Mike Arram
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Ruprecht closed the Institute offices for the summer recess, and with some relief he and Matthias took the northbound train to Schwarzwald. He delighted the boy by repeating once again the story of Jacques’s escape from Ardhesse. ‘You played your part too, Mattie!’ Ruprecht laughed. ‘You had the most dangerous job of all. I’d not have done what you did … venturing unescorted into that back-street costumier with Jacques’s exacting list of requirements, right down to his underwear and stoc
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Ruprecht had no idea whether the Baron’s agents had him under observation, but he assumed they did. There was little chance therefore of passing on to his home government the intelligence he had just obtained from the king about the breathtaking act of arrogance His Southern Majesty intended to commit next week. To proclaim himself emperor! For all the Alleman discontent down the centuries with Francien political hegemony, the Imperial succession had run unchallenged for eight hundred yea
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Ruprecht left for Ardheim the next week, though not without first discussing Gilles’s troubling dreams with Joerg. ‘It’s probably his age, Rupe. He’s coming out of adolescence, and it’s long been known how mental confusion and trouble can manifest itself at that point: the onset of serious migraines usually begins at sixteen or seventeen when the brain is changing, and some mental conditions appear, though I do hope that’s not the case here.’ ‘What conditions?’ ‘Not nice ones. Person
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Tension had been growing in the schloss of Blauwhaven all day. Ruprecht irritated himself by compulsively checking his pocket watch at increasingly short intervals, calculating the chances of the Schwarzwald train being punctual for once and the exact time the carriage would need to get up from the town, so he was confident that when he strolled out on to the terrace above the paddock he’d see the landau rattling up to the house. It wasn’t, but every other member of his household was sitt
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The site of the ancient Alleman prefecture was heavily wooded, but broken walls could still be glimpsed through the soil and brushwood. Ruprecht walked the woods with the owner, a prosperous dairy farmer who also owned most of the meadowland to the north of the river Sprungsee. He turned out to be an earnest scholar of the past in his own right, though his interest ran towards the period of the Noble Wars. ‘Minheeren, I was quite convinced this was an outlying castle of the local Graf, a me
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Kristijan of Ardhesse had by no means forgotten his captive. A week after his visit from Joerg and Felix, Ruprecht had a second encounter with the Baron Meisel. The minister sent a polite note ahead of him; Ruprecht found himself sniffing the paper, which as he half-expected was highly scented. The baron arrived promptly at midday bringing a picnic with him – complete with a tablecloth and chilled white wine – which he was delighted to share with Ruprecht. ‘We are family, Excellency, so l
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The launch pulled in under the lee of a stone dock belonging to the fortress. Ruprecht was hurried up the green, wet steps and through a barred portal looking north across the dark, white-capped waves to the distant city of Ardheim. Once inside, a mild, grey-haired gentleman greeted him. ‘Minheer the Graf von Aalst, I believe? My name is Heinz Althoff, the lieutenant governor of this fortress. I have been asked to assign you quarters, if you’ll come this way.’ Rather taken aback by the ci
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‘What do you think “radiation” might be?’ Ruprecht asked. ‘I have no idea, though I don’t think it can be a good thing, judging by the tone of that warning,’ Joerg replied. ‘Connor O’Connor. He must have been King Connor I of Kholnai, do you think? Except here he’s called President, just like Guillaume le Roux on the medallion. Is “president” an English synonym for king?’ ‘I think it’s something different. Kingship is hereditary after all. You can’t be an interim king. How dangerou
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The full might of the army of the Emperor François descended on Westrecht with brutal decisiveness. There was no opposition that could be offered to an invasion by three army corps totalling over 150,000 men. The size of the occupation force left little doubt that Westrecht was only the first step on the Emperor’s vengeful road towards the sacking of Ardheim and the capture of its king. It would not be long before Ardhesse would feel the wrath of the Empire. ‘Somewhat predictable,’ Ruprec
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The rest of the stay in the Montenard canton of Neuhausen was enjoyable but in the way a holiday would be, especially as on their last day snow fell in great quantities from a brown-tinted sky. Fortunately it failed to block the Central Line, though it succeeded in turning the city into a magical place and made their last night there highly memorable. The city was full of blue shadows and its lamps sparkled on the snow crystals. ‘I love snow,’ Felix sighed. ‘I’m going to get some for Ost
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For a long while the party stared in silence at the message from a lost and distant past, trying to extract some sense from the words. It was Joerg who snapped them out of it. ‘We’ll need a photograph of that, and also these other … er, drawings.’ He had been alone in noticing that there were charcoal drawings on the walls on either side of the door behind them. Despite the solemn circumstances, Felix giggled. ‘Randy sod that J-C. He must have spent a lot of his time down here just beatin
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Ruprecht kept a careful eye on his little brother throughout the excitements and trials surrounding his sixteenth birthday and Schwulene. A lot of the time Felix was serenely happy, not least the day he offered his lifeblood to the boy he had selected for his partner for as long as his life should last. But there were occasions when he believed Felix was labouring under some internal trouble, as much mental as physical, for all his usual happy-go-lucky demeanour. Ruprecht rather thought Gilles d
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It took a week to excavate as much of the riverside site as they could gain access to with the manpower they could hire from the village. Fortunately it was the quiet time for local farming, and there were plenty of hands available. They were limited to the meadow where they had made their first find. The other closes were within the bishop’s estate and his local agent couldn’t get a decision from Chasancene in time. ‘Even so,’ Joerg admitted, ‘the finds we have are amazing, so I’m not go
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Hi C'guy. This one's freestanding, so you don't need to know the Henry Universe to be at home here. It's a guessing game, as you've worked out, and if you like guessing games and fantasy history, you'll feel at home here. Enjoy. Henry's missed you. You might check out AD where there's a new one set in his early life as a broadcaster, it's called Alike in Dignity, about the Eurovision Song Contest of 2004. Mind you, that might put some people off of itself.
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Nothing much happened on the Day of the Dead, when all the city’s houses were draped in black. All inns and business premises were closed as families went in mid-afternoon to the city’s graveyards to light candles on their relatives’ graves and join the many solemn torchlit processions which followed the Cross of the Seneschal through the streets to the darkened cathedral. It was a day of fasting. Ruprecht escaped the dark and silent ducal château with Felix at sunset, both bundled up in
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The noise of the two returning boys and their tutor brought Ruprecht and Joerg back from their stunned state. ‘Rupe! Hey doctor!’ they called. ‘It was amazing; not to mention macabre. There were big queues at the Friendly Society Hall.’ The boys breezed through the house and pounded up to their room without noticing the preoccupied state of both men. The pair ran back down wearing nothing but their shirts and shot off through the front door in the direction of the pool, hallooing
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‘That’s impossible! A gun in ancient Terre Nouvelle?’ Felix shook his head in disbelief. ‘It can’t be anything else,’ Dr Tannerman concluded. ‘Tell me Gillot, did something other than dust come out of this creature’s skull?’ The boy searched around on the table, and held up a lump of white metal. The doctor scrutinised it. ‘A bullet, I think, with an especially hardened tip. The impact has crushed it back into the softer metal behind and caused it to flatten. That explains the size of the
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The previous time Ruprecht had been resident in the Holy City he had rented a cheap, sunless room at the back of St Michael’s Seminary, where he was often disturbed by theological students banging doors and shouting, which for some reason they did quite a lot. This time he had leased the Casa Levitica, a handsome country residence in the hills south of the city itself, with a remarkable prospect of the spires and towers of the ancient city to the north and views of the deep blue sea to the east.
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You guys are reading the plot well. How can I ever surprise you?
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Ruprecht remarked to himself how Gilles and Felix continued to surprise. They had been like angry children during the confrontation with Anton Vinseff, shielding the boy Ludwig and hurling vociferous abuse at the man who had sexually assaulted him, running to the nearest grown-up to get his help. In the aftermath of the challenge they were more dignified and mature than most adults would have been. He supposed it was that as adolescents they saw things in more clear and black-and-white terms tha
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At least he has a friend who's a doctor, if worse comes to worst 😉
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Only open to the aristocracy though. 😏 Nowadays we just ghost.
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Poor Rupe, he was in love with his departing youth, as much as Anton I think
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‘Rupe was beautiful!’ Felix coughed on his roast buffalo. Captain-lieutenant Vinseff raised an eyebrow at Ruprecht opposite him across the dinner table. ‘Why’s it so strange?’ Gilles leapt in. ‘Rupe’s really good looking for an old man!’ he protested, in what was perhaps not one of his more diplomatic moments. Anton laughed. ‘I can see him now in my mind’s eye, and believe me he was more good-looking then than you are now, Serene Highness. And yes, minheer Gilles, he still i
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Your instincts are not leading you astray on that guy.
