Lammas Night (62 page)

“You invoked a feudal bond between us even then, you know,” he murmured, feeling his way carefully through what he wanted to say. “I have no idea whether you were aware of it when you first asked your question, but I'm certain you must have realized by the time we'd parted. You knew I was your man and that I couldn't refuse you—even though it took
me
a while to realize that. We'd never talked about it before that night, and we certainly had sworn no formal oaths, but the bond was there. I couldn't even begin to tell you when it started. Perhaps that first day a green young naval lieutenant walked into my office—though I suspect, from what we've both been remembering, that it started long before this life.”

William's head dipped in hesitant agreement. “I think you're probably right.”

“What I want to do, then, is to make it official, the way it should have been that other night,” Graham said, bringing up his left hand to slip it between William's two, palm to palm with his own.

“To you, my prince, I would have given my fealty any time you asked it—even though you never asked. Now that it seems you are destined to be the sacred king as well as my prince and you wear
that
crown, the traditional words of the oath are perhaps particularly fitting: I, John Cathal Graham, do become your liege man of life and limb
and of earthly worship
.” He had to pause to swallow before he could go on; he could see William's throat working, too.

“I don't suppose we'll ever know how many times that oath has been true in a literal sense,” Graham continued softly, glancing again at the crown he had lately worn, “but it's certainly true now. Your early Garter Knights understood it that way, I feel certain. Incidentally, I don't know how to put this last bit into formal words, but there are no reservations or restrictions to the commitment I've just made to you. I will do whatever you ask me to do for you—
whatever
you ask.”

He could not keep his eyes on William's anymore at that, and sensed that his voice would break if he tried to say anything else, so he ducked his head and kissed the royal hands instead. As he rested his forehead heavily against their joined hands, he realized that William was trembling as badly as he was.

“Thank you,” he heard his prince whisper as William's head dipped to rest briefly against his own.

Then William drew himself erect once more, and Graham as well, the two of them embracing in the formal kiss of peace with a sense of relief that surprised both of them. As William raised him up, Graham knew that whatever lay ahead, they would approach it with as much of the joy of tonight as could be mustered. They were equally committed now. Nor would the cup pass.

C
HAPTER
25

“The gratitude of every home in our island, in our empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the world war by their prowess and by their devotion,” Winston Churchill told a packed House of Commons two days later. “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

Though Churchill was speaking of the RAF and was right to do so, it appeared to an even smaller few in the days that followed that the direction of battle might also be shifting due to other causes. The few at Oakwood had hoped that William's mere act of offering himself as a potential sacred king and going through formal preparations might serve to satisfy whatever fate was directing events. For nearly a week, that did seem to be the case.

Poor weather cloaked most of Britain in rain and cloud until the following weekend, severely hampering enemy reconnaissance and confining bombing to the coast and Channel. Dover endured an eighty-minute barrage from the big guns at Cap Gris-Nez at midweek as well as the usual air raids, but no massed attacks penetrated far inland. With improving weather on the twenty-third, the Germans bombed over South Wales, particularly in the vicinity of Pembroke Dock, but a guarded communication from Richard indicated that no great damage had been done.

The twenty-fourth brought clear weather and a tightening of German air tactics that at first caught the RAF unprepared. The introduction of “stepped” raids set incoming bombers at staggered altitudes before they split off in real and feint attacks, confusing radar interpretation and making fighter interception far more difficult. The forward airfields of Hornchurch and North Weald were pounded severely, and Manston was so heavily damaged that it had to be abandoned. That night, the largest German bomber force yet amassed was dispatched to attack the vital factories and supply facilities of the South.

London itself had not been on the night's orders. Up until then, the Luftwaffe had limited its raids to strategic targets whose destruction would obviously hasten the demise of the RAF and clear the way for successful invasion. But ten of the nearly two hundred bombers sent out that night made a navigational error as they approached their assigned target, east of London. Instead of hitting the oil storage facilities at Thames-haven, they destroyed old St. Giles Church at Cripplegate and other historic and residential buildings in the heart of London. The very next night, grim, determined pilots of RAF Bomber Command retaliated with a daring raid on Berlin, with more following in the days and weeks ahead.

Hitler was outraged, though it took two weeks to feel the full fury of his anger. To penetrate to Berlin was a gross insult to a man who had been telling his people for months that German cities could not be bombed. As he had threatened early in August when he reserved to himself the right to resort to terrorist tactics, he unleashed the Luftwaffe for indiscriminate bombing in the future. No longer would civilian noncombatants and historic buildings be spared. London, in particular, was to be singled out for punishment, the morale of its citizens shattered through a war of frazzled nerves, sleepless nights, and destruction.

“The British will know that we are giving our answer night after night,” he ranted early in September, just before the blitz began in earnest. “We shall stop the handiwork of these night pilots.”

Meanwhile, as Hitler's rage grew, German raiders continued to hammer daily at the ring of forward fighter bases and sector stations defending London—Kenley, Biggin Hill, Rockford, Lympne, Hawkinge, Croydon—massing over France each morning and afternoon to hurl new assaults against a gasping countryside. In the fortnight that followed the fateful London bombing, the Luftwaffe made more than thirty major raids on airfields and factories, seeking especially to draw the last reserves of Fighter Command into the air for destruction. Increasing numbers of fighter escorts came with the bombers—a thousand or more per day—all taking their toll of the dwindling defenders.

The defenders held fast, but the edge was slipping. Though Fighter Command accounted for nearly four hundred German aircraft during that period, they lost nearly three hundred—figures that did not reflect damaged aircraft or the grim statistics of pilot wastage: more than a hundred killed, and as many wounded, from a total strength of little more than a thousand. Training of new pilots could not account for half the dead. Such replacements were green, unblooded, all too easy pickings for German aces. Quickly, they either acquired survival instincts or died.

The pressure was as great on Graham and William and the others of Oakwood as August drew to a close and each day seemed to bring them that much closer to the brink. Some of the personal immediacy of the Nazi menace came through for Graham on the morning after the first London bombing. As he and several of his intelligence team sifted through the smoking rubble of a bombed-out MI.6 office near Cripplegate—drafted to help salvage some of the files—Graham unexpectedly ran across the translation of a Nazi loyalty oath.

By this oath, we again bind our lives to a man through whom—and this is our belief—Superior Forces act in fulfillment of Destiny …

Fulfillment of destiny.…
The words flayed him in ironic challenge, a brutal gauntlet flung across the miles from the hated man in Germany, for whose stopping a prince was preparing to lay down his life in sacrifice.

Not for the first time, Graham was seized by doubt, as well as dread—trying to deny the fatal necessity. Were they really doing the right thing? And how did
anyone
ever know for certain?

Then he flashed—as he had so often since that Lammas night—on the spectre of Hitler's face, contorted with rage as he approached the dying Dieter and raised a pistol … the victim who looked like William, bowed before the satanic throne with throat presented to the sacrificial blade … the predatory eyes of Hitler's black magicians watching from behind their masks … the blood of other sacrifices in the photos Dieter had sent them. And he knew that the man responsible must be stopped, whatever the cost—even if it meant William must die. That night, he was more than usually silent as he dined with William at the brigadier's club, all too aware that a decision must soon be made on the manner of William's death.

Consideration of the subject had been reluctantly under way since William's intentions first became known, while Graham still dared to hope he might not have to carry through. From the beginning, all of them had been acutely aware that a sacrificial slaying must be laid out with meticulous attention to detail. Though William might be prepared to die for the welfare of the people and the land as sacred kings had died before, the circumstances of his death must be such that even Wells's Thulist confederates—at large once more for want of evidence—would not dare to raise unwelcome speculations about the King's youngest brother. Just as the King's own name must be kept immaculate for the sake of the millions of his subjects who looked to him and his queen for courage and inspiration, so must any taint of the unconventional or the scandalous be diverted from William and any of his close associates—or William's death.

“Thank God I have you and Michael to help me winnow down the options,” Graham told the brigadier later that evening after William had gone home. “It's a bloody awful tightrope I'm walking. Part of me is resigned and very coolly calculating about the whole thing. The other part wants nothing more than to go gibbering off in a corner to hide. I hardly even know where to begin, Wesley.”

Ellis nodded, sucking at a pipeful of unlit tobacco as he poured cognac for both of them.

“You begin by discarding the methods that are totally unworkable, and then you go on from there. Fortunately, the actual ritual requirements are rather minimal: the blood of the victim must be spilled, and you must be the active agent of death—though that doesn't necessarily mean you have to be present when it occurs.” He cocked his head at Graham. “Has William expressed any preferences—or prejudices?”

“No.” Graham ran a listless fingertip along the edge of his glass. “He doesn't want to know.”

“That's certainly understandable.”

“Yes. Well.” Graham sighed. “I've eliminated two possibilities at least. No carbon monoxide mishap and no car crash. Our Thulists would have a field day so soon after Wells's death.”

Ellis nodded. “That's certainly true. And when the King's brother is involved, one can hardly hope to cover up the evidence with a quick burial at sea. Whatever you choose has to be able to stand the scrutiny of an autopsy—which also eliminates drugs or any kind of poison. Not that you could bring yourself to do it that way, I suspect.”

Graham grimaced and shook his head, flashing on the memory of Wells beneath the needle and the hollow look of dread in William's eyes as he became aware of what must be done.

“How about a riding accident, then?” Ellis asked. “Everyone knows William is a horseman. What could be more natural?”

“I'd thought of that,” Graham replied in a low voice. “It's too difficult to control the outcome. Riding mishaps are common enough, but not fatal ones. Suppose he were only hurt—or left crippled?”

“Hmmm, there is that.”

A few days later, Graham and Michael talked about outright assassination.

“You've had to do it before,” Michael noted. “You're bloody good, too. You wouldn't have to worry about botching the job.”

Graham buried his face in his hands and tried to massage the tension from between his eyes. He had performed his share of such operations in his rather checkered career with the Service, but sighting down the barrel of a gun with William as his target was quite another matter.

“There are two very practical reasons why that won't do,” he told the young agent patiently. “Not only could I never pull the trigger, but I'd almost certainly be caught. What motive could I possibly give that would be believed?”

“Temporary insanity?” Michael ventured.

Graham flashed him a grim, acerbic smile. “It would certainly be that. I shouldn't care to speculate on what else it might be.” He sighed. “No, the death of a member of the Royal Family is going to be difficult enough as it is. I suppose it might be different if he fell in combat, like other people's sons and husbands and brothers. But you heard what William said that night at Laurelgrove: they don't allow royals into combat zones.”

But death in noncombatant military service of some sort might fulfill many requirements, both civil and sacred. A prince who died in the service of his country would elicit the same kind of martyr's veneration as other war dead, only more so, since his death would bring the whole Royal Family closer to the people in their mutual loss. The notion opened up another entire field of speculation.

“He's a naval captain,” Michael offered as he and the brigadier sipped glasses of port late one night in Graham's flat. “How about an accident at sea?”

But as Ellis pointed out, William had not done sea duty for years. Such an assignment now might appear contrived. The most likely kind of military-related death for William, which Graham and the brigadier came to discuss more and more in the next few days, was an air crash.