Inheritance

by Ellen Kefferty

  “Fifty years?” She grimaced at the new information. How much did she not know? How far did this go?

  He settled further into his seat and sniffed. “I was younger than you. Straight out of Oxford. I saw the world was changing. I had been raised in the right way with all the correct morals, yet throughout the sixties people were burning morals in heaps. I wanted a wife, a family, a settled life. What’s so wrong with that? Yet most women my age wanted a fuck not a family. Please excuse my language. They thought that their whorish pleasures were the only thing that mattered. They were forgetting their roles. Their duties. How could they become wives and mothers after prostituting themselves? How would they even know who had father their bastard children?

  “I wondered how it had come to this. Why society was breaking down now. What was the cause? Then, one summer, I watched the investiture of the Prince of Wales on television. A man, my age or thereabouts, given status and power by a woman, his mother. Don’t you find that ridiculous? Insulting? That a future king, a man who would rule over this country, should be placed in a subordinate position by his mother, a woman? What kind of a man lets himself be ruled by a woman, and then presumes to rule over a country? It is bad enough that a woman reigns as a queen but that a man—a king—should put himself willingly beneath a woman? It was a sign of everything wrong with society.

  “I declared myself against it. I swore that I would never accept the rule of a woman, in my life, or in my country.” He paused for a long draught of breath. “I was at odds with society. And it felt wonderful.”

  A spluttering cough came from Edith. She gulped to clear her throat. “I’m sure it made you popular.”

  “Not with women, as they’ve never known what’s good for them. Most men too thought they could give up their roles as protectors and providers. That it made no difference. But look at the state of society today and tell me it made no difference!

  “Some men listened. They understood that a man is a head of his family, his household, just as the king is a father to his people. Just as God the Father watches and guides us all. There was a duty on men, a sacred duty, to maintain the order of society. So many men abdicated it entirely. Then I met a man who changed my life.

  “He was an old man.” Gervase laughed, “I say old, I suppose he wasn’t much older than I am today. He had heard me speak to fellow students one day. He came to my flat to discuss things in private, quiz me on my beliefs. He wanted to be sure I was sound, that I had the truth in my heart. I passed the test, naturally. And he disclosed to me the most amazing and unexpected thing.

  “This old man was the last member of an ancient order. They had been around for over eight hundred years. Can you believe that? I couldn’t, not at all. But at length he proved it to me. For weeks we met and pored over English history. At every point he named the members of the order who were present, what they did, how they worked. So many things I barely knew about suddenly made sense. All the way back to the 1130s, the time of the Anarchy. When...

  “You have a look on your face. One of idiocy. Let me guess, you don’t know what the Anarchy was?”

  She wondered if he really wanted an answer or was just throwing out a rhetorical question. Obscure history was not her strong point. She kept silent. His stare fell into a glower.

  “Oh! We English people, why do we not even know our own history?” A sigh swept outward with a sweep of his arm. “William the Conqueror had no legitimate male descendants beyond his sons. The kingdom devolved into an unseemly fight for the crown between a woman and a man whose only claim was through his mother. Ridiculous! Whoever won it would mean an end to sacred kingship, of the king as a father to his nation. There can be no such thing as rightful inheritance through a woman.

  “But do you know who should have won? Who should have become king without anybody giving it a second thought? Robert of Gloucester, a fatherline grandson of William the Conqueror. Yet they called him illegitimate because he was born to a concubine. Why? What does it matter which bitch whelped you into existence?”

  Edith lay silent. There was nothing she could say which might stop his rant. Nothing which could change his mind at this late hour. She regretted that even though she now knew why he would kill her, it still made no sense.

  “Mothers don’t matter! Only fathers. They protect us, they provide for us. A father for his family, a king for his people. We become what they make us.” He raised a finger to her. He opened his mouth to speak, but stopped. He let his hand fall. “There was a group of men who supported Gloucester for the throne and almost succeeded. And even though they failed they worked to further his sons, and his grandsons, moving them as near to the throne as they could. And so on, through the generations.

  “Anybody descended in an unbroken fatherline from William the Conqueror is a candidate for kingship. That is the rule of the order, its goal. The lines only exists through the descendants of Robert of Gloucester. To the present day the Gloucesterite order have continued to fight for sacred male kingship.

  “The order has caused crisis after crisis, war after war, always knowing that if the reigning king and his family was in danger then opportunities would present themselves to further their own candidates. At first we only thought of taking it by violence, and why not? The crown changed hands often enough in just such a way. We engineered the War of the Roses and almost succeeded in destroying all the male heirs. The false male heirs, I should add.

  “A hundred years later, when Elizabeth I became queen we had a new opportunity. An unwed queen was a novelty, and it called for an new approach. By then there were dozens of men who were descended from Gloucester, many quite eligible bachelors. We paraded them, one by one, under the queen’s nose. She only had to bite once, just fall for one of them, and her sons—or rather, his sons—would restore the ancient line without a single further death.

  “Of course, she stubbornly and stupidly refused all their advances. She forced us to become even more radical, to raise the stakes. Another civil war, Charles I lost his head and the royal family were exiled. It is true, there was no king whatsoever, but we were half way to our goal. The problem was that a second revolution was needed to oust the Cromwells. It went astray. The old kings came back.

  “I can’t say that the history of the Gloucesterites has been terribly glorious since then. The monarchy became less important, the desire for men to fight for its true form lessened. Victoria made many believe that a queen could be seemly and proper. Maybe I came along at the right time. The old man who befriended me in the sixties was the last of the order. He entrusted to me the sacred duty of restoring the monarchy.

  “Since then I have rebuilt this movement. I have turned up men who had no idea that they had a claim to the throne, nor that their claim was stronger and more proper than any monarch for nearly nine hundred years. Not all have joined, many baulked at the commitment. But enough men saw what the future could hold, if not for themselves then for their children and grandchildren.

  “In recent years many worthy foot soldiers have also joined. Men without the royal fatherline. None will ever be king but they understand the value of ensuring male bloodlines and disregarding women. I guess it was feminism which did it, so it’s good for something. I suppose. Where men’s rights are stripped away by feminism it reveals a warrior for our cause. I convinced them that the rot started at the top. Fix the father, fix the family. The order grows every year. We’re as strong as we’ve been in centuries. Soon we will have the opportunity we need.”

  Edith could hardly believe what she had heard. It was so outrageous, so beyond belief, so purely mad and senseless. Yet there it was, from a man who spoke passionately and truthfully. When he said he killed for such beliefs, she believed him. Though there was still a hole in the logic.

  “The Faircotes, where do they fit into all of this?”

  “You already know. I told you.” He waved his hand sharply as though physically dismissing her question. But still he gave an answer. “They’re
descended from Alfred the Great in a direct fatherline. It turns out their genealogy wasn’t a myth, it was true. Unfortunately for them, of course.”

  “But you said that lots of families had the same myth?”

  “They do, and they’re wrong. Let me tell you something you don’t know. We’ve been aware of all these families for years. I spent decades at the College of Arms researching descendants of Robert of Gloucester to find new recruits. That was my mission. I also had a sideline looking into those claiming descent from before William the Conqueror. I must have read the Faircote’s genealogy in the seventies. But while nothing could be proved it didn’t matter.

  “Then DNA testing was invented in 1984. We embraced it, naturally, to check that all the Gloucesterite heirs share the same male gene. Naturally some did not, as women can be awfully disloyal over who they let father their children. But that’s just another mark against womankind. Were one more needed.

  “It occurred to me that we could also check those who claimed to be descended from Alfred the Great, if only we had something to test them against. It turns out that only two bodies of the old English kings have been located, did you know that? Edward the Confessor, the last one, is in Westminster Abbey and therefore quite inaccessible. The other, Alfred himself, was dug up in eighteen hundreds and reburied in an unmarked grave. Rather curious that, isn’t it?

  “It hardly took much work to dig up the old man and grab a bone. Though it was harder to sample all the families who claimed unbroken descent from him. We did it, of course, and only the Faircotes were a match.”

  “This would have been about 1988?” She remembered when the first murder happened and when Phaeton Cars had been founded. “But why did you kill them when they’re not the royal family any longer? Why not recruit them for your bizarre cult?”

  “But they could have been kings. That’s the point. They were ignorant about the truth of their genealogy and we were happy for them to stay that way. Yet had they discovered it they would have been a rival claimant. And all the Gloucesterites I had recruited, all those men willing to fight and kill for a noble goal, might had left had a better royal line been revealed. I had to protect my investment, and that meant snuffing out the Faircotes.

  He knelt down by her head and leant in. “I’m in good company. I’m only finishing William the Conqueror’s job. Isn’t that noble of me?”

  With swelled chest he stood and strode the room.

  “We only kill the males. The women, naturally, mean nothing. We take our time, wait for the right opportunities. Just one murder now and again, nothing that would raise great suspicion. Whittling down the family tree until there were no male heirs left.”

  The sudden shock of realization struck her. Everything came together. “Samuel. You tried to kill him on his wedding night. You were scared that there would be a male heir.”

  “Indeed, indeed. Samuel has sadly made himself a concern for us by wishing to procreate. Being the current head of the family makes him somebody we must take out.”

  “He knows you’re after him now, though. I warned him enough to save him.” Her words were tinged with regret, a sad attempt to rescue something from her failure. She had been unable to do more. Her feelings quickly tipped into anger. “He might never learn who you are, but you won’t ever learn where he is. You’re never going to find him!”

  “Won’t we?” He shrugged a single shoulder. “We’ll see. You won’t.”

  “By the way, you’re very attractive when you’re angry.” He reached for the phone perched on the armrest of his chair. He fondled it restlessly. “Time will tell what happens to the Faircotes. But they were only ever a sideshow, do you understand? You have just spent your life on trying to save a family which never mattered all that much. The royal family are the main event.”

  “I wish you could have been naked, apart from the bonds, that is.” Gervase angled his phone and took a picture. “But you’ll have to do as it is. You are an unexpected prize. It would be churlish of me to turn you down.”

  A few steps to one side he aimed the camera and took another picture. Slowly he worked his way round Edith as she lay bound on the rug, making sure he caught her from every angle. He backed away for a wider shot, then came in close for the detail on a particular part of her body.

  As he came to her head she bent her neck to face away as best she could, unwilling to be pornographied as a prelude to her execution.

  “No, no. That won’t do.” His hand on her chin, he yanked her head back toward him. “You have to look at me. I like your face angry though, try not to smile. Snarling would be very welcome.”

  As soon as he raised his camera she screwed her eyes tight shut in shame.

  “No!” A sharp slap stung her cheek. “Eyes open!”

  “Why are you doing this to me?” She wept and screamed. “You could just fucking kill me, couldn’t you? Fair’s fair. I lose, I die. I’m a fucking idiot for not shooting you when I had the chance, but why do you have to do this? Why?”

  He stood with his hand in his trouser pocket.

  Her eyes raised to him, begging for an answer.

  For a full minute he refused to utter a single word.

  He blinked and let out a long breath. “Do what?”

  “This! Shame me, humiliate me! It’s enough that I’m going to die!” The anger she had penned up in his silence broke free once more. “But you’re taking everything. This doesn’t belong to you. I didn’t forfeit this, did I? Did I?” Her anguished face writhed beneath a sheen of wet tears as she sobbed.

  “I can take anything I want. Besides, like most women you don’t have any shame left to take. You’re practically a whore anyway, aren’t you? How many men have you slept with? How many have you pretended to love just to satisfy your lust?” He crouched and stroked her hair. His voice charged with tenderness. “It’s not your fault. It’s ours. Men should never have let women get out of hand. We’ve been too slack, too trusting. Most women need a good lesson in obedience. That’s all. But you’ve been damaged by society. There’s no hope for you, I’m afraid. If you had a daughter, maybe she could be raised correctly. Taught obedience, and modesty, and to know that men are her masters.”

  Spit flew into his face.

  He wiped it away swiftly and slapped her again, as hard as he could.

  “Bitch!” He grasped her bonds and jerked.

  She shrieked as her shoulders tore and her knees cracked. She sobbed as he slackened the pressure. Then as he yanked once more on the bonds she screamed again, the sound half–drowned from the tears and spittle clogging her mouth.

  “This is beautiful, beautiful!” His ecstatic voice drifted above her body where she could no longer see him. She caught only glimpses, flashes of him moving around again, taking more pictures. After dozens, maybe hundreds, of pictures he was eventually sated. A complete and accurate record of his prize.

  With the phone laid gently back on the arm of his chair, he once more moved toward. Probing hands swept her body. Fingertips crept along her sides. Nails scrabbled at the edges of her clothing finding opening they could.

  Then they touched her skin.

  Voiceless, dumbed with horror, she could only mouth through the sobs, ‘No, no, no, no, no, no.’

  “Yes!” He hissed through his teeth. Fingers darting beneath her clothes. Pawing at her flesh. He fought against buttons and zip, desperate for more.

  She rocked her body away from his hands. A sharp slap stopped her vain attempts at resistance. She shut her eyes and conjured in her mind a white light, warm, pushing out everything else.

  When she was fourteen she lay ill in bed for days. At first she thought it would pass, just a sickness like any other. Waking on the second day worse than before she panicked. It was impossible to know when she might see Ben and Sunny again. She scrabbled for her phone. Her weak voice summoning Aunt Shelley to her bedside.

  She wasn’t sure what happened next. Or how long passed. She woke one night, wild with fever. Ev
en through the faint consciousness she knew she was in hospital.

  The bright light above her bed. The warmth of the ward. A nurse shifted her clothes, rolling her onto one side. A doctor examined her. Hands felt her abdomen, under her armpits. Two fingers pressed under the line of her jaw. The side of her neck. Two hands wrapped round her neck and tightened. Pressing, they bore down on her windpipe. She rasped, then choked, then skipped a breath.

  Her eyelids flicked open, the scene a killer’s sitting room. His victim prone on the floor. Bound and dying. It was her, she knew. She knew. But even the sounds of her own throttling floated into distant nothingness. The colours washed away to grey and thought began to run slow.

  Not long now. Not long. Just another second.

  Or two.

  The arch window blew in with a crash. Cold air swept her face. Fingers, hands, dropped from their grip. Living air scoured empty lungs. She wheezed, whined, as breaths dragged in and out. The sound to her ears crackled then focused. She heard glass, still breaking. Voices, speaking but wordless. A car engine.

  Sight leapt into colour and pierced through the swirling dust.

  A man stood, motionless. A car door opening, a woman emerging.

  Tears ran freely. Edith cried. “Sunny!”

  Sunny stepped out of the car, slamming the door behind her. From within her jacket she slid a bat. She hefted it for a single, measured second, then swung.

  With a crack it met Gervase’s head above his eye. His body, straight, unbending, fell sideways. Before he had even hit the floor Sunny pounced forward and swung again. Then again. And again.

  The bat, thrown to the floor, rolled toward Edith. Sunny strolled behind it.

  “You okay, kid?”

  Edith simply shook her head.

  “Sorry, stupid question. Let me get you untied.”

  Loosened from her bonds Edith sat on the floor and drew her knees up to her chest. Her limbs ached and her cheeks burnt sore with old tears. She rocked gently a few times then, unnerved by her half undone jeans loose at the waist, stopped. She fumbled behind her knees to fasten them unseen.