The Comeback of the King Read online

  News that the boy had been sighted only cheered the King a little. Too many other thoughts crowded in. He strolled past the nearest flower bed, where a group of boys were cheering the Queen on, and reached out a hand to stroke the nearest tree. The bark was cold and damp and rough. This should have been his tree, because it was in his realm – and yet he could sense that even the tree was a foreigner. It hadn’t been planted here. Its seed had germinated elsewhere. What kind of kingdom did he have when even the trees could claim allegiance to someone else?

  “My realm is just too small,” he mused out loud. There was no point pretending otherwise. He was, and always had been, the King of only a few thousand royal subjects.

  The plan – yesterday’s tentative idea, which had now grown into a fully-fledged strategy – would see to that. He looked back to where the Queen coursed through the floodwater, and felt himself cheered.

  *

  The Queen rarely left her realm for long. Even as she strolled through Salisbury, out in the solid world, her arm linked with the King’s, her feet were bare on the wet pavements. Even that little contact helped her stay in touch with her own realm, which lay beneath and within and around and intertwined with the kingdom of her husband.

  They had come to the water meadows on the edge of town. Once it had been flat marsh that spread across the valley to the high ground half a mile away. Now, on the far side of the river it was fields. On this side of the river the King’s royal subjects had made a park. It looked like it had been a very pleasant and well-maintained park, until yesterday when she had released the river from its weir and put the whole area under two feet of water, but the effort and the respect shown to the park should have come to her.

  The royal subjects had put up barriers around the floods but there was no one around to stop her and the King ducking under them. The coat the King had given her had trailed in the water and wrapped annoyingly around her legs, so she had peeled it off and thrown it to her husband, then waded onwards. The water barely came up to her knees but it knew who she was and welcomed her back.

  She had reached the river channel, a broad band of darker water beneath the surface. The Queen held her arms up and dived in. The water hissed and roared in her human ears but behind it she heard other echoes: the voices of the spirits that had lived here once, in her day. She listened as they spoke and slowly she began to seethe.

  The weir she had destroyed the day before had been bad enough but it was just the latest in a series of atrocities the King’s royal subjects had wrought against her realm. In centuries past, the meadows around her had been controlled. The royal subjects had created a network of dams and sluices that guided the flow of water in and out of their fields.

  Sluices?

  Insolence!

  Once, when she and the King ruled this land uncontested, they had come direct to her. Your Majesty, we humbly ask that the waters be withdrawn from such-and-such a field so that we may plant our crops …

  And, of course, she had always granted the request. She was not unreasonable. Of course the royal subjects had to eat. If the realm was happy then her husband was happy. Sometimes the request came with a sacrifice, which had no power of itself but pleased her still because she recognised the importance of what was being given up. Some food (for which she had no use) or a monetary offering (likewise) or some kind of service or even a life – an animal, a child, sometimes a fully grown royal subject. What mattered was the deference shown.

  There was no hint of deference now. The royal subjects had taken matters into their own hands. The Queen was not pleased.

  And so she told the spirits of the King’s plan, and they clamoured their approval. They would do what they could to help.

  She rose to the surface again, stood and walked to where she had left her coat. For some reason a small crowd had joined her husband to watch her. She wondered if some vestigial memory of who she was had lodged in their minds. A group of young men were especially loud in their cheers. They wore strange garments with hoods and looked about the same age as that insufferable brat who resisted her husband. It was good to know that some of Salisbury’s youth knew the correct form.

  She nodded graciously as she waded towards them and the King. He held the coat out with both hands and she turned her back to slide her arms into the sleeves. It meant she was facing the boys and their silently respectful stares pleased her.

  “I see you are a virgin?” she said to the nearest one, who was wearing a white hood. The boy for some reason turned scarlet and gaped as if someone had hit him hard in the stomach, while his friends howled with laughter. The Queen raised an eyebrow. In her day, royal subjects had worn white if they had taken a vow of virginity and it had been an enormous privilege. It was something else she had never quite understood, like the sacrifices, but it had been important to them.

  Still, his friends were not being very supportive, so she decided to give assurance of her own.

  “It must be very special to know that you will never enter a woman’s body.”

  The young man was about her own height but somehow he managed to look about six inches tall. She wasn’t quite sure what she had said but she could see the King was pleased she had made the effort. She turned to face him.

  “Husband! The people of the water are deeply unhappy. This cannot stand.”

  “I was having thoughts along very similar lines, my dear. Will they help?”

  “It will be their pleasure. When do we begin?”

  He slipped his arm into hers again.

  “We can discuss it on the way back to the hotel, by which time the Hunter may have apprehended the Gorse boy.”

  She inclined her head to show she approved. Just before they set off the King glanced back at the group of boys.

  “Come with your King,” he commanded. “It is time for all my royal subjects to gather together.”

  The boys cheered, even the one who had apparently been struck dumb, and the small procession started back towards the White Bear.

  *

  “Come with your King–”

  “Your King needs you–”

  He called out to any royal subjects they passed on the way, and the original group had been considerably augmented by the time the procession reached the hotel. On their way they picked up another crowd that seemed to have grown following a brief sighting of the Gorse boy. The King and Queen headed a throng that chatted and laughed and thrummed with excitement. What did their King want? They didn’t know, but it was enough that he had commanded their presence.

  A police car, a noble chariot of blue and yellow and white, was parked outside the entrance to the hotel courtyard.

  “The Hunter is here to report to you?” the Queen asked. The King merely shook his head slightly.

  “She hasn’t called–” He held up a hand. “Wait here!”

  The procession shuffled to a halt while its babble and prattle echoed around the yard, and the King and Queen pushed their way through the doors.

  The manager, who had first welcomed them the day before, and an older man and two policemen were deep in discussion. The older man was talking, loud and agitated. He stopped the moment he saw the royal couple, blinked as if he couldn’t quite believe his eyes, then turned on the manager.

  “Is that them?”

  “Y-yes, Mr Lennox,” the manager stammered. “Your Majesties, may I present the owner of the hotel, Mr–”

  “Right.” Mr Lennox snapped his fingers at the policemen. “I’m pressing charges. Arrest them both.”

  The policemen looked at each other, then back at the King. Like Mr Lennox, neither of them were royal subjects.

  “We’ve received a complaint, sir–” one began.

  “No credit card, no registration details, half our cellar gone…” Mr Lennox was ranting at the manager. “What the hell were you thinking? I leave you alone for forty eight hours–”

  “But he’s the King–” The manager seemed almost in tears as loyalty to his sover
eign conflicted in his mind with his professional duty.

  “Thank you, sir,” the policeman said firmly. Mr Lennox subsided, grumbling. To the King: “This can probably all be settled, sir, with a few questions. Let’s leave aside the damage in the dining room – for the moment,” he added quickly as the older man seemed about to erupt again. “Mr Lennox has noted you didn’t register a credit card or any other means of payment when you moved in. Do you have any means of payment on you?”

  “Payment?” The Queen choked on her laughter. “Payment? My husband or I should pay for anything in our realm? Everything here is ours by right.” She glared at the manager. “Tell him!”

  The two policemen looked at each other again and the King was amused to hear one of them whistle softly. “Right … I think it’s best that you come with us, sir, madam, until we can sort this out.”

  The King felt the Queen swell with outrage, but before she could burst he took her hand and patted it gently.

  “He’s right, my dearest. I think we should step outside with these gentlemen. Well? Shall we go?”

  The policemen tilted their heads, suspicion stamped all over their faces, but they came forward. One took the Queen’s elbow, the other the King’s, and they escorted the royal couple back outside into the courtyard, to come up against a crowd of fifty or sixty loyal royal subjects.

  Up until then the crowd had been a merry place to be – people chatting among old friends, making new ones, all happy to wait upon the pleasure of their King and see what he had in store. A sudden swell in noise and mood moved across them from front to back, from idle chat to something darker and more ominous, as they saw what was happening.

  One of the policemen was already talking into the small box on his lapel, saying something about ‘backup’. The King nodded to a burly couple of royal subjects at the front of the crowd: short haired, muscular and quivering with eagerness to serve their master. They leaned forward and plucked the small boxes away from their owners. One of them, a man in a studded leather jacket, smiled down at the policemen with a predator’s grin.

  “His Majesty does not want to be inconvenienced,” he said.

  The policemen were pale but the older one turned on the King.

  “This won’t work. I don’t know who you are or what you’re doing, but backup will come.”

  The King met his eye.

  “I don’t doubt it,” he said.

  “What do you want done with them, your Majesty?” asked Leather Jacket. The King studied him approvingly, enjoying the aura that came off the man. In another age, this man could have been one of the Hunter’s minions. The King nodded back at the hotel.

  “Find a room with no window and a door that can be locked, and put them in there. Then join the rest of us.”

  “Backup is coming!” the policeman shouted as he and his colleague were marched away.

  “Let them,” the King murmured, and he turned back to the crowd. “Everyone!” He had their immediate attention. “To the market place!”

  They cheered, even though they had no idea what he was to do there, but their King had spoken and decreed action and so naturally they approved. For a moment he stood and watched the crowd jostle and shove as it tried to turn round in the small space of the courtyard; then he offered his arm to the Queen and they walked forward. The crowd parted like smoke to let them through. If it was to be a procession, they should lead it.

  “Would you reign uninterrupted, my love?”

  The expression on her face was all the answer he needed. Once again he turned his senses outward to the city, outward to his kingdom, outward to the world beyond and every royal subject within it.

  “Hear me, Salisbury.”

  It rattled in shop windows. The voice echoed up and down the aisle of the cathedral, and between the slopes of the valleys, and out of the wind blowing over Salisbury Plain.

  “Come to me. Come to your King in the market place. Come now.”

  Chapter 15

  Salisbury’s one-way system meant there was no quick way out of town at the best of times, and certainly not when you were sharing the road with every other Christmas shopper in Wiltshire. Malcolm plotted ahead as his car inched slowly down New Canal into the High Street. To get to East Harnham, home of the Gorse family, they would be driving in a large clockwise circle that took a quarter of a mile to get back almost to where they had started. Then, thankfully, speed might pick up a bit and it would be due south down Brown Street and Exeter Street, heading out of the city.

  They drove in silence, with Barry in the passenger seat and Sarah strapped – there really was no other word for it – into the back. Inside the car it was snug and dry. The wipers intermittently took a layer of droplets off the windscreen and the warm air from the heater was laced with the smell of the leather seats. Malcolm had thought of putting the radio on, let a little light classics wash around the inside of the car, but the mood really was against it.

  As they had come out of the shop, Barry had wondered what the sound of shouting had been about. There was no sound of it at all in the car, though, and Malcolm had forgotten about it until twenty minutes later when the first faint wails of police sirens pierced his thoughts.

  The traffic queue was crawling down Blue Boar Row, past the market place. Malcolm still couldn’t see the police vehicles but he had worked out that they were behind him, so like everyone else he pulled over and let them pass. Two police vans wound their way into view through the cars behind him, gave a loud squawk on their sirens, then disappeared into the traffic ahead.

  The two men glanced at each other.

  “Wonder what that’s about?” Barry fumbled for the window button and stuck his head out.

  “See anything?”

  “No … they’ve gone straight on … no, they’re turning right.”

  Barry sat back down again and the window slid up.

  “Right,” Malcolm repeated without expression. They had both worked out that whatever the police vans were going to, it lay in the direction they were heading as well. Malcolm grunted. “Okay, I’ll go left down Endless Street when we get there.”

  “It’s a bit out of your way.”

  “Probably quicker.”

  “True.”

  For a moment they were just a pair of Englishmen discussing the best way through the traffic – it was refreshingly normal. Endless Street was the left-hand turn at the crossroads at the corner of the square. The right-hand turn down Queen Street was blocked to traffic and straight ahead would commit them to the one-way system, following the police vans. Going down Endless Street would mean heading north, away from where they wanted to be, but it would let them circle round the problem ahead and might save time in the long run.

  If they ever got that far. The whole queue of traffic seemed to have ground to a halt. Drivers ahead were opening their doors and half-stepping out of the warmth of their cars, craning their necks to see if they could spot the hold-up. Malcolm wound down his window and peered out himself. There was still nothing for his eyes to see, but what his ears could pick up was another matter.

  “Sounds like a riot,” Barry said in disbelief, and Malcolm reluctantly had to concur. Incoherent shouting in dark tones full of rage and anger, and what sounded like the occasional scream. Optimistically, he thought that there were many things that sounded like a riot: a football crowd, or a group of boisterous lads out for a night on the town. But it wasn’t night, and there was no football stadium in that direction.

  He was about to close the window when the distant sound of breaking glass startled him. It really did sound like a riot.

  He climbed out of the stationary car and leaned on the door, gazing in the direction of the noise. Barry on the other side of the car, and drivers up and down Blue Boar Row, had done the same.

  Whatever was going on ahead, it had clogged the traffic flow completely. The only way out of this would be to turn round. Malcolm turned to look at the queue behind him. This was England. This was Sali
sbury. No one was going to do a three-point turn in a one-way street unless someone in a blue uniform told them to, and it sounded like the blue uniforms were all busy.

  The sound of running footsteps behind him grew like a rainstorm after the first patter of drops. The first man ran past and didn’t even look back. Then a woman, then another woman with a couple of children, then another man … Malcolm looked up, behind and then around him. People were leaving their cars. Pedestrians were streaming across the square.

  Finally, someone spoke to him. A running man: one of the King’s royal subjects who could spare him a few words.

  “What are you waiting for? The King needs us!”

  The man’s eyes slid from Malcolm to Barry, and lingered with a hostile glare for a moment, but he was running too fast to make it stick. He disappeared into the crowd.

  “The King,” Barry muttered without tone. “Why am I not surprised.”

  Malcolm was wondering how he had known the man was a royal subject. He just had. Somehow he could tell by looking. The signs were all over, except that they were invisible to the naked eye. And yet, he had known, the same way he had once recognised his fellow guardians even before they all knew who they were.

  What else could he know, if he concentrated? He thought, turned his senses inwards, as if he were trying to remember a long-forgotten fact or a glimpse of a vanished dream. And suddenly he heard it: the very faintest call, from a man that even now part of him still said was his King, calling for his royal subjects to come to the market place.

  Eh? Malcolm looked quickly around. This was the market place – but the King’s royal subjects were running away from it. He concentrated harder, and saw why. The King wanted to come to the square but he was being prevented, and that was why there was a riot going on.

  Not everyone was answering the King’s call. Some Sunday shoppers were resolutely ignoring it, making their way in the other direction with their heads down as if battling through a strong wind. The first car horn began to sound – some hapless driver irritated by the cars in front and behind him being abandoned. Couples, families were separating – men or women left baffled as their partner suddenly walked away.