Aztec Century (18 page)

‘Doctors can only do so much. She needs help from
you
most of all. You’ve got to support her, encourage her, make her feel …’ I searched for a suitable word, ‘… cherished.’

He looked at me. ‘Don’t you think I’ve been trying to do these things, Catherine?’

‘She’s lonely,’ I told him. ‘Homesick. She needs reassurance. She needs to see her family. You should try to take her away for a while after the baby’s born.’

‘I’m well aware of that. I assure you I’ve been doing what I can. But the campaign in Russia – it takes up so much of my time. I wish it were otherwise, but I have obligations which go beyond those of a husband.’

It was easier to talk candidly to him now we saw less of one another, now that he had Precious Cloud.

‘She’s also concerned about Mia,’ I said.

A frown.

‘She asked me not to say anything, but I feel I must. She thinks Mia’s spying on her.’ I paused. ‘She thinks there’s still something between you two.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ he said immediately. ‘I’ve been completely faithful to her.’

Feeling disingenuous, I said, ‘I’m sure you have. But I don’t think she’s comfortable with the fact that you retained Mia in your household.’

He looked perplexed. ‘I’m her patron. Should I tell her to leave because I’ve taken a wife? That isn’t our way, Catherine.’

‘I know that. You don’t have to justify it to me. But perhaps you should try to explain it to Precious Cloud. She’s young, Extepan, insecure. She needs to feel she’s not isolated from you.’

He shook his head somewhat wistfully. ‘Ah, my Chalchi. She’s such a delicate flower.’

‘She also hates that name. She told me today, when we were
riding together. It’s a Nahuatl name, not hers. It just makes her feel that her life isn’t her own any longer.’

‘I had no idea. She never spoke of it.’

‘That’s why I’m telling you now.’

He was silent for a while. We were standing alone, and he put his face close to mine and said quietly: ‘Do you know what I wish, Catherine? I wish she had just a little of your spirit.’

With this, he crossed the room to speak to the ambassador’s Mexican wife.

I was conscious of meddling in matters that were strictly no business of mine. But Precious Cloud’s vulnerability reminded me of Victoria, and I was by nature meddlesome. I think also I relished any opportunity to let Extepan know I still intended to make my presence felt. I wanted to continue to make an impression on him.

I stood near the french windows. It was raining outside, and rivulets of water snaked down the glass. If I focused beyond it, I could see London lit up in the wet darkness, a city continuing with its business despite the tide of war in the east; focusing on the glass itself, I saw the reflections of all the people in the room, well groomed and impeccably mannered, engrossed at that moment in their individual social exchanges. Everything descended in the end to the personal and the private: that was what shaped history, and things to come.

Extepan stood near the door, still talking to the ambassador’s wife, serious and handsome, intent on her every word. It was impossible to dislike him, harder still not to admire what he had achieved under the circumstances. I tried to imagine a world in which we had met in a different way, in different roles entirely.

Behind him, a terminal stood in an alcove, its screen blank. I could no longer see one without thinking of ALEX and wondering what had gone wrong. He had been categorical that there was to be no Aztec invasion of Russia, and yet it had happened. Bevan had suggested that the Aztecs may have managed to infiltrate ALEX and plant false information. I couldn’t accept this. It was hard to explain why, but I was sure I would have
known
somehow if ALEX had been subverted. Something in his manner would have told me.

Mindful of my social obligations, I turned away from the window. To my dismay, I saw Kenneth Parkhouse approaching.

I had managed to avoid him over dinner, but now he seemed intent on engaging me in conversation. But at that moment Chicomeztli arrived, looking positively alarmed. He spoke urgently to Extepan, whose expression grew grave. Immediately I detached myself from Parkhouse and went over to them.

‘Not now, Catherine,’ Extepan said sharply, waving me away.

‘What is it?’ I said. ‘Is it Precious Cloud?’

‘No, no,’ he replied. ‘It’s nothing to do with her. I can’t discuss it at the moment.’

He proceeded to announce his apologies to everyone.

‘A serious situation has arisen which requires my immediate attention,’ he informed us. ‘You must excuse me.’

He exited hurriedly, leaving us all wondering what the emergency could possibly be. Then Kenneth Parkhouse sidled up to me.

‘I believe I know what’s happened,’ he said in a whisper which seemed to imply a ghastly camaraderie between us.

I couldn’t bring myself to express curiosity; but he was determined to be the bearer of the news.

‘It’s most serious,’ he said. ‘The details are rather sparse at present, but I gather Mexican forces have suffered a severe reversal in the east.’

I was forced to look at him. He pursed his lips, apparently in concern. But I was certain he relished being the bearer of grim tidings.

‘Apparently there’s been a massive retaliation by the Russians on the Volga. They appear to have exploded a new kind of bomb.’

His bespectacled eyes twinkled; I had never found him more odious.

‘What sort of bomb?’

‘A bomb powerful enough to obliterate a whole city, by all accounts. Of course, the news is only just trickling in, and the situation is quite confused. It seems to have been dropped on Tsaritsyn, annihilating the Mexican armies there. I understand the Russians timed it to coincide with a victory parade at which both commanders were present.’

‘Chimalcoyotl and Ixtlilpopoca?’

Parkhouse nodded gravely.

‘They’re dead?’

‘If they were in the city, it seems likely they were vaporized.’

The woman was pale, dressed in an olive-green gaberdine that had seen better days. She sat down at the table, murmuring her thanks to me for seeing her, already apologizing for taking up my time.

‘It’s perfectly all right,’ I assured her. ‘That’s why I’m here. To try to help.’

‘It seems trivial, bringing this to a princess.’

I met her faltering gaze. ‘What?’

She began rummaging in her battered leather shoulder bag. ‘It’s my youngest son, you see. Richard. We named him after your brother, the King. My husband was a great royalist—’

‘Was?’

‘He got killed on Salisbury Plain in the fighting. Near Stonehenge, they told me.’

One of the main battles during the invasion had taken place there, the Aztecs annihilating our southern armies.

The woman had a Liverpudlian accent. I wondered if her husband had been in the army but did not ask in case of embarrassment, having posed similar questions on other occasions only to find that the deceased were innocent civilians, conscientious objectors or even collaborators shot by our own people.

I saw from her notes that her name was Cynthia and that she had four children, the youngest twelve years old.

‘Did you come to London today?’

‘Oh, no. We’ve lived in Ealing these last twenty years or more.’

‘Are you managing? Financially, I mean.’

‘We get by.’ She pushed a hand through her straw-blonde
hair. ‘John was overage, but he insisted on doing something, so they put him in the medical corps because things were desperate. He was hit by shrapnel, friendly fire they said. The army was very good about it. I got a pension, and my eldest son’s working part-time. But I’m worried about what my youngest’s being taught in school.’

She had produced an exercise book which she opened in front of me. ‘See? This is the sort of thing they’re learning them these days.’

There was a history essay entitled ‘The Decline of the British Empire’, written in a sprawling adolescent hand. I read it through. The boy, obviously under this teacher’s guidance, had enumerated ten reasons for the collapse of British power in the 1930s and 1940s. These ranged from racist policies towards the Boers in South Africa and the Muslims in India to the enlightened support for freedom fighters provided by the Mexican government in areas under British control. Aztec armies had been ‘invited’ into these regions by nationalist movements to supplant the hated British rule.

‘If you ask me,’ Cynthia was saying, ‘it’s a load of old twaddle. They’re indoctrinating him, making out we were rubbish and them like knights on white chargers. That’s not what I learnt in school.’

One of my assistants came up and asked her if she wanted a cup of tea.

‘Please,’ she said eagerly. ‘Milk and two sugars.’

It was hot in the crowded hall, and there were plenty of people still waiting their turn. The central office of the Aid Centre was located in the complex but we had set up a clinic in a defunct cinema near Marble Arch. I visited it twice a week, sitting at a long table on the stage with various advisers and helpers while our petitioners occupied the stalls. Chicomeztli had also set up a soup kitchen in the foyer, and this attracted the most crowds, passers-by often walking in simply to avail themselves of the free fare provided by such commercial outfits as MexTaco, obviously as a public-relations exercise.

On most accounts I felt compromised and ineffectual at the clinic. More people came during my visits, many simply to gawp or talk with ‘a Royal’, relatively few with serious complaints. In
addition, security was always very tight when I was present, armed guards and private detectives creating an atmosphere of tension and suspicion by searching people before they were allowed near me. None of my protests had any effect, Extepan insisting that it was essential I be protected from lunatics or zealots. It was plain to me that my attempts to have a normal dialogue with the citizens of the country would be frustrated either by the security forces or by the people themselves. I was a prisoner of my status.

This, however, was a real and serious complaint by a woman who was not prepared to let her awe of me get the better of her. It was not the first example of Aztec interference in the school curriculum I had encountered, the general thrust of the new history syllabus apparently being to eliminate any sort of criticism of their role in world affairs.

‘Even the teachers reckon it’s rubbish,’ Cynthia was saying, ‘but they have to do as they’re told. I don’t think it’s right.’

‘I agree,’ I said, reaching for my pen and notepad. Perhaps you can give me full details, including your name and the address of your son’s school.’

But before she could speak, all the sounds in the hall were drowned by a huge explosion outside.

The stalls swiftly emptied as people hurried towards the exit. Escorted by my guards and murmuring my apologies to Cynthia, I followed them.

It was the Excelsior Hotel at the end of Piccadilly that was ablaze. One half of its baroque façade had collapsed, and people were screaming and fleeing in disorder from the smoke and flames. Policemen and Aztec soldiers were vainly attempting to marshal the surging crowds as traffic began to pile up on both sides of the street.

The Excelsior was a favourite haunt of visiting Aztecs and had recently undergone a refurbishment to suit their tastes, steam-baths and, doubtless,
auianime
having been installed there. But as the air filled with the sound of fire engine and ambulance sirens, it was shoppers and hotel staff whom I saw being carried dead or maimed from the carnage.

I rushed across and did what I could to help. This mostly entailed giving orders to my escort to help with crowd control or
stretcher-bearing while I myself was continually kept away from the more gruesome aspects of the carnage. A princess of the realm cannot be allowed to bloody her hands and muck in with the common folk, even if all her instincts tell her she must.

I managed to arrange for the less seriously wounded to be temporarily housed in the cinema, and I was allowed to linger among the wreckage and blood until the press had arrived and taken suitable photographs of me at the scene. Then I was hurriedly shepherded to safety. As my Rolls was driven away, I glimpsed Cynthia, standing alone and bewildered in the middle of the rubble-strewn street, her son’s exercise book still clutched in her hand.

At breakfast the following morning, Bevan put a batch of newspapers down in front of me. My photograph was on the front page of all the tabloids, and there were headlines such as
KATE AT THE CARNAGE, PRINCESS OF PERIL, CATHERINE THE GREAT
!

‘This is embarrassing,’ I said, scanning the lurid stories accompanying the pictures.

‘You’re the heroine of the hour,’ Bevan remarked drily.

‘I didn’t do anything much. They wouldn’t let me.’

‘You mean to say you didn’t single-handedly save the day?’

I ignored his sarcasm, my attention already drawn by the weightier reports in the broadsheets.

‘What’s this?’ I remarked. ‘They’re claiming the Excelsior was destroyed by a Russian missile.’

‘Know different, do you?’

Bevan was slurping a mug of tea and leafing through the
News Chronicle
.

‘It was a bomb, Bevan, I’m sure it was. The whole frontage of the hotel had caved in, but I couldn’t see any damage to the roof. A missile would have hit it from the top, surely?’

‘Sounds reasonable.’

‘Then why pretend otherwise?’

He turned a page. ‘It would suit them, wouldn’t it? Make the Russians into everybody’s enemies, not just theirs.’

I switched on the television. Here the story was even more elaborate. The Russians had launched not one but several long-range missiles at London, the others having been shot down by
Aztec defensive systems over the North Sea. It was fortunate the missile that had hit carried only conventional explosives.

‘I don’t believe a word of this,’ I said. ‘It’s propaganda of the basest sort. The Excelsior was destroyed by a bomb that was probably planted by English partisans.’

I was watching Bevan as I spoke, seeing if he knew anything. But, as usual, his face gave nothing away.

‘What do you think?’ I asked him.

‘I think you’d better eat up those crumpets before they go cold.’

Extepan was ensconced with his staff in a briefing room, and I was surprised when he came out to see me.

I began to complain about the media coverage of the Excelsior’s destruction, but I could see he was preoccupied. I had not forgotten that he had lost both his elder brothers at Tsaritsyn – a disaster given only minimal coverage in the press – so I paused.

‘Catherine,’ he said, ‘I’m afraid I have more urgent matters to attend to. Shortly, I shall be leaving London.’

I think I had half anticipated this.

‘For Russia?’

He nodded. ‘The Revered Speaker has ordered me to take command of our armies there. I leave at dawn tomorrow.’