by Gwynn White
Madelaine yawned loudly. She struggled to her elbows. “I sent for you ages ago.”
“Who was that that just left?” None of her business, but she couldn’t help her curiosity.
“Oh, you saw him.” Madelaine grinned a lazy lioness grin. “Didn’t you recognize him? Caspar von Bismarck.”
“The heir to the von Bismarck dynasty? Son of the Lord High Chancellor? Are you planning to marry him?” Leonie said disapprovingly.
“Certainly not. He’s my uncle.”
“Half-uncle. His mum was the one after your mum’s mum, wasn’t she?” Leonie yawned. She dropped into a beast-footed chair. The cushion slid out from under her bottom as she tried to get comfortable.
“Anyway,” Madelaine said, “I cannot marry again. I am still in mourning.”
Everything the queen wore was black, but that had been the case even before her son Michael was killed. Leonie mentally reprimanded herself for thinking that Madelaine’s mourning was more of an excuse at this point. Ten years was a long time to mourn—but then, Michael had been her son, her first-born, her baby, cruelly murdered at the age of five. Leonie had no children, couldn’t imagine what that must feel like.
“I shall marry again,” Madelaine said, as she often did, “when a suitor brings me Guy Sauvage’s plastinated head.”
Guy Sauvage had been accused of Michael’s murder, but there’d been no proof as Leonie understood it, and he’d fled the country before he could be tried, which did make him look guilty, but also meant that he was probably dead by now. “Your Majesty, no one lasts ten years on the ROCK’s shit list.” The ROCK, the Royal Order of Coenobitic Knights, was the most feared—and also the most effective—outfit in the entire British security apparatus.
“Then why haven’t they presented me with his relics?”
“Cos they sold them on the black market to cover their operating expenses,” Leonie said, stifling another yawn.
“Darling, you look sleepy. Shall I ring for coffee?”
“Tea for me.”
“I’ll convert you someday,” Madelaine said, punching the intercom built into her bed.
“Coffee’s like drinking the water that someone’s washed their dirty socks in.”
“It is the most divine of vices and I’ll persuade you to like it yet. I’ve already got you to take up smoking, haven’t I?”
Leunie grinned palely and blew smoke at her.
They’d been through thick and thin together, her and the queen. She could read Madelaine like a book … and Madelaine could read her.
“Tell me what’s happened,” Madelaine said. “I know something has happened; I can see it in your eyes.”
The coffee and tea came. The service at the Tower was always prompt, even at one in the morning. Leonie collected the tray from the Queen’s Paladins on duty outside the bedchamber. The Queen’s Paladins were a recently founded sub-order of the ROCK, supposedly dedicated to Madelaine. Leonie didn’t trust them. She closed the door again, poured herself a titchy porcelain cup of tea. “Well, I lost a man tonight.”
“Oh, Leonie.” Madelaine checked in the act of adding sugar to her coffee. “How?”
Leonie related what had happened at the Notting Hill shrine. Madelaine listened compassionately. She might have come unprepared to the throne ten years ago, but she’d learned on the job. Perhaps most importantly, she’d acquired the royal skill of caring about people she’d never met. “I am so sorry. His family will be compensated. I’ll see to it myself.”
“They’ll appreciate that. But there’s still something that bothers me.”
“It’s dirty work, I know. But it has to be done. These superstitious cults are the seeds of rebellion, just waiting for some unscrupulous lord to water them.”
“Oh, I know. The cults have got to go. That’s not what bothers me. It’s two things, actually. Number one, that priest had a genuine holy relic. Where’d he get it?”
“The Church …”
“Doesn’t have any relics anymore. And they haven’t the money to buy them, either. No, someone gave him that. It’s like we’ve suspected all along. Someone’s funding these shrines.”
Madelaine’s lips thinned. “Cornwall,” she said. “Or Lancashire. Or …” She ran through a list of her enemies, great and small. Leonie finished her tea and poured another cup.
“The fact is we don’t know who’s backing ‘em,” she concluded when Madelaine had finished. “But now we’ve got proof it’s happening. If Littlejack hadn’t got stabbed, I was going to have a word with that priest. I’ll go back tomorrow and see if I can find him again.”
She didn’t expect she would be able to. The Church had been broken up seventy years ago, but that only made its scattered pieces harder to keep track of.
“You said there were two things bothering you,” Madelaine prompted. ”What was the other one?”
Leonie lit another Gold Cut. She explained about the saint-hunter with the Bloody M Boys tattoo.
“It’s a scourge, Your Majesty. These vaunt gangs are deliberately targeting the sick and vulnerable. And they’ve got the nerve to call themselves after you, and tattoo your heraldic animal on their ugly hides! You needn’t go public with it, but you could make the police pull their fingers out. Beef up that task force they’ve announced.”
“You’re quite right,” Madelaine decided. “This isn’t a job for undercover operators any longer.”
“I didn’t say that,” Leonie protested.
“No, but I can see it on your face. You lost a man tonight. Darling, I don’t want you to have to go through that again.”
“It’s not like that. You sign up knowing something might happen. It’s in the job description. If someone dies, yes, you’re sad about it, but then you move on.”
Madelaine winced, as well she might. Leonie had never known anyone worse at moving on. What Madelaine lost, she chewed over endlessly.
But now she was in queenly mode. “I’m not criticizing your performance. The fact is … the fact is that I’ve got something else I want you to do. That’s why I sent for you tonight.”
“Oh?”
Leonie stood up. Her feet carried her across the room. The queen’s bedchamber had formerly been the king’s. Madelaine had personalized the room with contemporary tapestries, grisly scenes of orgies and famine victims that Leonie wouldn’t have wanted in her bedroom, and unusable furniture commissioned from trendy designers. Random articles of clothing, art books, forgotten beepers, full ashtrays, and empty glasses strewed every surface. Madelaine had probably spent the evening entertaining her waste-of-space intellectual friends. Leonie ended up in the window nook, a sixteenth- or seventeenth-century addition, a little round tower built onto the back of the keep with windows all the way round. She opened one and leaned out. The breeze blew cold on her face. Spring had sprung but it was still parky at night. On the other side of the bailey wall, the Ivory Towers glowed in patches like code. She took a last drag on her cigarette and dropped it into the bailey.
“Did you know this used to be the toilet?” Madelaine said behind her, smelling of attar of orchids and fags.
“No, I didn’t know that.”
“It’s quite true. We hadn’t any indoor plumbing until fifteen-something. This was regarded as a great innovation: a shaft with a pit at the bottom.” Madelaine squeezed into the window nook beside Leonie. “I’ve been thinking of having the shaft re-opened. I could always use more escape routes.”
“This new job.” Leonie stuck to the subject. “Got anything to do with Caspar von Bismarck?”
“Can you keep a secret?”
“If you don’t think I can keep a secret, you shouldn’t be using me.”
“Don’t be so prickly. This is highly sensitive. It’s to do with the sanctity crisis.”
“Don’t tell me, then,” Leonie said, meaning it.
“Tomorrow or the day after, I’m going to announce Fiona’s betrothal to Caspar von Bismarck.”
“Fiona?” Le
onie’s guess had been out by a generation. Crown Princess Fiona was Madelaine’s daughter, the last of the Wessexes. “She’s only just turned eleven! He’s bloody ancient!”
“He’s thirty-eight.”
“You’re having me on. You can’t do that.”
“I can and I shall,” Madelaine flared. “I have Caspar’s word that he won’t lay a finger on her until she’s sixteen. I shall send trusty knights with her to Germany, of course, ladies-in-waiting, her nurse—”
“And what are we getting out of it?”
“A highly rated von Bismarck bride for Cedric,” Madelaine said, referring to the eldest of her Kent cousins. “And some research and development agreements,” she added vaguely.
“A third cousin and some minging R&D agreements. For that, you’re going to ruin Fiona’s childhood?” Leonie turned her back on the queen and leaned her forehead against stone, thinking for the hundredth time: The royalty really are different from ordinary people.
“Ruining her childhood? Berlin’s the capital of the world. Culture, academia, the arts—”
“Her childhood will be over the minute she finds out her mum is sending her away,” Leonie said patiently, as if speaking to a mental defective. “She worships the ground you walk on. I hope you know that.”
Madelaine flinched as if Leonie had struck her. She started to say something, then dropped her face into her hands and started to cry.
Maybe not so different from ordinary people, after all.
“Here,” Leonie said softly. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
Madelaine only cried louder. Leonie led her back into the bedchamber and pulled the drapes across the window nook. She sat Madelaine down in the chair with the slippery cushion. Madelaine folded up, shaking with the force of her sobs. Leonie knelt beside her. When the two of them were on the run, ten years ago, she used to despise Madelaine for crying so easily. Now she envied her for it.
Sliding her arms around the frail shoulders, she rocked the queen the way she used to rock her brothers and sisters when they were little. “Don’t take on. You’re right, any girl’d be thrilled to go and live in Berlin. She’ll get used to it, anyway…” People can get used to anything.
At last Madelaine’s sobs died down. The shoulder of Leonie’s t-shirt was soaked with tears and snot. Leonie dragged her hanky out of her pocket—stiff with Littlejack’s blood; nix that. She took one of the damask napkins off the tea tray. “Blow.”
Madelaine dabbed her eyes and blew her nose with comical delicacy, like a cat sneezing.
“That’s better.” Leonie smiled. “D’you know, when you mentioned a new job, I thought you meant you wanted Caspar von Bismarck put out of the way. I was going to tell you I don’t do assassinations, but I know a bloke ...”
Madelaine laughed, as Leonie had intended her to, but weakly. “Strange that you should say that ... I’m sending you to Khmeria.”
Leonie sat back on her heels. “That’s a long way away. What did I do?”
“You’re my only real friend. I’m going to miss you terribly. But there’s no one else I can trust.”
Leonie didn’t believe it. Sitting there in shock, she didn’t buy it for an instant. It might not be something she’d done, it might be the work of her enemies. She had enough of them, mostly in the ROCK, but also former mates from the Intelligence Company, blokes who resented her close relationship with the queen …
Friendship. Until a minute ago, she would have said she and Madelaine were friends.
But Khmeria… there was no way to interpret that as anything but a punishment.
“I’m naming a new High Commissioner of Khmeria. Sir Alan Scully,” Madelaine said.
“I haven’t heard of him.”
“No, you wouldn’t have. He’s presently the governor of Sri Lanka, so he’s not entangled with our domestic intrigues. Battle-hardened; very capable …”
“And you trust him?”
“Implicitly. You’ll be going to Khmeria as his aide. Of course, you won’t really be his aide. But that’s your cover story.”
Leonie shook her head. “Who’s been slagging me off? What’ve they said about me?”
Madelaine went blank, then tittered, but Leonie caught a minuscule tightening of the muscles around the queen’s eyes. This was someone else’s doing. It hadn’t been the queen’s own idea. That was good to know, and at the same time frightening, because it meant someone had it in for Leonie and she didn’t know who.
“If they’ve said I’m not trustworthy, they’re lying. I’m your truest friend. You just said so yourself.”
“Which is why I’d rather not send you if I had any choice! But I don’t!”
“Yes, you do! It’s the same as with Fiona’s betrothal. You don’t have to. You’re the queen. Nothing’s been announced yet. You can just change your mind.”
Madelaine burped loudly. She stood up and wandered around the room. Mascara streaked her tear-swollen cheeks. Leonie watched, fists clenched uselessly.
Suddenly, Madelaine clutched her stomach. She staggered to the bed and fell across it, dragging her knees up into the fetal position. Leonie flew to her and leant over her, smoothing her hair off her face. “It’s all right, it’s all right.”
“It hurts.” More tears rolled out of the queen’s eyes. “I wish Jon was here.”
“No, you don’t. He’s a waster. It was him that did this to you when you were just a kid, wasn’t it? You should’ve had him beheaded, not given him a job.”
“Yes, but he knows … he can tell …” The queen’s face reddened. She retched. Nothing came up.
Leonie darted across the room to the antique washstand. She grabbed the big china bowl, set it on the floor beside the bed, and wrestled Madelaine around, getting her head over the bowl just in time. Coffee and bile and blood splashed into the bowl. Leonie turned her head aside and breathed through her mouth.
Little white things floated in the queen’s vomit.
Madelaine flopped on the bed, breathing heavily. Leonie stuck her head out of the bedchamber. “Glass of water, quick!”
Sir Giles Llewelyn ran to fetch it. Sir Edward Starling murmured, “Trying to take the taste of royal arsehole out of your mouth?” Annoying Ed had it in for her ever since they were in the Intelligence Company together. Thought he was the kitten’s mittens for getting into the Queen’s Paladins. Maybe he’s the one who’s been badmouthing me to Her Majesty.
“Tasteful,” she shot back. ”Very fucking tasteful. She’s just puked her guts up, that’s all.”
“Prophesying? She usually wants someone to take dictation. Shall I call her secretary?”
“Don’t bother. They trained us for that in the Tabbies.” Sir Giles came back with a crystal tumbler of water. “Thanks a million,” Leonie said icily. She went back into the bedchamber, wishing the door locked.
Madelaine leant over the side of the bed, her hair hanging in the bowl of vomit. The tiny white floaters wriggled. They were worms, the babies or offshoots or God knows what byproduct of the worm of prophecy that lived in the queen’s gut. Madelaine had carried the worm since she was a teenager. She had been turned onto it by Jon Merryweather, a writer of mystical tomes who was Lord Merryweather these days, thanks to Madelaine. She’d given him the job of CEO of the Wessex Far East Corporation, so he could live in the East and write mystical tomes full time.
The worm was some sort of fey, apparently. It was supposed to prophesy, but everything Madelaine got from it was the kind of vague nonsense that you could always say had proved out.
Leonie squatted on the floor and held out the glass of water. Madelaine stared fixedly into the bowl of vomit. At last she drank, then fell back against the pillows. “Oh God,” she said explosively.
“Anything new?”
“No. It’s been the same thing every time lately, over and over… Leonie, my aunt’s sending someone out to Khmeria. A savant. She thinks certain aspects of the Wessex Far East Corporation’s banking operations l
ook dodgy and ought to be investigated. I’ve total confidence in Jon, but finally I had to say yes. It doesn’t seem as if this financial investigator chap is the sort of person who could cause any trouble. But every time I dismiss the matter from my mind, the worm warns me against him again. He may set things in motion… terrible things. I need a cigarette.”
Leonie fetched the case for her.
“That’s why I’m sending you, you see. ” The queen’s eyes were wet and red. “To find out what he finds out… and then kill him.”
Twenty Minutes Later
Before she left the Tower of London, Leonie took a chance on asking to see Vivienne Sauvage. She knew the Countess of Dublin was staying here at the moment—in fact, she stayed here so often that they said her own people in Ireland had forgotten what she looked like—but Leonie had scant hopes that she’d see her, especially at this hour of the night.
To her surprise she was ushered into the countess’s study. Vivienne sat at her desk, reading and minuting documents. She, rather than Madelaine, had the true royal work ethic. Even at one in the morning she looked great for fifty-odd—spine straight, face unwrinkled, no gray roots even close up. The rich were different: they had good saints and good hairdressers.
“Grant. What a pleasant surprise. Tea?” Vivienne reached vaguely for the empty cup that had left rings on her paperwork.
“Thanks, I’ve already had some with the queen. I won’t take up much of your time. I just wanted to ask …”
“Good Lord,” Vivienne muttered, making a note. She looked up. “Do you know how highly leveraged House Wessex is?”
Leonie wasn’t even sure what leverage was. “I’m guessing it’s not good.”
“The Emergency in Khmeria is costing the Crown an absolute fortune. Which has to be found, of course, by House Wessex, as the reigning House of Great Britain. The Wessex Far East Corporation is Madelaine’s most profitable subsidiary, and these bloody rebels are destroying its revenue base. And that’s not to mention defense expenditures.”
