He would have fought, I know that. He would have fought tooth and nail to the end.
Sentimental nonsense. The old man had his wrinkled cock in his hand when they came for him. They cut him down mid-dribble, his body made unrecognizable, battered by a thousand boot-heels, stamped into the snow by an army of our commuters.
Even this, of course, was very much more than he deserved.
Abby and I woke with the dawn, too distraught and too scared to kid ourselves that we were going to get much sleep.
I managed a wan sort of smile. “Merry Christmas,” I said.
“Merry Christmas, Henry.”
We hugged, and I was clambering out of bed to get us some tea when Abbey reminded me that the power had gone. No tea, then. No heat, either, and the pair of us lost no time in wrapping ourselves in multiple shirts and jumpers, self-insulating in worn vests, old cardigans and favorite sweatshirts.
We had been up for a couple of hours, in which time we’d scraped together a meager breakfast, held one another tightly and swapped tender pledges of devotion, when there came a knock at the door — a sharp, brisk tap, all business.
I ran to open it. “Granddad?”
A stranger stood at the threshold. A man not much older than me, slim, blond and sharp featured, his hair cajoled into slick, brash spikes.
“You must be Henry Lamb,” he said.
“Who are you?” I asked, although I think by then I’d already guessed the answer.
“I’m Joe,” he said, sardonically extending his hand. “Joe Streater.”
You hoped that we had gone?
We were only resting. We were relaxing, taking a little downtime, stepping back to gain a better perspective on all that has been laid before us to date. It is of vital importance (Leviathan has always said so) to maintain an equal balance between leisure and our working lives. But now our lunch hour is over and we have returned to work with a revitalized sense of purpose and a determination to succeed that I think you will find to be steelier and more implacable than ever.
We thought it might be of interest to adumbrate something of what occupied Arthur Windsor whilst the execrable young Henry Lamb was barricaded into his flat in Tooting Bec, crying into his pillow and quivering in the arms of his landlady.
Details follow, and as ever, unflinching accuracy is guaranteed.
As the prince slept upon the floor of his palace, a small, gray cat trod softly through his dreams. He told Arthur the truth about the war, he told him about the innumerable clashes between Dedlock’s men and the House of Windsor — a secret history of the British Isles which had run beneath the surface of public life for more than one hundred and fifty years. He spoke of the Process, of Estella’s sacrifice and of the dark miracle of Tooting Bec. He spoke of the one who had been prepared to take Estella’s place, a boy groomed almost from birth to contain Leviathan and who now needed only to remember a simple formula, an incantation to activate the Process and close the ancient trap. And the small, gray cat spoke, too, of the prince’s part in it all, his responsibility to deliver the boy into the belly of the beast. If the boy is the bullet, said the cat, then you, Your Highness, you are the gun.
When Arthur opened his eyes again, he was at once aware that something had changed, that something had tipped and shifted in the balance of the world which meant that no day would ever seem quite the same ever again. As he rose, awkwardly and painfully, to his feet, something of what had happened came back to him and, with it, certain details of his peculiarly troubling dream. But the prince tried to shake it off, stretching, yawning, attempting to persuade his eyes to focus, forcing himself back into wakefulness.
He looked around for the cat, but if it had ever been there at all, it had long since vanished. Only then did he notice what was happening outside. Snow. Jet-black, ebony snow, hurtling toward the earth.
He felt a strong compulsion to go outside — to run, not walk — to stand and luxuriate in that snow, to roll in it and, gawping happily into the sky, catch flakes in his mouth. But something else, some quieter impulse, persuaded him to stay indoors. It cannot have been later than lunchtime, yet it already looked dark outside. The prince walked up to the windowpane and it seemed to him that there were figures moving in the unseasonal gloom and that he recognized many of their faces — staff, servants, even one or two that he might have been moved to call friends. They were standing in the snow, allowing it to land upon their clothes and settle onto their skin, and they were laughing, all of them, gazing upward toward the heavens, emitting loose peals of demented laughter.
Remembering more now of what had taken place, Arthur’s thoughts returned to the well-being of his wife and he hurried into his quarters. There she was, mercifully safe and sleeping as soundly as before, although the prince wondered if her slumber didn’t seem alarmingly deep. How can she not have been woken by the ruckus outside?
Gently, he pulled side the covers. Lovingly, he brushed his fingers against her face. “Laetitia?” he whispered. “Laetitia, it’s me.”
No reaction. Not a murmur or a flickering of the eyelashes or even (how grateful he would the prince have been to hear this) a tiny, indecorous snore.
“Laetitia?” The prince shook her, carefully at first, then with increasing vigor. “Laetitia!”
She was breathing, at least. Leaning closer, he could detect an unfamiliar smell on her breath, and as he arranged his wife upon the bed, tucking her in with almost maternal concern, he concluded with a guilty kind of sadness that she must have been drugged. In this, if in pitifully little else in his almost entirely useless life, Arthur Windsor was correct.
He picked up the telephone and dialed Mr. Silverman’s number. It rang for an eternity without reply. He slapped at the cradle then dialed down to the switchboard. Whoever picked it up said nothing.
“Hello?” said the prince.
There was a low burbling sound at the other end of the line which might almost have been a laugh.
“Who’s there? Speak up!”
The same sound again — wet and gurgling. “Good afternoon, sir. This is Beth speaking.”
“Beth? We’ve spoken before, haven’t we? Good God, that seems a lifetime ago now. Listen, I’m trying to get through to Mr. Silverman.”
“I’m afraid that will be quite impossible.” Her voice sounded distant, flat and almost robotically toneless.
‘Impossible? Why the devil will it be impossible?”
“The playing piece named Silverman has been removed from the board.”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
The girl called Beth seemed not to have heard the question. “Have you been outside yet? Into the snow? You really ought to, you know. It’s so pretty, sir. Like ashes from the sky.”
“Now listen here, young lady-” the prince began, but the woman interrupted him without a thought.
“It’s coming, sir,” she said. “You know that, don’t you? It’s almost here. And the time has come for you to pick a side.”
“I’ve chosen my side,” the prince said firmly.
Beth just laughed at this, that same moist chuckle, before there was a tutting click and the line went dead.
Suddenly, as though all the fight in him had been used up in his conversation, the prince felt overcome by great waves of nausea and exhaustion. Something inside of his spasmed once, twice, three times, each more urgent than the last. It was all he could do to stumble into the corridor, where he was copiously sick. This done, he wiped his mouth, retreated back into the bedroom and closed the door (just managing to bolt and lock it) before he collapsed onto the bed beside his wife and passed out.