“Henry?”
“It’s me.”
The door opened a crack and my landlady peered out in her pajamas, yawning, blinking voleishly into the light. My spirits lifted, just a little, to be breathing the same air as her.
“You’re drenched. Where the hell have you been?”
“Never mind about that. I want to tell you how I feel.”
The hint of a smile. “And how do you feel, Henry?”
“I want to say that you’re really special.”
“I think you’re special, too. But it’s late.”
“Lunch tomorrow? My treat.”
She sounded bemused. “Fine. Sounds nice.”
“Fantastic,” I said as, pushing my luck just that crucial bit too far, I moved an inch closer to her. “I’d like to kiss you. But I’m rather damp.”
“Good night, Henry,” she said (not unkindly) before — and there’s really no getting around this — slamming the door in my face.
I stood there for a bit in the hope that she’d come back and offer to towel me down or something. But there was no such luck, and, getting tired of loitering and dripping all over the carpet, I had that hot shower and flopped into bed. It was past midnight and I was drifting off to sleep when I sat up with a start and began to wonder exactly when it was that the madness of my life had ceased to seem wondrous and bizarre and started instead to become a reality which I simply accepted with the same flint-faced fatalism as Jasper, Steerforth and all those other freaks and victims who had given themselves over, body and soul, to the Directorate.
After the latest bout of mawkish reminiscence from Mr. Lamb, clotted with glutinous sentiment and rendered practically unreadable by the torpidity of his prose, you are doubtless aching to return to the more palatable meat of our narrative. We can scarcely blame you for good judgment. Welcome back, and count yourself lucky that once again you find yourself in the hands of those who understand how to tell a story with verisimilitude and conviction.
As the storm screamed down the Mall and hurled itself against the walls of Clarence House, Arthur Windsor was receiving an unexpected education at the hands of Mr. Streater.
“Get your laughing gear round this,” the blond man said, brandishing his teapot. “Wouldn’t want you getting thirsty, chief.”
“Please don’t call me that.”
Streater poured the prince more tea. “When I meet a bloke I like to call him ‘chief.’ And I like you. So tough titty.”
Arthur’s brow wrinkled in distaste. “Tough what?”
“Arthur,” Streater said, allowing his impatience to show. “We haven’t got long. Your mother’s sent me to tell you a secret.”
“Secret? What secret?”
“It’s the secret, Arthur. The big one. You’ve been lied to your whole life. You haven’t been ready until tonight. But now a whole lot of shit’s about to make a whole lot more sense.”
Arthur took a jittery sip at his tea. He kept reminding himself that this was what his mother wanted (wasn’t that what Silverman had said?) and he had not disobeyed his mother since he was five or six years old and one of his nannies had found him in the great hall inking beards and moustaches onto portraits of his ancestors.
“Arthur?” Suddenly, Streater was close to him — uncomfortably close — near enough for the prince to smell whatever hung on the man’s breath, something cloying, sickly and too sweet.
“I’m sorry?”
“Thought we’d lost you there for a minute, chief.”
“My apologies. I have a regrettable having of wandering alone in the foothills of my thoughts.”
“Whatever.” The blond man clapped his hands and the old ballroom sank into darkness.
“Streater? What’s happening?”
The blond man stayed silent and invisible in the dark.
Gradually, Arthur realized that the darkness was not total. At the far end of the room there was a tiny flicker of light.
The prince moved toward it. To his surprise, as he drew closer, he realized that the light emanated from an old-fashioned oil lamp. Then — an even greater shock. There was someone else in the room. A middle-aged woman running to fat, folds of flesh coiled around her neck, her gray hair curled close to her scalp, a look of disapproval etched indelibly upon her face.
“Hello?” said the prince, determined to act (at least for the time being) as though her sudden materialization might possess some rational explanation. The woman gazed distantly ahead, and now that he was closer, Arthur saw that she seemed to ripple and shimmer, like a film projected onto heat haze. “Madam?” he said. “What are you doing here?”
Outside, the storm was getting worse — rain beating at the windows, wind screeching past the stone walls, trying to find egress — but the woman appeared oblivious to it all.
“Don’t you see the resemblance?” It was the blond man’s voice, maddeningly close.
“Streater?” said the prince. “Switch on the lights.”
“No can do.” He sound insufferably smug.
“You caused this.”
“A giggle in the dark.
“Streater? Who is this individual?”
“Oh, chief, don’t tell me you can’t recognize your own great-great-great- grandmother? Queen of England. Empress of India. Defender of the faith… Albert’s missus. Ring any bells?”
Arthur swallowed hard. His instinct for rationalism was shrinking to a pinprick, but still he struggled to accept the truth of what he saw before him. “How is this possible?”
“She’s an echo from the past, mate. Just a memory. Chillax. She can’t see us. And we can’t talk to her.”
“What is this?” Arthur said, his voice laced with fear and panic. “What’s happening?”
“This,” Streater hissed, “is 1857. The year the Indian Mutiny kicked off. Small wonder the old girl’s feeling a bit tender. Small wonder this was the year it made its move.”
“What made its move?”
There were three distinct knocks at the door.
Streater hushed him. “Watch and learn.”
The doors were flung open and a man — another stranger — strode into the room. Dressed every bit as anachronistically as the woman, he was not yet thirty, pleasant faced and athletic, his collar-length hair still boyishly tufty despite his efforts at lacquering it down. He shared the same quality of mirage and translucence as the woman, and Arthur could see that the stranger seemed half-asleep, aggravating his eyes by rubbing them, fiddling distractedly with his collar.
“This is the man who founded the Directorate,” Streater explained. “This is Mr. Dedlock.”
“Directorate?” Arthur said softly. “I’ve heard mother speak of them. Once, when she was in her cups-”
Streater cut him short. “Chief? Just go with the flow.”
The lady in the chair favored the new arrival with a frosty smile. “Mr. Dedlock. Thank you for coming so swiftly and at so unsociable an hour.”
“No more than my duty, ma’am.”
“What I have to tell you must go no further. Do you understand me? This is to remain a private matter, purely between the two of us. You are here in your capacity as my etheric advisor and I trust that you will honor the sanctity of that position.”