It was a bloody boring funeral, even for a funeral. They shouldn’t call it a funeral, thought Edwin, but a dulleral. He laughed at his own joke and had to cover his mouth with a handkerchief to pretend that he was crying, though why he’d cry over the death of some senile old king he’d never met was beyond him. Next to him, Martha was stiff and silent, as she’d been all day, from the moment he’d woken up to find her sitting in the armchair in the corner of the room, already in her mourning clothes and the impenetrable black veil she’d worn for the wedding. Opening his eyes and seeing Martha in her weeds, his cock had given a twitch – he owned her now, and a man wanted to make his mark. But before he could do anything about it, there had been a knock at the door and in had come that man from the Regency Council to tell them that the funeral was about to begin, so he’d had to dress in a hurry and run. And actually perhaps it was more gentlemanly to wait until his wife’s father was buried before boffing her. More kingly.
Not that Edwin thought he’d be able to get it up after all this tedium. (That was just an exaggeration for comic effect, he reassured himself. Of course he could get it up, he could always get it up. No problems in that department. None at all.) But Sweet Lord, couldn’t they just dig a hole, bung the old King in the hole, fill up the hole? A prayer or two, yes, for decorum’s sake. But did there have to be all this endless talking? It wasn’t enough that the Archbishop appeared determined to read out the entire Bible from cover to cover. But Jesus, Mary and all the Saints, was there a competition going on for the world’s longest sermon? At least Martha was wearing a veil and could fall asleep if she wanted to, nobody would notice. It wasn’t fair, being a man and having a face everybody could see. Maybe if his eyebrows got longer with age he could comb them down over his eyes and nobody would be able to tell if they were shut. If this funeral lasted much longer he’d be able to try it out.
I could start a new fashion. Call it the Edwin. Edwin tugged one of his eyebrows downwards and tried to figure out how long it was. It was useless. Barely made it to the top of his eyeball. Maybe he could get some kind of eyebrow wig crafted out of horsehair? Or, forget the eyebrows, perhaps men could start wearing veils, like women? No, that was ridiculous.
‘Those boyhood days,’ the Archbishop was saying. ‘I remember them well. The boy who would be archbishop and the boy who would be king. Playing together, like ordinary boys, though only one of us had divine right. As the Bible says, All your children shall be taught by the Lord, and great shall be the peace of your children. Isaiah 54:13. Although we were taught by Master Kenwood, or was it Ken Wood? Can you believe it, I don’t recall! But he had a frightful temper and just the one eye, and the only peace we knew was pudding. By which I mean pease pudding. A pun, you know? A ha. A ha ha. Ah, me. Those boyhood days. We never did actually eat pease pudding.’
In a minute, thought Edwin, even the corpse is going to be so bored it’ll get up out of the casket and walk off in its winding sheet.
‘As we grew into young men,’ the Archbishop droned on, ‘I became accustomed to living in Peter’s glorious shadow, or rather the shadow of his glory, a shadow, by definition, not being glorious. Although, of course, all things of the King are covered in glory, and therefore his shadow was, indeed, glorious. Peter had all of the women – the girls who would be queen – and I less so, which prompted Peter, immortally, if that isn’t a tactless word to use under the circumstances, although he lives on in the immortality of God, glory be to God, to say, “Have you ever thought about making a virtue of necessity and taking a vow of chastity?” And thus began my path to the priesthood. I owe him so much. Oh, those young manhood days.’
My God, will this funeral never end?
Edwin missed home. He missed his own young manhood days. He even missed Leo, in a way. Leo’s purpose in life was to make Edwin feel small. But that meant Edwin’s purpose in life was to prove himself to Leo, and without Leo there to watch him, everything he did felt a bit pointless. So, for example, if Leo had met Martha, he’d have been all, ‘I don’t fancy yours much,’ and Edwin would have been, like, ‘She may not be all that to look at, but she goes like a mule,’ and Leo would have been, ‘Have you shagged a lot of mules then?’ and Edwin would have been, like, ‘Get lost, Leo.’ Where was he going to get that sort of quality banter round here? He wondered what Leo was doing right now. He wouldn’t be at a bloody not-very-fun-eral, that’s for sure. He’d be giving a wench a good seeing to, probably, or down in the dungeon tormenting the man in the iron mask.
Maybe there was a man in an iron mask at this castle he could torment? That would pass the time.
‘Martha,’ he whispered, ‘do you have a man in an iron mask in your dungeon?’
But Martha didn’t respond. Lord, she was nearly as dull as this funeral. Though nothing was as dull. Nothing!
At least the Archbishop was finally winding up. ‘And now he has once again beaten me, this time to the grave. But I’m sure I will see him again in Heaven, where, perhaps, I will finally be in charge. Thanks be to God. Now I’d like to invite the dear departed King’s daughter Martha to say a few words.’
Martha jumped in her seat as if she had been bitten by a rat. Maybe she’d been asleep, or maybe she’d actually been bitten by a rat! That would liven things up.
‘Martha?’ said the Archbishop.
Martha shook her head vigorously.
Sir John, who was sitting on the other side of her, leaned in and said quietly, ‘Your Majesty, as Queen, and the daughter of the deceased, it behoves you to …’
At this, Martha got up and ran from the chapel.
Brilliant, thought Edwin, why didn’t I think of that? Oh, hang on –
‘I must see to my wife,’ he said, and ran out of the chapel after her.
She was fast. It took Edwin a while to catch up with her. She’d only slowed down for a moment by the servants’ staircase, pausing before heading up the main stairs and into their bedchamber. When Edwin arrived, she was sitting on the bed with her arms wrapped around herself, shaking.
‘Good idea, running out like that,’ he said. ‘That funeral was deathly. I mean, obviously it was. What I actually mean is deathly as a metaphor for boring.’
Martha didn’t say anything. Maybe she was upset. Fantastic! Now he could comfort her.
He sat down on the bed beside her.
‘Don’t be sad,’ he said. ‘If your father wasn’t dead, you wouldn’t be queen, and we wouldn’t be married.’
She still didn’t say anything. He put an arm around her. This is it, he thought. This is the perfect time for us to bonk. Because I will be doing it in a caring way, and she will be grateful, and maybe let me do more. He reached to pull her veil off.
‘Stop!’ she said, in a strange voice.
‘I love you,’ he said, which was the sort of thing husbands said, and went on tugging at the veil. She pushed his hands away.
‘I’m not her,’ she said. ‘I’m not Martha.’
She took the veil off herself. It was Martha’s servant, the skinny one – well, obviously. Edwin felt panic pouring into him. Where was his wife? What was this bitch doing in her clothes? One thing was certain, he had to get rid of her before anybody else found out. He grabbed the girl around the neck and started to squeeze. She struggled against him, clawing at his hands to try to make him let go.
‘She made me do it!’ the girl hissed with all the air she had left. ‘She made me dress in her clothes and told me to be silent so that she’d get a head start before you found out!’
That stopped him. ‘Found out what?’ he said. The girl was turning blue so he loosened his grip slightly.
‘That she ran away.’
‘She ran away?’
Edwin let go of the girl and she fell back on the bed, gasping. It was probably a bad idea to kill her, he’d have to get rid of the body and he didn’t know the castle well enough yet to hide a corpse. And this place was so insular and parochial that people might notice if a servant was missing.
‘Where did she go?’ Edwin asked.
‘I don’t know.’ The girl started to cry. ‘If I knew I would tell you. It’s true. She knows I can’t keep my mouth shut, that’s why she didn’t tell me.’
‘Listen to me,’ said Edwin. ‘She didn’t run away. She was kidnapped. And if you tell anybody that she wasn’t, I will kill you. You will tell everyone that it was her captors who made you impersonate her. If you say otherwise, I will accuse you of conspiring with them and you will be burned at the stake, a death so agonising you will wish I had strangled you.’
The girl nodded frantically. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Yes, Your Majesty,’ Edwin corrected her.
But he wasn’t Your Majesty, not yet. He hadn’t been crowned. And if anyone found out that the marriage hadn’t been consummated, he’d have no legitimacy at all.
He thought fast, as fast as he was capable of. He had to get Martha back and a crown on his head or there’d be pretenders to the throne coming out of the woodwork faster than termites. That he’d be consummating the marriage went without saying. Even if he didn’t need to do it for legitimacy, he was determined to teach her a lesson about what happens to girls who misbehave. Besides, he needed an heir. But as soon as she had a child, his child, she was disposable. Find her, sprog her up, then kill her. That was the plan.
But how was he going to find her? He’d send the army on her trail, but they were loyal to Puddock, not to him, and if push came to shove, he was the one who would get shoved. He’d have to call in assistance from elsewhere. But where? Turning to Leo was out of the question. If he found out that Edwin’s wife had run away from him, Edwin would never live it down.
There was only one place he could go to for help: Camelot.