Holy City: Chapter Twenty-Two - Part One

V ate alone that night. He was escorted to a large banquet room on the third floor of the eastern wing of the Summer Palace. Surrounded by portraits of Harold’s predecessors, V sat at a small table in the middle of a large room and was served a formal dinner. He was served a first course of beautifully arranged breads and cheeses by a young man in formal dress and then a second course of delicious soup that tasted like a dessert by a different member of the King’s staff and then a third and a fourth course before finishing with the actual dessert that was so light it floated on air.

Each time a different person in formal attire came out and placed the dish before V and announced the name of the food. Each time they offered him a refill on his still full glasses of water and wine. Each time V declined the water and wine and, after the server left, moved his food around his plate without eating and sat in silence in the very large room with the haunted portraits on the walls and the beautiful mosaics carved into the high ceiling. V looked up at those pastoral scenes outlined far above his head. Men were on horseback in the countryside. The colors were lush with greens and reds and oranges and blues. V admired the detailed outlines of the bodies of the horses as they galloped back and forth on the ceiling above giving life to the room below.

His gaze dropped from the bright ceiling to the dark portraits that hung on the walls. The somber reflections of the past twelve rulers of Lyonesse. The portraits stopped abruptly after a few centuries because that is when Harold’s line ended, broken by a civil war and another run of a dozen monarchs from a different line. A line that was only briefly acknowledged in the history books of Lyonesse.

As his warm dessert cooled on the dining table before him, V stood to get closer to those portraits. Those who were tasked with the painting of such intimate royal depictions varied by a surprising amount in their skill. Some of the portraits were lifelike and vibrant, others inert and plain. All of the portraits had dark backgrounds that sucked in the light from the faces on the canvas making the eyes of the former rulers of Lyonesse appear as the eyes of ghosts. V processed down the row of kings and a few queens, moving through the previous centuries.

It was as V was standing in front of an unfortunate King who ruled for only a brief time well over one hundred years ago before being struck down by a lingering infection in his right foot that the current occupant of the throne appeared. Harold spoke, his voice several decibels below his usual volume. “He was an unlucky one.” Harold said to the darkness. V did not jump at those words because he already knew Harold was standing behind him. He turned and greeted the King, who was alone. V could hardly believe the King of Lyonesse was alone without any courtiers or administrators or guards, that the King of Lyonesse was ever alone. The King had a half-empty glass of wine in his right hand. He was drunk.

“Where is your portrait?” V asked.

“Not yet.” Harold answered. “They put your portrait on this wall after you die.”

“Not yet.” Harold said again, to reinforce the idea he was still alive.

“We should sit.” Harold, a little unsteady, moved away from the portraits. For the first time, without the robes and the vestments, V noticed the girth Harold carried. He was not substantially overweight but he was not healthy either, carrying a few pounds more than a man his age should.

V started to walk to the dining table, which still held his now cold dessert and all of the other plates of food he did not eat.

“Not there.” Harold said, as he walked to a sofa chair near the wall. “It is much more comfortable here.” Harold sat down with force. He slumped into the chair with a posture a mother would want to correct.

V sat down carefully across from the King with rigid posture in a proper chair.

“I know a secret.” Harold said as he reached from his seated position to an antique bureau that lined the wall. He fumbled with the bottom drawer for several seconds and a hidden compartment popped out and a hidden bottle of red wine appeared. “There are benefits to growing up in a place as old as this. It’s not very fun for a child, but you find ways to amuse yourself and learn where all the secrets are hidden.”

Harold removed the cork from the formerly hidden bottle of wine and poured it into his glass. He offered some to V, who had to think quickly and found a dusty wine glass that had been placed on top of the bureau for decorative reasons. Harold poured V a full glass. V set his glass down on a coffee table near their chairs. Harold drank his glass quickly before filling it up again from the bottle. “This is very cheap wine. I like cheap wine.” Harold said with a smile as he put the bottle down on the coffee table and put his feet up on that same table.

“Do you miss Alexandria?” Harold asked.

“Of course.”

“I miss my past as well. Everyone misses their past. I miss all kinds of things about all kinds of places.”

“Is Alexandria now the past.”

“For you it is.” Harold took his glass and raised it as if to toast. “For others it is still the present.”

Harold had already finished half his glass. He did not notice that V had not touched his wine.

“Would you like to hear a story. Let me tell you a story.” Harold said, not waiting for V’s reply.

“Before this current unpleasantness, there were discussions. I bet you did not know that. Few remember it. There was a peace conference. I was not the one who organized it. I was not optimistic. I went anyway. We hoped to avoid war. I met with the leaders of the other two nations. We met to discuss our differences, to discuss the fate of Alexandria.” Harold raised his glass to V again.

“For months and years before the conference there had been discussions between ministers of our three sides on how to resolve our issues. Some of these discussions were promising. I am not generally trusting of my foes, but I went in good faith, I want you to know that.” The King looked squarely at V.

“And you want to know what happened when I met with the Premier of Damasia and the President of Vitesia.” Once again, Harold did not wait for a response to his question.

“The discussions that had once been promising stopped. There were no more discussions. There were only speeches. The Premier of Damasia gave a speech to explain why they needed to occupy and control Alexandria and the President of Vitesia rose and gave a speech about why they needed to occupy and control Alexandria. So I then rose and gave a speech about why we needed to occupy and control Alexandria. I happen to think I was right, but the thing is it did not matter who was right because we all believed we were right. And so, after the speeches were completed, after the conference was done, we all went back to our homes and prepared for war.”

Harold finished his glass and filled it up from the bottle once again. “Two months after that conference, we captured a spy from Damasia. A month after that we captured a spy from Vitesia. We tortured them of course. We tortured them to get information. We did not get information. Not any useful information. You know what we got?”

This time Harold waited for V to respond, yet V stayed silent. After some time, Harold continued. “The spy from Damasia repeated the exact words of the speech her Premier gave at the conference and the spy from Vitesia repeated the exact words of the speech his President said at the conference. They were parrots regurgitating the beliefs of their leaders. We should have painted them green and red before we chopped off their heads.”

Harold took another big drink from his once full glass. “That’s a true story.” He set his glass down and tottered slightly as he reached back for the bureau once again. “I think there’s another bottle here.” Harold fumbled with the hidden compartment for several seconds, and just as he hoped, another bottle of cheap red wine appeared. He set it on the coffee table next to the other nearly finished bottle. Harold opened the new bottle even though the other one wasn’t finished. He filled his glass and sat back in his sofa chair and his glassy eyes looked at V, who was still sitting with nice posture on his hard backed banquet chair.

“All revolutions end up in tyranny.” Harold said. “One of my prophets told me that. Not the last one, this was one from several years ago. He was a wise prophet. I liked that one.”

“The revolutionaries promise a perfect world. That is how they get people to tear down the current one. But the perfect world they promise always becomes a hell because it’s not based on reality. Because it is based on the dreams of fanatics. It’s because they sell this hell as a paradise, as a place that is better than reality, they get people to follow them and do the worst things imaginable. Then once everyone realizes the hell is not paradise, that it is worse than the previous world they tore down, do they leave hell, no, they continue further on down because to leave hell would be to admit they were wrong, and most people would rather live in a cruel hell where they harm others than ever admit they are wrong. All revolutions end up in tyranny. This is why I take the world as it is.”

“And you admit when you are wrong?”

“I believe in humility.”

“That is not the same thing.”

“Well, my friend, a king is never wrong. But I don’t promise a paradise.”

V looked at the King and wondered about paradise.

“But I am drunk and old and all of this talk is getting me tired. The King yawned a great yawn.”

“Is that why you fight this war? To stop the revolutionaries?”

“I fight this war for Alexandria.”

“Alexandria is a holy place to you?”

“It is the holiest place there is, the closest place to God on this earth.”

“And you’re willing to destroy it.”

“If that is the only way to keep it out of the hands of our enemies.”

“You would rather have Alexandria, all of the shrines, the people, the places you hold most dear wiped off the face of the earth than let others control it.”

“Yes.”

For the first time, V wanted to reach for the full glass of wine in front of him. He resisted the urge as he looked at a slumping King on the sofa chair, barely able to keep his eyes open. Harold closed his eyes briefly and then opened them again trying to stay awake.

“It’s not this war I fear.” Harold said between slow blinks of the eyes, “I know how to fight. It’s this disease. It just won’t stop. I’m afraid it will be the death of us all.”

Harold’s head fell back and rested comfortably for several seconds before waking again. Harold tried to stand. Without the heavy robes there was nothing to tether him to the ground and he wobbled like he was being blown around by the wind. V stood to catch Harold before he could fall. Two palace guards emerged from somewhere deep in the shadows and were under Harold. They were quicker than V and knew what to anticipate. This was not the first time they had to catch the King before he fell to the ground from a night of drinking. Each guard took an arm of the King and walked him out of the room. The King was asleep on his feet, and did not say anything to V as he passed. V heard the feet of the three men as they walked down the long hallway until the sound was gone and there was silence.

Next Chapter: Chapter Twenty-Two - Part Two
Previous Chapter: Chapter Twenty-One