmering platinum-colored material. Her hair was slicked back sleek and wet, as if she had just stepped from the bath. She wore no underclothes, and the clingy, shimmery cloth was so thin it looked like she was wearing water.

  “Bailey is taking a coffee break,” the young woman informed him.

  “Good God!” Waring all but yanked his visitor into the room, slamming the door behind her. “How the hell did you get in here?”

  “Oh, I know my way around most places.” She stepped close, pressing her body against him. “Don’t tell me you’re not glad to see me, Thomas,” she said, sliding a hand down between his legs.

  He pushed her hand away. “Did anyone see you?”

  “Of course not,” she said, kissing him on the mouth. Her lips tasted slightly salty, as if she had been swimming in the sea. “I find I can come and go pretty much wherever I want.” Winding her arms around his neck, she kissed him again. “Tonight, my darling, I want to be with you.”

  “Sorry, not tonight.”

  “Nobody will find out our little secret, Thomas,” she said, moving into the living room. She sat down on the leather couch and patted the place beside her. “Now come here like a good boy, and show me how much you’ve missed me.”

  Waring remained firmly planted before the door. “I mean it, Moira,” he insisted. “I’ve got meetings first thing tomorrow morning. This is not at all convenient.”

  “I see.” She pouted. “It was convenient for me to spend the last six months on that miserable, dull little island. It was convenient for me to play whore and nursemaid to that bloated old rake of a king. But now that you’ve got what you wanted out of it, it’s not convenient anymore. Is that it?”

  He stared at her. “I never asked you to do anything like that.”

  “You didn’t have to ask, lover.” She crossed one long leg over the other and let her filmy dress ride up a naked thigh. “We had an understanding.”

  “You shouldn’t have come here. I told you at the airport I couldn’t see you. What if someone finds out?”

  “You’ll get an ulcer, love, worrying like that.” She laughed, and her voice changed to a lightly accented Portuguese inflection. “Your Teresa was very discreet, mia cara. No one will h’ever find out.”

  He stared at her. She was ravishing, and the wildness in her — to one who had spent his whole life weighing out the possible consequences of each and every action — was both heady and irresistible. She was as unpredictable as she was lovely, and he valued both qualities equally.

  “Come and sit down,” she coaxed, leaning forward provocatively. “We have all night to get reacquainted.”

  Against his better judgment, Waring felt himself drawn to the couch. She reached out a hand, he took it, and she pulled him down beside her, snuggling at once into his embrace. She kissed him long and he tasted again the salty tang of her lips.

  “Mmm, I’ve missed you, Thomas,” she breathed, moving his hand to the inside of her thigh. “How are you at making up for lost time? Hmmm?”

  Part III

  Nineteen

  They put King Edward’s coffin in the Picture Gallery at Buckingham Palace: a long, narrow room with high ceilings and walls chock-a-block with priceless paintings. The oversize bronze casket was set up at one end of the room, and a single channel between red velvet ropes provided for those who wished to pay their final respects.

  One quick glance confirmed James’ strong suspicion that the venue was specifically chosen in order to diminish and embarrass the dead King. There were, after all, far grander halls and larger, more elegant public spaces where Britain’s last monarch might lie in something more closely resembling a regal state.

  But, no, the image manipulators chose the Picture Gallery — a slyly calculated choice, for it was an undeniably grand room, without being ornate or particularly handsome
. The dimensions, despite its size, actually gave it a claustrophobic feel. It was not a room anyone would care to spend much time in, and it certainly was not conducive to emotional or even purposeful reflection — a royal room, certainly, but spiritless and uninspiring.

  Although Buckingham Palace was, for many years, the principal residence of Britain’s royals, it had always had the unfortunate appearance of a provincial office block which aspired to better things. Workaday and stodgy, there was nothing about the building to lift the eye or stir the heart. The massive slablike blocks that made up the facçde were the dismal color of poured concrete; the entrance was meanly functional, the windows squat and small. The visual message the structure sent to viewers was: government institution. For all its statues, Buckingham Palace might as well have been an asylum or prison, for it shared the same grim, utilitarian, relentlessly featureless practicality of any government edifice where notions of grace and glory were rigorously subverted.

  This was the drift of James’ thought when, on the day before King Edward’s funeral, he walked through the great iron gates and followed the nylon rope cordon into the palace. There were many more people than he’d expected, and he joined a sizable queue which shuffled its way towards the entrance. Once inside the palace, visitors were ushered quickly through the entryway and through the Blue Sitting Room — even the names of the rooms were plebeian, indifferent — and into the Picture Gallery.

  The moment he stepped into the hall-like room, James sensed the subtle, insidious treachery which was the true aim of the enterprise. The lights were brighter than the occasion warranted, and as the mourners were herded slowly along, single file, to pass before the black-draped coffin, James quickly learned why: the lights burned brightly so everyone could admire the great works of art on the walls.

  As the line moved slowly, each visitor had plenty of time to view the various masterpieces. If it had been too dark, no one would have seen them properly and the crowd would not have been suitably impressed. The purpose, it seemed to James, was to distract, to substitute one event — paying final respects to the dead monarch — for another: inspecting a few of the nation’s rarely seen art treasures. James had to give the scheming bureaucrats their due. The manipulation was masterfully done; the mourners came to view King Edward lying in state, but left vastly impressed by Rembrandt, Rubens, and Raphael instead.

  Poor old Teddy could simply not compete with the glory of the glowing artworks surrounding him. Dwarfed by towering genius on every side, his boxy coffin with its drab black coverlet seemed, like the monarch himself, pointless, pathetic, inappropriate, and out of place… and, by the way, wasn’t that Vermeer lovely, such delicacy, such elegance, such astute observation.

  James shuffled along the line, growing more and more angry by the second. The sheer malicious arrogance of the attitude made his blood boil, and after only a few minutes he was ready to storm out of the place. But, on further reflection, he decided to linger awhile and talk to some of the visitors about their feelings. He wanted to know why they had come, what they thought they were doing, what they hoped to see.

  He began by striking up a conversation with the two people directly behind him in the queue, a young man and his girlfriend. Dressed in jeans and sneakers, they didn’t seem to be the sentimental kind, but when James asked them what brought them to the palace, the fellow replied, “I don’t know, mate. Guess I just thought this is the last one, right? And we should go and see him off.”

  “We didn’t like him or anything,” the girl pointed out quickly. “He was a bit of a rogue.”

  “We’re not sorry he’s dead,” confirmed the boy. He shrugged. “We just thought we should do something, you know?”

  Their feelings were echoed by the three middle-aged ladies behind them. “We’ve come all the way from Manchester,” said the designated speaker for the three. “And Myrtle, here, is from Burnley.” The woman with fluffy blue-rinsed poodle hair nodded vigorously. “We wanted to pay our respects. Not so much for him” — she indicated the coffin at the far end of the room — “but more for the country. You know what I mean, love?”

  The other two nodded, and the one who wasn’t Myrtle said, “We’re doing it for ourselves really. I mean, what kind of people would we be if we didn’t say cheerio to our King?”

  There were more nods all around, and a little man in a brown raincoat buttoned to his neck leaned forward and said, “He might have been a rum bugger, by jinx, but he was our rum bugger! Pardon my French.”

  This brought laughter, and more people began stepping up to air their views. “I’m glad he’s dead,” said a matron in a plastic poncho. “I never thought he should have been king in the first place. He wasn’t up to it.”

  “He was a weak vessel,” volunteered someone else.

  “That’s just what he was,” confirmed the woman. “He was a weak vessel. It takes a special kind of person, if you catch my drift. Poor Edward should never have been king.”

  “Why did you come here today?” James asked her.

  She glanced around at the people looking on; there were more now, crowding in to hear what the others were saying. “I came because it’s the right thing to do,” she said proudly. “I don’t care what anyone thought of His Majesty hisself; it’s the decent thing to do.”

  This sentiment was greeted with murmurs of approval. One young lady with long brown hair spilling over the collar of her coat spoke up. “There’s never been a time when there wasn’t a king in Britain — or a queen. I mean, there’s always been a monarch — for better or worse someone was always there.” She looked to her fellow mourners for support. “I feel kinda sad there isn’t going to be one anymore.”

  “It’s a sad day,” added the man in the brown raincoat, “a sad day for everyone, whether they know it or not.”

  “Why do you say that?” James asked.

  “Because it’s true,” he replied adamantly. “Course it is. I had no use for the man.” He nodded to those around him. “We all know that. I think he got what he deserved.”

  “We reap what we sow,” offered the Manchester woman, chiming in.

  “That’s right,” agreed the man. “And he’s reapin’ his wild oats now, I can tell you. I wouldn’t give you a fart in a bottle for old Edward over there — pardon my French.”

  “It’s more the institution, like,” put in the youngster in the white sneakers.

  “That’s right,” agreed the man, and nearly everyone else with him. “It’s because of what he was, not who he was.”

  “Mind you,” added the woman, “Ready Teddy probably couldn’t even park cars at the Naughty King’s Ball. He were a right rascal, but there’s been quite a few that was far worse. I don’t see as it’s time for throwing the baby out with the bath water.”

  James walked slowly back to Kenzie House by a long, circuitous route, trying to distill the common mood of the people in all he’d heard at the palace. Although the day for announcing his succession to the throne was rapidly approaching, he was still not at all certain he wanted to be king. He had not told Embries about his misgivings, however; nor mentioned the fact that things had gone rather sour on the marriage front, too.

  Embries was waiting for him when he returned. “Well?” he asked. “How was it?”

  “Interesting,” replied James.

  The old man nodded. “Follow me.” Drawn by their voices, Cal entered the foyer just then and Embries said, “Ah, good. You come, too, Cal. I want to show you something.”

  They went into the room which served as Donald Rothes’ office. Embries took a seat behind the desk and, when the two were settled opposite him, he told them the dreadful news about Collins’ murder.

  “When?” asked James, stunned by the violence of the act.

  “Night before last,” Embries said, shaking his head sadly. “He was a trusted and valued ally, and I will miss him greatly.” He paused and lowered his eyes, as if gazing into a well of sorrow.

  “Who would want to do
such a thing?” Cal wondered.

  “No doubt there are many who would want to see the monarchy abolished,” Embries replied. “The question is, who would be willing to kill to bring about that end?”

  “The Government?” suggested Cal.

  “That’s only a few thousand elected officials and civil servants,” James pointed out sourly. The news of Collins’ murder had struck a raw nerve.

  “Someone close to the top, I mean,” Cal amended. “Waring has been pushing through his devolution scheme like a bulldozer. He’s not likely to allow a few bodies to get in his way.”

  “Think what you’re saying, Cal,” scolded James irritably. “This isn’t Stalinist Russia, you know. The Prime Minister doesn’t have hit squads roaming the streets assassinating citizens who happen to disagree with his policies.” James frowned, glaring at his friend. “Anyway, who even knew what Collins was working on? Collins’ death is probably nothing to do with any of this. It might just be a coincidence.”

  “I think that unlikely,” Embries countered. Producing a thick, cream-colored envelope, he handed it to James. “This is what he was working on.”

  “What is it?” asked Cal.

  “It is James’ calling card,” Embries replied, tapping the envelope with a long forefinger. “Inside are the credentials needed to satisfy the various organs of State that James is who he claims to be. Wilfred finished it shortly before he died.”

  He then went on to explain the various documents, his plans for them, and how the announcement would be made. “Thanks to Donald’s raising the issue in Parliament, the media and public outcry has been such that the Government has backed away from its ill-conceived plan for a hasty cremation. There is now to be a memorial service at Westminster — after which, a procession will conduct the coffin to the train for transport to Balmoral, and burial in the family plot.

  “Thus, I can foresee a splendid opportunity for James’ announcement to take place outside Westminster following the service. The media will be there in force, and we will make a tremendous splash. I have worked out a special delivery system to make certain the event receives the appropriate notice.”