by Gwynn White
Guy had not stopped to oversee the seizure of the government. He had made straight for the White Tower. With Dierdre and a handful of picked soldiers, he’d charged upstairs into the royal family’s apartments.
“Out!” Dierdre had screamed, waving her pistol.
Whimpering, the ladies-in-waiting and varlets had scuttled out, leaving one small figure sitting at a child-sized desk in the corner of the nursery, frozen like a rabbit in the open.
Guy had seen more of Michael Wessex in the last week on television than he ever had in real life. “Michael, I am your cousin. My name is Guy.” He knelt and tried to lift the child out of his chair. Michael smelled of milk, a baby smell. He was only five. Guy saw that he had been drawing a picture: it showed a family of stick figures, parents and two children. He let out a gasp and clung to his desk. Guy noticed how dirty were his own hands grasping the thin little arms. The dark residue under his fingernails was probably the blood of Michael’s father.
“Do it,” Dierdre shouted. Guy twisted his head. She was standing behind him, pointing her pistol at Michael.
“Michael, stand up,” Guy commanded.
“I want my papa! Where’s my papa?”
Guy sat back on his boot-heels. “Your papa is dead. He died bravely. You must be brave, too.”
Michael stared at him for an instant, dark eyes huge, mouth open. Then he started to cry. “Papa! Papa!”
“Do it, or I will!” Dierdre screamed.
Michael cried louder. Small for his age, his dark hair in a braid no thicker than Guy’s little finger, clad in stiff-starched shorts and tunic, he had been an unimpressive sight to begin with. Face suffused, snot bubbles under his nose, he was a revolting object. Guy started to feel that Dierdre was right. How dare Michael cry, when Guy had only done what was right? More to the point, why should this puny brat live, when Ran, brave earnest little Ran, who was worth three of him, was missing? Why should the heir of House Wessex live, when the heir of House Sauvage was all but certainly dead?
“Mama,” Michael sobbed. “Fifi! Papa! Papa!”
Dierdre pushed Guy’s shoulder, knocking him off balance. Her shapely legs surged past him. The safety catch of her pistol snicked off.
Guy grabbed Michael’s tunic and bundled him, writhing and kicking, under one arm. He strode across the nursery, opened the door, and thrust Michael into the arms of a plump woman in a nurse’s uniform. He pushed through the crowd and strode fast down the hall.
Dierdre caught up with him. “Idiot! That is all that stands between you and the throne!”
“I want no more innocent blood on my hands!” Guy had snarled at her.
The inconclusive Cabinet meeting left him itching with frustration. He sought companionship in the Household barracks, which were now overflowing with his own men. Too numerous to squeeze into the barracks buildings, they had put up tents in the outer ward, in the freezing rain. But the other ranks’ mess was well stocked with food and drink, and that was what mattered to the newly arrived reinforcements, no less than to the men who’d endured the siege at the airport.
It did Guy a world of good to hear a regimental chorus resounding across the parade ground. Officers and men were mucking in together. The celebratory atmosphere reminded him of the night after the Overwhelm’s melee side had won the Worlds three years ago.
Taking Alan O'Scolaidhe, he went to explore the royal gymnasium under the barracks. He poured out his complaints into Alan’s sympathetic ear. “It’s not working. They’re trying to sideline me.”
“Did you lose your temper ?”
“Yes.”
“You shouldn’t have.”
Alan was right, of course. “I wish Mother would hurry up and get here. Her jet took off from Dublin Airport this afternoon. I hope she hasn't had a prang.”
“She may be on her way from Gatwick now. There’s a lot of confusion on the roads.”
“Confusion, confusion. I’m sick of confusion. People are using it as an excuse to do whatever they feel like doing. That clown Gordon Stuart took advantage of the confusion to name himself GOC.”
“Acting GOC. He’s still got to be confirmed by the Crown. Anyway, you can replace him when things settle down.”
“I don’t know if I dare. One doesn’t want to antagonize House Stuart.” His mother would have the answer to that conundrum, too. She knew by instinct just how far one could push the lords. “All right. When Mother arrives, I’ll go back and try to smooth their feathers … What d’you think is in here?”
“Changing room? … Oh. Showers. Smells nice.”
“Smells poncey. I’ll let the other ranks use it. Sling a bit of bleach around.”
“Holy water.”
A showerhead dripped on the tiles. Guy drew his boot through a web of hair clogging a floor drain. The nurse he’d had as a child used to burn the mats out of his hairbrush, lest a magician should get hold of them and use them to curse him. “Hey, Alan. You don’t really think Tristan was a magician?”
“I was talking to Malcolm Stuart earlier—”
“Yes, and he’s got a bloody nerve. He threw in his lot with Day, and now he’s worming back into his family’s bosom.”
“He’s a twat,” Alan said indifferently. “Anyway, it sounds as if there were some odd goings-on at Castle Arundel on the day the king was killed. Who knows, Tristan may have been up to something … unwholesome. Which would mean Day may have had a good reason to bump him off. No use thinking about that now, of course.”
The enjoinder was unnecessary. Guy was no longer thinking about the late king. “If I were Gordon Stuart, I’d have had Malcolm arrested. Witnesses say he murdered his own grandfather. And now he’s claiming he was on our side all along? You’d have to be a moron to swallow that. Then again, Gordon is.”
“Malcolm says he was sickened and outraged by Oswald’s coup, but he pretended to support him for Michael’s sake.”
If there was one word Guy hated more than confusion right now, it was Michael. “Well, Malcolm was nowhere to be seen when I personally confirmed Michael’s safety this afternoon.”
He veered into the weights room, leaving Alan behind. Alan caught up with him again in the spairjack gym. Guy switched on the lights and they clomped across the sprung pine floor. There was a smell of chalk and stale sweat. Guy prodded the wall, which was padded with brown leather. “I expect spairjack will face a sudden decline in popularity.”
“I’ve never seen the point of it. Kicking men in the backs of the knees and punching them in the face. What’s that got to do with chivalry?”
Voices sounded in the hall. The double doors of the gym parted to admit Clive Argent, followed by Cyril and a dozen stout fellows in pale-blue and grey Argent livery.
Guy spread his arms, buoyant with relief. “About time! I was starting to wonder if you’d had an accident. Where’s Mother? Has she gone up to the White Tower?”
Clive pushed back the hood of his mantle. He did not look happy. None of them did. “Sorry, Guy. She didn’t come with us.”
“She’s travelling separately?”
“She’s not coming. Just as we were about to leave, Colin showed up. She took the jet and went off with him. We had to fly commercial.”
Guy’s hands hurt. He looked down and saw that his fists were clenched. He forced himself to uncurl them. “She can’t … can’t let me down like this.”
“It appeared she had something better to do.” Clive shrugged. Guy remembered how much he disliked him. “Personally, while I’m not casting aspersions on Vivienne’s judgment, I think Colin is up to something. He had an unexplained Russian in tow. Unexplained to us, anyway. I don’t suppose he’s said anything to you?”
“For the last several days I’ve been on the road, under siege at Heathrow, or hacking my way through ROCK knights bent on taking as many of my men with them as they could. No, I haven’t talked to him.”
Clive’s gaze slid down to belt-level. He seemed to be taking note of the Worldcracker, wh
ich Guy had sheathed in a fine leather scabbard from Tristan’s apartments.
Cyril said. “Wherrmph wife?”
Clive said irritably, “Saints, Cyril, who cares?”
Guy said, “Dierdre? I’ve no idea where she is, I’m afraid. You might try the officers’ mess.” He had not set eyes on Dierdre since she tried to talk him into killing Michael Wessex.
“Never mind her,” Clive said. “We actually came about something else.”
Alan said, “Whatever it is, I should think it’d go better with a drink by the fire. Let’s go up to the mess. Your men-at-arms must be tired out from the journey, too.”
The odd stress caught Guy’s ear. Taking a second look at the Argents’ retinue, he saw poorly-fitting uniforms, unshined boots, faces like sharks’ backsides. The Argents never had enough dosh to employ professional men-at-arms or train them properly.
“Oh, this won’t take a minute,” Clive said. “You see, it’s just that that trinket you’ve got there—” he pointed at the Worldcracker— “is actually ours, and we need it back. I suppose Colin gave it to you. Unfortunately, it wasn’t his to give.”
Guy got the picture. The Worldcracker must have been hidden at Galway Castle. Dierdre had given it to him without permission.
He certainly wasn't giving it back.
“I’m afraid you’re confused, Clive. This can’t be yours—seeing as it’s mine.”
“Let me have a look at it. I’d be able to tell.”
Clive moved towards Guy, who retreated an equal distance. The slovenly-looking liverymen moved, too. They unslung their weapons. Myxilite automatic rifles. It made sense to go about heavily armed at a time like this. Guy wished he’d had that much sense himself. He had only his revolver, and Alan only the .38 he carried as an officer. That would not have mattered so much if there were more than two of them.
“I don’t think he understands,” one of the shark’s backsides said in an Irish accent. “I think we’ve got to explain it to him very simply. That sticker there, it isn’t yours, see? It belongs to the whole realm. Now, you’ve no quarrel with that, do you? You want to see Great Britain fairly and justly ruled. That’s why you’re after going to all this trouble. But the great ‘n’ good aren’t going to let you win. So we’ll do you a favor. We’ll take the sword, and you can come, too.” He spread his arms with a smile. “If you stop here, they’ll have you in the dungeons before the night is out.”
Alan said to the Argent brothers, “Sirs, do you usually let your men-at-arms do your negotiating for you? Or only when they’re actually IRA volunteers playing dress-up?”
“Shut up, you fag,” Clive said.
“Funny,” Alan said, going white. “I hear you talking but I see that cudsman’s hand moving.”
Guy found his voice. “Does your father have any idea who you’re mixing with? He’s an honorable man, or so I thought.”
“I like that,” Clive said. “You don’t know as much about your own f—oh, sorry, not your own father; Uncle William—as you think. He moved heaven and earth to find the Worldcracker, and when he found it, he was going to deliver it to Diarmait MacConn, whom he knew to be the true king of Great Britain. Unfortunately Diarmait kicked the bucket first. I’d still like to know how you got hold of it, but we’ll let that go. Just hand the bloody thing over. You haven’t got any choice, you must see.”
Guy did see. He had already calculated his own and Alan’s maximum rate of fire, measured it against the number of Myxilites pointing in their general direction, and come up with a number of bullet holes in their hides that would kill them both before help could come. All he could do was play for time.
“You admit it was William Wessex-Sauvage who found it, then.” And if that was the truth, Guy was certainly not giving it back. “In which case, it never belonged to your House at all. So sod off.”
“Never said it was House Argent’s,” cut in the Irishman who’d spoken before. “It belongs to Alyx MacConn, the true queen of Great Britain and Ireland, and she wants it back, so hand it over, you wee bastard!”
Out in the hall, a woman screamed, “Guy! Guy!”
Cyril started towards the double doors with his sword drawn. An ox-like shoulder barged the doors open. Two more of the Argents’ dodgy men-at-arms burst in, hauling Dierdre by an arm each. She writhed and kicked. They threw her at Cyril’s feet. “Here she is, sir!”
Cyril uttered a wordless roar and whirled his sword back over his head.
Guy put a bullet in Cyril’s back. Cyril tottered. The men-at-arms started shooting back. Guy chambered a second round. The noise sounded like the roof falling in on them, and he wanted to tell everyone to get down, but his voice wasn’t working. Alan stood rock-steady in a firing-range stance, pumping out shot after shot, but finally he got the message and slid to the floor. Guy lay on his face, fumbling at his hip for something that he mustn’t lose, no matter what. Other hands were trying to roll him over. He slapped at them weakly. Dierdre’s hair swept across his cheek. Her scent reminded him of that night in the Snowden Forest.
“Quick,” she said. “Get up! You aren’t hurt, are you?”
“I’ve been shot.”
“Can you walk? I’ve got relics in the car. I found some in the chapel that your men must have missed.”
He pushed himself up on one knee. His other leg flatly refused to join in the action. His right hip was also behaving unusually, something grating inside. Any second now, pain would arrive to join in, and the mutiny would carry the day. On the bright side, he still had the Worldcracker in his hand.
Dierdre pulled him onto his feet. He screamed. Gun smoke hung in the air like the smell of fireworks. Alan was lying on his back. Close to him lay Clive, twitching and grunting, moving around as if he were trying to get comfortable on the hard floor.
“Quick, bring our saints!” Guy croaked. “Alan's hurt!”
Dierdre dragged him towards the door. The gym was filling up with men in uniform but they were not his men. They wore dark grey livery tunics. Some of them rushed to Alan and clapped feretories to his gunshot wounds. Guy was glad to see that, anyway.
A sergeant trundled up to them. His sleeve bore a wolf badge. The wolf was the emblem of House Stuart.
“Sir Guy, surrender your weapons.”
“Knave! Durst lay hands on me!”
“You are under arrest for murder.”
52
Leonie
At The Same Time. Belfast
Filligan’s pub was heaving. Leonie sat in the corner with Dave’s patrol, six soldiers in uniform. Filligan’s turned out to be a royalist pub. The barkeep had stood the Ravens a round, and Wicke, the joker of the group, had passed his rifle around for the local lads to play with. She’d wondered what would happen if they ran off with it.
But she herself was asking the six Ravens to take a risk much greater than that.
She said, “I don’t want to get you in trouble. So we’re not going to make contact with them. We’re going to locate them, put an OP on their position, and call in the pointyheads. Then we scarper.”
Nodding heads, serious faces.
“I’ve checked and that’s Crown land. It’s strictly no trespassing …”
“So we trespass, and then get them arrested for doing the same thing,” said Alfie, the clever one. “And if they’ve got weapons, they’re fucked, never see the light of day again, will they. Lovely.”
“That’s right.”
She’d guessed they would be up for it. They were soldiers, after all. But she had been afraid the whole thing would founder on the idea of taking orders from her, a woman … a civilian, as far as they knew.
There she’d been wrong. Dave had said to her on the telephone, Don’t tell them you’re my sister. Act mysterious, and it was working. Without having said or done anything to win their respect, she had them soaking up her instructions. They were younger than her, a couple of them even younger than Dave, but that couldn’t be it. Was there something new and authori
tative in her manner? Maybe Madelaine had rubbed off on her.
“That’s it,” she said. “Sink those pints and let’s go.”
“Long live the Crown!” said Dogsy, whom Leonie had mentally tagged as one to keep an eye on: a twitcher, probably unreliable in a tight spot. “Long live House Wessex!”
“Long live King Michael!” Dave declared with fatuous solemnity.
Outside, it was sleeting. Punters skittered across the tarmac with newspapers over their heads, lads with their hair gelled into spiky combs, girls flashing plucked-chicken legs under their minidresses despite the bone-chilling cold. Leonie was back in the same kit she had worn all the way north, black jeans and dark blue hoodie, one of Madelaine’s black scarves around her neck. She walked beside Dave. “What did you tell them about me?” she muttered. “I’m not criticizing, mind. It’s great.”
“I said you were in MI5,” he whispered back. “Don’t bollix it.”
Tense and pumped up, Leonie almost giggled. MI5! The very same outfit she’d been dodging for a week! “Good thinking.” Raising her voice, she spoke to Lance-Corporal Boogan, who was deceptively quiet, but the deep-down chivalrous type. Had to be, to take the initiative to do the right thing, irrespective of the army hierarchy. “Follow me out. Don’t get lost.”
She jogged through the sleet and jumped into the Mini. Madelaine sat in the passenger seat. Fiona drowsed in her mother’s arms. Leonie had planned to leave the princesses behind at the Mercy shelter. But this evening’s news had transformed Madelaine. All black and white, was Madelaine Wessex, with nothing in between. And for someone who claimed to have strong powers of intuition, she was as gullible as a five-year-old. She believed what they were saying on the radio.
That Sir Guy Sauvage had ‘ousted’ Oswald Day.
