Whoops. “I, uh, was wondering. That is. What happened?”
“She died,” he said tersely. He glanced at the floor, then raised his brandy glass.
Miriam’s vision blurred. “I’m sorry.”
“Why? It’s not your fault.” After a long moment, he shrugged. “You had your fellow Roland. It’s not so different.”
“What—” she swallowed “—happened to her?” How long ago was it? she wondered. Sometimes she thought she’d come to terms with Roland’s death, but at other times it still felt like yesterday.
“Twenty years ago. Back then I had prospects.” He raised an eyebrow as if considering his next words. “Some would say, I threw them away. The movement—well.”
“The movement?”
“I was sent to college, by my uncle—my father was dead, you know how it goes—to study for the bar. They’d relaxed the requirements, so dissenters, freethinkers, even atheists, all were allowed to affirm and practice. His majesty’s father was rather less narrow than John Frederick, I don’t know whether that means anything to you. But anyway…I had some free time, as young students with a modest stipend do, and I had some free thoughts, and I became involved with the league. We had handbills to write and print and distribute, and a clear grievance to bring before their lordships in hope of redress, and we were optimistic, I think. We thought we might have a future.”
“The league? You had some kind of political demands?” Miriam racked her brains. She’d run across mention of the league—league of what had never been clear—in the samizdat history books he’d loaned her, but only briefly, right at the end, as some sort of hopeful coda to the authorial present.
“Yes.” He looked distant. “Little things like a universal franchise, regardless of property qualifications and religion and marital status. Some of the committee wanted women to vote, too—but that was thought too extreme for a first step. And we wanted a free press, public decency and the laws of libel permitting.”
“Uh.” She closed her mouth. “But you were…”
The frown turned into a wry smile. “I was a young hothead. Or easily led. I met Annie first at a public meeting, and then renewed her acquaintance at the People’s Voice where she was laying type. She was the printer’s daughter, and neither he nor my uncle approved of our liaison. But once I received my letters and acquired a clerk’s post, I could afford to support her, which made her father come round, and my uncle just muttered darkly about writing me out of his will for a while, and stopped doing even that after the wedding. So we had a good four years together, and she insisted on laying type even when the two boys came along, and I wrote for the sheets—anonymously, I must add—and we were very happy. Until it all ended.”
Miriam raised her glass for another sip. Somehow the contents had evaporated. “Here, let me refill that,” she said, taking Erasmus’s glass. She stood up and walked past him to get to the bar, wobbling slightly as the carriage jolted across a set of points. “What went wrong?”
“In nineteen eighty-six, on November the fourteenth, six fine fellows from the northeast provinces traveled to the royal palace in Savannah. There had been a huge march the week before in New London, and it had gone off smoothly, the petition of a million names being presented to the black rod—but the king himself was not in residence, being emphysemic. That winter came harsh and early, so he’d decamped south to Georgia. It was his habit to go for long drives in the country, to take the air. Well, the level of expectation surrounding the petition was high, and rumors were swirling like smoke: that the king had read the petition and would agree to the introduction of a bill, that the king had read the petition and threatened to bring home the army, that the king had this and the king had that. All nonsense, of course. The king was on vacation and he refused to deal with matters of state that were anything less than an emergency. Or so I learned later. Back then, I was looking for a progressive practice that was willing to take on a junior partner, and Annie was expecting again.”
Miriam finished pouring and put the stopper back in the decanter. She passed a glass back to him: “So what happened?”
“Those six fine gentlemen were a little impatient. They’d formed a ring, and they’d convinced themselves that the king was a vicious tyrant who would like nothing more than to dream up new ways to torment the workers. You know, I think—judging by your own history books—how it goes. The mainstream movement spawns tributaries, some of which harbor currents that flow fast and deep. The Black Fist Freedom Guard, as they called themselves, followed the king in a pair of fast motor carriages until they learned his habitual routes. Then they assassinated him, along with the queen, and one of his two daughters, by means of a petard.”
“They what?” Miriam sat down hard. “That’s crazy!”
“Yes, it was.” Erasmus nodded, calmly enough. “George Frederick himself pulled his dying father from the wreckage. He was already something of a reactionary, but not, I think, an irrational one—until the Black Fist murdered his parents.”
“But weren’t there guards, or something?” Miriam shook her head. What about the secret service? she wondered. If someone tried a stunt like that on a U.S. president it just wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t be allowed to work. Numerous whack-jobs had tried to kill Clinton when he was in office: a number had threatened or actually tried to off the current president. Nobody had gotten close to a president of the United States since nineteen eighty-six. “Didn’t he have any security?”
“Oh yes, he had security. He was secure in the knowledge that he was the king-emperor, much beloved by the majority of his subjects. Does that surprise you? John Frederick goes nowhere without half a company of guards and a swarm of Polis agents, but his father relied on two loyal constables with pistols. They were injured in the attack, incidentally: one of them died later.”
He took a deep, shuddering breath, then another sip of the brandy. “The day after the assassination, a state of emergency was declared. Demonstrations ensued. On Black Monday, the seventeenth, a column of demonstrators marching towards the royal complex on Manhattan Island were met by dragoons armed with heavy steam repeaters. More than three hundred were killed, mostly in the stampede. We were…there, but on the outskirts, Annie and I. We had the boys to think of. We obviously didn’t think hard enough. The next day, they arrested me. My trial before the tribunal lasted eighteen minutes, by the clock on the courtroom wall. The man before me they sentenced to hang for being caught distributing our news sheet, but I was lucky. All they knew was that I’d been away from my workplace during the massacre, and I’d been limping when I got back. The evidence was merely circumstantial, and so was the sentence they gave me: twelve years in the camps.”
He took a gulp of the brandy and swallowed, spluttering for a moment. “Annie wasn’t so lucky,” he added.
“What? They hanged her?” Miriam leaned toward him, aghast.
“No.” He smiled sadly. “They only gave her two years in a women’s camp. I don’t know if you know what that was like…no? Alright. It was hard enough for the men. Annie died—” he stared into his glass “—in childbed.”
“I don’t understand—”
“Use your imagination,” Erasmus snapped. “What do you think the guards were like?”
“Oh god.” Miriam swallowed. “I’m so sorry.”
“The boys went to a state orphanage,” Erasmus added. “In Australia.”
“Enough.” She held up a hand: “I’m sorry I asked!”
The fragile silence stretched out. “I’m not,” Erasmus said quietly. “It was just a little bit odd to talk about it. After so long.”