“You just want to keep your bloody oil fields!” jeered Augustus Shellingfield.
“Silence in the house!” The Speaker banged his staff. TK just shook his head and sat down.
“Troubled times are coming, Donald. That’s what I brought you here to understand.”
*
After the session closed at 5 pm, TK led Donald from the Lords Chamber to the upper level of the Palace of Westminster. Here was a place of marble-floored corridors and grand doors of brass or carved hardwood guarded by sovereign marines in a variety of uniforms, some of which, notably the Shellingfields’, appeared fanciful enough to belong in a children’s fairy tale. Behind these doors were the private suites of the wealthier members. TK stopped at two young toughs. Each wore a pale blue beret, camouflage smock, puttees and black boots. Each carried a holstered pistol on the hip.
“Good evening, my loyal marines,” TK said.
“Good evening, Your Decency.”
TK unlocked an ordinary wooden door and led Donald into what he would have described as a hall, with a high wood-panelled ceiling from which hung brass chandeliers on chains. It was like a courtroom. TK explained it had been a committee room of the old national parliament. Most of the furniture conformed to that functional style. The marked exception was a small Art Nouveau table under one of the Gothic windows. This table had more the appearance of a shrine. A silver-framed photograph stood surrounded by fresh hellebore of such a deep purple they were almost black. The photograph was too distant for Donald to make out details as TK led him to some deep leather armchairs facing the log fire. TK passed over a box of cigarettes. Donald did not smoke, so merely took the odd puff without inhaling. TK drew deeply, obviously finding the effect satisfying.
“It’s been a useful afternoon for you, Donald. You’ve seen the rancour of the Assembly. It’s a jungle, a constant battle for survival. The Shellingfields will never give up trying to get their paws on our oil fields at Winchester and the Isle of Purbeck. The awkward fact is both oilfields lie bang on the border with their lands. Nothing can change that”
TK was silent for a few minutes, staring into the fire. Donald waited, regretting having taken a cigarette as he felt silly holding it.
“Two weeks ago, I summoned you to my lands on a flight that ended in disaster, as a result of which I have lost time and gold. It may amuse you to learn what you are worth. The Dasti-Jones clan accepted compensation of five thousand ounces and monthly deliveries of one hundred barrels of oil for twelve months.”
“What is a barrel of oil worth, Your Decency?”
“A lot more to our enemies than our friends,” TK smiled. “The total package came to about fifteen thousand ounces, with some additional bits and pieces of intelligence we shared.”
The sum was more than Donald had ever earned in a year. His income typically averaged just under a thousand ounces per month. Not much of it stayed in his pocket. Life was a constant struggle to maintain the appearances befitting a sovereign-class wife.
“Anyway,” TK said. “You must be wondering why I called you out to our lands.”
“That is the case, Your Decency.”
“I need you to solve a serious problem. Do you recall a chap named Pezzini?”
“He was your appointed regent.”
Donald remembered an enormous, dark brown man with a shining bald head and bulky, shapeless body. On the few occasions he had attempted conversation during receptions at Wilson House, Pezzini had proved humourless and reticent.
“He was a spay—a eunuch—poor fellow. I always thought Pezzini was the model of probity until one day recently I discovered he was not reliable. I had to let him go.”
In the silence, the logs crackled. The fire spat an ember that landed on the floor near Donald’s left shoe. He reached down and flicked it back into the fire, closely followed by the cigarette.
“Let him go where, Your Decency?”
“He won’t be back.”
Donald had no idea what to say, so kept his peace.
“As you can imagine, it’s a mighty blow for the clan to lose someone of that calibre. There is only one candidate who combines the necessary qualifications to replace him. I think you’d be a splendid chap to take over, Donald.”
Donald was so amazed he had at first no idea what to say. It was extraordinary for a common outsider to be invited into the deepest privacy of a sovereign land. The appointed regent presided over the Land Council of Krossington, the ruling assembly of the Lands of Krossington. Donald had heard all about the Land Council through Lavinia, whose elder brother was a member and griped constantly about a ‘common neuter’ ruling over sovereigns, that is, when he was not griping about his fellow nobles. Donald supposed the Land Council was like the Westminster Assembly, a hot-air house where spoiled, petty-minded idlers vented their spleens.
But he was in no position to be picky. He needed a miracle to repair his finances and that miracle had just fallen into his lap!
“I’m completely astonished, Your Decency.”
“I thought you would be. I’ve had to work quite hard to get you accepted. My brother Marcus-John—and not a few others—felt that a common outsider could not be trusted with our secrets. However, there is great respect for your impartiality and competence.”
“Would I have to move to Castle Krossington, Your Decency?”
“No. You would be free to continue your practice here in town, although there would be restrictions on the clients you could engage. The commitment would be two to three days per month. You’ll get a salary of 750 ounces, freedom of the Lands of Krossington, all flights and insurance… The usual stuff. Oh, and your daughters can school at the Krossington Institute if you like.”
If you like? 750 ounces for three days’ work per month? Guaranteed steady income? No more school fees and his daughters schooling with sovereign offspring? For a self-employed man with a thin caseload and a spendthrift wife?
“You’re a fine salesman, Your Decency.”
TK smiled and extended his right hand. They shook on it.
“I was 99% sure you’d accept. It’s a good step up for you both socially and professionally.”
He made his way over to a drinks cabinet and returned with a couple of sherries. Donald sipped. Two problems of his own nagged for attention: the unpaid invoice and the matter of brother Lawrence. He decided to start with the unpaid invoice.
“It must have got overlooked in the ruckus caused by Pezzini’s exposure and then my idiot cousin Cecil trying to be a flying boat captain,” TK said, making a note in a little memo book.
A feeling of deep reassurance flooded Donald. Few things are as pleasant as a safe income in place of gaping chasms. He ruminated upon the matter of Lawrence and decided to let the matter sleep. TK had invested his whole reputation into Donald’s becoming appointed regent. If any trouble arose from the Oban direction, TK would bury it. There was no way in hell he could dump his appointed regent without dumping himself.
Donald was in any case exploring contacts at his sports club and inn of court to find a link into the personnel records of General Wardian. Once he got his hands on Lawrence’s file, he would have solid evidence on which to proceed. As he was considering this, the air rumbled—the Naclaski batteries of the Grande Enceinte were in action again. They had fired several times during the Assembly session.
“Why is there so much background these days, Your Decency?” he asked. “It’s far worse now than before I got interned.”
“It’s the radicals. The National Party have radio trucks out on the public drains. They beam a few minutes of their crap and then move before the glory trusts have time to fix the location and shoot. 99% of those salvos are a waste of good gold.”
“I’ve managed to live my life until now without encountering the National Party. Why is it suddenly everywhere?”
“Because that’s what happens when something grows exponentially from nothing. Imagine a lake
with a single lily on it. The next day there are two lilies, the day after, four and so on. Let us say it will take thirty days to cover the whole lake. On what day do you think anyone would even notice the lilies?”
“Maths is not my strong point, Your Decency.”
“I’d say on Day 26. By then one sixteenth—about 6%—of the lake would be covered. In the last four days the lilies would sweep over the whole lake. No one except a few like me took any notice of the National Party for years—as a young man I was involved with the old SUN Party along with Banner. Our moderate, entirely peaceful campaign for reform became infected with murderous radicalism. That was the real cause of the Sack of Oxford. It cured me of any appetite for reform.”
He gazed into the fire for a long time. His eyes grew glassy. He frowned, sniffed, and shook himself. Then he glared at Donald with a frightful intensity.
“I know you feel at least a degree of sympathy with what Banner proposes. It seems so beguiling. Yet he’s a dangerous fool who learned nothing from the Sack of Oxford, damn him.”
TK stood up and made his way around the conference table to the Art Nouveau side table with the appearance of a shrine. He returned with the silver-framed photograph, which he handed to Donald. The photograph was of a young couple in front of a low wall of sandbags behind which was a backdrop of pale canvas that was probably the interior of a tent. The young woman was dashingly beautiful, with dawn-red hair flowing over her shoulders and dark, slate-blue eyes all the more striking for her pale complexion. Donald was struck by her likeness to Sarah-Kelly Newman—they shared the same determined set of mouth—although this young woman was more delicately featured. She wore trousers to accompany her double-breasted suit.
“That was my younger sister, Victorina.”
Donald had never heard of any younger sister, which meant this young woman was either long dead or else banished. He therefore replied with delicacy.
“She was a very fine-looking young lady.”
“She was indeed.”
“Who was her beau?”
The young man was certainly an impressive fellow, tall and broad shouldered with an impressive dome of cranium. His eyes were thin and at least sceptical, if not downright scathing, an effect hardened by the flat, compressed mouth.
“His name is Prentice Nightminster. He’s still around, somewhere, although you won’t meet him. I heard he became a businessman of some sort after dropping out of Oxford University. A clever man, it must be said. Clever and mysterious.”
Donald knew he was being taught a lesson, what he could not fathom was the nature of the lesson.
“What is the message in this photograph, Your Decency?”
“That picture was taken on the evening of May Day 2073. A few hours later, a rabble of scum murdered Victorina in the Sack of Oxford.”
“Oh good God! That’s appallingly tragic.”
“Yes, it was. It tore open my heart. Don’t ask me to show compassion for radicals, Donald, because I won’t.”
“You need not be concerned about my loyalties. Politics is a hobby for those who can afford it or else the posture of those with nothing to lose.”
“Good.” TK stood up and took the photograph back to its place amongst the dark purple hellebore. When he returned, Donald asked:
“So our world is perfect?”
TK snorted and shook his head decisively.
“Not a chance! There are grotesque abuses for sure, but there never was a society without its foul underbelly. Yes, we discharge surplus to the public drains. But look at the Public Era, which in all sincerity considered itself the height of history. Millions died in crashes on the public highways, the banks sucked interest like lampreys, millions were killed in wars to protect oil for the Fatted Masses. If you like, we can go through every stage of human society and I will show you the foulness beneath. In time you’ll learn that balanced land maximises the health of our native stock and indeed, that of the whole world.”
Donald did not try to argue—it was too likely his anger would show. He resolved to start reading economics—and to attend the National Party conference on the 30th. It was a bloody dangerous resolution for one just granted high honour by His Decency. A commoner made privy to the heart of sovereign privacy would get no shrift should there arise doubts about his reliability. He would walk in the footsteps of Pezzini, wherever they led.
So why take such a risk?
Years of court work had taught Donald there was no more dangerous distraction than emotion, just as he knew resentment was one of the worst. It distorted perception of reality. But one had to consider the matter of self-respect—he had to meet his face in the mirror every morning.
Becoming aware he had drifted into himself, he lifted his head to find TK was watching him. TK’s eyes seemed to have cooled, and he spoke as if he had been mulling things over too.
“I’ve just had a thought,” he said. “With Pezzini gone there’s a stack of demographic calculations to be done. They’re not exactly difficult, the challenge is the vast amount of fiddly detail which makes them notoriously tricky to get right. It will give you an excellent overview of the economic structure of the Lands of Krossington.”
“That will be fascinating, Your Decency.”
Chapter 8
His Decency Tom Krossington spent the morning perusing radical leaflets gathered by his marines working undercover in the industrial asylums around London.
In other circumstances, it would have amused him to learn what the National Party’s radicals believed about the private lives of the sovereign caste. Apparently the Krossingtons lived in a white palace inlaid with gold—this description was accompanied by a poorly-reproduced image of an exotic building that TK recognised as the Taj Mahal of India. Another leaflet, written by one claiming to be a servant of the Krossingtons who had escaped, described drunken orgies in which brothers ravished sisters on beds of mashed peaches whilst out of their minds on opium. Natives who failed to achieve their quota of acres ploughed were skewered on stakes and left to rot after the habit of Vlad the Impaler. TK was reassured by reports from his spies in the asylums who stated few slummies took such claims seriously.
Neither radicals nor slummies would have believed the truth about the fabled Castle Krossington, that “vile lair of the most spiteful, arrogant clan”. It was not some immense and diamond-studded Versailles of the South Downs. There had been a settlement at the location of Castle Krossington since Roman times. By the end of the Public Era, it had grown into a country village not far from the Wey and Arun Navigation, bang on the border of Surrey and Sussex. As Castle Krossington, it remained that country village, situated a convenient ten miles east of Haslemere, the capital of the Lands of Krossington. The big changes lay in the surrounding woods, which had grown back across the flat-bottomed valley around the old canal. These woods hid barracks, armouries and garages for the Krossington marines. Beyond these safety features, the gravel lanes became a maze of dark tracks impenetrable to those not familiar with them.
Tom Krossington and family still lived in the eighteenth-century farmhouse purchased by their grandfather Wilson Krossington before the Glorious Resolution. It cost the (as it now seemed) modest sum of about two thousand ounces of gold equivalent in the Sterling paper crap of the time. The style of the house was a timeless simplicity. Only the steeply-pitched roof and thick chimney punching through the exact middle like the handle of a pan dated the house to the pre-industrial era.
The rumble of a motorbike approached through the village. It rolled into the Krossington’s courtyard ridden by TK’s bodyguard Wingfield. He pulled the bike onto its centre stand and switched off the engine.
TK was about to call down a cheery offer of tea from his first-floor office until Wingfield’s stony face deterred him. His bodyguard marched straight in by the back door, calling a gruff hello to the butler. He must now be ascending the wooden stairs, although as usual TK heard nothing until a brisk rap on the do
or.
TK’s office was no marble-pillared hall of power. It was a corner room with two small, diamond-paned windows, one of which overlooked the courtyard, the other a gable end of one of the barns. The ceiling was low. Steel filing cabinets around the walls added to the congested feeling. TK had no need of any grandiose office here at home.
“You look as if a squadron of seagulls just shat all over your motorbike,” TK said. Wingfield pulled out a chair and wedged himself across from TK, who waited for what was obviously bad news.
“I told you back in the spring I had recruited Donald Aldingford’s chauffeur. The man’s name is Okeke Ortalo,” Wingfield said.
“Yes, I recall.”
“He’s proved to be a good agent, not just for watching Aldingford but as a channel for all sorts of gossip running around the servants of the Central Enclave.”
“Great stuff.”
“He told me something very serious. I had to do some independent checking as this is too important to accept from one source. That’s why I’ve not told you sooner.”
“What’s up?”
“A leading member of the National Party visited Donald Aldingford last Sunday afternoon. She had been loitering about the house for several days asking to speak with Judge Aldingford despite the best efforts of Donald’s staff to shoo her away. She finally caught him arriving home and was persuasive enough to get invited inside. Her name is Sarah-Kelly Newman. She’s a high-caste slummy from a barging family of North Kensington basin. She met with Donald for about twenty minutes. Okeke had the wit to tail her up to Bloomsbury College where she is a student of economics, which explains how she had security clearances for the Central Enclave and Bloomsbury district. She is also a recruiter, lecturer and cell leader for the National Party.”
Sovereigns of the Collapse Book 1 Page 8