New Writings in SF 28 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Kenneth Bulmer

  To each his burden: to each his blindness. His patriotism was of the old order. And while he would always speak for England, right or wrong, there was a certain indefinable point after which he would feel he could no longer actively serve her. The murder of Vienna, alone, was far beyond this.

  ‘I predict,’ he said, ‘enough pointing fingers, but a general rising of Europe is something else.’

  I nodded. Kuard was probably right, their horror of the unleashed Fires or not. Almost certainly.

  ‘But come ...’ he broke the mood, smiled with an aged charisma. ‘I recall some mention of glad tidings of victory, hmmh?’

  ‘Ay.’ I cleared my throat. Already, the well-polished rhetoric of my story was beginning to bore me. ‘The Italians planned with the Soviets in a bastard alliance against us; but I caught a—’ I searched, ‘—hint of this, by the slow addition of whispers, and contrived to obtain a copy of their Admiralty’s battle plan. Knowing dates and the rendezvous point, a part of our fleet lured them out from Naples before the Russian navy arrived: we had additional ships concealed beneath the horizon, who sailed nor’-eastward, entrapped those rather stupid tinsel captains without their Eastern ally, and sank the greater part. As for Naples,’ I added as an afterthought, ‘come dusk we bombarded the city until it was afire, as a prelude to withdrawal. From The Lady of the West it was like a hellfire sea. Lord Sidney thought that in light of their treacherous surprise-that-failed, a lesson was needed.’

  ‘Their plan of battle, say you?’ He looked at me sharply. ‘But - how did you manage that?’

  I shrugged three lives. ‘A piece of luck. Now, Sidney takes the Fleet to scour the Eastern Mediterranean for the Crimean-based enemy’s warships, though I fear he’ll lose them. Deschernes and the flagship were lost.’

  ‘Hmm. Not all good news then. I’m sorry to hear of it, he was a good man Deschernes. Sharp at the dice-table, a generous heart, polished manners. I knew him well when he was - commodore, it must have been...’

  ‘Ay,’ I said. Paused. ‘I must see the King...’

  He nodded. ‘I have no time for more myself, Emmanuel. I am bound for the Continent—’ there he stopped and reflected on something. ‘But, certainly, you’ll find the King at the Tower, not at the Chelsea Palace. With Whitesmith; they’ve summoned there the Council-of-Empire to discuss this - situation.’

  ‘Thomas Whitesmith?’ I had stood up but paused now, head cocked, smiling crookedly. ‘Is not Manchester first minister still?’

  ‘Emmanuel,’ his eyes warned me, ‘There have been changes, since you went away. Northumbria is now the second man of the Empire, and I’d be wary of treading too close to him.’

  ‘Hmmh... What of Manchester, though?’

  ‘They say Earl Hollingshead still occupies the White Tower—’

  ‘A few levels below the ones he is used to?’

  The tired old eyes flickered momentarily.

  ‘There was some whisper of ... I don’t know, intrigues, plots in cobwebbed family crypts. Or somesuch. Whether true or invented, Whitesmith is in the chair now, and Hollingshead is no longer.’

  ‘Even the name,’ I hazarded, ‘Is no longer à la mode?’

  ‘I take care not to enquire into such matters. As I said, Emmanuel, it is a time of changes.’

  * * * *

  Four

  When we walked down the extending stairway outside the insulating cabin, the pens were all iron clamour inside vastness: a place of dragons. The next hangar’s roof had been opened, and Kuard’s own beast was now straining at the mooring lines, ready to depart. The flagship bellowed steam, and shrieked of its brute mechanical strength in spite of the flowing gracefulness of its lines. In one of the midships power-pods an Old salvaged diesel throbbed.

  As we passed above, sweaty, grimed faces peered up at us from lathes and presses. Van der Thorn loitered, smiled down. I think his face was like a map of Passchendaele I saw once: contour lines of trenches that wrinkled on yellowed paper. The lines on his proud, eroded old face were faintly twisted with long-ago laughter.

  ‘My Fleet,’ he said to me, ‘is configuring into a patrol-net. I myself will cast over to Brettaigné, help set up the best defense umbrella we can erect.’ Nostrils flaring, he stared up at the leaden torpedo, incredibly huge and cloud-like over us. Two hundred, three hundred yards long, with the lifting capacity of giants, the grace of kestrels: the skyship ‘This England’, pride of our Fleet and scourge of the enemies of his majesty.

  Again Annah caught my eye, fondling that Negro’s leopard-skin doublet, laughing with him...

  ‘Frafric... their Representative at Large, isn’t he?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  I motioned slightly.

  ‘Ay. Look him up sometime, Emmanuel - the king will be telling you more. He’s got great plans, him.’ Kuard nodded. ‘To aid this one against the Soud Afrikaan fiefs. Then to glean easy pickings off the loser; finally strangle the victor with blockades; and raise the glory-flag of Empire.’ He grinned, predatory again. ‘Ay, it’s “still waters run deep”, with King Charles.’

  ‘If you had plumbed those depths ...’ I whispered, to myself.

  ‘And Emmanuel,’ he ploughed on relentlessly, deaf, perhaps half senile, ‘I have been thinking. Charles is likely to be pleased with your work in Italia. The next time I see you, what chance you might be, say Marquis of Cornwall?’

  I smiled, emptily.

  ‘It might be. God go with you, Kuard. And...’

  He frowned, for several reasons.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Nothing. No matter... Good luck.’

  ‘Fare thee well, Emmanuel...” He climbed a stairway to the sky; willingly mustered hands dragged it away. A diesel roared throatily, and long plumes of steam trailed from the eggshell-smooth engine nacelle. From the workpits beneath, a few rusty cheers and whoops came up, ignorant patriotism speaking its imbecilic mind. The straining kite-lines were cast off from the skyship, and she rose as softly as a huge ball of thistledown, and soon glowed with afternoon sunlight. I climbed quickly up a gantry, onto the perspex roof. Effortlessly, she glided off to the south-east, still rising. I watched until his craft was a silver collar tailed temporarily there on the horizon; and then I turned away.

  I knew I would never see him again.

  Quickly I found Annah sitting tailor-fashion on a bench of plain, gnarled wood in a wagon yard behind; she was watching the fire where some old silver-painted oilcloth from a skyship was being burnt in a heap. And as she watched, she swayed and sang an old song, a centuries-old, minor-key lament, in sad French. It was a long regret, over the dying of the religious Light: ‘... a Lyons, a Lyons ...’ She sang of a Gothic cathedral, blasted, its great stones tumbling down; of the ritual burning of the Gospels.

  My face twitched. I was about to throw some angry words at her, tell her to cease from singing that song, but I stopped. It didn’t matter who might be listening. The danger was small and, more, it no longer mattered, really, if the King began to suspect I was one of the ‘true believers’ he detested so vigorously. I was through with Imperial service. One way or another.

  So, instead, I walked across the grassgrown cobblestones and sat down beside her.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hello,’ she said, still staring into the quivering sun-yellow flames. And that was that, for a moment.

  I said, unnecessarily, ‘I go to see the king.’

  She turned, looked at me solemnly. ‘Do you think you will find out the truth?’

  Later or sooner, it would make no difference in the end. I too peered at the warm blaze. ‘I don’t know. I think I have his confidence. It’s hard to be sure, with Charles. I could tell you stories ...’

  ‘What, Emmanuel, what if the story is true, it was the Empire?’

  I looked into the flames a moment without answering. Then I tried to find an answer that would not be clichéd, meaningless, flat, and dead.

  ‘Then ... we do what we must, of course.’
I didn’t really feel as if there was any ‘of course’ about it.

  We watched the flames then. Bright and leaping, consuming everything.

  She began to sing another song, even older, no one knew how many centuries Old. A slow, sad ballad.

  ‘Hark, the drums do beat, dear love - no longer can we stay;

  The bugle-horns are sounding clear, and we must march away.

  We’re ordered down to Portsmouth, and it’s many the weary mile,

  To join the British Army - on the banks of the Nile..

  I thought of the eroded funeral mounds that men still call ‘the Pyramids’, for no real reason, and of the daughter of the Israeli army-general. Old memories ...

  ‘Oh Willie, dearest Willie, oh don’t leave me here to mourn:

  Don’t make me rue and curse the day that ever I was born;

  For the parting of our love would be like parting with my life,

  So stay at home, my own true love, and I will be your wife ...’

  I thought of Annah.

  ‘Oh my Nancy, dearest Nancy, sure that will never do.

  The government has ordered, and we are bound to go...

  The government has ordered, and the queen she gives command,

  And I am bound on oath, my love, to serve in a foreign land...’

  It too was about imperialism and war and sorrow. But it was all clear-cut, predictable, unavoidable - fate, destiny. Weird. A hard road one must travel down. The sort of philosophy my father would have accepted joyously, perhaps.

  I shook my head. Things weren’t that simple anymore. I knew you could read that in my face. Hard roads there were, but so many; one must choose, nowadays, choose some ideal that will define one’s solitary path to commitment.

  It was a long song, but it came to end eventually, as dark rainclouds gathered in the sky. The fire was dying too; large drops of moisture began to spatter down, and red embers hissed. So I stood up too, nodded, indicated that she should stay, and said, ‘Yes. Yes, that was - quite beautiful, Annah ... It helped,’ I lied.

  I squeezed her hand for a long moment, blew her a kiss; then, as she didn’t say anything, I turned and left by the gates. She would back me, all the way, to the hilt. Whatever I chose.

  Through the cherry-gardens, past a last sentry box, onto the cast-iron pier; there a long launch was waiting, which walked with six bladed legs upon the grey Thames. Backed by the tide, it took me to the shores of the city and to the antechambers of the king.

  * * * *

  Inside the Tower a stentorian aide announced: ‘Emmanuel Kyygard, colonel-in-chief of Intelligence, and high emissary of the king ...’ and I entered. Three men only were in the roomy conference hall: standing, Klaus Dekker, the German provinces’ over-governor facing the uncouth and notoriously vigorous Duke of Northumbria, and, seated on a quilted-ermine throne, the king himself, Charles, effete son of the Empress Elizabeth.

  ‘Ahh, our dear Emmanuel ... What news from Deschernes and the Fleet?’

  I quickly knelt, kissed the offered ring. ‘Your majesty, a great victory—’

  Charles’ eyes glinted as I spoke my picturesque quarter-hour long tale, but his mouth showed nothing at all.

  ‘Good. Very good,’ he said at last, judicially. He allowed some teeth to appear. ‘You bring hoped-for tidings of good news, Emmanuel... We will examine the reports you bring and would speak with you in private, later, on these things. But stay for the moment. We discuss the “German question”, that old perennial. Also, there are some things which you must be acquainted with, shortly.’

  I bowed, sketchily. ‘I understand full well, sire...’

  Whitesmith rumbled heavily, ‘Deschernes is dead, you say?’

  ‘Ay, my lord Northumbria, lost when the Prince of Wales went down.’

  ‘Hmm.’ He turned his big blond head away, reflectively.

  I could imagine his thinking. It’s time for new blood; so that living museum-piece van der Thorn might as well be pensioned-off, because this is a new England now...

  I saw Klaus Dekker absentmindedly finger the multicoloured imitation windowpane. The stained glass in the Norman arches threw rainbows around the massive chamber, and its famous facetted-silver walls gleamed. Set upon the floor’s rich Persian carpets was the mahogany conference table, polished to its familiar mirrorness where Northumbria perched, and several uncomfortable plaited-metal armchairs; very little else. A spartan ambience?

  On the table I noticed the usual untouched ebony ashtray. The king gloweringly disapproved of tobacco. A portrait of the late Empress hung behind Charles’ right shoulder; her mad jade-bright eyes followed you inescapably about the room. I stood at something like waried ease, and watched his majesty whispering asthmatically with the inscrutably-frowning Whitesmith, overriding his shaken head and mutters of ‘no, by my oath’. Then the king hushed him with a gesture, and smiled demurely.

  * * * *

  At some sleight-of-hand signal Dekker hinted at a bow, and began his setpiece speech. ‘German nationalism is, in truth, reflowering, Majesty. Covertly: a little more stiffness in the dissension here and there, recently the development of a “maquis” of sorts in the backwoods ... The Deutschold and the still-free relics of the old Teutonic middle-Europe make no strong moves, secret or otherwise, but ... any major upheaval in the situation between Europe and the Empire and... The Kaiser would like to seize the chance, of a united Deutschold once more, but whether he is strong enough, or the Empire ever weak enough even behind our unfortified frontier ... So: where are we going vis-à-vis our Reichland, to butcher a phrase?’

  Affected, Frenchified speech - sickly-sweet, as far as our Duke was concerned. I could see that much.

  ‘Mmh. I think ... Northumbria?... a taste of our Dublin City regiments, hmm?’ King Charles pursed his lips, steepled his fingers to Ely cathedral. ‘Yes, a whiff of auto da fé, the death-kiss of mass reprisals ... perhaps some manufactured incident on our borders with one of the smaller fry of dukedoms, say a punitive raid... thus let us plan, ay?’

  Sieur Thomas Whitesmith, Duke of Northumbria and governor-general of the North, chief adviser to the king, shook his head annoyedly. ‘Forget this about “our Irish wolf-hounds”: of what relevance is it?’ His tarnished fair hair still moved with the motion. ‘What of Vienna? Vienna has been cremated by our Old-weapon bomb—’ my world darkened for me, then, ‘—such a crime, sire, if it doved abroad, would inevitably raise all Europe. The fear of the catastrophic Old days returning is ... deep. This is the kernel, the king-issue. I did not travel through the night and the day from Newcassel to discuss putting some Hun chaff to the Question. We’re not, after all, the Soviet Inquisition.’

  I might have thought of the Earl of Manchester, below us in the Tower’s black-rooms. It’s unclear now; I have difficulty in remembering it at all.

  ‘Yes,’ said Charles IX of United England, of the Low Countries, High King of Eireland and Prince of Orange-Ulster, Vice-Emperor of Germany, Emperor-in-majesty of the Grand Empire, Duke of Brettaigné ... ‘Yes: we must find means of pinning the Austrian target, as a child would a butterfly...’

  Cornwall: where all butterflies, they say, are born ...

  ‘Then ...’ he twisted one thin alabaster hand on the rich and fine-grained wood, ‘we crush.’

  ‘Ay, majesty, ay. But I propose we stay the while. Look, Europa is not united. Italia, France, Soviet Asia, someone will make the first move in carving headless Austria. Only then do we strike from our German provinces, using our massed Irish force, and seize the greater part. You see, the first one who moves - and I’ve no doubt that the Francais-bastard or someone is marching his armies already - we disclaim most vehemently, though not too stridently, note, in the pious name of all humanity. Others may well add their voice to ours, if we encourage the hope of making more pickings available on the Danube and Rhine axis.’

  Coldly, now, came the regal ‘Yes’.

  ‘Europe is a pack of dogs. They fight one another while trying t
o bite the leash of iron we, one by one, lay upon them. For their pains they deserve a good whipping.’ He smiled, his eyes flicking about to draw approval from our faces.

  ‘Uhhmm ... yes, yes, that is well planned, our good Northumbria. A Declaration might, if nothing else, cause the slightest fogging of the accusations, certainly if we seem slow to take advantage. Surprised, you might say.’ He paused, became introspective for a moment. ‘Very well; that is how we will play the game this time around. And how are the back-up arrangements for reinforcing our army in Antwerp progressing?’