The Whispering Swarm (32 page)

As the girls told a story of one of their friends' older brothers who had been drunk in class, I recognised a pair of sparkling black eyes glaring through the big bay windows of my office, staring at me with an expression of weary discontent. They belonged to that sarcastic raven who made me feel so uneasy. Clearly he was hoping to be let in. When the girls had skipped back out to the gardens followed by Marge and Helena I went and slid open the sash window. ‘So what's up?' I asked, a little brusquely.

He strutted in and stood on my little Olympia electric, his claws rustling on the sheet of paper I had recently wound in. ‘Altruism?' he said.

‘Don't you start,' I said. ‘I'm doing my best.' I felt wretched. I hadn't heard a word from Moll since I left. I had been relieved at first but now I was worrying a little. Had he brought a message, perhaps? By the way he cast his eye about I suspected he was looking for food
.
‘I was under the impression that we had an agreement', he said, scoping our cat Tom who had just strolled up and was looking at him with mild curiosity. For Tom any animal who managed to make it into our apartment was by definition a guest, one of us, and so should be treated with politeness and generosity. That was Tom's point of view, anyway. Had he been able, Tom would have offered Sam a cup of tea and a plate of seedcake. Sam wasn't our first visitor to be accepted by him. There had been mice, a young rat, several blackbirds and wrens, not to mention an Old English sheepdog, which had been neurotic before it arrived and had lasted a week or two before we were forced to return him to his breeder. Sam nodded at Tom who left as soon as it became clear there was no food. ‘My hope was that you would take my advice for a bit. I imagined that you understood how useful I could be to you in guiding you between the worlds.…'

‘Not
my
understanding, Sam.' I resented this intrusion and his general presumption about our relationship. ‘I still plan to see Molly. I haven't
abandoned
her! I go back and forth between here and the Alsacia pretty much as I please. I have friends there, just as I have here. But my children have to come first.'

‘It's the Chevalier. He begs for your company. For dinner.' Sometimes I forgot how Sam seemed able to read my mind. ‘And that of your sweet lady Molly, of course. He was asking after you both. He suggests Friday or Saturday.'

‘It'll have to be Friday,' I said. ‘I promised to take the kids out on Saturday night.'

‘Gotcha,' said Sam, by way of understanding. ‘Good luck with the deadline.' He walked back through the window, hopped up onto the back of the sofa by the open window and then flew east on his strong wings. Was that him cawing into the early autumn air? Announcing his credentials to his fellows? Or mocking them?

When later I asked Moll if she was familiar with Sam, she gave an evasive answer. She seemed happy to see me. She didn't ask me to stay the night.

I had still not told Helena about Molly. Did it matter so long as Helena believed the ‘retreat' had made me a better person? There seemed no point. Especially if I
was
a better person. Everybody won. I planned to make trips to the Sanctuary on a fairly regular basis. And if Molly wasn't prepared to accept the arrangement I proposed, so much for that. I would still go. I had even wondered about taking my kids there. The girls expressed cautious agreement but Helena wouldn't let me, even though she didn't believe the place existed. She knew my ‘retreat' had to be fairly close. She had ruled out Kings Hall and decided I had been staying at the Mill, a posh reconstructed windmill only a few miles away, in Tufnell Hill where our drummer Tubby Ollis lived permanently. I could cycle the distance easily. Helena identified it with a delusion I controlled most of the time. She had decided I visited some posh loony bin like the Priory but preferred to call the mysterious place a ‘writer's retreat'. That's what she told the neighbours. Knowing I could always find relief at Alsacia from the Whispering Swarm made it considerably easier to bear. Easier to work, too. I could anticipate visiting the Sanctuary, rest from the Swarm and, feeling restored, return to work. I could even go back briefly, as an experiment. Sam's invitation came at a great time!

So I told Helena I needed to go into retreat for a little while. And off I went!

I found it a huge relief to leave the Swarm outside those gates. I had scarcely realised how loud it was getting! Prince Rupert, ‘the Chevalier', proved a great host and that first dinner was wonderful, even though I wished Helena could be enjoying it too. There was no denying it. I loved them both. But meanwhile Molly was hugely pleased to see me! Apparently she held no grudge for my leaving.

The prince seemed to travel everywhere across Europe, Asia and the Caribbean. He had even been to East Africa. What he called ‘Far Egypt' or ‘Far India'. He had wonders to show from all these places. I didn't think he was lying. How he covered so much distance baffled me. As on most other subjects, he never gave a satisfactory answer, always promising me a big revelation in the near future. He did it with every question. I had almost given up believing him. Debonair, tall and courtly as usual, he again seemed to have aged a little more than we had. He and Boye had grown older at about the same pace. And yet I had last seen him only a few weeks earlier. I murmured this to Moll as the prince led us downstairs to the public rooms, where our friends waited for us. She preferred not to hear me. I began to feel like some morbid bugger who was always going on about death.

All the prince's dinner guests, Moll, Duval, Jemmy Hind, Nick Nevison, the other ‘giant' in our company, the four musketeers, Prince Rupert and myself were soon sitting comfortably in the snug of The Swan With Two Necks, enjoying shants of the best porter in the world. Mrs Juniper Toom, the publican's wife, brought us food. She was tickled, she said, at serving four of the tallest trenchermen in the civilised world. The cheerful, elegant prince rocked back on his chair, stroking the dog with one hand, running his fingers through his own curling, dark brown shoulder-length locks and fully at ease in our company. He travelled between Bavaria and France, between Venice, the ‘Near Indies' or ‘Far Egypt' and China. He had explored the American interior. He had met tribes of fully formed tiny men in ‘Far Egypt', living above the source of the Nile. A similar tribe had been found beside the Niagara River in America.

‘The Africans are the oldest created race,' he said, ‘yet wonderfully childlike and only three feet tall. The others, the Pukwudgie, did not come from America originally, but also from Africa. They had tribal memories of Adam and Eve. Some say they are our ancestors. Who would believe our antecedents were small and black!' If he invented some adventures I didn't care a bit. I might be listening to one of my favourite old fantasy writers telling a tall tale. He spoke of a thinking machine called the Grand Turk, which could play chess like a genius; of flying in a balloon to Mirenburg; of serving beyond the Mountains of the Moon in the army of Prester John, the great Christian emperor. Doing battle against the ten great pagan kings of the Congo.

I had the impression I was at table with Baron Munchausen himself!

‘Prester John lives even now?' I was delighted, astonished, disbelieving.

Prince Rupert laughed, pulling on his Van Dyke beard as if to test his own reality. ‘It depends on what you mean by “now”,' he said and told a story about encountering coiling monsters in a fog off the coast of Scotland, of tall sea caves and sleeping dragons. But long before Molly and I left to head back to our cosy little flat, he murmured to me, promising that he would talk to me again soon. ‘Moll tells us you're a very curious gentleman!' He winked. ‘Maybe now's the time to ask me those questions you had and discover if I have the answers.'

‘I'll take Your Grace up on that.' It was the nearest thing to a promise I'd had from him. I was surprised by this sudden offer. Was he truly ready with answers?

‘I was beginning to assume, sir, that your secrets, like those of the abbot, were not for general consumption. That you were putting me off, as kindly as you could.'

He understood this to be the sarcastic challenge it was not. He smiled up into my eyes. ‘There are no “kept secrets” here, lad. Just revelations for which you're not yet ready. What you call my “secrets” are our only currency, by which we and all we cherish survive. The means by which we maintain our pacts and treaties.'

‘You'll explain to me how you and I can meet here yet come from centuries apart?'

‘To be sure. I remember my promises. That's why I sent Sam to see you! An old friend has brought the remaining parts of my new astrological machine. Certain precise work had to be completed in the Amstelsdorp by the best Arab and Jewish craftsmen from Constantinople and Damascus. To specifications given them by myself and Dr Dee. The sage is over one hundred years of age, living in the Amsteli Palace, worshipping Bacchus as he once worshipped the great Gloriana.' He gestured. ‘No friend, I'd agree, to the Stuart cause. Architect of his mighty mistress's circle of intellectual paganism. No wonder the pope dubbed her The Great Sorceress.'

‘You knew Dr Dee, the alchemist?'

‘Nonbeliever though he be, we are good friends.' Prince Rupert rocked with reminiscent laughter. ‘He still lives, over there in the Low Countries! A healthy old man. Still investigating the natural world and communing with the supernatural! He claims he cannot die, for his soul is not his own to give up, but I'd say that's no more than a way he has of explaining his longevity.'

‘Well, I envy you his acquaintance, Your Grace.'

He grinned and sent his shant to Juniper for fresh ale. ‘Young as you are, I know you're a man of the world like me, a philosopher who lusts after knowledge as do I, needing to satisfy a curiosity never understood by most of these happy louts! We need you for your size and skills. The monks, however, have a great hope that you are the youth they have been waiting for, who will represent their cause when the final moment comes. They fear for all their treasures. Indeed their great Treasure. So many seek it who are careless of its metaphysical significance and could easily damage it.'

‘You know what it is, this Treasure?'

‘I believe I do. That Treasure was entrusted into their care many centuries ago when terror and blood flowed through London's streets like rain after a storm. I have heard the stories. Shameful days for Christian folk. I am not sure if our consciences have the strength to stand the burden. So our minds banish the memory. But the monks are creatures of great resilience of soul and physical courage. They'll reveal the nature of their Treasure when they're ready. Discretion is the mark of a true friend, not so Maur's spawn?' This was one of his nicknames for me. I had learned that St Maur was a lesser-known French saint whom it amused him to consider my father. Maurice was the name of his late brother. Moore-cocke was another Norman and Anglo-Saxon hybrid. ‘You'll keep a secret? Already, I'm told, the rumours spread like ripples in a pond. We must make more ripples, confuse the Lord Protector further. Happily we deal with men who would simplify the world to suit their own imaginings rather than expand their own imagination to take in the world's wonders! I intend to save the king, as our Moll has doubtless told you.'

‘She has not.' I glanced at her. She looked down. He seemed pleased by her discretion. He continued, smiling.

‘And my discoveries will ensure his safety until the people call for him again. Twelve days hence, we know, he will be escorted from Whitehall and led to the block by the Four Tall Men of Kent where his head will be struck from his body in an unholy act of regicide.
Save that it will not be Charles Stuart they slay!
The king will be aboard a waiting brigantine on his way to Holland and from there to France, protected by Duval and the Musketeers!'

It sounded a wonderful adventure. Like something by Dumas! I was immediately excited. I could have written the script myself. I could see the chagrin of the ‘Four Tall Men of Kent', whoever they were. I visualised the laughing triumph of the Cavaliers as they carried King Charles off up the river to the open sea while the thwarted redcoats gnashed their teeth and shook their fists. I told him what a tremendous escapade it sounded. He slapped his knee and roared his pleasure.

‘The instrument I have waited for all these years, without which the rest of my plan can scarce succeed, is with us at last, here in the Alsacia. That instrument is the finest of its kind—rivalled only by the great devices of ancient China and Greece. Oh, you'll marvel at my engines and my instruments, young sir! They are capable of the subtlest measurements and predictions. All made from honest observation and exploring of the Greater Heavens and beyond. My machine is the culmination of my own heavenly explorations!'

I said nothing to spoil the excitement of Prince Rupert, who rattled on with his usual enthusiasm. I did not expect too much. I had already seen the abbot's fantastic machine! I knew how simple most instruments of his day were.

When I was ready to go back to Ladbroke Grove, Prince Rupert bowed very low to us. I believe I detected something in his manner towards Moll and wondered again if he might be her ‘cavalier'. With elaborate French elegance he kissed Moll's hand, his brown eyes looking up from beneath pale lashes and causing her to blush. Duval turned to his friend, the gigantic Jemmy Hind, admonishing him to be at Moll's service. I joked about it when I said goodbye to her but for some reason she lost her temper with me. I suspected then that Duval, after all, was her mysterious cavalier. I hinted at it but she wouldn't say what was wrong. This was as bad as trying to deal with Helena in one of her moods.

The upper deck of the Number 15 bus was deserted when I boarded. For some reason, I realised, I was close to crying. What was in me which made women behave the same?