Avalon

by Stephen R. Lawhead

  “If, on the other hand, you are simply mouthing emotionally charged phrases designed to elicit a knee-jerk response in the voting public regardless of any actuality, veracity, or meaning, then you are a liar and a hypocrite in thrall to the politics of envy.”

  Waring, smiling the thin, vicious smile of an assassin, drew himself up to answer the challenge. “Say what you like, Your Highness.” The words were a curse in his mouth. “In six weeks the nation votes on the final referendum, and then you — and everything you stand for — will be history.” He rose quickly, and nodded to his entourage to prepare his exit. “Now, if you will excuse me, I have put up with this ludicrous distraction long enough.”

  “Yet you will put up with it a little longer, I think,” James stated firmly. “Sit down, Mr. Waring. We are not finished here.”

  Waring sat down again, hands on knees, looking like a fugitive ready to bolt at the first sign of trouble. “What is the point?” he demanded. “Why are you doing this?”

  “You astonish me, Prime Minister,” James answered. “Twice I have stood before the nation and explained the reasons for my actions. Perhaps you missed my televised speeches, or perhaps you were not paying attention.” Waring glowered at the King with dull hatred in his eyes. “Let me put it to you as simply as I can: I intend to see the monarchy of this nation restored. I intend to make Britain great again, and I intend to do so with your help, or without it.”

  “Was there anything else?” Waring said, his voice dripping scorn.

  “It doesn’t have to be like this, you know,” James told him. “We could put aside our differences and work together. We might even come to like one another — who knows? At the very least, it would be better for Britain.” James guessed what he would say, but he had to make the offer. “How about it, Mr. Waring?” he asked, extending his hand towards the Prime Minister. “Peace?”

  “In six weeks this little game of yours will be over, finished forever,” Waring said. He regarded the offered hand, but made no move to take it. “Enjoy your reign, Your Majesty.”

  “Good-bye, Prime Minister. I look forward to continuing our discussion next week.” Turning to Cal, who had entered and was standing with his back to the door, he said, “Calum, please show these gentlemen out.”

  The Prime Minister turned and stalked from the room without looking back. The photographers and TV crews were waiting as he emerged from the castle. Under a hail of shouted questions, he dived into the back of his waiting car; as soon as the security men gave the ready sign, the three black sedans drove away.

  When they had gone, everyone decamped to the second-floor conference room. “Well? What do you think?” James asked as they settled in for their debriefing. “Any observations?”

  “I didn’t hear all of it, of course,” replied Cal. “But from what little I did hear, I think it safe to say you’re off his Christmas card list.”

  “The hate,” said Embries, shaking his head. “I expected him to be difficult, but he didn’t even make an effort to disguise it.”

  “It is well known in Whitehall,” Gavin replied, “that our Prime Minister is a man whose life begins and ends with power — its accumulation and preservation. No wife or family, and few real friends, if any. He has devoted every aspect of his existence to obtaining the highest political office. Long ago, he set his sights on becoming the first president of the British republic, and the prize is almost in his grasp. You stand in his way and he hates you for it.”

  “Waring? The first president of Britain?” Cal wondered. “Bloody marvelous.”

  “Waring’s obsession fuels his attempt to eradicate the monarchy,” Embries said pointedly. “Once the old system is out of the way, there’s nothing to stop him. He’ll go down in history as the greatest reformer since Oliver Cromwell — or so he thinks.”

  “It’s true,” Gavin agreed. “The final referendum is his ticket to immortality. The British presidency was a common topic of lunchtime debate among freshman civil servants — whether the American form of presidency was the best system, or whether we should adopt the European model. We got into some heated arguments over executive accountability.”

  “Do tell,” remarked Cal. “And here was I thinking civil servants were all dull as ditchwater.”

  After a lengthy analysis of the meeting, they went down for some of Priddy’s famous fish pie, then spent the rest of the evening watching the coverage of the PM’s visit on the various news broadcasts. Gavin, James noticed, grew increasingly reflective as the night wore on. Seeing the PM on TV saying over and over again how this meaningless charade was just the sort of nonsense the referendum would bring to an end had, James suspected, begun to have an adverse effect on the former civil servant.

  At one point, he looked so forlorn, James said, “Cheer up, Gavin. We knew the job was dangerous when we took it.”

  “Sure,” he said, forcing a smile. “I know.” Then, unable to ssustain even that much enthusiasm, his face fell. “Waring is right: it’s less than six weeks to the referendum.”

  “You know what they say: six weeks is a lifetime in politics,” James told him. “I’m not dead yet.”

  Twenty-nine

  “If I didn’t know better,” said Dennis Arnold, “I’d say the man was a ghost.”

  “You couldn’t find anything?” asked Waring, pulling the coffee cup away from his lips. “Hell, Dennis, you’ve been working on this for the better part of a week. What’s going on?”

  “Don’t get excited,” the Devolution Chairman said, sliding into a chair beside the Prime Minister’s desk. “I didn’t say we haven’t found anything.” He opened the folder in his lap.

  “Well, then?”

  “It’s just that there’s nothing much to it,” Arnold replied. “And what there is appears very insubstantial.” He withdrew a photograph from the file and passed it to the Prime Minister.

  Waring picked it up. “That’s him. That’s the man I saw.”

  “When would you say that photograph was taken?”

  “How the hell should I know?” Waring shrugged. “Any time in the last year or so, I guess. What difference does it make?”

  “Not much,” replied Dennis Arnold. “But what if I told you that picture was taken in 1978?” He withdrew another photograph and placed it on the desk. “This one was taken by one of our agents on the grounds at Blair Morven a few days ago.”

  “My God!” remarked Waring. Snatching up the picture, he placed the two photos side by side. “He hasn’t aged a day.” Holding up the first photo, he asked, “Where did you get this?”

  “It was taken at a departmental dinner given in his honor,” Arnold informed him, “the day he retired.”

  “Retired? From what?”

  “The Scottish Office, apparently. Something to do with the registry department — although that’s largely hearsay. I haven’t been able to trace him back any further.”

  “If he worked for the Government, there’s a record.”

  “Don’t be too sure. The departmental branch he worked for was phased out in the late eighties, and the employment records were taken over by another agency and subsequently destroyed.”

  “Convenient.”

  “Yeah, but it doesn’t end there,” declared Arnold. “On a hunch, I mentioned Embries’ name to some of the elder Whitehall mandarins, and one of them came up with a lead. He said to check out St. James’s Palace, as he remembered someone of that name once had an office there.”

  “And?” asked Waring, becoming absorbed in spite of himself.

  “Bingo!” answered Arnold, allowing himself a satisfied smile. “It turns out that someone named Embries has been acting as a consultant for various organs of State for as long as anyone can remember — undertaking special projects for task forces, quangos, government focus groups, that sort of thing. Part of the arrangement was the use of an office in perpetuity.”

  “You mean he’s on the payroll? He’s one of ours?”

  “Not exactly. He isn
’t on the payroll, because he doesn’t get paid. It’s strictly service in exchange for the office and parking privileges, and so on.”

  “Jesus.”

  “I know. That used to be standard practice, apparently. Who knew the guy would live so long?”

  “You’re telling me that for the last thirty-odd years this Embries has been poking around inside the corridors of government and nobody knew it?” Waring shook his head. “Unbelievable.”

  Arnold looked down into his file and pulled out a sheet of mostly blank paper. “Here’s what I was able to find out.”

  “Name and national insurance number — that’s it?”

  “That’s it. And the national insurance trail is cold, too. According to their records, he is missing, presumed dead. All they have is a seventy-five-year-old address in Wales somewhere, and no indication that he ever collected a penny in benefit.”

  “It’s a shambles, Dennis,” said Waring, tossing the paper onto the meager pile. “Even the name isn’t complete: M. Embries? What’s the ‘M’ stand for?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “My God,” sighed Waring. “Nobody knows who he is or what he does, and he’s been around since Moses.”

  “Actually,” Arnold pointed out, “plenty of people know him — that is, know of him. They just don’t know much about him. He sort of comes and goes as he pleases, and no one’s the wiser.”

  “A bloody ghost.”

  “Exactly.”

  “What about this office at St. James’s Palace?”

  “I went over and checked it out. But there’s nothing there.”

  “No office, you mean?”

  “Oh, I found it. No difficulty there. Like I said, plenty of people seem to know about him. The office itself wasn’t much — a single room and an alcove; little more than a broom closet. There wasn’t even a phone — hence, no phone records. The place was empty. Apparently, everything was cleared out as of ten days ago. According to the building supervisor, Embries handed in his keys, and the space is soon to be taken over by a copying machine.”

  Waring stared at his aide in frustrated wonder. What was he dealing with here?

  “There are one or two other scraps of information.” The Chairman of the Special Committee for Royal Devolution tossed the file folder onto the desk. “But that’s it, mostly.”

  Waring picked up the folder. “You said he retired from the registry office in 1978. What was he doing before that?”

  “Before that is anybody’s guess. The name pops up a few times in various computer files — it’s distinctive, but not unusual, especially in Wales. We can’t tell if it’s the same person or not. Beyond that, we haven’t been able to turn up anything substantial.”

  “Maybe you’re just not trying hard enough, Dennis,” said the Prime Minister, growing irritated by the lack of information.

  “You’re welcome to let someone else have a go,” Arnold replied. “Be my guest. Just don’t forget that an awful lot of records were lost when files were transferred to computer. Rather than waste taxpayers’ money transcribing every last scrap of paper, the government at the time simply tossed out anything that wasn’t absolutely vital to the continuity of service or national security.”

  “So that’s that,” said Waring. “Dead end.”

  “Afraid so.” Arnold rose. “Then again, maybe it doesn’t matter who he is or where he comes from. I mean, we could spend all our time and energy trying to discover his pedigree, or we could just accept that he’s on the scene and deal with it. At the end of the day, what difference does it make? You said you met this fellow, talked to him. He’s one of the King’s advisors, right?”

  “That’s what they told me.”

  “Then he should be pretty easy to get a hold of — if someone really wanted to, that is.” He hesitated, then added, “You know, if push came to shove.”

  “It just might come to that,” Waring mused. “Someone like Stuart doesn’t just appear out of nowhere. There’s a machine behind him, a force driving him. From where I sit, this Embries chap is the one calling the shots. If we can get to him, our worries may be over.”

  “Then I don’t think we really have anything to worry about, do you?”

  Waring leaned back in his chair, regarding his friend; he kept few secrets from Dennis Arnold. “If you put it that way, I guess not. Politics can be a rough business. One day soon he may wish he’d never come out of retirement.”

  “The referendum clock is ticking,” James announced. “We should get out and do something.”

  “What do you want to do?” asked Cal. “Campaign for king?”

  “Would that be such a bad idea?” James challenged. They were sitting together in the conference room in what was quickly becoming a daily ritual — the morning staff meeting. Nearly a week had gone by since his meeting with the Prime Minister; there had been no change in the state of play where Downing Street was concerned, and he was growing impatient.

  Also, Jenny was taking an awfully long time to think about his proposal. He’d called her twice and sent flowers — with a card asking her to forgive him and let him make up for lost time — but word came back that she had gone to Wales to think things over. James felt this was a bad sign, and uncertainty, along with enforced inactivity, was making him anxious.

  “You want to be seen doing something kingly,” observed Embries. “Well and good. I agree, it would be wise to let people see what manner of king they will be asked to support.”

  “Slaying dragons, rescuing damsels, things like that?” remarked Cal. “What’s a king supposed to do these days?”

  “Maybe Waring and his lot are right,” conceded James. “Maybe the country doesn’t need a monarch anymore.”

  “Never say it,” Embries replied sharply. “Never think it.”

  Addressing the others gathered around the table, he said, “If anyone here doubts the seriousness of our enterprise, or the dire necessity which makes the survival of the crown an absolute imperative, then be gone.” His eyes shifted towards Cal as he said this last.

  “Sorry,” muttered Cal. Feeling the need to redeem himself, he said, “What about making a donation to a charity? Christmas is coming. ’Tis the season for giving. Make a speech, and get your picture in all the papers.”

  “How about reviving the Christmas Day address?” said Rhys.

  “That’s it!” Cal seconded the idea at once. “You’d get a lot of mileage out of something like that.”

  “People still remember the Queen’s Christmas speech,” Rhys continued. “It was a big deal back when I was a kid. The whole country stopped to listen to it.” He glanced around the table, gauging support for the notion.

  “It’s true,” Gavin agreed. “My family always did. Something like that would make it seem like old times.”

  “A king’s Christmas speech — I don’t know…”

  “How about an interview instead?” Shona suggested. “We could get one of the big guns in here for a cozy fireside chat: Christmas Day with the King. Jonathan Trent would jump at the chance to do it. You haven’t given a real interview since your declaration. Maybe it’s time you did.”

  “A speech is all very well,” said Embries. “It may even prove worthwhile. Still, no matter how well it is received, it will not answer the fundamental question of your kingship.”

  “And that is?”

  “What does it all mean? If you are to win the hearts and minds of the people, you must decide the nature of your kingship. What is your reign to be about?” At James’ expectant glance, he said, “I cannot do it for you. No one can. You must discover it within yourself. Only when you know what your role is can you count on anyone else to understand, much less to follow.”

  James frowned. “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “A wise man once told me, ‘It is difficult for people to follow a dream,’” Embries explained, “‘but they will follow a man with a dream.’ Think about it.’”

  A thought
ful silence descended over the group for a moment, broken by Cal, who wanted to know, “What about the speech?”

  James reluctantly gave his assent, and Shona began making phone calls. By the time negotiations were completed, James had agreed to an hour-long interview with Jonathan Trent — at Blair Morven — on Christmas Day.

  No one, but no one, had any interest in making it easy for James. For a start, the BBC refused to establish subject parameters, nor would they let him see the questions ahead of time. Instead, they insisted that Trent — a professional, highly regarded, award-winning journalist — would conduct himself with all the tact and respect appropriate to the occasion. End of discussion.

  The machinery of presaged failure ground into operation as soon as the terms of the interview were agreed. Once notified of the event, the newspapers began running features on what they called — for reasons known only to themselves — the “Christmas Confession,” while their resident pundits began guessing, and then second-guessing, what the King would say. Several daily papers proposed lists of topics he might wish to include, such as the location of the Holy Grail or whether he might reinstate the Round Table. One tabloid ran a competition in which readers were asked to supply a question for Jonathan Trent to ask James. The winner would, apparently, have his or her question included in Trent’s interview.

  James couldn’t decide which he found more disagreeable — the inundating cascade of calls from aggressive, impudent journalists which Shona was forced to take or the not-so-hidden expectation in the press that he would be shown a fool and a failure. The easy assumption was that lightning would not, could not, strike twice.

  The media, James decided, was a very cynical beast.

  Part IV

  Thirty

  “Are you sure you want to be doin’ this, miss?” asked George Kernan, not for the first time since leaving Penzance harbor.

  The young woman rose from arranging her equipment, turned, and faced the ship’s skipper. “Asked and answered, Mr. Kernan. For the third time: yes, I know what I am doing.” Her green eyes, almost turquoise against the deep blue of her new overalls, skewered him with angry intensity. “The sea is calm; the weather fine. Don’t tell me there is a problem with the boat, or I shall become quite cross.”