by White, Gwynn
“Good luck on the outside, Floyd.”
“Same to you, Grant. Watch how you go. Ah, it’s no use telling you that.”
* * *
Next Day. September 26th, 1979. London
“Lee-lee!”
“Leonie!”
The little ones flung themselves on her, knocking her against the railing of the front steps. She shifted her duffel into her right hand. Part of her mind yammered no, she needed to keep that hand free for her weapon. But she didn’t have a weapon anymore, she’d turned it in.
She hugged the kids. Cyra, age eight, her fringe clipped back with a plastic flower; Bethie, age five, the youngest of all. Toll—he was ten now—hung back. She cornered him and hugged him, too, then followed them down the hall, past bicycles, gardening tools, and the old pram, which hopefully would not see any more use. Mum had to stop somewhere.
The Grants had TiP—tenancy-in-perpetuity—rights to the ground-floor flat of No.6 Lion’s Claw Lane, a redbrick terrace in Lambeth that had been all-Wessex for more than a century. The flat smelled of coal smoke and boiled cabbage, and you had to raise your voice every time a train clattered along the ‘new’ forty-year-old elevated spur two streets away … but with ten in the family, you were always raising your voice, anyway. And the kitchen was always spotless. And it was home.
Leonie dropped her duffel and embraced her mother, pressing her cheek to the top of Una’s blonde perm. She nodded to her stepfather, Tollan, the red-nosed, balding father of the youngest three. “How’s it going?”
“It was a sight better before my eldest got booted out of the army on her scrawny arse,” Una snapped. But she was smiling, and tears glistened in the corners of her eyes.
“I’ll get a brew on,” Tollan muttered.
“What did you do?” Una demanded. “No, I don’t want to know. Just tell me, is it a dishonorable?”
“Mum. I’m not even out yet, just on leave.” Leonie took a deep breath. The family didn’t know what kind of work she’d been doing these past two years. As far as they knew, she’d been in Ireland with the women’s auxiliary of the Lions, the Wessex Tabbies. “I won’t be dishonorably discharged.” She’d been promised that. “I had a mind to try something else, anyway.” Glancing around the kitchen, visually confirming every familiar detail, as if she was doing an appreciation of a hostile situation. “Where’s our Sam?”
“Here I am!”
Samantha, small for fifteen, stood in the doorway of the living-room.
“Oh, angel.” Leonie hugged Sam, careful not to squeeze her too tight. Sam started coughing. Leonie patted her back. Over Sam’s head, she met Una’s gaze: She’s not better! She’s worse!
Una took a mug from Tollan and passed it to Leonie. “Two sugars. Now, I’ve got that broiler in the pot, see what we’ve got to stretch it out with, Tollan. Dave won’t be home for dinner, that’s one less. We’ll have a nice little party for our Leonie, and there’ll be no more talk of dishonorable this and that. Cyra, run down to the shop and get us a jammy sponge …”
After dinner, they all gathered in the front room around the television. Harlan and Bastian, the twelve-year-old twins, tourney-mad, pored over the new stats books Leonie had brought them. Sam lay face down over Leonie’s lap with a dishcloth over her head, inhaling steam from a basin while Leonie slapped her back with cupped hands, helping her to cough out the phlegm in her lungs.
“You’re right bunged up, aren’t you?” she said. “And you were getting out of breath just from walking earlier. Didn’t St. Halyson of the Beck do you any good?”
There was a brief silence.
Una said, “Well, she hasn’t been to see him, has she?”
“What? I sent you the money. Three hundred quid, that took me six months to save.”
“Ask her where it went.”
“Did you even give it to her?”
“I did, Lee-lee, so don’t look at me like that. I gave her the money and put her on the bus and sent Harlan with her in case she came over poorly. And what do you think? She bribed Harlan with ten quid to go see the jousting at the Palace, and then she turned right around and came back and gave the entire packet to our Dave. It was gone before I ever knew a thing!”
“I tried to make her go, but she wouldn’t,” Harlan muttered.
Bastian stuck up for his twin. “It’s Dave’s fault! He spent his course fees, so Sam gave him the dosh that was s’posed to be for her cure.”
“Dave’s fallen into bad company, Lee-lee!” Una cried. “I’m that worried about him.”
Maddy, who had a good job at a fashion boutique on Oxford Street, looked up from painting her nails. “Don’t make me laugh, Mum, our Dave is bad company. He’s been getting into trouble ever since he left school.”
“Wait till I get my hands on him,” Leonie said, her rage compounded by helplessness. The reason Dave had gone wrong was because he’d always been the only one too close to her own age and size for her to boss him. If only she still had her weapon, she’d give him a scare to turn him around, sharpish.
Tollan lifted the dishcloth, topped up Sam’s basin from the kettle, and waddled around their legs to get back to his place in the corner chair.
Needing something else to get angry about, Leonie sniffed. “What’s that smell? Is there something funny in her steam, Mum?”
“It’s just some herbs,” Sam said from underneath the dishcloth.
“The doctor said they ought to do her good,” Una said.
“Mum. Not a doctor!”
Doctors were extremely disreputable. They sold possets and potions to people too poor to afford miracles, but most of them were clandestine magicians. And what’s more, they were rubbish magicians. Leonie could forgive illegal. She couldn’t forgive incompetent.
“It was a doctor who told us to give her the whacks every night, back when she was a tot, wasn’t it? And that’s done her more good than a dozen saints. And it’s free, so there you are, Leonie.”
“Shut up, everyone, I’m trying to watch the news,” young Toll yelled from a corner of the sofa, bony knees hugged to his chest.
“… Piers Sauvage remains in custody at the Tower of London, although he has not yet been charged. What does this delay signify? Let’s hear from the experts.”
The camera tracked around RBC’s Round Table of commentators to an old man with an iron-gray knight’s knot. “Most probably, ladies and sirs, this indicates that the Crown is considering additional charges. It has been widely suspected for some time that House Sauvage may have concluded a separate peace with the IRA, which may include payments or shipments of materiel to the terrorists. Any such arrangement would, of course, constitute treason.”
“Thank you, Sir Bravagant, and just to remind the viewers, what is the central charge that the Crown is understood to be considering?”
“Conspiracy to murder.”
A still photo of Piers Sauvage filled the screen. Narrow-skulled, long-nosed, platinum-blond hairknot secured by the wolf-headed pins that went with his title of Protector of Ireland, he was just a few years older than Leonie, and commonly thought to be a dreamboat. This photo, though, had captured his face in motion, so it looked as if he were snarling.
“Traitor! Ugly mug Irish!” shouted Bastian and Harlan. The announcer said in voiceover: “If convicted, Sir Piers will face the death sentence for his role in Prince Harry’s murder.”
“We ought to’ve put a stop to their games years ago,” Una said. “Bloody Irish, give them an inch and they’ll take your hand off.”
Leonie laughed. Her heart was pounding. None of them knew that she, she had pressed her palm over the hole in Prince Harry’s lungs as he died. “Sweat of the saints, Mum, the Sauvages aren’t Irish. They’re as English as we are, look how fair they are. And why are you all so keen to think he did it? We used to be fans when Sir Piers fought in tourney. You twins had a signed poster of him, remember?”
“That was when we were little,” Bastian said dismissively. “He
hasn’t fought for ages.”
“His brother Guy’s a better knight than he ever was.”
“But we don’t like him anymore, either.”
“He’s Irish and a bastard, too.”
Sam rolled onto her side on Leonie’s lap. She croaked, “Well, they wouldn’t have arrested him if he didn’t do it, would they?”
“There you are,” Una said. “There’s no one like our Sam for getting to the heart of things.”
Out in the street, a souped-up engine rumbled. The window vibrated to the rhythm of bass beats. Adrenaline pulsed through Leonie’s chest. Again, she remembered Floyd Ayrett’s warning: Don’t say their names or they’ll appear, which was bloody useless advice when you didn’t know their names to start with, and she still didn’t know what he had been on about. Some weird Irish superstition that had no place in London. No business anywhere near her family.
All the same, she shifted Sam onto Una’s lap and stood up.
The front door of the flat started to shake, as if someone was trying to force their way in.
Leonie went into the kitchen and watched the knob turn in both directions. Then the person outside started hammering on the door and shouting: “Mum! Mum, the door’s locked!”
Leonie snatched the chain off and flipped the deadbolt. Her brother Dave was an eyesore in a tight shirt patterned with orange and pink circles, no coat despite the cold weather, a paler pink scarf hanging down to his knees. His hair curled over his collar, long enough that he’d get fined if the police spotted him.
“Was it you that locked the door?” he said. “We never lock up.”
“We do now.”
“Oh yeah? What gives you the right to waltz back in here and start queening it over everyone?” He deliberately bumped her with his shoulder as he headed for the room he shared with the twins.
Leonie grabbed him by the collar and pushed him back across the threshold and out of the flat. “You’ve been messing this family about too long.” She slammed his shoulders against the wall of the hall. He stank of cigarettes and beer. “You’re going to shape up, starting now.”
He tried to twist away. They were about the same height, Dave being short for a man. He still outweighed her, but Leonie was no longer scrawny. She’d trained with the ROCK, survived days in exposed OPs on not much more than biscuits and water, and trekked through rural Ireland on exercises. The Company had also taught her the basics of spairjack, the old English art of unarmed combat. She was wiry and knew her strength to the ounce. She hooked Dave’s ankle with her foot and overbalanced him. He landed on Bethie’s tricycle. “Aaargh! You fucking cow, Lee-lee!”
Leonie shut the door of the flat in the little ones’ faces. “You’ve got a proper nerve taking Sam’s money. What did you spend it on? This gear?” She grabbed the ends of his scarf, jerking it to throttle him, then let the tassels fall back on his chest. “That’s the stupidest thing you could wear anywhere there’s going to be fighting.”
“Can I get up now?”
“The vaunt scene’s full of knackers and freelance relic hunters. Freemen and all sorts. You’re better than that, Dave Grant.”
“It’s not like what you think. There’s rules. You have to keep the peace.” He scrambled up, red-faced. “No one gets hurt unless they’ve entered for the vaunts.”
“As long as they pay their gambling debts. Right? Saints, Dave! Don’t you want to get a real job? Don’t you want to swear on with the Wessex Corporation and make real money?”
“I do.” He rubbed his cheeks. The tears in his eyes surprised her. She hadn’t expected him to cave in. “But what’s the fucking point? They’ll never have me. There’s a million unemployed.”
“They will,” she insisted. “They will. We’re not the unemployed. We Grants have served House Wessex for five generations. That gives you an advantage. And besides, you’ll have a qualification soon.”
“Yeah, well. That. I’m just not that keen on it, Lee-lee. The electrical engineering. The blokes on the course, it’s like they’re all savants or something. I can’t keep up with the sums.”
“Maybe you’re not trying hard enough.” Wearily, she looked him up and down, his bloodshot eyes and hair standing on end, the ugly shirt … “What’s this anti-color shit you’ve got on? You could get picked up for sumptuary violations.” Commoners were only permitted to wear black, denim, and the colors of their liege lord. Leonie’s own black sweatshirt had crimson ribbing, for House Wessex, at the wrists and hem.
“I just like it, right.” Dave sniffled, picked his nose, and wiped the snot on the underside of the stairs. “I don’t want to let you down, Lee-lee.”
“It’s not me you’re letting down. It’s yourself. Listen, if you swear you’ll try harder, I’ll go with you tomorrow and pay your next semester’s fees myself.” A hundred quid she could just about manage. But what about the semester after that? And what about Sam? Dave wasn’t stupid; he could make it through his course if he tried. But even so, it would be a year before he was earning real money. And if I’m going to lose my deployment bonus and hazard pay …
“Swear on—on Dad’s memory.” Their father’s relics had been sold a long time ago. “Swear you won’t let us down anymore.”
“I swear,” he muttered.
She opened the door of the flat, marched Dave in among the wide-eyed little ones. Something fell from his back pocket and clattered to the kitchen floor. Leonie snatched it up. A goblin-hide-handled, four-inch butterfly knife.
* * *
The Next Morning. September 27th, 1979. London
After a flying visit to see her sister Mystie’s new baby, Leonie reported to National Chivalry, which meant an el ride to Monument and then a fifteen-minute walk along tree-lined Fenchurch Street. Leaden clouds drizzled rain. Cars hydroplaned around potholes, splashing the brand-new tights she’d put on with her uniform. Distantly came the tan-tara for the changing of the guard at the Tower of London. The townhouses of the nobility hid behind fortress walls, shielded by trees. Amidst all this discreet wealth, NatChiv headquarters was a modern concrete building with lots of net-curtained windows and twirly faux ironwork, Crown men-at-arms in cobalt and black livery guarding the gates, antennae everywhere.
Leonie gave her name to a pair of receptionists in a bulletproof cubicle. A man-at-arms patted her down and Instaroided her face and shoulder brand. “Someone’ll be down for you.”
“Lance-Corporal Grant?” A kid too young to shave, dress sword belted over tunic and hose. A nobly born squire. “Follow me, please.”
National Chivalry—the umbrella agency that ran the ROCK, MI5, MI6, and the Intelligence Company—had been created just five years ago to impose order on the alphabet soup of Crown security forces. Glancing into open doors, Leonie saw men and women, but mostly men, working at long desks shoved together, every surface cluttered with paper. The squire ushered her into a conference room that was all ciggy stink and chairs held together with duct tape, and left her alone.
Shoulders back, head up. In the Intelligence Company, she’d had to relearn how to slouch like a normal person, for undercover work. Now she had to look military again. Her six-month-old niece Bryanna had sicked up on the shoulder of her uniform tunic. She spat on her fingers and scrubbed at the spot.
“Lance-Corporal, sorry to keep you waiting.”
Astonishment took over; muscle memory carried her into a salute. Oswald, Lord Day, shook his head and reached out with a smile to shake her hand. At the thought that he was getting traces of baby vomit on his fingers, Leonie had no trouble giving him a smile right back.
“Thanks for coming. Take a pew. Coffee?”
“Oh… right. Yes, please.”
The squire brought it, together with a plate of biscuits.
Leonie felt like she was on television: Surprise Of Your Life. She’d expected to get a rocketing from someone pretty senior. Not in a million years had she expected to be having coffee with Oswald Day, Knight Commander of National Chivalry,
the king’s son-in-law.
Lord Day’s azure eyes and 1,000-watt smile flashed even brighter in the flesh, and his long straight limbs would’ve looked fit in armor, despite the fact that he’d never been a tourney knight, and the only weapon he wore was the Knight Commander’s rod of office. He sat with one haunch on the corner of the conference table, cup and saucer balanced on the palm of his hand, asking how her journey had been, was everyone well at home—the usual small talk from a knothead who wanted to look as if he cared.
While giving stoic responses, Leonie reflected to herself that Lord Day was thigh-deep in this clusterfuck. He must’ve pulled strings to get Piers Sauvage arrested, or at least stood by and let it happen, so he and his blue-eyed boys in the ROCK could wriggle off the hook.
So too bad, yes, too bad for Leonie Grant that she was one of about three living witnesses to the truth of what had happened on the night of Prince Harry’s death.
We were shooting them and shooting them but they wouldn’t go down …
“Royal policy is that tragic events shall not be allowed to disrupt the Irish peace process,” he said at last.
“No, sir.”
“The Irish Knights’ Conference will continue to meet, pending an investigation into which of House Sauvage’s northern bondsknights may have been involved in the Lord Protector’s plot.”
“Yes, sir.” What about the Countess? Wouldn’t she have known what her son was up to, if he was up to it? But that would be going too far, wouldn’t it. No one could arrest Vivienne Sauvage, Countess of Dublin. Not even the king himself would dare.
“There is a suggestion that foreign elements may also have been involved, but you’ll keep that to yourself, Lance-Corporal.”
He was saying that because he knew she’d seen the arms dump on Slieve Gullion, and all the German weapons in it. What he didn’t know was that she’d seen similar caches a dozen times before. So it was no news to her that there were foreign elements involved. She wondered if they were going to spin it as a fiendish conspiracy between the Sauvages and the Germans. That might be enough to take the Countess down …