“Only this morning? Well then, I probably need not execute anyone just yet—”
“Wait!” She held up a hand. “Brill was sorting things out for me. What are you going on about?”
“It was Lady d’Ost?” Olga’s anger faded. “She told me about your . . . arrangement. She left you here?”
“Yeah. But she was supposed to be back later in the day. Think she ran into trouble?”
“Possibly.” Olga walked over to the heavy oak sideboard that stood against one wall and opened a small valise to pull out a CB handset. “I’ll just check. One-two, one-two. Stefan, wer’ ist?” A burst of crackling hochsprache answered her. Miriam didn’t even try to follow the conversation, but after a minute’s back and forth Olga was content to shove the radio back in her bag. “My men will ask, when they finish walking the perimeter. It could be just one of those things. . . .” Olga shrugged, delicately. “But we cannot leave you here without a staff, especially once the servants work out who you are. At a minimum you need your own ladies-in-waiting—at least two of them, to supervise the servants and look to your needs. I am able to detach Lady Brilliana from other duties, so she can serve, again. . . . Then you need a lance of guards under a suitable officer, and a communications officer with a courier or two at his disposal. I’d be happier if we could add a doctor or at least a properly trained paramedic, a coachman and two grooms, and either a full kitchen staff or at least a poison-taster. The full household we can leave until later, this is an essential minimum—”
“Olga.” Miriam—shoving Helge out of her mind—took a deep breath. “Why?”
“Why?” Olga raised an eyebrow. “Because you’re carrying the heir, dear. We have a special word for a woman who does that. We call her the queen.”
“This glorious nation of ours was not built by the landed gentry or the bastard sons of George; it was built by the sweat and love of men like you. And its future is in your hands.”
Erasmus squinted at the faces behind the fulminating glare of the limelights as the scripted applause rolled on, trying to hold an impassive expression of determination on his face. “Thank you, citizens! And long live the commonwealth!”
The applause grew louder, sounding genuinely enthusiastic. Hungry men clinging to their best hope of a solid meal, a cynical corner of his mind observed as he bowed his head, then stepped back from the lectern and walked to the back of the stage to make way for the next speaker.
“I thought that was well enough received,” he told the fellow on the bench seat behind the backstage curtain. “What do you think?”
Ronald Smith, the Assistant Commissioner for Justice, nodded thoughtfully. “A good tub-thumping rant doesn’t go amiss,” he conceded. “Who’s on next?”
“Brian MacDougal.” Burgeson frowned as he sat beside Smith. “Which means he’ll harangue them for three hours on the price of flour while their stomachs are rumbling.”
“I ought to go back to the front bench.” Smith showed no sign of moving.
“I ought to go back to the office.” Burgeson’s frown deepened. “There’ll be new slanders and rumors from the Patriot Club to rebut before the congress is over, if I don’t mistake myself. . . .”
“No, you don’t.” Smith fumbled in his coat pocket for a while before pulling out a villainously stained clay pipe. “They’re getting ready for something big. I can feel it in my bones. We’ll have to break some heads before long, or they’ll be electing a king to ride us like nags. Francis or Sir Hubert, most likely.” Both of whom were popular with the elitist thugs of the Patriot Club and their opportunist redshirted street runners—the shirts were dyed to conceal the bloodstains of their victims, as Burgeson had announced in one of his more lurid editorials, and for once he was making none of it up.
“They’ll break the assembly if they do that.”
“The assembly’s doomed anyway, Erasmus. As long as Sir Adam sticks to his and our principles and the New Club continue to demand amnesty for John Frederick, there’s going to be no compromise, and the taller the debate grows, the more bitter its fruit will be.”
“You sound as if you want to compromise. Or am I misunderstanding you?”
Smith grunted as he fumbled with his lighter. “No, I believe there will be a compromise, eventually, whether we want it or no; the only question is, whose terms will it favor? The alternative is open strife, and as that would only benefit our enemies . . .”
He pulled the trigger. Sparks snapped and fell into the barrel of his pipe.
“I think you underestimate our resources and our prowess,” Erasmus murmured as Smith drew on his weed. “We have a majority of the navy behind us.” The rigid stratification and harsh discipline of the service, combined with a recent decline in the quality of rations and an influx of conscripts, had turned the navy into a tinderbox of pro-Leveler sentiment. “In fact, I think we’d have a majority of the people behind us, if the assembly would get round to holding the elections we were promised for our support.” Erasmus smiled thinly. “We know we hold the people’s mandate, that’s why they’re carrying on this rearguard action in the popular committees. And the sooner we stop gassing at each other and patting ourselves on the back”—his nod towards the front of the stage, where citizen MacDougal had commenced his peroration on the price of bread, took in the invisible audience of party delegates—“the better. This is what did for us the last time round, and if we don’t seize the day it’ll do for us—”
He paused. A messenger boy was tiptoeing towards them, eyes wide. “Citizen Burgeson?” he piped quietly.
“Yes, lad?”
“Electrogram from the Westminster Halls!” He held the message slip out, stiff-armed.
“Hmm.” Burgeson took the message and read it as fast as he could in the backstage twilight. Then he pocketed it and rose. “It has been good to talk to you, citizen Smith, but I’m needed elsewhere.” He smiled faintly. “Do keep me informed as to the substance of citizen MacDougal’s bakery, will you?” Then he turned to the messenger boy: “Go tell the postmaster to signal that I’m on my way.”
Burgeson emerged blinking from the basement of the commandeered theater where the party caucus was in full swing. Two militiamen in the gray and green uniform of the Freedom Riders challenged him. “Citizen Burgeson. Please tell Citizen Supervisor Philips that I am ready to leave on urgent business and require transport.”
“Sir!” One of the guards hurried off; the other stood by. Erasmus pointedly ignored the solecism: Ex-soldiers generally made the best militiamen, even when their political awareness wasn’t up to scratch, and with the opposition boasting of two redshirts for every Freedom Rider the Party could muster, only a fool would make an issue of a slip of the tongue.
Presently the guard returned with Supervisor Philips following behind him. Philips, tall, stoop-shouldered, and quavery of voice, wouldn’t normally have been Erasmus’s idea of a military commander: He reminded him of a praying mantis. (But these weren’t normal times, and Philips was, if nothing else, politically sound.) “Ah, citizen Burgeson. What can I do for you?”
Erasmus suppressed a twitch. Drawing himself up to his full height, he said: “I am summoned to the Westminster Halls by Sir Adam.”
“Interesting.” He could almost see the gears meshing in Philips’s mind. “We’ll have to avoid the Central Canal and Three Mile Lane, the redshirts are smashing up shop windows and working themselves up.” The gears spun to a conclusive stop: “Citizen, please follow me. Meng, go tell Stevens to send the armored car round to the front steps. He’s to follow with the motorcycle detachment. Gray, stand guard until I send someone to relieve you.” Erasmus fell in behind Philips. “I should like you to ride in the car for your own safety, citizen. Unless you feel the need to arrange a provocation?”