The Triple Goddess

by Ashly Graham

  As soon as they were assembled they ran, clutching their heads as if they were about to lose them, which would possibly be the case at the King’s command, out of the Outer Ward’s Middle tower gate to greet their monarch in the moat.

  Pesci, conscious again after coming to while the plant’s attention was diverted, hauled the vegetable back through the window from which it was making obeisance to its liege lord, wishing it were under happier circumstances and that it had had a chance to dust and compose its leaves, tied a granny knot in its neck and hastened after his mistress.

  As soon as Arbella had apprised him of what was going on, Pesci knew that there was not a moment to lose, and, commanding his platoon of Neapolitan thugs to fall in, he blew a blast on his bugle and ordered Battle Stations. His men snapped to with a will, and before King James had a chance to establish that the Yeomen Warders had no idea what was going on, and send them back inside the Tower, the bascule drawbridge had been raised, the barbican gates secured and portcullises dropped, and the enemy was barricaded within the curtain walls of the oldest and stoutest fortress in the kingdom.

  There was nothing that the humiliated Beefeaters could do but brandish their pikes and partisans in frustration and hurl invective breath at the walls.

  Pesci had trained his soldiers well. They began setting up cauldrons in which to boil the un-Green surplus-to-requirement heating oil drawn from the Tower’s storage tanks, with the object of pouring it on the heads of those who might approach the battlements with intent to escalade the walls.

  A siege engine—a cousin to the trebuchet, springald, ballista, mangonel, and onager—which had been discovered to great excitement amongst the Tower’s historic collection, was being readied for use in launching its first missile by a team operating the machine’s levers to wind the rope. The younger crew was preparing for offensive action with longbow and arbalest and spear.

  ‘Men!’ shouted Arbella to the members of her force through a rolled-up original of the Magna Carta, ‘Should a single one of that royal rabble get in here I will personally cut off the heads of those responsible and use them as cannonballs.’

  Pesci smiled: Arbella, as young as she was, reminded him of his mamma. He paused to picture the dear lady as she probably was at that moment, elbow-deep in pasta, garlic, and tomato sauce in her kitchen. Half a dozen of her fettucine-fed family, ranging in age from thirty to their late fifties and still living at home (those who were not in jail or, in Ignacio’s case, had fled the country), would be sitting round the table gazing at her adoringly.

  The Italian’s sentimental thoughts were interrupted as the rubber plant, which had discovered some vestigial ability of its genus to exert independent locomotive power and follow them, threw itself at them. Looping itself several times around Arbella’s neck and making an eldritch sound it began to squeeze her, boa-constrictor style, while gathering itself to hit her over the head with its pot.

  It was its first and last mistake. Before Ficus elastica could wreak its murderous intent, demonstrating great strength of tooth and claw Arbella ripped it off her and tore it into a confetti of leaves and pieces of stem. In its death throes as it was dismembered, the plant screeched an agonized prayer to King James, begging to be avenged.

  Striding to a machicolation in the parapet and measuring the distance with her eye while Pesci loaded the catapult with the rubber plant’s receptacle, now funeral urn, Arbella took a sighting on a bright red target in the moat and made an adjustment to the machine’s aim before her sidekick released the firing mechanism. The clay missile curved up and down, striking a Beefeater on the temple as he looked up to identify the whistling sound. His hangover cured, that was the end of him.

  ‘Four-nil,’ Arbella yelled at the horrified King James, as sombre members of the portly guard bore their fallen colleague from the field; ‘including the dozy duo who were supposed to be guarding the Jewel House, and the Bungy Plant.’ She was not aware that it was a sporting count, because it did not include the two friendly-fire deaths of the sentries at Buck House, and the expiry of the spurned driver of the phaeton from toxic fume inhalation. ‘You’d better pull your socks up, Jugs baby, if you can manage to do so without help from your nanny.’

  Then, spitting out a leaf, she went back to her apartment to change her clothes.

  Chapter Eighteen

  When Arbella reappeared fifteen minutes later, in order to taunt King James further she had transformed herself into a Pearly Queen of the early twentieth century London organization associated with Henry Croft, an orphan street sweeper who collected money for charity.

  Except that charity was not what Arbella had on her mind. Bedizened with excerpts from the Crown Jewels, she was a mosaic of earrings, pendants, brooches, and rings, and her arms were slung with bracelets. On her head was wearing the Imperial State Crown featuring the Cullinan II diamond.

  So dramatic was the sight that the sun was drawn from behind a cloud to marvel at his competition, dazzling the crowd on the ground. James put on his sunglasses and rolled a surplus quantity of ear into a vocal amplifier.

  Rattled, his childhood stammer re-emerged. ‘Woman, s-surrender while thou hast opportunity, or it will go more ill with thee than thou canst endure! Command those c-caitiff varlet wretches to lay down their arms—our arms. You have affronted us beyond tolerance, and are guilty under the Treason Act of thirteen fifty-one of levying war against the King in his Realm and of otherwise attempting by force of arms or other violent means to conspire against and incite overthrow of the organs of government established by the Constitution. Therefore be it known that we will assail ye m-mercilessly, as God be our witness. All of your lives are hereby declared f-forfeit.’

  Arbella snorted out a pearl that had lodged in a nostril into her palm. ‘Yah b-boo sucks, you knock-kneed lily-livered n-nitwit!’

  ‘We say! Whatever happened to l-loyalty, and respect, what-what?’

  ‘Carn ’elp yer there, mate,’ she responded; ‘I don’t kiss no relly of the Kaiser on the keister. Your arse ain’t the Blarney Stone, Jimbo me lad.’

  The antagonists glared at each other. Jugs whipped off his glasses, fired an ocular missile at Arbella and joined his anxious men. He beckoned to the Chief Raven, there was a brief consultation, and the loyal and aged Oswald—he was sixty-five years old—again lumbered into the air for the return journey to the Palace, to summon the Royal Household to the King’s aid and have a warrant drawn up for Arbella’s arrest on charges of High Treason and Grammatical Abuse. Each was a hanging offence.

  Arbella nodded to Pesci, who flagged a marksman; there was the twang of a bowstring, and the pied bird turned a somersault in the air and crumpled to the ground at James’s feet.

  The King and Beefeaters, aghast, viewed the corpse and wrung their hands. The Tower had lost its oldest retainer. Now there were only five ravens left, and the Tower and the Monarchy were in imminent danger of collapsing. It was an awful omen, for legend had it that if the ravens left the Tower the monarchy would fall—so would the White tower, but Arbella had no worries on that score because by then she would have traded up to Windsor Castle.

  ‘Five-zip!’ shouted Arbella as Chief Raven Oswald was borne from the field, to wailing and gnashing of teeth on the part of the Royalists.

  Jugs gnawed his woven-nettle sleeve and shed several low-salt tears, and mournfully hailed a passing pigeon to send in the raven’s stead. He added to his message an order for the post-haste delivery of an apprentice Tower corvid from the royal aviary at Hampton Court.

  Then he instructed the Beefeaters to ransack the ugly modern grey concrete insurance brokerage office complex at Tower Place behind All Hallows Church—James had recalled the monarch’s ancient privilege to rase to the ground any building within a longbow shot of the Tower’s walls—for metal desks and doors and chairs to use as barriers and shields.

  Meanwhile Pesci’s men continued their preparations space. The copper cauldrons of oil that had been hung on tripods along th
e bartizans, or battlements, over fires fuelled by the antique furniture and Old Masters in Arbella’s apartment, were now bubbling hot. Thomas Sheraton’s George the Third armchairs and cabinets, of satinwood, rosewood, and tulipwood, proved dry and fast-burning and were almost smokeless.

  Art historians were later not surprised to learn that the Rubenses conflagrated especially well, and that the Botticellis and Canalettos were of less incinerative value. The thickly applied paint of Joseph William Mallord Turner’s canvases gave off oily fumes but generated an intense heat, while those of John Constable were less fiery but lasted longer.

  When the office furniture arrived a squad of Yeoman Warders assembled in an imitation of the “testudo” or tortoise formation adopted by Roman soldiers in such circumstances, supporting the desks and doors over their heads, and advanced to the Tower walls. But so shambolic was their advance that their coverings afforded little protection against the quantities of redundant distillate petroleum product that cascaded down upon them, and Pesci’s men cheered madly as two warders sang out like moribund lobsters and were stretchered from the field on the same doors as they had been carrying.

  If James had any ideas about scaling the walls with fire ladders, this would put paid to them. Also of concern was that the Tower force’s younger crew was hurling spears with enough velocity to threaten any Beefeater who was incautious enough as to come within range.

  The score was seven to nothing and things were looking bleak for the royalists. The would-be besiegers looked nervously at the King as Arbella crowed her Schadenfreude over the heads of the confounded, high-fived her Italian accomplice, and symbolically pinned a garter—her garter—on his doublet. Founded by King Edward the Third, the Order of the Garter was the world’s most ancient order of chivalry, and it could only be bestowed by the Sovereign.

  ‘Zounds!’ exclaimed Jugs in dismay at the way things were going pear-shaped, and, ‘Gadzooks!’ As a former Boy Scout, he knew the importance of Being Prepared. But what was he to do? This was lèse-majesté on the grandest of scales. Thank goodness that his mother, who had gone on well past her sell-by date until he was close to his before relinquishing the throne, did nothing these days except watch soap operas and drink pink gins.

  It was for this moment, he knew, that he had been bred and trained, and it had not come too soon. He had been kept in short trousers by his parents until he came of age, and made to wear his schoolboy cap, and carry the same wooden pencil-box with the sliding top and swivel compartment that he had used in Primary school in his old leather satchel with the steel crossbar, when he went to Grindham public school and thereafter was up at Hardicanute College, Cambridge.

  Alerted to the state of emergency by the Tower Hamlets pigeon, the members of the royal household, courtiers, and other retainers were beginning to trickle in, and the Lord Chamberlain hastened to the King’s side.

  ‘There you all are at last!’ said Jugs, trying not to sound or look relieved.

  The royal servants began erecting tents on the sward, and imported into them the impedimenta of the Mobile Court, and the various Green necessities and comforts of home that accompanied the monarch on his sojourns around the Kingdom. The filtration unit for his health-giving beverages was unpacked, and the recycling machine that continuously produced the vellum on which were transcribed HRH’s copious memoranda, so that they might be illuminated in green ink in the mobile scriptorium and preserved for placement in the royal archives.

  For Jugs was a mighty dictator, and a great sentencer, keeping a dozen scribes employed in shifts.

  The portable greenhouse contained the flowers and shrubs that he required about his person at all times, to gladden his heart and eye. Also in it were the most highly strung of the houseplants, which could not bear to be separated from their lord for even brief periods, nor he from them. If he did not speak to them every day they pined and wilted. In the vegetarium, a crack team of organic gardeners tended to a temperamental collection of tubers, legumes, and grains.

  The King had a weak stomach and was very finicky about what he ate. He had no need of salt, weeping instead over his food as he thought of the cropping process. Sometimes, if he fancied that he recognized an asparagus spear, or the shape of a favourite turnip, he would be unable to finish the meal.

  Today, the arrival of the Mobile Court coincided with the end of James’s seventy-two hour gustatory cycle, when it was necessary that he betake himself promptly, very promptly, to the lavatorium to produce the manure that was spread on his gardens—for the pedigreed plants would tolerate no other—and used to grow coprophagous mushrooms for the royal breakfast.

  Once he was ensconced on the portable excremental dais covered with padded white kidskin, and provided with a double roll of recycled grass paper impregnated with aloe, the Lord Chamberlain bowed to the King and begged to know his further pleasure.

  ‘Hoo…aah. Have the u-u-uniforms brought to us, LC, in the travelling Throne Room. Give us ten minutes to ourselves and we’ll be with you. Make it fifteen. This is a more than usually, er, m-moving day.’

  ‘Very good, Your Majesty.’

  Word and other matter was passed, and when the King was installed on his solid-seated lightweight throne in an open pavilion of green-striped silk, the head keeper of the Royal Zoological Gardens was admitted to his presence. He was leading a couple of milk-white palfreys, one on either side of him, and brought them before the King. Each beast had a long straight horn like that of a narwhal strapped to its forehead.

  The keeper dropped onto one knee and, as he dug his elbows into the palfreys’ flanks, they followed suit by sinking onto one foreleg and bowing their heads. The King was a distant cousin of theirs, and they had been trained in royal etiquette as foals.

  ‘’Slid! you idiot,’ said Jugs to his Chamberlain. ‘Honestly, we daint neigh [don’t know], we said to bring the uniforms, not the unicorns: the new uniforms for the Yeoman Warders. We can’t continue with the siege until they’re wearing them, they stand out too much in all that red. Haven’t the seamstresses finished them yet? As if things weren’t bad enough already.’

  Late as always the unicorns’ attendant virgin, Sabrina, entered the pavilion blotting her freshly applied Laura Mercier Baby Doll Lip Glacé with a cambric handkerchief, a monogrammed gift from Jugs, looking annoyed and wobbly in ten-inch heels rather than poised and demure.

  When Virgin Sabrina encountered the keeper and his charges on their way out, and was whispered to that her attendance was not required, she scowled and turned and tottered rather than flounced back to her own tent. It was so like Jugs to call for her when she was in the middle of having her hair or nails done. There had been no time to have the toe separators put in, and the nail lacquer had smudged and dried unevenly so the basecoat would have to be removed and the process begun again.

  It was all such a bore, especially since when the summons came Sabrina was already running late for a cut-and-colour from Errol Douglas on Motcomb Street; though she had now missed her appointment she would still have to pay for it out of her allowance, and it would be yonks before she could get in to see Errol again—none of the other stylists would do—unless there was a cancellation, and what was the chance of that?

  Jugs, whose face had turned the colour of Sabrina’s pink lip gloss at seeing her, pulled himself together. ‘Lord Ch-Chamberlain,’ he said in exasperation, ‘shortly to be ex-Lord Chamberlain if you don’t buck up. Again we say, where are the uniforms?’

  At last the Master of the Wardrobe arrived at the head of a group of servants in formation like pall-bearers, carrying poles on which rested oaken chests. Staggering under the weight they brought them forward, lowered them onto the turf and raised the lids. At the King’s command the Yeoman Warders fell in and advanced, stamped, and saluted, none too smartly.

  But this was no time for drill, and Jugs, his composure somewhat restored by three hundred milligrams of toadflax that his chief physician had insisted that he wash down with a glass
of beetroot juice, to reduce his blood pressure, curled a gracious hand in acknowledgement.

  The Lord Chamberlain stood before the King and held open a parchment scroll for Jugs to read from.

  ‘“Oyez, oyez, oy.... Doh! Now hear this: Following our gloriously renewed entrecôte with our worthy and ancient adversary the French...” Entrecôte? That’s entirely the wrong word, being French, and getting rid of the Beefeaters in beefy name not person is the point of what we’re doing here. Beeves, henceforth, are out of season and off the menu. Who wrote this crap, anyway? Surely not. Well, the word we should have used is contretemps.

  ‘Dash it, no it isn’t. Memo to file: ensure that both those words—are they nouns?—are eliminated from the dictionaries. Disagreement, spat, or barney...no, they’re not weighty enough…never mind, now isn’t the time to be farting...whoops, was that we?, do excuse us, around with semantics.

  ‘Back to the crisis, what? Here goes. “Be it known that ye Beefeaters are no longer yclept Beefeaters. The word Beefeater is hereby proclaimed illegal. Those who offend by continuing to use it will be mulched and fed to the giant daisies. Hereafter ye will be called M-Marrow Splungers.”

  ‘Marrow Splungers? Who came up with that doozy of a name? Sounds like a toilet implement. Oh. Yes indeedy, Marrow S-Splungers it shall be. “From now on, let nobody use the words courgette or zucchini.” There. Advance for the last time, Yeoman Warders, and disrobe that we may proceed with the induction and get on with dealing with the bitch aloft.’

  There was a pause as the men stripped down to their, none too clean, long underwear.

  ‘Now, pile the old uniforms for burning.’

  The red and gold costumes, which dated from 1552 and were made to a design by Holbein, were removed from under the awning and put in a heap at a distance, sprinkled with methane hydrate and set alight; whereupon a hip-flask in one of the pockets exploded. The thick material blazed as the Splungers garbed themselves in their new dark green and cream-striped outfits.