by Ben Jeapes
Unfortunately they had no idea what to do about it. They had kept having to break off their talk so that one or the other could pay attention to a customer who inconveniently wanted to buy something, and by the end of the afternoon they had reached no kind of conclusion to the King problem. Ted’s own sense of fairness meant he didn’t want to lodge a formal complaint against Inspector Stewart – it wasn’t her fault. And Zoe still wasn’t answering her phone or texts.
At five o’clock they stepped out into the dark, rain-swept street. The Christmas crowds were thinning and the decorations strung out across New Canal reflected back from damp tarmac. Malcolm pulled the door shut on the beeping of the burglar alarm and they looked glumly at each other for a moment.
“I can give you a lift?” Malcolm offered.
“Thanks.” Ted’s heart lifted slightly. “That would be good.” For all his general Malcolm-ness, Malcolm drove a top of the range, modern Jaguar – the nearest thing there still was to an English car, he liked to say – and a ride in it was a rare privilege.
They set off, side by side.
“If she does arrest me, will you defend me?” Ted asked. He didn’t think Inspector Stewart would. He just wanted to continue the conversation, get to the heart of the unfairness that gnawed at him.
Malcolm smiled. “She won’t. There’s the small matter of nothing having happened, for a start, and if it did, she started it.”
“But she said–”
“Besides,” Malcolm added wryly, “I used to prosecute, not defend.”
“You defended me, once. You’re my counsel.”
“Did I? When … Ah. Yes. Well, that’s all behind us, isn’t it?”
Ted let himself smile. It had not been a day he ever wanted to remember – that summer, getting caught walking out of a shop with a DVD full of porn stuffed down his trousers. And having to ask Malcolm to come and get him. On the second day of his job. But Malcolm was right, and a glimmer of pride lifted his spirits a little.
“Yup. All behind.”
“You know, I can’t be formally retained if I’m not paid–”
“So where’s your car?” Ted asked brightly.
*
The cathedral was only the second oldest building in Salisbury. The White Bear was the oldest.
It had been built to accommodate the draughtsmen of the cathedral while the rest of the city was just chequers marked out on the marshy plain below Old Sarum. As the city grew around it, it had evolved into a coaching inn. Now its cobbled courtyard was its secluded heart and the rooms overlooking it were panelled in wood. The floorboards were polished. The lights were dim. The hotel prided itself on its old-world atmosphere and service.
And tonight it hosted the reconvened court of the King.
The Queen sat on a stuffed leather chair at one end of a transformed dining room. A waiter – a royal subject, of course; all the foreigners in residence had grown strangely huffy and moved out almost at once – picked his way over a tree root that thrust out of the floorboards and ducked his head beneath a canopy of leaves that had shattered the panelling. Many in the court were spirits of woodland and water and, as spirits will, they had brought their habitats with them.
“Champagne, ma’am?”
She took the slim glass between two fingers, sniffed the sparkling drink, and took a sip. Her eyebrows shot up as bubbles exploded on her tongue. Then she nodded her thanks and sat back, while music pounded out of the walls and the King led the dancing.
The people of this new world certainly had interesting styles, and the jukebox contained more variety and rhythm than a hundred sets of pipes and skin stretched over wooden frames. The King seemed to be working his way down the range of ages. Some of the older guests had introduced the King to a style called the Conga, and he had led a chain of them round the room until they were dizzy and their legs ached. That had been when the King’s jacket came off. Then some younger royal subjects had introduced him to the Macarena, which had everyone present moving in a way that reminded her of a stately ritual while the steady, inevitable rhythm worked its way under your skin. That was when the King removed his tie. And now two young women, about the same age as the lout who had defied her husband earlier, were leading His Majesty in what was apparently called the Lambada. It was quick and involved much whirling around and catching and physical contact. Shirt untucked, sleeves rolled up, the King was clearly loving it. The Queen smiled coldly and let her fingers tap a rhythm on the chair’s leather arm.
The song ended and the King laughingly untangled himself from his two companions. He snapped his fingers for a waiter to come hurrying over with more beer, and dropped himself into the chair next to the Queen’s. His face was red, his clothes dishevelled and his grin split his face from ear to ear.
“So, my beloved. Tell me this doesn’t improve a thousand times upon our wooden palace on the mound.”
“It is acceptable,” she agreed with a nod.
The King had asked where a King and Queen should live in Salisbury: the White Bear had been the majority answer, and once they saw it the royal couple had concurred. The hotel had been built barely a blink of the eye ago by their standards but it was old enough in spirit to satisfy.
“I had hoped the Hunter would rejoin us,” she added innocently, and hugely enjoyed seeing the cloud that passed over her husband’s face. Well, if he could cavort with these child-maidens in their Lambada, she could give the old jealousy a small prod just to see what flames it might stoke. The Hunter had never been disloyal to his King but he was also so much more … direct in his feelings.
“There is no Hunter anymore,” he said shortly. His good mood had vanished and he gazed glumly upon the court. Spirits of the air and the forest and the rivers – all delighted to see their old master return, all well-meaning, but none of them as powerful as the lords of old. “The world has changed too much. Our old court has gone to sleep and it sleeps too deep to waken. There is no Hunter now because Salisbury has no need of the Hunter. You saw the ‘super market’. This, my love–” He waved a hand at the room. “This is our court.”
She pulled a genteel face to encourage him. If her King had a flaw, and he was loath to admit to any, it was that he could be distracted from his task. She needed to manage him, very gently, to keep his mind on the task at hand.
“But!” He thumped the arm of his chair. “No matter! The lords of our old court are no longer needed. We will survey this new world and we will create new ones.”
The Queen was delighted but she knew the worst thing she could do would be to tell him so. She had to give his resolve further fuel.
“Make it quick, husband. Your kingdom cries out for you.” She leaned over. Her voice lowered and her eyes flashed as she spoke quickly and clearly. “We stood in the market place and we heard the spirits of wood nymphs cry out for vengeance from beneath the paved ground.”
He scowled. He did not like to be reminded of weakness. She pressed on.
“This city’s heart is the mighty temple of a foreign god built where once my shrine stood in the water meadows. My shrine! Once we could have ordered the ground to open and those proud stone walls to crumble.”
He rolled his eyes.
“I know all this. And did you not notice, my love, also in the market place, a sacred grove?”
“There was no grove there!”
“It was a grove of stone and metal. A wall, carved with the names – hundreds of names! – of men who died in a great war.”
“I saw the wall,” she agreed with a sniff. “Scarcely a grove, husband.”
“It is a place hallowed by sacrifice. So, a grove! A powerful magic could be worked there, if you could summon the right spell.”
“And will you summon the right spell? Or will you simply sit and enjoy this frivolity?”
She could see him losing his temper.
“I will do what I do, my wife, my Queen, but I am aware the world is still much larger than we once thought; there are still thin
gs we must learn–”
“Such as, how can a royal subject of yours choose to disobey you?”
The King gave a single wordless shout of anger.
“Oh, very well! Since I will get no peace at all until that matter is resolved, I will resolve it.” He leapt to his feet and pressed her hand to his mouth. “With your permission, my lady?”
“My Lord!” the Queen breathed. Finally: to have the insufferable brat who dared to defy them in their grasp! He hurried from the room.
Salisbury outside was dark and wet. The shops had closed and cars hissed by on the damp street. He spoke into the night.
“Hear me, Salisbury.”
His voice would carry no further than any man’s but his command went into the very fabric of the city. Every one of its 45,000 souls who was a royal subject would hear him.
“I want the boy named Ted Gorse brought to me.”
Chapter 6
Malcolm dropped Ted off by the end of Henderson Close and drove off down Harnham Road towards Wilton. The red tail lights of the Jaguar merged into the stream of traffic while Ted dodged across the road and trudged up to no. 34. As usual he gave Stephen’s house a glance, but only a cursory one.
“You’re well out of it, mate,” he muttered, and pushed his front door open.
“Hello, sweetheart,” his mother called from the kitchen. “I’m just making some tea.”
“Oh, yes please.” Ted shucked his coat and leaned against the kitchen door, savouring the warmth and the smells of home. The day had drained him. It was only tea time on a Saturday evening and he actually felt like crawling upstairs and into bed. His mum pecked him on the cheek as she swooped by en route to the larder.
“Tired man home from a day of toil?”
“You bet.” Where to start? He decided not to. Least of all was he going to say anything about being snogged by a police inspector under the influence of some mysterious King guy. Talking to Malcolm about it had been hard enough.
“Everyone’s in the other room. And apparently–” A disbelieving, half-smile hovered over her face. “You have something of Sarah’s?”
“Huh?”
“She told me, ‘Mum, Ted’s hiding something from me, make him stop’.”
It took Ted a moment to work out what she meant, and then he realised. Conniving brat!
Sarah meant the explanation for her bloody dream.
“Well, whatever it is, dear, just let her have it back.”
“I don’t have anything of hers!” Just an explanation that I have no intention of giving her, and you wouldn’t want me to either if you knew what it was.
“Well, just sort it out with her, will you?”
Ted simmered quietly, and maybe it was in a slight spirit of retaliation that he asked, “How’s Barry?”
Her mouth set in a line for just a flash, so quick that there was barely time to notice.
“Barry’s Barry. Oh, and what did Malcolm say?”
“Malcolm–” For a moment Ted almost panicked, wondering how the hell his mum knew what he had been talking to Malcolm about. Then he finally remembered the other thing to go wrong that day – the non-upgrade to the shop’s computers. “Oh, yeah. He said no.”
She tilted her head in sympathy, though he could tell she wasn’t really surprised, and pinched his face.
“Go through and I’ll bring you your tea.”
*
Ted followed the sound of the TV into the living room, though just for a moment he wondered why a sudden mental image of the posh hotel on Milford Street burst into his mind. Barry was slouched on the sofa, still working his way through the Agatha Christie box set he had got for his birthday. Robert sat next to him, upside down, with his legs hanging over the back of the sofa. Sarah was curled up in one of the soft chairs with her tablet. Ted gave her a look through narrowed eyes which she haughtily returned, before drawing up her legs a bit more tightly and gazing back at her screen. Ted picked the cat up out of the other soft chair and sat down with the animal on his lap. Mr Furry indignantly waved his tail under Ted’s nose, giving Ted the chance of direct line of sight into his colon had he been so inclined. Then he turned a couple of circles and settled down again, jabbing his claws into Ted’s knees as a sign of feline love.
“Your turn to choose a movie for tonight, Ted,” was Barry’s only greeting, issued without taking his eyes off the screen.
“Right …” Ted doubted Barry would want to watch the kind of movie he felt he needed. He tried to let his mind go into neutral: let go of the day’s generally crap events, maybe work out which member of the upper classes of the 1930s had committed this episode’s murder, and forget that he had been snogged by a gorgeous woman in a way that had activated all kinds of mechanisms inside him which he still hadn’t done anything about turning off. He wondered if he should wait until bedtime or just get it out of the way now. He shifted uncomfortably, getting another jab from Mr Furry, and idly tuned into the fake Belgian accent coming out of the TV.
Observe, Inspecteur, the frustrated teenager is much desirous of having the intercourse sexual, but because c’est ne pas possible he must perforce resort to la materiél pornographique dans son chambre, non?
“He wants him,” said Robert cryptically, like his stepdad not taking his eyes off the screen.
“Uh-huh.” Barry’s attention still barely wavered. Uh-huh was what he tended to say to give the impression he was listening to you.
Ted settled back into the chair and idly tickled the cat behind the ears, with no idea what they were talking about. Just try to relax. TEDLISH. Think of TEDLISH. Much more productive than porn. What needs doing? Well …
“Here you are, sweetheart.” His mum had come in with a tray of cups and she angled it so he could take one. “We don’t have to go just yet. I wonder if we should dress up?”
“What?” Ted looked blankly up at her.
“Barry?”
“What?” Ted’s stepdad actually tilted his head a little away from the TV.
“Do you think we should dress up?”
“Uh-huh–”
She pulled a face, probably realising she had as much of his attention as she was going to get.
“Well, I might change my top–”
“Are we going somewhere?” Ted asked.
His mum settled herself down between Barry and Robert and gave her younger son a nudge.
“Sit the right way up, darling. The King wants you, Ted.”
“What!” Ted sat up so abruptly it almost dislodged the cat. His gaze shot to the door, to the French windows, to the fireplace, even. Was the King just going to appear? “No! No way!”
“What is it now?” Barry seemed to realise he wasn’t going to be allowed to concentrate on the programme any longer.
“The King wants to see Ted,” said Ted’s mum. “Right now. At the White Bear.”
Barry looked from Ted, who was still trying to find words to articulate his objections, to his wife.
“Better take him, then, hadn’t we?”
“No!” Ted blurted. “I don’t–”
“Oh, Ted.” His mum shot him the same look of reproach as when he had got his final warning for shoplifting. It almost broke his heart. “Don’t cause trouble now.”
Barry rolled his eyes. “Because,” he stated, “it would be so like you–”
“Listen!” Ted shouted. Barry buried his face in his hand. “You don’t know what it’s like. This King, he can … order people, somehow, make them do anything. This afternoon, right, he told this woman, this complete stranger, to … to–” He so didn’t want to say this to his mum. “To do it with me! And – and she would have! I had to say no!”
“A little too much information, Ted?” His mum always said that when Ted and sex were in the same sentence, or conversation, or indeed thought. Robert and Sarah stared at their big brother.
“You could have done it?” Sarah asked.
“Done what?” Robert asked.
Barry’s face t
wisted with contempt.
“Ted, I have no idea what you’re on about or what floozies you hang out with, but your mother wants you to do something–”
Ted gaped. “You know, a lot of dads would probably be pleased that their son doesn’t shag a complete stranger in a burger bar–”
“Enough.” Barry lumbered to his feet. “Get your coat. I’m driving you to the White Bear whether you like it or not.”
He had moved too quickly for Ted, trapped in his chair with a cat on his lap. Ted looked up at his stepfather’s determined glower and his heart pounded. Oh my God, he means it!
“Okay–” he said, slowly. His mind worked overtime, exploring and rejecting a thousand courses of action per second. He shifted a protesting Mr Furry off his lap and got up. “I’ll, yeah, get my coat–”
Barry followed him all the way into the hall. Ted could sense him, just a few inches away. The coats hung on the wall next to the front door. Ted had wanted to get his coat and make a run for it but he might not have time – Barry would just block the door. Think think think … He could want to go to the loo? No point – he could never climb out of the small window. Go upstairs, shin down the drainpipe?
Ted lunged, coatless, for the front door and Barry’s arms wrapped around his waist.
“Oh no you don’t!”
“Let me go!” Ted howled. The shock banished the fear and just made him angry. They had had their ups and downs but Barry had never laid hands on him before. “You don’t have to–”
“Robs! Get his coat–”
The rest of the family were filing into the hall.
“Listen to me–”
“You are going to do this one thing properly if it’s the last thing you do–”
“You’re so naughty, Ted.” Sarah peeked out from behind their mum, not trying to hide a wicked grin.
“Edward Gorse, please just do as you’re told–” Their mum only ever called him Edward when she was really upset. His heart filled with fury and hatred for this bloody King who had caused all this.