Correction to above post: there are three more remaining segments to 250 (including this one) I was forgetting a short one in between this one and the final one.
(Part #250.4)
Fredericksburg, Williamsburg Province, Empire of North America
February 19th 1900
Lewis Burwell VII, President of the Empire of North America (though in his head he still liked to append ‘Lord’ to his title), sat quietly in a corner, an oasis of peace in the midst of hectic hustle and bustle. He had been coming to Fredericksburg as a representative of the people of Williamsburg Province’s Fourth Imperial Constituency for over thirty years now, but he had never shaken off the feeling that the nation’s capital did not truly belong to Virginia at all. Virginia, in his mind, was a place of calm and plenty, at peace with itself and with the world, not the frenetic madhouse that Fredericksburg often felt like. Of course, his grandfather would have called him naÏve for that, his grandfather who had lived through the Meridian invasion during the Great American War, and had been born at the time of the Virginia Crisis and Caesar Bell’s depredations.[12] He thanked God that, at least, this greatest of all wars had left his homeland untouched.
The reason for the chaos in this particular room was that it was the heart of the Supremacist Party’s de facto election headquarters at Douglas House. The big townhouse had been donated to the party in the will of Matthew Q. Douglas, the party’s great grandee of the Seventies and Eighties who had been defeated twice at the ballot box by Michael Chamberlain’s Liberals. During the election campaign it had been a place for strategy planning and the redrafting of speeches to be circulated throughout the country by Lectel, though Burwell had never managed to spare much time for that even at the campaign’s height.
Now, instead, anxious party grandees and young stalwarts paced up and down the corridors, poked irresolutely at the hearths in the great hall where Burwell sat, hammered away on abaci and adding machines and even solution engines. As though the numbers might look more favourable this time they added them up.
Burwell puffed away on his pipe, heedless of the increasingly desperate tone fo the conversation around him. It was good tobacco, from his own ancestral plantation at Fairfield, and the taste had always been a solace to him even in his lowest moments, as when he had lost his daughter Alice to the flux at the age of five.[13] Yet now it seemed taseless.
With a sigh, he blew a smoke ring. He watched the ring of dark blue-grey smoke drift aimlessly away into the room, expecting it to be disrupted by the passage of one of those dreadfully young stalwarts dashing hither and thither with the latest news. Instead, however, it made it as far as the nearest hearth and seemed to melt under the flow of hot air from the rich orange flames. Dark blue conquered by orange. There were Biblical prophecies that were less clear-cut than that, he thought bitterly.
Without warning, Burwell snuffed his pipe and stood up. Ignoring the queries fired his way, he walked across the hall, almost absently snatched a page of hastily-scribbled fresh notes from a secretary, and shut the door behind him, instantly cutting off most of the noise.
Still silent, his features all but immobile, Burwell walked through the corridors, dark save for the occasional hissing luftlight, to the doors of Douglas House. He heard rattling sounds from some of the smaller rooms; though most of those stalwarts had been bringing Lectel messages from the commercial offices, there were a few private lines on-site for checking uncertain reports. More than once, a campaign had been blindsided by the opposition spreading false rumours of overwhelming victory, missing the chance to call for an inquiry or recount into a close result. The Supremacists were taking no chances; but, from what was compiled from even the most reliable of sources on Burwell’s page of notes, there would be little point in trying any such tactics.
Douglas House was conveniently located on Charlotte Street, in an area where a handful of colonial-era houses had been preserved by historical societies, but the majority had long since been demolished so that larger and more modern buildings could be constructed. Fredericksburg was, first and foremost, a working city. There was even talk of allowing the steam tramlines from the suburbs to intrude into the interior, though for the moment the good old chugging multicarriages served the public. Burwell could, of course, have called for a metered cabriolet or even his own steam-car, but deliberately did not do so.[14] He wanted to walk, and think.
The skies were dark, and yet Fredericksburg was alive. He wondered if his grandfather would recognise it. Perhaps he would, after all; fashions changed, the youth grew more outrageous (he spotted two tipsy debutantes tottering past on patten-heel boots, their ‘steerable pants’ ballooning in the wind), but Fredericksburg’s character had been set when Fred the First had chosen it as his place of exile and capital. The nature of the city as a political hotspot from almost its beginnings had led to a subculture of rather staid, humourless, Protestant-work-ethic-espousing civil service families (which to Burwell always seemed like an incongruous slice of New England in the heart of Virginia) but had also attracted wealthy and influential families, as well as the ambitious poor seeking to win wealth and influence in the heart of American public opinion. Both Henry Frederick Owens-Allen and Albert Stonor had shown how viable a route to power that was. Oh, there were many who would dismiss the feverish dog-eat-dog culture of the capital and speak of the Knickerbocker ballrooms of New York City, the ice fayres of Mount-Royal, the industrial wealth of Chichago where a worker could invent a new fish-canning technique and live to see his family live in a mansion and his daughter marry a duke; even the open clean vistas of the Western cities like St Lewis, Washington or New Norfolk, filled with opportunity.[15] But, in the end, they all came here. Fredericksburg was where history was made.
Burwell just wished he was not here to witness the history that would be made tonight.
He found himself, unwillingly, at his destination rather earlier than he had hoped. Little St. James’ was formally the residence of the Lord Deputy of North America, but as that office had increasingly become a sinecure since the Emperors had spent most of their reigns on this side of the Atlantic, it had finally come into use for its original intended purpose: Emperor-King George IV lived here. At least, when he wasn’t staying with his Washington relations at Sulgrave House—or troubling Burwell himself by calling at Fourteen Culpeper Road.[16]
Delaying the inevitable, he turned back and looked far away, to the west, where the glow of the setting sun was still just about visible, turning the darkling sky a deep blue. Fredericksburg was too flat, had too many buildings (and more constantly being built) for a truly impressive view. But nonetheless Burwell’s mind’s eye saw farther, into the distance, where the vast bulk of his country lay. The treacherous numbers scribbled on his piece of paper told him that that west had rejected him and his party, but he could not bring himself to hate it. America was strong, and free, and great.
It was true. He just couldn’t quite bring himself to say it.
Burwell let out a long sigh and walked up to Little St. James’. What had begun as a deliberately small-scale palace had grotesquely expanded through ill-judged extensions as its remit, too, had ballooned. The last gleam of the sunlight glittered on the gilded fretwork of the windows, on the impressive murals depicting scenes from American history, from the founding of Jamestown through war and conflict to triumphal depictions of the Imperial Navy at sail and glittering modern cities. Now that neat little whig story would be disrupted. More scenes of war would need to be added. Not to mention...
He brushed the thought aside and removed the wide-brimmed hat he had worn, of the style that was called a ‘bermuda’ for some reason even though (he thought) it came from Westernesse. He had made a cursory attempt to hide his identity, not because he feared an attack of course—this was hardly the Infernal Device Rage of 1857!—but because right now he did not want to be recognised by the public.[17]
The Imperial Guards, in their old-style plain green uniforms and caps, gave him a few suspicious looks before they reluctantly admitted he might be the President and let him in. Burwell rubbed his hands together, thankful for the fires roaring in the building; he had not been so consumed by his thoughts that he had failed to notice the cold February evening outside (even though New Englanders like Tom Gedney would mock him for considering it cold).
Burwell made his way directly to the Emperor’s favourite drawing-room, and knew he had guessed right from the mutterings within even as he stood before the door. He knocked cautiously. “Your Imperial Majesty? President Burwell presents his most humble duty.” Usually they were not that formal, but here and now the old Virginian Tory Patriot in Burwell’s soul told him that if any time called for the old forms, it was now.
There was a silence that dragged on for seconds. Burwell was about to knock again when it was suddenly broken. “Come—come in.”
The President was filled with misgivings. It had recognisably been the Emperor’s voice, but it had cracked halfway through. Resolutely, he pushed the door open and entered.
George IV, Emperor of North America and King of the Britons and of Ireland and Iceland, Defender of the Faith, sat before the fire with a pile of papers on his lap, staring at them without reading. A dozen more sat on his desk nearby. Burwell’s misgivings grew as he saw the Emperor’s face, cast into hard-edged shadows by the flickering firelight. George’s eyes were bloodshot, his face was pale. His hands shook as he read. He looked half dead.
“Sir,” Burwell said finally to break the silence.
With the abruptness that Burwell had long grown to associate with him, so that he no longer flinched in surprise, the Emperor threw down his papers. “See—” The voice cracked again and an alarmed Burwell thought his monarch was about to burst into tears. George’s face rippled as he visibly marshalled himself. “See what has happened now,” he said softly. He pushed a Lectel transcript, stamped with a half-dozen different red-edged state secret stamps, into Burwell’s hands.
Reluctantly, gulping down his own news, the President read the first few lines and frowned. “Sir, this purports to be from your brother—that is, actually from your—” He fell silent.
“Yes,” George said bitterly. “Yes, Your Excellency, you and a dozen others tried to warn me.” He stared searchingly at the ceiling as though the mosaic up there hid the secret answers to his questions. His fingers twitched. “Actually from my brother. All the other messages I had—the ones that assured me that all was well in Britain—all faked. They had our secret childhood cypher!” He waved a finger at Burwell. “The one thing that meant I could dismiss all your worries, for how could any man...” He trailed off.
Burwell could have said ‘I told you so’, even to an Emperor. There would be little in the way of consequences for it after tonight. He did not. Sorrow overcame anger and frustration that this had come to pass. He bowed his head. “How, sir?”
“They...” George shook his head violently. “He objected to the way the country was being run, by Herriott at first, and then by the conspirators behind this ‘Lee Clack’ as a figurehead. But by that time they had already trapped him. A supposed visit to the New Tower to see some imprisoned MBPs—MPs,” he corrected himself, recalling that he had never actually got around to asking British representatives to add an adjective to their title as he had planned. Now it was too late. “But they imprisoned him too, and...” He closed his eyes. “Tortured him. My brother! The Duke of York! So they could send me false messages, while...”
“While they plundered the country, I would guess,” Burwell said quietly. He had had his own theories about what was going on in Britain, but it had never seemed a high enough priority to argue with the Emperor on. So long as the old motherland kept sending men and arms and supplies, did anything else really matter?
Now, as his old Patriot Tory heart had warned him, he knew it had.
“And more, it says here,” George said. “All in my name, blackening it with the British people...and getting off scot-free.” He shook his head again. “My brother now fears that too many of them have turned their coats and are higher-ups in his regime, and he cannot do anything to stop them.”
“His regime?” Burwell asked. “Then the reports—are true?”
Wordlessly, George pushed another Lectel transcript his way. Burwell frowned and took out his monocle, as this time there was a wall of small text:
“‘And the said Knights and Burgesses, seriously considering how it has pleased Almighty God in his marvellous providence and merciful goodness to this nation to provide and preserve King Frederick the Third’s royal person most happily to reign over us upon the throne of their ancestors, for which they render unto him from the bottom of their hearts their humblest thanks and praises, do truly, firmly, assuredly and in the sincerity of their hearts think, and do hereby recognise, acknowledge and declare, that King George the Fourth having abdicated the government, and King Frederick the Third having accepted the crown and royal dignity as aforesaid, his said Britannic Majesty did become, was, is and of right ought to be by the laws of this realm our sovereign liege lord, king of England and Scotland, in and to whose princely persons the royal state, crown and dignity of the said realms with all honours, styles, titles, regalities, prerogatives, powers, jurisdictions and authorities to the same belonging and appertaining are most fully, rightfully and entirely invested and incorporated, united and annexed.’”
Halfway through this, Burwell’s eyes had widened to the point that his monocle fell out, yet he seemed not to notice. “I recognise this,” he murmured. “I had to do it in school...that’s from the English Constitution of 1689! The First Glorious Revolution!”
“With a few names changed, yes,” George said acerbically. “They are calling it a Third Glorious Revolution. I have been reduced to the level of the Old Pretender! Overthrown by my own brother...” He waved the first sheet at Burwell again. “And I cannot even hate him for it! Damn him, I made him do this! He never wanted to do this! He hates the idea of it even now! But...” He turned abruptly away to hide the tears.
Burwell gave his monarch space for a moment. Then, tracing his finger over the Lectel transcript again, he said quietly: “I note that it says ‘England and Scotland’.”
George, his eyes red, nodded impatiently. “Yes. That was the price the damn Blackites, the Scots Parliamentarians, demanded to help him. I have not only lost the Old Kingdom, I have disunited it!”
“But what of Ireland?” Burwell said urgently, before George could descend into despair again.
George paused and frowned. “I do not know,” he said at length. “If Frederick has not claimed it, perhaps it remains to us...perhaps...”
“We could land forces there and use it to retake Great Britain,” Burwell pointed out. He did not sound enthusiastic about the prospect.
George stared at him. “Like the spoilt child of a wealthy family, with more toys than he has time to play with,” he said softly, “who cares not for a plain wooden rattle among his collection, which he had never cast a second glance at, until a poor boy asks if he may have it. Then it becomes the most important thing in the world to him, and he will fight to the death to keep it, not for its own sake, but merely to deny it to his rival.”
Burwell took a step back, shocked by the venom in the Emperor’s voice. “You think...?”
“I think that is how the British people—pah, the English and Scottish people—would see it,” George said bitterly. “And I cannot say with all my heart that they would be wrong to see it that way.” He plunged his face into his hands. “Damn it all,” he muttered. “Would their opinion of us be improved if we shed blood to take them back by force? No, let it end here.” He stared off into the distance, perhaps at a painting on the wall that depicted his ancestor Frederick the First. “Perhaps that way, one day a long time from now, we can be friends again. Not master and runaway slave.”
“Sir,” Burwell said, feeling as though the universe was dropping away below him. And yet, at the end of the day, this was not his decision. There was comfort in that, of a sort. He was not having the worst day of anyone in the Hanoverian Dominions—what was left of them.
The Emperor—no longer the Emperor-King, just the Emperor—levered himself upright in his chair. “But you did not come here to hear me lament my failures. What is it?”
Burwell sighed. “I came here to tell you my own, sir. The election results are coming in—” a far cry from his grandfather’s day when it would take weeks or months, now the whole country could vote and report results inside of less than a week, “—and they look bad for my party. I should inform you that soon you are likely to be dealing with Mr Faulkner.”
“Mr Faulkner,” the Emperor said, curling his lip as though at an unpleasant smell. “If it must be a Liberal government, why couldn’t it be Mr Briars?”
“I fear we who poison chalices must always watch out for the man who knows how to make antidotes,” Burwell said sourly. “Mr Faulkner’s work in Carolina impressed his parliamentary caucus, and Mr Briars was regarded as growing too close to our party in our work.” He shook his head, then looked at his page of notes again. “But the situation is more complex than that. Really, both our parties have lost support, just us more than the Liberals, and they have made slight numerical gains at our expense—based on preliminary reports, of course.”
The Emperor nodded impatiently, so he went on: “So we’ve both been blamed for...recent events, war fatigue, and for delaying the election till now...but others have benefited. The Mentians have got formal major-party status now, I think, unless we change the rules on them...a lot of independents...even the continuing Patriots are on double figures for the first time since the Eighties, I think.”
George frowned at that. “So not so much a victory for Mr Faulkner as a defeat for everyone except those who did not participate in the war. I suppose the people deserve the politicians they vote for.”
Burwell must have reflexively stared at him pointedly, because George gave a harsh laugh. “All right. Point taken. But I’m afraid dealing with this...difficult government...”
“Most likely Mr Faulkner backed up by a bunch of wealth-taxing Mentians,” Burwell agreed dolefully.
“...will be a challenge for the Prince of Wales,” George concluded. “Augustus is ready. It’s right.”
Burwell stared at him in shock. “You don’t mean...”
“Yes,” George said firmly, dramatically sweeping several papers from his lap. Some floated past Burwell in the hot air from the fire and he caught brief irrelevant glimpses: a Scandinavian charlatan who’d claimed to have invented a way to send Lectel messages without wires, a rumoured illness of the King of Spain, a Russian fleet sailing from Yapon. “You know, when I was a child, I asked my father why I would be George IV, when there had been only one other George ruling over North America, and he explained we take the regnal number from the older crown, that of Great Britain...well, let us start afresh with a new number.”
“You will...abdicate?” Burwell asked, barely daring to breathe the word.
“I have failed my country and my people,” George said simply. “Like King Belshazzar.” For a moment Burwell thought he was making some reference to the Wraggs of Carolina, before he realised he meant the original from the Book of Daniel from which the Wraggs had taken their names. “I have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. My kingdom is divided, not even by my enemies, but by my brother. So, let my days be numbered.” He closed his eyes. “I will give Augustus a few months to prepare himself and for Mr Faulkner’s government to settle in. And then, yes, I will abdicate.” His voice broke. “The first of my line to do so, and God willing, the last.”
Burwell opened his mouth to point out that Richard II had abdicated at the end of the fourteenth century, if he remembered his school history correctly. Then he closed it again. Richard II had been King of England, and George and his descendants would never rule that land again.
What with everything else, neither man thought to discuss the Meridian boat that was rumoured to be bringing Jorge Suárez as a prisoner, the executed bodies of Carlos Priestley and Álvaro Monterroso, and a gold ransom for Venezuela. Here and now, none of that seemed important.
[12] The fact that this is Burwell’s first thought of a disruptive influence in the Virginia Crisis of the 1830s, considering how many better candidates there are, should be taken as an indication of his view of black people—or at least what this author thinks of his views of black people.
[13] In OTL the Burwell family of Virginia was very important and politically influential in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but the Fairfield plantation was sold in the 1830s due to mounting debts. Their most famous twentieth-century descendant is US Marine General “Chesty” Puller. In TTL, by contrast, the Burwells threw in with Prince Frederick as some of his earliest supporters when he was exiled in 1727 and reaped the rewards of that friendship later on, maintaining their position as a result.
[14] A ‘metered cabriolet’ is a taxicab (‘taxi’ in OTL comes from a German word meaning ‘scale of taxes’, ‘cab’ in both TLs is an abbreviation of ‘cabriolet’). Even in 1900 Burwell would probably have abbreviated it to metercab, but the author wants to emphasise this is archaic.
[15] This is a rather broad definition of ‘Western’, even taking in more than one continent, and is intended to suggest how Burwell, as a man of the old coastal colonies, rather vaguely and dismissively lumps the rest of the Empire all into one.
[16] In TTL, Sulgrave House is a large manor built by the Washingtons that is indecisively halfway between a Fredericksburg townhouse and a suburban mansion. It is named for the family’s ancestral property in England, Sulgrave Manor.
[17] This is the author deliberately highlighting a contrast to the present day in which a politician would not walk around alone without bodyguards and would fear attacks. The 1857 incident mentioned is the bombing of the Capitol by the Palmetto League, which killed three MCPs.
