Obelisk

by Stephen Baxter

  ‘It’s amazing we haven’t had revolts before, as they have in Europe. In 1848—’

  ‘You should have gone to the police,’ Ulrich said sternly.

  ‘What, and get locked up as a conspirator myself? You know what the police are like – at least you do, Giles. And it’s worse for a woman, believe me. And what if the agitators find out I’ve been talking to you, what if they come after me? Who will protect me then?’

  Giles was moved, if astonished. ‘So you risked your life to save mine?’

  Ulrich murmured, ‘Evidently she cares about you, Romillie. Can’t imagine why.’

  Giles looked uneasily into his own soul. He had never thought of Edith in such terms at all – not at all. She was from a different category of society from him, and always would be. How could he love such a girl? And how could he deal with the prospect that such a girl loved him?

  Ulrich said, ‘We must set off if we are to be back in time.’

  Edith stared at Giles. ‘You won’t give me away—’

  ‘Of course not,’ Giles said, distressed she thought him capable of it.

  ‘And, oh, say you won’t race! You can find some way to cry off. Say you’re ill. Or get the race cancelled, or at least postponed … There must be a way.’

  But Giles recoiled from the very thought. He glanced at Ulrich, and saw in the German’s eyes that he understood.

  Giles wanted to race. At that moment he cared nothing for Chartists or resentful Irishmen. Even when he looked at the children crowding around Patience Wilcox, he felt that way. Tomorrow I will find out all about the history of electoral reform, he promised his Lord. For today, let me race.

  But did he have the courage to see that resolution through?

  Six o’clock approached, as measured by clocks set to Paris time – England had no universal standard time of its own, for it had no national rail system that required it.

  Giles climbed into his Boulton coal-gas autocar alongside the other racers in their American Selden designs and German four-stroke petrol engines, and Ulrich in his Daimler. It was a magnificent setting, the gleaming autocars lined up across the clean new roadway, the bridge set straight before him in bold, intimidating perspective, and the bright blue sky of a June evening over it all. The morning scare had much reduced the crowd, but the few spectators remaining were being rewarded with a cold collation, and beer for the men and tea for the women and children. And, it was said, the Prince of Wales was still here, braving out the panic, determined to open the bridge and start the race.

  It would all have seemed perfect, the culmination of Giles’s young life so far, if not for the doubt that still churned in his stomach.

  Even if Edith were correct about the bomb being placed on the bridge, there was no reason to suppose it would work as planned – the Jubilee Plot conspirators had failed twice today already – but still, if he raced he would be gambling with his life.

  Or he could tell his father or the police all he had learned from Edith. If he did so, he would be safe, come what may. But he would show his father who he had been dabbling with. A floozy was one thing, but a girl with a brain and exposure to radical ideas was quite wrong for him. And the race would surely be stopped; he would lose his chance of glory.

  And, worst of all, he would show himself to his father to be a coward: to be unwilling to take the ultimate risk in search of glory. It made it worse that Ulrich was sat patiently waiting for the start, as aware of the risk as Giles was.

  Then, minutes before the off, his father walked up and clambered into the passenger seat beside him.

  ‘Don’t mind me stowing away, do you?’

  Giles, astonished, could only reply, ‘Not at all, Father.’

  ‘I thought we should chat.’ Sir Joshua ran a finger along the leather surround of the dashboard. ‘Look, boy – do you understand what you’re doing here? Do you understand why you’re here?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Sir Joshua shifted in his seat to look at his son. ‘Just this. We’re an old lot, we Romillies. For centuries we got our money and power from land, the oldest asset of all. But that all started to change in my father’s time – your grandpapa’s, God rest his soul. Suddenly there was industry everywhere; suddenly there was trade; suddenly there were these absurdly wealthy fellows in grimy northern cities making demands for parliamentary representation. And then that wretched man Stephenson started throwing down his railway lines.

  ‘Well, your grandpapa and others of like mind had soon had enough. Once they had rid of Grey and his Reform Bill, they decided to deal with Stephenson and his crew. We were all for transport, it was obvious the old canals and roads weren’t sufficient, but railways were far too – ugh! – common. Grandpapa told me of one of his workers who spent his pennies on a train ride to the coast. Do you know what it does to a man, to see the sea for the first time? Fills his head full of longings that can’t be fulfilled. No, the railways had to go. Of course the argument mightn’t have been won if not for the Olive Mount disaster.’

  In that notorious catastrophe, a cutting close to the Liverpool terminus of Stephenson’s Liverpool & Manchester line had collapsed, crushing two packed passenger trains and killing hundreds – including Stephenson himself. The collapse was supposedly caused by poor excavation and vibration from the trains themselves.

  Giles said, ‘Nobody wanted to ride the railway after that. I remember Grandpapa saying so.’

  Sir Joshua smiled. ‘Fortuitous, wasn’t it? And good riddance to ruddy Stephenson, of course.’

  Fortuitous. Suddenly Giles saw what his father was telling him. The Jubilee Plot wasn’t the only conspiracy he was learning about today.

  ‘After that we Romillies didn’t look back. We made a fortune during the Crimean War, when we poured buses and wagons into the conflict, and bought the lot back afterwards, along with an army of trained veteran drivers, the beginnings of a new industry of motor-driven hauliers. The recent war with the Ottomans was almost as profitable.’

  ‘I never really understood why we had to fight the Ottomans …’

  ‘Oil,’ Sir Joshua said firmly. ‘That’s all. The oil under the provinces we took: Baghdad, Basra, Mosul. Oh, don’t look so shocked! All the experts assure me that the Germans’ petrol technology is the way of the future. That doesn’t mean to say the race can’t be won by good old British coal gas, today …’

  Engines were throttled. Giles looked around. A box had been set up at one side of the road; a number of men surrounded a portly figure in a military uniform who must be the Prince of Wales. A white flag was raised: one minute to the start. Giles tested his throttle and choke, and squeezed the foot bulb that controlled the flow of gas. The engine hummed sweetly. He glanced across at Ulrich, who looked back at him sombrely.

  Sir Joshua sat back in his seat, fixed a harness across his chest, and adjusted his goggles before his eyes. ‘So you do understand what’s happening here, do you, Giles? This new bridge, this race, this very autocar, they all represent the England we have built, we and others of our class. And now at this moment of national celebration the eyes of the empire and the world are on us – on you. That is why what you are about to do is so important …’

  The flag remained poised. Only seconds remained for Giles to make his choice.

  It all swirled around in his head.

  Above all, he found, he still wanted to race, that was the iron frame of his thinking. Even if it cost him Edith – even if there were other costs, and for some reason he thought uneasily of the hollow faces of Edith’s brothers and sisters – even if it cost him his life, he had to race. And even if he were weighed down by his father’s baleful presence, and the autocar by his weight, he would win.

  He made his decision.

  The flag fell. He engaged the engine. The Boulton shot forward.

  He had travelled perhaps half a mile be
fore he realised that his was the only vehicle that had started. The rest remained lined up on the grid.

  Sheepishly he turned the autocar around and drove it back to the start.

  ‘You arranged this,’ he said to his father.

  ‘Surely that’s obvious! Oh, don’t worry, the bridge has been made safe. I set up this little trial with the race starter. Prince Edward himself thought it was all rather a lark!’

  ‘So you know. About the Jubilee Plot, the bomb, Edith—’

  ‘Of course I know. The police picked up that silly Brady girl even before you sneaked away from me in the crowd. Well, you were followed. The police should have collected Edith Wilcox too by now.’

  ‘She wasn’t involved,’ Giles said hotly. ‘She only knew what Gemma told her.’

  ‘That’s what she told you. But even if so, she didn’t report it as she should have done, did she?

  ‘As for you, I saw an ideal opportunity to test you, boy. I merely wanted to see if you had the courage, the sheer blind bloody-minded guts to hurl yourself into a race for glory, even if there was a good chance you would kill yourself in the process – and me, by God! And that was precisely what you did.’ He patted Giles’s shoulder. ‘Good boy! You are a Romillie after all.’

  Giles reversed the autocar back into its starting place. The other drivers applauded him ironically. He glanced across at Ulrich, who shrugged at him and grinned. ‘I see you shared this plot with Zuba.’

  ‘Oh, yes. I didn’t want him babbling about potential bombs. He was happy to go along with it. He too wants to win. And he sees a better chance of doing so without you in the race.’

  Giles frowned. ‘What do you mean, without me? I could win this yet.’

  ‘No.’ Sir Joshua leaned past him and opened his door. ‘Out you get.’

  ‘What?’

  Sir Joshua’s face became thunderous. ‘You kept the truth from me, boy! And, worse, you hesitated. You should have hauled the girl by her ear down to a police station, or brought her to me. I make family decisions, not you; you come to me, you do not act alone. You need to learn a lesson.’

  ‘And this is the lesson?’

  Sir Joshua grinned. ‘Certainly. To watch me take the glory that should have been yours. Never mind! There might be another chance for you when Victoria reaches her Diamond Jubilee in ten years’ time. Out you hop. Shoo, shoo!’

  So Giles got out of the autocar, pulled off his goggles, gloves and cap, and walked away, off the bridge. The spectators smirked and giggled. Everybody else seemed to have been in on his father’s joke, save him.

  There was a roar of engines. The spectators cheered. So the race was under way. Giles didn’t bother turning around.

  His father had set him a test he believed Giles had passed. Giles wasn’t so sure, not any more. Perhaps, in fact, he had failed.

  He thought of Edith, who had winked at him boldly when he was on the roof of the bandstand; Edith, daughter of a freed slave, and her toiling siblings; Edith who had tried to save his life, and would pay for it with her own liberty. He didn’t even know if he loved Edith. He had never posed the question to himself before. But now he wondered if he deserved such loyalty, such love from her. Perhaps that was the next test he would have to pass.

  And as for her ‘experiment in revolution’ – well, now that she seemed to have provoked a revolution in his own heart, perhaps other tests lay ahead. A role in such a revolution for the heir of a family who had grown so rich while so many others had stayed so poor might be difficult to find …

  But first he must find her. He looked around for a policeman to ask him where Edith might be held and how he could see her.

  FATE AND THE FIRE-LANCE

  ‘Imogen. Oh, Imogen, you must wake up. He’s dead, Imogen. Gavrilo, the son of a Roman emperor, killed in London! It’s such a frightful mess, and I don’t know what I’m going to do …’

  The thin, tremulous voice dragged Imogen Brodsworth out of a too-short sleep. Her eyelids heavy, she had trouble focusing on the face before her: young, oval-shaped, with big eyes but a small nose and mouth, not pretty despite all the efforts of the cosmeticians. And Imogen, just for a moment, couldn’t remember where she was. The bed was big, too soft, and there was a scent of old wood, a whiff of incense – and, oddly, cigarette smoke.

  Incense. This was Lambeth Palace, residence of archbishops.

  The day was bright, the light streaming through the big sash window where a servant had pulled back dusty curtains. She glanced at the small clock on her bedside table. At least that was her own, an ingenious French-Louisianan contraption that told you the time and date on little dials. It was 29 June 1914, fifteen minutes past six on this summer morning.

  The girl before her, her face swollen with crying, was Alice, daughter of the English king Charles VII. A princess babbling of killing. She had a maidservant with her, who flapped and fluttered as Alice’s mood shifted.

  Imogen struggled to sit up. ‘Ma’am? What did you say of Gavrilo?’

  ‘That he’s been murdered, Miss Brodsworth.’ That was a male voice, grave, and Imogen reflexively ducked back down under the covers.

  A soldier stepped forward, crisply uniformed, immaculately shaved, walrus moustache trimmed despite the earliness of the hour. He was perhaps forty. He held a small cigarette in his right hand. He kept his eyes politely averted. ‘My intrusion is unforgivable, but it is a bit urgent. We met yesterday at the reception at St James’s Palace—’

  ‘I remember. Major Armstrong.’

  Imogen was a teacher of Latin and Greek, employed by a small private girls’ school in Wales. She had been attached as an interpreter with special responsibilities to support the Princess Royal at the reception for her fiancé, the second son of Caesar Nedjelko XXVI Princip. She had encountered Major Archibald Armstrong who was charged with the security of the party, working with a splendidly dressed Roman prefect called Marcus Helvidius.

  Imogen had little interest in politics, but she could imagine the implications of the murder of an imperial scion on British soil. ‘My word,’ was all she could think of to say.

  Alice’s tears were turning to temper. ‘What about me? Gavrilo was my fiancé, if you’ve forgotten! I’m a widow before I was even married – I’m not even eighteen – everybody will look at me and laugh!’

  Imogen glanced at Armstrong. ‘Major, please …’

  Armstrong coughed, and turned his back.

  Imogen got out of bed. Her nightdress was thick and heavy, too hot but quite suitable for spending the night in the residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury. She faced Alice and took her hands; they were weak and clutched a soggy handkerchief. ‘My lady. You must be strong. Dignified. Today is bound to be difficult, and your father will be relying on you.’

  Admonished, Alice did calm a little. ‘Yes. I know. It’s just – is my whole life to be defined by this moment? I hardly knew the man, Imogen. I spent more time with him yesterday on his quireme than we’ve ever spent before. Even when I visited his palace in Moscow he was always off hunting. Marie Lloyd sang for us on the ship, you know. “Everything in the Garden’s Lovely” …’

  And you did not love him, Imogen thought. Of course not, how could you? ‘I’m sure the future will take care of itself. For now, I know you will do your duty.’

  ‘Yes …’ Alice let her maid lead her away.

  ‘You’re good with her,’ Armstrong said, back turned, puffing calmly on his cigarette.

  ‘I have pupils older than her. I think you’d better let me perform my toilet, Major.’

  ‘Thirty minutes,’ Armstrong said briskly. He nodded and walked out.

  On the bedside table, her little clock chimed the half-hour.

  In the event she took only twenty minutes.

  She checked her appearance in the mirror behind the door: her hair tied up in a neat, practica
l bun, high-necked blouse and long black skirt, her sensible schoolmistress’s shoes for a day she expected to spend on her feet. She was twenty-five years old, and prettier than at least one princess, she told herself defiantly. But she knew she had a sensible air about her, and tended not to attract the eye of any but the most sensible of men. For sensible, she meant dull, she conceded wryly. Certainly none of the exotic grandees from across the globe present at the sessions yesterday had noticed her, not like that. None, perhaps, save Marcus Helvidius, who had, she thought back now, smiled at her once or twice …

  She was wool-gathering, and blushing like a girl. She glared at her own pink cheeks, ordering herself to calm down; she would not have Major Armstrong think she was a ninny. She picked up her handbag and left the room.

  Armstrong was waiting outside, puffing on another skinny American cigarette. Without a word he hurried her down a broad staircase and out of the palace.

  An automobile was waiting for them on the embankment. They clambered aboard. An armed soldier sat up beside the driver, and two more climbed in behind them. The driver worked the ignition bulb, the engine started up with a smoky roar, and they pulled away into the road. More automobiles joined them, so it was quite a convoy that headed up along the embankment towards Lambeth Bridge. They all sported Union flags, but like most of the automobiles on London’s roads they were Roman designs powered by Roman petrol; innovation in the automotive industry was driven by the demands of the empire’s huge battlefields in central Asia.

  The sun was still low but the sky was a bright cloudless blue, and the air was already warm. London’s buildings and bridges were adorned with wreaths, flags and streamers, marks of celebration for the coming of a Roman prince to the city. But there was no air of celebration this morning. Soldiers lined the route, alternating with police, rifles at their shoulders. Aside from them there was nobody to be seen, and only Navy boats moved on the Thames.