Incarnation (36 page)

“Are you certain?” I asked. “Your clan is already upset by our alliance.”

“My clan, my family, all of them will have to accept how it is between us. But, as we are speaking honestly, what of Mordred? How accepting do you think he will be?”

I did not pretend to misunderstand him. Although the compulsion Mordred had laid upon me was gone, an undeniable connection remained between us. I had no reason to believe that would change even if I regained my humanity, especially not given that I was of the same bloodline as the two women he had loved.

“I don’t know, but I will not be swayed by him. It is you
I want, only you.” On this the conflicting sides of my nature were in full accord. I wanted Marco with a passion that would not be denied. If I remained as I was, I would have to watch him age and die as Mordred had watched Elizabeth do. And if I became human again, the time we would have together would be so short, a mayfly’s breath in the vastness of eternity.

So do I excuse why I pressed him gently back down onto the bed. Our lips met, our limbs entwined, the strictures of propriety burned away as though they had never been. There was a moment when, wrapped in his arms, I gazed at the fine blue tracing of his lifeblood in his throat and felt an urge to taste him, but it passed swiftly as I discovered the many other ways that hunger can be assuaged.

We had little time, as I think we both knew, but never has time been better spent. Moment to moment, touch to touch, we laid claim to a future of our own making even as we knew that it might remain forever beyond our grasp. Together, we forged a private world far from the conflicts that raged outside the walls of the Golden Dawn.

But inevitably, those conflicts were bound to intrude. When the knock came at the door, neither of us were surprised.

Felix stood in the hall. He cast a glance at Marco hastily tucking his shirt into his trousers, and at me struggling to confine my hair into some semblance of order, and sighed. His eyes spoke volumes but he said only, “It’s dawn. The others are asleep. Even Mordred is getting some much-needed rest. He’s vetoed a plan to attack the Bagatelle directly. Instead, he wants to draw Blanche out into the open.”

“Tonight,” Marco said, “at the Crystal Palace?”

Felix nodded. “So I gather. It’s risky, of course, and far too public but it may be the best option. If they were to clash in the streets of London”—he shuddered—“the fighting would be horrific. He thinks this way will be quicker and cleaner.”

I understood why Mordred wanted to act without delay. After his months in captivity, whatever patience he had possessed must be long gone. Moreover, he was likely concerned about his ability to retain the support of those who had been willing enough to abandon him a short while before. He would want to dispose of Blanche, then move on de Vere in short order. All that made perfect sense, but I still feared that he had not given himself the opportunity to think the matter through.

“A better possibility,” I said, “would be to cancel the event altogether. Deny Blanche the opportunity to seize any more victims or trigger a war, at least for the moment.” Nothing would really be solved by doing so, but having more time could only work in our favor. Mordred would be able to better recover his strength, others might come over to his side, it was even possible that Blanche could begin to see the folly of her ambitions. I turned to Marco. “There is still time to cancel it, isn’t there, if the right people could be convinced to do so?”

“There is only one person who would have to be convinced,” he said. “Her Imperial Majesty, Queen Victoria. The problem is that she sees almost no one.”

He was right, of course. The enormity of trying to reach the reclusive queen empress and persuade her to alter her plans for the evening seemed overwhelming, until a possibility occurred to me.

“I know someone she will see. Her old adversary, the prime minister who plagued her for so many years. If he bends his knee and begs an audience, she will not turn him away.”

To me, it seemed like a starkly logical plan. Marco also claimed to see good sense in it. Even Felix managed a hint of enthusiasm.

Only one party to the scheme was adamantly opposed.

“You want me to do what?” the Lion of Parliament roared. “Beg that woman to grant me a few moments of her time so that I might—yet again—preserve her realm? Do you have any idea how she and I clashed? Or how gleeful she was when I left office for the last time? I wouldn’t have been invited to this event tonight at all if she didn’t want to sit on her throne and stare me down.
I’m still here,
she’ll be thinking,
and you’re nothing but an old man who’s been put out to pasture
.”

Marco and I were standing in Gladstone’s office on Downing Street, but this time we were not alone. Several stricken aides were present, all looking as though they most fervently wished they could be anywhere else.

Marco cleared his throat. “Hardly that, sir. If anything, your authority has only increased since you cast off the fetters of public service. Her Imperial Majesty may not be eager to admit that, but she undoubtedly knows it, just as she knows that however much she disagreed with you in the past, you never gave her any but good counsel. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she doesn’t regret not taking more of it.”

Gladstone’s brows worked mightily. Grimacing, he said, “Tell me, Marco, what exactly were you doing over in Ireland when you found time to kiss the Blarney Stone? For kiss it you have obviously done, given the nonsense you’re spouting. Our
queen empress is unburdened by any regrets, apart from the loss of her dear Albert. In her eyes, she has lived a life of unblemished correctness.”

“Then surely she wants to continue doing so,” I suggested. “Now in the winter of that life is not the time for her to make a single fatal mistake that will plunge her realm into a war that cannot be won.” When he still hesitated, I added, “Has she not had enough of these Jubilee celebrations? What a burden they must have been on her, dragging her from her life of solitude. Surely she would welcome a reason not to have to endure yet another.”

“She is a stickler for duty,” Gladstone said, but I could see that his mind was working. “Yet there is something to your point. The events of the past few days undoubtedly have exhausted her. However disappointed people were, they would have to understand if she declined any more such activity.”

“Then she must be persuaded to do so,” Marco said. Pointedly, he added, “You are the only man who can make her see reason, Prime Minister. We will help, of course, but everything depends on you.”

The lion smoothed a hand over the thick white mane of his hair in a gesture at once anxious and pensive. Old as Victoria was, he was older still and his life had not been easy. Together they had borne the weight of keeping the realm safe through turbulent decades. Foes though they were, I could only hope that they still had within them the strength to bear that burden just a little longer.

“All right,” he said at last. “I will request an audience but I will not go alone. The two of you are coming with me. She’ll have questions, likely not many because she’s never been one
to rattle on, but they’ll be sharp and to the point. Not much gets past her even now. Answer her honestly and we should be all right.”

Marco appeared completely unfazed by this but I could not say the same for myself. My mother had dreamed of seeing her daughters presented at court. Her wish was about to become reality for one of them, if only in the most unorthodox fashion.

CHAPTER 27

T
he Crystal Palace had been built at the direction of Her Imperial Majesty’s consort, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, to house the Great Exhibition of 1851 in which scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs from all over the world came together to celebrate the achievements of the new industrial age. With the conclusion of the exhibition, there had been talk of removing the massive iron and glass structure from its site in Hyde Park, but for one reason or another this was not done. After the prince’s sudden death in 1861, his widow insisted on preserving the magnificent building she regarded as a symbol of his service to the realm and to her.

Going one step further, she moved into it, abandoning Buckingham Palace and dragging most of the royal court along with her.

“You can imagine the scramble that set off,” Gladstone said as our carriage turned into the park. “It had never been intended to be used for more than a few months. There were no rooms to speak of, just vast exhibition spaces. Come winter, it was colder than a witch’s—” He broke off, glancing at me. “Let’s just say that it was very cold. If that fellow Faraday hadn’t perfected his electromagnetic rotary much sooner than
anyone thought possible, providing central heating to a place that size, not to mention lighting it, would have been just a pipe dream.”

“Has Her Imperial Majesty ever considered leaving?” I asked.

Gladstone shook his head. “Not as far as I know. She’s a tough old girl, I’ll give her that. But security was a nightmare from the beginning. The walls are glass, for heaven’s sake! Anyone could stroll up and have a peek inside, and plenty did. It was all well and good for her—she had private rooms constructed for herself—but the rest of the court was left feeling like players in a pantomime.”

“That’s why the outer walls were built?” Marco asked. We came up on them as he spoke. Taller even than the walls around Bethlem, the massive stone structures enclosed all of what had been first a royal hunting ground beginning in Tudor times and later a park open to the people of London. Very few ordinary men and women had been allowed within the precincts since shortly after the queen took up residence. The 350 acres that comprised Hyde Park were closed off to all but the chosen few.

Impressive as those walls were, I knew that they would present no impediment to Blanche and her followers. The vampires would go right over them as though they did not even exist. We, on the other hand, drove through the heavy wrought iron gates after being cleared by the royal grenadiers standing watch in their massive bearskin hats and red jacketed uniforms. They were a reassuring reminder of how things had been in a gentler time, but they were not alone. Watchers hovered close and there were even a few Brownshirts in evidence.

“Who are that lot?” Marco asked as we drove past a cluster
standing about looking at once nervously pleased with themselves and ill-at-ease in their exalted surroundings. “They seemed to appear last night out of nowhere.”

Gladstone looked grim. “They’ve been recruited from the slums, promised a few quid a week and the chance to march about making fools of themselves. In return, they’re not to question where they’re sent or what they’re told to do.”

“Who’s behind them?” I asked.

“No one, if you can believe it. The current PM claims to know nothing nor does any cabinet minister. They’re lying, of course. The government’s only concern these days is how to maintain public order as people wake up to the fact that the world they’ve known is being engineered out of existence.”

I looked ahead toward the walls of the Crystal Palace glittering in the morning sunlight. Prince Albert’s creation was still beautiful despite having long outlived its natural life. But it had about it an air of brittleness that I could not ignore.

“The whole thing could come tumbling down in a moment,” I murmured.

“Are you talking about the building,” Gladstone asked, “or Britain itself?” Without waiting for an answer, he rapped on the roof of the carriage. “Faster, by God! Faster! Think we have all day, man?”

Gravel sprayed under the wheels as we drew rein in front of the entrance jutting out from the center of a three-story structure that resembled nothing so much as an elaborately tiered cake. Seeing it so near, I could only marvel that a building made almost entirely from glass could stand that tall. Graceful iron girders secured the immense panes that made up most of the exterior, but the overall impression was of unimpeded light and air. If her critics were right when they said that Victoria
had immured herself in a living tomb, she had chosen one remarkably free of darkness.

Gladstone was recognized at once and we were allowed to proceed without hindrance. We stepped into a vast hall that ran the width of the building, almost five hundred feet deep by my estimate. Living trees filled the space including many elms that had likely been in the park long before the palace was built. Birds darted between them and a large fountain that stood beneath the central dome. Water cascading over terraces into deep basins threw off fine mists in which miniature rainbows danced.