1901
Randolph Churchill Junior stood on the steps of Blenheim Palace and waved listlessly at the motor car taking his father and uncle away to London. Nephew of the Duke of Marlbrough, the young Churchill had been expected to follow in the family footsteps and secure for himself a future in the Conservative Party, but direct involvement had never interested the younger Randolph. He was a student of the past, the recent past perhaps more than that more distant, but he was never more happy when buried up to his nose in reports, letters and communiques. The joy other men felt in the pursuit of a pretty girl, Churchill felt only in the pursuit of historical accuracy and, above all, historical understanding.
The Agincourt Model II was now out of sight, though its fumes were still lingering down the long driveway. With a last look round at those others of his family clustered upon the steps, Randolph junior took himself back inside. It was a matter of minutes to wend his way back to his upper level study, but once inside he stripped of jacket and tie, slung both lazily over the hat-stand, and fed fuel to the fire. Ahhh warmth, he settled back in his favourite armchair and sipped at a delicate French brandy that his best friend, and close companion, Lewis Cayley had brought back from the French Republic
The twenty-seven year old remained in such a pose for some moments, then agitated himself out of his chair, grabbing several piles of letters from off his desk, before collapsing in another armchair, this one close up against the fire. He remained stationery thereafter for some half hour, his quick eyes scanning letter after letter, missive after missive, until he was certain that he had the pattern held properly in his mind
There was nothing more complicated than a revolution, and the events at the end of the American Separatist War were nothing short of a revolution. The breakaway of New England, the betrayal, as many in Washington had seen it, of Fredonia, and the eventual independence for the Trans-Mississippi Federation, and after the loss of NW Louisiana of Oregon too... All this had brought dramatic and incredible change to the N American continent, the freeing up of the Plains Indians had brought undreamt of opportunities for the British dominion of Columbia, and in the remnant United States it had brought military rule
True, that as like the early French Republic political figures had acquired military commands, and that the figure who had emerged at war's end to seize power had started out as a senator, and ended up as a general, but by that time he was a military man first, a political man second. Oliver Morton had been the first Dictator of the United States of America, charting his country's path out of military defeat and economic disaster, his self-appointed ten-year period of rule seeing the gradual re-emergence of the Union as something other than a poor joke
Randolph junior skimmed over letters from that period, a not inconsiderable number belonging to his family, the Conservatives finally in government, in alliance with the Reform Party, after years of SDF stagnation. Churchill family diplomats had joined with those from other noble lineages - the Percy, the Courtenay, the Cavendish, the Stanley, the various Fitzroy, and the Seymour - to spread their webs once more over the world, and to be part once again of a global international that had been too long denied to them
They had made the most of it, never trusting to providence to affirm the permanency of their revival. A Churchill had been Ambassador to the vibrant reformist Chinese Empire at the time of the Amur Crisis, had even played a bit part in supporting Peking in standing firm against Russian ambitions. Another Churchill had been deputy at Constantinople during the Turkish Revolt of the mid 1870s and had seen at first hand how the Greeks and Armenians had joined with the Russians in chasing down Turks of noble lineage and slaughtering them, their guilt or involvement in the plot irrelevant to their extermination.
Young Randolph's eyes alighted on a letter that had always puzzled him, not an official communique at all but from the late 7th Duke of Marlbrough (died 1883) to the Prime Minister of the day, Thomas Coke, 3rd Earl of Leicester. Randolph's grandfather, for such the 7th Duke had been, had passed on certain intelligence gleaned during a highly unofficial visit to Khiva, at that time at the centre of Russian, Chinese and Sikh intrigues. The 7th Duke had died at Calcutta on the way back, and the exact frames of reference of his letter had never been clearly established in the aftermath, but to Randoph's eyes it read as a secret mission, a confidential deniable political approach that the Khan had tried to take up, but had ended up losing out from as the duke's death had robbed him of the expected British support and his khanate had fallen to a three-cornered war of which there was only one obvious loser - Khiva
But of the letter had reached London, why had Coke not acted ? It hardly needed Marlborough alive to verify the report, and Khiva clearly was in a desperate situation. Randolph could only assume that Coke's government had decided that things were too desperate for Khiva, and that whilst perhaps Marlborough's personal relationship might have managed to create a viable policy, the absence of it would have meant they were scrabbling in the dark...pissing in the wind, as it were
Either way the khanate had not lasted many years after that, nor too the emirate of Bokhara. Indeed, only the Chinese vassal of Khokand remained, and that on a similar footing to Mongolia or Tibet, self-governing until Peking decreed that something else ought to happen.
A knock came upon the door, tentative but certain, if that could be. Randolph rose and set down the letters, throwing back the bolt. His cousin stepped forwards, beautiful raven-haired, unobtainable, but... They kissed
Best Regards
Grey Wolf