Lammas night

  "You're entitled," Ellis replied. "Do you think you can handle things now?"

  "You're just going to have to give me some time to adjust, Wes," he answered softly. "One step at a time. I'm not resigned. A lot can happen in two weeks. Maybe we'll never have to do more than we've already done. Emma and the cards could be wrong...."

  The brigadier rose as if nothing unusual had occurred and moved casually toward the door.

  "If that qualification makes it easier to deal with for now, very well," he said. "Just so long as you realize what else may be necessary—and I think you do."

  As Alix came back into the room with the tea, Graham knew he realized all too well.

  Graham endured the next two yeeks in something of a fog, outwardly cool and efficient but numbed inside, praying that somehow he and William would yet be delivered. He saw little of anyone outside his office, for as the Battle of Britain intensified, his own duties grew heavier, the hours of sleep fewer. Only occasionally was he able to sandwich brief, unsatisfying meetings with William and the brigadier between his own long hours with his intelligence team and William's heavy rounds of royal duties.

  Other than to voice quiet acceptance of the initiation plans for the eighteenth, William spoke little of the decision he had made and would not discuss it with Graham at all. Whether that was for fear of being dissuaded or because William himself was having second thoughts, Graham did not know. He wondered whether William, too, felt that if the matter was not mentioned, it somehow would not have to happen.

  Those first two weeks of August brought devastating shifts in the emphasis of the war. Poor weather conditions initially prevented any serious German incursions beyond the usual shipping raids in the Channel and an occasional swipe at Dover or one of the other port towns; but by the second week, it was clear that the Luftwaffe was gearing up for a major assault. Adlertag —or Eagle Day—had been hinted in secret German ciphers for weeks.

  Heavy cloud cover and sporadic rain kept German sorties confined to the usual harassment at the beginning of the second week, but good weather on the twelfth brought concerted attacks on the southeast coastal radar chain: Ventor, Rye, and others. Several forward fighter stations were hit, along with Portsmouth Harbor and two unprotected convoys in the Thames estuary, but at least there were no further raids on the vital radar stations. Oddly enough, the Germans did not yet seem to have recognized the strategic importance of the radar nets.

  On the thirteenth, Adlertag finally began, though fortunately for the British, it got off to a slow start. Intended as the decisive punch at the beginning of a four-day campaign to knock the RAF from the skies, it was an essential step to the next phase in Operation Sealion—for the Germans could not hope to land an invasion force without mastery of the Channel and the British navy—and they could not master the British navy as long as the RAF ruled the skies above.

  But poor weather in the morning led to postponement of the major strike until the afternoon—and because of communications problems, part of the Eagle strike force found themselves over enemy territory early on without adequate fighter escort. In the fifteen hundred sorties flown that day, the Luftwaffe managed to bomb only secondary targets and to bag only thirteen British planes compared to their own losses of forty-five. The following day, attempting to cover their confusion, they confined their attacks to railways near the coast and a few RAF stations. By the third day, however, the German efficiency recovered dramatically.

  More than seven distinct Geiman attacks bombarded the length of Britain on the fifteenth. Beginning with a major raid on Lympne and Hawkinge airfields in Kent, just before noon, the Germans next simultaneously attacked the coastal areas of Northumberland and Yorkshire, hoping to draw off fighter defenses so that new waves of bombers might better harry the south. Although the bomber station at Great Driffield lost ten Whitley bombers on the ground in addition to other heavy destruction, and several other lesser northern targets sustained damage, the British radar gave sufficient warning for most of the raiders to be met and engaged while still over the Channel, where Hurricane and Spitfire pilots made short work of them.

  By midafternoon, more waves of bombers and their fighter escorts hit Hawkinge again, as well as the airfields at Eastchurch and Martlesham and the vital aircraft factories at Rochester. Later in the afternoon, a flight of eighty bombers attacked the south coast at Portsmouth Harbor and the airfields at Middle Wallop and Worthy Down, though they inflicted little serious damage. An hour later, yet another wave hit the airfield at Croydon, near London. More sporadic attacks continued through the hours of darkness—harassment designed to fray the nerves of the British people.

  Pilots of the RAF fought doggedly and effectively, inflicting more than twice the losses on the Luftwaffe than they themselves sustained, but relative losses were of little comfort in light of absolutes. The coastal raids continued to take their toll daily; and though British aircraft production had risen to the point that lost or damaged aircraft could be replaced at the rate of over a hundred a week by mid-August, the fact remained that the replacement of trained pilots could not be accomplished by assembly lines working extra shifts. Fighter Command had fallen more than two hundred below strength by the seventeenth; and as new pilot training programs were cut to the bone and cut again in order to get pilots into the air, the life expectancy of an RAF fighter pilot fell to less than ninety flying hours. Some men were going into their first sorties with as little as ten hours of solo time in Hurricanes or Spitfires and had never fired their machine guns at a target in the air.

  It was with this grim awareness that Graham rose on the morning of the eighteenth and drove to Buckingham Palace to collect William. There he and Michael heard Sunday service in the Chapel Royal with William and other members of the Royal Family and household, since William asked it, then had a light luncheon in William's quarters before starting down to Oakwood. Michael accompanied them, for William had also asked that he be present that night.

  The criss-crossed contrails of distant aerial battles scored the grey rim of the horizon almost all the way to Oakwood, underlining the growing need for their journey. Close by, massed enemy bombers and their swarms of escorts pounded the beleaguered airfield of West Mailing without mercy. Once, when the thump of nearby bombs even rocked the moving Bentley, Michael pulled off the road. Ahead, a disabled Heinkel crashed spectacularly in a farmer's field and burned.

  The sheer physical peril of the drive from London kept the minds of all three men diverted from the less palpable but no less real perils of the night and days to come. Alix and the brigadier were waiting when they drove up the long, tree-arched driveway of Oakwood just before teatime, and the five spent a strained several hours discussing the week's war developments and the battle they had seen, waiting for nightfall. By unspoken agreement, they avoided the real reason for their conning together.

  But as the afternoon wore on, the silences grew longer and the conversation more forced until, just before dusk, Graham finally escorted William upstairs and suggested that he nap for an hour or two while preparations went forward.

  "There's no sense getting yourself worked into more of a state than you already are," he told the prince.

  "I wouldn't be in such a state if I knew a bit more what to expect," William replied as he sat on the edge of the bed and removed his shoes. "Can't you even give me a hint?"

  Trying to avoid the searching blue eyes, Graham jammed his hands in his pockets and studied the pattern in the rug.

  "I'll ask Wesley to come up and brief you a little later," he said softly "For now, you should get some sleep."

  "I don't want to sleep, and I don't want Wesley," the prince said pointedly. "I want to know whether I can count on your support tonight."

  Graham turned partially away, forcing back the numb edge of despair. "I'll be present as a witness. Right now, that's all I can promise."

  "Do you think denying it will change things?"

  Graham knew it would not but had no
argument to answer William. When he did not reply, the prince laid back on the bed with a perplexed sigh, his eyes never leaving Graham.

  "Gray, we have to go through with this," William said. "At least tonight's part. Please don't make it harder for either of us than it already is."

  Graham allowed himself a heavy sigh. "Forgive me, William," he whispered. "Simple being here is hard enough."

  He caught just a glimpse of the hurt and resentment in William's eyes before the prince rolled abruptly onto his side, away from Graham. Stung by that reproach, Graham sat gingerly on the edge of the bed. When he finally summoned enough courage to touch one tentative hand to the prince's shoulder, William flinched.

  "William, I'm sorry," he whispered.

  "So am I," came the low-voiced response.

  "Will you—try to sleep?"

  "Yes—for all the good it will do."

  Justly chastened, Graham bowed his head.

  "William, I told you I was sorry. I can—put you to sleep if you like."

  Without warning, William rolled onto his back to stare at him.

  "Yes, you can, can't you? But you can't do the one thing I really need you to do. Do you think you're the only one who's afraid. Gray?"

  "William, I—"

  But William only shook his head and closed his eyes, breathing out with a resigned sigh.

  "Never mind," he whispered. "Just go ahead and put me to sleep."

  Graham had no heart to continue a discussion that he had not wanted in the first place. When William did not look up again, Graham reluctantly brushed his finger tips over the prince's closed eyelids and eased him into kind, undreaming slumber. He wished there were time to make the same sort of escape, if only for an hour, but he feared to dream if he slept. After finishing his own physical preparations, he spent the remaining hour in solitary contemplation, searching his conscience and dreading every step he was increasingly bound to take. Both Alix and the brigadier tried to talk to him, but Graham declined their comfort. Wisely, they left him to his own anguished soul searching.

  A few hours later, William sighed and sputtered a little as he gently surfaced from under his bath water and scooped water and hair out of his eyes with both hands. Steam rose all around him, pungent from the herbs the brigadier had run under the tap when he drew the bath a quarter hour ago. The aroma, sharp but not unpleasant, lent an odd air of other worldliness to the ambience of the bathroom, unlike anything William had ever smelled before. The flickering of the single candle near the tub softened the white starkness of the tile, but it also gave free rein to his already active imagination.

  Not that the unfamiliar was unexpected under the circumstances. As William had learned in the past two weeks, one of the principal purposes of an initiation was to cause changes in the initiate, partially by placing him in an unfamiliar environment. Just what those changes might encompass, William was not altogether sure. He was not exactly afraid of what lay ahead tonight, but he could not help a gnawing little knot of apprehension, for all his trust of those in whose hands he had placed himself. The hot bath had at least eased a few of the physical knots and tensions.

  He breathed deeply of the scented steam and let himself slip down in the warm water again until he could rest his head against the edge of the tub, closing his eyes to drift, wishing many things were different. Oddly enough, his most urgent concern for tonight was not himself at all, but Gray, who still was resisting the decision William had made and could not seem to make himself a part of it.

  It had been the brigadier who had broached the subject of initiation to William in the first place, while a sullen and uncommunicative Gray sat silently by, contributing only when questioned directly. Though Gray never again voiced the kind of resistance he had offered that first time, in the garden—at least in William's hearing—it was clear that his heart was not in any of the preparations. William met with him privately several times after that, but Gray assiduously avoided further discussion. Not until this evening had William even dared to bring it up.

  Now the part of tonight that William sometimes sensed so joyously in Gray had lost a little of its edge, for Gray refused to be drawn into William's sharing of it. William wondered whether there was any chance at all that Gray might change his mind.

  A door opened and closed in the next room, and very shortly there was a discreet rap on the bathroom door. William sat up in anticipation, sloshing water, but it was the brigadier, not Gray, who slipped through the doorway with an apologetic bow, a large, snowy-white towel on his arm in stark contrast to the now-familiar black robe. William hoped his disappointment did not show too much as he put on a tentative smile for the older man.

  "How do you feel?" Ellis asked, crouching near the head of the tub and balancing against the edge with one hand.

  "Clean?"

  Ellis smiled. "And with a sense of humor yet, I see. That's good." He swished his free hand in the water near William's shoulder, apparently testing the temperature, then dried it on a comer of the towel.

  "As it happens, 'clean' is what this part is all about," he continued. "The washing away of all impurities and imperfections before one is presented to the gods—psychic impurities as well as physical ones. Fortunately, water is good for doing both. Do you feel sufficiently pure?"

  "I'll feel sufficiently waterlogged if I stay in here much longer," William quipped with a ragged smile. "At least physically. Psychically, I couldn't say. You're the expert in that department."

  "You'll pass."

  "Well, that's a relief. Are you going to brief me any further? Gray—hasn't told me much."

  "I'll tell you what I may," the old man returned, standing and holding out the towel sympathically. "Come and get dry now. I shouldn't want you to grow old and wrinkled before your time."

  The prince climbed out and wrapped himself in the towel Ellis held, accepting the older man's assistance wordlessly as he was dried and garbed in a loose-fitting white robe that wrapped across the front. As he knotted a white cord around his waist to hold it in place, he tried not to think about whether he would have the chance to grow old and wrinkled. The possibility got increasingly smaller. Toweling his hair dry, he followed Ellis into the adjoining sitting room, which was also lit only by candles. He studied Ellis furtively in the mirror while he combed his hair. Ellis seemed nonplussed by the scrutiny and only patted the divan beside him when William had finished his toilette.

  "Come and sit, son," the old man said, holding up two envelopes. "I have some mail for you: a note from the master of the house and a cable from Richard and Geoffrey. I think you know that all three of them would have been here tonight if that were possible. You've not met my granddaughter Audrey, Geoffrey's sister, but she was here Lammas night, and she also sends her respect and best wishes. She felt you might be more comfortable if tonight's gathering were kept small."

  William smoothed his robe over his knees with a restless gesture as he took the two envelopes and sat. Both had been opened, for they were addressed to Ellis on the outside. The first note was penned on the familiar, cream-colored stationery of Lord Selwyn's ship, with its crest engiaved at the top in gold.

  To Victor, with reverence and warm affection. You are in my thoughts and prayers. Your servant, Selwyn.

  William smiled at the "Victor" appellation and laid the note aside, unfolding the cable from Wales. The words printed on the yellow signal flimsy were more informal but also more cryptic.

  TO BRIGADIER SIR WESLEY ELLIS, KCB, LAURELGROVE, EYNSFORD, KENT STOP WE WIN STOP TO THE VICTOR BELONG THE SPOILS STOP SIGNED YOUR SPOILED GRANDSONS R&G.

  "To the victor belong the spoils?" William said, glancing up at Ellis.

  Ellis smiled. "Since they had no way of knowing how many nosy clerks might read it, they had to be a little indirect. They're giving you their homage, William, as the sacred king."

  William read it again, a shiver of awe gradually overcoming him as the hidden sense registered. We win. To the Victor belong the spoils....
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  He snatched up Selwyn's note and reread it then, only now seeing his "reverence" in a possibly different light.

  "And—Selwyn, too?" he finally murmured, hardly daring to ask it.

  As the brigadier nodded, not saying anything, it was all William could do to blink back the tears. He stared at the two messages, seeing the faces of the three who had sent them superimposed over the two very different sorts of paper, then gently folded the cable form around the stiffness of ship's stationery and closed them between his hands, overcome. It was not until he had recovered enough to slip them into the pocket of his robe that he realized he had unconsciously clasped even the written pledges as he would have clasped the hands themselves. He started shaking as he patted the papers in place inside the pocket, and he forced himself to take a deep breath.

  "What can I say?" he whispered after he had slumped bone-lessly into the softenss of the divan, wishing there had been a fourth name added to the three.

  "You don't have to say anything if you don't want to. Are you nervous?"

  "What do you think?"

  "That's fine. A little anxiety is normal and healthy. There's supposed to be some anticipation. I did want to reassure you, however, that nothing terrible is going to happen to you tonight. Even though you've offered yourself in a very worthy cause, we all still hope that won't be necessary."

  "I'm not sure I understand what you're saying," William said.

  Ellis smiled and produced his pipe and pouch from a hidden pocket, beginning the little ritual of scooping tobacco and tamping it into the bowl.

  "I suppose what I'm trying to say is that no one is going to slip in a surprise sacrifice tonight to spare you the anticipation and the worry later on," he said slowly. "What you'll experience out there—and in here"—he touched the side of Wil-ham's head lightly with a finger tip—"is your's by right of birth, even if it weren't for the other. Granted that in ordinary circumstances it might have been safer for all of us if you never knew about any of this—but none of us, knowing you as we do now, would have denied you its joy, had you come to us in normal times."