Last Act (31 page)

“Yes,” said a councillor who had spoken before, “I agree with all that. But, I say it again, we cannot proclaim him Hereditary Prince until he is actually married to the Princess.”

“Who is in deep mourning,” said Josef.

James Frensham had been frowning heavily as he listened, now he leaned over and spoke quietly to Alix, who nodded—reluctantly, Anne thought—and rose to her feet. “Your Excellency, may I speak?” Once again that lifeless voice silenced the crowd. “My cousin—my betrothed,” she corrected herself, “has suggested a compromise. A marriage contract, formally drawn up, witnessed by you twelve gentlemen, binding on both of us.” Beside her, Anne felt Michael stiffen, almost thought for a moment that he was going to leap up and protest, but all he did was to take her hand again and hold it tight.

Alix sat down, graceful, composed, an automaton, while the members of the Diet discussed this new proposal. It seemed to satisfy them. “With the wedding date named?” asked one, and received a curt nod from James Frensham, who was beginning, increasingly, to dominate the scene, as power seemed to slide from Josef to him. He was getting visibly impatient too, a hand beating a tattoo on the side of his leg as the discussion continued.

“Gentlemen.” Josef was on his feet again. “I think the time has come to take a first vote. I put it to you that in its hour of need, Lissenberg should invite Princess Alix and her husband-to-be to take office as Hereditary Princess and Prince.” He looked up and down the table. “Those in favour?”

Six hands went up.

“Those against?”

Five hands. Every eye in the hall was fixed on Josef, who stood there, for a moment, apparently thinking, then exchanged one long, undecipherable glance with Alix. “I shall not vote,” he said at last. “The proposal is carried six votes to five.” He raised a hand for silence. “But before we greet our new Prince and Princess, there is one last formality to be gone through.” He moved slowly round the table and came forward. “This must be in both English and Liss,” he told the hushed crowd. He spoke in Liss first, then in English: “Mark and listen, people of Lissenberg. I, chairman of your Diet, do now proclaim to you its decision. By majority vote, we have approved the accession, as Hereditary Princess and Prince of Lissenberg, of our beloved Princess Alix, and her husband-to-be, James Frensham.” His
voice rose in challenge. “And if any of you know any reason why these two people should not succeed to the government of our country, you are now to declare it, or forever after be silent.” His eyes roved round the hall. Hopefully? Impossible to tell, and Michael was twitching her hand. This was the hardest thing she had ever done. She rose to her feet, and knew she was shaking all over. But her voice, when she forced it out, came resonant with long practice. “Your Excellency.” As heads turned towards her she was aware of the man in front, her shield, tense in his seat, watching the hall like a hawk.

“Speak.” Josef was looking at her without a hint of recognition.

It was a timely reminder. She put up her hand and pulled off her wig as she began to speak the words she had rehearsed. “I, Anne Paget, a foreigner who loves Lissenberg, must tell you that James Frensham is unfit to govern here.” The hush in the hall was absolute. No time to see what Frensham was doing. She must go on, quickly, before something—a bullet?—stopped her. “I myself heard him plan the explosion that destroyed the opera house. Before I could give warning, his men, the ‘police' he has so kindly provided for Lissenberg, assaulted me, captured me, left me where the explosion must kill me. Look at him, my friends”—now she was improvising—“and see his surprise. He thought me dead.”

It was true. For one crucial moment, James Frensham had sat still, completely taken aback. Now, as the hall seethed into life, he was on his feet, about to give a signal? To precipitate a holocaust from behind that ominous curtain? But as he rose, a figure threw itself up onto the dais from the corner where the musicians had sat quiet all this time. Carl Meyer had Frensham by the throat. “One sign of violence,” he spoke towards the curtain at the back of the dais, “and I kill him.”

“Not if you can avoid it.” Herr Winkler was making a determined way forward down the silent hall, his policemen massed behind him. For all his bulk, he jumped lightly onto the dais and faced James Frensham. “I suggest, Mr Frensham, that you tell your gang to come out from behind that curtain, and lay down their arms. You do not want your trial bedevilled by
international complications.”

“Trial? What nonsense is this about trials?” Frensham had got himself together. “The woman's crazy! Well, opera singers! Must I tell you that she made advances to me which I naturally rejected? This is her idea of revenge, to hide, and then come here with these lies. A totally uncorroborated story of something she pretends to have heard, and you speak of trials!” He turned, with great dignity, to Josef. “Your Excellency, I suggest that the poor woman be removed and looked after as her state demands. You cannot, for a moment, take her seriously. A woman. No Lissenberger. Unhinged, no doubt, by the disaster at the opera house, the blow to her career. Her story alone!” He spread out his hands in a gesture of dismissal.

“Not alone,” Anne protested, and felt Michael rise to his feet beside her. But what in the world was he doing? “Say something,” he muttered to her. “Give me a moment.” Of course, he was removing Dr Hirsch's padding from his cheeks.

“No.” She said again. “Not alone. My friend Michael, whom you all must know, was with me. He saved my life; both our lives. Hear him!”

Tumult in the hall. What in the world was happening? “Michael!” they were shouting, and, “Michael of Liss!”

“Thanks, Anne.” He had the pads out now, and was recognisable again, his grin rueful. “And forgive me?” He looked down into the seething, shouting hall, and raised both hands for silence. “Herr Winkler, who told you I was dead?”

A great many things happened at once, and Anne was never quite sure of their order. Alix swayed where she sat and was falling from her chair when Carl Meyer sprang to catch her. Freed for a moment, James Frensham hesitated, his eyes fixed on the row of diplomats, who must be the first targets of any violence, and as he did so, one of Winkler's policemen seized him, while another found the cord of the curtain at the back of the dais. It rose slowly, revealing a group of Frensham's police, armed with light machine guns, a study in desperate indecision. For a long moment the tableau held, the weapons still threatening the crowded hall, then Winkler spoke to Frensham.

“Tell them to lay down their arms,” he said. “If you want to
live to stand trial.”

The hall held its breath, then Frensham turned and spat an order at his men. For a moment, Anne thought they might ignore it, take the situation into their own hands, begin to fire into the helpless crowd. One scream, one sign of panic might start it. But the Lissenbergers did not go in for panic. Instead, a number of men had risen silently in their seats and were filing down to the dais. They must be unarmed, but they moved with the confidence of training. Two of them for each one of Frensham's men, they climbed silently onto the dais, moved round to the back and accepted the machine guns that were as silently handed over.

The crowd was going to go mad again. No, it was not. Josef was in charge. As Winkler's men removed James Frensham, Josef raised his hand for silence, and got it. Even the journalists, who had risen to stampede from the hall with their story, paused where they stood to see what would happen next.

“Gentlemen.” Josef addressed not the audience but the Diet. “Our meeting is not over. An objection has been made to our first choice and, in my view, sustained. Do you agree?” There was a mixture of
Jas
and yesses and a strange little ripple round the big table as the Diet members adjusted to the new situation, and the six men who had voted for Frensham whispered uneasily among themselves. “Thank you,” said Josef. “Now, more than ever, Lissenberg needs a ruler. Prince Rudolf is still unburied. We are faced with conspiracy, scandal and bankruptcy. Princess Alix”—his voice was gentle—“are you able to speak to us?”

“Yes.” With Carl's help she got slowly to her feet. “Gentlemen, you must forgive me. What I said before, I said under duress. My mother, my young brother and sister were hostages for my behaviour. Herr Meyer tells me they are safe, thank God. Perhaps a braver woman would have acted otherwise. I can only beg your indulgence, withdraw all claims to the principality of Lissenberg and name my brother Michael as the obvious heir.”

The audience was on its feet now, stamping, clapping, shouting. Michael took Anne's hand. “We'd better get down there and say our piece.”

“But, Michael—” She still could not believe it, and yet, in a
way, had it not been obvious all the time? Michael … Michael everywhere … The friendly conspiracy around him … A dropout, he had called himself. “But, Michael—” she started again.

“Buts later.” He was pulling her forward through the friendly crowd of “students” who had made a passage for them to the aisle. Hands reached out to touch her. She caught one vast, amiable wink from the man who had acted as her shield, returned it without thinking, and was with Michael at the exit.

“This way. There's a door, and, remember, I did ask you to forgive me.”

Forgive! It was he who had so much to forgive. Would have when he knew the truth. Through the wild confusion of the last few minutes, one thing rang true and clear. Michael was Hereditary Prince of Lissenberg. In a moment, he was going to be acclaimed by the Diet, by the crowded hall. And—he was going to name her as his bride. His dying bride. She should have told him. But when? There had been no point in doing so when they both seemed doomed to die anyway, and since then there had been no chance.

“Cheer up. They won't eat you.” He was laughing at her, lovingly, as he urged her up the steps of the dais. “Stage-fright now, of all things?” He took her hand and led her forward to where Josef stood to receive them.

“Michael!” Josef kissed him, very formally, on both cheeks, and Anne was aware of the great listening silence of the hall. “And Anne.” His smile was immensely kind. “No time now for explanations.” Michael was kissing Alix, one hand held out to Meyer. Then Alix took Michael's hand and led him formally up to the table where the members of the Diet still sat frozen, watching. “Gentlemen,” she said. “Allow me to present my brother Michael.” She was herself again, her cheeks faintly pink, her eyes sparkling with amusement as she took in Michael's shorn hair and shabby jeans. She raised her voice so that the whole hall could hear. “Our father disinherited him. Unjustly, as one of you rightly said just now. May I, whom you have honoured beyond my deserts with your choice, present him as the heir to Lissenberg.”

Now the audience went mad. In all her experience, Anne had never heard anything like it. Josef's appeals for silence were simply ignored, and at last, with a sigh and a shrug he moved back to his place at the big table and went through the ceremony of naming Michael in dumb show. This time, when eleven other hands went up in approval, his joined them. Now, at last, as he moved forward again to the front of the dais, the audience began to settle down. There were cries of “Hush!” and “Hear him!” and he was able to repeat the formal request for any objections to Michael as Hereditary Prince, ending, as before, “Or forever after be silent.”

A long hush, and then, from the gallery where Anne and Michael had been sitting, one voice. “What about her?” it cried. “She spoke up for us all, didn't she, at risk of her life. I say, Long live Prince Michael and Princess Anne.”

“That saves trouble,” said Michael cheerfully, took Anne's hand and led her forward. “Don't look so bashful, my darling. It's no worse than taking a curtain call.”

No worse! Bowing, smiling, bowing again, letting herself be solemnly kissed—first by Michael, then by Alix, then by Josef—she thought that if she could have died, there and then, as she stood, by wishing it, she would have done so.

Would she ever be alone with Michael, and, if she was, how would she tell him? It was all confusion, chaos, explanation, happiness. For them. For everyone but her. And, somehow, at some point, she had decided that, for today, she would not spoil it. Tomorrow would be time enough. For today, she would be still, listen to the explanations, try to understand. They were all up at the castle now, where Princess Gloria, sober for once, had thrown her arms round her son Michael and burst into floods of hysterical tears. She and her two younger children had been held incommunicado by Frensham's men since they had taken over the castle on the night of the explosion, ostensibly to protect her. They had been rescued, she explained, after Frensham and Alix had left for the Rathaus. “I should have known it was your doing, Michael! Who else knows the way in by the great vine? I couldn't believe my eyes when the first one came in at my bedroom window. Who are they, Michael? They've been so kind … But I don't seen to know them.”

He laughed. “School friends of mine, Mother. The best thing Father ever did for me was to let me go to the Liss Academy. And I know whose doing that was.” He smiled across the room at Josef. “We were a romantic lot. Formed ourselves into the Lissenberg Volunteers. All for one; one for all. That kind of thing. And—when I came home, they remembered. Now we're the United Workers of Lissenberg—its first trade union. How soon will I be able to legalise us, Uncle Josef?”

“If you can solve Lissenberg's financial problems, you can do
anything,” said Josef. “But the situation's bad, Michael. We have to face it. If James Frensham chooses to call in the money Lissenberg owes him, the country will collapse.”

“Will it, I wonder? What makes a country collapse?”