155
Middle Parliament
Kevin MacNeil tugged at his court robes. He hated ceremony, but of all ceremony, what he hated the most was what he was about to endure: an appearance before Parliament.
“It could be worse”, Elizabeth murmured. “It’s only Middle Parliament.” The term was an informal one, not legal – yet still a strong tradition. In the structure of Lost Britain, a system similar to that of ancient Rome’s patronage had emerged, where the weaker looked to the stronger for their interests, and the stronger did the talking to their peers. Here in the Middle Parliament were those lords who spoke, some for themselves alone, most for others as well. The term came from the concept, set forth by a past group of influential lords, that those who spoke through their patrons stood around the outside, and those who spoke for them or had the standing to speak on their own stood closer to the Prime Minister and to the throne – thus putting them in the Middle. The monarch and ministers, in this picture, were the Core, not the “Center”, lest there be confusion.
“I know, I have to listen to anything any of them says”, Kevin replied sarcastically, “instead of being able to dismiss some of it as the chattering of squirrels.” Yet at the same time that he dreaded this, he also welcomed it: he’d gotten to visit his father, and the experience had set him back more even than the battle against the Aliens. The old man could speak clearly, but his words came at less than a tenth the rate Kevin’s own when he spoke unhurried. He couldn’t hold a tea cup to save his life, and his once-strong and sure legs, the legs of a man who could fence against two on the quarterdeck of a squall-tossed ship, twitched and jerked uncontrollably when he tried to use them.
This visit, he hadn’t needed the physicians to point out the bulge growing on the side of his father’s head, destroying its noble proportions. He had listened to one explanation, after dismissing the others angrily, how the growth had begun inside, but pushed itself out as it got larger, and that as it squeezed on the brain and the spine, it was like a pinch on a leg that made it all tingly and “sleepy”, or a blow to an elbow that made the arms jerk and wander when a man tried to use it. It was an image he understood; it made sense to him, having an invader and blows exchanged – while the others spoke of humours and one even wanted to let out blood! He’d asked only one question: “Can you cut it out?” – and gotten a plain reply, “I could try. I could make it worse, I could save him, I could kill him. Most likely, kill him.” But he’d recommended an herb, one from old journals – one not found on the islands, but on the mainland.
“Kevin!” Elizabeth jerked at his sleeve. MacNeil snapped to reality: trumpets had sounded, pages were moving, the Staff stood with Prime Minister Owen Logan, about two beats from moving. The beats, sounded by the soft hand bells Elizabeth so loved, and not even audible past the podium – so none of the waiting Lords could hear the tempo they marked for the grand entrance – soothed him, especially when the beats marking their own beginning came in full major chords.
He wasn’t aware of the ceremony, except insofar as a portion of his mind kept track in order to go through the proper motions. One again he was thankful that Elizabeth had one day gotten tired of having the same full ceremony for a Middle Parliament as for a full Parliament, and cut it short. That was something he’d viewed from the side, not up front, and the memory still made him smile: there was the Queen, on the throne but two years and some months, who had moved from one bow not to the next step, but as though it were the final bow of the ritual, skipping over the several minutes of the middle. She’d said nothing at the time, so the whispering had begun, that they had a Queen whose mind was deficient. But only a few weeks later, when she’d initiated a visit to a Middle Parliament, a near-dozen puzzled ministers had been bundled into an arc instead of their usual long string of places, and gotten one bow for the batch of them. At the podium, she’d been marvelous. “My lords, you are too important, and your time too valuable, to waste time watching a girl bow over and over and perhaps lose track of how many times she’d bowed. It pleases me more to do honor all at once, for here you are Lost Britain, not as little pieces but as one.” It had been all the right words – and her first move to take ownership of Parliament, after securing all the details with respect to her House, after taking the throne.
And she’d never looked back – nor was she now. Kevin mostly ignored the subjects of the questions, waiting for the ones at the end. Supposedly it wasn’t proper for a monarch to decide anything about the order of questions, but by simply playing deaf on a few occasions she’d established her right in one small bit: if there was a topic she wanted to be last, it would be last, because she just simply would not even acknowledge the questions. After a handful of tests, the Middle lords had accepted this, as she had shown that she held strictly to her one topic, not broadening it at all. Having found her trustworthy, they humored her. Yet today’s “final topic” was broad no matter how it was addressed, and would spill over onto himself. Already in some faces he could see recognition that he wasn’t just a ceremonial escort, as Bride’s Spokesman to Bride, but would be answering questions for his Queen. With one exception, those were lords he wouldn’t mind hearing questions from, either – just as they thought clearly enough to understand why Elizabeth had really brought him, so they would think clearly enough to ask sensible questions. “Which ought to be a requirement for this body”, he muttered, softly enough, he thought, but earning a marked glance from the Staff.
Finally his mental watchdog alerted him. “Majesty, this is twelve ships! Nearly two thousand men! The year’s apportionment will be gone before the year! Do you truly expect us to vote an increment?” a not-quite-snide voice demanded.
“Lord Sheehan, let me first correct you”, Elizabeth’s voice rang out. Sniggers rose in response; she had adopted a tone reminiscent of that of the schoolmarm in a popular play – just enough to slap the lord down, slight enough to make it deniable. “It is twelve ships of war which will remain, four which will return, and eight of cargo. It is not ‘nearly two thousand men’, it is two thousand and forty – none of whom shall return.” She paused and stared down three lords who had been fidgeting, not really paying attention – a sign not of boredom, not in this assembly, but that their minds were made up, and they didn’t care at all what their Queen had to say. “And yes”, she continued softly, making them strain to hear, “I expect you to vote an increment. And I expect you to understand that the apportionment for the Fleet may need that increment permanently – and perhaps more.”
“Majesty”, a more rational voice came – a much younger voice, as well. “We have only Major MacNeil’s report of Aliens – apologies, Lord MacNeil; I mean do disparagement of your report, only that it is, thankfully, alone. Is this response not... excessive?”
Elizabeth nodded. “It may appear so. Yet of a night now and then, I lose sleep, wondering this: what if it is insufficient? What if seventeen ships and two thousand men are not enough to hold, when the Aliens come, and all we have begun is swept under as they swarm over everything, seeking our children to eat?”
Kevin almost laughed; that last was nearly unfair. The young lord made no mention, though. “Majesty, standing here, I cannot choose between those two.” To MacNeil, his slight shift of posture broadcast that here came the real reason he’d stood. “I request that at least one other military man, of the ground, be dispatched to assess the situation at this wall and harbor and peninsula. I suggest no choice, but leave that to your Majesty.” Kevin really had to hold in his laughter – on the other hand, the man sounded reasonable, and shouldn’t be too bad a companion. That his thoughts were ahead of the speaker’s became clear a moment later, as Elizabeth demonstrated her knowledge of her lords.
“Royal Marines, Royal Artillery, Royal Archers. Holder of a degree in fortifications”, she mused as though thinking aloud. “Rose to First Leftenant before switching to Marines – these are goodly recommendations, are they not?” The young lord blanched as he recognized she was stating his own qualifications. Elizabeth didn’t wait for a response. “Aston George Michael Nightingale-Hughes, second son yet likely Heir”, she went on, now looking him straight in the eye, “I find merit in your request. I appoint you, as you are both qualified and had the foresight to make the request.” Somewhere out there, Kevin suspected, an older lord was congratulating himself for how well that had worked. “For the other – I can think of only one officer other than... but wait a moment.” She turned “Major MacNeil, approach.”
She’d caught him off guard. It wouldn’t do to appear wary, so Kevin walked confidently to her. A slight narrowing of his eyes, visible to no one else, was all the chastisement he would even be allowed. A hint of an impish grin was her rejoinder. “Major MacNeil, you have command of this endeavor. For one set over so many men, the rank of Major is insufficient. So” – from her cleavage she produced colonel’s lens-star and crown – “you’re now Colonel MacNeil”, she stated as she attached the insignia. When she was finished, she patted the new decorations on his jacket, then gave him a gentle push back toward his seat.
“...than our Colonel MacNeil who has faced actual combat in our lifetimes”, she went on almost as though she hadn’t interrupted herself, “and that is General Gilliam Ernest McCutcheon. Lord Owen, do you think he might be nearby?”
The Prime Minister closed his eyes and shook his head ever so faintly. They’d had an informal breakfast encounter with the man, who’d been invited to the Palace to dine – by the Captain of the Guard, who of course would swear it had been on his own initiative. So the General was a minute away, at most. “I shall endeavor to enquire, Majesty”, he intoned, bowing. Kevin found himself feeling honored at the prospect of not merely meeting, but working with, a man who was close to being a legend.
“If I do not wish the position, Majesty?” the distinguished general responded not two minutes later.
“I could order you”, Elizabeth noted, though with a twinkle in her eyes.
McCutcheon sighed. “No, Majesty, you could not. Oh, you could say it”, he went on as gasps and groans sounded across the chamber – gasps from those how didn’t know him, groans from many who did, “but words would not make it so. You could have me dragged bodily to gaol, but words do not command my body – I command it.” He stated it as a professor might a proposition to a class in philosophy, not caring one way or the other what the students did with it. An angry murmur gave the gathering an undertone Elizabeth ignored.
MacNeil saw Elizabeth waiting for something, and decided he wasn’t going to play that game. He stepped up to the general’s side, but looked at Parliament. “The general’s right, and any man of action knows it. When it comes to acting, what moves a man or woman is that man or woman. No order from a leftenant or colonel or general – or monarch – can make a soldier’s body move. When you face it, your body either responds to your own mind, or it doesn’t respond at all.” He smiled wryly. “Of course, if your body doesn’t respond to you in battle, likely you’ll never have a chance to remedy that.”
Elizabeth laughed softly. “Two of a kind – men of action. While we live”, she went on, turning to Parliament, “our kingdom is going to need men of action. Look, all of you, on these two, and learn.” She spun to the general, then, sharp as any Marine on drill. “General, you speak bluntly. That is exactly what I need from you: see the great wall Engineer Granger is erecting, see the preparations Colonel MacNeil is making, and come speak bluntly. Some here will fail to find such blunt speech stimulating – I find it refreshing.”
McCutcheon nodded. “Well played, your Majesty. But offer me no ‘honors’ for this service. Common I was born, and common I’ll die.”
Elizabeth laughed again. “Gilliam McCutcheon, there’s nothing common about you. Well, you may not take honors, but you’ll have a reward – one you’ll even accept.” McCutcheon raised an eyebrow. MacNeil made a bet with himself, that his queen would find a way to make that true – or rather, she probably already had a way. “In the meantime, you’re back on the list – duty pay, for the duration.”
“And don’t tell her you don’t have to take it”, MacNeil whispered out of the side of his mouth.
“Well I don’t, now, do I lad?” came the return whisper as McCutcheon turned, not one to wait on ceremony.
“How’d he get to be a general?” It was a comment Kevin overheard from a young lord he didn’t recognize, right in the front. He went and leaned down, to answer. “Because he’s very, very good”, he said softly. “Will you be?” He spun too rapidly to allow for a response. Before he got back to his place, the questions had begun again.
“Majesty, you have commanded the largest ponies of the Kingdom! How are we to breed larger, if you take them all?” Unstated was the question of whether she expected them to pay for it.
Elizabeth was ready. “The Aliens are swift. Though the Dragoons are mostly smaller than most, they are still a burden. If a slightly larger pony will keep even one of my Dragoons out of reach of those foul jaws, then larger ponies I shall have.”
“Why ponies at all? Why have the Wall, and not stay behind it?” Because we’re not sniveling cowards, MacNeil wanted to say, just as he realized this one was really his. Elizabeth was in fact already turning.
“Colonel MacNeil will answer this, my lords”, the queen said, and stepped aside.
Kevin gripped the podium. “That’s a bundle to unwrap”, he responded. “You want larger steeds, so does Her Majesty. Unsaid last year, about the nomads I met: their have larger steeds. Thanks to policy” – and this body! – “last year I was not permitted to enter into discussions with them. We hope to encounter them again, or some like them. If we do, we can negotiate for larger steeds. But to meet them, we must be out looking again.
“So if we stay behind the walls, we won’t need to use larger steeds – but we’ll throw away the chance of getting yet larger ones.
“Without the walls, we’d have little chance at all. With Aliens about – and I do not believe that the small band which nearly slaughtered my command will have no counterparts this year – patrols will not be able to count on fleeing to ships, for while boarding they would be overrun. But with a fortress – there, gates can be opened, and they can stream in while those above rain death on the enemy.
“So it ties together – to have the one, we must have the other, and to have the other, we must have yet another, and to have it, we must have the first. So we need larger ponies. And if God is gracious – well, He’s always gracious, but if He’s favorable and especially generous in aiding us, Her Majesty will have the pleasure of selling back some of those ponies.
“Oh – don’t bother asking about who might get to have some of these larger steeds, until we’ve actually met some more nomads and learned just how much larger their steeds are and if we can trade for them.”
“What if they want to trade ponies for them?” some wit called. Replies came as shouts of derision mixed with laughter.
Kevin shrugged. “If for some strange reason they want to trade larger for smaller, I expect we ought to oblige them.”
“How much larger?!” The voice was from the back; Kevin knew it as belonging to a reasonable, if grasping, man.
“Well, I remember their saddles as higher than my eyes”, he joked. “But you know the heat of batt– No, you don’t know the heat of battle, do you?” He turned at a noise, and found McCutcheon beside him.
“I do, lad”, the general said softly. “In my dreams, those pygmies I fought still bear five-meter spears, and their shields are big enough a man could mount a sail and travel the islands.” He shook his head. “Some men remember aright, and others remember what hot blood told them. Others remember some of each. It's the rare man who remembers aright.” He smiled bleakly at Kevin, then turned to Elizabeth. “Majesty, if those steeds are eighteen hands high, one for my own would be all the reward I might ever want.” Back to Parliament, “But perhaps they’re only thirteen hands high – a bit taller than our best.” All eyes were on him as he scanned the faces, and Kevin saw another reason the man had risen to general rank as a commoner: he could command men without giving commands. “Should you truly wish to know how things look when a foe is coming with malice in his mind and weapons in his hands – or about his mouth, as the Colonel faced – come take a time, and learn it. I doubt neither Her Majesty nor her Colonel – they’ll be back.”
He had words for Kevin before he retreated. “It was a scouting party, lad. They’ll have others come to look where it went.” General’s eyes searched Colonel’s face as the words were received.
“Just let me pick the ground, sir.” He let the man older than his own father take a seat before turning back to the Middle Parliament.
“A thing to add”, MacNeil announced. “Those two thousand and a few aren’t the end of it. You’ve seen the requisitions for ponies – I’ll have two men for each of those.”
“Why so many? We could attack the southerners with that!”
“Might be easier, at that”, Kevin remarked, drawing chuckles. Attacking south, hopefully gaining sea room out of their cramped sea – like the eastern end of the Mediterranean on the Earth stolen from their ancestors – into a real ocean, was a commonly recurring dream. At the moment, having seen the real enemy face to face, the Colonel of Dragoons could concede that it would be much more a comfortable thing to fight humans. “But here’s why so many: my patrols are to be three hundred strong – four hundred, if they leave sight of shore. Without the nomads’ surprise assistance last year, none in my command would be other than Alien-food. From that battle, I judge that with the weapons and steeds we have, two hundred would likely have sufficed to allow fifty of us to survive and come home to tell of it.
“General McCutcheon has written of the wisdom of never assuming that what you know about the enemy is what is true about the enemy. What I knew was that the one band of Aliens was a certain size. I could not assume that meant all would be of that size. Thus, a standard patrol will have three hundred, not two, and an inland patrol will have four hundred, not three.
“But know this: I do not trust that even such numbers will suffice to win battles against these creatures. My wish, desiring to win, was for near-shore patrols of five hundred, and inland patrols of eight hundred. Unfortunately, there is another fact about armies which the general has written down to remind us: the larger the army, the slower it goes.” He flashed his best disarming grin. “More than that – Her Majesty reminded me that the Exchequer requires revenue; it is not magic.” The humor was rewarded with chuckles; among the more thoughtful, the reminded went home that without their vote of funding, none of this would happen.
“By any measure, enough on that. Another?”
“Lord – I suppose in this context, Colonel MacNeil, I believe I nearly understand the issues of wall and ponies and numbers: the wall is to keep from being overwhelmed, and to give patrols a place unto which they might flee; the larger ponies are to advantage the Dragoons in the matter of fleeing, that they might survive; the numbers are so that the patrols might not be slaughtered outright by the Aliens.
“Yet in that I find myself unable to discover one seemingly important aspect: when do we make an end of fleeing, and actually fight?”
“I judge you worthy of higher rank than you hold”, Kevin began. “You state our problem succinctly.
“Part of the answer is that we can
not at this time fully answer. Her Majesty and I find that the prospect of standing alone against these vermin is not pleasant. The appearance of the nomads at just this time is hopeful: consider – they wander across the hills, traveling the savanna as they please, apparently with no fear of the Aliens, yet no strangers to them either, and with a willingness – nay, a ferocious
eagerness, to fight them. We hope for an alliance; until we know if such is possible, and then what form it might take, we really have no plans to ‘actually fight’...
“... except one. In the old records, a pattern appears. General, you’ve had some things to say about patterns....”
McCutcheon didn’t bother to even stand up. “Patterns. If the enemy falls into patterns, use them to defeat him.” He scratched his chin. “You mean the way they never left human fortifications be, once found.” The white-crowned head began to nod firmly. “Aye, the wall isn’t there just to keep them out, it’s to draw them in. The trick is to destroy their patrols until the whole thing is ready, and then fight one without quite killing it. Then it is to wait for word to get back to their kingdom, and to prepare.” His smile was friendly and the nod became approving. “Aye, the wall isn’t there so you don’t have to fight, it’s your decision on where to fight. Their pattern will draw them to your chosen field, so they can die.
“Majesty”, he added, “I’ll be taking some kin and friends along, if your coin stretches so far. I know some who hold a bit more understanding of fortifications, than myself.”
“No more than a dozen”, Elizabeth replied with a smile. The general nodded, satisfied.
“Basically that’s it”, Kevin agreed. “We want to fight – but the best way we can do that right now is make a place for them to come and die.”
“I wish to come see this peninsula”, a voice called from the left. “Did you choose it so the ships can bombard the Aliens as they approach the fortifications?”
“Hire a ship and sail on over”, Kevin replied. “True, that is part of the function of the squadron. There are zones down the center, though, where Aliens will be safe from bombardment. Under-major Granger has examined the ground, and we and Lord Sidmuth agree that will persuade the Aliens to avoid the shorelines, which will in turn bring them against the fortifications in a certain small area. The whole is designed to make the best use of that.”
“I see you’re trying to make the best use of the best we have – what, then, of these bloody commoners and their ancient bows?” The question dripped with sarcasm.
Kevin was just amused by the attitude. “There’s a tactic the nomads use that we don’t have the weapons for. Rather than try to teach hundreds of men totally new weapons, I asked what it is the weapons achieve, and what we might do to accomplish that. The answer was simple: the nomads were piercing the Aliens with weapons that don’t come out again, so when the injured Alien moves about, it finds the movement more difficult, and makes the wound worse with each motion.
“We really don’t have anything we can use, if we get close. But Captain Shaugnessey’s enjoyment of archery reminded me that we have a weapon which strikes from a range, throwing a projectile which pierces. But ordinary arrows are just an annoyance to these creatures, so I turned to the longbow.
“I don’t care who draws them. I care only about a few things: that they can send an arrow from a goodly distance, that enough men know their use that I don’t need to train anyone, and that the arrows they fire can be altered to be heavier and very difficult to pull out. Put a handful of these harpoon-like arrows into an Alien, and it won’t be moving faster than a pony any longer – and that’s the important thing.”
“Colonel, are you giving up the task of Bride’s Spokesman? If you’re out there, commanding this show, how will you do both?”
Lord Richard Grenville answered before Kevin’s mental gears finished switching. “Gerald”, he called with a laugh, “were I Bride’s Spokesman, I could think of no better place to be, or job to have! The few dozens of dispatches of Spokesman’s business would be lost in the scores from being commander of the scheme! Surrounded by other military men, I could be confident I wasn’t being spied on to learn of my inquiries, or their object. Oh, true”, he conceded with a wave of his hand, “some military folk can be bribed, but I think none such are likely to be found in a situation where death and deprivation are a likely part of events.
“Lord MacNeil, I envy you – no Bride’s Spokesman, I think, has ever had such a good place to hide.” He gave Kevin a casual version of a hand-to-brow salute.
“Well, I’m not there yet”, Kevin commented back, drawing laughter.
“Have you even talked to the family?” That came from Lord Henry Creevy, a man busy building a new place for himself in kingdom politics.
“Not so they’d know”, Kevin answered after a brief hesitation. General laughter erupted.
“So if we haven’t had any inquiries, we know it’s not us?” It was a frequent foe of Creevy, one Chauncy Chalmers.
“You catch me in an error”, Kevin dead-panned. “I seems you’re correct. Now several families will know they’re not on the list!” He let the laughter rise and begin to fade. “Lord Creevy, I’m sure you’re concerned with the succession, securing it with an heir. Rest assured; I will ask the necessary questions at the proper time.”
“And a lot of rubbish along the way!”
“There’s a funny thing about being Bride’s Spokesman”, Kevin related. “It comes from all the queries – make ten, be sure that three are just misdirection. Get ten answers back, find that two of the real seven don’t answer any question at all... but that one of those done for misdirection reveals some aspect never imagined. And it can be quite revealing, what some know about their neighbors, yet don’t even know the importance!”
One of the ladies in the chamber raised her voice. “What if he says ‘no’?” Silence fell.
It was a question Kevin had contemplated all too often, with a weight that sent him back to gripping the podium. If his rescuer didn’t come to aid his Queen.... “In that case, my lords and ladies, God help us all – in that case, God help us all.”
