Jealousy

[Gunnland]

The Bishop's Residence
Ayr, Gunnland

The fat bishop put down the phone and looked sadly out the window at the weeping willow. He looked prayerful, though he seldom prayed. In fact now he was thinking of a redheaded girl, slight and serious, with big brown eyes. He was thinking of her lips and her slender freckled arms. He was thinking of her smiles. The tree bent from the ice and the wind. He thought, you can't stand against the seasons. If you don't bend, you will break. How few of his brother priests understood this. It wasn't that his faith in God wasn't deep. There was a volume of Hopkins on the floor. Swelling buds and trees spraying their inscape and that sort of thing. It's just that his faith didn't extend outwards into every form of life the Catholic Church taught was divine. Of course he wouldn't say that to anyone. It was a lonely life.

He had the chubby face of a little boy, but his nose was sharp and his deep set eyes almost porcine. After the doughfaced attorney he was only the second fattest man of great power in Gunnland.

Two things distressed him. One was that he loved Queen Julian in the same way that he loved the redheaded girl, with a protective love that was a possessive love. There is a secret passage between empathy and eros. Shepherds have been known to lie with their sheep. Anyway what distressed him in the first place was his conviction that the Smith Circle was making contact with the Army of the Little Brethren or the Knights of St. Basil or the Ordo Solaris (or whatever, he didn't have such clear ideas of this shadowy world) in hopes of resurrecting the Holy Tiburan Empire and bending the knee before the Emperor Charles-Marie and the Empress Mireille. The Integrity hardliners never liked Julian, never trusted her, and with traditional Gunnish ingenuity had even tried to kidnap her. Now they would try to shove her aside and be the crux of a new empire. He saw it in their eyes. He understood why the marpesiennes like Molyneux and Gladstone-Pape and Demai whispered in Burgundian dialect in the Thingstead.

The second thing that distressed him was the liberals. Doug MacLeish had promised him there would be discipline, but the radicals had gotten out of hand, alarmed people, and made things uncomfortable for him. They didn't understand what they were dealing with. The fat bishop was more and more convinced that the liberals failed to understand the country so entirely that they could not be trusted with power.

It had been Doug on the phone. He was coming to the bishop's mansion to talk things over. The bishop said he could not support Cathy Birmingham, but everyone knew Doug wouldn't nominate Cathy. Or Matt Stolmand, who was a former Integrity pol. Doug was going to nominate himself. And the bishop thought he would go along with this, until a silver Retalian sports car pulled up between the weeping willow and his window, and a freckly leg stuck out the rising-gullwing passenger door.

 

[Gunnland]

Sword and Ship Pub
Windhaven, Gunnland

The plan was set. The Party knew how every Thingperson would vote. MacHugh wouldn't vote Bowerman, but he would abstain, triggering new elections. For the expriest, the censor, this was his chance to get back into the Thing. Then the news came through the grapevine that Bishop Broithe would excommunicate Cathy Birmingham. Thingpersons might be immune from civil prosecution but not the laws of the Church.

The expriest was drunk. The dyspeptic journalist was livid that the moderates wouldn't back Bowerman, even. Bowerman was a gentleman. A pious soul. The doughfaced attorney kept laughing. At one point he said, "These Liberals would trip over their own dicks." Whiskies filled and emptied.

"How are you going to get back into the Thing, Coemgein? The Church won't back you now. Will the people back an expriest?"

The doughfaced attorney would be sorry he asked. The expriest turned his large frame towards him, his languid expression condescending, and said: "Robert, Jude... men don't serve in the Thing anymore. I'll send Lar." Walter Matthew snorted in disgust at the joke, that men sent their girls to the Thing. So did Bowerman. It didn't sit well with the men on the inside. But the doughfaced attorney...

The image of Lar MacGusty came, her almond-shaped eyes, brown hair, white smile. Smith decided he would prosecute Cathy Birmingham. There would be no elections for the expriest. He didn't say so, but the enquêteur locked eyes with Walter and told him as much.

 

[Gunnland]

Cathedral of St. Andrew
Windhaven, Gunnland

You know the story behind the morning headline BROITHE EXCOMMUNICATES BIRMINGHAM, but most Gunnishmen see the specter of the ruling conservative party behind sabotage. Nonsense; it's an accident caused by two episodes of sexual jealousy compounding one another.* These events will clear the way for kind and earnest William MacDougall Bowerman to become the Leader, for a humble sacrificial-lamb politician to ascend to power, even though all plans were against him. Lest, however, you think this is all a spring awakening of lust in a country that lets the wind blow up the kilts and around the little balls of petty rivals, here is another story of jealousy.

Adelaide had to hang up on Bess Stoke to go to Mass. She was pleased to return from hot Port Stanley, but displeased that Queen Julian had decided to take a semester leave from Robert Koch Universität. There wasn't the same pressure to go to Mass in Radeberg, to don the black mantilla, to listen to the priest droning in rapid-fire Latin. Adelaide was daydreaming about smoking cigarettes on the parapets of Schloss Klippenstein, sneaking off to the nightclubs of Weissenfels, and breakfast in the queen's bed after half-remembered nights.

The queen sat in the first pew, where her subjects wished to see her, accompanied by Robert Gunn, a respectful distance to her right. Their framework to elect a new Leader without bitter partisan controversy had been ruined.Adelaide noticed that Robert was beginning to bald in the back. This made her feel old, since she was Robert's age, his first and sometimes-lover.

She was tired of men, period. Like Bess she was livid at how the establishment had come down on Cathy, months after her controversial comments. And at the worst time possible. Adelaide had to reapply Julian's eyeliner on the way to the cathedral. The queen was crying about the wasted effort of a settlement that had lost its legitimacy in a flash. But however angry Adelaide was about "politics," the real source of her rage was closer to the heart.

To Adelaide's right was the prime minister, who had done nothing to deserve her hatred. Still, it was Ian MacLean's fault that things were different. How had Julian fallen for an accountant? What was the point of being a queen? She refused to concede to Ashild and Madeleine that he was handsome. How had the other girls moved on, after all they had been through together?

At the moment that Adelaide could have moved Julian to help Cathy Birmingham, perhaps, she was lost to her own jealousy and self-pity.

*A bishop angry to find his old auburn-haired ambatt had become Doug MacLeish's girlfriend decides to excommunicate a prominent liberal politician. A prosecutor jealous that his old thrae had become the expriest's paramour decides to prosecute the same politician in order to prevent new elections.

 

[Gunnland]

Sword and Ship Pub
Windhaven, Gunnland

The expriest and the doughfaced attorney were having an animated argument, but nobody could hear over the din of the toasts. It was barely past noon, and the Integrity pols were already a bit drunk from celebrating Billy Bowerman's election. The man who was not supposed to be leader smiled in his double-breasted suit, handsome if a little square-headed.

Hadrian was regretting giving permission to his stepdaughter, Hana, to marry the bushy-bearded MacReddin fellow. They were across the room, speaking to the justiciar, Philippe Demai. It had looked like a match just months ago, but MacReddin's stock had fallen when Jake Blackthorn fell from power. "Le mec ça me donne des boutons," he was complaining nasally to his marpesienne colleague Théophile.

Condescending southern shits, thought Robert, though he knew he was the only one who could overhear the hardline Île-des-Pins professors. He was drinking in silence with Jake, who was morose to see the Party succeed without him at the helm. He was also processing what Walter had told him in all earnestness, that Bowerman had seen a vision of the Virgin Mother during an illness several years previously.

He was not so lost in thought, Robert, that he did not hear the women at the next table over. "Absolutely stunning," Lar MacGusty was telling Mora MacMorgan Bowerman about Udomo's gold-lamé dress, wondering if she was Stanlean royalty, and generally gushing over the most mysterious member of the thing. "I am so jealous!"

"A toast, a toast," Hadrian Molyneux had stood up, Théophile trailing close behind him. Hadn't they toasted Billy enough? What were they up to? "Raise your glasses, mesdames et messieurs, to Charles-Marie. Vive l'empereur!"

 

[Gunnland]

The Patrimonium Institute
Marian University III, The Capitollium
Windhaven

Thomas MacDougall MacIntyre -- no relation to the famous MacIntyre, though everyone always asked -- sighed heavily. "Gothenhagen. Fuck Gothenhagen!" He was denied for a coveted position there once. Jealousy. So he deleted it from the list on his laptop. "Ralph, what's a shitty university in Jyskerige-Østveg?"

Ralph Rhyderch looked up from the book he was reading, Days of Sorrow, Days of Joy: My Life in Ostmark. He put his hand to his neatly trimmed black beard pensively. "I don't know. Nyhamn is kind of a shithole. Don't forget what Elwald said, that he got the impression that the queen does not like Villesen on the ban list."

"For fuck's sake why don't we scrap the probationary list altogether!"

Rhyderch observed his colleague blandly. Thomas was surly ever since he came down in the world, forced out of the 15AR for trying to turn the Seven Days' War into a Seven Years' War. Thomas was a little crazy. Safer to be a crazy philosopher than a crazy agitator in the shadowy halls of power. Except the Marian University was kind of the shadowy halls of power in Gunnland. Sort of. The country was all redneck Blud addicts and shooting violence, but everyone in the capital thought it was Plato's Republic. The view from the Patrimonium Institute was well-enough respected in scholarly circles, but it had a strong conservative bias that would attract eyerolls, and sometimes passionate denunciations, in Tauritania.

MacIntyre was typing N-Y-H-A-M-N with two fingers like an old man. "This will piss them off, Ralph. Nyhamn, heh. Teach those fucking Jysks who their real king is, right bucko? What do you think of this list?"

Rhyderch started laughing. "Avalon at six! Juke University at thirteen!" He could barely speak. "Thom, I don't even think Juke University is a real fucking school... You can't... There needs to be some kind of objectivity if anyone is going to take these lists seriously."

MacIntyre looked a little hurt to hear that Juke University might only be a joke on Twatter. He hadn't actually been to Justosia. "OK, but we're keeping Avalon above Tauritania anyway and no gay orgy new year's in March for me, thank you very much. This means we need a fifteenth school to make the list."

Rhyderch rolled his eyes and squinted at his book. "Got one. The People's State University of Wien."

 

[Gunnland]

Institute for Social Research
Île-des-Pins

Théophile stood in front of his class for the first time all semester, and there were only four weeks left in term. It was nice to feel the warmth of the sun after spending so long in St. Tears. You couldn't get warm on that foggy outcrop of rock in the Straits of Mar. The wet got into your bones. His students didn't seem phased by his sudden appearance. There were fewer of them now that the ISR had been absorbed into the Marian University. Mostly political types that resented the erosion of Lower Marpesia's republican institutions. It dawned on Théophile. They hated him.

To them he was a traitor. The Gladstone-Papes were an old marpesienne family. Théophile had taken his place at the Marian, and his place in the Thing, and sold his countrymen into a kind of second-class citizenship in Gunnland. They knew what he knew, that he had a position of power only because the professors deigned to give him one, because they were embarrassed by the lack of representation of the large Francophone community in the south. The Visislavic mountain towns of the southeast, for some reason, did not rate representation like the urbane marpesiennes of Île-des-Pins.

What they didn't know is that Théophile led a secret life, a life that was just becoming exciting. The politics of the south was about to change radically, and Théophile was one of the few who could even imagine the sea change. Today's republicans would be tomorrow's imperialists. The prospects of electing a Holy Tiburan Empire were closer than they had been in 300 years. In the empire, Countess Mary would not only be another subject of Queen Julian, but an imperial elector. Lower Marpesia would be restored to a former glory that it lacked, ever since it was caught in a limbo between Gunnland and Bourgogne in the Age of Nations. Their jealousy would be assuaged.

His lecture was on the alliance of liberals and industrialists, and between the MacLeods and the MacLeishes, that dominated Ayr and Dalmyre in fin-de-siècle Gunnland. The hellish factories, now long rusted. Dalmyre and Ayr were synonymous with the European Industrial Revolution, cities that Marx said were capitalized with the blood of children. The incredible human suffering. And how the Integrity Party joined the suffering masses with the bishop and priests resentful of their loss of power, and came to dominate a society that saw its national liberation bound up with the Catholic Church. It was only in the past several years, in fact, that the MacLeods won their name back, which is how Countess Mary came to rule Lower Marpesia again.

The students did look nonplussed, finally, when Théophile turned and walked out of the lecture hall without saying a word. He knew he had to be careful with timing. Countess Mary would wait and see, and take a trip to see her Himyari subjects while plans moved forward. Hadrian was working within the hardline elements of the Party, especially the Smith Circle, who were eager to knock the meddlesome Queen Julian down a peg in the world. But now was not the time to start working on the marpesienne students. They would support Empire when the time came. And Théophile had a report to send to Eschenbach.