I waited.
‘You remember Chimalcoyotl’s daughter, Xochinenen?’
‘Of course.’
‘Your brother intends to marry her shortly.’
Again, there was something unexpected yet inevitable about his words.
‘You’re lying,’ I said.
‘He was greatly taken with her after their first meeting. At his request, she visited him while he was holidaying in Monaco There they exchanged rings as a token of mutual affection. He visited her again while he was in Mexico. He wants her to become his queen, Catherine, and she’s agreed.’
I thought of the snake ring, and Xochinenen’s tiny hands. Richard could only wear the ring on his little finger.
‘Naturally my father is delighted,’ Extepan was saying. ‘especially as the initiative came from Richard himself. So you see, we Aztecs, as you call us, will already be marrying into the British Royal Family, and at the very highest level. Politically, it would be far more expedient for me to marry someone other than you. My father would certainly prefer it, even though he appreciates your qualities. But I would rather have you as my bride.’
I was full of thoughts of Richard, aghast at what he intended Pushing back my chair, I rose.
‘Please,’ Extepan said, also rising and taking my arm. ‘Consider it carefully.’
‘I must go,’ I said, hurrying away.
Richard was in conference with Kenneth Parkhouse and his cabinet in one of the private rooms off the new House of Commons chamber. I burst in on them.
‘Richard,’ I said, ‘I have to talk to you immediately.’
‘I’m very busy now, Kate,’ he replied with child-like gravity. ‘It will have to wait.’
‘Now, Richard.’
I put every ounce of command into my voice. To my surprise, it was Parkhouse and his ministers who reacted, hastily gathering together their papers while murmuring that they would be happy to continue their business later. Soon they were gone, leaving Richard looking stranded at the head of the conference table.
‘What were you discussing?’ I asked acidly. ‘The arrangements for your marriage?’
He was incapable of hiding his surprise.
‘She’s a lovely girl, Kate. I think we’ll be very happy together.’
‘Richard,’ I said with forced patience, ‘can’t you see they’re using you? You’re being manoeuvred into this marriage.’
‘It was my idea, Kate.’
‘You think it was your idea. They want you to think that.’
I could imagine Xochinenen doing everything in her power to make herself attractive to Richard; he was so innocent it had probably been no hard task.
I sat down next to him. ‘Listen,’ I said softly, ‘I’m sure she’s a charming girl and that you’re very fond of her. But she’s an Aztec, the granddaughter of Motecuhzoma. How do you think the British people will feel about you marrying one of our enemies?’
‘The Prime Minister and his cabinet believe that the country would enjoy a royal wedding.’
‘The Prime Minister and his cabinet are collaborators, stooges of the Aztecs. They’ll just tell you what you want to hear.’
‘I love her, Kate. She’s so pretty and fun to be with. She says we can have six children.’
‘She’s using you, Richard.’
‘No, she’s not! She says I’m kind and gentle. You don’t know her – she’s the only person I can laugh with. Everyone else is so serious all the time. I always have so many important decisions to make.’
I took his hand across the table. ‘Once she’s married to you, you’ll be completely in the power of the Aztecs. They’ll have the authority to do whatever they want. And you’ll carry the blame if anything goes wrong.’
I let him ponder on this, already knowing it was futile.
‘I don’t care,’ he said at length. ‘I don’t care what anyone else thinks. I love her and I’m going to marry her, whatever they say.’ He pulled his hand from under mine and gave me a fierce look. ‘If you try to stop me, Kate, I’ll have you sent away!’
Eight
Three weeks later, Extepan flew back across the Atlantic to visit his Sioux princess. On the same day, Richard’s engagement to Princess Xochinenen was made public. She had arrived from Mexico a few days earlier, and the couple were shown on the nine o’clock news attending a première of the Grey Webster musical Tequila Sunrise at the Ambassadors Theatre off Shaftesbury Row. The large crowd outside was uniformly rapturous. Richard and his bride-to-be paused to wave outside the theatre in a snowstorm of flashlights. Xochinenen was dressed in a sequinned Jagger costume gown, Richard in an evening suit. They looked the perfect couple.
Over the weeks that followed, I put my energies into establishing my Citizens Aid Centre, publicizing the new office on television and stressing its independence and confidentiality. Soon, with a small secretarial staff, I was spending long afternoons dealing with grievances by telephone, letter, and in person. The problems ranged from the uncompensated expropriation of land to the boorish behaviour of Aztec soldiers in public houses. But although the work proved demanding and in its way fulfilling, I was disappointed by the relative mildness of the complaints; I had a suspicion that Maxixca, who had been left in charge during Extepan’s absence, was somehow managing to keep more serious breaches of human rights from us.
Meanwhile, Kenneth Parkhouse’s first parliament was about to begin sitting. It was given full television coverage and portrayed as the re-establishment of over a thousand years of English self-government after only a brief hiatus. Everything had been done to re-create as far as possible the grandeur and ambience of the pre-invasion parliaments, Richard even appearing to read out the government’s proposals at the opening of parliament, as tradition dictated. These proposals included a rise in pensions and state benefit, a reduction in income tax and across the board pay rises of ten per cent. It was a blatant exercise in populism, and I wondered how many people realized that the extra expenditure on these measures would be derived from the complete extinction of the defence budget. From now on, the only army, navy and air force in the country would be Aztec.
Elsewhere, Extepan was also in the news, meeting with Matogee, the leader of the Sioux Confederacy, and his daughter in the neutral city of Potomac, where his territory met with that of Greater Mexico and New England. Gushing word-portraits were painted of Precious Cloud, a willowy girl of eighteen whose mother was a French-speaking aristocrat from Montreal. Potomac, its painted triangular skyscrapers and polyglot people reflecting two centuries of bustling mercantile existence between three often-warring powers, looked almost fairytale under a limpid early autumn sky. The people, in their feathered hats, rhinestone cloaks and big Texcoco cars, seemed exotic from afar, making London sedate and drab by comparison. Extepan was shown bowing to the princess and kissing her hand. They exchanged stilted conversation in English for the benefit of the cameras. Extepan seemed very far away.
Next day, it was announced that Richard would marry Xochinenen in mid-October, the day after his nineteenth birthday. Preparations began in earnest, hastened by Richard’s declaration that he was going to marry his princess not in St Paul’s or Westminster Abbey but in the Crystal Palace on Sydenham Hill, a favourite childhood haunt consecrated for royal marriages during the eccentric later years of my great-grandfather’s reign. The palace had fallen into disrepair since it and its surrounding park were closed to the public in the aftermath of the invasion, but now an emergency programme of renovation was set in motion. Newspapers, magazines and the television channels were full of talk of the wedding, unstinting in their praise for Xochinenen, publishing poll after poll which showed that the great British public loved her too.