He had no idea how he had ended up in bed, no recollection of staggering along the corridor, of peeling off his clothes and falling onto the mattress, no memory at all, in fact, since he was last in the ballroom, taking tea with Mr. Streater.
Streater. If the prince was certain of just one thing then it was this: he needed to see that man again. Only Streater would understand. Only Streater could make the world tolerable again. Only Streater could ease the craving, the black desire, the burning need.
The extremities of his body tingling with pins and needles, the prince swung himself out of bed and wrapped himself in his dressing gown. Every noise seemed too loud, every light intolerably bright. He used the telephone by his bed to make two calls — the first to Mr. Silverman, the second to his wife. Both, he was told, were unavailable.
In the end the prince had to wake an underbutler named Peter Thorogood to ask the only question which seemed to matter to him anymore.
“Where is Mr. Streater?”
Although Peter Thorogood thought that the prince appeared out of sorts, he politely pretended not to notice and simply directed him to the room which Streater had commandeered upon his arrival at Clarence House.
However, once the prince had left (Arthur was adamant that he did not wish to be escorted), Peter Thorogood telephoned his superior, a butler called Gilbert Copplestone, to inform him that the master was acting erratically, that his speech was garbled and his gait had become eccentric. Copplestone conveyed these fears to the head of the household, Mr. Hamish Turberville, who then telephoned the prince’s permanent secretary, Galloway Pratt, who called Kingsley Stratton, his contact at the palace, who spoke to his lover, a lady-in-waiting named Eloise Clow. Four hours later, the Queen herself had heard the news about the behavior of her only son. The message which she sent back was alarmingly simple.
Everything is proceeding according to plan.
As Arthur weaved his way down the corridors of Clarence House, he saw what had descended outside — a thick fog, a pea-souper — and it is a measure of his increasing instability that he pondered at length whether the weather was real or a trick of his mind.
It turned out that Mr. Streater was staying in an unusually unassuming wing of the house, halfway down a corridor of single rooms traditionally designated as quarters for chauffeurs and scullery staff. Exhaling asthmatically with relief, Arthur knocked at the door and waited.
When the sharp-faced man opened up, he was fully dressed and beaming. “All right, chief?”
“Let me in.”
Streater stepped back and watched the heir to the throne totter inside. The room was almost monastic — bare white walls, cheap furniture, a single bed with its duvet rumpled and distressed. There were no books, keepsakes or mementoes, nothing to suggest any life beyond the palace, with just one exception — a framed photograph of a young woman, a pretty brunette in skinny jeans.
Arthur all but tumbled onto the bed. “You know what I want.”
Legs splayed, immobile but somehow still swaggering, Streater sat opposite on the only chair in the room. “Do I though, chief? Do I really?”
“Is it true what you told me? About the deal? About my family?”
“Come on, you gotta know the answer to that.”
“So Leviathan is real? The war… I’m a part of it?”
“Chief, chief, chief. I think we both know that’s not why you’re really here.”
Windsor blinked vaguely, as though he’d forgotten what he was about to say.
“Spit it out,” Streater said. “Tell us what you’ve come for.”
“You know what I want.”
“Maybe I do, chief. Maybe I do. But perhaps I’d just like to hear you say it.”
The prince’s Adam’s apple yo-yoed in desperation. He felt salt in his mouth, the panicky taste of sweat. “I was wondering…”
“Yeah?”
Arthur’s eyes were pleading. “I was wondering if you happened to have any more tea?”
Streater laughed. “Tea?”
The prince ventured one of his unconvincing smiles. “Yes, please.”
Mr. Streater shook his head in mock sorrow. “Oh, Arthur. You’ve got it bad, haven’t you, old son? But since you asked so nicely…” He reached into the holdall by his feet and pulled out a hypodermic loaded with pink fluid.
“For God’s sake,” the prince muttered, “now’s not the time to be fooling around with that stuff. I need tea.”
Streater cocked an eyebrow.
“What is that muck you put in your veins anyway?”
Mr. Streater did not smile. He seemed more serious than Arthur had ever seen him before. “The name of the drug is ampersand.”
“Ampersand? I’ve never heard of it.”
“Ampersand is my mother.” Streater spoke slowly, intoning every word, as though this was something sacred to him. “Ampersand is my father. Ampersand is my lover, my life. Ampersand, Your very Royal Highness, is the future.”
Arthur moaned. “Please…”
Streater sat down on the bed and began to roll up the prince’s sleeve.
“What are you doing?” Windsor was too enfeebled to move, too broken and pathetic to offer the least resistance.
“I’m giving you what you want, chief. Giving you what you need.”
“Explain yourself.”
“Surely you’ve worked it out by now? It’s in the tea. It’s always been in the tea.”
“Streater?”
“You’ve been taking ampersand from the day we met.” The blond man was slapping the inside of the prince’s arm, searching for a vein, brandishing his needle. “You’re one of us now.”
After that, His Royal Highness Prince Arthur Aelfric Vortigern Windsor did not speak again but lay back, gave in and let the sharp-featured man do it to him.
When the thing was over, he wept with gratitude, joy and a terrible sense of submission. He kissed the hands of Mr. Streater, he licked his palms and sucked his fingers. He made awful promises and horrid vows. He bartered his soul for another cup of tea.
Chapter 17
I stepped out of the car at the furthest end of Downing Street to find a world fallen into darkness. In open defiance of the TV’s predictions of clear skies and moonlight, an impenetrably dense, freakishly pervasive fog had descended upon the whole of London.
Fog was everywhere. The city was steeped in it — thicker than smoke, saturating clothes, sinking insidiously into lungs. It was as though we had been dragged half a dozen generations to the era of the gas lamp and the hansom cab, the ancient queen and the advent of the war.
I was struck by the thought that perhaps such an age was not so far away as it seemed, that it was only the short lives of human beings which gave the illusion of distance. Perhaps, from some greater vantage point, the span between the age of Victoria and our own would appear no more than a handful of seconds, a few spasms of the little hand around the clock.
The whole of Whitehall had been sealed off and the most famous street in England was crowded with the sounds and sights of war. Arc lights blazed impotently against fog banks. Men in uniform swarmed around an armor-plated vehicle which had been backed close to the door of Number Ten and there was everywhere the glint of gunmetal, the growl of orders, the dull jangle of weaponry. These were preparations for disaster, it seemed to me. This was insurance against catastrophe.