Three Kings Read online

  Most satisfactory.

  And then, a distant crow heard the peal of bells.

  Great crowds gathered around a white cathedral whose dome would have swallowed Belfast City Hall. Security guards pushed back a forest of microphones at the main entrance, but they couldn’t stop Badb drifting down to listen.

  Annoyingly, the city had put in those spikes intended to discourage pigeons from landing. But the crow impaled itself willingly and would live long enough to see what came next. She left it to suffer, taking the mind of another bird and then another, circling, circling until she saw what she was looking for: weakness.

  A guard absent from his post, mobile phone in hand.

  She landed right behind him.

  ‘Not now, babe,’ he said in a thick accent. He knew nobody could hear him. The crowd was too loud, the reporters too many. ‘What? Absolutely no! They find out I’m Serbian instead of Croat, what then? Home on first plane, that’s what. Marriage? Ha! They’ll read my war record. It will be prison not Belgrade where they send me.’

  Fascinating.

  ‘Of course, I am changed, babe, but only you know. Only you. What?’ He laughed. ‘Crazy bitch. I see you tonight.’

  Behind him, the doors of the cathedral swung open. A new king emerged and at his back a wealth of other important people. So handy to have them all gathered here in one place. Leaders she would follow with crows, listening to their every word for hidden cracks in this magnificent city.

  It was a raw day with lowering clouds and a cold rain that had ambitions of becoming sleet. Noel tightened Jasper’s scarf, pulled on his gloves and opened his umbrella. ‘Can we wait and watch the King leave?’ Jasper asked. ‘It’s kind of like when I play Dragon Age with all the kings and stuff. I mean, to see one for real is kind of cool.’

  Noel scanned the loitering crowd and realized that a lot of people apparently shared his son’s fascination with royalty. And if he was honest, he felt it too. Not for any fanciful sense of brave kings and beautiful princesses but because of what it represented: Magna Carta and Trafalgar and the Battle of Britain and fighting on the beaches. It was that sense of history, permanence and continuity embodied in an institution to which Noel had sworn his allegiance.

  He hugged his son. ‘Okay, we’ll wait a bit.’

  At the bottom of the stone steps the press and paparazzi lay in wait. Camera lenses stared up at him like dead eyes. There was a growing murmur as Henry and his fiancée emerged, the young woman walking a few steps behind her husband-to-be, which left Noel wondering about that relationship.

  ‘Answer a few questions, Your Majesty?’ a reporter yelled from the crowd.

  ‘Certainly.’

  Noel noted that the equerry, a man in his fifties with the upright stance of a former military officer, blanched a bit at the response from Henry.

  ‘So what are your hopes for your reign, sir?’

  ‘I’d like to bring England back to being England again,’ Henry responded.

  ‘What does that mean? Exactly, sir’?’ another called.

  ‘Well, take London. In my youth you heard English spoken everywhere. Now you’d be lucky to hear your own language in amongst all the other gabble.’

  Noel thought the equerry was going to have a stroke. The rapid fire of digital cameras was like claws clicking on ice.

  ‘So you don’t like the fact that London has become a multilingual, multicultural and multi-ethnic city?’ came a third voice out of the crowd.

  ‘It’s all well and good until it isn’t. If we lose sight of who we are we’ll be done for.’

  ‘Does that mean white and European, sir?’

  Henry gazed down his nose at the questioner, a tall, elegant black man. ‘It means Anglo-Saxon. Make of that what you will.’

  ‘Damn right, I will,’ the journalist muttered.

  Another voice rose out of the crowd. ‘The Pakis are one thing, sir, but what about those freaks down in the East End?’ Noel searched the crowd for the speaker and also for any sign that a riot was about to break out. It proved to be an older white man with a bulging belly hanging over his belt. ‘They’re driving down property values.’

  ‘It is a problem, but now there is that thing up on the moon.’ Henry waved vaguely skyward. ‘Perhaps they can be encouraged to emigrate. They’ll no doubt be happier among their own kind. Better for all concerned if they leave.’

  There were more cheers than Noel liked to hear, and only a few muttered objections, but no one booed. We are so British, Noel thought. Henry was king despite the ignorant words that had just fallen from his mouth and no one was going to be overtly rude. It was at this point that Henry’s people wisely decided to rush him to the waiting car.

  People began to disperse. Noel stood watching the motorcade making its way back towards Buckingham Palace and wondered if maybe a removal to his bolt-hole in Paris or even the one in Vienna was called for. Things were likely to become tense in the city after Henry’s performance. But if he left for a foreign capital it might add to the perception that he was merely a kidnapper and not a devoted father.

  He also had a performance to prepare and getting sued for cancelling it was not going to aid his effort to seem like a fit parent. It was ironic that he had to keep working. His company Ace in Hand back in New York continued generating income despite him no longer doing the day-to-day management, and he was technically a millionaire because of his share of the money after that ill-fated poker game in Chicago, but he had mentally set those funds aside for Jasper; for his education and to set him up in life.

  Jasper tugged at his jacket. ‘Dad?’

  He looked down. ‘Hmmm?’

  ‘Does this mean people don’t like any wild cards? I mean, I’m an ace, but if they don’t like jokers does that mean they don’t like me too?’

  You’re far too smart for me to sugar-coat this, Noel thought as he gazed down at his son. ‘We have it easier because people don’t know we’re wild cards, but yes, a lot of people don’t like us.’

  ‘That’s why you don’t like me to …’ Jasper allowed some sunlight to briefly become a physical golden thread in his hand then quickly released it.

  Noel put an arm around Jasper’s shoulders and pulled him tight against his side. ‘Precisely.’

  The weather was still shite and Glory was still dead.

  Constance plugged the kettle in and started the ritual she and Bobbin had begun decades earlier. Every morning they would get in early – long before their employees – drink tea and share a post-breakfast pastry. Breakfast they ate out. Cooking was forbidden in the atelier. The smell alone ruled it out. No one wanted to buy expensive clothes in a place that smelled of eggs, sausage, beans and bacon.

  Normally, they would chat about what was happening with the studio. Constance would tell Bobbin about the designs she’d been working on and how she was planning on fabricating them. Then Bobbin would look dismayed as he mentally ran through the cost of materials.

  But today they had the telly on instead and couldn’t stop watching reports of Queen Margaret’s death. It hardly seemed possible to Constance. Losing two people she loved in such a short time was horrid. She had always been inclined to get angry rather than cry. And today she was livid.

  Footage of Henry, that bastard, came on and he was saying things about jokers no decent person would, except he’d wrapped it up in that royal verbal deceit. The things he said on the steps of St Paul’s were all too clear for anyone paying attention. She may have clothed his mother, but Constance was damned if she’d ever put so much as a scrap of fabric on his back.

  And just as her indignation rose even higher, a vox pop interview began, with the reporter inquiring what their reaction was to what Henry had been saying.

  ‘The Pakis are one thing,’ said a stout fellow with a florid complexion. He wore a cap and an Army-green zippered jacket. ‘But those joker freaks down in East End? The King is right, send ’em to the moon.’

  She swore at the telly, and t
hen there were cool fingers on her wrist. Bobbin.

  ‘This is only going to make you angrier,’ he said, gently tugging her into her chair. ‘You should stop watching.’

  She hadn’t even known she’d stood up. Henry was talking about her people, for the love of God.

  ‘Why are you so upset?’ he asked. ‘It isn’t as if you’ll ever have to deal with him.’

  ‘You know very well I made clothes for the Queen,’ Constance said, pulling her arm away. ‘Do you think that’s going to stop now?’

  Bobbin shrugged and took a sip of his tea. ‘Why would he come here? There are plenty of other tailors that cater just to men that he would probably prefer to use.’

  The reason Henry would come to her was part and parcel of what she hadn’t shared with Bobbin. Constance debated whether to tell him part of her secret, but decided against it. She’d kept the whole of it hidden for so long that she wasn’t even certain how to tell anyone.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. He gave her his funny lopsided smile that showed off his pretty teeth. ‘Tell me about your new sketch.’ He gestured at her drafting table.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep last night so I thought I’d do something to honour Glory,’ Constance said, punching the mute button on the remote. She wasn’t ready to let go of the news just yet. ‘Florals,’ she said with a smile. ‘Of course.’

  She lifted the protective tissue up off the sketch. A simple, but sweeping, dress was covered by bright geometric rectangles. These provided a background for stylized flowers. It felt both modern and as if it were an homage to the sixties, which was what it was.

  ‘It’s quite lovely,’ Bobbin said. He stepped closer, looking down at the sketch, and Constance got a whiff of his spicy cologne and the Pears soap he used. There was a hint of pipe tobacco and wintergreen mint, too. The combination was very Bobbin-like. She felt a little rush of happiness and calm.

  ‘I suppose you’re going to do a whole line based on Glory?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ she replied.

  ‘And we’re going to need to have a lot of new fabric made up.’ There was resignation in his voice.

  ‘Indeed. As always.’ This was a bit of old play-acting between them and it made her feel a bit better.

  ‘And it’s going to cost a fortune because your fabrics always do.’

  ‘You have the right of it.’

  Bobbin sighed. She knew he would work out a way to get the fabric made without bankrupting them and she would make sure they had designs people wanted to buy.

  But out of the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of a replay of Henry on the telly holding forth on the steps of St Paul’s.

  Bastard.

  Green Man sat at his desk staring at the array of newspapers, not really reading any of them. Every headline spoke of the same story, rendered in sombre lettering, and those that favoured a splash of colour in their logo had forgone it for a funeral black.

  Queen Margaret was dead.

  The spiteful comments of the new king, Henry, were there too, pushed to the corner but still on the front pages. A bad sign of things to come.

  Green Man wasn’t a fervent royalist but he’d always had respect for the Queen. Throughout the turbulence of the war, and the ups and downs of Britain’s fortunes in the years that followed, she had been there. A thread of continuity and a thing of stability. It was not unlike the feeling of when he’d first left home but been told his old room was still available. He hadn’t needed it, but it was comforting to know it was there. Now she was gone, the world seemed that bit less safe.

  A familiar knock at the door brought him back to the present. ‘Come in,’ he said.

  Wayfarer stepped inside, reliable as ever. Thank God he still had her! She’d been a young slip of a woman when she’d first started working for the Fists, but time had thickened her. Despite this, her skirts remained too short, her hair often changed colour, and she still insisted on wearing sunglasses at all times. No doubt this last detail was connected to her mutation, but she’d never volunteered the information, and he’d never asked. A person should be allowed a few secrets. God knows, I have them.

  Unlike him, however, she still had a youthful energy. A quiet spark of industry that he admired and wished he could reclaim.

  ‘Good morning.’

  ‘Is it?’ he replied, casting a glance towards the papers.

  ‘Sorry.’ She closed the door behind her. ‘What are the plans for today?’

  ‘No plans.’

  ‘I thought we were going to check in with the local cells.’

  That had been the plan but he didn’t feel up to it. It all seemed so pointless. All these years of fighting and what did he have to show for it apart from bloodied hands? Despite their best efforts, jokers were no closer to being accepted now than they had been forty years ago.

  The silence hung there for a while. He knew he should say something, perhaps give an order, but he couldn’t summon the energy for it.

  Wayfarer came a few steps further into the room. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I don’t know, first Glory, now Queen Margaret. It seems as if we’re losing all of the greats. And look at her replacement: the poster boy for Britain First.’

  ‘I’m not convinced we should have a monarchy at all,’ said Wayfarer, ‘but I’ve always liked Richard. It’s a shame we can’t give the crown to him instead.’

  ‘He’s too soft. In times like these we need a king with a spine.’

  ‘With respect, Richard isn’t soft. He’s just not an arsehole.’ Green Man scoffed but she carried on quickly before he could reply. ‘Besides, a gay man might be just what we need on the throne. He’ll understand persecution and social injustice better than Henry ever could.’

  ‘He’s not gay, he’s a married man.’

  It was Wayfarer’s turn to scoff. ‘Everyone knows he’s gay.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter either way. The crown doesn’t get passed on to the person with the most votes. It’ll go to the eldest as it always has.’

  ‘I think that’s a shame. We’re supposed to be living in a democracy.’

  He sighed. ‘A corrupt democracy. Our elected officials get worse every year. I remember when our leaders were people of character, not these limp-wristed, career-minded …’ he searched for a suitable insult to finish his sentence, ‘lawyers!’

  Wayfarer shook her head. ‘You can’t use “limp-wristed” like that. You sound homophobic.’

  He’d long since learned to trust her on these matters, but it still irked him. He used to consider himself an expert on the use of language, and now it seemed as if the rules on what was and was not appropriate were changing too fast for him to keep up. ‘You know what I mean,’ he said peevishly. ‘In the old days we had politicians with morals. The kind you could be proud of.’

  ‘Like Churchill?’

  ‘Yes, now he was a real Prime Minister.’

  ‘And a racist,’ she retorted, ‘and a killer who ran death camps.’

  Green Man nearly stood up, he was so surprised. ‘How dare you! Churchill was a hero.’ He was also the man who had charged Roger with the task of infiltrating the Twisted Fists in the first place. Roger had done so out of love for the great statesman and to secure his family’s future. Cruel fate had seen Churchill die while Roger was deep under cover, condemning him to a life as the Green Man.

  ‘Wait,’ said Wayfarer as she pulled out her phone. ‘Here are some things your hero said …’ She made only a few taps on the screen, suggesting that she had the quotes saved somewhere for an occasion just like this one. ‘“The Aryan stock is bound to triumph.” That’s not Hitler talking by the way, that’s Churchill.’

  ‘It’s hard for me to comment without context.’

  ‘He called Africans “savages”?’

  ‘Well,’ Green Man said weakly, ‘it was a different time back then.’

  One eyebrow appeared over the top of Wayfarer’s sunglasses. ‘And when he fought the Kurds, he said:
“I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas on uncivilized tribes”.’

  ‘He really said that?’

  ‘Yes. He said it would,’ she made air quotes with her free hand, ‘“spread a lively terror”. And you should hear what he said about the Palestinians—’

  Green Man raised a hand. ‘All right, I get the idea. Are you making a point with all of this?’

  ‘Yes.’ She slipped her phone away. ‘My point is that people get nostalgic about history. They forget what it was really like and it gets buried. All children learn is Churchill’s speech about fighting on the beaches and the fact he liked cigars.’

  ‘I see.’ Green Man had known Wayfarer long enough to know there was more going on. He waved a hand for her to continue.

  She sagged a little. ‘The truth is, I know this sort of thing riles you and I wanted to stir you up a bit.’

  ‘Consider your gambit a success. Now, will you tell me why?’

  ‘You’ve been quiet lately, and I had a feeling the news was going to hit you hard. I’m sorry, I really am, but you should be out there. The Fists need to see more of their leader, especially now that King Henry’s put jokers on his agenda.’ When he didn’t reply, she added: ‘If you don’t say something, someone else will.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  She looked away. ‘There’s been some talk.’

  ‘Let me guess, Seizer?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What’s the old fool done this time?’

  ‘He’s saying you’ve gone soft, that you’re harking back to the time of the Black Dog.’

  ‘Let him. It’s all hot air.’

  ‘But the younger Fists don’t know what it was really like under the Dog’s rule. They’re scared of what’s going to happen and Seizer’s going to stir them up even more. You know what he’s like once he has a crowd.’

  ‘Fine. I’ll show my face and put this nonsense to bed, but not now.’

  ‘This afternoon then?’

  He frowned. She’d been taking more and more liberties with him lately. ‘Don’t push me, Wayfarer.’