Mrs. Queen Takes the Train (20 page)

Suddenly, the huntsman, the dogs, and the following riders started moving off the hilltop and downward, clearly intent on crossing the roadway. The police had blocked off both protesters and automobile traffic in both directions and were making way for the hunters to cross onto another neighboring field. Some signal seemed to have been given among the protesters. The ski masks and other dark scarves came out of pockets, and people started pulling them down over their faces. The young man whom she’d driven down with now had on one too, and he had the boot of the Austin Cooper open with half a dozen others gathering round him. She moved closer to see what they were doing. She saw them handing out knives, with the sunshine glinting on steel blades.

“Hey, what the hell are you doing?” she asked, her shyness forgotten in the instant of seeing the knives.

“Stay back, Rebecca,” the young man told her. “Steer clear. Get in the car, turn it round, and have it running for when I get back.”

“But what are you doing with the knives?”

“We’re going to disrupt the hunt.”

“How?”

“When the horses cross, we’re going after them.”

“Going after who?”

“The riders. We’re going to get them thrown off.”

“And then knife them?” said Rebecca, not believing what she was witnessing, feeling as if she were in the midst of some great, slow-moving, automobile accident she was powerless to stop.

“No, no. We go after the horses and then the horses will throw ’em off into the road.”

“You’re going to kill the horses!”

“Not kill them. Just surprise them. Give them a little a jab, a little gouge, until they rear up and throw the riders.”

“You
cannot
do that.”

“Look, if you’re not up for this, just stay away. Start walking back up the road. You’ll get to the village in about ten minutes. You can get a train back to London from there. But this is too important to let you interfere.” With that, he turned his back on her and ran up to join the rest of the ski masks who were making their way to the front of the police barricade.

Rebecca felt sick to her stomach, but also desperate to stop any injury to the horses. She quickly put the badger back in his cage in the car and then ran up to the blockade. It was quite difficult to make it to the front. The number of people kept her back, and no one felt inclined to make way to let her go forward. She ran up to a policewoman standing at the edge of the crowd, away from the barrier, just beside a hedgerow.

“You’ve got to stop them.” Rebecca cursed herself—she gave an involuntary sob and tears started rolling down her left cheek. “Damn, damn, damn,” she said to herself. “You useless coward.”

“We
are
stopping them,” said the policewoman, not happy to be addressed by one of the rabble.

“No, no, no,” Rebecca wailed. “You have got to listen to me.” But she couldn’t speak further as her sense of panic made it impossible for her to communicate what she had to say.

“Go and sit down, miss,” said the policewoman impartially, keeping her eyes on her colleagues at the barricades. There seemed to be some forward surge from the crowd. The hunters on horseback were now reaching the roadway and beginning to cross. Rebecca was in full flood, and she couldn’t get out more than a few words in between deep wracking breaths. “They have . . . knives.” She bent her head over and the tears ran hot down her neck. “They’re after the horses.”

The policewoman heard her and took two steps forward. “
Oi
, Rod!” she yelled to one of her colleagues. “Watch out! They have knives!”

[© Philippe Hays/Rex Features Ltd]

Just then the first horses and riders began clopping onto the hard surface of the road with the iron-shod hooves of the horses. At the same time, five people in ski masks slipped under the barriers and pushed past the police, who were outnumbered by the protesters. They ran forward with their knife blades exposed and the first horses started screaming, not from being wounded but from the shock of being approached by strangers in ski masks. The police radioed for reinforcements. One of the first riders was thrown from her horse, and confused shouts went up from the crowd. It was a mess, a muddied, muddled, disorderly jumble of police, protesters, riders, and horses, with humans and animals crying out in distress. An Independent Television Network camera and crew had taken up their post on another rise in the ground and were filming it all for the evening news.

Rebecca crumpled up in a ball beside the hedge, her knees in the mud, her head in her hands. She couldn’t stop crying. Another young man approached her and got down on his knees next to her. “Becca? Is that you? Becca?”

Who was here? Who could possibly know her? Only the young man she’d driven down with knew her name. She looked up and recognized another boy who was a little older than her. Her parents used to take vegetables to a group of protesters who were trying to stop a road being built, she couldn’t remember where. She couldn’t be sure, as he used to live with some other protesters up in the trees. She’d never had a very close look at him. “Oh, hi. Um, sorry. I’m useless.” She looked up at him with tear-streaked misery. She managed to get out, “I don’t remember your name.”

“Dickon Bevil.” He smiled at her. “I suppose I was always too high up for a proper shake hands. Are your parents here?” he said, looking around over her shoulder. “They used to send us up vegetables in a basket tied at the end of a rope.”

“No.” She now remembered sending the baskets up. “Did you come here to hurt the horses too?” she asked accusingly.

“Lord no. It was planned as a nonviolent protest. Greenpeace is just here to lend moral support. Swell the numbers. I think a fringe element must have brought the knives. Anyway, the police have now got the upper hand.” He added, with disappointment, “Won’t be a good story for us on the news.” He nodded toward the television crew.

As they spoke, Rebecca still on the ground, and Dickon crouching near her, the police brought several of the ski masks by in handcuffs. One of them was the young man she’d accompanied to the protest, his wrists chained behind his back. “Rebecca!” he said. “Hang on a minute,” he said to the policeman leading him to a police van down the road. “Let me give the keys to the car to my girlfriend.”

“I’m not your girlfriend,” said Rebecca, still angry and shocked about the knives.

“Okay, whatever. Look, can you get the car back to London? Leave it near my flat? I don’t know how long they’re going to lock us up for. We could be at Her Majesty’s pleasure for a while.”

Rebecca was torn. Here was the only man who’d ever shown her kindness, who’d wrapped her in a white sheet, who’d never said to her, “You stink!” He was asking her to help him. She was secretly pleased at the same time as she was still upset with him.

“Come on, love, just come and take the keys out of my jeans pocket.” He hadn’t hands to gesture, so he nodded her toward him and pointed his eyes down toward one of his front pockets.

The policeman seemed inclined to allow this. It would be one less car that they had to tow away during the clean-up operation.

“She is not putting her hand in your pocket, I’m afraid.
Mate
.” Dickon suddenly stood up from where he’d been kneeling down next to her. Rebecca could see he was angry. She was surprised at how posh his accent was. His voice had seemed normal when he was talking to her before. Now he seemed to be using 1950s BBC English to take charge of all present.

“Who are you, then?” asked the young man with a sneer.

“Never mind who I am. Do you realize you lot have ruined what might have been a very effective peaceful protest? We will have lost credibility with the public. That won’t get the legislation through Parliament.” He spoke with authority, as if his family had once owned half a dozen pocket boroughs to which they could nominate their own MPs without need of election, as indeed the Bevil earls had, about two centuries previously.

The policeman pushed the young man along. He wasn’t standing by to listen to internal disagreements among the protesters. “Look, there isn’t time for this,” said the young man. “You take the keys out of my pocket, then. Hand them to her. Go on, have a squeeze of the family jewels if that’s what you’re after.” It was an insult, not an invitation.

“Not my taste. Can’t tell what yours might be.” Dickon stepped forward, shoved his hand in the young man’s pocket more roughly than was necessary, and gave the young man’s testicles an intentional jab in the process. Then he fished out the keys.

“Bloody fucking hell,” said the young man as he doubled over.

“All right, you lot, that’s enough,” said the policeman, and he pulled the young man away by the crook of his arm, still groaning.

Rebecca watched all this with disgust. She’d seen rival cocks fight among the bantams. This was the same.

T
he Queen had driven off to have luncheon with the Airlies on the other side of the hill, so Luke and Anne had the afternoon off. It was unusually warm for late September and they’d decided to go on the footpath below the ruin of Knock Castle. Luke had been doing some research online, ignoring all the pamphlet literature on local walks that was literally stuffed into the equerry’s desk at Balmoral. He had discovered something called the “Seven Bridges Walk,” which took in a big stone arched bridge over the Dee, a smaller bridge over the Muick, and, most spectacular of all, a Victorian footbridge called Polhollick. He and Anne had parked the car near the entrance to the road that led to the Queen Mother’s fishing lodge and started along the stony footpath through the tall pines.

“Don’t know if I’ll make it across all seven bridges,” said Anne, laughing a little ruefully. “You may end up having to carry me on your back like a sack of potatoes.”

At this Luke went charging off into the underbrush, and came back with two tree branches, which he broke into size for sturdy walking sticks. “There you are. A wand for you. A pike for me.”

Anne took her stick gratefully. Luke was a courtly young man, the equerries often were. What was different were the dark clouds that sometimes crossed his brow, the awkward silences, his having wept in front of her, a virtual stranger. But she liked him more because of all these things, not less. She was sure he needed professional help. In the middle of a silence between them, she wondered about how to return to the subject. Instead, he surprised her by asking, “Do you have children, Lady Anne?”

“A boy, a son, only one.”

“Perhaps wish there were more?” He looked not at her, but up into the pine boughs.

“No, I think not. I have enough trouble with the one. We don’t speak.”

Luke saw that this was sensitive territory and wondered whether it was better just to be quiet and let her carry on, or to press for more. He said nothing.

“I suppose I interfered too much. Saw what he needed. Told him what he should do. His father died when he was quite young, so I had to be both parents at once, you see?”

“Mmm,” said Luke sympathetically.

“Well, he got involved in environmental politics when he was at school. And before I knew it he just upped and left. Went to go live in the trees. To prevent a bypass from being constructed.”

“A lot to be said for trees,” said Luke, surveying the military ranks of pines along the path. They had been planted as a cash crop for ultimate harvesting. They were now reaching their adult growth.

“Yes, yes, of course. But you need qualifications, training, a university degree.”

“Oh well. University of life, and so on, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” said Anne, unpropitiated. After a pause, she continued, slightly more cheerfully. “I did find a picture of him in the paper the other day.”

“Oh?”

“In a pontoon boat, harassing a Japanese whaler. Trying to prevent them catching whales. Greenpeace.”

“Good cause. Brave chap.”

In her heart, Anne loved Luke more for saying this, as it was near one of her own divided reactions to the picture. She articulated the other reaction, “But he should be working toward a degree now. Greenpeace could wait for later.”

“Got to discover that for himself.”

“Why risk his life six thousand miles away?”

“Why go to Iraq?”

“That’s different surely?”

“Not
that
different. Chaps like showing their stuff in a
Boy’s Own Paper
sort of way. Scouting. Going into the wilderness. Living off nuts and berries. Oriental travel. Enduring hardship. Contributing a very little bit to a very big cause.”

“Yes,” said Anne bitterly, “and getting themselves killed.”

Andy’s face passed in front of Luke’s eyes for a moment and he stopped walking. Anne turned around to look at him behind her, leaning on her stick. His face was blank. “Oh! I
am
sorry. Forgive me.” She walked back two paces to collect him. She said, “Come now, help an old woman whose rheumatism is bothering her.” She put the walking stick in her right hand and slipped her left through Luke’s arm. She knew in her aching bones that now was not the time to bring up the friend Luke had lost. He will have regretted telling her as much as he did.