‘Why indeed?’ answered Slovo politely. ‘Cornshire is, I agree, impermissibly barren and stark. Why, I wonder, do people persist in living amidst such extremes of Nature?’
‘Habit?’ postulated de Peubla, endeavouring to be charitable.
‘Some such strong force,’ agreed Admiral Slovo. ‘And I do apologize to you both for so exposing you to the very outer fringes of the World. It is merely that I somehow sense that we are tracking the mischievous shift-phenomenon to its lair.’
‘Good,’ sighed Daubeny. ‘So let’s kill it and go!’
‘Would it were so simple,’ murmured Slovo, schooled in a more ancient culture and thus aware that murder was but the beginnings of politics.
The little party with its most curious of missions should have been acting in all urgency. Each day brought a fresh dispatch from King Henry, urging them on by news of further outrages. The North had been raided and there had even been an insolent proclamation received from ‘Free Surrey’ (Libertas Suthrege, if you please!), and His Majesty had estates there. Henry’s Celtic powers of fancy and invention were being fast exhausted by the explanations he was having to concoct. Dark hints were dropped in his letters about Slovo’s fee and the current state of the Royal coffers.
However, the Admiral would not be rushed. ‘We do not have enough time to hurry,’ he grandly explained in a reply to the King – thus causing a Regal headache and a spoilt banquet. To Henry’s considerable but unspoken distress, Slovo was methodically tracing the zig-zag of his thoughts across the shifting map of barbarian England: there had been musings in St Albans, a glimpse of devastation where Winchester should be and ‘Dumnonian’ resurgence at the Gates of Cirencester. Each time he and his group, plus escort of soldiery, arrived just that instant too late to experience for themselves immersion in the ‘shift’. It could not however escape a mind so subtle as Slovo’s that each encounter was closer and closer, and that their steps were drawn inexorably west. Only too able to empathize with spiders, he recognized a web when he saw one.
The Celtic land of Cornwall had seemed a good place, just sufficiently off-centre, from which to pluck the cobweb and see what stirred forth to seize its prey. In purely aesthetic terms, though, Admiral Slovo had to agree with his comrades: he had had better ideas.
‘Take that island, for instance,’ said Daubeny, pointing at St Michael’s Mount across the bay. ‘What good is it? Soil you couldn’t grow weeds in and fortifications fifty years out of date – even in Scotland!’ (This last with particular venom.) ‘And as for … what is it we passed through?’
‘Ludgvan,’ prompted de Peubla, wary of the Baron’s brandy-borne torrents of temper.
‘And as for the … village, if one may so dignify it, of that name,’ Daubeny spluttered on, ‘I’ve pulled down better houses than those. No wonder the poor wretches invaded England in ’97 – anything to see a bit of decent countryside. And another thing—’
The sea breeze across the bay played with the Admiral’s fashionable basin-cut hair as he tuned out the rant-frequency to hear more subtle whispers – from both within and without.
On the presently submerged causeway to the Mount, the two young Princes were clearly visible, more solid, though unearthly still, than ever before. At that distance even Slovo’s sea-trained eyes could not be sure but he nevertheless felt certain that they were smiling at him – as before. The water broke over their feet in ways it should not, the wind did not disturb their golden locks. Mere additions to the scene for Admiral Slovo’s benefit, they looked at him, a distant matchstick figure, and he likewise looked at them.
‘Do you see something, Admiral?’ asked de Peubla, who under his assumed clumsiness was as watchful as a cat.
‘Nothing that has not been my constant companion on this journey, Ambassador,’ came the unhelpful reply. But, in fact, sudden enlightenment dawned like a storm-laden day over Slovo, a revelation sufficiently dark to make him smile.
When he raised his eyes again, the fort on St Michael’s Mount was no longer obsolete or quaint. Storey upon storey, crammed with cannon, rose into the sky above a tessellation of the very latest Dutch-Italian style fieldworks.
Even Daubeny could see that this was no longer a place to be laughed at, its black and white flag of St Piran not a subject for mockery. Only the suspected smiles adorning the Princes on the drowned causeway remained as before, though perhaps a little broader now, to Slovo’s favoured eyes.
Enquiring at the church in Ludgvan, at the Admiral’s request, they were welcomed to ‘Free Kernow’ in most uncertain English by a priest called Borlase. When the foreigners’ business was confidently demanded, Admiral Slovo casually killed him at the presbytery door with a stiletto.
‘I needed to see if my theory was correct,’ protested the Admiral to his shocked companions later.
‘They ask me to investigate something,’ said Admiral Slovo, ‘to “sort it out”, and then cavil at my methods!’
‘I agree,’ sympathized his fellow countryman. ‘You never know where you are with the English. Mostly they’re as rough as a Turk’s lust and then suddenly they’ve gone all mushy on you.’
‘Precisely,’ said Slovo, warming to this young man and more glad than he could, of course, decently show, to run into such a compatriot. ‘And their sense of humour …!’
‘Nothing but toilets,’ nodded the young man. ‘Yes, I’ve run into that – and even that would amuse them – run, do you see?’
Admiral Slovo had come to Westminster Abbey with the intention of hearing mass and offering up a prayer for his speedy delivery home. At the door, however, his eye had been caught by a lithe figure with a sketch-book and charcoal-stick, whose evident grace and taste in dress proclaimed him a non-native. As it turned out he was a Florentine, but the Admiral could forgive him that for the sake of civilized conversation – and a possible pick-up.
‘Your sketch shows no small talent,’ said Slovo, ‘Master …?’
‘Torrigiano – Pietro Torrigiano. And so it should after all my schooling.’
Admiral Slovo studied the artist from head to foot but received no satisfactory answers to the silent questions he posed. ‘Your style betokens tuition,’ he agreed, ‘but the residual stigmata of humble origin suggest insufficient funds for such luxuries.’
Torrigiano smiled wryly. ‘What I do not owe to God, I owe to the Medicis,’ he conceded, and at the second half of his tribute spat heartily on to a proximate headstone. A passing chantry-priest looked blackly at them but thought better of any other protest. Foreigners were best left to their own damnation.
‘Duke Lorenzo, dubbed “The Magnificent”,’ continued Torrigiano as he sketched furiously, ‘rescued me from my peasant destiny and placed me in his sculpture school. We were taught by Bertoldo, you know, and he was taught by Donatello!’
‘Most impressive,’ commented Slovo (who was actually self-trained to indifference in all matters artistic).
‘It was also Lorenzo who expelled me from both school and Florence and into my present penurious exile. I altered another pupil’s face; we couldn’t both remain, so Lorenzo made a decision as to who showed most potential and …’6
‘That is the way of Princes,’ said Slovo, trying and failing to offer consolation. ‘Difficult choices.’
‘Difficult to live with possibly,’ answered Torrigiano with a mite less respect and tact than he should have shown to an elder and better; the very cockiness that would ensure his death, many years on, in the prisons of the Inquisition in Spain. ‘Mind you, I have made a life of sorts here in this land. The odd commission does arise.’
‘None odder than this, I suspect,’ said Admiral Slovo. ‘Draw me now against the background of the Abbey – or whatever it may be called at present. Use all speed whilst the effect lasts.’
Slovo had been starting to lose interest in his young find and thus looking about, thinking of Kings and Crowns, discovered that the world had changed whilst they talked.
Torrigiano gape
d in awe, even as his hand tore madly across the new canvas. ‘Mother of Sorrows!’ he gasped. ‘Where are we?’
‘London,’ replied Admiral Slovo, considerately remaining as still as he could, ‘or some substitute for it. Do not slacken your efforts, Artist, we may not be here long.’
Torrigiano shook his head sadly. ‘This is for a life-time study,’ he said, ‘not a tantalizing browse. Is it still a church?’
Unable to turn and observe properly, Slovo shrugged. ‘Possibly; though not, it seems, a branch of the Christian faith I’ve yet encountered.’
‘The gargoyles,’ enthused Torrigiano, ‘the domes; such a torrent of flowing colour. I could worship here.’
‘But who?’ smiled Slovo at his chilly best. ‘That is the question. Now, be sure and feature my best side …’
‘It’s disgusting,’ said King Henry. ‘Take it away!’
Torrigiano’s face fell at this savage review of his efforts.
‘His Majesty is not alluding to the verisimilitude of your depiction,’ said Admiral Slovo to him. ‘I can vouch for that. It is the effect he finds distressing.’
‘All that bloody ivy and carving,’ confirmed Henry. ‘It makes me heave, so it does. Who would have fashioned Westminster Abbey like that?’
‘No one of, or to, your tastes, that seems certain,’ said de Peubla in a manner intended to be soothing. He got a regal glare for his pains.
‘I can see that,’ said the King. ‘It is not the sort of place in which Kings of England are crowned.’
‘Though maybe Kings of another sort,’ said Daubeny, looking bemusedly at the picture held by Torrigiano.7 The eye-borne volley of royal ill-will was worse even than that just received by de Peubla.
‘Bit of a cheek, isn’t it?’ the Baron blundered on, unaware of his present disfavour. ‘I mean, kidnapping the centre of the realm like that. It’ll be the Tower next!’
As King Henry’s eyes widened and he was about to say something he would regret, Admiral Slovo stepped into the breach.
‘That is entirely the point,’ he said, with all the brusqueness that etiquette would permit. ‘The process is becoming more frequent, and of wider reach. It was for the proving of this that I conducted my Cornshire experiment about which so much unpleasant fuss has been made …’
‘He was a priest, boyo,’ muttered Henry darkly. ‘You just can’t do that here.’
Slovo waved the protest aside. ‘Not only was the Borlase person dead in his “free Kernow”,’ he went on, speaking slowly, anxious that these mere shallows of trouble be properly traversed prior to the really treacherous deeps in store, ‘but on our “return”, he was also found to be similarly deceased – mysteriously struck down in this, our own, real world.’
‘So?’ snapped Henry, thinking of the gold he’d had to throw at the Lords Spiritual to buy their grumpy peace over that little matter.
‘So,’ answered Slovo, ‘this was a progression. The “real” and the “projected” worlds were becoming interactive. One might even suspect they were in the process of merging. Up to now, Your Majesty, you may have mislaid the odd taxman—’
‘Or army,’ added Daubeny.
‘But,’ continued Slovo, ‘they were lost into fleeting visions, leaving behind no lasting effect. What my much maligned experiment showed was that the two possible worlds were coming together and joining as one. These “alternatives” are maturing into reality. In short, one version will ultimately prevail.’
‘And if people begin to retain memories from the period of crossover,’ said de Peubla, entirely enthused as he caught on and raced ahead, ‘then the spirit of independence and rebellion could blossom with a profuse abundance such as never seen before!’
‘It’d make the Wars of the Roses look like a wench’s kiss,’ said Daubeny, smiling broadly.
‘Yes, yes, yes!’ roared Henry. ‘All this I understand – dammit! Now when are you going to tell what there is to do!’
Suddenly all the bluster evaporated and the King looked on Admiral Slovo with plaintive eyes. ‘I want my version of history to win,’ he added sadly.
‘It can still do so,’ replied Admiral Slovo confidently, signalling that Torrigiano should place his picture strategically in the King’s view. ‘But I warn you, stern measures will be required.’
Henry visibly brightened. ‘Oh well,’ he said, ‘I’m no stranger to them. Needs must and all that. Tell me more.’
Admiral Slovo looked at the two Princes standing, invisibly to all bar him, behind King Henry’s throne. They beamed back at him angelically.
‘Then,’ he advised, seeking to minimize his own part in the reckoning to come, ‘might I respectfully refer you to two passages from Holy Scripture: namely Genesis 22 and Luke 10, 37.’
Henry looked puzzled but, in his freshly optimistic mood, was willing to go along with the game. ‘Come on then, Wolsey,’ he called to a loitering cleric, ‘here’s your chance to shine, boy.’
The priest screwed up his face, mentally travelling back to the days when he had learnt his trade. ‘The first,’ he said eventually, much relieved to find the requisite mental cupboards stocked, ‘is the story of Abraham and the abortive sacrifice of his first-born son, Isaac. The second is a quote of Our Lord’s: Go and do thou likewise.’
‘Whaaat!’ shouted Henry, leaping to his feet.
‘A drastic remedy, I agree,’ said Slovo defensively, whilst pondering the correct form for brawling with Kings, ‘and you are not obliged to take my counsel.’
‘I should hope not, Ad-mir-al,’ said Henry, now quiet and deadly.
‘Oh dear,’ gasped de Peubla, full understanding falling on him like a shroud. ‘Oh dear …’
‘I fear, however,’ continued Slovo, conscientiously mindful of a commission accepted, ‘that the gradient of the … slippage is against you. If nothing is done, then very soon some visitor to these shores will find a most radical – and permanent – change. They will assume, I suppose, a rising or some such has taken place and there will be none left to gainsay them. As to where you and yours will be that day, I cannot say.’
‘Nowhere perhaps,’ suggested de Peubla, still in shock.
‘Perhaps,’ nodded the Admiral. ‘A version of events superseded, a history that just didn’t happen.’
Henry went white and scowled. ‘And what brought it all on?’ he asked, quite reasonably in the circumstances. ‘And what’s it got to do with my boy?’
‘Such things have laws entirely their own,’ replied Slovo disarmingly. ‘If forced to explain the phenomenon—’
‘Which you will be, if necessary,’ said Henry, less than gently.
‘… then I postulate the freak convergence of two trends – each separately harmless, but together a mighty tide to overwhelm the sea-walls of normality.’
‘Speak Latin, man!’ spat the King, his Welsh accent ranging wild and free.
‘I speak firstly,’ said Slovo, stoically swallowing the insult, ‘of a thousand years of longing and expectation by a set of emotionally incontinent peoples: sustained by prophecies, engrained by endless defeats, and marvellously revived by your victory at Bosworth. Now, met and enflamed by the choice of name and ceaseless promotion of your first born, the age-old wishes are coming true.’
‘And it’s all my fault, is it?’ asked Henry, his face worryingly impassive.
‘You are your own nemesis, albeit unknowingly,’ Slovo confirmed. ‘You have benefited from, fed and upheld the very alternatives which are superseding you. However, none of this would be so were it not for the second factor, the vital additional force which permits this terrible violence to the way things are.’
‘And what might that be?’ asked Daubeny, looking for a chance to be helpful and pointedly loosening his sword.
‘It is not a matter for promiscuous discussion, I fancy,’ said the Admiral, as quietly as clear diction would permit. ‘Suffice it to say that what I propose, namely the Abraham option minus Jehovah’s intervention, is the cancelling
balance to some similar act so horrendous that it has wounded the fabric of the Universe’s propriety. Through this wound, the other gangrene affecting your Kingdom has effected its entry.’
Silence settled on the Tower throne-room as some thought furiously and others just as furiously strove to avoid doing so. The spectral Princes looked, unseen, at King Henry as grim and confident as advancing glaciers.
‘So … if Arthur goes …’ croaked Henry.
‘Some other, equal, act will thus be answered for,’ agreed Slovo, ‘and propitiation is made to the scales of Justice. The decision to act alone should be sufficient: you need not move precipitately. Then, with the deed done, the bubble of your aboriginal races will be burst with their Arthur the Second no longer feeding false hopes. And I would also suggest some judicious oppression.’
‘Annexation? Suppressing the native gobbledey-gook?’ offered Daubeny in joyful tone.
‘Something like that,’ agreed Slovo in a neutral voice. ‘Then I suspect you will have no more trouble from them for some hundreds of years.’
‘By which time we shall be safely in our tombs,’ said Daubeny to the King, as though relating a great stroke of luck.
Once again a humid silence fell. Admiral Slovo presumed Henry was debating as to which he wanted most: his son or his realm. No one else dared speak. It was only then that Slovo realized with a delicious shock that Henry perhaps saw more of the murdered Princes than hitherto suspected.
‘I shall be in my tomb, yes,’ said Henry at last, in a voice of pure lead, ‘but not, I fear, at peace. Do you do tombs, Master Sculptor?’ he asked a dozing and bemused Torrigiano.
‘I can turn my chisel to anything, Sire,’ came the blurted reply in richly mutilated English. ‘I was trained at the—’
‘You’ll do,’ interrupted the King, boring into the foreigner with his eyes. ‘I’ll make you rich and famous, which is the entirety of what men want from life. May the two bring you more happiness than they did me.’
Popes and Phantoms Page 14
