no inspiration, no shaft of sunlight to mark his way, no celestial salvation, only the hard steel sky of an English winter. He realized his fists remained clenched with the nails biting into the flesh of his palms; he forced his palms open and down the side of his trousers. A quiet prayer. Another breath. Then he bent, thanking God that his knees still had sufficient strength to guide him, lowering himself slowly and gracefully as he had practised in his room during the night, and lay stretched out on the rough wooden platform.
Still from the crowd there came no sound. His words might not have lifted or inspired them, but at least they would have vindicated. He was drenched in fury as the overwhelming injustice of it all hit him. Not even a chance to explain. He looked despairingly once more into the faces of the people, the men and women in whose name both sides had fought the war and who stood there now with blank stare, ever uncomprehending pawns. Yet, dullards all, they were his people, for whose salvation he was bound to fight against those who would corrupt the law for their own benefit. He had lost, but the justice of his cause would surely be known in the end. In the end. He would do it all again, if he had another chance, another life. It was his duty, he would have no choice. No more choice than he had now on this bare wooden stage, which still smelt of resin and fresh sawdust. And they would understand, wouldn’t they? In the end…?
A plank creaked beside his left ear. The faces of the crowd seemed frozen in time, like a vast mural in which no one moved. His bladder was going – was it the cold or sheer terror? How much longer…? Concentrate, a prayer perhaps? Concentrate! He set on a small boy, no more than eight years old, in rags, with a dribble of crumbs on his dirt-smeared chin, who had stopped chewing his hunk of loaf and whose innocent brown eyes had grown wide with expectation and were focused on a point about a foot above his head. By God, but it was cold, colder than he had ever known! And suddenly the words he had fought so hard to remember came rushing back to him, as though someone had unlocked his soul.
And in the year sixteen hundred and forty-nine, they took their liege lord King Charles Stuart, Defender of the Faith and by hereditary right King of Great Britain and Ireland, and they cut off his head.
In the early hours of a winter’s day, in a bedroom overlooking the forty-acre garden of a palace which hadn’t existed at the time Charles Stuart took his walk into the next life, his descendant awoke with a start. The collar of his pyjama shirt clung damply and he lay face-down on a block-hard pillow stained with sweat, yet he felt as cold as…As cold as death. He believed in the power of dreams and their ability to unravel the mysteries of the inner being, and it was his custom on waking to write down everything he could remember, reaching for the notebook he kept for the purpose beside his bed. But not this time. There was no need. He would never forget the smell of the crowd mixed with resin and sawdust nor the heavy metallic colour of the sky on that frost-ridden afternoon. Nor the innocent, expectant brown eyes of a boy with a dirty chin smeared with crumbs. Nor that feeling of terrible despair that they had kept him from speaking out, rendering his sacrifice pointless and his death utterly in vain. He would never forget it. No matter how hard he tried.
Never cross an unknown bridge while riding an elephant.
(Chinese proverb)
December: The First Week.
It had not been a casual invitation, he never did anything casually. It had been an insistent, almost peremptory call from a man more used to command than to cajolement. He expected her for breakfast and it would not have crossed his mind that she might refuse. Particularly today, when they were changing Prime Ministers, one out and another in and long live the will of the people. It would be a day of great reckoning.
Benjamin Landless opened the door himself, which struck her as strange. It was an apartment for making impressions, overdesigned and impersonal, the sort of apartment where you’d expect if not a doorman then at least a secretary or a PA to be on hand, to fix the coffee, to flatter the guests while ensuring they didn’t run off with any of the Impressionist paintings enriching the walls. Landless was no work of art himself. He had a broad, plum-red face which was fleshy and beginning to sag like a candle held too near the flame. His bulk was huge and his hands rough, like a labourer’s, with a reputation to match. His Chronicle newspaper empire had been built by breaking strikes as well as careers; it had been as much he as anyone who had broken the career of the man who was, even now, waiting to drive to the Palace to relinquish the power and prestige of the office of Prime Minister.
‘Miss Quine. Sally. I’m so glad you could come. I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time.’
She knew that to be a lie. Had he wanted to meet her before he would most certainly have arranged it. He escorted her into the main room around which the penthouse apartment was built. Its external walls were fashioned entirely of high-impact glass, which offered a magnificent panorama of the Parliament buildings across the Thames, and half a rain forest seemed to have been sacrificed to cover the floor in intricate wooden patterns. Not bad for a boy from the back streets of Bethnal Green.
He ushered her towards an oversized leather sofa in front of which stood a coffee table laden with trays of piping-hot breakfast food. There was no sign of the hidden helper who must only recently have prepared the dishes and laid out the crisp linen napkins. She declined any of the food but he was not offended. He took off his jacket and fussed about his own plate while she took a cup of black coffee and waited.
He ate his breakfast in single-minded fashion; etiquette and table manners were not his strong points. He offered little small talk, his attention focused on the eggs rather than on her, and for a while she wondered if he might have decided he’d made a mistake in inviting her. He was already making her feel vulnerable.
‘Sally Quine. Born in Dorchester, Massachusetts. Aged thirty-two, and a girl who’s already made quite a reputation for herself as an opinion pollster. In Boston, too, which is no easy city for a woman amongst all those thick-headed Micks.’ She knew all about that; she’d married one. Landless had done his homework, had pawed over her past; he wanted to make that clear. His eyes searched for her reaction from beneath huge eyebrows tangled like rope. ‘It’s a lovely city, Boston, know it well. Tell me, why did you leave everything you’d built there and come to England to start all over again? From nothing?’
He paused, but got no reply. ‘It was the divorce, wasn’t it? And the death of the baby?’
He saw her jaw stiffen and wondered whether it was the start of a storm of outrage or a move for the door. But he knew there would be no tears. She wasn’t the type, you could see that from her eyes. She was not unnaturally slim and pinched as the current fashion demanded, her beauty was more classical, the hips perhaps a half-inch too wide but all the curves well defined. She was immaculately presented. The skin of her face was smooth, darker and with more lustre than any English rose, the features carefully drawn as though by a sculptor’s knife. The lips were full and expressive, the cheekbones high, her long hair thick and of such a deep shade of black that he thought she might be Italian or Jewish. Yet her most exceptional feature was her nose, straight and a fraction long with a flattened end which twitched as she talked and nostrils which dilated with emphasis and emotion. It was the most provocative and sensuous nose he had ever seen; he couldn’t help but imagine it on a pillow. Yet the eyes disturbed him, didn’t belong on this face. They were shaped like almonds, full of autumnal russets and greens, translucent like a cat’s, yet hidden behind oversized spectacles. They didn’t sparkle like a woman’s should, like they probably once had, he thought. They had an edge of mistrust, as if holding something back.
