Avalon

by Stephen R. Lawhead

  “Voluntary abdications,” Waring repeated, “acquired by this government, when combined with the unfortunate circumstance of King Edward’s death, however lamentable in itself, does bring to an end what might be mildly termed a ‘vexed and troubled reign,’ and would therefore seem to vindicate this government’s pursuit of disestablishment.”

  There were whoops and jeers at this, but the Prime Minister coolly reached for his glass of water and waited while the Speaker restored order in the chamber.

  “I make no apology, Mr. Speaker,” Waring resumed, “for the policy which this government has faithfully pursued for the systematic reduction of privilege for the rich and idle at the expense of the poor and hard-working. I make no apology for removing the burden of an onerously expensive monarchy from the public purse, nor for returning valuable lands and properties to public use, nor, indeed, for releasing royal treasures to the enjoyment of all this nation’s people. Further, I would remind this House that these initiatives have enjoyed broad-based support in the country, and cross-party support in this chamber!”

  He glared defiantly across the table at the Opposition benches. “I am sure the House will agree with me that, while we may mourn the sad death of a man and the passing of an ancient institution, the actual benefits flowing from this government’s policy of royal devolution are incalculable, and must not be sacrificed to softheaded sentimentality.”

  This drew another raucous flourish of jeers and catcalls which the Speaker of the House, with difficulty, silenced.

  “If I may be allowed to finish, Mr. Speaker,” resumed the PM, apparently unperturbed by the outcry, “I will conclude by saying that in the absence of any remaining claimants to the throne, and in light of having achieved unqualified successes in accomplishing the goals set before it, this government now considers the work of the Special Committee for Royal Devolution to have entered its final phase. I will therefore take this opportunity to reaffirm our intention to adhere to the schedule ratified some months ago in this very chamber with regard to the referendum vote for the final Act of Dissolution of the monarchy.”

  Prime Minister Waring paused and looked up from his notes. “This is an important point. Allow me to underscore it, if you will. In light of recent events, this government will hold the final public referendum on the fifteenth of February, as previously announced, thus securing the will of the nation as regards this timely issue.”

  With that he stepped back and took his seat on the front bench to the chorused grunts of approval from his supporters and party members, and shouted japes and challenges from the opposition facing him across the room. Speaker Carpenter called the House to order, and passed on to other business, whereupon the PM, the cabinet, most of the visitors, and all of the journalists departed.

  The coverage from the Commons ended, but the news broadcast continued; there were live reports from Madeira and outside Parliament, and from pundits gathered in the BBC studio to discuss the implications of the PM’s speech and read the tea leaves of political fortunes. James found his attention wandering, and after a few minutes Caroline returned, all apologies over a kitchen disaster of major proportions.

  “Did I miss anything important?”

  “It’s hard to say,” James told her. “The question of a State funeral was raised —”

  “Excellent! Jolly good!” Caroline clapped her hands once for emphasis. “Oh, that’s very encouraging indeed. Well done!”

  Baffled by her sudden excitement, James said, “I don’t think the matter was settled. Waring seemed to waffle.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Caroline countered. “Thin end of the wedge, eh, Calum?”

  “Thin end of the wedge, absolutely,” Cal replied, regarding his hostess with a bemused expression.

  Lady Rothes switched off the TV, and turned to her guests. “Now then, dinner is served.”

  James and Cal followed her back through the mahogany doors, across the grand foyer, and into a large formal dining room dominated by a massive crystal chandelier and a floor-to-ceiling gilt mirror covering most of one wall. Cal let out a silent whistle as he took in the elegant sideboard laden with silver tureens and platters; the precious, if slightly threadbare, Persian carpet on the parquet floor; and a heroic Sheraton dining table that could have served as a Thames bridge. A dozen matching chairs surrounded the table, and more stood against the walls at various places around the room.

  “Here we are,” Caroline said. “I’ve put you at this end. I hope you won’t feel like you’re dining in an airplane hangar.”

  “Not at all,” James assured her. “But I see only two places. You’re not joining us?”

  “I had a light supper earlier. But you two tuck in, and I’ll just potter around. I might be persuaded to join you for pudding, if you twisted my arm.”

  “Consider it twisted,” Cal said, pulling out his chair.

  “I was hoping you’d say that,” she acquiesced nicely. “Bon appétit!” She buzzed from the room, disappearing through a door all but hidden behind the sideboard.

  “Sterling,” murmured Cal, picking up a fork and hefting it in his hand. On the plates before them was a cold prawn salad prepared with freshly made garlic mayonnaise, and no fewer than four stemmed goblets were arranged before each plate. Cal tapped the largest goblet with a tine of his fork, sounding a clear, resonant note. “Lead crystal.”

  The bell-like tone brought an immediate response, for a door opened across the room, and a young woman entered carrying an ice bucket on a stand. Although she was dressed like a man in black trousers and a long-sleeved white shirt, and her dark, straight hair was cut short as any schoolboy’s, her long-limbed figure argued otherwise.

  “Hi,” she greeted the diners cheerily. “I’m Isobel.” Placing the ice bucket beside the table, she withdrew a corkscrew from her pocket and proceeded to open the bottle of white wine in the bucket.

  “Hello, Isobel,” Cal said appreciatively.

  “This,” she said, indicating the bottle between her hands, “is a good South African Chardonnay.” She pulled the cork with a practiced twist of a slender wrist, and poured two glasses. “I think you’re going to love it.”

  “I love it already.” Cal smiled, adjusting his collar, obviously pleased he’d worn his new shirt.

  She winked at him. “Enjoy!”

  Isobel disappeared as abruptly as she’d arrived, leaving a gaping hole in the room. The two men fell silent, eating their prawns and sipping wine which, as promised, was very good. No sooner had they laid the fish forks aside, than Caroline entered with two steaming plates of soup.

  “It’s plum and parsnip,” she informed them. “I know it sounds hideous, but do try it. Donald would have it every day, but we ration him to Christmas.”

  Like the wine, the soup was exceptional. After a perfunctory sniff and an exploratory taste, Calum tilted his plate and scooped away. It was all James could do to keep him from licking the shallow bowl clean.

  Next, it was Isobel’s turn to reappear, bringing with her a bottle of red wine, already opened. “I know you’re going to like this one. It’s one of my favorites — not terrifically well known but really solid. It’s an eastern Australian Shiraz. And it” — she began pouring — “is” — she filled Cal’s glass — “smashing.”

  She filled James’ glass, and then removed the half-empty white wine goblets. “Enjoy!”

  “Is this all you do?” Cal asked her.

  “I cook as well,” she confided. “Starters, salads, and desserts — which are my specialty.”

  “Will you marry me?” asked Cal.

  She gave him a dazzling smile. “Why don’t we wait until pudding? In case you change your mind.”

  With that, she was gone again. Caroline arrived a moment later with a tray of steaming plates. “These are hot,” she warned, placing a plate before each of her guests. The air was suddenly filled with a heavenly aroma.

  “Lamb and potatoes.” Cal sighed happily. “They must be able to read
my mind.”

  “Everyone can read your mind, Cal,” James remarked. “Whatever you’re thinking is on your face before you open your mouth. Enjoy!” Raising his glass, he took a deliberately large sip. The red, in James’ estimation, was even better than the white. Although partial to reds, he knew nothing whatsoever about wine — except to stay far, far away from that nasty Khazak stuff the Afghans served the UN troops. What the soldiers didn’t drink, they used to clean their rifles; it stripped away old grease and did not leave a sticky residue.

  The two men made short work of the meal, eating in companionable silence.

  “Will she marry me, do you think?” asked Calum, looking up from his empty plate.

  “Isobel? Oh, sure,” James told him. “You two can open a wine bar in Aberdeen.”

  “Stranger things happen, James, my man,” he pointed out.

  “They do indeed.”

  A moment later, Isobel came to remove the plates. “Who’s for pudding?” she said, refilling James’ glass with the luscious red. She moved to refill Cal’s glass, and James noticed that she stood much closer to Cal than before.

  “You were right,” Cal told her, indicating the wine. “This is very good.”

  “I knew you’d like it.” She poured a little extra into his glass. “For pudding we have a really scrummy chocolate torte,” she said, replacing the bottle.

  “If it’s anything like its cook,” answered Cal, returning her smile, “I’m sure it’s lovely.”

  “Charmer,” she purred and disappeared again.

  “I think she likes you,” James said when she had gone. “Charmer.”

  Isobel returned with two plates. Placing one before James, she moved to Cal’s side. “Take a bite,” she instructed, resting her hand lightly on Cal’s shoulder, “and tell me what you think.”

  Cal dutifully picked up his spoon and took a large bite, rolled it around in his mouth, and grinned. “I was right,” he said. “It is terrific. The best chocolate torte I’ve ever tasted.”

  Isobel beamed triumphantly. “I’ll see to the coffees.”

  She left them to their desserts, and James dug in. Cal, however, merely stared at his plate. “What’s wrong?” James asked.

  “You know I can’t eat chocolate,” Cal sighed. “It always gives me a bruising headache.”

  “The things we do for love.”

  Nodding forlornly, Cal took a wary bite. At that moment, the door opened and a lean, lanky man with thinning gray hair stepped quickly in. “Here!” he said, almost bounding across the room. His tie was loosened, his suit coat unbuttoned, and he wore a pair of reading glasses on a cord around his neck, giving him the air of an overworked librarian. “Dreadfully sorry to be so late. Don’t let me interrupt. I just wanted to pop in and say hello. I’m Donald.” He held out his hand. “You must be James.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” James replied, shaking his hand. “And this is my friend Calum.”

  They shook hands. The kitchen door opened and Caroline entered with a pitcher of water. “Donald, You’re home. Come into the kitchen and we’ll get you something to eat.”

  “Not hungry in the slightest,” he said. “But I could do with a slice of that torte — if someone insisted.”

  “Please, join us,” James offered. “Cal says it’s terrific.”

  Lord Rothes did not require urging. Caroline set down the pitcher and went off to fetch him his pudding, while Rothes pulled out a chair and sat down opposite Cal. “I don’t mind telling you it’s been one of those days,” he confided. “Still, we gave as good as we got, I think. Good trip down?”

  “A small delay in Crewe, apparently,” James answered, “but otherwise tolerable.”

  “Then you won’t have seen the Prime Minister’s speech this afternoon, I suppose?”

  “As a matter of fact, we caught it on the news a little while ago.”

  “What did you think?”

  “About what you’d expect, I guess,” James replied. “No real surprises.”

  “Ah!” Donald said, jumping on James’ assessment. “There wasone small victory snatched from the jaws of defeat.”

  He learned forward, his expression growing keen and excited. It was only then that James recognized him as the backbencher who had thrown Parliament into a tizzy with his question about the State funeral for Ready Teddy. It suddenly dawned on him why Caroline had been so unaccountably pleased to hear that the issue had been raised in the broadcast. Then, he had been just another pinstriped politico waving an order paper. Now, however, he looked like a schoolboy who has just found out a dirty secret about his teacher. “One small victory. Know what it was?”

  Six

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if the Save Our Monarchy lunatics put him up to this. Those bastards have been a pain in the as from the beginning. I want them squeezed until the pips squeak, understand?” Prime Minister Waring thrust himself back in his chair and glared at the unhappy faces huddled around the oval table.

  The PM’s deputy, a carefully coiffed, Armani-suited redoubtable woman named Angela Telford-Sykes, was first to speak. “Calm down, Tom,” she said, trying to smooth her chief’s ruffled feathers. “They’re just a bunch of blue-haired old dears. They make tea and hand out leaflets in shopping centers. Why, in a day or two, I wouldn’t be surprised if —”

  Waring’s fist struck the table with such force the empty water jug bounced on its silver tray. “We don’t have a day or two!” he shouted. “Bloody hell! Is everyone braindead around here?”

  Telford-Sykes gazed over the top of her glasses, unmoved. A veteran of many campaigns, she was used to taking much worse from the PM. One or two of the other members of Waring’s kitchen cabinet — those few trusted advisors of his inner circle — glanced nervously at the deputy.

  “Because of that blasted question,” Waring said, lowering his voice, “we’re being maneuvered into providing a gala State funeral for that reprobate winesop. The whole country heard it, for Crissakes! Any hope we had of sending him off with a quiet private ceremony is ruined.”

  “I don’t believe that was ever a realistic option, Tom,” Angela said soothingly. “Perhaps they’ve done us a favor by bringing this out into the open. We can use it.”

  “Bloody right we’ll use it,” Waring snapped. “But it will cost an absolute bomb.”

  Adrian Burton, Chancellor of the Exchequer, spoke up. “As it happens, I’ve had some figures prepared” — he lifted a sheet of paper from the leather folder before him — “and it looks like something in the region of fifteen million pounds is a reasonable minimum.”

  Waring stared daggers at the man. “I was thinking more in terms of the political cost, Adrian,” he enunciated coldly. “I don’t give a damn about the money.”

  “Quite,” replied Burton. “Yes, quite.”

  Waring turned his eyes away from his chancellor. “Hutch has been on the phone all day, doing damage control, but the media smell blood. They are circling. Unless we provide a suitable alternative, gentlemen, this thing could get very painful.”

  “Hutch” was Martin Hutchens, his press secretary. His slight stature, cheap suits, and prep-school haircut went a long way towards disguising a fiercely calculating, creatively resourceful adversary. When he stumbled across a journalism course at the Poly years ago, the NHS may have lost a proctologist, but the Government gained a top-flight spin doctor. Ever since the televised House announcement, he had been laboring to deflect the increasingly strident insinuations that the Government had something to hide in the matter of the King’s death.

  “This is where it sits at the moment,” Hutchens said. It was time to bring the rest of the inner circle up to speed. “The story is that the King’s suicide — yes, we’re using the ‘S’ word now, to desentimentalize the account and to prevent the opposition from whipping up a froth of false sympathy. Anyway, the suicide, unexpected as it was, has surprised us no less than anyone else. Did The Times predict it? Did The Guardian? Was Ladbrokes taking bets
? No. All right. A state funeral takes time to organize — you just can’t throw one together overnight. We are sympathetic, of course. We are looking into it — doing all we can. Unfortunately, time is against us — we don’t even have the corpse back yet and there’s half a week gone. Not to put too fine a point on it, Portuguese embalming practices being what they are” — he made a fluttering motion with his hand before his face as if fanning away noxious fumes — “there are likely to be certain complications.”

  “For pity’s sake, Martin,” sighed the Home Secretary, a trim and elegant, dark-haired former Oxford Union president named Patricia Shah. “Might we forgo the histrionics, please?”

  “Sorry,” he said, moving quickly on. “More important, timing-wise, we host the Pan-European Economic Summit next week. That’s true,” he hastened to point out. “It’s been on the books for months. Everybody knows it. Circumstances may not permit us to do all we would wish for the King’s funeral — limited resources… available manpower… security… et cetera, et cetera.”

  “Are they buying it?” asked Dennis Arnold, Chairman of the Special Committee for Royal Devolution. A long-time party workhorse, he had known the Prime Minister since their days of sharing a flat at university.

  “Not entirely,” admitted Hutchens. “They’ll probably assume we’re stalling. But it’ll stick until they dig up something else to throw at us.”

  “This is why we need to find out who is behind this State funeral scheme,” Waring reiterated. “I want a thorough and speedy workup on Rothes. What’s he up to? What’s his agenda? Just as important: does he have a mistress? A fondness for schoolboys? Get something we can use.”

  “What if we can’t find anything?” wondered Burton.

  “Invent something, Adrian. Use your head for once.”

  “There’s his title, of course,” put in Hutchens. “He’s one of the diehards who still uses it. That’s what I hear, anyway.”

  “There,” said Waring, throwing out his hand to Hutchens. “He’s a greedy, aristo-royalist. We can start with that. We’ve got to sideline this bigmouthed smart-ass — put the heat on and keep it on. We’ll keep him so occupied putting out fires that he won’t have time to stir up any more trouble.”