none has ever succeeded.” He looked up at the grinning statues. “Gloriana falls-and Albion falls back to this-or worse-inturned, cynical, greedy, unjust and weak-we should become small again and we should rot. Arabia wishes to preserve what we have gained, there’s no question of it-but Arabia would rule Albion, and thus disaster would come, inevitably. Arabia is too intractable, too proud, too masculine…. We survive through the Queen, her character, her very sex. She fills our people with her own idealism, with a sense of all that is best in Albion. Indeed, she infects the world. But as some men would drag the sun from the heavens so that it might be theirs alone, so do some who love Gloriana most see her as the fulfillment of their private desires: unable to see that Albion created her as much as she has created this Albion, and that if they destroy the root they destroy the blossom, too.”
“Is there no Prince, I wonder,” said Ingleborough, “in all the world, who would give himself to Albion so that he might then win Gloriana?”
“None we have met.” Montfallcon turned suddenly, thinking he had seen a tall figure moving behind the statues. He smiled at himself. “And no one who matches nobility of spirit with the means of comforting the Queen. By Xiom-barg! Enough have tried, Lisuarte. Soon, I think, she must reconcile herself.”
“I fear a reconciled Queen might also become a moody Queen-a careless Queen-for I have it in my mind that Albion and Gloriana’s circumstance are interdependent-that should she ever lose hope, then Albion’s hope, too, vanishes.” Ingleborough led Patch by the hand from the old Throne Room. Montfallcon hesitated for a moment before following them.
As they left there came a rustling behind the throne itself and, cautiously, the ragged, unkempt frame of the mad woman rose to stand with one hand upon the chair’s black arm, poised on tip-toe, alert in case they should return. Then she danced gracefully down the steps, curtseyed once to the empty throne, and drifted away into the shadows as mist might join smoke.
Jephraim Tallow, who had been following her, emerged, standing with hands on hips, cat on shoulder, to look about him. He had lost the mad woman.
“Well, Tom, she’s led us nowhere. I’d hoped for a pantry, at least. I think we’ve exhausted her possibilities as a guide and must find some other old inhabitants to show us more secrets.”
He stalked to where a narrow stair ran up the wall to a gallery. He climbed. He found a bell-shaped arch and went through, crossing a narrow bridge with a parapet higher than his head. Above was darkness. Below were echoes, perhaps the sound of water. He walked quickly, found more steps and then was opening a door which took him onto a little balcony, set into a tower, and he was in daylight. He shivered, glancing down once at the two figures far below in the garden, before he went inside again.
Oubacha Khan, son of the Lord of the Western Horde and ambassador from Tatary to the Court of Gloriana the First, clad in a long ponyskin coat that reached to his ankles, ponyskin boots that reached to his knees, and a cap of chain mail lined with wool, was walking the grey garden with the Lady Yashi Akuya, who, kimono-clad, was forced to take several little steps for every stride of his but, since she was secretly in love with the thin Tatar, she bore all discomfort (including the cold) with an eager smile. Tatary and Nipponia had long been traditional enemies, which was why the two found one another’s company so comforting at this alien Court.
Certain that they were not observed in their distant and forgotten garden, they spoke casually of the matters most frequently upon their minds.
“Last night it was the little ones again, and the swimming pool,” the Lady Yashi Akuya informed Oubacha Khan, “or so I had it from my girl.” (She had introduced a geisha to Gloriana’s seraglio and now the geisha sent regular reports.)
“Followed by some obscure activity involving toy sheep, as I understand it,” said the young Khan, fingering long moustaches and causing Lady Yashi Akuya to blush. He maintained his own spy, Maurentanian, to keep him informed not of Gloriana’s specific amusements (if amusements they were) but of her condition, of her state of mind and her state of health. Several nations pursued a theory of diplomacy based very closely on their own interpretations of Gloriana’s private misery.
“But without result, as usual,” added the Lady Yashi sympathetically. She suffered much as Gloriana suffered, but rather less intensely. Also, she was convinced that she would soon know the pleasures of orgasm, when Oubacha Khan at last decided to have his will with her.
“She remains frustrated.”
The Nipponian ambassadress made a small noise through her rounded lips.
“And no suggestion that either Poland or Arabia visited her secret apartments?”
“None. Though both were eager. Attempts were made. Notes were sent, and the like. But in the end Poland left, assured of a sister in the Queen, while Arabia consoled himself with a page or two and-this is a mere rumour- the Countess of Scaith.”
“He hoped the Countess would provide a way to Gloriana. We can reasonably guess that it was with this in mind that he broke a lifetime’s habit.” The Tatar ambassador uttered a frosty chuckle to disguise the jealousy he felt. Although he had absolutely no ambitions concerning the Queen, he had for two years entertained a passion for her closest friend and would have courted her long since, had he not, when leaving home, taken the vow of celibacy demanded of all Tatar nobles who went as emissaries to foreign lands.
“And yet,” said Lady Yashi Akuya enthusiastically, “both Arabia and Poland appear to have committed themselves even more closely to their alliance with Albion.”
The Tatar nodded. “It is a tribute to Gloriana’s innocence and Montfallcon’s guile. I had thought, by ensuring Lord Shahryar’s discovery of the truth concerning Montfallcon’s part in his nephew’s murder, that I had provided a substantial subject for contention, but evidently Arabian ambition is so great they would relinquish all honour if it meant one slender chance of winning the Queen.” He was disapproving now. “If such a thing had happened to a Tatar, vengeance would have been taken immediately, no matter what the political gains at stake.”
Extended lashes fluttered. “Honour is not dead,” she said, “in Nipponia, either.”
He put habitual prejudice behind him. “The Nippon Isles are a synonym for selflessness,” he told her generously. “Our two nations stand alone as upholders of the old values in a world where pacifism has become a creed in itself. I am all for peace, of course-but a proper peace, won by victorious arms, a well-deserved rest after manly conflict. Battle clears the air, decides the issues. All this diplomacy merely complicates, confuses and suppresses problems a decent war would bring immediately into the open. The victors would know what they had won and the vanquished would know what they had lost-and everyone would have a perfectly good idea of their position, until things became cloudy again. As it is we know that Arabia wants nothing more than to go to war with Tatary but Albion frustrates her, and that is why Arabia grows degenerate, because her energies are not naturally employed.”
They had reached the door which led into Lady Yashi Akuya’s quarters. “How refreshing it is,” she said, “to listen to such direct and healthy talk. Would you consider it self-indulgent if I invited you to talk with me so that I might listen a little longer to your thoughts?”
“Not at all,” replied the Khan. “I am flattered by your interest.”
She stepped aside to admit him to a room which was, like all her rooms, excessively black and white. “And you must tell me more about the Arabian murder.” She clapped her hands for her servants to come to take Oubacha Khan’s tawny coat. “Montfallcon did it, you say?”
“His creature.”
THE ELEVENTH CHAPTER
Within the narrow confines of a sedan chair carried by four none too healthy lackeys cursing and stumbling on rain-slippery cobbles, Captain Quire sat staring almost tenderly at Alys Finch, who sat with back straight, hands folded and knees together, in respectable stomacher, gown and petticoats, with a starched ruff like an aurora about her throat, emphasising her high, unnatural colour; she was as carefully costumed as her ex-swain, and as carefully trained by the demon who had mastered them both. His tone was approving: “How swiftly you rise in society, Alys. I shall soon be proud of you.”
