The Rise of the Automated Aristocrats (28 page)

“Yes, ma'am.”

Malazo turned back to Burton and led him to a staircase, up to the second floor, and along a corridor to a chamber on the right. He tapped on the door then opened it. Burton passed through and found himself surrounded by maroon draperies, plush redly upholstered furniture, and rather garish
objets d'art
.

The door closed behind him.

“Hallo! Hallo! Hallo!” Swinburne screeched, jumping up from a
chaise longue
. “About time! Are you perfectly squiffy?”

Eying the man who rose from an armchair beside the poet, Burton said, “I'm very rapidly regaining my sobriety, Algy. It's good to see you again. And how do you do, Mr. Gladstone? I shan't pretend I'm not taken aback to find you here.”

“Old Gladbags is a regular customer,” Swinburne declared airily. “He's perfectly fascinated by the doxies.”

“My name is not Gladbags,” Gladstone objected. His voice was icy and precise. He stood with his back ramrod straight and extended a hand toward Burton while giving every indication that he'd prefer it not to be taken and shaken.

Burton took it and shook it.

The leader of the opposition and—until his recent and uncharacteristic silence—Disraeli's fiercest critic, possessed a glowering and entirely unforgiving demeanour. It was so thoroughly puritanical that a brothel was perhaps the very last place on earth in which one could expect to encounter it. Yet, despite the permanently disapproving glare and the puckered lips, the haughty angle of the chin and the nostrils that flared as if permanently assaulted by a foul odour, there were persistent whispers concerning Mr. Gladstone's nocturnal habits, a certain breed of tittle-tattle that clung to him no matter how censorious his words and deportment.

“And you know full well, Mr. Swinburne,” he said, “that my visits to this establishment have but one object, it being to turn the dox—the young ladies—from their sinful ways.”

Burton removed his hat and put it on a sideboard. He laid aside his cane and unbuttoned his coat. “With what rate of success so far, if I might ask?”

“My labours are ongoing. The eradication of such varieties of wickedness that are found herein cannot be achieved in short order.”

“He's still in the research phase of the project,” Swinburne said. He gestured for Burton to occupy a vacant chair and, as the explorer settled into it, added, “And there is such a
delicious
variety of wickedness, Richard. The girls of the lodge are remarkably creative. Especially Madam Betsy, who, I am convinced, possesses the strongest right arm in the city. Why, she recently inflicted upon my buttocks a thrashing of such savagery that I am still hardly able to—”

“That's quite enough!” Gladstone barked. “We are here to discuss a different order of vice altogether. I refer to the perversion of the law and the ethical degeneracy that is currently sweeping through the government.”

“Do you have the capacity for another drink?” Swinburne asked Burton.

“I've had my fill,” he responded. He ran his tongue around his teeth, tasting coffee and traces of brandy, and regarded the leader of the opposition. “Mr. Disraeli's policies?”

Gladstone resumed his seat, pulled his jacket straight, and gave a curt nod. “Do you divine his intentions, Sir Richard?”

“My friends and I were discussing the matter this very evening.”

Burton returned his attention to Swinburne. “You were missed, Algy. You've been making waves. We're all impressed but concerned. I hope you know what you're doing.”

“I'm writing poetry,” Swinburne said. “There's no danger in that. The arts are the one place where truth can be expressed with impunity. If such a circumstance ever changes, the world is finished.” He lifted a glass of red wine from the floor beside the
chaise longue
, drank from it, then added casually, “Incidentally, I'm being followed.”

Burton's right eyebrow arched upward. “As am I, according to Montague Penniforth.”

“I suspected as much. That's why I had him whisk you here under cover of the fog.”

Gladstone snapped his fingers. “I asked a question.”

“You did,” Burton agreed. “Disraeli's intentions. Well, sir, as far as I can tell, he's attempting to make the rich richer and the poor poorer while removing what few avenues exist that might allow the latter, in terms of their income and quality of life, to in any way approach the former. He is also stifling the right to protest, which is why I'm anxious about my outspoken friend, here.”

“Pah!” Swinburne interjected dismissively.

Burton locked eyes with Gladstone and adopted a challenging tone. “In the apparent absence of any effective governmental opposition, it appears that the empire must rely on its poets and literati to voice concerns about the prime minister's unwarranted actions.”

Gladstone responded coolly to the jibe. “We'll address that observation in a moment. Do you know where your brother is?”

“No. Why do you ask?”

The politician lifted a thick document from a small table beside his chair and, leaning forward, handed it to the explorer. Burton saw, upon the top page, the words
The Return of the Discontinued Man
. The penmanship was neither his own nor Edward's. He flipped through the pages.

“It's a copy of the report I gave to him, but this is not his hand. Someone else must have written it out. How did you come by it?”

“It was delivered to my door by a ragamuffin who made off before I was able to question him. The significance is plain, is it not?”

Burton narrowed his eyes. “Significance?”

“As leader of the opposition I should have been granted access to the original. I was not. Someone who
does
have access to it has defied the prime minister by sending this copy to me.”

“And you think it was Edward?”

“Your brother hasn't been seen in the prime minister's company for three months—or anywhere else, for that matter. For a very large man, he's demonstrated a remarkable ability to disappear. Why has he done so? Because he opposes Young England?”

With a shrug, Burton said, “I don't know. Edward is a slippery customer at the best of times, which these most certainly are not. If he's up to something, I haven't been made privy to it. Perhaps it was he who sent you this. Perhaps it wasn't. The important thing is that you have it and are now aware of the historical context in relation to which the prime minister enforces his policies.”

Gladstone uttered a sound of agreement. “I stand incredulous that he is pursuing such a misjudged course. Is the empire not being hastened along precisely the path you cautioned against?”

Burton returned the document to Gladstone. “Absolutely. If we continue upon it, I foresee a situation wherein, in years to come, generation after generation will be subjugated by an unassailable, unconscionably affluent, and utterly unprincipled minority that is completely lacking in ethics, vision, and leadership ability. There will be no representation. Only oppression.”

“I am moved to suggest,” Gladstone responded, “that the aristocracy's response to industrialisation steered us in that direction well before Mr. Disraeli's ascent to power. In almost every one, if not
every
one, of the greatest political controversies of the last fifty years, whether they affected the general public, whether they affected religion, whether they affected the bad and abominable institution of slavery—whatever subject they touched—these leisure classes, these educated classes, these titled classes have been in the wrong.”

“Then we must accuse the premier of magnifying and hastening forward an already dangerous state of affairs. What is your point, Mr. Gladstone?”

“That Benjamin Disraeli is an unprincipled bounder but not one jot a fool. He wouldn't have ignored your warning. There must lay, amid all his unconstitutional measures, some element that we are missing, something within Young England that he intends as a solution to this problem of erosive patronage and nepotism.”

Burton felt his pocket for a cheroot but found he'd smoked the last. “Some manner of meritocracy being established within the bounds of the upper classes, you mean?”

Gladstone gave a disdainful snort. “Really, are you so blind to the arrogance of these people? They would never submit to such a scheme.”

“But if there was made a legal requirement for such—”

“Stuff and nonsense! It could never happen. If Mr. Disraeli were to even attempt such a move, the elite who fund his Conservative Party would withdraw their support, and he'd be ousted. Such is the financial stranglehold the gentry has on the political system.”

“What, then, do you suggest? What might this seemingly invisible policy be?”

“That is what I want you to find out.”

Burton recoiled, blinking in surprise. He glanced at Swinburne, who was grinning, then looked back at Gladstone. “Me? I'm no bloody politician.”

“That, I am very well aware of. You rather artlessly indicated, a few minutes ago, that you consider me remiss in my duties as leader of the opposition party. Why am I not waging a campaign against Young England, you wonder? I shall tell you. Due to the prime minister's declaration of a state of emergency, normal parliamentary legislation is suspended. Laws are being enacted, amended, and repealed without the normal period of consultation. New policies are bypassing the House of Commons entirely and going straight to the House of Lords for approval. I am not even informed of them, let alone given the opportunity to voice my concerns. Thus it is that only the aristocracy is dealing with issues affecting the aristocracy. In the parlance of the street, the lords and ladies of the empire are writing their own ticket.”

“But you have access to Number Ten. Have you not confronted the premier in person?”

“He no longer occupies Number Ten. He and his cohorts are now running the country from a secret location, supposedly for fear that the Chinese might attempt to assassinate him. He has made himself inaccessible.”

“Has Lord Elgin's bombing of the Old Summer Palace really so incited the Qing Dynasty that an attack upon the empire is imminent?”

“Not in the slightest bit. It's utter humbug. The Opium War is won and done with. There is tension but no danger, no impending conflict, no spies, no threat at all.”

Burton pushed himself to his feet and, with his thumbs hooked into his waistcoat pockets, his chin down, and his brow creased, strode back and forth across the room, his boots making no noise on the plush crimson carpet. After a minute had passed, he murmured, “And the king? He holds executive authority. Can he not put a stop to this?”

Gladstone took an empty glass from the table and extended it toward Swinburne. The poet lifted a wine bottle and poured.

“The fact that he hasn't done so suggests that he's in on the game.”

The explorer grunted. “What about the newspapers? Don't they offer you a platform?”

“Who do you think owns them, sir? Even those that claim to back my Liberal Party are the property of peers. Did you read the piece I wrote for the
Daily Bugle
? It was so heavily edited that my scathing condemnation of the government was somehow transformed into nominal support.”

Burton stopped pacing and faced the politician.

“What on earth do you expect of me?”

Gladstone examined his glass of wine, raised it, hesitated, and put it aside.

“You were not long ago Mr. Disraeli's swashbuckler. Now I want you to be mine. Find out what's happening to our aristocrats.”

“What's happening to them? I should think it obvious. As you say, they are making their position inviolable.”

“They are disappearing.”

“What?”

“The House of Lords is less than two-thirds full, and its numbers dwindle with every session. Votes are being posted in. Absences are notable, too, at every event favoured by the nobility. Ballrooms are half empty. Gentlemen's clubs are all but abandoned. The horse tracks are losing money.”

“Posted in, you say? So disappearing from view but still active?”

“Apparently. Will you look into the matter? I can't match the stipend you earned as the king's agent, but the Shadow Cabinet has allowed for a certain allocation of party funds to be made available for your commission.”

Burton shrugged. “I wouldn't know where to start.”

Gladstone withdrew a folded sheet of paper from inside his jacket. “Some of those who've not been seen for the past few weeks are listed here. Also—” He paused, reached for his wine, and this time took a sip. “Also, might I suggest that, if you and Mr. Swinburne are being followed, perhaps you should follow the followers?”

“To what end?”

“To discover who and why. I suspect that I'm also under observation, as are a number of my colleagues. If there has been established some manner of secret agency for such nefarious purposes, then it must be exposed to the public, else we are closer than ever to a totalitarian state.”

Burton hissed a breath out through his teeth. He removed his thumbs from his pockets and took the proffered list. Scanning the names—many had addresses written next to them—he immediately recognised three: Lord John Manners, Henry Thomas Hope, and Alexander Baillie-Cochrane.

“The original Young Englanders,” he muttered. His eyes flicked up, met, and held Gladstone's. “Very well. I'll undertake the job. Do I have a free hand?”

“Take whatever action you deem appropriate within the bounds of the law.”

“The latter part of that statement may prove difficult. The law is becoming ever more restrictive. If I'm found out, I'm liable to be declared a traitor.”

“Indeed so, but I haven't the authority to grant you immunity. Whatever risks you take must be on your own account.”

“In that case, I shall try very hard not to shoot anybody.”