Nation - Пратчетт Терри Дэвид Джон - Страница 65

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“How about if I take a canoe and sail it to the trouserman island and stick my flag in the sand?” said Tom-ali. “Will that make it our place?”

“No,” said Mau. “They would laugh. Flags are like guns that flap. If you have a flag, you need a gun.”

“Well? We have guns too.”

Mau fell silent.

“And bad gunpowder,” Pilu pointed out.

“I think… I think if you are a suckfish in a sea o’ sharks, you must swim with the biggest shark,” said Milo. This met with general approval; the island council was still learning about international politics, but they were experts on fish.

They all looked at Mau, who was staring at the chart again. He stared at it for so long that they began to worry. There had been something different about him since the Raiders had left. Everyone said so. He walked like someone whose feet only touched the ground because he told them to; when you talked to him, he looked at you like a man scanning a new horizon that only he could see.

“We cannot be stronger than the Empire,” he said, “but we can be something it doesn’t dare to be. We can be weak. The ghost girl told me about a man called Eyes-Ack New-Tan. He was not a warrior, he had no spear, but the sun and the moon spun inside his head and he stood on the shoulders of giants. The king of that time did him great honor because he knew the secrets of the sky. And I have an idea. I will talk to the ghost girl.”

There should be a word like honeymoon, Daphne thought, but not about husband and wife, rather about parent and child. This one lasted twelve days, and she felt as though she was the parent and he the child. She’d never seen her father like this before. They explored the whole of the island; he had picked up an amazing amount of the language in a short time. He went torch fishing with Milo and got rascally drunk on beer with the other men, so that they all ended up paddling one of the big canoes in several directions at once while singing the words of his old school song.

He taught them cricket, and they played a match against the soldiers and sailors from the ship, with rifles for stumps. It became very interesting when Cahle was allowed to bowl.

Daphne’s father declared that not only was Cahle the fastest bowler he had ever seen, but she also had an almost Australian talent for vicious and forensic accuracy with the ball. After the first three whimpering soldiers were carried down to the lagoon so they could sit in the water until the stinging died away, the fourth man took one look at her thundering toward him with her right arm swinging and ran away into the woods, clutching his helmet over his groin. For the sake of the game she was banned from bowling after Daphne’s father explained that women should not really be allowed to play cricket because they fundamentally didn’t understand it. But it seemed to Daphne that Cahle understood it very well, and therefore tried to get it over with as quickly as possible so that they could get on with something more interesting, since in her opinion the world was overwhelmingly full of things that were more interesting than cricket.

It was not much better for the soldiers when the islanders went to bat. Not only were they devilishly good at swinging a bat, but they had somehow picked up the idea that the ball should be aimed at someone on the opposing side. In the end the match was declared a draw because of injuries, most of them sitting in the lagoon.

And the ship came, and play stopped in any case.

Mau saw it first; he was always the first to see anything that came from the sea. It was the largest ship he had seen, with so many sails, it looked like a storm heading for them. Everyone was waiting on the beach as it anchored outside the lagoon and lowered a boat. There weren’t soldiers this time. The boat was rowed by four men in black.

“My word, that’s the Cutty Wren,” said His Excellency, handing the bat back to Pilu. “I wonder what they want here…. Ahoy, you chaps! Do you need help or something?”

The boat touched the sand and one of the men jumped out, hurried toward him, and drew him, protesting gently, along the beach and away from the match.

The conversation that took place was baffling to Mau, because the man in the black clothes spoke in a whisper while His Excellency asked questions at the top of his voice, so that what he heard was a fast buzzing, punctuated with explosions, as in “Me?”… “What, all of them?”… “What about Uncle Bernie? I know for a fact he is in America!”… “They have lions there?”… “Look, I’m really not — ”… “Right here?”… “Well, of course no one wants another Richard the Lionheart, but surely we don’t need”… and so it went on. Then His Excellency held up a hand to stop the man in black in mid buzz and turned to Mau. He looked shaken, and in a strained voice said, “Sir, would you be so good as to fetch my daughter? I believe she is up at the Ladies’ Place, stitching somebody. Er, I’m sure this will all turn out to be a misunderstanding. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.”

When they got back, His Excellency’s soldiers, who had been lounging around in their shirtsleeves for more than a week, had struggled back into their red coats and were standing on guard, although at the moment they were unsure whom they were guarding from what and how, not to mention why, and so until there were any orders to speak of, they were guarding everyone from everything.

Another boat had been lowered and was heading into the lagoon, with more people in it. One of them, sitting bolt upright, was unfortunately familiar to Daphne.

She ran to her father. “What’s going on?” Daphne glared at the men in the black suits and added, “And who are these… people?”

“Is this your delightful daughter, sire?” said one of the men, raising his hat to her.

“Sire?” said Daphne. She glared at the man in black. No one should call anyone delightful without written proof.

“It turns out that I am, not to put too fine a point on it, king,” said His Majesty. “This has not come at a good time, I must say. This gentleman is Mr. Black, from London.”

Daphne stopped glaring. “But I thought one hundred and thirty — ” she began. Then an expression of horror crossed her face. She looked back at the approaching row boat. “Has my grandmother been doing anything… silly? With knives and guns, perhaps?”

“Her ladyship? Not that I am aware,” said the Gentleman of Last Resort. “Here she comes now, Your Majesty. We called first at Port Mercia, of course, and picked up the Right Reverend Topleigh. I’m afraid the archbishop of Canterbury does not travel well, but he has sent instructions for the coronation.”

“A coronation here? Surely it can wait!” said His Majesty.

But Daphne was watching the figure in the distant boat. It couldn’t be true, could it? She wouldn’t come all this way, would she? For the chance of bossing a king around? Of course she would — she would have towed the ship with her teeth! And this time he wouldn’t be able to run away to the other end of the world.

“Strictly speaking, yes,” said Mr. Black. “You became king as soon as the last king died. At that very second. That’s how it works.”

“Really?” said His Majesty.

“Yes, sire,” said Mr. Black patiently, “God arranges it.”

“Oh good,” said the king weakly. “That’s very clever of Him.”

“And for full ratification, you understand, you must stand on the soil in England, but in these unusual circumstances,” Mr. Black went on, “and uncertain times, and so on and so forth, we thought it might save any argument — if we were delayed, for example — if the crown was firmly on your head. It would save any hairsplitting arguments — with the French, for instance — which can take such a long time.”

“There was the Hundred Years’ War, for example,” said a second gentleman.

“Well pointed out, Mr. Amber. In any case, we will have another coronation once we get home — which must, now, be a matter of some urgency, of course. Bunting, cheering, souvenir mugs for the children, that sort of thing. But in this case the Crown thought it would send out the right message to get you sorted out, as I might say, as soon as possible.” As he spoke, two of his colleagues began to take apart, with great care, the small crate they had brought ashore with them.

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