Origin of the Body (5 page)

Chapter 3

They woke the following morning, huddled together on a pile of straw, a raft of others strewn across the floor around them.  The welcome smell of sizzling bacon wafted through the air, enticing the hung over group to their feet.  If there had ever been any doubt that Alexander and Anita were a couple, it was now thoroughly dispelled, Bas and Anderson throwing a raised eyebrow at each other as they walked past.  Anita couldn’t help but feel guilty, he was putting on a brave face, but Bas’ energy noticeably dropped as he passed.  ‘He certainly likes you,’ Alexander commented, half-mocking, half-uncertain, before pulling her to her feet.

‘I know,’ was all she said in reply, pursuing the spectacular smells, that now included freshly baked bread, out of the barn.  They ate greedily and drank several cups of tea, trying to quell the throbbing headaches the rum punch had left behind, then took themselves off to the copse of trees on top of the hill to continue with the diary, hoping today’s excerpts might shed more light than those the day before.

‘11th February, 1333.

So much has happened since a year ago when I last wrote.  But today, I again find myself with something to say, but not a soul to say it to, so again I turn to you in the forlorn hope that spilling my thoughts onto your pages might in some way help.

The day after my last entry, I told my parents I was going to stay in Kingdom with Jeff.  They went ballistic, calling me stupid and naïve first, and then trying to win me round with reasons why it’s so dangerous to collude with members of the Institution.  Needless to say none of it worked, but they did agree not to run to Tobias, although they drew the line at letting me run their business in Kingdom - it would have always been a long shot, even if Jeff wasn’t in the equation.  So they left me in Kingdom when they returned to Empire, and I haven’t seen them since.  I know they’ve been in Kingdom, trading and lecturing, but they have never once tried to seek me out, so neither have I tried to speak with them.

I moved in with Jeff and joined the Institution, which, to be honest is more of a social club than anything else.  Yes, it has ideological undertones, and yes, we get together to discuss them, and yes, we try to gather support from powerful people, but other than that, all there is, is great deal of drinking and dancing and playing cards.  I’ve never met the leadership, so I have no idea who they are, or if they’re really as dangerous as people make out, but they let us get on with what we want and don’t interfere with our affairs.  There’s quite a large group of us now; me and Jeffrey, Alistair (a friend of Jeff’s from his time studying), Rose (a promising Mind from an influential Mind family), Helena, Celia (Helena’s cousin), Olivia (Rose’s cousin), and the two most surprising members, Peter (son of Christiana, the ruling Body Descendant) and Anthony (son of Philip, the ruling Sprit Descendant).  Everyone knows the only reason they joined was because of their respective relationships with Olivia and Celia, and Helena has been working on Austin for as long as anyone can remember.  He’s infatuated with her and she boasts she has him wrapped around her little finger, but he won’t join us for fear of what his father would do if he did.  In truth, this is all we can be accused of, nothing illegal or dangerous as my parents made out, but instead, involving high profile people in conversations where we speak of the merits of more progressive ideologies.  We talk of democracy, elections, true free trade, but we take no direct action to try and progress in that direction; we’re a debaucherous, ideological, drinking club, that is all.

And I write, oh useless diary, because of late it’s got more debaucherous than ever before.  Last night, we were in Monty’s back room, drinking and smoking and playing poker after dinner, when, as I was returning along the panelled corridor from the bathroom, I saw Jeffrey and Milly (Amelia’s new nickname) going into one of the bedrooms Monty’s keeps for when the owners come and stay.  She had her back against the door, looking up at him suggestively, and Jeff had one hand on her stomach and one on the handle as he swung the door open and pushed her through.  I didn’t say anything, nor did I do anything.  It felt like an out of body experience, like a bad dream, so I floated numbly back to the room with everyone else and sat quietly trying to work out what I should do.  Jeff can be like this, I’ve always known him to be an outrageous flirt, so I suppose it was only a matter of time before something like this happened…and for all I know, this isn’t the first time...

Anyway, a few minutes later, the door flew open and one of the barmen told us some of Tobias’ men had just demanded entry to Monty’s to search the place.  We fled out of the back exit and scattered, each of us taking a different route through Kingdom’s maze of streets to lose them.  Peter and I ran together, he knows the streets far better than me, so I grabbed his hand and followed his weaves through this archway and that turning.  We could hear boots behind us; some of the guards had been sent round the back, chasing after us when they saw us leave, so when he was sure we weren’t in view, he pulled me into a tiny passage between two streets and hid us behind a lip in the wall, pressing himself against me to make sure we were both fully out of view.  The guards passed but we stayed where we were, just in case they came back the same way.  The echoes of the guards’ boots fell away into silence, the blackness swallowing us so all that was left was Peter pressing up against me, his breath and mine deafening in the silence.  I looked up and was surprised to find him looking absorbedly down at me, intensity there I had not seen from him before, nor indeed expected from a man who was usually so meek and mild.  He crept his hand up to my neck, lowering his head down towards mine, but I pulled my eyes away, looking down at the floor and raising a hand to his chest to fully deter him.  I looked back up to try and offer some kind of apology but he had already moved away, making for the other end of the dark passage and leaving me to walk the short distance back home alone.

Jeff was already there when I arrived, I was pleased to see without the company of Milly.  He said he had been returning from the bathroom when he’d heard the alarm and fled.  I didn’t say I knew he was lying, I didn’t really see the point.

18th August, 1334.

My entries are becoming only annual events now, and I fear this entry is a dangerous one to write.  I’ve started hiding the diary so it will never be accidently found.

A few weeks after my last entry, Anthony and Celia became engaged, and the rest of us followed like a stack of falling dominos, first Peter and Olivia, then Rose and Alistair, then finally Jeff and I.  Whereas for all of us, this had always been the likely conclusion, for Helena the story was quite different.  I don’t know what she expected to happen between her and Austin, not with the influence Tobias has over his son, but she had apparently not been expecting the announcement of his engagement to Milly, the daughter of the most prominent of Mind Councillors.  Helena appeared unaffected on the surface, but I knew the news was eating away at her inside and one night she finally admitted to me how devastated she really was.  ‘We were together the night after it was announced,’ she said, ‘he told me he didn’t want to be with her, but that was what his life was; he didn’t have the luxury of choice.  We both knew it was a lie, he’d made his choice, his choice just wasn’t me.’

And after the marriages, the partying died down a bit, and recently, babies have started making an appearance; first Celia and Anthony’s son Alexander, then Austin and Milly’s son Marcus.  Helena was once again hit most hard, I know she still sees Austin, even to this day, and I think a part of her still expects him to one day choose her…

Anyway, life seems to have somehow become more serious; Tobias’ guards can be found everywhere, he increases taxes almost by the month, any kind of relic research has been outlawed, and the other Descendants are, for some reason, notably absent.  Christiana has moved permanently to her Empire residence and Philip is barely ever seen at all.

So it was a surprise when Christiana summoned me to see her a couple of months ago.  I had not a clue why, the only reason I could think was that as my God Mother she somehow wanted to intervene to restore my ruin of a relationship with her best friend, my mother.  I didn’t tell the others where I was going, not even Jeff, our relationship deteriorates further almost daily, and headed to Christiana’s enormous, square manor house on the outskirts of Empire.  To my surprise, Peter greeted me at the door, asking if I knew why we were there.  I told him I had no idea and we went straight to see Christiana together.

Unusually, Christiana had invited us to eat dinner with her in her suite, dishes of food already laid out on a dresser when we entered.  We followed her lead and helped ourselves to roast lamb, crispy roast potatoes and an array of vegetables, before sitting at a small, round table, giving her quizzical looks between mouthfuls.  ‘I’m sure you’re both wondering why you’re here,’ she started, letting out her breath quickly in a half laugh when she saw our faces, ‘so I’ll skip the chit chat and get straight to the point.  As you are aware, Descendants have particular duties, especially to fulfil the oath we swear when we are crowned, that we will strive to send back the relic and free the world from the Gods.  You will also be aware that the Descendants don’t exactly take this oath seriously, in fact, I am sure you will have interpreted certain recent events as a move in the other direction, to ensure we never fulfil our oaths, and I’m afraid you wouldn’t be wrong.  Previously, I haven’t been too concerned about our lack of focus on what is supposed to be our primary objective.  My mother, Patricia, the Body Descendant before me, was, what can only be described as a radical, as was Tobias’ father, which means we have both held views that up until now, I haven’t thought to question.  However, there has been a niggle of doubt in me for years, and given Tobias’ recent actions, I’ve had cause to have a change of heart.’

Peter was losing patience, not catching her drift, ‘mother, what exactly are you trying to say?  It sounds suspiciously like you’re about to throw in your lot with the Institution, for Gods’ sake.’

‘Well, that’s the thing, I sort of am.  And furthermore, you shouldn’t call me mother, she should,’ she inclined her head in my direction and Peter’s mouth fell open.  I frowned and tried to make some sense of what she’d said.

‘Sorry, what?’ I replied at last, lost for something more intelligent to say.

‘I’m your mother Clarissa, not his.’

‘I’m not your son?’ said Peter, looking as though his world was crumbling around him, as indeed it was.  ‘Then whose son am I?’

‘You were swapped with Clarissa at birth.  Her parents are in fact your parents.’

I sat in silence as I took in what she was saying, astounded more by the way she had chosen to break the news than the words escaping her mouth, until at last I felt the need to speak.  ‘Why?’ was all I could whisper, a small shadow of a word in a sea of deceit and confusion.

‘As I said, my mother was a radical, power-obsessed, she never wanted the Descendants’ reign to end.  So she, Tobias, and I hatched a plan to make it so.  All we had to do was put an end to one of the lines, meaning the prophecy could never be fulfilled and we would rule forever.  As your mother was due to give birth around the same time as me, it seemed a perfect opportunity to swap the babies and tell the world the line was at an end.  If Peter hadn’t been a boy, we would have found someone else, but as Imogen was my closest confident, it fitted together so perfectly in the end.’

‘And my father?  Did he know of this too?  And Peter’s father?’

‘No.  The only ones that knew were Tobias, my mother, Imogen, and I.  It seemed more likely we would succeed that way.’

‘So why are you telling us now?’ Peter spat.  ‘You got away with it, nobody knows, nobody suspects.  Why not just continue as you have?’

‘Because, as I said, I’ve had reason to reflect.  I was a radical, but with my mother gone and her voice no longer sitting in my ear, I’ve heard views from a cross section of our world, from people who look up to me and expect me to fulfil my vow.  People think I’m their only hope, they plead with me, offer to help me, send me gifts, and all the while, Tobias is playing the tyrant to an ever increasing degree.  Even when my mother was alive, that was never the plan.  The reason for the switch was twofold; to keep the Descendants in power, yes, but also to provide stability in the world, so people could live free lives and not have to worry about years of famine and fear like we had before.  It seems to me that Tobias will single-handedly bring down that stability, entirely for his own gain, and I can’t sign up to that.’

‘You know, I felt so guilty for joining the Institution, like I was betraying you and all the good things you stand for; how laughable that seems now.’  Peter threw his chair back and stormed out, yanking the door open so hard it slammed into the wall with an almighty crash.

I looked at Christiana, my mother, and couldn’t find a single thing to say.  She didn’t look repentant, or sad, or angry.  She was impenetrable.  I have no idea what she was thinking, or if this was all just some game to her in which we, and everyone else, where insignificant little pawns.  I placed my napkin down, drew my chair back in as dignified a manner as I could muster, and left the room, following Peter down the stairs and into an enormous drawing room, a fire blazing in the colossal hearth, Peter sitting on a pile of furs in front of it.

There was a tension in the room that almost seemed to slow my movements, it sucked at my limbs as I entered.  Even for an energy reader, I’m sure that kind of sight would be rare; the energy of a man whose identity had just been cruelly and unceremoniously wrenched away from him.  And not just any identity; an identity that made him one of the most powerful people in the world, an identity with a destiny that the whole world cared about.  He had a glass of whiskey in his hand and indicated for me to join him.  I walked to the cabinet and poured myself a large amaretto over rocks of ice, the crystal glass shimmering in the light of the fire as I quietly sat down beside him.