by Ade Grant
Jocelyn shook her head at what such a code would finally look like, written down and made law. ‘Well, the economy sure does need something.’
‘But that’s not all!’ he said, almost jumping in his seat. ‘The PaPA System allows us to find the best governance on everything. Let’s take the example of Health: through rigorous testing we’ve found a voucher insurance system that’ll blow your mind. In education we’ve devised an organisation that does away with schools entirely. We won’t need them. We’ll utilise contact-screen technology fused with an apprenticeship style of learning.’
‘Sounds expensive.’
He seemed positively cheered by her pessimism. ‘It was! But after a few months of slight alterations to the policy the costs were reduced forty-seven percent! Incredible!’
As if inspired by his enthusiasm the foam upon Jocelyn’s latte bubbled over onto the table. The barista had seemingly been waiting for just an eventuality and he hurried over, cloth in hand. ‘My apologies,’ he said, forgetting his faux-accent and frowning as if it were anyone else’s fault but his own and thus nothing for him to actually apologise for. ‘Damn frothbot is always on the blink. I made the mistake of accidently dropping two into the same mug and they fought to the death. Territorial little buggers. Ever since, the victor has been something of a foam zealot.’ He sliced the top of the ever-expanding head and shuffled away.
She waited for him to cover a suitable distance. ‘So you want me to publish that you’re finally approaching a policy announcement?’
She thought she had him pegged, but Laughton’s face fell. The sudden absence of enthusiasm seemed to physically shrink him by a third. ‘No,’ he moaned. ‘No, that’s not it at all.’ With a glum glance about, he leaned in close. ‘We’re going to have to put it off until after the election.’
Jocelyn’s eyes hardened. ‘You won’t get away with that. You can’t.’
‘We can and we will,’ he replied, defences raised. ‘We’ve got no choice. There’s been a problem with the PaPA System and we need more time. I need you to publish a story that will lay the ground for us to announce that the new tax-code will come within the next parliament. Tax-code, trade-deals, education policy, health reforms, you name it.’
She shook her head. ‘I can’t possibly spin this for you. Two whole parliaments of doing nothing but dicking about with a fucking computer program? Are you serious?’
His face flushed red, like a put-upon child. ‘I just got through explaining all the good work we’ve done. Why can’t you people just hold on for a year or two? Look at the big picture.’
Jocelyn couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Was Westminster really so detached from reality? ‘The big picture is that the state is falling apart,’ she replied. ‘We need changes now.’
‘You think we don’t know this? Jocelyn, please, all I’m asking for is calm whilst we iron out this final kink.’
Her lips were pursed while she thought it over. ‘I can’t take it on trust,’ she decided. ‘What’s this kink?’
Laughton’s eyes shifted, still as a petulant child, though this time caught with shit in his pants. ‘Right, so the PaPA System is useful to us because it is an accurate representation of our society…’
‘Uhuh.’
‘And for the results to have any use they are contingent upon that very accuracy …’
‘…Yes.’
‘Well we found out it wasn’t.’
‘Wasn’t what?’
‘It wasn’t one hundred percent accurate. I mean, we missed one tiny aspect.’
Jocelyn had been about to take a sip, but couldn’t raise her hand. The frothbot seemed pleased. ‘You’ve spent eight years running scenarios in a flawed system? You decided an election using a flawed system?’
‘Keep your voice down! It’s a minor flaw, it probably would have had no bearing whatsoever on the election result. However negligible it is though, we can’t implement policy until we have run it through the corrected system. Our state and the PaPA’s digital state must be identical.’
‘What was it you missed?’
Landon gave a bleak mirthless laugh. ‘We didn’t program the synthetic government with a PaPA of their own.’
‘A PaPA… within the PaPA?’
‘Yes. It sounds absurd, but that’s an important piece of our national infrastructure, and yet we left it out of theirs! Heads rolled, I can tell you.’
‘But you’ve added it in now?’
‘Correct.’
‘So what’s the delay?’
Laughton lowered his face into his hands, his voice dropped low. He didn’t need to whisper, the cafe was empty. Who else would be willing to waste money on something as frivolous as coffee in these desperate days? ‘The damn thing’s stopped working. Before, when we’d suggested a policy, the digital government would leap into action, but now… now all they do is run it by their Department of Projection and Policy Analysis. Three months!’ he wailed. ‘Three months and no matter what we tell them, their government just sits there doing fuck all!’
SONS OF YORK
TOWER OF LONDON: 13 JUNE 1483
Hail Richard, King of Nothing!
He inclined his head to better hear the voice. ‘What did you say?’ Richard’s words sounded raw to his own ears.
The small man, a stranger until now, clutched his hat between his hands, more hair trapped within its rough fabric than still on his head. ‘Lord Protector?’ he replied and Richard could sense the man’s bewildered panic. ‘Forgive me, but I did not say a thing. Did… did you ask a question beforehand?’
No question. He’d merely remembered a voice he’d never actually heard. Richard shook his head and the keeper of the menagerie backed away, relieved, though a little perturbed, at his lord’s behaviour. The Duke of Gloucester, Lord Protector of England, regent to a prince yet to be crowned, turned his attention back to the chained animal housed in this dank tower. Two of his own retinue, brought south from York, stood nearby. These soldiers were charged with Richard’s safety and eyed the beast with trepidation plain on each face; neither had ever dreamed of seeing a lion outside of heraldry. Every breath the animal took shook the chains that bound it.
With a thin, oscillating tone, the lion keeper spoke again. Richard bit down on his tongue. He’d come here for silence, a chance to think, not to hear this prattle. ‘This monster has been delivered from distant Africa,’ the keeper explained in well-rehearsed lines. ‘It is the jewel of our tower. As fast as any horse and as strong as a bear. It slew ten men in the effort of its capture and countless more before that. Not another exists in the whole of England.’
Richard didn’t take his eyes from the cat. ‘How about France?’ he asked. ‘Does Louis XI have another like it?’
‘I could not say for certain, but… no, no I don’t think that’s possible. This monster is unique, the last of its kind. They are deeply territorial beasts these emperor lions. They hail from a small fertile valley trapped between arid, inhospitable plains. Very rare, very rare.’
As if responding to the mention of home, the lion let out a snort, nostrils flaring in the dark. The keeper paused, his attention momentarily diverted, but once assured he continued, ‘The lions of that valley are a breed above the rest, especially large, especially cruel. Unable to tolerate their own kind, they slew their brethren until only this one remained.’
Richard let out a bitter laugh. ‘A king?’
‘I… I suppose so, my lord.’
‘An African king.’ The idea seemed quite appropriate. ‘From distant lands to here.’
Pain flashed up his back, tracing his spine from base to shoulder, and with a wince Richard shifted upon the low stool. The keeper responded to his discomfort with his own flighty panic. ‘Please m’lord, let me bring you a more suitable chair.’
Richard waved his hand in irritation. ‘Not necessary. I’m required elsewhere all too soon. Tell me, has my nephew seen the beast?’
The keeper hesitated. ‘Princ
e Edward? Yes, his grace has made frequent visits to this tower. It brings him great pleasure to look upon the oddities housed within and it is my honour to oblige. It will not surprise you to learn that this one here is his personal favourite, despite its unsavoury demeanour.’
Richard agreed, ‘The boy is brave,’ and whilst he spoke his fingers drifted down to the dagger sheathed at his side, fingers dancing about the hilt and then recoiling as if burnt. ‘Leave me,’ he said abruptly and looked to his guards. ‘All three of you. I wish to petition this king of beasts alone.’
Without any quibble, the men retreated. For any other lord, the guards might have argued that they should stay for his own protection, but with Edward V yet to be crowned, his regent Richard held all the power. If Richard Duke of Gloucester commanded them to go, they went, and were quick about it.
Their footsteps faded and all was quiet in the castle’s menagerie, the tower known as the Lion’s, though all manner of beasts and birds were housed on the various floors above. This one had been kept clear of late, a stage for the displaying of this great cat.
Small slithers of light illuminated the lion’s pelt, slow breaths rising and falling in the gloom. ‘My apologies, your grace,’ he said in little more than a whisper. ‘We are two of a kind, I think. Noble blood, but blood best suited to other climes. Do either of us belong in London? No, I think not.’ He paused as if the beast might have something to offer on the subject, but all it did was regard him with dark, baleful eyes.
‘And yet here we are, one chained by metal and the other by duty, but both chained nonetheless.’ He inched forward, closer to the creature than the keeper would ever have advised. Still, the cat did not stir. ‘Do you wish to kill me? Is there a soul in there, a spirit, a mind? Or if not now, did you ever? With every vanquished foe, every slain kin, did you lose a piece of yourself? Did you mourn their loss with their blood on your tongue?’
The beast opened its mouth and Richard tensed, ready to recoil, but all that issued forth was a pant heavier than before. He could feel its breath against his face, a stink filling his nostrils. It was not the usual smell of a captive animal, of shit, straw and meat. There was something more rank and corrupt hanging in the air. In the dim light he could see numerous patches of festering wounds upon the creature’s flank, patches of skin where the fur had been stripped bare. Lice in the mane. A king brought low.
Hail Richard, King of Nothing!
Should he be concerning himself with something so trivial on this of all days? Within the White Tower, the meeting was still in session, despite his excuse to pray. Hastings would be there now, sowing the seeds of dissent. Richard had meant to do as he’d said, to visit the tower’s chapel, but somehow he had ended up here.
We are in the sight of God, his mother had told him all those years ago. Whatever happens in this chapel, God shall see.
God shall see.
He toyed with his dagger, sliding the blade partly out of its sheath and then back in.
Would God see everything that must transpire this day? And when God read his heart, would it testify to his defence or his prosecution? It did not seem clear, even to him.
When his father had rebelled against his anointed King Henry, Richard had been but a boy. That first stage of the war had ended swiftly, with his father outnumbered and forced to flee at Ludford Bridge. Richard Duke of York had fled to fight another day, leaving his youngest son and wife to await the king’s revenge. She’d awaited their foes with Richard in the chapel. Within God’s sight.
‘God may see all, but he doesn’t intervene,’ Richard whispered, feeling nauseous as always when recalling that terrible day. Terrified youth had blinded him to a courage shown, dwarfing that of the Yorkist men. His mother had met her fate with dry eyes when all he could do was cry.
Yet somehow they’d all survived, his father and eldest brother in exile, his mother and he as prisoners. Perhaps the hand of God had been at play after all? Later in the struggle, his father fell and Edward took over, and Edward’s final victory had certainly seemed blessed by the divine, so why should sitting in a chapel fill him with such dread?
No good can come of this, Richard. Only evil.
‘Maybe,’ he said, finally withdrawing the dagger fully from its sheath. The blade caught the light and the eyes of the cat. ‘But if all my deeds this day must prove wrong, let me do one that is right.’
Richard reached out his hand and touched the lion’s mane. It didn’t pull back. It didn’t strike. If this beast was a king then it was less his late brother and more the docile Henry. He stroked it as he would a dog and felt it tremble.
Swift and gentle, Richard slid the knife up into the lion’s throat. It stiffened in his grasp, but didn’t struggle. The African king gave up his throne.
When the sun shone across the Tower of London it would illuminate the white walls of the central keep into a pillar of light, a beacon behind its circle of stony armour. However, when Richard stepped out of the menagerie and looked upon it, there was no such illustrious sight. The sky was grey, and so were the stones, a bleak cliff rising up from the ground, everywhere bathed in a single shadow. Richard looked to the clouds, but although he knew the sun must have climbed high above the curtain walls, he could not discern its position. A grim day for grim tasks.
Yet the hours were passing and those tasks had yet to be done. After leaving his council he’d paced the grounds, only to end up in the Lion’s Tower, and there the morning had vanished. Time seemed as slick and treacherous as the nearby Thames. No, he could not delay any longer, the deed must be done, no matter how much he loathed to do it.
The keeper approached him, having waited patiently for the Lord Protector to emerge. ‘Shall I move the beast back to its cage, my lord?’
‘That will not be necessary,’ Richard replied, keeping his eyes upon the White Tower, his new home, the seat of his power. These walls offered him protection should any pretender to the throne need to be repelled, but at the same time the very bricks themselves held a sense of foreboding. It was a dreary place. ‘I regret to inform you that the beast is dead.’
The keeper’s eyes widened, a flicker of fear and outrage within. ‘Dead? How? My lord, you cannot mean to blame me? I can assure you that it could not have harmed your royal person even if it had tried, those chains could hold an elephant. You must have made a mistake.’
‘A mistake?’ Richard’s voice was thick with disdain.
‘That was the king’s favourite animal.’
‘Prince. Prince Edward has not been crowned yet.’
‘Of course, but… but the young prince took great pleasure in observing the beast, so the idea that I would be so reckless as to allow it to attack your royal person is… is… well, preposterous.’
Richard finally diverted his eyes to the small man. On the slender side himself, Richard had never had the bulk and bravado of his brothers. No man would ever think to challenge those enormous knights, but they would the runt of the litter. To many, Richard must have seemed easy pickings with his short stature and crooked back. Not until they looked into his eyes did they realise their challenge misjudged.
He employed his withering stare to good effect now. ‘Keeper, I said I regret to inform you, because I loathe your presence and regret every moment of conversation I am forced to endure on your behalf. I do not regret robbing my nephew of his favourite toy. The beast is dead because I chose to slay it. Now be gone before I clap you in those very chains you boast of.’ The keeper fled back into the tower over which he held sway, eyes making threats he’d never entrust to his tongue.
Beyond the White Tower on the far southern side of the courtyard stood the Garden Tower, the temporary home of Prince Edward V. The boy’s maternal family had tried to crown him early, but Richard had put a stop to their plans by seizing the child and housing him here. But oh, how the sight of that tower sickened him about as much as the chapel did. The Garden Tower was joined at the hip to the Wakefield one, and was there ever
a name with more evil connotations as that? It was upon the fields of Wakefield Green that his father had lost his cause and lost his head. Outnumbered and ambushed, the Yorkist army had perished and that monster Clifford had conducted the execution of their leader, though not before parading Richard’s father with a garland of reeds to mock his royal claim.
Hail Richard, Clifford had laughed as he swung the sword. King of Nothing!
It took time to climb the many steps of the White Tower and reach the upper chambers where Richard held court. Before beginning the ascent he’d summoned an additional clutch of guards, more loyal northern men, who dutifully followed his step. It was no use dwelling upon the past. The Butcher of Wakefield was long dead, his father avenged at a later battle when Edward had secured his throne. So many blood-drenched fields, but in time Richard’s brother had ended the dynastic struggle and brought peace to the realm.
And now that unifying presence was gone, Richard’s brother, Edward IV, was dead. He’d passed suddenly, tragically young, and left a boy to rule in his place. Edward V.
Or maybe… Richard III?
The contentious question had reared its head the previous night in a heated argument between him and William Hastings. They’d met in Richard’s privy chambers, away from even the most loyal of servants, to whisper urgent pleas.
You cannot mean to.
I must, Richard had said. For England, I must.
Hastings had shaken his head, the first denial he’d ever received of the man. I will support you in all but this. No good can come of it, Richard. Only evil.
Daggers could have been drawn if it were not for the love the men shared, brothers in arms as strong as brothers in blood, and the pair had retreated their separate ways, to brood on words that would have been better left unsaid.
But they had been said. I will support you in all but this, and in that moment Hastings had snuffed out his own life. Anything Richard did now was at Hastings’ behest, not his own. In his heart he longed to find that council chamber empty, the lords fled, but it was not so. He could hear his friend’s voice, as boisterous as ever, engrossed in some bawdy jest about his mistress, Jane Shore.