Triumff: Her Majesty's Hero (43 page)

Well, here you have it, lock, estoc and barrel, as they say in the stews. It’s an
open-plan
space, so I can both sit and bed, or bed and sit, as is both fancy and fashionable in this modern era. To here, the kitchen area, and to there, the water closet. I have a bathing room cox and box with Pam the Shriver, who lives down the hall from me.

This trinket on the credenza is a dispenser of the dry, tablet confectionary
Pez
, which I acquired when I was working as a fact-checker on the
Doctor Johnston’s Dictionary Part-Work
(fifty-two readily affordable weekly instalments). You’ll notice that the head is in the shape of Victor Kiam, whose
Rubaiyat
I so treasure.

On this shelf, under the slit window, I keep a copy of a
book
that my neighbour Pam lent me. It’s a codex of self-help, that I presume she hopes will help me. It is entitled
Seven Steps to
Instant Happinesse!
, though I feel that, if it takes seven steps, it is hardly instant.

Upon here, beside my desk, is an “action figure doll”, which was given to me by none other than
Sir Rupert Triumff
himself. As you may know, I am lucky enough to have secured the position of being Sir Rupert’s official biographist. I am only just beginning to enfold his multifarious adventures for the publik benefit. This “doll” - though no girl-child’s dolly, I insist! - is a finely chiselled mannequin of most exquisite detailing, fashioned for boy’s play. It is from the popular “Man of Action” line, and it features the likeness of Lord Gull, complete with kilt, rapier, Stornoway black pudding, and realistic ruff. Sir Rupert suggested to me that it had fifty per cent too many ears for strict accuracy.

    I am keen to acquire the “codpiece and doublet play-set” that accompanies this fine scale toy, and I understand there is also a “Stout Cortez” model in the same series, which possesses eagle eyes, presumably for staring at the Pacific with all his men.

For listening enjoyment, I like many things to be placed upon my
wax cylinder
. Currently, I am particularly taken with the works of the young Diseased Rascal, Lady Geegaw, and of course Puce.

Ah, this? Well, yes, it was gifted to me by Lady Mondegreen when I was covering Lord Mandelbrott’s set at court. We were having supper at Foccacia in the Rye when she
presented
me with it. It’s a bottle of A Scent of Man. I love the smell, but I won’t wear it. That’s what Sir Rupert wears.

About
town
? Well, tomorrow, it’s a toss up between
Look
Back in Manga
at the Oh (I hear the eyes and breasts are all too large) or
Hiroshima Monobrow
at the Royal Court. After that, I hope to take in a late gig, possibly the all-girl viol band Undersmile, who are playing at Hobohemia.

Why, yes, I do have a strenuous
beauty regime
. I like to cleanse, facially, with Jojoba’s Witness, and then moisturise with Elizabeth In The Forest Of Arden products.

And so to bed and there’s nothing I like better than cuddling up with Rimbaud. Maybe the original,
First Blood.

yrs, Wllm Beaver, esq.

THE DOUBLE FALSEHOOD

Your humble author, Wllm Beaver, does not quite know where Sir
Rupert’s adventures might take him next but here is one possible start:

THE MIME
of the
ANCIENT MARINER

The sinking winter sun was just shewing across the naked larches at the head of the field, and frost skinned the landscape like settled chalk-dust. Ormsvile Nesbit, a village whose place it was in the general scheme of things to be overlooked, clung to the nap of the Suffolk hill as if it were in danger of slipping off.

    This fear was well-founded. Many times in Ormsvile Nesbit’s long and lack-lustre past, it had so nearly slipped away into the soil, and become nothing but a ghost etching on the open fields, a feint trace of ploughed-under walls that only those gifted in archaeology or braille could ever have read.

    Those threats to the village’s welfare had come in many shapes over the years. In the distant pre-Unity age, lost (and slightly embarrassed) Vikings had plundered it twice as they roamed the Suffolk countryside, looking for a coast that they seemed to have mislaid1. Then there had been Plague, on what seemed an unfair number of occasions. In 1240, the population of the village dropped to five, and two of those were geese. Window Tax blighted then, as did Tin Tax and Tax Tax2. During the Sixty Years War, army recruiters managed to muster the entire village and march them off to Yaresborough until half a dozen or so of them remembered they had left the supper on. Then the lamentable Leek Famine of 1911 hit them hard. In recent memory, the Great Fire of Ormsvile Nesbit, caused by a nervous heffer called Nettie and a badly positioned tallow lamp, had nearly done the trick.

    But always, somehow, it clung on. Such is the tenacity of these tiny, isolated pockets of rural England: the fierce will to survive is bred in the bone.

    For the last - well, it would be improper to record exactly how long, that being a lady’s prerogative - for the last little while, the village fate has rested in the spindly hands of Mother Grundy.

    Mother Grundy. “She’s as old as the church weather cock,” they say, and the similarity doesn’t end there. She is hard, slender, angular, spiky beaten from whatever precious mettle Ormsvile Nesbit mines up through its genes. And she turns with the wind. Her philosophy - and my! but she has a great deal of that - is to accept the cruel vagaries of life and never fight against them when such a fight is futile. “Turn and bend”, “Forgive and forget” this is the sort of thing she will say. “The willow stands when the oak has blown over.” “A dandelion bows before the mower, and springs back up when the surly grass is cut.” Honestly, that’s the sort of attitude she has. I know the woman. I have her manner well.

    However, she deserves no scorn for these sayings nor this philosophy of life. Mother Grundy has seen enough to know that poor folk in a poor village in an impoverished corner of the Realm will only survive if they adapt and roll with the blows. This is, if my Classical schooling has not failed me, called Stoicism. Mother Grundy calls it “the survival of the fittest.” Neither I, nor any of her villagers, have any idea where that well-turned phrase comes from.

    So, it is Mother Grundy who supervises the village fate. However, she leaves the Village Fete to Mrs Ambussway at number nine, as she “can’t do blithering everything.”

    Mother Grundy is a fixture of the landscape, as permanent as the aforementioned weather cock (lightning permitting) or the long stones at Fulke’s Barrow. She personifies the spirit of the village, and the villagers are used to her, reassured by her. They see her striding out across the cold fields, as stark and straight and bare as a long tooth in a beggar’s ruined gumline. They turn to her for advice, they hide from her when they have wronged, and they come to her when they need help. She advises. She helps. She also always knows when they’ve erred.

    It’s not her job or her duty, or even something she is vocationally drawn to do.

    She does it.

    That’s all. She just does it, because it needs to be done.

The pressing concern on that Michaelmas was not the state of the turkey3, nor the decoration of the village tree. Luckin Ambussway, four year-old son of Agfnes4, the eldest daughter of Mrs Ambussway at number nine, was suffering from a milk tooth that simply refused to acknowledge the post-toddler growth of its owner.

    By the warming fireside of Mother Grundy’s cottage, Luckin Ambussway sat patiently on a milk stool as Mother Grundy finally gave up on her herbal remedies and tied a loop of cotton around the recalcitrant tooth. She was just attaching the other end to the latch of her parlour door, when Fortunate Joseph hurried in out of the biting Michaelmas wind.

    Fortunate Joe was the village shepherd, and he had got his name mainly due to the fact that it was he who enjoyed the regular, complimentary flasks of turkey broth right through until March. Joe, not over-blessed in cognitive faculties, had never really been able to reason out why this made him fortunate, or why he suffered from chronic gastro-enteritis each year from late February until early April.

    Close on his heels came Less, the miller’s son. Joe and Less slewed to a halt in Mother Grundy’s parlour, and tried to contain themselves.

    “There’s a dead man up on Four Acres Paddock,” squealed Joe, who was absolutely no good at all at self-containment.

    “Shhh! Shhh!” hissed Less. Joe nodded.

    “There’s a dead man up on Four Acres Paddock,” Joe whispered.

    There was along pause, broken only by the logs coughing and spitting in the grate. Mother Grundy slowly turned away from Luckin Ambussway’s tiny, gaping mouth and stood up.

“A dead man?” she queried, softly.

    “All cold and dead. With a frost on him,” Fortunate Joe gabbled.

    “Shhh!” said Mother Grundy.

    “All cold and dead. With a frost on him,” Fortunate Joe repeated, quiet as a dormouse.

    “I’d better see,” murmured Mother Grundy. She patted Luckin Ambussway reassuringly on the head, and took down her shawl form the door peg.

    Mother Grundy followed the excited men out into the village yard. Marble-cold, the night closed around them, steaming their breaths. Above, the sky was ludicrously heavy with stars.

    “This had better not be another of your fairy stories, Fortunate Joe Clubbley,” warned Mother Grundy.

    “It isn’t, ma’am, I swear. A dead man. Dead. In Four Acres Paddock. And dead.”

    “Come on,” she said.

    Fortunate Joe gathered up his crook and beckoned her on. Less the miller’s son slammed the cottage door behind them.

    “Owww!” came a little, muffled voice from within.

    “Well, at least that’s done with,” said Mother Grundy.

The moon was up, swinging like a bright inn sign from the leafless branches of the black elms. Its bright glare reflected off the hoar frost around them, making the rime glint like diamond chips. Feckless hares, long-limbed and rangy, skittered around the crest of the hill under the lunatic glow.

    Fortunate Joe led Mother Grundy and Less up the hard earth slope of the paddock. the ground rang hollow and dead as their pounding feet resonated the ancient rabbit warrens of the hill.

    “There!” said Fortunate Joe at length, pointing with his crook. There was a stiff, crumpled shape on the frosty ground beneath the hilltop oak.

    “Hmmph,” said Mother Grundy, and instructed them both to stay where they were. She strode forward to the foot of the great, old tree.

    The man was old and dirty, his face white and pinched. It was impossible to tell where his matted beard ended and the ground-frost began. His clothes were rags, black with grime, caked and swaddled around the bag of bones that was his body and limbs.

    Mother Grundy knelt by him and reached out a hand to his cheek.

    Stone cold.

    She cautiously checked the folds of his matted garb. In one pocket, a knife, blunt and rusty, the hopeless designs of the bored and untalented decorating its scrimshaw handle. In another pocket, a pewter tobacco box, worn smooth by years of use, and a chunky, gold-plated signet ring. On one cuff, a last remaining button, clinging by a twist of thread, gave a clue to the garment’s original nature. The button was brass, with the anchor mark of the Admiralty cut into it.

    “So you were a mariner” whispered Mother Grundy as she examined the button.

    The corpse’s eyes flicked open.

    Mother Grundy didn’t start or flinch. She adapted to the situation.

    “Can you speak?” she asked.

    He stared back: wild, bright eyes trapped in a dead face. His jaw moved, but his mouth would not open. It was as if it was frozen shut. Slowly, he shook his head.

    She began to turn, to call to the others. “We’ll get you to shelter, good fellow, and-“

    He shook his head again and beckoned her close. He tapped at his sealed mouth for a moment in frustration, and then, after another shake of the head, held up three knotted fingers.

    “Three?” Mother Grundy asked. “Three what? Three words?”

    A nod. One raised finger.

    “First word? Two? Two what? Two two? Double?

    An eager nod.

    “Double then. Second word. Two syllables? First one mouth? Lips?