The Queen Must Die Read online

  ‘It’s true, what you say. She is nothing to us,’ DuQuelle’s voice echoed through the empty hall. ‘She is just a little girl – as you said – a little girl who dressed up in disguise hoping to see the Queen. Go ahead, kill her.’

  Had she always known it would come to this? She had hoped DuQuelle might help her, send her home. But now he was sending her to her death. She thought about Alice, about James. But mostly she thought about Mimi. She was glad her mother would never know what had happened.

  Katie heard the click of the gun as the assassin cocked the barrel. A second sound made her look up; just in time to see a large sparrowhawk swoop overhead and catch a tiny bird in its beak. ‘So Prince Albert went for the sparrowhawks,’ she thought, feeling strangely detached from her own death. ‘It’s the last thing I will ever see, another predator with another victim.’ And then the shot rang out. She braced herself for the tearing of her flesh, the fall, but instead she saw a look of frozen surprise, almost irritation cross the assassin’s face. He clutched Katie tight, as in an embrace, then fell to the floor.

  ‘Well, he looked up too,’ DuQuelle explained, almost apologetically, pocketing his freshly fired pistol. ‘Thank God for the elm trees, and the sparrows and the sparrowhawks. I will drink a toast to the Duke of Wellington tonight. Sparrowhawks, what a capital idea it was.’

  The anarchist was still alive, though only just – with a mortal wound to his chest. He was lying on his side, a warm dark pool of blood forming around him on the wooden flooring. ‘The anger is gone,’ Katie thought. His face had a look of intense concentration as he tried to fight off pain and death. DuQuelle took his ebony walking stick and pushed the man on to his back. A bubble of blood formed in his open mouth as he tried to speak.

  ‘There’s nothing to say now,’ DuQuelle murmured in a low soothing voice, ‘you’ve failed, the plot has failed. And now you are leaving us – goodness, but I do have an idea of where you will be going.’

  The assassin was losing his fight for life – the look in his eyes was changing into the fear of a small child. He whimpered.

  ‘There, there,’ said DuQuelle, again in that eerie soothing voice. ‘I will tell you something to ease your way. You are right. What you wanted was right.’ DuQuelle laughed gently. ‘You looked surprised to hear that from me. Well, there are many things about me that would surprise you. But in the very last moments of your life, it would be supremely rude to talk about mine. And it is a particularly uncomfortable way to die; drowning in one’s own blood. So I will be brief. Why shouldn’t all people be equal? Why should some live in squalor and ignorance, while others wallow in the soft folds of opulence? Why should we subjugate entire nations to our imperial will? What right have spoilt monarchs to dictate the lives of millions?

  ‘You are right,’ he continued, ‘but you will fail; because violence will never succeed. Killing breeds more killing, and each generation hates more than the last. It is never the means to equality. Instead of liberating us all, you will bring a war that destroys the world.’

  The anarchist’s eyes glazed over and the bubble of blood burst in his mouth.

  ‘The life and the lesson are over,’ DuQuelle mused, ‘but has anything been learned?’ Picking up the end of the dustsheet, he peered up at the statue underneath – ‘Ah, the admirable Albert on a rearing steed – heroic, indeed – though perhaps a bit overblown? But it will do as a hiding place for our dead friend. The Black Tide, for now, is at low ebb.’

  And taking the end of the trailing dustcloth, he pulled it over the dead man. ‘I wonder if the other sculptures are as horrid as this,’ he added. ‘Though I hear the French have quite a racy Bacchus in their display.’ Even as the light banter continued, Katie winced as DuQuelle gripped her arm like a pincer. ‘You are coming with me, Katie Berger-Jones-Burg,’ he said. ‘We have much to discuss. And I’ve been waiting quite some time for this conversation.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  Half Moon Street

  For once I’m inside a carriage,’ Katie thought, as they bounded around the Serpentine and towards Piccadilly. She would have paid more attention but she’d been too frightened for too long and couldn’t concentrate.

  ‘Better than being rolled up in a blanket, choking on dust, I assume.’

  Was it possible that DuQuelle could read her mind? If so, she was in an even weaker position than she’d thought. She looked over at DuQuelle, unnaturally still in his corner of the carriage. More like a wax effigy than a man, except for his glittering green eyes. ‘I don’t care how comfortable the carriage is. I’m not exactly happy about where it’s going.’

  ‘Thankless child. I’ve just saved your life,’ DuQuelle laughed a mirthless laugh, while Katie moved as far as possible from the pale man before her. This wasn’t really the time to laugh. Yes, he had just saved her life, but he’d also just killed a man.

  ‘Why did you tell the anarchist that all peoples and nations should be equal? You don’t believe that. You’re employed by the Queen, and she’s very big on empire. You know, she even becomes Empress of India…’

  ‘Really?’ said DuQuelle, ‘fascinating. What a marvellous idea. When does this happen – sometime… in… the… future?’ With each word he prodded Katie with his walking stick with a force that was more than playful. Katie winced and squeezed into the corner. ‘To answer your questions – as I hope, my dear, you will answer mine – I do believe that the independence of nations is the best hope for peace. This is my personal belief. But my job – as you might call it – is to ingratiate myself with the Queen. And the Queen likes ruling things – such lovely new toys with which to play. Toys like India. Look how her eyes lit up when she saw the Koh-i-noor diamond? So prudent of the Maharaja of Punjab to hand it over. Though it wasn’t his choice of course, the East India Company strong-armed him. I must have it reset in a crown for her. Perhaps you could tell me which design to choose?’

  The carriage came to a stop and Katie recognized the dark timbered house on Half Moon Street. ‘Now, come along,’ he said. For a fragile-looking man his grip was unbreakable. ‘As I said, we have so much to discuss. And so very little time.’

  They went quickly down the carriage steps and into the townhouse. A wave of fright rolled over Katie as the door closed behind her.

  ‘Do not disturb us,’ DuQuelle said to the manservant in the hall. ‘Oh, but what rude manners, I almost forgot – are you hungry, my dear?’ Katie shook her head. ‘Chocolates, ices, cakes? I believe these stay the favourites of the young throughout time.’

  Katie was silent. She remembered what James had said: ‘Anything you say can be a clue.’ She could have kicked herself for talking about Queen Victoria becoming Empress of India. ‘I must be careful,’ she thought. She took courage from the fact that DuQuelle didn’t seem to know she had been in his townhouse before. His ability to read her mind must be limited. She stood in the hallway – uncertain. It was best to let him make the first move.

  ‘This way,’ DuQuelle said, stepping aside for her to walk up the stairs. Was this a trick to see if she knew the way? She paused at the top of the stairs, feigning confusion. He ushered her into his dark study at the top of the house and shut the door. It had been tidied since Lucia’s whirlwind visit. ‘Don’t look so worried,’ he said with a forced smile. ‘I believe I can be of great help to you. My sole desire is to protect you. I will not harm you.’

  ‘How well he lies,’ Katie thought. ‘His face is like a mask, so white and so lined – it’s hard to read.’ She feared her own face was telling the whole truth – fright, loneliness and total distrust. DuQuelle sighed as he looked down at her, a sad sight in her tattered bishop’s robes. This might take him time – time neither of them had.

  ‘Please sit down,’ he said, gesturing to a sofa near the fire. Even on this warm day flames leaped in the grate. ‘What a very dark horse the Princess Alice has turned out to be,’ he added. ‘With those wide grey eyes and silky tresses, she looks as passive a doll as the best o
f them. And yet she was the one who sized up the situation, seized the initiative – saved her mother’s life in fact. She provided me with just the pause I needed. If the assassin hadn’t hesitated, we would be in the middle of a most serious crisis. Prince Albert would have had quite a battle on his hands to continue to rule. And with a weakened England, any foreign power might have struck – Russia, France or even the newly emerging Prussia. And then the war might come, the one that destroys all. Bravo for the Princess Alice. She may be the saviour of the Empire, as you call it.’

  Katie’s eyes lit up at the praise of her friend, and she began to hope. But DuQuelle continued. ‘Don’t even think, though, that she is on her way here to save you. No, no – Princess Alice’s heroics are over for the day. I suspect she is locked in the nursery; being punished by the Baroness Lehzen. And knowing the Baroness as I do, Princess Alice is probably far less comfortable at the moment than you are.’ Katie felt as if all the air had been let out of her body. To make things worse, DuQuelle added: ‘That young James O’Reilly, such an irritant. There’s no bend to that boy… stubborn… determined. Well, the fates were with me today, or at least the bright sunshine was. He was so busy with the victims of sunstroke that he hasn’t a clue what’s happened or where you’ve gone. And with Princess Alice under lock and key, he’s not likely to find out.’

  ‘Don’t panic and keep your mouth shut,’ Katie said to herself. She tried to think about anything other than the situation she was in, to count the beams in the ceiling, to recite the alphabet, but she couldn’t help hearing DuQuelle’s low drawling voice.

  ‘I know you have come from another time,’ he finally announced. ‘I can quite possibly send you back home. Do you miss your family?’

  ‘Do I?’ Katie asked herself. ‘Do I miss my family?’ She thought of Mimi, so utterly selfish, so totally absorbing, leaving no space in the room for anyone else. And then there was Dolores, talking endlessly, grumbling over the slap-slap of the iron. And why didn’t Katie have any close friends? Katie realized she’d kept the kids she’d grown up with at a distance, so they wouldn’t know the truth – the truth that no one really wanted Katie. For Mimi she was a reminder of her own youth ebbing away. For her father, she was dollars disappearing into private schools, ballet, piano lessons. For Dolores, she was school uniforms to iron, sandwiches to make – yet another set of chores. Yes, Katie might miss her family; but she didn’t believe her family missed her.

  Perhaps the only people who had ever cared for Katie were Alice and James. For the first time in her life she had friends, real friends, and she could not let them down. She stiffened her resolve. She would have to beat DuQuelle at his own game. Suddenly it hit her. It was so simple and yet so complicated. Bernardo DuQuelle knew the three children had travelled through time, but he didn’t know which of the three children Katie was: the child who brings peace, the child who brings war and peace or the child who brings the war that ends the world. If she could convince him that she was the child who brings peace, her life would be saved. ‘What he’ll do with me afterwards – I’ll think about that later. But right now I have to think peace, breathe peace… look peaceful… like I’m supposed to act in yoga class… if only I could remember my mantra…’

  Katie breathed in deeply several times and exhaled slowly through her nose. Unclasping her hands and relaxing her posture, she looked up to DuQuelle and smiled. ‘Yes, I do miss my family, my lovely mother. She is tireless in her care of me and will be so distressed at my absence. And my dear father, so dedicated to our well-being. In my time children are completely safe. We often sleep with the doors and windows open to see the stars. And the skies are so clear, there are millions of stars!’ Katie could see the interest quicken in DuQuelle’s eyes, but he leaned back in his chair and feigned nonchalance.

  ‘How very nice for you all,’ he said. ‘Tell me more about your time. It will help me to send you back there.’

  Katie reached into the corners of her imagination, searching for that perfect world. ‘The children are the centre of everything,’ she began. ‘The family, the community, the government – their first priority is to raise happy, healthy children. We have fewer things than you do, but we don’t seem to want as much. We fix broken things. We share a lot. We want to protect the planet and everything that lives on it.’ Was DuQuelle buying this? She didn’t dare look at him, but stared at the tips of her pointy bishop shoes instead. This was a whopper of a lie, and she had to make it convincing. What were those things that politicians said when they were running for election – the things that always sounded so great, but then never happened? ‘Better health and education,’ she continued, ‘safety, opportunity for all. These are the things we strive for. We believe in the future.’

  DuQuelle pondered this utopia. ‘And what happens in times of war?’ he asked.

  Katie knew this was the pivotal question, and she lied through her teeth. ‘War? There is no war,’ she said. DuQuelle smiled to himself, absorbed in this image of Katie’s world. Gradually the smile faded, and his face hardened. His skin had become so white, it developed a greenish-blue tinge. The deep creases around his nose and mouth deepened into crevasses. Lucia and the Verus were losing patience, Mr Belzen could be here any moment, and this child was playing with him. He would not be manipulated.

  ‘Aids,’ he said. ‘I can see you recognize this word. All right my dear, let’s try some other words. Global warming, fanaticism, terrorism, famine, weapons of mass destruction, nuclear capability…’ With each word he played his favourite new game, tapping Katie with his walking stick, slightly harder each time, until she winced with pain. ‘I have been in contact with many worlds, Katie, but the one you talk of does not exist. You overstepped the mark by creating something too beautiful, too perfect. You come from one of the most greedy, selfish, brutal societies of all time. Harbinger of peace! You and your people are planting the seeds of destruction.’

  ‘No!’ Katie cried. ‘No!’ She knew she was pleading for her life. ‘We are trying, honestly we are. We are trying to learn, trying to find a way to stop wars, to feed the world, to house and educate the poor, and cure the ill. We have prizes for peace and global groups with thousands of doctors who help the sick; educational projects that span the world. We are trying, trying to do the right thing. And yet…’

  ‘And yet,’ DuQuelle said, ‘it isn’t working, is it? What a mess you’ve made of things. And it’s not the type of mess that can be cleaned up easily. I’d make an educated guess that there are two or three hotspots in your world that are about to implode. And this type of explosion might be terminal for us all. If you want to save anyone, Katie, I suggest you start telling the truth.’

  Katie tried to look completely bland, but even as she struggled, her mind was betraying her. DuQuelle sat down next to her on the sofa. Taking her chin between his hands, he turned her face towards him and looked directly into her eyes. His pupils were strangely black, surrounded by deep green, and drew her in. The tenseness left her body. She felt drugged, hypnotized. Images of her world, her real world swam before her – could he see them too?

  She was in her own time, her own city. It was late at night in New York and an elderly woman was walking down an empty street. In her shopping bag she carried dinner, just enough for herself and her cat. She turned a corner, into darkness. Shadows leaped towards her. Hooded boys, a half dozen of them, jeering and cursing. They pushed the old woman to the ground and grabbed her handbag. They swung her shopping against the wall. ‘Not my dinner!’ she cried out, ‘and the little kitty’s dinner. You must give it back. We’ll have nothing to eat.’ Laughing, the boys kicked her hard, again and again, in the head, to make her shut up. She pleaded and cried and then was silent.

  Katie wanted to turn away, but DuQuelle kept a firm grip on her. His pupils widened, and grew even darker, sending her mind forward to the twenty-first century. And now she was in a foreign land, on a new continent. A tall black woman walked towards Katie, one weak footstep
after the other, through a landscape blasted and desolate. It seemed a hopeless journey, but the reason the woman continued lay in her arms. It was a baby – a sick baby, a baby who had not eaten for many days. As the woman walked past, the dust circling her bare feet, Katie knew that her search for food and medicine would be of no use. The baby in the woman’s arms was already dead.

  In front of Katie’s eyes swam an army of the damned: dictators and thugs, prisoners and orphans, the violent and the hopeless. Above them all loomed the image that had defined Katie’s childhood: the enormous mushroom cloud that could bring death to millions of people across thousands of miles. The cloud that could destroy everything: not only across space, but across time. The nuclear cloud of Hiroshima. Tears streamed down Katie’s face.

  DuQuelle wiped the tears from her cheeks with his fingers. His hands were soft and very dry, like old velvet. They smelled of musk. His touch seemed to further sap her will. ‘You do not like what you see?’ he questioned gently.

  ‘I do not like what I see,’ Katie repeated dully. DuQuelle stroked her cheek with one hand and reached for a sofa cushion with the other. He addressed her quietly, almost as if having a philosophical debate. ‘And yet, just by being alive, this is the future you will create,’ he explained. ‘Just by being here. Just by being alive. Is this really what you want for your friends, for your family? Now tell me, tell me the truth about your world. And once you’ve told me, you will not have to return. You can rest, let go – you can be free of it. You can be free of everything.’