Ten Little Wizards: A Lord Darcy Novel

by Michael Kurland

  To His Lordship, the Right Honorable the Marquis Sherrinford.

  From His Lordship the Marquis of London.

  On Monday, the 25th of April, in the Year of Our Lord 1988.

  Greetings Noble Cousin.

  I hesitate to bother Your Lordship, busy as you must be with plans for the impending coronation of His Royal Highness. I would be there myself but, as you know, pressing business keeps me in London—

  “Pressing business!” Duke Richard interrupted, laughing, “pressing weight is more like it. He hasn’t left that palace of his in something like thirteen years. There isn’t a carriage that would hold him; he’d have to hire a dray. He must weigh thirty stone.”

  “Nonetheless,” Marquis Sherrinford pointed out, “he carries out his duties as Chief Magistrate for the City of London very well.”

  “That’s so,” Sir Darryl agreed, nodding his angular, bony head. “The man never leaves his house, and yet he knows more about what goes on in London than if he ran about all day peering around corners. And the inferences he can make from the merest speck of dust or spot of food on a waistcoat are truly astonishing.”

  “Oh, yes,” Duke Richard agreed. “The man is a brilliant investigator, no question about that. A relative of yours, I believe, Darcy?”

  “Distant cousin,” Lord Darcy said.

  “Just so,” Marquis Sherrinford said. “Now, if Your Highness will permit me to continue—

  “Of course,” Duke Richard said. “Sorry.”

  “‘—pressing business keeps me in London,’” the Marquis picked up where he had left off.

  A certain piece of information has come to my attention during the routine investigation of a series of bizarre robberies. Since you are concerned with the safety of our beloved King John, I thought I had better pass it on. It is probably of no moment, but you are in a better position to judge that than I.

  At the mention of the king’s safety, a sudden palpable tension entered the room. “Our beloved King John” was not just a formula with these men, but an expression of an honestly held emotion.

  Here are the details, to the extent that we know them:

  The robber, who turned out to be one Goodman Albert Chall, was apprehended on Sunday—yesterday—by my assistant, Lord Bontriomphe who is not without a certain primitive cleverness. In trying to escape along a rooftop, Goodman Chall leaped over a parapet and fell six storeys onto a paved walk.

  Lord Bontriomphe reached him as he was expiring—it is nothing short of a miracle that he lived even that long—and held a brief colloquy with him which he subsequently quoted to me verbatim. I am sure you are familiar with Lord Bontriomphe’s abilities along that line. I quote the conversation in full:

  Bontriomphe: Just lie still, I’ve called for an ambulance.

  Chall: That ain’t no good. You know that, gov. Look at me; I’m all broken up. I can’t feel nothin’.

  Bontriomphe: Is there anything you want me to do?

  C: I got to tell you somethin’.

  B: About the robberies? You don’t have to—

  C: No, no—it’s somethin’ else. I was kind of holdin’ this as a trump, ‘case I got caught. But I won’t need it now. I won’t need nothin’ now. I want to get it said in case I—in case I don’t make it. Which it looks like I won’t.

  B: What is it?

  C: I would have told anyway. You can see that, can’t you? I would have told anyway before June first. You know that?

  B: Told what?

  C: About them killin’ His Majesty. I wouldn’t have let them do that. You believe me, don’t you? I would have told anyway. You know that.

  B: Of course I do. I believe you. Tell me about it now.

  C: I heard about it by accident. Oh Gawd, the pain is startin’. It hurts somethin’ awful. I must be all busted up inside.

  B: There’ll be a healer here in a minute. Talk to me—it will keep your mind off the pain. What about them killing His Majesty?

  C: I overheard them talkin’. It was at my ten percenter’s. They didn’t know as I was there. They’re goin’ to do it for His Majesty at the coronation. They’s been plannin’ it for a long time, is what it sounded like.

  B: Who? Who are they?

  C: Why—the Poles. I thought I said so. It’s not so far, once you’re started. The trick is wearin’ of the right hat. You can fool anybody if they see the right hat. And...and...and it’s pointed the wrong way. That’s what will fool them, you see. It’s pointed the wrong way!

  And with these words Albeit Chall, master thief, expired. We assume the last sentence or so to be a dying ramble, but as to the rest, we are not sure. We are, of course, doing what we can to ascertain the veracity of his story, but there is small hope of discovering anything beyond his dying words.

  The identity of his “ten percenter” is being assiduously pursued. There is some chance of locating that person and interviewing him, and I will, of course, immediately inform you of the results of such an interview. To the best of our information Goodman Chall neither spoke nor understood Polish. If there is any further information we can give you, please inform us post haste.

  Long live His Majesty, John IV.

  In Haste,

  London

  The Marquis put the last page of the letter down and looked around. “My lords?” he asked.

  Duke Richard stood up, his face white. “Long live His Majesty, my brother John,” he said softly.

  “Amen,” the Archbishop of Paris said firmly.

  The six men in the room crossed themselves. “June first, that’s the day of the coronation,” Duke Richard said. “Barely three weeks away. What can we do?”

  “I called you all here to help me decide what is to be done,” Marquis Sherrinford told him. “Your Highness because, as the Duke of Normandy, you are responsible for the safety of everyone in the Duchy. Lord Darcy because, as Chief Investigator of the Court of Chivalry, as well as the man overseeing the security arrangements in Castle Cristobel during the coronation, you are, or will be, intimately involved in whatever decisions we make. Your Grace because your advice is valuable, and the assistance of the Church may prove invaluable. Master Sir Darryl Longuert because, as ranking member of the Sorcerers’ Guild present, you will have to help us design and implement our, ah, magical defenses, if any.

  “I, as the King’s Equerry, am, of course, directly responsible for His Majesty’s safety. And I can assure you that I take that responsibility very seriously.”

  “Do you think that this can possibly be true?” Duke Richard asked, sitting slowly back down in his chair. “It doesn’t make sense!”

  “His Highness is right,” the Archbishop said. “A threat to His Majesty’s life from King Casimir—or any other Pole—makes no apparent sense whatever. Nominally, we are enemies, but actually—I can’t believe he’d be so stupid!”

  “What do you say, Darcy?” Duke Richard asked. “How does it strike you?”

  Lord Darcy paused. He was supposed to know such things, and his answer would be given weight.

  For most of the twentieth century the kings of Poland had been interested in expansion. At first they had contented themselves by moving east, bringing one small Baltic state after another under Polish hegemony.

  By the mid-thirties King Sigismund III had annexed or controlled most of the territory from Revel on the Baltic to Odessa on the Black Sea. But then the Russian states to the east had formed a loose coalition for the purpose of fielding a vast army against further Polish expansion. And since the Russian coalition included states deep into central Asia, their army could be vast indeed.

  So King Casimir IX, Sigismund’s son and heir, decided that Western discretion was the better part of Eastern valor, and cast his covetous gaze on the disorganized and fragmented Germanic states that formed a buffer between the Slavonic and Angevin Empires.

  While the Poles were expanding to the east, their Angevin majesties had paid little heed. The Imperial Territories of New England and New France
on the far side of the Atlantic had taken most of their attention, and were allowing the Angevin Empire to expand as fast as it could responsibly administer its new land and new people. The Russian states, like the rest of Asia, seemed half a world away.

  But when the Poles turned their gaze west, they saw their way to the Mediterranean and to the North Sea both blocked by the Anglo-French Empire or its dependents. Not that the Germanic states were really dependent upon the Angevins for anything except stopping the Poles. In theory they owed fealty to the Angevin Emperor as part of the old Holy Roman Empire, but in actuality they had never paid a twelfth-bit of tribute to the Plantagenet kings, and never would. But they did know that, with the Angevin Empire on their west, they could tell King Casimir to go to hell; just as, with the Polish Empire on their east, they could remain as independent as they wished of Angevin influences. It was a balancing act they had become quite good at.

  And besides, the German states produced good fighters. Their men served as mercenaries in the Angevin Legion, as well as half the other armies around the world. If Bavaria and Hanover and Hesse and Prussia and all the other little German states could ever stop feuding and get together, the combination would be quite fierce. Nobody would purposely do anything that might encourage such a thing.

  But Casimir coveted clear water, which he could not reach. On land, the Germans stood in his way. At sea, the Baltic exit to the Atlantic was closed by the Scandinavian fleet, and the Slavonic navy’s exit from the Black Sea was closed at the Sea of Marmara by the Roumelian fleet, both backed up, if necessary by the Angevin Imperial Navy.

  Therefore, on land as on sea, King Casimir IX saw himself as ultimately blocked by the Plantagenets and their empire. His response was to create a powerful weapon and put it to work against the Angevins; a weapon which, he thought, would cause the undermining of an empire in the fullness of time. He might not live to see it, but his son Stanislaw, or certainly his grandson Sigismund, would.

  This weapon was the Serka. A contraction of an expression meaning, roughly, “the King’s right arm,” the Serka was the Polish Secret Police. Owing allegiance only to King Casimir, the highly-trained, highly-dedicated agents of Amt V, the Serka’s External Division-West, were dedicated to the overthrow of the Plantagenet dynasty and the Angevin Empire.

  But against all of this, which seemed to indicate that agents of Casimir IX could well be plotting the death of John IV, there was the overriding question as to why they would do such a thing. The death of John would not bring the wheels of Anglo-French government to a halt. As able as John was, there were other Plantagenets available to take the throne. If Parliament thought either of John’s sons too young, or otherwise unsuitable, there was Duke Richard to act either as King or as Regent. And beyond him, in male and female branch, the Plantagenet tree had many suitable leaves.

  And, for any disruption that the death of John might accomplish, there was the counterweighing factor of the danger of discovery. If the death of a reigning Plantagenet could ever be brought directly to the door of the Polish king, it would mean immediate war; a war the Poles could not possibly win.

  “I don’t see it, Your Highness,” Lord Darcy said. “I’m not saying that the dying words of that thief were lies, but that there is either more to the plot that he was unaware of, or he misunderstood what he heard. Plotting the death of Our Beloved Sovereign does not make sense in any way that I can see. Even for the Poles.”

  “What else could it be?” His Grace the Archbishop asked. “What else could it mean?”

  Lord Darcy turned to Lord Peter. “What do you make of it?” he asked.

  Marquis Sherrinford raised his hand. “I should explain,” he said to the Archbishop, “that Lord Peter, while serving, quite ably, as my private secretary, is also the Lord Commander of His Majesty’s Most Secret Service.”

  “Ah!” Archbishop Maximilian said, turning to Lord Peter. “You are the famous Q, are you? I knew that Grand Master Lord Petrus de Berquehomme was the Chief Sorcerer for the Most Secret Service, but he was most secretive about the identity of his, ah, boss.”

  “How did you know that, Your Grace?” Marquis Sherrinford asked sharply.

  The Archbishop of Paris looked faintly embarrassed. “I, ah, was Lord de Berquehomme’s confessor for a while when he was in Paris. But, of course, in that capacity I could never have mentioned it. I also, ah, helped develop the spells for the Pearls of Identity. Lord de Berquehomme asked for my assistance because of some theoretical work I had published on the Law of Similarity. It was quite a little problem. It made me feel rather adventurous, I must admit, to be even that close to the Most Secret Service. I trust that I was of help in some minor way.”

  “Indeed,” Lord Peter said. “It is of utmost importance to the Service to have a means of identifying our agents that cannot be forged, cannot be duplicated, and cannot inadvertently give the agent away. You have performed a valuable service indeed. Lord de Berquehomme never told me of your connection with that particular problem.”

  “At my insistence, I assure you,” the Archbishop said. “It was entirely too, ah, trumpery an occupation for an archbishop. Although I admit that I enjoyed the challenge.”

  “A pretty problem,” Sir Darryl said. “I have often admired the, um, result. I’d like to discuss with you sometime how you handled the symbolic referents.”

  “Delighted,” the Archbishop told the wizard. “With Lord Peter’s permission, of course.”

  Lord Peter nodded. “Of course we have no secrets from the Wizard Laureate,” he said. But he didn’t sound too happy about it.

  Sir Darryl laughed. “You’re right, of course,” he said, replying to Lord Peter’s expression rather than his words. “The fewer who know, the less the chance of the wrong person finding out. Your Grace, I withdraw my request.”

  “Tell me,” Duke Richard interrupted, “what is the meaning of the reference to a ‘ten percenter’? It is a term I am unfamiliar with.”

  “It is thieves’ argot, Your Highness,” Lord Darcy explained. “A ten percenter is a receiver of stolen goods; so-called because he pays out a bit over a twelfth-bit for each sovereign’s worth of illicit merchandise, or roughly ten percent of the value.”

  “I see,” said Duke Richard. “So His Slavonic Majesty hires thieves to spy for him. Spying is such a foul business that I am surprised that even a good Angevin thief would stoop to it.” He turned to Lord Peter with a sudden realization. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to imply—”

  ”That’s all right, Your Highness,” Lord Peter said. “It is a common reaction. Their spies are dirty, filthy scum, not fit to wipe your boots on, while our spies are noble gentlemen doing dangerous work for the love of King and Country. Would that it were so, Your Highness, but I’m afraid that sometimes the desired image is at fault—in both directions.”

  “What do you think, Lord Peter, about this message?” Lord Darcy asked again.

  Lord Peter paused. “I have been giving the matter careful thought for the past few hours, as you can imagine,” he said. “And I must admit to the possibility that it is true. I have no evidence that it is, mind you. And that is surprising; seldom does anything happen of this magnitude about which we don’t pick up at least a ripple. But it is quite possible. King Casimir has made some injudicious decisions in the past. And then there is always the distinct possibility that this is an operation of the Serka that the king knows nothing about.”

  “You mean we might be facing a ‘will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest’ sort of syndrome, eh?” Archbishop Maximilian asked.

  “Exactly, Your Grace,” Lord Peter agreed. “It could well be that some Serka official has decided on his own that what his King really wants is the death of His Majesty, although he doesn’t mention it.”

  “The question is, what are we to do about it?” Duke Richard asked. “My lord marquis, you are in charge of His Majesty’s security. What precautions do you intend to take?”

  “I th
ink Lord Darcy and I will have to sit down and discuss possibilities, along with Coronel Lord Waybusch, who is in charge of Castle security,” Marquis Sherrinford said. “It is a delicate question, Your Highness. We will have the delegations of over a hundred trade guilds, a few hundred various organizations, and some sixty sovereign and not-so-sovereign states arriving over the next week for the coronation. Including the heir apparent to the throne of His Most Slavonic Majesty, as well as the Polish foreign minister. Of course His Majesty’s safety must be held of first importance.”

  “None of these people will get to see His Majesty except under carefully controlled conditions,” Duke Richard said. “Sir Darryl, can we get some sensitives to stand at the doors to the throne room as these people come through? Grab them if they show murderous intent? Would murderous intent be detectable?”

  The Wizard Laureate of England thought for a minute. “It’s not that simple,” he said. “Something can be done, but it won’t be that clear-cut unless we’re very lucky. You see—”

  There was a loud knock at the door, startling the five men in the room. Reality knocks, Lord Darcy thought. And we are not yet ready for reality.

  “Excuse me, my lords,” Marquis Sherrinford said. “They wouldn’t have allowed anyone to knock unless it were very important. I’d better see what it is.”

  “Yes, yes,” the Archbishop said. “Go ahead.”

  Marquis Sherrinford opened the door a crack and peered around it. “Yes?”

  “Beg pardon, Your Lordship,” came a gruff voice from beyond. “But Coronel Lord Waybusch has sent me for Lord Darcy. He’s to come at once. Is His Lordship in here?”

  “Yes, I’m here, Serjeant Martin,” Lord Darcy called, recognizing the Norman-French accent of the Coronel’s aide. “What is it?”

  Serjeant Martin stepped into the room and stood stiffly at attention. “Beg pardon, my lord,” he said. “But it is murder. A foul murder, and also an impossible one.”