The Triple Goddess (26 page)

As the war of attrition wore on, nobody in the Tower was able to sleep or eat. This music, far from being the food of love, was the genetically modified nourishment of monsters.

Conductor after conductor fell off the podium, and had to be borne hence and a new one installed, but the band never took a break. There was more militant Sousa:
Esprit de Corps
,
The Crusader
,
The Gladiator
,
The Dauntless Battalion
,
Oh! Warrior Grim
,
Sabre and Spurs,
and
The Thunderers…
and
Stars and Stripes Forever
, which was egregiously unpatriotic, but Jugs had authorized it being played because the tune and beat were so fine:
Ta dah, ta da dah, ta da dah-ah-a; ta da dah, ta da dah, ta da dah-ah-ah. Ta-da
....
Oom-pa, oom-pa, bam bam, poom poom
. End, repeat, end, repeat.

And then more of the modern stuff:
Squeak fiddle-dy squeak, fiddle-dy squeak squeak
, while the singers went, ‘
Aah-ah-aah-aah-ahh, oo-eee, ee-ooo, eee
.’

On the morning of the fourth day, by which time everyone in the Tower was tympanically wounded or insane, two of the inmates had thrown themselves from the walls of the Outer Ward in despair, and the remainder had been driven up the Inner Ward’s walls and were gibbering on the ceilings. Although technically the tally was nine to three the statistic was meaningless.

Arbella surrendered. She threw in not just one towel, but every towel that the members of her staff could lay their hands on, most of which were conveniently turbaned around their heads for jettisoning below.

‘I give up!’, she cried, Tosca-like on a crenellation, as a white sheet was run up a flagpole by a delirious Eye-Tie, and the Cavaliers tore off their headphones to hear what she had to say. ‘Stop it, please, stop it, anything to stop it!’, she cried; and as in Tennyson (from “Home they brought her warrior dead…”), “like summer tempest came her tears--”. ‘I can’t stand it any longer!’ she sobbed. ‘What can’t I do?’

‘She can’t stand it any longer!’ came the joyous shout from below.

When the Lord Chamberlain raised one side of Jugs’ headgear—the King was taking a sixty-second power nap—and bawled into the chambered nautilus beneath that Arbella was hurling, not a weapon, but her concession speech, Jugs was instantly and refreshedly awake. Reluctantly—the soloists and orchestra were about to embark on his
Compost Chorale
—Jugs signalled to the conductor by drawing a finger across his throat that the music and singing should cease; whereupon the conductor, after tying things up most professionally at the end of a bar, toppled face first onto the sod.

But although the breathless and arm-weary players had downed tools, and although the mouths of the singers were closed, even when everyone had stopped music-making it was not apparent to those in the Tower whether the overlaying strains had ceased, as wave upon wave of equally deafening silence crashed upon their ears like combers on a beach.

Arbella disappeared from the roof of the White tower and shortly thereafter emerged from the Tower at the head of her train of defeat, crestfallen, wild-eyed, tear-streaked, haggard, and—one must say—soundly beaten. Of her once-flaming defiance not an ember remained. As the defeated staggered about the grass clutching their heads and moaning, the Marrow Splungers easily rounded them up.

The crowd roared, strangers hugged and kissed,
and the elderly danced like young fauns. The King’s household, the musicians and singers, and all the general public and media representatives tossed their headphones in the air and cheered, singing ‘“Rule Britannia! Britannia rule the waves!”’ (the music critic mouthed ‘
air
waves’, sniggered, and made a note to include the analogy in his review).

The singers, too, were pleased: by holding up for the full thirty-six hours without being replaced, they had demonstrated that size did indeed matter. So dedicated had they been to ensuring they could hear their own voices over everything and everybody else, that they had had no need of earphones. After a few days of rest, which they would spend replacing the thousands of calories that had been used up in the patriotic cause, they would be able to resume their normal concert schedule, and tell their agents to up their fees because of their increased fame…or notoriety, it made no difference.

The media quickly spread the glorious news throughout the Kingdom, and the story, if not told in Gath nor published in the streets of Askelon, was retailed in Bath and on the boulevards of Basildon.

King James, gathering the diaspora of his wits, had the Marrow Splungers march the criminals in ignominy up and down the moat as if they were so many dead Hectors being dragged by Achilles about the walls of Troy—though he was generous enough as to order it done three times only and not over the course of the nine days that the vindictive Achilles had hauled Hector’s corpse about—to the accompaniment of the National Anthem, directed by the Monarch himself, now that there were no more conductors left.

Arbella was loaded with chains and taken back inside the Tower: this time into a different place that was as formerly advertised dark, verminous, and rank; a place without any modern comfort or convenience, tapestries, art or furnishings except a rack that was designed, not to hold wine bottles as in her former accommodation, but to effect greater spinal traction than any orthopaedist would recommend. Worse than any thought of that were the continuing
Oom-pa-pa
s and
Ta-da-dah
s and
Ay-ee, ay-eee
s that haunted her as, manacled to the wall, she banged her head against the stone.

Surrounded by his courtiers and an admiring mass at a respectful distance, King James—nobody would call him Jug Ears, or Toby Jug, behind his back again—composed his features. People all around the country, glued to their televisions, for the first time were struck by his kingly mien.

Though he was tempted to express his jubilance by fluttering and dancing like a daffodil in the breeze, J…the King restrained himself,
took a restrained bow, and stood before the cameras with one arm akimbo, a leg forward, and his chin up as if he were posing for a full-length portrait by Kneller. When the sound of noise-makers had abated, he agreed to make a statement
for broadcast to the nation, and an entropic
forest of sound booms lowered over his head.

His stammer had disappeared. ‘We are, well...quite pleased. Though of course, we are most grieved for the plant and the bird. They shall not be forgotten.
Suitable obsequies will be performed and their ashes interred at the Abbey. I will design a suitable plaque, and the Royal Mint—it used to be at the Tower, you know—will at my command strike a commemorative Raven and Rubber Plant twenty-two-carat gold proof sovereign coin Brilliant Uncirculated with a portrait of us on the obverse.

‘The Marrow Splungers, too, and the tuba player, we will not forget them.’

From somewhere in the crowd came a Cockney voice, ‘Waggle yer ten-speeds for us, Your Majesty! Waggle yer King Lears, yer Lords and Peers!’ And all around the cry was taken up by the people: ‘Yes, sir, please sir! Just this once, do it for us! Waggle your ears!’

His Royal Highness King James the Third paused, frowning. Then he laughed and complied with the request—not once but four times, to the north, east, south and west. T
he crowd applauded and roared its appreciation, and the King cupped a gracious hand in airy acknowledgment.

The next day Arbella was paraded onto Tower Green. In the normal course of events drums would have rolled, the axe would have swung, and the head and torso would have been removed to be hung on a gibbet in Whitehall as a warning to any would-be republicans who might get ideas about mounting a similar insurgency.

Instead, the executioner, before withdrawing the axe from concealment in the straw at the base of the block, and upon asking in the traditional manner for forgiveness, received from Arbella a mighty clip round the lughole. Grabbing him by the goolies, she twisted them as hard as she could, and, when he bent over noiselessly screaming with pain, felled him with a karate chop to the neck. The blow was so forceful that this essential linkage was broken with rough justice similar to that which the headsman was accustomed to meting out to his victims.

Then Arbella caught up the axe and, displaying astonishing strength for one so slight, severed her bilboes—the sliding shackles on an iron bar that confined her ankles—and scythed a path through the Marrow Splungers, who were already breaking out the hipflasks that all but one of them had rescued from their old uniforms.

The weapon, which she used as club and stave as well as cutting edge, was razor-sharp, and much blood was spilled as fingers, hands, arms, and a leg or two were sliced off.

When she had done sufficient bodily pruning to achieve her liberty, the King watched helplessly as Arbella vanished in the direction of Traitors’ Gate, having entertained the world to a live dramatic variant conclusion with an exciting twist to Donizetti’s opera
Anna Bolena
, the first titular role in which was taken in 1830 by the soprano Giuditta Pasta (sic), and which was performed so memorably by Maria Callas in the 1957 Milan production directed by Luchino Visconti.

At the Upper Pool of London between Tower and London Bridges a frigate was waiting to bear Arbella across the Channel to France. There she settled down to a life of great peace and contentment, eating snails, drinking champagne, flirting with the Dauphin, and doing her famous impressions of King James…in French.

Exeunt omnes
, finis, farewell…

…and Good Morning. Awoken from her dream by the clock radio at her bedside, Arbella jumped, for the first time since her early teens on a Christmas morning, from under her duck-down duvet. On Classic FM the Band of the Coldstream Guards had been playing a march by John Philip Sousa,
Transit of Venus
.

A second later the radio was shattered and strewn about the floor in many pieces.

Chapter Twenty

The following day Arbella went up to Lloyd’s early in an agony of anticipation to see Carew. As she peeked around his pillar she was relieved to see that he was at his box and alone, sorting through a mound of fur and feathers and showing no sign of distress. He was wearing a three-piece heather-mixture suit, such as one might put on when one was only going to put in half a day’s work before going fishing. A daring yellow silk handkerchief spilled from his top pocket.

She approached him cautiously from behind, but Carew must have sensed her because he turned, smiled, and motioned her to the seat opposite. ‘My apologies for leaving you in such a hurry yesterday, it was rude of me. I do hope you didn’t get too wet. I was soaked to the bone when I got back here. Fortunately I keep a change of clothes in the Members’ cloakroom.’ He busied himself putting his materials away.

‘Don’t mention it. It was the worst weather. I was able to get under shelter pretty quickly. More importantly, how is your foot?’

‘Much better, thanks. It was the shock, mostly. The nurse treated the wound and there’s some swelling, but it’s going down. Can I offer you a cup of coffee? On me this time.’

‘That would be nice. Where will we go, the Captains’ Room?’

‘No need.’

Carew ducked his head under the box, and there were the sounds of a cupboard being opened and running water. When he reappeared he was holding an earthenware jug. ‘I had the box plumbed in,’ he explained; ‘there’s an aquifer below the Yellow Submarine which no one knows about, and the quality of the water is excellent with a good balance of minerals, and no chemicals, of course.’

Arbella was too taken aback by this extraordinary fact, if fact it was, to say anything.

The Yellow Submarine was the overflow underwriting room that had recently been created to accommodate newly formed syndicates. Because it was a windowless basement underneath the marine floor, the walls had been painted a bright yellow to compensate for the absence of natural light.

Carew pushed the jug across to her, and pointed to a row of inkwells that were set into the desk on her side, beneath the bank of drawers with brass retainers for alphabetic identification that, at any other box, would contain record cards of all the slips that the syndicate had written, and the empty shelves that ordinarily would be filled with Registers of Shipping and marine reference books.

‘Ignore the first, which is Indian ink, and pour the water into the second inkwell from the left. No, sorry, the third, the second is
encre de Havane
. No again, it’s the fourth; the third is a dye I mixed for a new fly pattern I’ve designed. It used to have brandy in it, which may or may not improve its effectiveness. Pour it into the fourth, if you wouldn’t mind.’

After Arbella had done so and watched the water glug away, Carew took back the jug and replaced it in the cupboard underneath the box. Then he lifted the top of the seat next to him and pressed a button in the storage compartment. There was a rattling and grinding noise, followed by gurgling; and a smell of freshly ground coffee, so powerful that it seemed it would attract even the distant brokers, permeated the air.

Next, the underwriter delved into another cupboard and brought out a silver coffee-pot with a long curved spout, a silver tray, a couple of porcelain cups and saucers, two rat-tail spoons, a small bowl of muscovado sugar so dark that it was almost black, a hand-painted cake-plate, a tin, and two napkins. Placing the tray on the desk next to the inkwells, he arranged everything on it except the tin, from which, using a pair of pliers from a drawer of fishing tools, he extracted two macaroons half coated with chocolate, and laid them on the plate with the napkins.