"Ah… well, that brings us to the reason for the visit, Nigel. We didn't know your situation here in any detail, you see, except that you and Alleyne had landed on your feet as might be expected of Lorings, and His Majesty is deeply grateful for your saving his life-"
"Several times," Robert Knolles put in, unabashed when his father gave him a quelling glance. " And setting up the contacts that put him on the throne instead of his late unlamented stepmother when the time came."
" Late unlamented?" Loring asked, with an arched brow.
The elder Knolles continued: "She shuffled off eight months ago, from the effects of house arrest, idleness, curdled venom and lashings of strong drink. And His Majesty has asked me to inform you that it pleases him to offer you… well, he's made you an earl, you see. Earl of Bristol. With the estates appertaining thereunto, as well as your family land at Tilford, of course."
Nigel felt his jaw drop, and closed it with an effort of will. "Good God."
"He'd like you to return; earnestly requests it, in fact, and sent a ship we really can't spare all the way here to fetch you. Confidentially, he'd also like you to have min isterial rank with a roving commission, and both Houses concur."
"Father is one of the top nobs of the Tories, these days," Robert added. "And note that His Majesty hasn't given you a continental title, godfather, nor the proverbial 'estate in France.' Good English farms, fully tenanted."
At Nigel's raised brow, the young man amplified: "In England 'an estate in France' is a synonym for 'dubious gift,' or 'white elephant,' these days, sir-land that gives you a position in society and then prevents you from keeping it up. Father repented and came over to the side of the righteous, but rather late."
Knolles snorted. "Nonsense. The land at Azay is first rate; better climate than anywhere in England proper, and there are the vineyards-"
"Bushy, overgrown vineyards, half-dead…"
"-and the chateau-"
"The ruins of the chateau."
"Ruins? Nonsense; it never really caught on fire… not completely… and half the roof was still intact. It just… well, it needed a spot of work."
"And still does, I rather think, Father… work for my grandchildren."
"Silence, whelp. In any case, Nigel, I've got a belt, a sword and an ermine cloak for you, and a bally great parchment to go with it. Thing's festooned with enough seals and ribbons for a publican's license, too."
Nigel began to laugh, quietly at first, then wholeheartedly. Mopping at an eye with his napkin, he replied, "I'm truly sorry to disappoint King William, and you, Tony, but my life is here now. Not to mention my wife, and my daughters; and my son, and his children-a grand son and two granddaughters, so far. This is where we'll leave our bones. Give His Majesty my regrets and my best wishes for a long and prosperous reign. I thought the lad would turn out well."
He turned his head to meet Juniper's bright green eyes for an instant; they crinkled in the face that loved his line for line, and their hands linked fingers beneath the covering tablecloth.
"Not tempted by the prospect of being Countess Juniper, my dear?"
"Chief's bad enough. I'd scandalize your William's court, that's beyond doubting."
Knolles sighed. "I thought that was the reply I'd get, as soon as I walked in. Your stepson warned me; we met outside the gates. Remarkable young fellow, even on brief acquaintance. Usually one feels an impulse to kick a man with good looks of that order, but I didn't this time."
"Remarkable young scamp," Juniper said. "He didn't warn us you were here, the creature."
Knolles hesitated. "There is one thing more, Nigel. And Lady Juniper. You haven't had much contact with the Atlantic coast of North America, have you?"
"None at all; we know more about East Asia, or even the Indian Ocean countries," Juniper said. "Scarcely even rumors from east of the Mississippi." She winced slightly. "Just enough to know that it was. .. very bad there. As bad as California, or what Nigel tells of Europe, or mainland Britain."
Knolles nodded somberly. Nobody who had lived through the Change as an adult would ever be quite free of those memories. It had been worst of all in the hyper-developed zones.
"On the American mainland, yes, it was very bad. But some islands did much better. Prince Edward Island best of all; rather as the Isle of Wight or Orkney did in relation to Britain. After the, ah, after King William came to the throne, they established close ties with the old coun try-in fact, they've MPs in Parliament at Winchester now, and seats in the Lords."
"William isn't repeating George the Third's mistakes, eh?" Nigel said, savoring the joke.
Though it wasn't like Anthony Knolles to waffle around a subject. The other Englishman cleared his throat.
"Among the places they've landed… or tried to… is Nantucket."
He shot a glance at them from under shaggy brows to see if the name of the island off southern New England meant anything to them. They both looked back soberly.
"Then the rumors were true?" Juniper asked softly. "I've talked to those who were listening or watching the news services, right at the time of the Change. To some who were listening while they flew a plane over moun tains, sure! The reports were of something extraordinary going on there on Nantucket, just before…"
All three nodded. The flash of light that wasn't really light-even the blind had seen it-and the intolerable spike of pain felt by every creature on Earth advanced enough to have a spinal cord. And then the world was Changed; explosives no longer exploded, electricity wouldn't flow in metal wires, combustion engines si lently died, nuclear reactors sat and glowed below their meltdown temperatures until the isotopes decayed and became inert. A civilization built on high-energy tech nologies writhed and died as well. There had been little time then for anything but sheer survival, but in all the years since no slightest hint had been found to account for the why of it.
Eventually a few scientists had measured the effects with what crude equipment could be cobbled together within the new limits; all they'd found was how eerily the Change was tailored, to make a generator impossible but leave nerves functioning as they always had. .. and that beyond the immediate vicinity of Earth everything seemed to be proceeding as normal. You couldn't even prove that the Change hadn't happened before. Prior to gunpowder, who would have known? Most of human ity put it down to the will of God, or gods, or the devil; a stubborn minority held out for inscrutably powerful aliens from outer space or another dimension.
"A dome of lights miles high and miles across, and the water boiling around the edge of it, yes," Knolles said in a flat matter-of fact tone. "Multicolored lights, crawling over it like lightning… that's quite definite. We've collected hundreds of testimonies, and found some eyewitness records written down right afterwards, even a photograph or two. I do not believe it is a coin cidence such a thing happened just seconds before the Change."
"So what did they find there, your Bluenose explorers?" Juniper asked.
Nigel could feel the pulse beat faster in the hand he held, and his own matching it. This wasn't just a rumor, that was proof… though of what, only the Powers could say.
Juniper went on: "Not the dome of lights, still there-that we would have heard of. They'd have heard of that in Tibet, sure!"
Knolles turned to his son. The young officer was in the red coated dress uniform into which he'd changed when he shed his armor, but he'd also brought a small rectan gular box pierced with holes from the diplomatic party's baggage. Nigel had assumed it was a gift of some sort.
Now he brought it up from the floor, and folded back the covers around it. A soft crooo-cruuuu came from it, and behind wire mesh strutted a bird, cocking its head at the light and looking with interest at a piece of bread nearby.
Juniper's breath was the first to catch. She'd been a student of the wilds all her life, long before the Change, and had read widely then and since about the life of other lands and times.