Renaissance 2.0: The Entire Series (books 1 thru 5)

by Dean C. Moore

  “I suggest you go enjoy one of your protein shakes,” Thornton remarked.

  “That’ll be enough of that gutter talk,” Frumpley said. “Go grab some vegetables from the yard and some eggs from the hen house. We can bloody well do our own breakfasts. I’m damn tired of all the learned helplessness around here.”

  “I’ll do it,” Wilder said. “I could use a walk. Damn knees are acting up.”

  Wilder opened the door to the yard on sirens blaring, and the paramedics parading in with the stretcher. They attended Irene without a word passing between them and the kitchen staff. They were gone out the door and loading her up in the ambulance before anyone could move.

  “Say one thing for these chronic behaviors, gives everyone a chance to get their roles straight,” Frumpley remarked dryly. Rake walked in on cue, coughing from the suffocating sensation in his throat. Thornton figured it must be the perennial gas cloud he was living in, more dependable than London fog.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  “What’s the latest on Morsi?” Lord Grimley said, as Thornton finished slipping on his dinner jacket.

  “He was here just last week, sir.” Thornton flattened out his shoulders for him. “The sheikh was in town. He has a lot of Arab contacts, as you can well imagine.”

  “That’s all I’ve been doing is imagining it. Why do you think I’m here? My wife’s social agenda aside.”

  Thornton used his sticky roller to catch the lint on Lord Grimley’s pant leg. “Personally, I don’t think Morsi’s going to manage a balance of power with the military.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “He’s too quick to knock heads, loves to flex his muscles and all that. Can’t be that way with that sort.” Thornton attacked the final pant leg with the roller.

  “No, you can’t.” Lord Grimely evaluated himself in the mirror.

  Thornton smiled. “Glad you’re pleased, sir.”

  “Don’t mind me admiring myself. Just how I gear up for the day.” Lord Grimley adjusted his position before the mirror. “I spend hours primping like a peacock to fine tune my game face. The ladies and their makeup mirrors have nothing on me.” He adjusted his pose before the mirror yet again, pulled down on the lip of his jacket to straighten it further, leveled his shoulders through an act of will. “Then again, applying war paint has never been any less harrowing a task. And preparing for battle requires a longer self-annealing process than preparing for one of Lady Harding’s dinner parties.”

  “So you say,” Thornton said.

  Lord Grimley laughed. “Maybe so. Maybe so.” He made his face more stern in the mirror. “Morsi’s got the Americans running scared. That’s all they need is an all-out attack on Israel. Poor bastards have themselves stretched thin playing police to a world intent on unraveling. He say anything useful?”

  “He has his hand out to too many factions to focus much bile on Israel.” Thornton attended his collar. “He’ll need a lot of financial aid, sir, to keep Egypt’s collapsed economy from spinning out of control worse than it is, and eroding the marginal two percent majority he capitalized on to get in office.”

  Thornton evened the ruffles on Lord Grimley’s French shirt.

  “You do have a knack for staying ahead of the papers.” Lord Grimley modeled stern face number four before the mirror, having transitioned through the others during their debate about Morsi.

  “Yes, if I could just parlay my position to greater advantage.”

  Lord Grimley thought about it from beneath the most prescient looking of the daunting faces he had sported thus far. “I imagine once the sheikh gets a load of your ability to cut through court intrigue to get to the heart of the matter, he’ll want you at his side.”

  Thornton’s ears pricked up. With each breath he perked up further. “Ashamed I didn’t think of it myself.”

  “That’s how it is with us plotters and schemers. The simplest path through the maze often eludes us. Seems a bit beneath us, if you know what I mean.”

  Thornton chuckled. “Yes, I do, sir.” His arm was getting tired brushing off Lord Grimley. “You keep game cats, sir?”

  “Yes, cheetahs. Spend half the day wrestling with them. I breed the endangered animals as a matter of playing the good Samaritan to Mother Nature. Used to breed tigers. Got too old to wrestle with them.”

  “What a marvelous way to keep you figure in trim, sir.” Thornton recovered some more cat hairs with his sticky roller from Lord Grimley’s jacket.

  “Don’t bullshit me, Thornton. My waistline is an ad for going to seed without the least agony over the loss of dignity.”

  Thornton combed Lord Grimley’s beard, tried to get the ripples to draw the eye away from the pockmarks in his face. “I bet wrestling game cats helps with holding on to a sense of ferocity when you go head to head with those foreign diplomats.”

  “That it does,” Lord Grimley conceded. “You have a painful way of unmasking a man, Thornton.” He appeared happy with his latest game face.

  “Best we avoid any man-in-the-iron-mask associations.”

  Lord Grimley laughed. “Yes, speaking of the state of foreign diplomacy these days.”

  ***

  “You’ve got your work cut out for you, Wilder,” Lady Grimley admonished. “Thornton’s with my husband now. You know what that means? You’ll need me to plant seeds of doubt to keep my husband from insisting on his promotion to first footman over you as the price for his return visits.”

  She paused long enough to adjust her position at the side of the bed. Moaning ecstatically, she refused to hold back the slightest on her appreciation of an all-out orgasm. “Three more orgasms to go, Wilder; that’s my price for keeping my husband in check.”

  Wilder rubbed the back of his neck, teeter-tottered from shifting weight on his knees to give them a break. He came up for air briefly after having his face buried in her crotch. His tongue needed a rest; he was losing his ability to feel anything with it, and it weighed on him like a beached whale. If he couldn’t maintain his deftness with his tongue, he’d see his future go up in smoke. He was already running through his mind tongue-exercises he might do to get in shape for his next meeting with Lady Grimley. Her penchant for oral satisfaction was legendary.

  Thank God she didn’t require much conversation. His tongue couldn’t manage a carefully grafted groan of protest.

  Wilder had once dreamt of pursuing a degree in marine biology. Instead, he had written his thesis on the complex ecology of the Harding household, how the aberrant psychologies played off one another to advance the human condition despite the most recalcitrant of personalities which made it up. It had earned him a knighthood, a honorary PhD, and an offer to teach at Oxford. None of that prestige, though, compared to the honors bestowed on him for maintaining his place in the Harding household ecosystem of characters. And collectively mapping, classifying, and analyzing the ongoing interactions of each member of the ecosystem was the only thing mentally stimulating enough to take his mind off the direction not taken with his life as a marine biologist. At least now he could afford to vacation in the biological hotspots of the world. That might be reason number three his mind was drifting the direction it was now; he was due for a vacation in a couple of weeks.

  ***

  On a mission to dust the ceramics, Aggie passed the headless Muriel in the hall, seated on an art deco chair, her arm resting on a small hall table. Aggie subsequently ran screaming down the hall at the top of her lungs.

  She ran straight into the arms of Lady Harding. “Dear, dear, girlie. What has your nipples standing at full attention and saluting?”

  Aggie fought to get the words out, but they wouldn’t come. Merely dry heaves. She’d just broken the world record for the hundred meter dash. Her fans could bloody well wait while she composed herself. “Muri… Muri… Muriel.”

  “She really has outdone herself, hasn’t she?” Lady Harding insisted. “I can’t wait for her to pull that stunt in front of Lord Harrelson. Should cure his ch
ronic dry nature once and for all.” Gesturing dramatically, she added, “The man hasn’t displayed a drop of emotion in thirty years. There are mummies drying in pharaohs’ tombs that change their facial expressions more often.”

  “But— but— but—”

  “Don’t let her get to you, dear. She sabotages her relationships with those nearest to her. Must have had a dreadful childhood. Dreadful. One or both of her parents violated her sense of safety, alternated between lovey-dovey one minute, and monster the next. It’s the only way she knows to show she cares.”

  “How— How— How—” Aggie still couldn’t catch her breath.

  “How do I know about her past? Well, I don’t really, but you get better at filling in the blanks for yourself. Give it a try sometime.” She kissed Aggie on the head and resumed her promenade of the great hall headed for Aggie knew-not-where.

  Aggie finally composed herself, taking inspiration from the cast iron fire poker she had fixated on next to the fireplace. She imagined her spine being just such a rod. It was just a quick OCD moment to help her cope, as Minerva, queen of vortex-psychology, would say.

  She couldn’t believe Muriel could still get to her. She was just so damned convincing. Aggie was sure one of these days it’d be real. Intentionally or not, she’d go too far.

  ***

  Rake, finished taking in the scene between Muriel, Aggie, and Lady Harding from the shadows, rushed to the one section of the acres of rooftop on the Harding estate dedicated to his carrier pigeons.

  He scribbled a note for Ermies, rolled it up, tucked it into the band of one of the homing pigeons, then let the bird fly. Half the cages were empty.

  He observed the pitiful state the rest of his birds were in. “At this rate, I’m going to need more homing pigeons.”

  “What are you up to?” Ferrero exclaimed. Appearing out of nowhere. He was the chief gardener for the estate. “And what are these God awful pigeons doing up here?”

  “Lady Harding said I should have a hobby, sir.”

  Ferrero looked him up and down as Rake sported his proud smile, stood erect, and looked as clueless as possible.

  “She should have told me,” he said. “All that bird poop’ll be work for somebody. I’ll have to put a couple of workers on it. I swear the woman insists on propping up the economy single-handedly.”

  Ferrero ambled off in a huff.

  Rake let out the air trapped in his lungs.

  ***

  Irene ogled the chocolate truffle in her fingers, salivating, then put it back in its hidden sleeve below the overhead cupboards. Her doctor had threatened her with life and limb. “No more close calls,” he had said. She returned to driving her fists into the dough in frustration of being back on the wagon; punching the unleavened bread as if determined to hammer it into a pizza crust.

  Wiping her brow of sweat, Irene noted she felt faint. Maybe she was overcompensating, trying to come off the sugar too fast. Just one little bonbon. Just one. Probably be good for her. Stop it, Irene. You know you’re just telling yourself what you want to hear. She sprinkled some water into the flour, picked up the roller, and hammered at the dough she had no reason to be hammering, just to hear the satisfying sound of wood connecting with the butcher block table.

  She needed another breather, noticing how hard she was huffing and puffing. She dropped the rolling pin and leaned against the table. Her skin, prickled with sweat, was itching, as if each one of those beads of water along her surface was housing millions of amoebas with piranha teeth.

  She opened the draw under the face of the butcher block table, searched for the yeast, and found instead a chocolate covered pretzel. She vacillated before she slammed the drawer shut. To hell with it, the bread could be baked without yeast. The sheikh liked his bread coarse, dense, and hard, left to dry out and become stale. She never inquired into this peculiarity of taste, far too used to accommodating strange dietary requests.

  After staggering to the fridge, she opened the door, noticed it was as empty as the depths of space. “Where did I put the cinnamon butter?” She slammed the fridge shut. “The flower pot beside the back door, beneath the petunias, I think.” She took one step to verify this and collapsed on the floor, shaking violently before blacking out.

  ***

  Aggie burst into the kitchen, blinded by the sprawled umbrella with a diameter that nearly covered her full height. She shook it to dry it, then folded it down to behold Irene on the floor. Aggie screamed like she had never screamed before.

  Finally, remembering Lady Harding’s advice, she decided to give it a try. “She grew up farming sugar cane in Trinidad, and her field-handler beat her every time he saw her sucking on some sugar cane for stamina. So she learned to hide her sugar treats for later, when all eyes were off her.” She opened her eyes, feeling much calmer. “God, that stuff really works.”

  She stepped over the body and collected the items that would be needed for breakfast for the kitchen staff. Today was bacon and eggs. At first she had found the kitchen routines oppressive, but as time wore on, she had come to rely on them for the few handholds on this ship tossed about on the stormy seas of testy human relations.

  ***

  Frumpley walked in to see Irene passed out on the floor, and Aggie attending to breakfast. “What’s wrong with you, girl? Call for the ambulance at once!”

  “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. I was so pleased to put this ordeal out of my mind, I entirely forgot.” She ran to the phone, and worked the crank for the operator. “We need the ambulance for Irene!”

  “Again?” The woman sounded impertinent.

  “Just do it!” Aggie shouted in her ear-piercing soprano.

  “We should keep our own ambulance and medics on hand. Save all sorts of drama,” the operator mumbled.

  Flustered, Aggie hung up on her. “That woman is impossible.” She ran out of the room crying into her apron. “I’ve killed her! I’ve killed her!”

  As he hung up his overcoat, Frumpley shook his head. “I don’t know why it’s me who always has to walk into the middle of a scene.”

  ***

  Minerva arrived for her morning shift to find Frumpley on the floor, cradling the comatose Irene in his arms. He rocked her like a child, the carton of orange juice by his side, which he’d undoubtedly tried to stuff into her. Risky business that, guessing if she was suffering from too high or too low blood sugar.

  Frumpley emitted sounds with his pursed lips of ocean waves bursting over the brow of a ship, accompanied by howling winds. The old man had quite the set of pipes on him. As a younger man, he had served as a deckhand on a fishing ship stationed in Nova Scotia, pressed with catching crab, one of the most dangerous occupations on earth, short of keeping your head around here. Maybe the sounds of the sea were his idea of soothing ambiance. Maybe he was invoking a cruise he’d discussed taking with her across stormy Atlantic waters en route to see the Statue of Liberty. Irene was big on the Statue of Liberty. Or maybe he had been sobbing for so long, he was calming himself with the ocean squall, to keep his mind from reeling with fear and pain at the thought of losing her.

  Minerva made a sour face, and hung up her umbrella. “It’s the vortex. Can’t expect things to be normal around here unless it’s a sign the Earth itself is dying. All that energy flowing through a major power center, what do you expect? Gothic cathedrals have fewer energy veins crisscrossing beneath them than we do.”

  “Shut up, Minerva. Can’t you see I’m beside myself?”

  “Just trying to be supportive. But you go ahead and bleed your heart out if that’s to your liking. I have a house to run. Can’t keep up with everyone’s emotional neediness on a good day.”

  She exited as the ambulance crew entered to do their thing, having to first pry Irene out of Frumpley’s hands.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Robin and Drew passed Muriel sitting in the hall, headless. Drew chuckled.

  “Don’t encourage her. It’s compulsive behavior; that’s all it is. Of
no redeeming value.”

  “We wouldn’t know anything about that.”

  Quickening her pace, Robin said, “I’m compulsively inspired; so all is forgiven. That— Whatever that is…”

  Drew smirked. “Me thinks she doth protest too much.”

  ***

  “I’ve fixed it!” Rumfeld boasted proudly. He held out the contraption for anyone who’d care to fondle his baby.

  “What is it?” Thornton said.

  “Why, it’s a potato-eye-gouger-outer, of course.”

  “Of course,” Frumpley said. He chuckled, sharing a joke with the others in the kitchen at Rumfeld’s expense. What an unrepentant fool, he thought.

  “Here, let me show you.” Rumfeld set the device down on the table, inserted a potato, and hit the button. The prongs holding the potato in place were shaped like icepicks, which left the potato as exposed as possible so the infra-red scanner mapping the terrain of the potato for the computer could do its work unencumbered. Once it got a lock on the position, the device flicked an evil-looking flexible metal whip at the potato’s eye, like an eel darting out of a cave. It removed the blemish just perfectly, in all fairness, Frumpley thought, before running the next scan. “Well, Irene, how much time and effort you think this’ll save you?” Rumfeld said.

  “Sweetheart, it takes an hour to do a potato. At that rate, we’ll have our own potato famine in England to outdo anything they had in Ireland.”

  Frumpley guffawed, returned his eyes to his paper, satisfied Rumfeld was getting nowhere with Irene, which allowed him to continue fantasizing about her for himself.

  “For days when you’re feeling under the weather, then,” Rumfeld said, trying to save face. “Or perhaps just for the staff meals, to save you having to cook for us on top of his lordships.”