Band of Gypsys (2 page)

‘
No.
’

‘All right, don’t panic. Well, then, sex. We’re good at sex, I do b’lieve.’

‘You’re not taking this seriously.’

‘Yes I am. I was a crowd-fucking entertainment industry whore for years, why not get honest about it?’

‘I think that’s harsh. I may have said it, and worse, but I now think it’s harsh.’ But Ax was intrigued. ‘Could you get into doing sex for money?
Really
?’

Sage considered, thick stubby blond lashes downcast. ‘Lemme see. You would be there? With me the whole time?’

‘Not on the face of it, big cat. I’d take the money and wait round the corner. I think that’s the more usual arrangement.’

‘I was imagining you’d be right there watching, Sah. Dunno about otherwise.’

Silence. As a fantasy scenario the proposal had merits, but there were doors that opened onto ugly memory—

‘Maybe I’ll just earn our bread busking,’ suggested Ax, at last. ‘I like busking, except, this weather, my hands get so fucking cold.’

He checked the white-laced quilt of roofs again. The frozen silence of Paris.

‘Is there any way we could
sneakily
get her to take a test?’

‘Don’t see how, if she doesn’t want.’

‘Couldn’t we, er, slip it to her, in her food or something?’

‘You have to piss on them, Ax.’

‘I
knew
that.’

Fiorinda sat up, rubbing her eyes. ‘What are you two sniggering about?’

‘We were discussing my new career.’ They leapt across the room, bringing Sage’s coat (Ax and Fiorinda’s coats were already enhancing the bedding).

‘He’s going to sell his arse under the bridges of Paris,’ explained Ax, burrowing into warmth. ‘It could work, he has ex-celebrity cachêt. But I have to be there, holding his hand throughout. The punters will think we’re nuts.’

‘They already know that,’ said Fiorinda. ‘Don’t be stupid. If we’re selling sex, obviously that’s my job. I’m the girl.’

Sage wrapped himself around her back, kissing the nape of her neck through silky tendrils of red curls. ‘No, no no, not you. Never, never never.’

‘Not even in jest, sweetheart. You’ve done your share.’ Ax took her face between his hands, and gazed. Her eyes, the curve of her mouth, her strong brows, her stubborn jaw. As the song says, he could not get enough. All he wanted to do forever was this, drink them up, immerse himself, fill himself with them—

Sage and Fiorinda had never felt the weight of Ax Preston’s undivided attention before. There’d always been some little task like saving the world to take the pressure off. They were agreed it was quite a rush; a little scary.

‘You were ganging up on me,’ said Fiorinda. ‘I can tell. What’s it about?’

‘Hm.’

Both the men withdrew. ‘Fiorinda’ began Sage, propped on one elbow, addressing his remarks mainly to the shabby pillows. ‘We don’t want to crowd you, nothing further from our thoughts, but it’s forty six days. Could we talk about that?’

‘It’s your business, woman business, we just, we can’t help it—’

Fiorinda sat up, and folded her arms tight around her knees.

‘My period’s about two weeks late, big deal. Can’t I have
any
private life?’

‘Sorry.’

‘Okay, let’s look at this. I was de-sterilised six months ago, tested fertile and had my first no-kidding ovulation three months ago. You two have been shooting live ammunition for how long?’

‘We tested good in London six weeks ago,’ said Sage.

‘So be reasonable. Is it likely?’

‘We’re sure you’re probably
not
pregnant,’ agreed Ax, hurriedly. ‘But what if we
quietly
bought an old fashioned pregnancy test, and brought it back here?’

‘Just for the hell of it, nothing serious.’

‘Oh, right. Mr ex-dictator virtuoso busker and his giant Zen Master bodyguard, in Paris on a publicity stunt.
So
hard to recognise. What are you going to say? We’re a couple of tourists, making this intriguing purchase for a friend—’

‘Ax looks normal. I wouldn’t go in. I would hide around the corner.’

‘I wouldn’t take a guitar into the
shop
, Fiorinda.’

‘I see you have it all worked out.’ She sighed and lay down again, disarmed inspite of herself. ‘You know how people say, you can’t be a little bit pregnant? It’s totally the opposite. People get a little bit pregnant all the time, and something or other goes wrong before they even notice. Three months and morning sickness, that would be worth talking about. Oh, okay. I’ll think about it.’

They swiftly changed the subject, before she thought too much, and carried her away with them, into the whispering, giggling sweetness of sex in this winter bed.

Ax had tried hard to run away from being the funky rockstar President of post-civilised England. After his first flight he’d ended up having to invade the country, and distract a Green Fascist junta while Fiorinda and Sage destroyed an occult monster. The second time there’d been, arguably, even stranger consequences. Nothing had improved while they’d been in California. The Second Chamber Coalition Government were a bunch of shites, possibly the most lawless, rapacious adminstration since Dissolution—just more cunning and sustainable about it. Yet here he was again, coaxed back into the snake pit by emotional blackmail from his friend Fred Eiffrich. Persuaded by himself, because this time he would get it right. This time he would not stumble over his own ego. He had leverage in Europe of the kind that can’t be measured easily. He had the mandate of the so-called Leader of the Free World: which impressed the so-called Greens in Westminster, oddly enough. He had no great faith in Fred’s Righteous Global Recovery, but he could tackle a few gross abuses, claw back a few civil rights for the people. And he was
happy
, all three of them were happy. It felt right, it felt good to be doing this, while the world burned and froze and fell apart.

They were in Paris now, staging a 21
^st
century Lennonist bed-in, to raise awareness of conditions in the Second Chamber’s agricultural labour camps: where life ranged from vile to just grim and miserable, and the lucky people on the outside didn’t want to think about it. Because hey, it works, and we have to feed ourselves somehow, without machinery or fertiliser—

Admittedly, there were wrinkles in the contract. While they’d been gone Ax’s brother Jordan—along with Ax’s whole family, including his mother—had left the old homestead in Taunton and moved into a Government-selected stately home. Allegedly so they could be protected as befitted their status. Ax had been
furious
when he found out Jordan had accepted such a gift. At close quarters it was worse than that. The stately home was an isolated fortress, the Prestons were ‘protected’ by razor wire, constant surveillance and troops of heavily armed goons, over whom they had no control. Even Jor, who had argued that all top celebrities live like this, had finally spotted there was something wrong. The rest of the family were terrified. Except for Ax’s mum, of course. Sunny Preston took everything well.

It was okay. They weren’t in immediate danger, and Ax knew his value to the bastards in power. He could do business with a hostile government. Even now, being a Lennonist in Paris, he was working on his family’s release.

When Ax and Sage arrived on the Ile St Louis, the ironbound sky had given up none of its burden. They had a borrowed office, in the Seventeenth century mansion where Alain de Corlay, leader of the French Techno-Greens, kept his headquarters. Here they amused themselves by entertaining the proposals of various lunatic emigrées, while Alain’s merry crew prowled around dressed up as spacemen, or
Apaches
, or whatever currently took their
absurdiste
fancy. M. de Corlay himself sat in on the meetings when they needed a witness, smoking his horrible marijuana bidis and looking disgusted. Fiorinda stayed at home, working a different crowd.

Today it was the
Restore The Thames Party
(main platform, massive slave-labour engineering to return the Thames to its pre-iceage route, thus persuading Gaia to reverse the collapse of the thermohaline circulation and restore the North Atlantic Drift). Then a few minor suppliants, and a genuinely fascinating presentation from the Devon couple who could make wind turbines invisible.

The delegates from the New Plantagenet Society had been left until last, sent off to get nervous in the brown and gold salon next door. These lunatics had been holed-up in Paris since Ax’s dictatorship—when the French had provided asylum (out of sheer cussedness) for a hotbed of dodgy former-UK opposition groups. The “Plantagenets” were not the harmless kind. The two delegates were in full reenactment regalia, jewelled badges pinning sprigs of broom pinned to their velvet caps; velvet robes over formal business suits. Mr Red, sallow and middle-aged, thin mousy-grey hair in a long bob, bore an eerie resemblance to a famous portrait of Henry Tudor; suitably enough. Mr White, a much younger, rosy-cheeked and hearty
rosbif
, didn’t look much like Richard Crookback,
but
he did have a Yorkshire accent

There goes your project, thought Ax, with mordant amusement, frowning at the sprigs of hothouse
planta genista
. Don’t you know we’re soldiers of the queen, and Fiorinda hates cut flowers?

Nah, the New Plantagenets knew nothing.

The Reds and the Whites had buried their differences, and were ready share power. They’d approached Ax with a plan whereby he would marry—purely for legitimacy—the Yorkist heir, a young Greek woman: but it was fine if he preferred to be adopted by the Lancastrian heir (and elderly Canadian) instead. Their hopes were high. They had quasi-legal documents, including a ‘writ’ declaring Ax’s Islamic faith was not an impediment, and a ‘writ of perpetual abdication’ from the Hastings family, living Plantagenets who didn’t want anything to do with these nuts. They had fanfold genealogies in oak-gall, scarlet and gilt; they had a recorded video message from the elderly Canadian. They had detailed plans for the ceremony where Ax would simultaneously be adopted, by video-proxy, and consecrated king. He would take the dynastic name Richard Henry the First.

The conference room was bitterly cold, heated only by a trash-eater stove in the back of a cavernous baroque fireplace, where its heat went straight up the mighty chimney. The former Dictator of England and his Minister did not remove their coats. Mr Preston wore Dickensian, fingerless dark mittens that looked none too clean. He smoked one of the expensive cigarettes that were proffered (but declined the carton); showed an interest in the ornate paperwork, and asked gentle questions about the dirty business of actually taking over a country. Tall Mr Pender, with the intimidating good looks, never spoke except in an undertone, to his chief—murmured asides that won Mr Preston’s flashing smile, and made the negotiators envious.

Alain sat at the end of the table, chain-smoking, and followed the proceedings with exasperated disbelief. Sage stared at curling satellite image print-outs of London and the south coast of England, thumb-tacked to the panelled walls. Must have been there since this was the nerve centre of Ax’s Velvet Invasion. He wondered why Alain kept any relics of that hellish time. Poor housekeeping? A phalanx of landline phones stood on a side-table, gathering dust.

The stove hissed. At last Ax squared the documents, slipped an ancient vellum into its silk-lined folder, and swept the lot across the board.

‘Mr Red, Mr White, thank you. That’s all I have time for: you may go.’

The delegates looked at each other, nonplussed.

‘You
could
move that stove out into the room,’ said Sage to Alain, in English. ‘It would be slightly more fuckin’ use than where it is.’

‘Certainly not. It would mark the parquet.’

‘Welsh sovreignty wouldn’t be a deal-breaker,’ announced Mr Red, after a sub-vocal consultation, on a throat mike, with confederates elsewhere. (The New Plantagenets were not fanatical about appropriate Renaissance tech). ‘We believe in political union between England and Wales, but we can live with separation.’

‘Well, that’s
good
,’ said Ax, smiling; and raised an eyebrow.

They didn’t take the hint. The pinch-faced older man steepled his hands and leaned forward. His “real” name was Woodville, and he had form, racketeering and violent crime: a background of which Ax was well aware.

‘Mr Preston, Sir, having come this far, can we assume that we have Fred Eiffrich on board? Or are we, er, is Your Majesty waiting for that assurance?’

Mr White (Henry Lovell, close associate of the British Resistance Movement, a body formerly known as the BNP), glowed like a rose, already tasting glory.

In practice, Ax knew he would never have Fred ‘on board’. The friendship of the mighty is a fickle thing, you can never tell when their priorities are going to change. But Mr Eiffrich in theory made a very good stick to poke at monsters.

‘I could be.
Or
I could be mulling over my chances of waking up one morning in some draughty Norman tower, with a red hot poker up my bum. Or else starving to death in chains when you folks get tired of your new toy.’

The Plantagenets looked shocked, the stove hissed. Ax grinned like a friendly wolf, and leant forward himself; becoming affable and confidential. ‘I don’t have to tell you this, but fact is, we’re getting head-hunted all over the shop. We’ve been looking at a rather nice package from the Sealed Knot.’

The Plantagents bristled like startled cats at the hated name. ‘They’re lying!’ cried Mr White. ‘Whatever they said, it’s a crock of shit! Those bastards have no money and no credibility!’

‘They speak highly of you, too… And the Irish are putting out feelers, about Fiorinda for High Queen. They’re looking at the idea of having a decorative Head of State, like a lot of countries, and she’s an O’Niall you know. The Tyrone branch, the legitimate family, are cool about it. We’re thinking that might suit us very well.’

Sage nodded in confirmation. ‘Nicer climate in Ireland.’

‘So, what can I say? It’s all up in the air. Why don’t you try the Mountbatten-Windsors? They’ve a posse of children, they might let you have one, for the right offer. Feel free. I don’t mind where you take your pitch, as long as you don’t try this game on any other member of my family, or any connection of mine.’