‘If you ask me,’ Cynthia was saying, ‘it’s a load of old twaddle. They’re indoctrinating him, making out we were rubbish and them like knights on white chargers. That’s not what I learnt in school.’
One of my assistants came up and asked her if she wanted a cup of tea.
‘Please,’ she said eagerly. ‘Milk and two sugars.’
It was hot in the crowded hall, and there were plenty of people still waiting their turn. The central office of the Aid Centre was located in the complex but we had set up a clinic in a defunct cinema near Marble Arch. I visited it twice a week, sitting at a long table on the stage with various advisers and helpers while our petitioners occupied the stalls. Chicomeztli had also set up a soup kitchen in the foyer, and this attracted the most crowds, passers-by often walking in simply to avail themselves of the free fare provided by such commercial outfits as MexTaco, obviously as a public-relations exercise.
On most accounts I felt compromised and ineffectual at the clinic. More people came during my visits, many simply to gawp or talk with ‘a Royal’, relatively few with serious complaints. In addition, security was always very tight when I was present, armed guards and private detectives creating an atmosphere of tension and suspicion by searching people before they were allowed near me. None of my protests had any effect, Extepan insisting that it was essential I be protected from lunatics or zealots. It was plain to me that my attempts to have a normal dialogue with the citizens of the country would be frustrated either by the security forces or by the people themselves. I was a prisoner of my status.
This, however, was a real and serious complaint by a woman who was not prepared to let her awe of me get the better of her. It was not the first example of Aztec interference in the school curriculum I had encountered, the general thrust of the new history syllabus apparently being to eliminate any sort of criticism of their role in world affairs.
‘Even the teachers reckon it’s rubbish,’ Cynthia was saying, ‘but they have to do as they’re told. I don’t think it’s right.’
‘I agree,’ I said, reaching for my pen and notepad. Perhaps you can give me full details, including your name and the address of your son’s school.’
But before she could speak, all the sounds in the hall were drowned by a huge explosion outside.
The stalls swiftly emptied as people hurried towards the exit. Escorted by my guards and murmuring my apologies to Cynthia, I followed them.
It was the Excelsior Hotel at the end of Piccadilly that was ablaze. One half of its baroque façade had collapsed, and people were screaming and fleeing in disorder from the smoke and flames. Policemen and Aztec soldiers were vainly attempting to marshal the surging crowds as traffic began to pile up on both sides of the street.
The Excelsior was a favourite haunt of visiting Aztecs and had recently undergone a refurbishment to suit their tastes, steam-baths and, doubtless, auianime having been installed there. But as the air filled with the sound of fire engine and ambulance sirens, it was shoppers and hotel staff whom I saw being carried dead or maimed from the carnage.
I rushed across and did what I could to help. This mostly entailed giving orders to my escort to help with crowd control or stretcher-bearing while I myself was continually kept away from the more gruesome aspects of the carnage. A princess of the realm cannot be allowed to bloody her hands and muck in with the common folk, even if all her instincts tell her she must.
I managed to arrange for the less seriously wounded to be temporarily housed in the cinema, and I was allowed to linger among the wreckage and blood until the press had arrived and taken suitable photographs of me at the scene. Then I was hurriedly shepherded to safety. As my Rolls was driven away, I glimpsed Cynthia, standing alone and bewildered in the middle of the rubble-strewn street, her son’s exercise book still clutched in her hand.
At breakfast the following morning, Bevan put a batch of newspapers down in front of me. My photograph was on the front page of all the tabloids, and there were headlines such as KATE AT THE CARNAGE, PRINCESS OF PERIL, CATHERINE THE GREAT!
‘This is embarrassing,’ I said, scanning the lurid stories accompanying the pictures.
‘You’re the heroine of the hour,’ Bevan remarked drily.
‘I didn’t do anything much. They wouldn’t let me.’
‘You mean to say you didn’t single-handedly save the day?’
I ignored his sarcasm, my attention already drawn by the weightier reports in the broadsheets.
‘What’s this?’ I remarked. ‘They’re claiming the Excelsior was destroyed by a Russian missile.’
‘Know different, do you?’
Bevan was slurping a mug of tea and leafing through the News Chronicle.
‘It was a bomb, Bevan, I’m sure it was. The whole frontage of the hotel had caved in, but I couldn’t see any damage to the roof. A missile would have hit it from the top, surely?’
‘Sounds reasonable.’
‘Then why pretend otherwise?’
He turned a page. ‘It would suit them, wouldn’t it? Make the Russians into everybody’s enemies, not just theirs.’
I switched on the television. Here the story was even more elaborate. The Russians had launched not one but several long-range missiles at London, the others having been shot down by Aztec defensive systems over the North Sea. It was fortunate the missile that had hit carried only conventional explosives.
‘I don’t believe a word of this,’ I said. ‘It’s propaganda of the basest sort. The Excelsior was destroyed by a bomb that was probably planted by English partisans.’
I was watching Bevan as I spoke, seeing if he knew anything. But, as usual, his face gave nothing away.
‘What do you think?’ I asked him.
‘I think you’d better eat up those crumpets before they go cold.’
Extepan was ensconced with his staff in a briefing room, and I was surprised when he came out to see me.
I began to complain about the media coverage of the Excelsior’s destruction, but I could see he was preoccupied. I had not forgotten that he had lost both his elder brothers at Tsaritsyn – a disaster given only minimal coverage in the press – so I paused.
‘Catherine,’ he said, ‘I’m afraid I have more urgent matters to attend to. Shortly, I shall be leaving London.’
I think I had half anticipated this.
‘For Russia?’
He nodded. ‘The Revered Speaker has ordered me to take command of our armies there. I leave at dawn tomorrow.’
Three
Three weeks before Christmas, at ten o’clock in the morning, Precious Cloud went into labour. Chicomeztli arrived in haste at my suite to announce the news and also to ask if I would attend the birth.
‘Me?’ I said. ‘What use would I be? I’m no midwife.’
‘She wants you. She begged me to ask you to come.’
I accompanied him to the hospital, which was on a lower floor of the complex. Precious Cloud lay in a large private room, surrounded by all the paraphernalia of modern medicine – ECGs, drips, oxygen cylinders, a contour bed which was supposed to shape itself to her every movement and so provide constant back support. Extepan’s personal physician, a grey-haired Otomi called Yeipanitl, was overseeing her labour, along with three nurses and Mia, who stood at her shoulder, stroking her forehead with slender fingers. The contrast between Precious Cloud’s look of panic and Mia’s total impassiveness made me think that perhaps Precious Cloud was right and that what I had always assumed was a serenity in Mia was simply an absence of feeling.