by White, Gwynn
“What training?”
“Your mother and I discussed the issue last night. It isn’t fair for you to go on thinking you can grow up to be a knight. It is time to face the fact that you are incurable. And time for us to make the best of a bad situation by training you, as well as we may, in the art of magic.”
“They accused Piers of witchcraft. It was a dirty lie!”
“It was. Lord Piers was hale in body and spirit. But our family does have the—the—”
“Bad blood.”
“The incurable tendency. Many old noble families have it. In fact, you get it from both sides. But Ran—Ran! You must understand that it’s not your fault. Incurability strikes the rich and the poor. It does not distinguish between sexes or races. It’s sometimes inherited, sometimes not—”
“And you’ve got it, too!” Ran shouted.
“Yes,” Francis said stonily. “I have.”
Ran swung his legs to the floor. “Where’s Honor? Is she all right?”
“Honor?”
“My dragon!”
The door slammed back against the wall and there was Mother. “Darling! Oh, darling, you’re awake, thank God.” She crushed him in her arms. Maybe she really did love him a little bit. But more likely, she was just glad he hadn’t died, so she would not be completely heirless. He wriggled free.
“Where’s Honor?”
Mother used a corner of the bedspread to wipe her eyes. She was still in her black party dress, with a ratty old cardigan over it, makeup smeared on her cheeks. “Francis, have you talked to him?”
“Yes, I h—”
“I want Honor!”
“Darling, do be quiet! She’s in the mews, where else? Guy wanted to shoot her on the spot for dropping you, but it was clear to us all that she’d tried to save you.”
“Oh.”
Mother nodded tightly. “Now, Francis has told you some difficult truths. I am sorry we did not have this talk years ago. But your father did not want your childhood to be blighted.”
“I don’t want to be a stupid magician! I won’t!” Ran hesitated. “Does this mean I don’t have to go to Scotland?”
Mother and Uncle Francis shook their heads at the same time. “You must go,” Mother said. “But Francis will go with you. He will teach you … oh, magic and things. Whatever you need to know.”
“What you want me to know. That’s what you mean.” Ran was out of bed now. His head throbbed, but he gritted his teeth and kept moving. His clothes had been folded on top of the chest by the window. He turned his back on Mother to put on his underpants and shorts. He was going to the mews. He was the Lord Protector of Ireland. They couldn’t stop him.
“If only your bloody father were alive,” Mother said. She was crying again.
“I’m glad he isn’t,” Ran said. He pulled his jumper over his head, forgetting about the bump on the back of his skull. This time he managed to choke back the yelp of pain. “In fact, I wish he’d died sooner! Then I wouldn’t exist, would I? And everyone would be happy!”
He fled the room.
24
Leonie
Four Days Later. November 22nd, 1979. Castle Arundel, Wessex
The hill wasn’t Ben Corr but it was steep for this part of the world. Shreds of mist blew over lumps of rock and thorn bushes. They crossed a stream. Rick slipped and went in up to his knees. “This is a shit OP,” he said crossly. “Reckon we ought to go back down.”
“What, to that forestry block?” Leonie said. “Fat lot we’d be able to see from in there.”
“We’d be dry, anyway.”
“Or lower down,” said Mase. “One of them fields’d do.”
“Wouldn’t,” Sims said. “Farmer opens the gate after you’re all snugged up, and come dawn you’ve got a hundred cows breathing down your arse.”
“It’s a nice view from up here, anyway,” Rhoda said. “Doesn’t the castle look tiny? You could throw a stone right into the bailey.”
The king had green-lighted Operation PREDATOR. This was the rehearsal, a massive exercise involving a whole company of the Crown Army as well as dozens of ROCK, MI5, and Company operators.
The scenario: the IRA had captured a castle and were holed up inside.
The likelihood that this would ever happen: nil.
The real point of the rehearsal, in everyone’s opinion: to give the Crown Army something to do to make them feel important.
If PREDATOR accomplished its objective of crushing the IRA, it would be a massive feather in the hair of Lord Day. So naturally the Crown Army wanted in on the action. Lord Stuart himself had parachuted in to take overall command and scoop the prestige.
Tomorrow, back in London, rehearsals of other elements of the operation would kick off. Annoying Ed had bragged to Leonie that he was being put in charge of surveillance for a ‘snatch squad’ of ROCK knights. They’d practice their actions on tomorrow, and then when the time came, they’d carry out hard arrests of known terrorists on the streets of Belfast, Galway, Cork, Dublin, and Armagh.
That’s where Leonie belonged. Armagh was her old stomping ground. All her old mates would be over the water, in the thick of it.
In her dream world, she’d have been assigned to the squad tasked with arresting Alyx MacConn.
In the real world, she was freezing her arse off on a hill in Wessex County. Below them, Arundel Castle was a lopsided star stitched on the winter-withered South Downs. The castle had been abandoned for a century—the Arundels, vassals of House Wessex, had built a more comfortable place next door. The castle was a ruin. Most of the quadrangle had fallen down, and the outer ward was a mucky pasture. The local constables had been tasked with chasing the cows out.
Leonie dragged out the map, which she’d folded into a clear plastic envelope and hung around her neck inside her mac. Condensation had built up inside the envelope. She made a half-hearted effort to match map to compass to terrain. The River Arun wound past the castle in a dark scribble of trees. Lost in the mist somewhere to the south was the sleepy little town of Arundel. Beyond the castle, the bleak downs faded away north. She tried to think like a defender. Which way would she run?
“If this was real, we’d put the heavy artillery up here,” Rick said. “Control the high ground.”
“Sorry to inform you, someone else thought of that first,” Mase said, crowding Leonie’s shoulder. He stabbed the map. “There’s a church on top of this lot: Our Lady of Arundel. Im-fucking-pregnable, if there’s anything left of it.”
They all peered up into the mist.
“Bollocks to the church,” Sims said. “It’s not in the orders.” Sims was the team leader, an older operator with no front teeth, the biggest skiver in Company London. He squinted around the barren hillside. “This looks good to me. What do you say, Grant?”
Leonie felt mildly smug at being consulted. “I’d like to get a bit further over that way. We can’t see the A27 from here.”
“They’ll slap a VCP on the road. Not our responsibility. This’ll do,” Sims said, squashing Leonie’s illusion that her opinion mattered. “Could you put in a OP here, Grant? That’s all I want to know.”
Rick snorted. “Couldn’t hide a sausage up here.”
“Oh yes I could,” Leonie said. She pointed at a patch of briars. “Give me ten minutes and you’d walk right over me without seeing me.”
“That’s Grant and Mase up here, then,” Sims said. “We’ll go down the other way from what we came up and find somewhere nice and dry for Rick and me. Rhoda’s backup.”
Gloomily, Leonie marked their position on the map.
This little expedition had been Sims’s idea. They had all been astonished by his suggestion that they get up at the crack of dawn to arrive at Arundel Castle before anyone else, so they could ‘prepare’ for the exercise. It wasn’t like Sims to go out of his way to do any work … unless it was for a good cause.
Cackling, Sims had explained that if they scouted out the lie of the land ahead of time,
they would be able to demonstrate preternatural good judgment in selecting their OPs once the exercise started. “It’s going to kick off after dark, a little bird told me. Fucking nightmare putting in OPs at night … you think you’ve got a good position, then the sun comes up and there’s a hundred horrible great trees in the way. No, me lads and lasses, we want to get this one right.”
So here was Leonie slithering down the hill, cheating with the other dregs of Company London. She glowered at her companions’ camouflage hoods. Sims, who’d been made up to lance-corporal and busted back down so often that his arse must be made of rubber; Rick, the big-timer that everyone could see through; Mase, who seemed all right until he got started on his favorite subject of bringing back judicial torture; Rhoda, all six-and-a-half fragile stone of her, useful for urban surveillance and not much else … and me.
They fetched up dirty and panting at the bottom of what looked from below like a sheer cliff.
“This’ll do for me and Rick,” Sims said, waving vaguely at the forestry block off on their right. “I’m not climbing back up that lot in the dark.” He looked at his watch; the expedition had taken longer than planned. “Let’s get back, and maybe we’ll have time for scoff before the khaki lackeys roll up.”
They trudged back down through the fields to the little road which led out to the A27. Leonie thought: The defenders might run this way, if they broke out in vehicles. Scream straight through the VCP, if there is one. That’s how I’d do it.
“What castle do you reckon this pile is standing in for?” Mase said.
“Armagh Castle,” Rick said immediately.
“Not likely,” Leonie scoffed. “Armagh Castle is our Northern Ireland HQ. The boyos would have to besiege us to get in there.”
“Belfast Castle,” Rhoda said. “That’s the castle they actually did capture in ‘56.”
“I thought about that, but I think not,” Mase said. “It’s got high ground overlooking it, hasn’t it? If the real target had that, they wouldn’t be leaving the high ground here to the likes of us. No; it’s either on the high ground, or it’s on the flat.”
Mase wasn’t as stupid as he acted, Leonie grudgingly admitted to herself. “There is no flat ground in Ireland,” she said.
“Must be Edinburgh Castle, then,” Sims said, to laughter all around. “What are we going to use for them horrible great cannons they’ve got? I know: we can put Mase up on the motte and have him drop his trousers.”
Leonie tried to think of castles in Ireland that stood on high ground. “Dublin Castle,” she muttered.
“What’s that, Grant?”
“Dublin Castle. It’s up on a hill, it’s got a forest next door. There’s a port nearby.” As she spoke, she felt increasingly sure she was right. “It’s far and away the best match.”
“Ho yes, the boyos are going to waltz straight in there,” Sims said skeptically.
Leonie shrugged. “I never said it was going to happen. ‘Cos we all know this exercise is just a compensation prize for the Crown Army, anyway.”
They passed police, ambulance, fire, and mobile plastination vehicles parked on the verge, a parade of heraldic color schemes belonging to local Wessex bondsknights. Their own car stood where they’d left it. They drove the rest of the way to the rear holding area, an old mill by a stream with the rotted remains of a millwheel in it. They were still half a mile from the castle; Incident Control would be somewhere up ahead. This was easily the biggest exercise Leonie had ever been on, and the Haymakers—the Crown Army company that would be providing the bayonets for the siege party and the defense alike—hadn’t even arrived in force yet.
“There’s Boniface,” Sims said. He smarmed up to their commanding officer. “Just got here, sir. Traffic was horrible.”
“You’re all covered in mud.”
“Went into the ditch, sir, had to push her out.”
“Oh. Well—” OC Boniface looked vaguely around the old mill. The derelict clockwork of the millwheel went up through the ceiling. The place smelled of cat’s piss, but at least there was electricity. “You’ll be sleeping in here. Bogs outside. Tea over there, use your own mugs. Briefing at seventeen hundred hours. Anything else?”
“Feeding arrangements, sir?”
“Being laid on by Lady Arundel. Ought to be quite good.” Boniface perked up visibly at the thought.
“Must be that tent I saw in the field over there,” Sims said to the others. “Cor, I love living off the land. Think I’ll go and see if m’lady needs any help.”
Mase and Rick followed him. Leonie and Rhoda got themselves mugs of tea and went back outside to sit on the bumper of their car. Leonie gave the younger girl one of the Crispie bars she’d stashed in her pockets. “Get this down you, you’re looking peaked.”
“Ooh, thanks.” Rhoda chewed daintily. “D’you really think we’re rehearsing to besiege Dublin Castle?”
“I hope not.”
A Rover screamed through the holding area, scattering policemen, and continued up the road.
Rhoda pulled forward a strand of blonde hair and crossed her eyes to see the frazzled ends. “My do’s wrecked. I was going to pull a sickie but Tim made me come.” Rhoda was not-so-secretly dating a ROCK knight.
“He made you come? He’s not on this lark, is he?”
“No, he’s got some other assignment.” Rhoda pulled a face. “He said I’d be safer out here.”
Safer out here? Leonie thought. From what?
A knothead with three pips on his shoulder dashed down the road and ran into the old mill.
“Wonder what that’s about,” Leonie said.
“Someone’s flapping,” Rhoda said. She finished her Crispie bar and picked the last broken bits out of the wrapper. “Tim said I’d look good with long hair. D’you think that means anything?”
“Like what?”
“Well, don’t you think that might be his way of proposing? ’Cos if I married him I’d be a lady. I could grow my hair.”
“I think if he was proposing, he’d say something like, will you marry me?”
Rhoda’s face fell. Leonie felt sorry for her. That was the only way either of them was ever going to win rank: marry someone who’d got it already.
“I s’pose it might be his way of working up to it,” Leonie said. “Testing the waters.”
“That’s just what I thought!”
The three-pips knight came back out of the old mill. He hurried over to Leonie and Rhoda, who banged their mugs down on the bonnet of the car and saluted. “Private Grant?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Come with me.”
Leonie’s heart seized up.
Dave. Oh God, it has to be Dave.
After just six weeks of training—typical of the Crown Army’s rotten standards—Dave had been posted to Belfast. That was one of the most dangerous postings in the entire army. Una had wept her eyes out at his passing-out parade. Leonie had played down the risks he would be facing, but now she recollected her own tour in Belfast, when she was in the Tabbies, before she got seconded to the Intelligence Company. Belfast was like a foreign country. A city of horrible empty spaces amid the rotting carcasses of buildings where every twitching curtain might conceal a sniper, and the female troops were cooped up on base around the clock unless they could wangle an armed escort. It was even worse for the lads on patrol, of course. They had insufficient kit, not enough armored vehicles, and worst of all, they were not allowed to shoot first. Every time the boyos slotted a soldier, the whole city would start up after dark with the dustbin lids, smashing and crashing and rattling in a hateful song of triumph that echoed off the hills, so you couldn’t sleep and had to lie awake listening to it.
And now Dave was there.
Mentally paralyzed, Leonie followed the knight up the road. They passed through a tunnel of weeping willows, dark yellow stems trailing over the hedges. The derelict towers of the castle rose above the trees. A stately house stood back from the road, its garden full
of staff vehicles. Incident Control. This would be the Arundels’ new house. Leonie followed the major inside, to a warm, smoke-fugged room where mucky plastic sheeting had been taped over the carpets, fancy furniture pushed back against the walls. ROCK knights were calmly drinking tea. Civilian aides flapped around like budgies.
“Name, rank?”
An ancient and very smart four-star general addressed her. Mindlessly snapping to attention, as if she were back in the Tabbies, she shouted, “Private Grant, Intelligence Company London, sir!”
Oh God, it’s Lord bloody Stuart himself. He had sent for her in person. How was she going to break it to Mum?
“Can you drive?”
Leonie blinked. “Yes, sir!”
“Boniface said he’d vouch for her, sir,” the livery major said.
“Intelligence Company?” someone else said. “They’re trained to drive like demons.”
“Don’t need her to drive like a demon! Just need her to drive well. Can you?”
“Sir?”
Nothing to do with Dave! Overwhelmed by relief, she grinned. Of course, the OC wouldn’t do a compassionate notification himself! It was something else.
“Hell,” Lord Stuart said. “Women can’t drive! We’ll just … no, I refuse to let the Wessex livery … my operation … simply not on!”
“Sir! I am a good driver, sir!”
“Saints. You’d better be!”
25
Oswald
That Afternoon. London
Oswald lunched at Rocky’s, the Coenobite club in the City of London. When two o’clock came he left the dining-room and checked with the steward to make sure there were no messages for him. He walked past the stairs that led to the bar and ascended a narrower flight of stairs that dated back to the days when the Coenobites had ‘lived in’ Rocky’s in monkish single rooms. Nowadays many men used their cells to entertain their mistresses. Oswald used his for other purposes. It was furnished as a study, with one small window overlooking the bedraggled garden.