Conflagration

by Mick Farren

  Nell giggled. “We always obey Madame’s orders.”

  Daphne grinned. “If we know what’s good for us.”

  De Wynter looked Argo and Raphael up and down with a directness that was akin to a military inspection. “You are both very handsome in your uniforms.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “But now it is time to remove them.”

  Argo was momentarily taken aback. He glanced at Raphael. Had he heard de Wynter correctly? Did she really expect the two of them to strip on her orders? Raphael seemed only able to shrug, and his hands went to the top button of his dress tunic. Behind them was a huge man with a perfectly shaved head, slanted eyes, and broad cheekbones, who had to be Madame de Wynter’s bodyguard. His general demeanor left Argo in no doubt he could very easily and very swiftly refute any argument. Thus Argo also started to unbutton his tunic, but de Wynter had already noticed the hesitation. “Don’t be shy, Major Weaver. The Turret Room is where all secrets are revealed.”

  The raven croaked in apparent agreement, and Argo and Raphael began removing their uniforms. The hunchback at the Hamilton key didn’t even look up as they stripped. He really did have total detachment. De Wynter, on the other hand, was watching closely, and did not seem to think they were undressing quickly enough. “Daphne, Nell, help them divest. The boys still seem a little bashful.”

  While Estelle poured glasses of wine, Daphne and Nell made short work of the boys’ remaining buckles and buttons, pulling their tunics and undershirts over their shoulders and then easing down their tight breeches. Once their boots were off, the floor was cold underfoot as he and Raphael stood naked, unsure of what was expected of them. De Wynter sensed this and beckoned. “Come to me now, lads. Without your grand Albany uniforms, you really have no ceremonies on which to stand.”

  Propelled forward by Daphne and Nell, Argo irrationally felt like a small child being invited to the bed of his mother, back in those so much simpler, happier days, long before the Mosul had come and when his father had still been alive, but he also had a sense of absurdity as he climbed onto the circular mattress and crawled across the covers. At a gesture from de Wynter, the girl who had been massaging her shoulders and the adoring young man withdrew to the outer shadows of the room. De Wynter patted the bed. “I want one of you on each side of me.” She looked up at Nell and Daphne. “And you girls will be ready to attend us.”

  The girls needed no further urging. Their party dresses came over their heads and they were down to brief lingerie. Loaded as he was, Argo knew that this was hardly a usual situation, even by London standards, and he might as well relax and enjoy whatever happened. And the first thing that happened was that de Wynter offered him a mouthpiece to the pipe.

  “My dear Argo, it’s a blend of recreational opium and other herbal delicacies, most gathered deep in enemy territory and one, I was led to believe, actually purloined from the personal reserve of no less than Jeakqual-Ahrach.”

  After hearing such a provenance, Argo was not going to refuse. He took the mouthpiece and inhaled deep, but almost coughed the smoke back out of his lungs when he heard Raphael’s blunt comment. “I don’t believe you.”

  Argo looked away, not wanting to be a part of whatever happened next. Madame de Wynter was plainly unaccustomed to being disbelieved, and she initially froze, and Garth the bodyguard stiffened, but then she smiled from behind the veil. “You think I exaggerate, Major Vega?”

  “How could anyone get close enough to Jeakqual-Ahrach to steal her drugs?”

  “There are not many with the courage to question me like that, right here in my own bed.”

  Argo grinned. The effects of the smoke had him reeling. “I think she might be telling the truth, brother.”

  “It seems like Raphael here has inherited a laudable Hispanian scepticism.” She made an odd sign to Nell. Nell slid her way up the bed and began fondling Raphael. He gasped, but de Wynter continued the conversation as though nothing was happening. “In answer to your question, there are very few who have ever stolen from Jeakqual-Ahrach, and lived to enjoy the theft.”

  “I can…” Raphael suppressed a groan. “… believe that.”

  “But Morgana’s Web is almost without limits.”

  Daphne was now tracing unreadable symbols on Argo’s stomach and her breast was against his leg, but he felt he was required to maintain his end of the conversation. “We’d never heard of it until we came here.”

  “And yet you were in contact with it, Major Weaver.”

  “I was?”

  “Almost immediately after you left your home in Thakenham.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The sadly deceased Bonnie Appleford was one of the Web’s associates.”

  “What?” Argo’s surprise at the unexpected mention of the name from the past was almost matched by his confusion at seeing that Nell had now taken Raphael in her mouth and Raphael had fallen on his side. The raven stared down at him, and he knew de Wynter was putting the two of them through some kind of test.

  “Bonnie Appleford was an associate of Morgana’s Web?”

  Bonnie had helped him escape the Mosul, but had been killed in a firefight while the two of them had been running with Slide and the Rangers, before The Four had even found each other. He knew that de Wynter couldn’t be lying. No way existed that she could know of Bonnie Appleford, let alone make up such a story. “It hardly seems possible.”

  “Believe me, it is possible. With the Web nearly everything is possible.”

  Daphne was now kissing Argo’s thighs and rubbing him with her cheek. De Wynter observed his confusion and tousled his hair, then she patted Daphne’s bobbing head. “You’d be mistaken to assume that all you have seen here, and all that is happening now, is merely empty decadence and hollow hedonism.”

  Argo could not stop himself groaning, and de Wynter seemed amused. “All Four of you are moving to a new stage.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You will.”

  “We will?”

  “It is happening already. You two are here with me. Jesamine is with Jack Kennedy.” She again pointed to one of the curved images on the wall. “And if you look closely, you see Cordelia in the arms of Harriet Lime. You are all cross-connected to powerful energy sources.”

  Daphne took her mouth from Argo and began kissing de Wynter’s stomach. De Wynter sighed. “There is, of course, one more hurdle that you to have to surmount.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I want the two of you boys to take hold of each other.”

  CORDELIA

  “You Americans are not quite as straitlaced as you seem on the outside.”

  Cordelia whipped her tongue over Harriet Lime’s parted lips. “Full of surprises, darling, when our corsets are off.”

  And soon her metaphoric corsets would be off. Harriet Lime was unfastening the remaining buttons of her Ranger’s dress tunic. Cordelia did not actually resist, but traces of doubt had managed to find their way into her mind. “Does this qualify as an orgy?”

  Lime smiled. “I believe so.”

  It certainly seemed like an orgy, maybe with some of the properties of a ritual. The music was rhythmic and insistent, and a light projector had commenced to beam swirling patterns over the draped walls, and even across the disorder of prone and supine guests. The beating of the bodhran was relentless in its demand that all remaining reservations be abandoned. An old and basic power was unbound and would not be denied. Clothes fell away and bodies alternately tensed and relaxed.

  “I’m very drunk, but I don’t know if I want to do it in the middle of all these people.”

  “Do what my, darling?”

  Harriet was kissing Cordelia’s right breast, and Cordelia was enjoying the sensation immensely. She raised her arms to give Harriet Lime easier access. “You know very well what we are about to do. We are practically doing it right now.”

  “But you feel inhibited by the crowd?”

&nb
sp; “Not exactly inhibited.”

  The benodex and absinthe had placed Cordelia at some detachment from the activities of her body. From a narcotized middistance she could watch herself moan and squirm obscenely, and very much enjoy the spectacle. She just wasn’t sure that she wanted a whole lot of strangers enjoying it along with her. Cordelia was reasonably accustomed to a variety of erotic permutations. The various coupling and multiples employed by The Four to achieve a sex-energy trigger to push them into the Other Place had more than prepared her for what was now taking place, and she was also evolving a theory, in so far as mental evolution was possible in her condition, that an orgy had to be, by definition, more than just a lot of couples having sex, one on one, in the same room. Like the shark must swim to survive, the movement forward of the orgy had to be to extreme and challenging, numerically unconventional, creatively depraved, and physically innovative.

  “So exactly what?”

  Cordelia reached out and stroked the English girl’s hair. “I don’t know.” But she did know. The increased sensitivity that had come with her training told Cordelia, even in her current insobriety, that a massive sexual energy was being generated right there in the room, enough to knock over a house, perhaps, if it could ever be channeled, and she was more than a little apprehensive that it might be channeled through her. Then Cordelia’s back arched. As Harriet’s lips moved down her body and her hand slid between Cordelia’s legs, she qualified her first statement. “But I don’t think I actually care.”

  Harriet was unbuttoning Cordelia’s breeches, and Cordelia wrapped a languid leg around her. Tiny bright flashes danced in front of her eyes, and temporarily hid the identity of the figure who was suddenly standing and looking down at them. Cordelia assumed it was an interloping male looking to join their girl-play, but then he spoke. “I came to see if you wanted to leave, but you seem to be otherwise engaged.”

  She instantly recognized the voice. “Gideon!”

  Gideon Windermere, the previous objective of her entire evening, was staring down at her as she lay sprawled and wanton, half out of the uniform, legs spread for Harriet Lime and loving it.

  “When I told you to be nice to Miss Lime, I didn’t have anything so extreme in mind.”

  For once, Cordelia was at a loss for words. “Gideon, I…”

  “You’re busy and I have to go. Doubtless we’ll catch up with each other tomorrow.”

  Cordelia started to protest, but Windermere was already walking away. “Gideon, no…”

  She began to hurriedly disengage herself from Harriet Lime and, at the same time, pull on her uniform. Harriet immediately began to take offense. “You’re leaving me to run after him?”

  “I’m sorry. I have to.”

  As Cordelia stood up, Harriet Lime rolled onto all fours. “You really are a bitch.”

  Cordelia couldn’t worry about Harriet Lime’s feelings. She was on her feet and lurching through Deerpark, trying to fix her clothing. As she emerged from the front door, Windermere was already staring the engine of his Armstrong roadster. She ran towards the car, stumbling on the gravel. “Gideon, wait! Please wait!”

  But he either didn’t hear her or was ignoring her. He put the car in gear and started down the drive. Cordelia halted and let out a forlorn cry. “Oh shit!”

  Her distress was so great that she did not notice the figure moving up behind her until the hand holding the stinking, chemical-soaked rag was over her face, and she was already plunging into black unconscious oblivion.

  SIX

  ARGO

  Argo sat in the café in the Asquith Hotel and stared dismally at his plate. It was occupied by a very large English breakfast: two sausages, two fried eggs, bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes, baked beans, fried potatoes, and something called black pudding, plus toast and black-currant jam, and the two fried eggs seemed to be staring back at him in mute reproach that he had ordered so much food and was now not eating it. He had hardly slept, but was hungover to the point of mutilation. Earlier, he had sworn an oath that he would never drink or take benodex again, but he had lately relented sufficiently to order a gin and orange juice along with his coffee, and, had anyone offered him one of the capsules of yellow powder, he probably would have taken it and asked for another, justifying his oath-breaking by claiming it was a matter of survival. He had managed to shave and dress for the day’s parade, and make it down to the café for a late breakfast, but, after those efforts, he had flagged. He took a sip of gin and orange and decided he should force himself to eat. He liberally poured catsup over the eggs, and then tore off a piece of toast and stabbed the yolks with it. He ate the piece of toast with its coating of egg and tomato sauce, but felt queasy before he had even swallowed.

  Argo was facing the entrance to the café, and this afforded him a clear view of the lobby. It was already busy with hotel guests from the Kennedy party making ready for the upcoming parade. The plan was that Jack Kennedy and his retinue, of which The Four were a part, should ride with full ceremony from Jutland Square down Whitehall to, once again, the Palace of Westminster, although this time their destination would be the chamber of the Provincial Parliament, not the Great Hall. Streets would be closed to traffic for the event, and, if all went according to plan, lined with enthusiastically cheering crowds. The parade was designed to demonstrate Norse/Albany solidarity, and confound all those who opposed it, and came with the full trappings of horses, military escorts, and proudly marching brass bands. The Four were not needed at the assembly point for more than an hour, and had no part in the arrangements, but he could see Jane Tennyson holding a clipboard and conferring with a half-dozen officers from the London Metropolitan Police. The day was plainly underway, and that meant, very shortly, he would have to face Raphael. Right at that moment, Argo did not want to think about facing Raphael, or the strange culmination to the previous night. They had drunk too much, taken too many of the new Norse drugs. All of that was understandable. The bizarre and erotic encounter orchestrated by Anastasia de Wynter, on the other hand, could not be shrugged off as high spirits or boyish excess. Since they had become members of The Four, he and Raphael, and Jesamine and Cordelia, for that matter, had been subjected to a variety of strangeness, but the episode in the turret room surpassed any deviant behavior that they had engaged in during their training or after. All he could hope was that he and Raphael would both do the gentlemanly thing and pretend that what had happened had, in fact, never really occurred, and, if it had, they’d both been too messed up to remember.

  As it turned out, the first of The Four to enter Argo’s day was not Raphael at all, but Jesamine, who, in total contrast to his hungover misery, positively radiated a happy and beaming energy. Argo could only assume that her rumored night with Jack Kennedy had been everything that she had desired it would be. She, too, was dressed and ready for the parade, and, when she spotted him, she came directly to his table and sat down. She inspected his hunched form and grinned. “You look really terrible.”

  “I feel really terrible.”

  She pointed to his breakfast. “Are you going to eat that?”

  Argo shook his head and drank a little more gin. “I don’t think so.”

  She pulled the plate to her and grimaced. “You put catsup on your eggs?”

  “You don’t have to eat it.”

  But Jesamine had already picked up a sausage, and Argo knew from experience that she hated to waste food. She looked at him again as she chewed. “So what happened last night to put you in such a wretched state?”

  Argo sighed. “Benodex and Madame de Wynter.”

  “That Madame de Wynter is really something.”

  Argo nodded. “So we discovered.”

  “We?”

  “Raphael and me.”

  “Jack Kennedy thinks very highly of her.”

  Argo didn’t say anything. The last thing he wanted to talk about was the previous night. Fortunately, Jesamine didn’t notice, having news of her own to impart. “Did you know that C
ordelia’s gone missing?”

  Argo blinked. “Missing?”

  “I went to see if she was up, but her room was empty and her bed hadn’t been slept in.”

  “Should we be concerned about that?”

  Jesamine did not appear bothered. “Maybe, if it wasn’t Cordelia. The odds are that she went off somewhere with that Colonel Windermere. She was totally after him.”

  Argo tried a piece of dry toast. “The last time I saw her, she was in a hot and heavy embrace with that Harriet Lime woman.”

  Jesamine raised an eyebrow. “Cordelia’s gone back to girl fun?”

  Argo avoided looking Jesamine directly in the eye. “I think she was close to paralytic drunk.”

  “Yes, well, we all know Cordelia.” It seemed as though Jesamine was going to say more but then she looked across the café. “Shit. He looks as bad as you do. Maybe worse. What the hell did you two do last night?”

  Raphael had come into the café and Jesamine was right. He did look awful. He hesitated for a moment, and then made his way to the table. Argo took a deep breath as Raphael sat down. Was the whole story going to come out? Raphael also seemed uncertain. He was silent for a moment and then asked, “So how are you two this morning?”

  Jesamine beamed. “I feel great. More than ready for a parade.”

  He turned to Argo. “And you?”

  “Lousy.”

  “Did we have too much fun last night?”

  Argo half smiled. “I think we may have. I’m damned if I can remember much about the end of it.”

  Raphael nodded. “Me neither.” Argo began to relax. The gentlemen’s bond was intact. Raphael looked round the room. “Can you get a drink in here at this time of day?”

  “They brought me a gin.”

  Raphael smiled through his obvious pain. “Good.” A fresh thought occurred to him. “Have either of you seen Cordelia this morning? I ran into Windermere and a blonde called Harriet Lime. They were both looking for her.”

  Argo and Jesamine looked at one another. “Then who the hell did she go home with?”