The Henchmen of Zenda

by KJ Charles

  Hentzau reclined on the bed to rest his shoulder; I sat at the table, turning my glass in my fingers, watching the evening sun catch the ruby liquid and send spangles of colour over the table, like splashes of blood.

  “So,” I said. “What the hell happened?”

  “Well you may ask,” Hentzau said. “All right. You know that I spoke to Antoinette earlier that night. I came to tell her I intended to swim over and wait in her room for two o’clock. And she told me that she had had a message from Flavia, telling her the child was found, and advising her of Rassendyll’s full plan.”

  “Oh, there was a plan, was there? I had started to wonder.”

  “There was. He’d arranged that Johann would open the front door of the chateau to his forces at two o’clock, just as Antoinette was to start screaming rape. His forces were to take the chateau and kill Michael in the chaos; meanwhile, he was to swim over to the Tower to ‘save’ the king. All very well for him, but it meant that if I was in the chateau to protect Antoinette from Michael, I would find myself significantly outnumbered. I can’t say I was feeling precisely optimistic when I left you to go to her that night.”

  “And yet you did it,” I said. “Rupert, I had wanted to say to you—”

  “Nonsense, no need. And be quiet when I’m telling a story. It was, what, around quarter past one when I left you in the Tower? So I came out of the door to swim the moat, and I saw out of the corner of my eye a shape. A man, lurking in the shadows. And I realised it was Rassendyll. He was already there, with the attack not due to start until two.”

  “Ah. Was he indeed.”

  “I pretended not to see him and swam over—rather wondering if he’d take the chance to put a bullet in my head, I will admit—and climbed up to Antoinette’s window. I told her Rassendyll was already there, and we realised this was our chance. We could start the party early.”

  “Before Rassendyll’s forces were ready to attack,” I said. “Very nice.”

  “Thank you,” he said demurely. “I thought I might be able to deal with Michael promptly and without interference, get you out of the Tower, and make a clean getaway, all before Rassendyll’s forces arrived. So Antoinette started screaming, and Michael duly came bursting in to find me, and we fought.” He grimaced. “He wasn’t my match, you know. It was unequal. We exchanged a few strokes, he shouting for his men, and I suppose he realised that he didn’t stand a chance, because he turned and fled for the door. Only, you see, Antoinette had already got behind him and locked it. Locked him in with me.”

  “Good for her.”

  “And then the damnedest thing happened,” Hentzau said. “He turned, and the expression on his face—oh, hurt, and bewilderment, and betrayal. He looked devastated, it’s the only word. And he reached out a hand towards her and said, ‘Antoinette. Why?’”

  “He— Right,” I said. “Of course he did. What did she say?”

  “‘For Christ’s sake, Hentzau, kill him.’ So I did.”

  I nodded. “And then?”

  “We decided she would play the grieving widow. I ran downstairs and ordered the drawbridge lowered—it was chaos by then, Antoinette screaming, servants milling, and I was damned glad they didn’t have firearms. I held the bridge, and you emerged. What did you do with Rassendyll, by the way?”

  “Locked him in with Bersonin and Rudolf.”

  “Oh, very good. And then you toppled over the side, you see, and that was where it went wrong. We’d agreed that Antoinette would shoot at me, for verisimilitude, and I would shout something caddish yet noble—‘I can’t kill where I’ve kissed’ was what I had in mind, which I thought rather neat—and flee, leaving her to create chaos, wave the gun around, scream about helping the king, and so on. And it all went to plan, right up to the point the bloody woman fired, and hit me.”

  “I’m not surprised,” I said. “I don’t think she’s ever used a gun in her life before. Did you even ask her if she could shoot? You posturing idiot.”

  “Yes, well. And that was that, although I must say I was glad you were there to get me out of that sodding moat, because I could not have done that alone. That was really not a pleasurable swim one-armed.”

  “Nor was mine,” I said, and told him about the king sinking to his watery end.

  Hentzau whistled. “Rassendyll killed him, you think? Well, of course he did; King Rudolf the Fifth is alive and well in Strelsau.”

  We knew that from the newspapers. Ruritanian affairs rarely dominate the front pages anywhere except Ruritania, and sometimes not even there, but the unexplained death of the king’s own brother had attracted a certain amount of attention. I was mainly concerned to discover if a hue and cry had been put out for the Duke of Strelsau’s killer; so far it seemed not.

  “So,” Hentzau said. “Now what?”

  “For whom? Antoinette should, I hope, have her daughter back. Flavia can manage her own affairs. You and I will need to get further away from Ruritania, for safety’s sake. And then, well, the world is your oyster. You’re free.”

  “Some might say I’ve disgraced my name, abandoned my family, and exiled myself from my native land.”

  “That’s what I mean,” I said. “You’re young, healthy, a damned good swordsman, and have nothing left to lose. It’s quite a position to start from, take my word for it. And you did want adventure.”

  “Indeed I did, and now I shall have all that I want. As a seasoned adventurer, Jasper, would you care to show me the ropes for a little while? With no obligation, needless to say.”

  “None at all,” I agreed. “Go off on your own as and when you choose, just as I will. But until then . . . well, why not? There are plenty of two-man jobs out there, and we do work well together.”

  “We do,” he agreed. “And I can think of a few two-man jobs that I want done in here, if it comes to that.”

  “With your shoulder?”

  “Be damned to my shoulder,” he said. “Work around it, that’s what you’re good at. Come here.”

  AND THAT IS MY TALE done. Or almost so, since I am reminded readers may wish to know what happened next.

  Antoinette was reunited with Lisl just two days after Michael’s death. Flavia kept her word as to her protection and even appointed a steward to help Toni untangle her affairs and retrieve the funds Michael had kept from her, as well as his many gifts of jewellery and the extensive wardrobe. Since she had also taken advantage of the chaos to help herself to anything valuable and portable, Toni emerged from her affair with Michael a sadder, wiser, but mostly very much richer woman. She gave it out that she was retiring from the world in mourning for her lost duke, and settled down with her daughter in a small town in southern France, only visiting the larger cities occasionally to keep her hand in.

  Lisl Mauban has grown into a remarkable and sharply intelligent young woman. She had an excellent education, in addition to which I taught her to fuzz cards and use a knife, and Hentzau taught her to shoot, not without some sarcastic remarks to her mother on the subject. Toni taught her not to trust a man as far as she could throw him, and then undermined her lesson to everyone’s surprise, including her own, by marrying the local doctor. He appears to be a thoroughly decent, gentle man who worships her, and she is quietly and entirely happy with him. Hentzau and I attended her wedding, attempting to look respectable with questionable success.

  Rudolf Rassendyll emerged from the Tower that long-ago night with Bersonin dead and no trace of the prisoner he had supposedly come to rescue. I dare say he told a good story to Colonel Sapt; I dare say Sapt wanted to believe it. I don’t know what went on behind closed doors thereafter, but Rassendyll-as-Rudolf married Princess Flavia in a grand ceremony in Strelsau, and immediately appointed her Queen in her own right, sharing the business of government with him in equal authority.

  There was, of course, the problem of getting rid of Rudolf Rassendyll the Englishman, now that he had to become Rudolf V of Ruritania permanently. Rassendyll solved this by returning to England to s
how himself in his true identity for a few weeks every year, presenting himself as increasingly reclusive each time, and finally “retiring from the world” for good.

  Perhaps six years into his reign, it was reported that the king was suffering from some persistent ailment, as his previous debauched lifestyle finally caught up with him. His condition did not cause a constitutional crisis, since by then it had become apparent to all that Flavia was the ruler, with Rudolf as mere consort and figurehead. The king confined himself, or was confined, to ceremonial appearances only; soon enough he started turning up to public events drunk and resentfully muttering; and a short time thereafter he expired of what was said to be an apoplexy in his sleep. I do wonder if Rassendyll found his crown worth the price he paid for it.

  He had given Flavia two healthy daughters by then, and there is no question but that Ruritania’s next monarch will be a queen, especially since Flavia is generally agreed to be the wisest and most forward-looking ruler Ruritania has had in many generations, as well as being an exceedingly bad woman to cross.

  In his spare time, of which he had plenty, Rassendyll wrote a highly unreliable account of his adventures which was widely circulated after his death. He supposedly wrote it as a plausible explanation of what had happened to him that summer, changing only the ending to preserve the royal family’s secret and give his own family a tale to believe. But in truth I think he wrote it for himself, to tell the tale as he wished it had been. In that version (which, as I have said, is riddled with inaccuracies, impossibilities, and unlikelihoods far beyond the truth), Rassendyll is a self-sacrificing hero who gives up love and throne for the sake of the true and legitimate king whose life he saved, and Flavia is a simpering, passive cipher who adores him. Rudolf V survives to reclaim his throne and his bride; I, a minor henchman, die ignominiously, slipping on the blood of my innocent victim; and Rupert of Hentzau stands alone on the pages as a glorious, reckless embodiment of adventure. Let me quote Rassendyll’s (entirely fictional) description of his last sight of Rupert Hentzau, and ask yourself what Rudolf Rassendyll—false king, cousin-killer, outmanoeuvred and trapped like a shop dummy on a meaningless throne—wished his life to have been.

  Leaning forward, he tossed his hair off his forehead and smiled, and said: “Au revoir, Rudolf Rassendyll!”

  Then, with his cheek streaming blood, but his lips laughing and his body swaying with ease and grace, he bowed to me . . . and rode away at a gallop.

  And I watched him go down the long avenue, riding as though he rode for his pleasure and singing as he went, for all there was that gash in his cheek.

  Once again he turned to wave his hand, and then the gloom of thickets swallowed him and he was lost from our sight. Thus he vanished—reckless and wary, graceful and graceless, handsome, debonair, vile, and unconquered. And I flung my sword passionately on the ground . . .

  I could almost find it in my heart to pity Rassendyll, you know.

  It only remains to tell what Hentzau and I did next. Well, we adventured. We roamed Europe for a year and more, fucking and fighting as we pleased; we parted when our wanderlust took us in different directions, and met again in new cities. I did not see him for three years once, when he fell hopelessly in love with a prima donna in the Imperial Opera of Warsaw. They were a well-matched pair in every way; she led him a merry dance until he finally lost her affections to the King of Bohemia. Nobody at all heard of him for a few months after that, and then he reappeared as though he had never been away, but with a few new lines around his eyes, and told me a South African hunter of his acquaintance was putting together a party for a somewhat unusual expedition and would I like to accompany him.

  So we have rolled on through the years, happy in each other’s company, not troubled at parting because we will doubtless meet again. It has been well over two decades now, and I am unquestionably becoming too old and grizzled for this life. And yet, like an idiot, I write this on the Orient Express bound for Constantinople, and for trouble.

  Once again, this is all Hentzau’s fault. He introduced me to a young man last year, the son of some Scottish lord, all air and fire and nerves, and the pair of us spent a highly satisfactory week in a hotel room giving him an education. In between bouts, we exchanged enough conversation to become rather fond of the youth, one Sandy Arbuthnot, before he headed off to seek further adventures. Evidently he found them, since he is currently held prisoner in some Cappadocian fortress. He managed to smuggle a letter out, which eventually reached Hentzau, and so we go east to a land neither of us knows, to rescue a pretty Scot with a death wish.

  It is, I may add, my sixtieth birthday today. Hentzau, still reading over my shoulder as he has been from the start, says he has no intention of allowing me to age any further; I cannot imagine I will have the opportunity if we carry on like this (and yes, Rupert, I know I always say that).

  Ah well. This is a ridiculous way for an ageing swordsman to go on, but one must help one’s companions in life, or what else is there? And it should, at least, be interesting.

  Jasper Detchard

  Constantinople or thereabouts

  19—

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I feel I ought to apologise to Anthony Hope, author of The Prisoner of Zenda. It’s one of my favourite (problematic favourite) Victorian pulp novels. I hugely enjoyed inverting his story and borrowing Rupert of Hentzau, one of the great charm-villains of all time, and I feel slightly bad for being so rude about his hero.

  That said, during the course of writing this book, I realised that Hope had given the ancient keep of Zenda a drawbridge that opened from both sides, causing me endless trouble, so let’s just say we’re even.

  Huge thanks to Chas Lovett, who spent ages delving into Munich geography to help me get one line right, and to Alexis Hall, who sorted out my swordfights like a maestro.

  For more stiff upper lips and skulduggery, try....

  Think of England

  by KJ Charles

  Lie back and think of England

  England, 1904. Two years ago, Captain Archie Curtis lost his friends, fingers, and future to a terrible military accident. Alone, purposeless and angry, Curtis is determined to discover if he and his comrades were the victims of fate, or of sabotage.

  Curtis’s search takes him to an isolated, ultra-modern country house, where he meets and instantly clashes with fellow guest Daniel da Silva. Effete, decadent, foreign, and all-too-obviously queer, the sophisticated poet is everything the straightforward British officer fears and distrusts.

  As events unfold, Curtis realizes that Daniel has his own secret intentions. And there’s something else they share—a mounting sexual tension that leaves Curtis reeling.

  As the house party’s elegant facade cracks to reveal treachery, blackmail and murder, Curtis finds himself needing clever, dark-eyed Daniel as he has never needed a man before...

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  About the Author

  KJ Charles is a RITA®-nominated writer and freelance editor. She lives in London with her husband, two kids, an out-of-control garden, and an increasingly murderous cat.

  KJ writes mostly romance, mostly queer, frequently historical, and usually with some fantasy or horror in there. She is represented by Courtney Miller-Callihan at Handspun Literary.

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  Copyright

  Published by KJC Books

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events,
or locales is entirely coincidental.

  THE HENCHMEN OF ZENDA

  Copyright © 2018 by KJ Charles

  Cover art: Simoné, dreamarian.com

  Layout: L.C. Chase, lcchase.com/design.htm

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the copyright owner, and where permitted by law. Reviewers may quote brief passages in a review.

  ISBN: 978-1-9997846-9-0

  Also available in paperback:

  ISBN: 978-1-912688-00-5

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