The Ninth Circle – The Twelfth Night Massacre Part 1
The Ninth Circle – The Twelfth Night Massacre Part 1
5th January 1916
5th January 1916
The two men sat in stony silence as the carriage rattled through a London downpour. Whilst the inciting incident had been an argument over the Duke’s attendance at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, in truth, it had been a difficult end to the year.
Clivedon had been more of a political summit of warring tribes than a holiday getaway – the Shell Crisis had required wining and dining, as well as backroom dealing and metaphorical kneecapping, right up until Christmas, at which point an utterly fed-up Rodger decamped with his sisters to Abbeystead House. His parting barb that he had actual work to do rather than this exhausting political theatre of the older Radcliffe’s’ own making. The simmering tension between the Duke and Earl exploded when the latter suggested the former retire to Eaton rather than attend to London.
“I will not vegetate in Chesire! And who are you to bar me from a city I have been Lord Mayor of on multiple occasions, unlike some I could mention!”
“You are supposed to be on medical rest, and I apologise from bringing Westminster down on our home at Yuletide but the fact remains-”
“You are one to speak of maintaining vigour and caring for the family. Bringing your work to the shires was your idea, at a time when you damn well knew we all needed rest! Rodger was quite right to call you out about it.”
“Arthur does not know what he is talking about.”
“I know he is deeply hurt still and wanders the land like a ghost. He was like a spectre at the feast. Worse, he reminded me of you.”
Atherleigh’s mouth snapped shut and he glared into his notebook, from which he had yet to raise his attention from. The Duke watched him at it and sighed as another hole in the road banging the pair around.
“What are we to do about him?”
“He has made it pressingly clear our aid is not required. Besides…the change is not unwelcome.”
“Hmm…in some respects I agree. But this is not the case of a young libertine maturing into a man, this is-”
“I would not call it libertine.”
“Oh Arthur,” the Duke looked at him pityingly, “Naval schools do not gift a name like that to a pupil without cause, especially one so illustrious as he. Just because he went about it in a more controlled fashion to young David does not mean there were not rather pressing concerns at one point. I’m sure you recall-”
“Indeed.” Atherleigh halted that line. “But he had already been raised to rationality in mentoring the Prince. Why the Palace was so concerned and skittish about the whole affair is beyond me.”
“Because they were not wilfully blind, unlike it seems, some of us, to what was going on during their Oxford days.”
“I will hear no more of this.”
“Hear or not, it happened. In some ways, it is to his benefit.”
“That he was a drunken layabout before being crippled?”
The old man shot a disproving look at his son. “He was always capable, you miserable prick. But unlike the pair of us, he is liked and loved by his generation. There are benefits to being a sociable and affable man.”
“No longer, it seems.” Atherleigh glanced out the window as if to see some distraction, but the dark panes and the howling wind beyond offered no respite. “He is…wounded. But he will recover. I have seen it all before.”
“As you say,” the Duke sighed, “you certainly have seen much.”
“Too much,” there was a brief pause, and then, “I should have refused recall to government.”
“Last year?”
“Hmm! 1905, in all honesty. As much as it appealed to my ego and my desire for power…in truth I had done what I had set out to achieve by 1899, and I have come to accept, and perhaps agree, that the people and Parliament sensed that. I have no taste for this modern world and this modern war. The world no longer makes sense to me, and I try to make it conform to how it was…this is God’s way of telling the old politico to stop. For twenty years I was the greatest man in the world. Destroyer of armies. Defeater of nations. The Grand Architect of the Grandest Age. And now Fate laughs in my face. I…I cannot win this war. Only continue it. Make it bigger.” He closed his notebook and looked down upon it. “I wonder if it would have been better for my legacy if I had died in 1911.”
His father shifted over to sit beside him. “You are in deep and dark waters.”
“These are dark times. I am so afraid for the now, and the future. My nerves are buckling under the strain of a million lives in France, and the fates of empires across the world. Long had I hoped for the Great Battle of our times, where the world was changed, and my stamp firmly placed upon it. Now that it is here, I see only death ahead, as well as destruction all around. Whilst the burning of the forest leads to new growth, to be caught in the inferno is no blessing.”
“What do you fear?”
“Irrelevance. For myself, for my country. We are both nothing without Empire. Should it fall, we will never again reach the height of nations, and must be content to sit like a larger but rather more unfortunate Netherlands, off the coast of a continent that long has sought our doom and would delight in our failure. We are what we are, a small collection of islands given far greater pomp and circumstance than our due. There are too few golden threads to guide us forward, and far many more pits and traps that would destroy us utterly.”
“Do you believe we can win the war?”
“This war? Yes, of course…but what else after? A century of balance is gone and will need to be replaced with another system. And that took a decade and more of war, total continental collapse and the most gifted diplomatic minds the world has ever seen. More than that, France and Austria are not the powers they once were, and their role in the balance of peace is thus muted…whilst Germany and Russia grow ever stronger. We do not possess the power to destroy either, and besides which, neither is the true problem, are they?”
The Duke placed a hand upon his shoulder. “And yet, do you remember what happened after the declaration in 1895? Both here and in the States?”
His son shrugged.
“The shock, the horror, the economic issues from such an act were to some extent expected…but beneath it, there was something else. In the past few decades prior, since their civil war, we had somehow become…well…friends. We competed with each other over invention, and shared the bounties that came with it. A thousand bonds of marriage and love now bind the east coast and the upper ten thousand. You have met and liked every president elected since the war’s end. The Chicago world fair was a great success and led to state and federal cooperation in that canal project. And since the closing of the frontier and the end of the Oregon Dispute, there have been remarkably few diplomatic issues between us. It could be that, much like a poor but well-meaning parent, and a spirited but ignorant child, the relationship has begun to be restored after a lifetime of acrimony.”
Atherleigh bowed his head, before turned and taking his father’s hand with his own. “What has passed between us is not forgotten, I think, but it is forgiven for the most part. Whilst we were rarely who we wanted the other to be, I think we have lived good lives regardless.”
“Then you must reach across to Rodger as well. And trust that he is capable of walking his own path, and doing so with the style he has so far demonstrated. I know you wished for a Prime Minister for a son, but instead you have an admiral. Harken to it.”
Atherleigh grunted. “We shall see.” He cast around for a change of topic, once again finding no help in the inscrutable window. “Did you see the German press release about their man in Russia?”
“Oh, the hunting master or some such rot…dear me, I have seen several boy’s own adventure books with better stories. He has recovered from injury, so they say.”
“Indeed, though they of course previously said he was never in any danger, nor missing in action…so the truth is uncertain there.” Atherleigh chuckled a little to himself, then paused. “We know him, do we not?”
“We do? Ah…August von Ouster-”
“No, no…that was the brother. And the father, also August, who so terrified the French…and continues to do so come to think.”
“Who is this one then?”
“Frederick, he took the name August after…”
“Frederick von Ouster? Why, but we do know him! He married a Spencer daughter, did he not?”
Frederich Klaus Gustav von Ouster on his wedding day in 1900
“The Earl’s niece, Anne, I think. Lady Anne, one day now.”
The mood returned to the doldrums it had briefly been raised from.
“That family has been through an ordeal, haven’t they?”
“Many have. More to come, I am sure. The loss of Charles Spencer is a heavy blow, of course.”
“Perhaps we shall reconcile now.”
“Hardly. Not before we are both in our graves.”
“You do Rodger a disservice.”
“Humph…yes, they may have been friends. But the boy has no interest in politics.”
“He has a human interest, which is not to be sneered at by the likes of us. I for one, am glad he is not so…austere as you were at his age.”
“Gregariousness is not a virtue in and of itself.”
“Neither is cynicism.” The Duke’s head very nearly bumped into the roof as another stone or mound was hit. “Although…I am beginning to reconsider assigning Henry to him. I miss my driver.”
“At his age, I am glad he is not out in this blizzard dragging the likes of us around. Though we are certain to be late.”
The Duke smirked at him. “And who’s fault is that?”
Atherleigh rolled his eyes. “Two old men arguing over everything. The source of much of the world’s ills.”
…
In London, winter’s day and night were often indistinguishable. The lamps were already lit, or perhaps had never been put out, by the time they arrived at the hall.
“What’s this?” the Duke huffed as he descended from the carriage. “When did they move the canopy from the road?”
“Three summers ago. You were aggrieved then, also.”
“I should expect so. What on earth possessed them?” The rain battered down the uncovered path, emphasising his point.
“Something to do with motor carriages, I believe. I’m not entirely sure what the trouble was.”
“Infernal machines! Old George Miller - you remember Sir George, yes? - at the office, swears his twilight years have been considerably shortened by his children acquiring such a contraption. Certainly, his orchard has been reduced by several trees.”
“Hmm,” Atherleigh buttoned his coat up and accepted the driver’s umbrella. “Lucy told me that both the Earl of March and the Duke of Richmond drive rather well. Then again, they were no doubt showing off.”
“Goodness me…getting desperate, are they?”
“It seems like it. Nothing like the ordeal of getting Elizabeth through her Outing but by God, some of the leches these days…” Atherleigh shook his head. Elizabeth had been the most eligible match of her era and remained the greatest lady of England – Lucy should have had an easier time of it but unfortunately, her father had gotten richer and her brother had become famous.
“Speaking of,” the Duke said, shivering a little as they walked down the path, flanked by the dependable shadows of numerous family men, “any rustlings for the boy?”
“Of course there are,” Atherleigh scoffed, “and it’ll be even worse now.”
Sir Arthur Robert Cecil Radcliffe – that name being announced was going to be enough to make women, and their mothers, faint. His emergence in naval dress, two feet of brass on his chest and an honourable war wound, would do the rest. “What harridan wouldn’t like a dukedom and ‘untold riches’.”
The Duke coughed, and shook his head with a grin. “How times change…ah well…shit, we are late, aren’t we?”
Atherleigh sighed and tried not to glare. “It is fine. It is not as though one of us were invited to commence the dinner speech…”
As they were brushed and dried off, Atherleigh ran through the key points he wished to address and found himself returning back to the journal he had been reading at Christmas. William Radcliffe had spent a lot of time pondering what to do about and with Napolean, evolving from genuine fear of invasion, to finding some accommodation, to bewilderment, to final understanding that the little man was not to be trusted, and had to be stamped flat…without destroying France in the process. ‘Victory at any costs, in war and in peace’ was a noted line written before the Prime Minister had left for Vienna and remade the world.
Atherleigh would have to redouble his efforts, not just with Italy but with the Arabs, the Greeks, and even the Scandinavians. He had already told the French to push as hard as they dared with the Americans, but who knew what they were going to do, whatever the Duke said.
“Ah, Arthur! You made it.”
“Prime Minister,” Atherleigh shook Asquith’s hand firmly. “I apologise for the delay. We were delayed in leaving Clivedon and-”
“It is of no consequence Arthur,” Asquith waved it away, “and thank you again for your hosting. The government is much improved with the Crisis behind us. That is…” he quirked an eyebrow, “I damn hope the business is behind us.”
“I agree. Minister Roberts and young Churchill have it in hand. I understand French is fully gone?”
“Yes, yes” Asquith sighed. “Unavoidable, that.”
Atherleigh nodded. “Very well. I understand preparations are well underway even at this very hour for Austerlitz, so let us hope we begin as we mean to go on this year.”
“Indeed. Indeed! With that in mind, I would invite you to come along to the latest of the hospitals we’re opening. A solider hospital now of course but one day soon I hope to be a children’s ward.”
“Indeed?” Atherleigh thought a moment. “I shall check my diary.”
“Capital. I shall see you inside.”
Atherleigh watched him leave, wondering at the change in the man, and his relationship with him, this past year. Asquith was a determined reformer, of men, of society, of country. But he wasn’t half a fine party leader and government head when distracted from all that Liberal nonsense. Still, he thought, as he checked himself once again in the mirror, seeing far more grey than there should be, change was rather an inevitability in this life. And really, as the doors opened and he began to walk through the chamber, taking in the gathered delegates and glinting plates, was that really so awful? There were far worse things. This building had only been in its current incarnation some thirty years – redesigned and rebuilt from funds provided by the Duke. The old way of doing things, as this war had shown, did not work forever. Modern science, that most alarming and thrilling of things, demonstrated that Darwin’s adaptability was the true measure of life. It was that or extinction.
The Earl strolled down the central aisle of the hall and realised that he wanted to live, despite the difficulties. To be an elder statesman and guide the next generation of leaders was no penalty of time, rather a reward of service. He remained a very wealthy and influential man of a kind, the sort that might do some good yet, if he could find his way to it. Perhaps, in the end, he should have some faith in his fellow man, and trust them to see things through.
He reached the high table and sat, scribbling out and adding a few pieces to his script. As he had finally arrived, the wine at least could flow. He ignored the glass and continued with the pencil for a while, before the Duke next to him coughed. He smoothly rose and greeted the audience with practiced refinement, before delving into a few small words. The majority of speeches could wait until after refreshment.
Still, his throat was a little dry. He sipped slightly to wash around his mouth, repressed a frown, and continued on, gamely refusing to insult the host with his poor-quality drink. He could not stop a small cough, but otherwise kept to his words…at least for another minute, at which he had to pause when he heard several coughs beside him. Clearly the rest of the table had similar palettes to him.
Or so he thought.
The violent retching on the other hand, was rather more dramatic. Lord Crewe, his glass already empty, had gone scarlet and purple, eyes bulging and mouth gasping. Concerned, Atherleigh turned to him, and thus did not notice Arthur Balfour collapse until the onlooker’s yell alerted him. Up and down the high table, men were on their knees, clawing at their collars or twitching in their chairs. He looked at his father, who shook his head frantically.
“I drank nothing. But you-”
Atherleigh’s heart dropped into his stomach. He grasped for a tumbler, water and salt seller, dumping the three together before swallowing the foul mix and passing it back up, along with a mild amount of yellow and no small amount of crimson.
Shit.
His tongue was blistering up and felt twice its size. The merest drop had obviously been enough to cause that much damage to his mouth. What on earth was it doing to his insides?
Atherleigh slapped himself and wrung his hands hard, enough to cause pain. A common trick when adrenaline was spiking…and it was. He was already feeling slight shakes and a lightness of breath, though how much was anxiety and how much due to the death he had drunk…
He noted that he was not so far gone to not feel horror as Asquith fell upon the table, vomiting blood at a fantastic rate, and several men rush forwards from the lower tables and from outside to try and help. He waved them off, directed them wordlessly to help the fallen.
“Arthur…”
His father was holding his shoulder. No…his father was holding him upright. No…no…no…he could not afford to die at this time! And yet the world had adopted the greyscale all soldiers who had been shot knew well. He touched his chin and found he had yet to pass but a small dribble of hot blood from his lips. The bleeding must be internal then.
“Inner jacket pocket,” he rasped, sitting down heavily into his chair.
“You need to get all this off,” London was attempting to be clinical, and failing in much the same was he had at being a father.
Atherleigh frowned and shook his head. He would not waste such time on such thoughts. “Please. Important.”
Breathing was increasingly difficult. He now saw the world, but through the haze of one heavily inebriated. A locomotive could drive through his chest, and he would not note it. It certainly felt as though one roared through his ears, however.
“I have it.” He did. “Arthur…”
“Page 3, 5, 8, 9. P…plans.” Atherleigh couldn’t feel his fingers, but they still worked. At least, they tapped the notebook, which is what he intended. “Burn the letters. And…”
What. What was it?
Another lie. An important one.
“Tell Arthur he is ready. Ready.”
That was everything, wasn’t it? Notebook. War. Scandal. Children.
He thought he had forgotten. There was certainly a great deal of…regret? Had he forgotten?
No…he was just sorry he had not done enough.
With that horrifying thought, his face seized up in terror, and then laid still.
The Earl of Atherleigh was no more.
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