The Triple Goddess (23 page)

So much steam was coming from the tunnels of the King’s ears and pouring from the windows, that London SW1 from Victoria to Hyde Park Corner was fogged in. Traffic ground to a halt, pigeons collided in the air, and two sentries outside St James’s Palace, believing that a terrorist attack was under way, shot each other.

After he had confused everyone as much as he could regarding his intentions, James ran to the courtyard where his green flying phaeton, fully fuelled with liquid bat guano, was on stand-by to whisk him wherever it was the royal pleasure, or displeasure, to go. Impatiently the King swatted his driver out of the way, leaped into the front and assumed the controls himself. Switching the fuel selector to the highest octane tank for maximum thrust, he fastened his safety harness and pressed the self-starter.

The machine powered up with a roar, and the triple exhausts coughed into action and asphyxiated Jugs’ driver. As the carriage rose into the air the King deployed his ears to act as radar—there was a lot of bird traffic in the area, so one had to be careful—and receive radio messages and meteorological information relayed from the Operations Room at the Palace.

Wrinkling his nostrils against the stench of the volatile rocket mixture, he slid his oxygen mask over his head to cover his nose and mouth.

In a twinkling they were over the area previously occupied by the odious South Bank complex comprising the Festival Hall, the Hayward Gallery and—to the lasting shame of James’s line—the Royal National Theatre. The King jettisoned a quantity of depleted bat shit as he shuddered at the sight of the other architectural excrescences and nicknamed eyesores: the “monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend” of the Sainsbury wing of the National Gallery, the Eye, the Wobbly Bridge, Ken’s Testicle, the Razor, the Gherkin, the Helter Skelter, the Blob, the Shard of Glass, the Walkie Talkie, the Doodle, the Pinnacle, the Dome/O2 Arena, and the future apparition of a new Lloyd’s of London that would be known as the Inside-Out Building.

These prospects nearly caused Jugs to lose his breakfast of muesli and warm goat cheese, and he vowed to
caused them all to be demolished and shipped as hard core in barges to Calais, during a cessation in hostilities to allow the French, as was traditional for them to do for the months of July and August, to go on holiday.

The architects would
have their necks stretched on The
New King’s Gallows at Tyburn, as Marble Arch had formerly been and now was again called.

Descending over London Bridge to the Tower,
Jugs’ conveyance made a perfect landing in the dry moat surrounding the Tower of London. The piebald Chief Raven, Oswald, who had hitched a ride in the phaeton’s luggage compartment, holding his breath as much as he could on the way, staggered onto terra firma and threw up.

Hearing a commotion outside and the strangulated voice of the King talking to himself, Pesci, who had discarded his rapier and was now hacking at the rubber plant’s aerial and buttress roots, and branches alternately with the Jewelled Sword of Offering and the Great Sword of State, looked away; upon which
Ficus elastica
wrapped a stem round his neck and tightened until he passed out. Then the plant stuck its upper portion out of a window and fluttered its fronds like the arms of a damsel in distress.

Alerted to danger, Arbella scooped as much of the jewelled Coronation Regalia as she could into the folds of her skirt, and hurried back to her quarters in the White tower. From there she saw the thirty-five Yeomen Warders of His Majesty’s Royal Palace and Fortress the Tower of London,
and Members of the Sovereign’s Body Guard of the Yeoman Guard Extraordinary milling
around
the Inner Ward. The Yeoman Warders were in disarray, pulling on their scarlet and gold dress uniforms as if they had been caught napping, which was indeed the case: they had been carousing
until early that morning to celebrate the King’s Unofficial Birthday (James himself had forgotten about it, and no one had sent him a card) and were in no condition for action of any kind, least of all a fight.

As soon as they were assembled they ran, clutching their heads as if they were about to lose them, which would possibly be the case at the King’s command, out of the Outer Ward’s Middle tower gate to greet their monarch in the moat.

Pesci, conscious again after coming to while the plant’s attention was diverted, hauled the vegetable back through the window from which it was making obeisance to its liege lord, wishing it were under happier circumstances and that it had had a chance to dust and compose its leaves, tied a granny knot in its neck and hastened after his mistress.

As soon as Arbella had apprised him of what was going on, Pesci knew that there was not a moment to lose, and, commanding his platoon of Neapolitan thugs to fall in, he blew a blast on his bugle and ordered Battle Stations. His men snapped to with a will, and before King James had a chance to establish that the Yeomen Warders had no idea what was going on, and send them back inside the Tower, the bascule drawbridge had been raised, the barbican gates secured and portcullises dropped
, and the enemy was barricaded within the curtain walls of the oldest and stoutest fortress in the kingdom.

There was nothing that the humiliated Beefeaters could do but brandish their pikes and partisans in frustration and hurl invective breath at the walls.

Pesci had trained his soldiers well. They began setting up cauldrons in which to boil the un-Green surplus-to-requirement heating oil drawn from the Tower’s storage tanks, with the object of pouring it on the heads of those who might approach the battlements with intent to escalade the walls.

A siege engine—a cousin to the trebuchet, springald, ballista, mangonel, and onager—which had been discovered to great excitement amongst the Tower’s historic collection, was being readied for use in launching its first missile by a team operating the machine’s levers to wind the rope. The younger crew was preparing for offensive action with longbow and arbalest and spear.

‘Men!’ shouted Arbella to the members of her force through a rolled-up original of the Magna Carta, ‘Should a single one of that royal rabble get in here I will personally cut off the heads of those responsible and use them as cannonballs.’

Pesci smiled: Arbella, as young as she was, reminded him of his mamma. He paused to picture the dear lady as she probably was at that moment, elbow-deep in pasta, garlic, and tomato sauce in her kitchen. Half a dozen of her fettucine-fed family, ranging in age from thirty to their late fifties and still living at home (those who were not in jail or, in Ignacio’s case, had fled the country), would be sitting round the table gazing at her adoringly.

The Italian’s sentimental thoughts were interrupted as the rubber plant, which had discovered some vestigial ability of its genus to exert independent locomotive power and follow them, threw itself at them. Looping itself several times around Arbella’s neck and
making an eldritch sound
it began to squeeze her, boa-constrictor style,
while gathering itself to hit her over the head with its pot.

It was its first and last mistake. Before
Ficus elastica
could wreak its murderous intent, demonstrating great strength of tooth and claw Arbella
ripped it off her and tore it into a confetti of leaves and pieces of stem.
In its death throes as it was dismembered, the plant screeched an agonized prayer to King James, begging to be avenged.

Striding to a machicolation in the parapet and measuring the distance with her eye while Pesci loaded the catapult with the rubber plant’s receptacle, now funeral urn, Arbella took a sighting on a bright red target in the moat and
made an adjustment to the machine’s aim
before her sidekick
released the firing mechanism.
The clay missile curved up and down, striking a Beefeater on the temple as he looked up to identify the whistling sound. His
hangover cured,
that was the end of him.

‘Four-nil,’ Arbella yelled at the horrified King James, as sombre members of the portly guard bore their fallen colleague from the field; ‘including the dozy duo who were supposed to be guarding the Jewel House, and the Bungy Plant.’ She was not aware that it was
a sporting count, because it did not include the two friendly-fire deaths of the sentries at Buck House, and the expiry of the spurned driver of the phaeton from toxic fume inhalation
. ‘You’d better pull your socks up, Jugs baby, if you can manage to do so without help from your nanny.’

Then, spitting out a leaf, she went back to her apartment to change her clothes.

Chapter Eighteen

When Arbella reappeared fifteen minutes later, in order to taunt King James further she had transformed herself into a Pearly Queen
of the early twentieth century London organization associated
with Henry Croft, an orphan street sweeper who collected money for charity.

Except that charity was not what Arbella had on her mind.
Bedizened with excerpts from the Crown Jewels, she was a mosaic of earrings, pendants, brooches, and rings, and her arms were slung with bracelets. On her head was wearing
the Imperial State Crown featuring the Cullinan II diamond.

So dramatic was the sight that the sun was drawn from behind a cloud to marvel at his competition, dazzling the crowd on the ground.
James put on his sunglasses and rolled a surplus quantity of ear into a vocal amplifier.

Rattled, his childhood stammer re-emerged. ‘Woman, s-surrender while thou hast opportunity, or it will go more ill with thee than thou canst endure! Command those c-caitiff varlet wretches to lay down their arms—our arms. You have affronted us beyond tolerance, and are guilty under the Treason Act of thirteen fifty-one of
levying war against the King in his Realm and of otherwise
attempting by force of arms or other violent means to conspire against and incite overthrow of the organs of government established by the Constitution. Therefore be it known that we will assail ye m-mercilessly, as God be our witness. All of your lives are hereby declared f-forfeit.’

Arbella snorted out a pearl that had lodged in a nostril into her palm. ‘Yah b-boo sucks, you knock-kneed lily-livered n-nitwit!’

‘We say! Whatever happened to l-loyalty, and respect, what-what?’

‘Carn ’elp yer there, mate,’ she responded; ‘I don’t kiss no relly of the Kaiser on the keister. Your arse ain’t the Blarney Stone, Jimbo me lad.’

The antagonists glared at each other. Jugs whipped off his glasses, fired an ocular missile at Arbella and joined his anxious men. He beckoned to the Chief Raven, there was a brief consultation, and the loyal and aged Oswald—he was sixty-five years old—again lumbered into the air for the return journey to the Palace, to summon the Royal Household to the King’s aid and have a warrant drawn up for Arbella’s arrest on charges of High Treason and Grammatical Abuse. Each was a hanging offence.

Arbella nodded to Pesci, who flagged a marksman; there was the twang of a bowstring, and the pied bird turned a somersault in the air and crumpled to the ground at James’s feet.

The King and Beefeaters, aghast, viewed the corpse and wrung their hands. The Tower had lost its oldest retainer. Now there were only five ravens left, and the Tower and the Monarchy were in imminent danger of collapsing. It was an awful omen, for
legend had it that if the ravens left the Tower the monarchy would fall—so would the White tower, but Arbella had no worries on that score because by then she would have traded up to Windsor Castle.

‘Five-zip!’ shouted Arbella as Chief Raven Oswald was borne from the field, to wailing and gnashing of teeth on the part of the Royalists.

Jugs gnawed his woven-nettle sleeve and shed several low-salt tears, and mournfully hailed a passing pigeon to send in the raven’s stead. He added to his message an order for the post-haste delivery of an apprentice Tower corvid from the royal aviary at Hampton Court.

Then he instructed the Beefeaters to ransack the ugly modern grey concrete insurance brokerage office complex at Tower Place behind All Hallows Church—James had recalled the monarch’s ancient privilege to rase to the ground any building within a longbow shot of the Tower’s walls—for metal desks and doors and chairs to use as barriers and shields.

Meanwhile Pesci’s men continued their preparations space. The copper cauldrons of oil that had been hung on tripods along the bartizans, or battlements, over fires fuelled by the antique furniture and Old Masters in Arbella’s apartment, were now bubbling hot.
Thomas Sheraton’s George the Third armchairs and cabinets, of satinwood, rosewood, and tulipwood, proved dry and fast-burning and were almost smokeless.

Art historians were later not surprised to learn that
the Rubenses conflagrated especially well, and that the Botticellis and Canalettos were of less incinerative value.
The thickly applied paint of Joseph William Mallord Turner’s canvases gave off oily fumes but generated an intense heat, while those of John Constable were less fiery but lasted longer.

When the office furniture arrived a squad of Yeoman Warders assembled in an imitation of the “testudo” or tortoise formation adopted by Roman soldiers in such circumstances, supporting the desks and doors over their heads, and advanced to the Tower walls. But so shambolic was their advance that their coverings afforded little protection against the quantities of redundant distillate petroleum product that cascaded down upon them, and Pesci’s men cheered madly as two warders sang out like moribund lobsters and were stretchered from the field on the same doors as they had been carrying.