Your Royal Hostage

  'No, Susy, no.' The melodious tenderness was in danger of wearing thin.

  'I take it you want the Roman Catholic Cathedral,' interrupted Harry, not necessarily out of any sense of diplomacy. 'See the spire if you duck and crane your head. Its exact height is —'

  Rick Vancy found his fingers itching for a telephone to transport him to a wider world.

  Just as Harry swung the large dark-blue car into the road leading to the Cathedral's piazza, Susanna gave a little squeak.

  'Look! The Guards! Dressed up for rehearsal! Their history is absolutely fascinating—' She looked nervously at Rick's back. But even Rick was murmuring approvingly: 'Great pageantry.'

  Suddenly to Jemima the scarlet-coated guards, their heavy cuirasses and plumed helmets gleaming in the sun, the jangling bridles and sweating flanks of the huge black horses, spoke not of pageantry - nor of history - but of violence and threat. Once upon a time men dressed like this or something like this, had ridden to battle to ride down other men dressed similarly. Now their role was apparently merely ceremonial: the visible guarding of the monarchy on occasions of official pageantry. Plus various clanking trots applauded by tourist London. Yet not so long ago men like this had died in London itself in an outbreak of terrorist bombing. Someone took the ceremonial sufficiently seriously to blow them to bits. Horses like this had suffered an even worse fate if you took the line that the horses had not voluntarily enlisted

  in the service of the State And if the horses and guards were

  worth sacrificing, what price the equally ceremonial figures that they guarded?

  As Rick observed in a most melodious voice: 'Where pageantry is concerned, the rest of the world is over the hill compared to you Brits.' Jemima shivered.

  The lofty twilight interior of the great Byzantine-style cathedral, with its glinting mosaics and towering bands of green and rose marble, came as a relief. Jemima's morbid thoughts vanished as she observed with interest the considerable quantity of people - worshippers, tourists? - moving at some speed through the various aisles. It was four o'clock on a weekday afternoon. It was not just the advancing priests in their traditional long black vestments or the busy nuns (whose short skirts and briefly veiled, mainly uncovered hair would have been witnessed with horror by Jemima's old headmistress Mother Ancilla). There were quite as many lay people bustling about and the judicious development of the Catholic Church since Jemima's schooldays (a Protestant, she had attended a Catholic school) was attested by a large exhibition of photographs concerning relief in the third world.

  'Good heavens, there's my cousin Lydia Quentin,' exclaimed Susanna, ‘I didn't know she was a Catholic these days. Still I wouldn't put it past her. I wouldn't put anything past Lydia. Poor Ione, that's Princess Amy's lady-in-waiting, you know her, the ever calm one, she's had a ghastly time with Lydia. Ever since her father died, the famous Colonel Q, you've probably heard of him, terrifying ! But rather marvellous. Then the house and everything had to be sold. What with that and her mother, Lydia picks up with the most terrible people - Moonies, Trots, people like that. Then Ione has to come and rescue her.' Susanna had on her important voice with which she generally imparted historical information. 'Now I suppose it's subversive nuns.'

  Jemima gazed at a distinctly thin and rather pale girl. There was some resemblance to Ione Quentin, not only because both had dark hair; but where Ione radiated quiet strength, one would scarcely suppose that this frail creature possessed any strength at all. Cousin Susanna, with her sturdy frame, was a third version of the same model.

  In one of the side chapels, behind a silver grille with its gates open, Lydia Quentin was kneeling as though in prayer in front of a large mosaic picture. Banks of little yellow candles twinkled on a stand outside. There was no nun, subversive or otherwise, to be seen. In fact Lydia Quentin was kneeling in a row with several other people and there were further people bent in prayer behind her. It struck Jemima that this was an especially popular shrine. The next door chapels were empty. Given the fact that their lips were moving in prayer, it occurred to her that this little group, if it was a group, might be taking part in some communal novena. Which said, the afternoon was an odd time for it to take place.

  Jemima knew she should really be concentrating on the interior of the cathedral. This was her opportunity since tus like all other foreign stations would not be allowed to have a camera inside the cathedral on the day itself, tus would be obliged to take the bbc coverage with their own commentary superimposed as necessary. The tus team would thus be installed in a specially built studio overlooking the piazza. All the same, curiosity - or perhaps even the famous instinct to which Pompey sometimes gallantly alluded - drove Jemima to investigate this popular or populated chapel further. The mosaic showed a man in monk's clothing, his hands outstretched, a group of birds perched upon them.

  This must be the chapel of St Francis. White marble lettering surrounded by an acanthus border confirmed the fact. A rather less elegant wooden box nearby had a slit for donations and for candles (there was a large heap of candles in another box on the floor). Jemima wondered why she persisted in feeling the kneeling people were united in some common cause. The empty chapel next door was dedicated to St Paul; perhaps St Francis was more in keeping with the spirit of the times than St Paul. But then, further down, the chapel of St Patrick was empty too and it could certainly be argued that St Patrick had kept up with the times. For a moment she had even thought they were talking to each other instead of praying - which was absurd.

  Lydia Quentin for example was kneeling next to a young man in a T-shirt with some conventionally protesting slogan on it. She was now gazing intensely in front of her. The young man turned his head and briefly his eyes met those of Jemima. There was no recognition in them although Jemima, with her distinctive colouring, apart from anything else, was used to the surprised flicker which the public sometimes accorded her, springing from the true late twentieth-century familiarity of television. Oddly enough, in this case it was Jemima who felt she might have seen the man somewhere before ... somewhere recently ... the wedding ... what was it ... the memory nagged at her and vanished.

  It was fortunate that the man known to his fellow worshippers as Beagle was a sufficiently common type for there to be no certainty.

  'Nosy bitch,' said Beagle in a low voice. 'If you'll pardon my language in this house of prayer. Jemima Shore Investigator as ever is. Not satisfied with that interview and all that royal rubbish.'

  'Do you know her?' asked Chicken, kneeling on the other side of Beagle.

  'I sat next to her at the Press Conference. I came in late. She won't remember. And even if she does - what's she doing here I want to know?'

  'Same as us, I dare say,' murmured Chicken drily.

  'Not quite the same as us, I hope, dear.' Pussy shifted the parcel at her feet and plunged her face once more into her hands.

  Of the members of the Innoright cell, only Monkey was a practising Catholic. It was Monkey, with his usual sense of planning suffused with irony, who had suggested the cathedral for a meeting place, and the statue of St Francis, patron saint of animals, for the rendezvous.

  'The Church. Another place where anyone sits next to anyone, as you put it, my dear Miss Lamb. Like the Underground.'

  Fox, however, if not actually a Catholic (he had never been officially converted) was a man of romantic temperament who, in his single life with Noel, often dropped into Soho churches. He was not exactly seeking God, more enjoying the incense and music and above all admiring the vestments - a busman's holiday from his own work. When had he not loved costumes, dressing-up? It was a passion rooted deep in his unhappy childhood. Fox however had not turned his head at Jemima's approach. He took the opportunity of the respite to pray, a frequent prayer that he would somehow die with Noel; Noel who had been parked, panting, outside many churches and was in fact waiting panting outside the cathedral now.

  Chicken, raised as an Anglican, had long ago abandoned that wishy-washy r
eligion as she saw it, for a single-minded adherence to her campaign for the rights of the innocent. She felt marginally uncomfortable in her present Catholic situation but as a disciplined person, she was used to putting up with such things in the cause of Innoright. Pussy on the other hand, although she literally detested the Catholic Church for daring to state that animals, unlike slaughtering, meat-gorging humans, had no souls, had been raised by a Polish Catholic mother. She thus slumped down easily in her pew, crossed herself quite naturally and in general looked much like all the other middle-aged women with shopping bags scattered round the cathedral.

  Jemima Shore wandered away to rejoin Susanna and Rick. Monkey was the last person to catch her eye: this was because this prosperous-looking person, conventionally dressed, appeared to be praying aloud.

  'So, ladies and gentlemen of Innoright, fellow animals -' began Monkey again. Even at simulated prayer, Monkey's voice was sonorous.

  It was some hours after this that Jemima, pouring another whisky for Pompey as she described her recce, remembered where she had seen Beagle. The recollection, including the group of disparate worshippers at the shrine of St Francis - St Francis, patron saint of animals, animal love, interesting that, there seemed to be a lot of it about, even within the cathedral's precincts - the recollection did not then seem important enough to relate. But it did seem important enough to file away in her memory, like one small piece of the mosaic on the cathedral walls. She thought of saying to Pompey: 'What was that photographer called? The one who was a friend of the murdered man? The one with the alibi?' That too would wait, if not for ever.

  Thus it was part of her general thought process on the subject of the Princess, her security, and the past threat posed by Innoright, that she observed aloud to Pompey: 'They're at the opera tonight. I shall have to throw you out in order to get ready for Covent Garden. Royal Gala!'

  'You to your garden and I to mine,' observed Pompey wistfully.

  'Still, they'll be safe enough at the opera,' said Jemima.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Evening in a Good Cause

  Against the red velvet frame of the box, Monkey looked both substantial and dignified in his white tie and tails. Moreover the crackling white waistcoast stretched smoothly over his broad chest unlike those of some of his contemporaries, sorted out from disuse for the occasion of the Royal Gala. But Monkey was used to white-tied City dinners; he was also used to benefits in aid of good causes of which the present Royal Gala might seem to be just one more example. Monkey even sported on his chest a minor medal incurred for philanthropic work and donations - in another life before Innoright.

  For Monkey, however, it was not just one more evening in a good cause. Or not in the sense that the world generally would understand the phrase. The presence of Lamb beside him, thin shoulders peering out of a plain pale-pink satin dress with shoestring straps, signified that. Lamb herself was as appropriately dressed as Monkey. If her dress was slightly dowdy, an unusual lotus pattern diamond circlet sat upon her dark head. Ione Quentin, who had lent the dress (as a lady-in-waiting, she had numbers of such inconspicuous long dresses available, this one being cut sufficiently straight to accommodate Lamb's much slimmer figure) had also insisted on Lamb wearing the tiara.

  'Mum's tiara,' said Lamb doubtfully, weighing it in her hand. The box in which the circlet had been housed was ancient battered red morocco, and the red velvet interior, unlike that of the Covent Garden box, distinctly shabby. But the diamonds shone in all their

  yellowish eighteenth-century lustre. 'I thought you usually wore it at this kind of bash.'

  'P.A. won't mind. P.A. won't notice.' Ione, as so often with her sister, was determinedly cheerful. 'She's the veritable star of the show this evening. No other Royals going. Well, one or two royal-ish ones. The younger lot. But P.A. outranks them all. The Duchess, who frankly loathes the opera, has got one of her frequent convenient illnesses. P.A. loves that, of course; after all the Gab is for her - him too, naturally. Even if it was all rather last minute, slotted into the schedule. I told you.'

  'Yes, you told me.' Lamb continued to weigh the tiara as though it represented a subject she was weighing up in her mind.

  'Go on, Leelee, put it on.' Ione used the name from their childhood as she seldom did nowadays; it seemed to upset Lydia, reminding her of their mother who had never called her anything else. 'Besides it will help me to keep an eye on you. Also, I want to see what's his name. What is his name? The dirty old man who's taking you.'

  'He's not a dirty old man.' Suddenly Lamb wore her intense look, the one that made Ione's heart sink, and Ione cursed herself. 'He's a very fine person who does a lot of good in the world, unlike all your lot with their show-off jewels. Princess Amy should meet him instead of that awful Gala committee. Do you know how much suffering -'

  'But darling, it was a joke. I'm sure P. A. would love to meet him. You said he was a dom, do you remember?' Ione hastily retrieved the tiara from Lamb's agitated hands and replaced it in the shabby box. 'And anyway I looked him up and saw that he married a sister of Mum's friend, Penelope, my godmother; wife deceased; no children; never remarried. So I said he must be looking for a young wife and you said, no, that's not what he's looking for, a wife, he's a Dirty Old Man. It was a joke,' concluded Ione patiently.

  In the end Lamb wore the tiara. Ever since her illness she often did what people wanted in small things in order to save her energies for resistance when it really mattered. Lamb smiled to herself as she allowed Ione to fasten it on. She thought she might sell the tiara and give the money to Innoright. After everything was over. Then what would clever Nonie do? The tiara had after all been left to them jointly. Ione saw the smile on her sister's sad little face and was not reassured.

  It would undoubtedly have surprised Lamb to learn that Ione's supposition concerning Mr Edward James Arthur Monck mbe's intentions were not really so wide of the mark. Or perhaps fantasies would be a better word than intentions. As Major Pat Smylie-Porter sometimes confidently dreamt of the day when he would marry Ione Quentin, Edward Monck also secretly dreamt from time to time of taking her sister as a second wife. He would review the years without his beloved Cynthia, she who had been so very different (not only physically) from Lamb and whose pointless death of an embolism during a minor operation had driven him on his first steps down the path of obsession. First making money — what else was there to do?-— then giving it away - what else was there to do with it? Cynthia had left no children - finally Innoright, his own protest against a cruel world, and the Underground Plan, its supreme expression.

  His mission accomplished, the Underground Plan accomplished, might he not allow himself at last the indulgence of a second bride, a child wife, one would combine in those two things, two attributes so long missing from his life?

  Tonight was not the night for such dreams. Edward Monck a.k.a. Monkey, took one more quick look at Lamb's pale skin glimpsed above the smooth satin which virtually matched it and pointed his thoughts back sternly to the matter in hand.

  At that moment there was a hush then a rustle in the audience. The starched white waistcoats crackled as their inhabitants struggled to their feet. Long skirts were retrieved uncomfortably from beneath the next-door seat. Like animals feeding together, who turn their heads in unison at a sudden noise, the whole audience now craned in one direction.

  Princess Amy, a tiny shining figure, appeared in the Royal Box, in the centre of the right-hand tier of boxes facing the stage, followed by Prince Ferdinand, darkly handsome with the green sash of some appropriately Ruritanian order across his chest.

  While flunkeys in the flamboyant Opera House uniform were visibly hovering round them, the more discreet figures of Ione Quentin and Major Pat Smylie-Porter, the latter with several medals of a genuinely military nature on his chest as well as others gained in the royal service, could be discerned behind them.

  Unlike Monkey and Lamb in their box on the opposite side, framed in red velvet alone, Princess
Amy and Prince Ferdinand stood in a bower of blue flowers, swags cascading from the rim of the box itself, and great pilasters of blue surrounding them on either side. Was the blue a delicate tribute to Amy herself? But then speculation about such a comparatively minor matter as the flowers faded in favour of universally admiring exclamations concerning the Princess herself. Or rather almost universally admiring: an exception to the general chorus of admiration would have to be made in the case of Chicken and Pussy, sharing a second-tier box.

  'Little Madam,' said Pussy to Chicken, putting down her impressive-looking binoculars. Lately she had taken to using Fox's phrase for Amy, rolling it succulently on her tongue, in preference to her own 'spoilt brat', ‘I believe that was a fur stole that was being stowed away at the back. And after what she said on television! They're all the same. Hypocrites. I'd like to give her one.'

  'You may soon have an opportunity,' murmured Chicken drily. But her words, as she intended, were drowned by the sound of the National Anthem. Chicken, believing herself to be potentially far more ruthless than Pussy — in a good cause and at the right moment - disapproved of the latter's habit of indulging in such blatantly vicious talk. Chicken rustled the score which as an opera lover (if mainly on Radio 3) she had brought in order to calm her nerves. With her usual forethought Chicken had taken care to remove all personal marks from the score; nevertheless she was aware that if anyone cared to look closely with their own binoculars into what was in effect a corner balcony box, next to the stage itself, they might be surprised to see an Indian woman sedulously following the musical score.