The Domino Men

Chapter 10

Floating in amniotic fluid with only his trunks to protect his wrinkled modesty, Dedlock glowered at me from within his glass sarcophagus. “You failed to retrieve anything of value from the house of your grandfather. The old man’s journal is lost to the flames.”

“I’m afraid so, yes.”

As Dedlock paddled over to me, I was put in mind of a shark I had once seen at the aquarium on a half-term trip with Granddad. Toothless and gray, it can’t have killed its own food for years and must have spent half a lifetime chewing on stale meat tossed into the water by its keepers, yet despite all this, it still had murder blazing in its eyes. Looking at it through the glass, I knew that one chance was all it needed, one momentary slip on the part of its owners — and it would grab the opportunity to kill again, seize it with its withered gums and swallow it whole.

“Unacceptable, Henry. You’re not filing paper anymore. Every secret in that house is in ashes. The only man who can help us is in a coma. And now the House of Windsor is marshaling its forces against us. It is only a matter of time before they make their move.”

I was flanked by Steerforth and Jasper, both of whom had remained strategically silent in the course of my thorough dressing-down. Steerforth looked as though he hadn’t shaved that morning and appeared to be nursing a more than usually persistent hangover. A volcanic pimple protruded from his chin.

“We’ve no other choice, sir,” he said. “We all know it.”

When Dedlock turned to me, his eyes were glittering with a horrible facsimile of geniality. “Henry Lamb?”

“Yes?”

“The time has come to tell you precisely why we are prosecuting this war — why the House of Windsor is the sworn enemy of this city. The time has come to tell you the secret.”

Jasper touched my shoulder. “Sorry. I always liked your innocence.”

“You might want to sit down,” Dedlock said. “People often find they lose the use of their legs when they hear the truth. I would ask you also not to scream. This is the city’s most profitable attraction and I’m loathe to scare our visitors away.” He grinned again in that same ghastly parody of good humor. “Now then,” he said, with what he probably thought of as an avuncular twinkle. “Are we sitting comfortably?”

Stepping out of the pod, I walked swiftly through the mirage, past the queue of sightseers and toward the scrap of grass which backs onto the Eye. There, I found myself an isolated corner and proceeded to be copiously sick. When I was done, I straightened up, dabbed at my mouth with a tissue and began to worry about my breath. A seagull landed at my feet and pecked inquisitively at the vomit.

Trying desperately not to consider the ramifications of what I’d been told, I stumbled to the river and stared dully down into its murky waters.

Someone strolled up beside me. “They’ve told you, then?”

The speaker was an elderly woman, fragile with age but in possession of a certain geriatric poise which suggested that there was little she would not be willing to face down.

“I suppose you’ve come to sell me some double glazing?” I said.

A hint of a smile. “Could I tempt you to a stroll? We don’t have long.”

Wearily, I agreed, and together we walked along the riverbank, past tourists, buskers, tramps, office workers on an early lunch and truculent-looking kids on skateboards — all of them oblivious to the secret I had just been told, the truth that made a perverted joke of every one of their lives.

“Hits you rather hard, doesn’t it?” the old lady said, as though she was discussing nothing more alarming than a national shortage of buttered scones. “You’ll get used to it.”

“Are you going to tell me who you are?”

“Unlike the rest of them, Henry, I’m going to do you the courtesy of telling you the name I was born with.” She smiled. “I am Miss Jane Morning.”

“Are you… Did he…” I gesticulated inarticulately toward the Eye.

“Before his defection to the BBC, your grandfather and I worked together at the Directorate for many years.”

“I never knew any of this.”

“There are less than two dozen men in all of England who know of the Directorate’s true purpose. Your grandfather loved you dearly but, come now, he was hardly likely to entrust you with one of the best-kept secrets of British intelligence.”

“That’s why they need me, isn’t it? Because of Granddad.”

Miss Morning nodded. “The whereabouts of Estella is keeping the war in stalemate. That was always your grandfather’s secret. And with him gone” — she looked as though she wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry — “well, as I believe the saying goes — all bets are off.”

“You’re not making a great deal of sense. Not that anything seems to lately.”

“Concentrate, young man. The hunt is on for Estella now. Your grandfather knew this day would come and he planned for it. But something’s gone wrong. Certain forces have taken an interest in us and it is most unlikely that we shall survive their attention.” She broke off. “You seem frightened.”

“Of course I’m frightened. I’m extremely frightened. Probably close to terrified if I’m being honest.”

“That’s eminently sane of you. But things are about to get a good deal worse. If I know how Dedlock thinks — and I’m very much afraid that I do — then he’ll take you to see the prisoners tonight.”

“Who are these prisoners?” I asked. “How do they know who I am?”

“You don’t want me to say their names. Not out loud. Not in public.”

“Why on earth not?”

“Names have power. Theirs more than most. I warn you, Henry. They’ll lie to you. If they ever tell the truth, it will be to twist it to their own purposes. Don’t take a single wicked word they say on trust. They are chaos incarnate. They delight in destruction for its own sake. And nothing is sweeter to them than the corruption of an innocent soul.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Then I fear you may have to discover it for yourself.” Miss Morning snapped open her handbag and passed me a discreet square of card. “Call me when you need me. And you will need me.”

“Can’t you tell me more?”

“Not today.”

“Why?”

“Because if you knew everything, I doubt you’d find the strength to carry on.”

Although this sentence might look a little theatrical on paper, I should point out that it was delivered in a tone which was remarkably calm and matter-of-fact.

“There is one more thing,” she said.

“Yes?”

“I have his cat. It found its way to me.” A sad smile. “As, in your own way, have you.” Then she gave me a good crisp nod goodbye and walked into the crowd.

If I thought it would do any good, I’d tell you the secret now. I’d write it down and damn the consequences. But I can’t see what help that would be. I don’t see how laying before you those terrible truths about the House of Windsor, their insane treachery and their secret lusts, would serve any useful purpose save to infuse your nightmares with clammy and crepuscular dread.

I stood motionless, my mind whirling with impossibilities. Then — bathos.

“Henry? Is that you?”

Someone chunky stood in front of me, a sandwich engorged with cheese and pickle clasped half-eaten in her hands.

“Barbara!” I mustered a wonky kind of smile. “How are you?”

“Mustn’t grumble. But how are you? How’s life in” — she lowered her voice in serio-comic reverence — “the new department?”

I gulped back a bitter laugh, wondering what kind of cover story she’d been fed. “It’s… challenging.”

Barbara grunted and took a noisy bite of her sandwich but seemed to have nothing further to add to the conversation.

“How’s Peter?” I asked.

“He’s fine,” she said between mouthfuls. “Keeps talking to me about all the gigs he’s going to.”

I rolled my eyes and we shared a moment of exasperated collusion.

“Actually,” Barbara chomped on, “I had a phone call from one of your colleagues. Mr. Jasper. Remember? He introduced himself when he came into the office. Tallish man. Lovely skin.”

I don’t think she noticed me flinch at the mention of the name. What the hell was Jasper doing calling Barbara?

“He’s taking me out to dinner,” she said in answer to my unspoken question. Then, with a small crescendo of pride: “We’re getting pizza.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say.

“He seems really nice.” For an instant, she sounded like a very small girl. “He is nice, isn’t he?”

“He’s interesting,” I said. “Oh, he’s full of surprises.”

Barbara looked at her watch. “Better go. Nice seeing you again.”

“And you,” I said politely, meaninglessly, as Barbara lumbered away, leaving me to watch the surge of strangers, wondering if any of them had the dimmest notion of how brittle the world really was.

My landlady and I sat in front of the television in an exploratory embrace, Abbey trying her best to get comfortable with my arm around her, me struggling against that nausea which had settled in my stomach ever since I’d been told the truth about the war.

Abbey had remarked on my pallor but I had admitted only to being worn and exhausted from my new job. I’d not forgotten Mr. Dedlock’s threats.

So as not to hurt her feelings, I was wearing the lemon-colored sweater which she’d given me for my birthday.

She was channel hopping. “Poor bastard,” she said as she came to rest on BBC1.

I forced myself to focus on the screen. “Who?”

“Prince Arthur,” she said, as the crinkled Prince of Wales moped dolefully across the screen. “Sixty today and still no closer to being king. No wonder he looks so flipping miserable.”

“Hmm.”

“I mean, look at him. Always so sour.”

“Hmm.”

“Wife’s quite pretty, though. Never understood what she saw in him.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Are you OK, Henry? You seem miles away.”

“Difficult day,” I murmured.

“You can talk to me, you know.”

I laughed, and judging from Abbey’s expression, I imagine the sound cannot have been a pretty one.

Consequently, when the doorbell rang, I was grateful for the excuse to get to my feet.

The sky was stormy and black, and Mr. Steerforth was standing on our doorstep. He seemed bulkier than ever, dressed in some kind of flak jacket and the sort of khaki trousers which boast a preposterous amount of pockets. “You all right? ’Cause you look bloody rough.”

“I’m fine.”

Steerforth snorted. “The secret will do that to you. Better get used to it.”

“What do you want?”

“Get your coat. You’re going to see them tonight.”

“See who?”

“I can’t say their names. Not their real names. But I call them…” He swallowed hard. “I call them the Domino Men.”

“What?”

“Just get your coat,” he barked, then, unable to resist a grin: “Nice sweater.”

“Who was that?” Abbey asked, her attention half on me, half on the TV, which had now begun to show a montage of the heir to the throne’s baby photos.

“It’s work. I’ve got to go out.”

“This late?”

“Sorry. Can’t be helped.”

The look that she gave me was split between sympathy and suspicion. “I wish you could tell me what’s really going on.”

“Believe me,” I said grimly. “So do I.”

It had begun to rain, a mean, thin drizzle, and Barnaby was waiting in the car, slouched in his seat, engrossed in the Dissemination of Irony: The Challenger Narratives Through the Prism of Postmodernism.

“What a bloody awful sweater,” he said, then blew his nose defiantly on the sleeve of his jacket.

Steerforth was already inside.

“Isn't Jasper coming with us?” I asked.

The driver spat out of the window. “Too chicken. Strap yourselves in.” I did as I was told and Barnaby started the engine with the dutiful air of a man doing the school run for someone else’s kids.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“You’ll know it when you see it,” Barnaby said.

Steerforth nudged me in the ribs. “Dedlock wants to talk.”

“Fine.” I looked around for a phone. “How’s he going to manage that?”

“Give me a minute.” Steerforth screwed up his face s though grappling with the most gruesome kind of constipation. “He’s coming through.”

Then the big man’s face began to twist, flex and gurn; it was possessed by rubbery quivers, spasms and twitches, contorting itself into strange and horrible shapes. He was evidently in considerable pain and it only seemed to end when the man who sat opposite me was utterly transformed. He may still have had Steerforth’s body, but through some impossible realignment of his features, he’d become a parody of the old man in the tank. Even his voice was altered, moving into a higher pitch, suddenly wavery with unnatural age.

“Good evening, Henry Lamb,” he said.

I stared, astonished. “Dedlock?”

“Do not be alarmed. Steerforth is the pit bull of the Directorate. Some time ago, he submitted to a small procedure which allows me, on occasion, to borrow his physical form.”

“Unbelievable.”

“Indeed. And speaking of unbelievable… What a splendid pullover.” The body of Steerforth emitted a series of gurgles which I presumed, after a while, to be laughter. “We’ve been left with no choice,” he said. “Tonight, you meet the prisoners. You need to prize just one single piece of information from them. The whereabouts of a woman called Estella. Have you got that, Henry Lamb? Am I making myself unequivocally clear?”

“Who are these prisoners? How do they know so much?”

“I don’t wish to say their names. Not now.”

“Dedlock? I need to know who these people are.”

It was raining harder now, each drop a hammer-blow against the pane. “My, my.” The thing in Steerforth gave a liquid giggle. “Who said anything about them being people?”

There was a final burble, then Steerforth’s face, running with rivulets of sweat, went slack and sagged back into its old, familiar lineaments.

“What the hell was that?”

Steerforth yanked a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his face. “Now you see the price of the war,” he murmured. “And we can’t afford it. Not by a long shot.”

The car sped on through the night, passing out of south London, over the river, toward the center of the city. It was a silent journey except for the deluge which beat ferociously against the windows, the windscreen, the roof.

At last, we headed past Trafalgar Square and turned into Whitehall, stopping outside a metal barricade guarded by a man with a machine gun slung around his neck. Hair plastered to forehead, his uniform sodden with rain, the sentry motioned for Barnaby to wind down the window. “State your business,” he said, with all the thoroughgoing charm of a German border official.

“My name is Barnaby. This is Steerforth. We work for Mr. Dedlock.”

The soldier peered into the back of the car, then took a stumbling step backward. “Sorry, gents,” he said. Then again, cravenly: “Really sorry.”

Barnaby muttered something resentful, wound up his window and drove on toward the most famous address in England.

I think I might actually have shaken my head. “You can’t be serious.”

Steerforth was unable to keep a hint of pride from his voice. “Welcome to Downing Street.”

Number Ten Downing Street is full of false doors. Built, re-built, altered, extended, improved and reconceived over generations by a plethora of architects eager to impress, almost everything done by one designer his later been summarily reversed by another. The result is that the building his acquired the air of a folly, filled with corridors which lead nowhere, staircases that curve gracefully into thin air, doors which open onto brickwork. It is a place of doubles and traps where little is what it seems and nothing can be trusted.

Steerforth led me inside (the door to Number Ten, being perpetually open, has no handle), down a long, tapering corridor which, rather dispiritingly, seemed every bit as gray and nondescript as those in my old office. Eventually, we reached a spiral staircase, the walls of which were decorated with portraits of past prime ministers, beginning with the most recent incumbent before stretching chronologically backward in time.

Then Steerforth led me down into the past. At first I recognized many of the politicians depicted on the walls — men and women who had held high office in my lifetime — but as we descended, the pictures grew older and increasingly unrecognizable, their costumes changing with the unfurling of the years, from starched collars and cravats to powder wigs and frock coats to lace and frills until, as we reached the lower levels, they scarcely seemed like statesmen at all. The people in those paintings were men of shadows, their faces half-masked and their bodies shrouded in darkness. At the end of the sequence, there were men in animal pelts and furs, hailing from an era of history I wasn’t even sure I recognized at all.

At the bottom of the staircase was a lavish library, its walls filled with shelves, packed tight with books — but not the kind of books that one would expect to see here, not parliamentary records, treaties, contracts and points of order, but other, more troubling titles, akin to those I had found in Granddad’s house, though stranger still. The tang of the forbidden was in that room. Often I think back to some of those half-glimpsed titles and I shudder.

The only space not taken up with books was filled by a life-sized portrait of a Victorian gentleman, his face still young but starting to show the corruption of age, his dark hair worn daringly collar length, a flutter of grim amusement on his face. I thought I recognized that smile. I have my suspicions as to why, but even now, I shouldn’t like to say for certain.

Steerforth walked over to the portrait, pulled out a two-pronged metal tube identical to a device I’d seen Jasper wave at Granddad and pointed it at the picture. There was an electronic whine, a subtle click, and the painting swung backward. No, not a painting, I saw now. A door.

A halogen light flickered on to reveal the smooth steel walls of an elevator.

Steerforth stepped inside and asked me to follow.

Numbly, wondering why the madness of this life no longer seemed to affect me, I did as I was told.

Steerforth pressed a button, the door hissed shut and I heard the painting snap back into place. Smoothly, the lift began to descend.

“Is there any point in asking where you’re taking me?”

The man said nothing.

“Steerforth?”

The lift came to a halt, the doors swept backward and Steerforth led me into another long corridor. Two guards, both armed, greeted us with grim nods.

On either side of us were glass windows fronting small rooms or cells, as if we were passing through the reptile house at the zoo. It was completely silent save for our footsteps and the shuffles of the guards. As I followed, I saw that there were people in each cell and that every one of them was naked. All seemed ill but their actions careered between the extremes of human behavior. One raged and gibbered at the sight of us. Another placed his hands imploringly upon the glass, tears curving down his plump cheeks. Another still seemed quite oblivious to us, curled up in a fetal ball, his flabby body quivering in despair. There was even a man who seemed faintly familiar. He let fly a thick stream of urine as we passed before crouching down and enthusiastically licking it up.

“Don’t I recognize him?”

Steerforth grunted. “Health secretary. Last but one, I think.”

“You’re not serious.”

We reached the end of the corridor, the final room, which, in contrast to the rest, lay in total darkness. Another guard stood outside, another machine gun slung around his neck. He sported an eye-popping look of the kind of state-sponsored sociopath who’d not only kill without a minute’s hesitation but would probably be looking forward to it.

“We never meant for you to see this,” Steerforth said softly. “But your grandfather’s left us no choice. You’ve got to go inside.”

“You’re not coming in with me?”

A hesitation. “Please,” he said, and his voice seemed to tremble.

“Steerforth? What’s the matter?”

The big man sounded as though he were about to cry.

“People think I don’t get frightened. But what’s in there…” His voice grew husky and he began to shake, like an alcoholic about to admit in front of his support group that he has a problem. “They scare me.”

“Oh, but you don’t mind sending me in?”

“You’ll be perfectly safe,” he said, although it was obvious he didn’t believe it. “They can’t leave the circle. Stay outside the circle and I promise you’ll be fine.”

The glass door glided noiselessly open and Steerforth looked away. “They’re waiting for you,” he said, and it was impossible not to notice the dark stain that had begun to spread across his combat trousers, snailing down his left leg and toward his shoes. “Go inside,” he said miserably.

“Please. At least tell me what to expect.”

But the pit bull of the Directorate couldn’t even meet my eye.

“Fine,” I said. As I walked into the dark, the door slid sleekly shut behind me.

I addressed the blackness, my voice trembling with fear. “My name is Henry Lamb. I’m from the Directorate.”

For a terrible moment, there was nothing. Then — light. Blazing, piercing light, almost intolerably bright, making spots of color jig before my eyes, forcing me to blink fiercely before I became accustomed to the glare. A spotlight picked out a large circular space in the middle of the room, its parameters marked out with white chalk. At the center of the circle, perched on garishly colored deckchairs as though they were settling down for an afternoon nap on Brighton beach, were two of the oddest people I have ever had the misfortune to encounter.

Two grown men, well into middle age — one thick necked and ginger, the other slight and thin faced with a cowlick of dark hair. Both (and this was most bizarre of all) were dressed as old-fashioned schoolboys, kitted out in matching blue blazers and itchy gray shorts. The smaller one wore a little striped cap.

They beamed at the sight of me.

“Hullo!” said the larger man. “I’m Hawker, sir. He’s Boon.”

His companion winked in my direction and that alone was enough to set every nerve in my body jangling. “You can call us the Prefects.”

Henry Lamb is a liar. Take nothing he says on trust. He is spinning you lines, sugaring the truth, telling you what he thinks you want to hear. Henry is no innocent. The lily-white Lamb has blood on his hands.

Mercifully for him, we have little interest in simply blackening his name. He has only a short time before his consciousness is irrevocably snuffed out, an eventuality which renders catcalls and finger-pointing superfluously petty. Instead, we intend to while away these last few days by telling you a story of our own, and you have our unimpeachable word for it that, in shaming contrast to Henry’s own self-serving memoir, every syllable shall be the truth.

Brace yourself for a move away from Lamb’s quotidian universe of office girls and landladies and the morning commute. Prepare for an Olympian leap from dewy-eyed sentiment about the aged and pubescent longing for the girl next door. This is the story that matters. This, the story of the war, of the last prince, of the fall of the House of Windsor.

I expect you shall find it a good deal more to your taste.

At around the time that Henry the liar was making the acquaintance of Hawker and Boon, the future king of England was listening to a roomful of people who were paid to adore him sing a rousing “Happy Birthday” in his honor.

His Royal Highness Prince Arthur Aelfric Vortigern Windsor was the kind of man whose appearance might generously be described as unusual — not for him the privileged complexions and arrogant cheekbones of most of his ancestors and a good many of that swarming mass of male relations to which he referred, in that long-suffering tone which the nation had come to find faintly irritating, as “the brood.” Lugubriously proportioned, thin lipped and pharaoh nosed, Windsor was a man profoundly ill at ease with the twenty-first century. He despised the vulgarities of its culture, the vapid light shows of its television, the unmelodic jabberings of its music, but above all else he hated the manner in which his family, once the most influential bloodline in Europe, had degenerated into a national laughing stock.

This particular day was special, not only because Arthur was celebrating his sixtieth birthday, a milestone in a life which seemed to him increasingly without compass, but also because it was the day on which he finally accepted a miserable truth. His wife — beloved by her subjects as a radiant philanthropist, sylphlike humanitarian and dispenser of hugs on an industrial scale — no longer fancied him. Naturally, he hoped that she still cared for him, that she at least felt some residual dregs of affection, but it was painfully clear that she no longer incubated the slightest scintilla of physical desire, meeting every one of his advances with barely concealed distaste. Arthur had realized it that morning when, upon his suggestion of a birthday roll around the marital bed, Laetitia had sighed and looked away, a small, darting, sideways glance which confirmed his every fear. In the end she had acquiesced, though wearily, and as she lay dutifully beneath him Arthur noticed her stifled yawns, surreptitious inspections of her nails and regular stolen glances toward the clock.

His mood was not significantly improved by the feudal cheers of his household staff which greeted him on his descent for supper by way of a “surprise” (scarcely that, since something similar had occurred annually since his birth). Arthur gazed at their ham-fisted attempts at decoration and found it difficult to suppress a sigh. He thought the pomp and strut of his official birthday (traditionally held much earlier in the year to avoid a clash with the Christmas season) taxing enough but often wondered whether this ghastly pageant of vulgar good intentions might actually be worse.

There was no sign of Laetitia. Over breakfast, she had complained of the first stirrings of a migraine, no doubt laying the groundwork for a plausible absence from the festivities. Arthur would have to face it alone, all the smiling and the shaking of hands and the pleasant inconsequentialities. This was the worst of it, he thought, the awful knowledge that one belongs, almost in one’s totality, to other people.

As the assembled domestics launched, wincingly off-key, into “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” and a troupe of small boys enthusiastically tossed rose petals in his general direction, the prince noticed a muscular, bulky man, a year or two his junior, shoulder his way toward him. Here, at least, was an ally.

“Good evening, sir,” said the man when he had at last drawn close enough to be heard above the caterwauling. “Happy Birthday.”

“Thank you, Silverman.”

“Are you quite well, sir?”

“Oh, I’m dandy.” The prince tried his best at a smile but, as usual, entirely failed in the attempt. He knew that his smile did not convince. He had seen himself many times on the television, and various acquaintances in what he supposed he was obliged to refer to as “the media” told him that it was regularly used by certain sectors of the press as a stick with which to beat him. It had a rictus quality, an overstretched look quite at odds with the boyish grins and flirty smirks of the new prime minister — a youth with whom the country still seemed inexplicably besotted.

“I have a message from your mother, sir,” said Silverman.

“Oh?”

“She sends her apologies for not being able to attend in person.”

The prince thrust his considerable chin into the middle distance and mumbled an acceptance. His mother had not appeared in public for years, having long ago removed herself to a modestly proportioned wing of the palace in order to live out an informal and thoroughly deserved retirement. Arthur had not seen his mother for almost twenty months and relied upon Silverman as a go-between. Tired of life in the public eye, the woman was close to becoming a complete recluse, although naturally no one in the palace seemed at all prepared to admit this. It suited them all — the fawners, the toadies and the yes-men — to pretend that she would go on forever, monarch in perpetuity.

“I appreciate that this is rather an irregular request, sir. But I understand that your mother would like you to meet someone.”

“Who is it?”

“I regret I do not know his name, sir. But the gentleman is waiting outside.”

“Now?”

“Your mother believes time to be of the essence, sir.”

“But this is my party.”

A deferential tilt of the head. “Indeed, sir.”

The prince looked around him at the merrymaking, brushed away the rose petals that had accumulated like expensive dandruff on the shoulders of his dress uniform and came to the conclusion that everyone present would have infinitely more fun were he simply to disappear.

Silverman walked toward the big oak doors which constituted the exit and prompted: “This way, Your Highness.”

Windsor looked back, hoping for some evidence of his wife. There was nothing. Feeling a pang of sadness rise up in him again, he followed Silverman from the room. Nobody noticed him leave — and, if they did, they scarcely cared.

Silverman led him to a large, circular chamber around the size of an Olympic swimming pool which Arthur was almost certain he had never seen before.

“Silverman? Where is this place?”

“The old ballroom, sir. I believe you danced here as a child.”

A vague memory, lambent in his mind. “It is as though I recollect it from a dream.”

“That may be so, sir.”

A stranger stood in the center of the room — a slim, blond, narrow-faced man, sharp suited though stripped of a necktie, his hair cajoled into slick, brash spikes. He was the kind of man who seemed to swagger even when he was standing still; the kind of man, the prince reflected, whom women, in their wisdom, find irresistible.

The stranger looked at the prince, conspicuously unimpressed. Not that Arthur was sufficiently naive to expect awe or admiration — not in these, the dog days of empire — but a little respect would not have been amiss. A bow. The tiny courtesy of a handshake.

“I’m Mr. Streater.” The voice of the stranger echoed around the room. “Your mum sent me. I’m sorta her birthday present to you.”

“I’ve never heard of you.”

Mr. Streater winked. “Yeah? Well, I’ve been told plenty about you.” The blond man glanced dismissively toward Silverman, who, hovering three paces behind the prince, looked constipated in his concern. “Oi, Jeeves! Sling yer hook.”

Silverman rallied with his frostiest smile. “So sorry,” he said. “I’m afraid I didn’t quite catch that.”

“You heard me,” Streater snapped. “Arthur and me have got private business here. Man to man.”

As Silverman looked toward the prince for guidance, Arthur beckoned the equerry to come closer, lowering his voice so that they might not be overheard. “Could you do something for me, Silverman?”

“Anything, sir. Always. You know that.”

“Get word to my mother. Find out why she’s sent this fellow. There’s something wrong here. Something most improper.”

Silverman gazed at the prince, unwilling to abandon him. “I could hardly agree more, sir.”

“Good luck, Silverman. Godspeed.”

“Yes, sir,” the equerry said reluctantly. “Thank you, sir.”

Arthur gave him a brisk nod, meant dually as goodbye and reassurance. Silverman walked across the ballroom, hesitated for a moment by the door and left. The prince returned his attention to Mr. Streater, who had watched the departure of the other man with a smirk so appallingly insouciant that several of Arthur’s ancestors would have had him hanged for treason.

“So then.” Arthur glared at the intruder. “What does my mother wish you to do?”

“I’ve come to prepare you.”

“Prepare me? For what?”

“Something’s coming, Arthur. A new world.”

“If this is a prank or a practical joke, Mr. Streater, I can assure you that I shall not permit it to continue for a moment longer.”

Streater did not seem in the least alarmed by the threat. “Easy, mate.”

Arthur was astonished at the effrontery of the man. “Mate? I’m not your mate. I’ve never been ‘easy’ in my life. And I am hardly accustomed to being spoken to in this manner.”

“Yeah?” Streater shrugged. “Bet you’re not used to this either.”

What happened next seemed almost like a dream. In a few deft motions, Streater rolled up the left sleeve of his jacket exposing his bone-white skin, produced a rubber glove, knotted it into a tourniquet, patted his arm and found a vein. Arthur guessed what was coming and, despite the bile steaming through his chest, he could not bring himself to turn away. With the air of an old-time confectioner dispensing half a pound of sherbet lemons, Streater took out a hypodermic loaded with pale pink liquid, thrust it into his arm, depressed the plunger and sighed with obscene pleasure. Then and only then did Arthur Windsor look away.

When he could bring himself to look back, the syringe and the tourniquet had vanished and the blond man was rolling down his sleeve, grinning wildly, like someone had slashed a smile in his face from left ear to right. “I don’t care what anyone says. Drugs are cool.”

“The Prince of Wales flinched.

From somewhere, Streater had conjured up a cup of tea, which he proffered to the prince. “Oi. Get this down your neck.”

Arthur took the cup and drank. The blend was unfamiliar to him but he liked it at once — soothing, rich and aromatically sweet.

“I’m not sure what this is all about,” he said. “But I want no part of it. I am a decent human being.”

Streater gave him a pitying look. “Grow up, chief. The world’s not interested in decency anymore.”

Arthur turned his back on the man and tried the door, only to find it locked and bolted. “Let me out this instant.” Somehow, he succeeded in keeping his temper. “You’re already in very serious trouble. Don’t make it any worse for yourself.”

Mr. Streater shook his head in mock pity. “Stay where you are, chief.” He peeled back his lips and grinned. “I’m gonna tell you a secret.”