The Breaking Point (26 page)

Markoi knew this. A journalist has spies everywhere, even within a palace. He knew very well that a wedding between the Archduchess and her cousin Anton, or a wedding between the Archduchess and the Archduke, would be enough to keep the ruling house in power for at least another generation.The Rondese people believed in romance. Nothing could be more romantic than the immortal one spending his eternal youth in courtship, but if he had no such desire it was not their business. He could then bless the nuptials of his sister with her heart’s choice, and his subjects would make merry in consequence. Markoi, therefore, had to act with subtlety, and to propagate his gospel among the younger people before any such wedding took place.

During the first weeks of his campaign, he placed a daily column about the activities of the Archduchess in the
Ronda News
. The column was harmless enough and there was never direct criticism of the Archduke, but always a vague implication that all was not well with the idol of the Rondese people. She looked thoughtful, pale. She was said to gaze wistfully out of the palace windows at the carefree crowds below. Could it be possible that there was an estrangement between the Archduke and his sister, that she was shrinking from the near alliance pressed upon her by palace protocol?

‘The Flower of Ronda,’ dared Markoi,‘belongs to the Rondese people. If she could have her way she would marry a commoner, but she is prevented from doing so by outworn tradition. The loveliest girl in the country can never be free.’

In truth, the Archduchess was up at the Ronderhof chalet with her cousin Anton the very evening that particular statement appeared in the
Ronda News
.They were alone for a brief courtship holiday to discover for themselves how much they were in love. But this was not known outside the palace.Therefore the absence of the Archduchess from the capital - she usually waved from the window - was the more marked. Was she in disgrace? Or, worse, a prisoner? Markoi let the rumour spread that the Archduchess was indeed under guard in the mountains, and would remain under guard until she submitted to the will of the Archduke and became his consort.The high-spirited darling of the Rondese people must be disciplined and broken. The rights and wrongs of the case were hotly disputed during the next few days, the arguments instigated invariably by the supporters of Markoi and Grandos.

‘It has always been thus, and it will continue,’ said the older, more conservative of the Rondese, generally hill or village folk. ‘The Archduchess will settle down and breed a fine immortal. No good comes of mixed marriages. Look at the Europeans and the Americans.’

‘But why deny her happiness?’ argued the intelligentsia in the capital. ‘Why should she not be free to choose? Aren’t most of us every jot as cultured and fit as her blood-relatives? If the Archduchess wants one of us, why can’t she take one of us?’

‘Who says she wants one of you?’ put in the hill-folk.

‘Everyone,’ declared the hotheads.

The evening Ritzo, tingling the blood, made possibility a proven fact. The young men of the capital, glancing at each other as the warm night fell, wondered which of them it could be who, glimpsed from a palace window, had caught the fancy of the Rondese Flower. Rumour seized upon one and then another. A handkerchief had been found in the high snow of the topmost crags of Ronderhof, and in it a message, ‘Save me’. An earring had been discovered hidden in the heart of a Rovlvula blossom tossed over the palace wall. A medal of the Archduchess bearing the words ‘I love you’ had fallen into the midst of a party of young huntsmen returning from a chamois chase at dawn, and no one knew for whom the medal was intended, or whence it fell. How can we save her? Which of us is beloved? It is easy enough to see how passions became enflamed and the seed was sown for revolution. Silence greeted the appearance of the Archduke upon his balcony. Even the older people kept away, or withdrew.

Then Markoi changed his tactics. For a week the subject of the Archduchess was dropped. Instead, the properties of the spring-waters were discussed. ‘Scientists from northern Europe,’ ran a leading article, ‘who had lately tested the water from the Rondese spring, declare that it contains minerals of a value hitherto unknown to the Rondese people. Whether they are in fact known to the Archduke we are not in a position to say. But evidence goes to show that they are. These minerals, according to the scientists, prolong not only life, but love as well, and confer immunity from sickness. The scientists professed themselves astonished that these valuable waters should remain the property of one man.’ The article went on to give technical details of the minerals, and wound up by stating the benefit they might bring to the whole world.

Once again there was a division between the older and the younger people as they read the news over the evening Ritzo.

‘There’s one thing about the spring-waters,’ said the cautious middle-aged farmers and vineyard planters. ‘We can be sure they are safe in the hands of the Archduke. If they got into other hands, who knows what might happen? You can’t play about with minerals, solid or liquid. Why, there might be some property in the Rondese spring which could blow us all to pieces!’

‘Exactly!’ said the hotheads in the capital. ‘All that power at the whim of one man. All that power for good or evil. The Archduke can keep young, can’t he? And we live our usual little span, and then wrinkle up and die. No immortality for us.’

‘The Archduke dies in the flesh like the rest of us,’ said the older folk. ‘When illness strikes him down, he goes.’

‘Eventually,’ said the young people, ‘after he has seized everything in life he wants, including his own sister, if she is his sister and not his great-niece. Why can’t
we
live to a hundred years and look as we do now?’

‘Because it would not be good for you,’ said the old folk calmly. ‘You wouldn’t know how to use the gift of eternal youth.’

‘Why not?’ cried the boys and girls. ‘Why not? Does he?’

They thrashed the matter out amongst themselves. When all was said and done, what was so remarkable about the Archduke? He appeared every evening on the balcony, and that was all. What he did all day inside the palace no one knew. He could be a tyrant, forcing all his younger relatives to do his bidding. He could be a monster, murdering his older relatives so that they could never betray the facts about his age. Who had ever seen the burial grounds of the palace? What deeds were done in secret there, in the attics, in the cellars, in those mountain fastnesses on the Ronderhof, in that rock-bound islet on the Rondaquiver? What plots were hatched? What poison brewed?

Rumour can make cowards of the most courageous, and sow panic amongst the most serene. Markoi watched the result of his propaganda, keeping aloof himself and merely replying, when questioned, that he was obliged to print public opinion. For himself, he had no views.

‘It is disquieting,’ ran a second leader, ‘when we consider that these mineral properties of Ronda water might - we use the word “might” advisedly, for we do not suggest that such an event may already have taken place - be sold to a foreign power above the heads of the people, and eventually used against them. What is to prevent the Archduke from leaving Ronda, if he so desired, taking the formula with him, or handing over the entire workings of the springs to some other power, at whose mercy we should be? The people of Ronda have no say in their own destiny. We are all living on the edge of an abyss that may crack and engulf us at any moment. It is time the Rondese people possessed the springs. Tomorrow will be too late.’

It was at this moment that Grandos entered the campaign. He wrote a letter to the
Ronda News
expressing alarm because one of his best foremen, in charge of the plant down on the Rondaquiver where the fish-bones were prepared before being sent to the factory, had been found drowned. His body, weighted with stone, had been washed up at the mouth of the river. A contented man, with a family, he had no reason to take his life. Could it be foul play, and, if so, who was responsible? He had been seen talking with a servant from the palace the preceding day. That servant had since disappeared. Was it possible that the powers-that-be (the word Archduke was not used) wished to obtain the secrets of the new progressive fish-industry, which benefited so many of the river people, and control it? What was Grandos to do? Was he expected to hand over his industry to the monarch without a word, or, if he failed to do so, have his workmen murdered? If the ruling powers controlled the spring-waters, that was one thing. It might be unfair, and even dangerous, but it was not the affair of Grandos. What was his affair was his own fish trade, created and built by himself, owing nothing to any tradition, and he wanted the advice of the Rondese people as to how he should act if one of his foremen was threatened again.

This outburst could not have been better timed. The spring-waters . . . Well, that was a big subject, and would continue to be discussed. But a man found drowned, probably murdered, and the fish-bone industry threatened, that was another matter. Letters poured into the
Ronda News
from throughout the country. If the fish industry was threatened, what about the vineyards? What about the wine-trade? What about the cafés? Was there to be no security any more for any man?

Grandos replied to the letters, thanking all correspondents for their warm-hearted support for freedom of action, and added that he had posted guards outside his plant on the Rondaquiver.

Guards outside the fish-bone factory . . . Nothing had ever been guarded in Ronda except the palace.The older people were much disturbed, but the young Rondese were jubilant. ‘That’ll show them,’ they said. ‘They can’t take our rights away from us. Hurrah for Grandos and the right of every man to work for himself !’

‘They’, of course, meant the Archduke. The fact that he had never threatened anyone, drowned any man, or taken the slightest interest in the fish-bone industry except to make jokes to the Archduchess about women who needed to have their breasts supported, was not realized by the people, now thoroughly upset by what they read in the
Ronda News
.

The moment was ripe for a deputation to the palace, and with some manoeuvring by Grandos and Markoi, who themselves did not take a part in it, a body of young people formed up outside the palace gates and handed in a protest, signed by the sons and daughters of leading Ronda citizens, asking for a statement of policy from the Archduke.

‘Will the Archduke give his solemn word,’ ran part of the protest, ‘that the rights and liberties of the Rondese people will not be attacked, and that there will be no attempt to control the new industries which are making progressive Ronda the most forward of European countries?’

The following day a notice was attached to the gates of the palace.‘If any attempt is made to control the industries of Ronda, or to attack the centuries-old rights and liberties of the Rondese people, this attempt will not be made by the Archduke.’

The young Rondese were nonplussed. The reply was so terse, so non-committal that it amounted almost to an affront. Besides, what did it mean? Who, other than the Archduke, would seek to control the industries and the rights of the people? A reply of some two dozen or more words to a protest of half-a-dozen pages. The
Ronda News
hinted that the Rondese youth had been slapped in the face.

‘The over-privileged cling to outworn symbols as a means of protecting themselves,’ said an article on the front page.‘Hence the mystique of the uniform, of the solitary public appearance, of the ritual of intermarriage.The young people of Ronda can no longer be deceived. The power of action lies in their hands. Those who wish to preserve their own youth and pass on the secret to future generations know that the answer lies in the cave on Ronderhof, and the key to the cave in the laboratories of Ronda palace.’

This was the most direct attack yet made on the Archduke. The next day the subject was dropped, and prominence was given to a botanical article on the Rovlvula flower, which, so the botanist said, was in danger of losing its sheen and scent because of contamination from certain radioactive particles caused by the high snows of Ronderhof avalanching into the valleys. These avalanches were all on the western side of Ronderhof, never on the eastern face; and the reason for this was that the eastern face was kept clear for the ski-jumping and water-leaping of members of the royal family.

‘The natural fall of snow,’ said the botanist, ‘is to the east, but, because the fall would interfere with the pleasures of the privileged, it is learnt that orders have been given to the mountain guards to divert to the west all avalanches that threaten the skiing grounds. That these avalanches may be detrimental to the flower industry on the western slopes apparently does not matter, nor that the contamination from radioactive snow may affect the Rondese market-gardeners.’

This article brought a quick response from one of the leading flower-gatherers in the country to say that he had always understood the snow to be the cause of the very rare texture of the Rovlvula buds, and the avalanches had been appreciated by his forefathers for that very reason. Had they all been mistaken?

‘We are afraid,’ said the
Ronda News
, ‘that our correspondent has been misinformed, and his forebears brought up in a false tradition. Recent tests prove that snow is harmful to the bud, and a number of the workers in the Grandos factory employed in pulping the Rovlvula into paste for export have had the palms of their hands affected by some itching substance that is feared to contain particles of radioactive dust.’

The newspaper gave an alarming photograph of the skin of a man’s hand covered with eczema. This eczema had appeared after the man had crushed a bud gathered from the slopes of the Ronderhof. The man had lost the use of his hand and was said to be seriously ill.

Grandos announced forthwith that he was fitting every workman in his employment with gloves so that they should run no risk of contamination if the Rovlvula flower were in fact radioactive.