Rogue Princess

Chapter 2

WHEN HE came to Claude Godwin was lying on a bed.

As he opened his eyes, he gradually became aware, first, of the ceiling; then of the pajamas he was wearing; then of a large window through which he had a view of rather barren looking greenish-gray hills under a gray sky; then of something on his left wrist.

It was a handcuff, and attached to the handcuff was a tall, broad, moonfaced, 250-pound man with prominent blue eyes and a fringe of faded blond hair around a pink scalp covered with the fuzz that resulted from the persistent use of trichogenone, the hair-growing hormone.

"What the hell?" said Godwin.

"Yes?" said the man. "You are feeling better now, ha?"

"Better? Than what? Where am I? Who are you? Why was I snatched? How long have I been out? What's the idea of this bracelet?"

"Vun at a time. First, I am Sven."

"Sven who?"

"Sven Kaalund. But ve shall be friends be, yes? So you call me Sven; I am calling you Claude."

"Well, isn't that damned decent of you! And where am I?"

"Dis is de King Edvard Hospital in Julianehaab, in Greenland."

"Greenland!" Godwin shouted. "But why? What have I got to do with Greenland?"

The moon face smiled. "You vill everyting in time learn. Meanvile, please to be a good boy and do as you are told."

"The hell you say!" yelled Godwin. Propping himself up on his left elbow he swung a right at Kaalund's jaw.

In a calmer moment, Godwin might have admitted that it was a silly thing to do. Although he had had occasion to learn boxing in the course of his employment, he was hardly in a position to land a real blow; nor was he, at 145 pounds, fairly matched with his vast opponent. But Godwin was anything but calm.

Sven Kaalund moved his big head and raised his right shoulder so that Godwin's fist bounced off the deltoid muscle as off a truck-tire.

"Yeow!" yelled Godwin.

A terrific pain had shot through his left wrist, doubling him up into a foetal position. It was gone in an instant, and Godwin relaxed. He now looked more closely at the other end of the handcuffs. Instead of a twin of his own cuff encircling Kaalund's wrist, the cable attached to his own cuff ended in a gadget something like a knuckle-duster, gripped in Kaalund's great fist. A guard ran across the back of Kaalund's hand: and on the other side of this object were buttons, on one of which Kaalund's thumb rested lightly.

"I told you to be good," said Kaalund in the tone of one reproving a child.

Godwin recognized the Kobik neuronic stimulator, the outstanding improvement in the art of inflicting pain since the time of Torquemada. Godwin almost wept with frustrated rage, but then pulled himself together.

"What are you?" he asked.

"Detective, first-class, of de police department of Julianehaab."

The door opened and a nurse said something.

"Han gar man inte uden Forskyndelse," said Kaalund. "Sage on Ophœveran at man kan ham snakkes."

The nurse disappeared. Not knowing Danish, Godwin could not follow the conversation. He relapsed into glowering silence while an interne took his temperature and blood-pressure and other bodily indices. When the interne (who like most Greenlanders showed a mixture of Danish and Eskimo descent) finished his task and departed, Godwin asked his man-mountain, "What now?"

"You shall yust for de boss vait."

"Who's he?"

"Prime Minister Gram. I do not know vat about you so important is dat the head of de whole country is coming to see you, but dat is how it is."

GODWIN stared out the big window at the bleak landscape, noting the dwarf willows and birches sparsely scattered over the craggy hills. The hospital must be located on the outskirts of Julianehaab, for there were only a few houses in sight. The melting of the ice-cap by the climatic engineers a century before, while it had made Greenland into a modern nation with a huge habitable area and a lusty and growing population, had not converted it from a miniature Antarctica into a tropical paradise. Instead the land had become something like a large insular combination of Iceland and Norway, with the damp climate of the former and the snag-toothed mountainous coast-line of the latter.

The door opened and in came & lean dark bald man with a long droopy nose. Sven Kaalund jumped up, saying,

"God Dag, Excellenz!"

The man replied in almost-perfect English: "Good-morning, Kaalund. Good-morning, Mr. Godwin. I am Anker Gram. How are you feeling?"

"Like plain and fancy mayhem,'' growled Godwin. "What is this? I'm an American citizen, and you can't go snatching me all over the world! I won't stand for it! My government will make a stink—"

"On the contrary, my dear Mr. Godwin, you will stand for it," said Anker Gram.

"Huh?"

Gram drew a brown paper envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket: an envelope of the sort that photographic service establishments send back prints and negatives in. Gram took out two prints and handed one to Godwin, saying, "Does this look familiar?"

The print was obviously one of those that Westbrook Wolff had taken eight months previously of Godwin and the red-haired girl lying nude on the beach near Point Conception. The color of her hair came out fine.

"Guk," said Godwin.

"And now this."

Gram extended the other print, a portrait showing the same girl, seated, clad in a shimmery evening-gown with a tiara on her hair. This picture was of the sort that actors like himself had made up in great numbers to send their fans, and true to form it bore in the lower right corner a facsimile of a longhand legend reading: Hjertlige Oensker, Karen af Greenland.

"What does it say?" said Godwin.

"Best wishes from Karen of Greenland."

"You mean Karen's a name? That— uh—she's—"

"Certainly; it is the Scandinavian equivalent of 'Catherine'. And the young lady, if you have not yet realized the fact, is Princess Karen, the only child of our king, Edvard III of Greenland."

"But—what—that is—I didn't know—"

"So she maintained her incognito throughout your liason? I knew she had entered the University of Southern California under the name of 'Karen Hauch', which is of course her true laic name: Agnes Brigitte Karen Leonora Margaret Arrebo-Hauch. She seems to have shown more prudence than—-"

"What d'you mean liason?" cried Godwin; "I never even saw the dame, except when that pic was taken!"

HE DESCRIBED the jape to Gram, who shook his narrow head. "It is a fine story, and from your air of virtuous indignation one might almost believe it if one did not know better."

"How do you know better? Was you there? All the evidence you got is that fool pic, which shows us acting a little unconventional, maybe, but—"

"Unconventional!" said Gram with a grin. "No, my fine American bird, you will never get anybody in Greenland to believe that, especially as your countrymen are a byword for uninhibited lechery. And since the medical evidence was inconclusive, and most of the population has heard a rumor of one sort or another, we find it necessary to act accordingly."

"How'd they find out?"

"That is simple. When the princess finished her roll of film she air-mailed it back to Julianehaab for developing and printing by her favorite photographer, Hans Tungak. When he saw the prints, he knew something was wrong and took up the matter with the government."

"So what?"

"We naturally sent a mission to the United States to escort the princess home before she could get into any more trouble. Incidentally they found who you were from the pictures and brought you also. That was perhaps not strictly in accord with international law, but since one of Tungak's assistants, who also saw the photographs, had talked, our hand was forced."

"But why? Even if I had done what you guys think, what good does it do to kidnap me to this god-forsaken piece of Arctic real-estate?"

Gram smiled thinly. "Perhaps you are familiar with the legendary American institution called a 'shotgun wedding'?"

"You mean you want me to marry the dame?"

"Precisely."

"I won't!" yelled Godwin; "I'm damn well gonna stay a bachelor until I feel like changing!"

"You will not find the position of consort difficult; your material wants will be well supplied."

"Hell with that! I got all the dough I need. In fact I was gonna quit the movie racket. I don't care if the Prince Consort brushes his teeth with a platinum toothbrush set with natural diamonds. I'm gonna do what / want when I want it, and I ain't gonna marry no lady wrestler ..."

Gram let him rave until he ran down, then said: "You forget, Mr. Godwin, we have means of coercion available. Has Kaalund demonstrated his special manacle yet?"

"Yeah."

"Well, either you shall go through the ceremony in a civilized manner, or we will have Kaalund stand beside you as best man, with his handcuff on your wrist so that should you balk he can apply the necessary stimulation. Would you like a cigar?"

"Thanks," said Godwin and took the proffered smoke; then wished too late that he _ had spurned the offer in righteous wrath.

"You see," said Gram, puffing, "you Americans take a very cavalier attitude towards sex, like the Eskimos from whom we Greenlanders are partly descended. At least such is the impression given by your fiction and your cinema. In fact, since paternity is, among you, usually a matter of some doubt, I note that when you adopted the institution of monarchy you made it elective, so that the problem of legitimacy should not trouble you. We, however, look upon things differently. Our monarchy operates on strictly legitimatist principles, and we therefore cannot have our princesses running around and—ah—mating with all and sundry."

"I tell you I never—" began Godwin, but Gram continued.

"I was opposed to Karen's going to California alone for just that reason; but she is a usually sensible girl and persuaded her father to her way of thinking, so I weakly gave in. And now we must—how do you express it?—pay the devil."

"Even if you make me do this, I won't—I'll—I'll run away and get a divorce at the first chance. You can't keep me locked up the rest of my life."

"I do not believe that will be necessary. There is another possibility that will, I think, reconcile you to your—ah—fate."

"Yeah? It better be good."

"It is; it transpires that you are the beneficiary of the most amazing coincidence in history."

"Well?"

"You are the legitimate heir to the throne of Great Britain."

GODWIN stared at the other for a moment. "Huh? Ga wan, you're loopy!"

"It has been proved, I assure you."

"What's the matter with George XII?"

"He is merely the descendant of the usurping bastard Duke of Normandy, William Fitz-Robert, while you are the heir of Harold Godwinson—otherwise Harold II—the last Saxon king of England."

"You mean the guy who got bumped off at the Battle of—uh—Hastings?"

"The very one. Harold Godwinson's children by his mistress Edith Swan-neck being ineligible, you are the oldest legitimate descendant in the male line of his posthumous son by Aldyth, Harold Haroldson."

"Ulp. And you mean you're gonna talk the Limies into kicking out George and putting me in his place?"

"That is the idea."

Godwin tugged at his hair with his free hand. "I never heard of such a crazy idea in my life! I must be in a booby-hatch and you're one of the inmates!"

Gram relighted his cigar. "You shall see. Your accession to the British throne will not be so difficult as you suppose. For one thing the British, like most people, have made a fetish of legitimacy in recent decades. For another George XII is unpopular for his vices—a thoroughly maladjusted type."

"Wait! Last winter I played a supporting role in Bonnie Prince Charlie. I dunno much about the real history—you know how the script-writers always hash it up—but it was something about a guy who claimed to be the rightful King of England and invaded Scotland to prove it, but got chased out again. They had us running around in kilts and wigs and talking with Scotch accents. Well, why couldn't the descendants of this Charlie guy have something to say about your project?"

"Oh, you mean the Jacobites. The answer is 'no', for several reasons. The English Parliament decreed that James II, having become a Roman Catholic (this being a time of religious controversies) was ineligible to be king, and the succession was therefore vested in his daughter Mary and her husband Prince William of Orange, a grandson of King Charles I who lost his head. Then when William and Mary died sine prole—"

"What did they die of?"

"Without issue. The crown went to Mary's sister, Anne. In the meantime, Parliament had passed the Act of Settlement in 1701, which named as Anne's successor a granddaughter of James I, whose husband was Elector of Hanover; when Anne died in 1714, this woman's son became King George I. The Jacobites claim the line should have gone to James II's son James Stuart, and then to this man's oldest son Charles—the fellow in the cinema, and then to Charles's younger brother Henry of York. Then when Henry died leaving no more descendants of James II they should have gone back to the descendants of Charles I, through his daughter Henrietta, who married Duke Philip of Orleans—"

"Stop! You got me dizzy with all these Jameses and Charleses; what happened to the Jacobite claim, finally?"

"Oh, nobody has taken it seriously for centuries. It got into the royal house of Sardinia for a while and then into the royal house of Bavaria. Just now the pretender is a young man named Werner von Wittelsbach, a German living here in Greenland."

"Why does he live here?" asked Godwin.

"I arranged that our leading magnate, Thor Thomsen, should offer him a job here he could not afford to refuse, so we could keep an eye on him. And where should he live? The Germans do not want him because he is also the Bavarian pretender, and Bavaria is now under the Austrian crown; and the British will have not have him because Jacobitism is high treason by their act of 1707."

GODWIN said: "I remember from a book that one time there was a Danish king of England named Cahoots or something. What happened to his line?"

"The claim of Knud the Mighty comes down to the modern Danish royal house through his nephew, Knud II, since both his sons died sine prole. The Arrebo-Hauchs are related to this line, but only by a cadet branch. And as the present King of Denmark will have nothing to do with, such an enterprise, we must resort to the remaining line of pretenders: the descendants of Harold of Wessex—which means you, my friend."

"How do you know? They didn't have birth-certificates in the Middle Ages, so you can't trace a line over a thousand years. Who ja think you're kidding?"

"Ah, but we can! Have you ever heard of Viggo Bruun?"

"Nope."

"Naturally not, because we have kept his work quiet. Dr. Bruun is the world's greatest authority on terrestrial magnetism. He discovered the Bruun effect."

"What's that?"

"A permanent impress left in the magneto-gravitic matrix of our planet by every event that happens on its surface; something like the Akashic Record of the occultists. By means of an instrument he has developed, Dr. Bruun can photograph these impressions. The instrument is called a parachron, short for 'parachronoscope'."

"You mean if you took this here gadget you could see the Battle of Waterloo being fought over again?"

"More or less."

"My Goldwyn, what'll they think of next? But what's this got to do with me and your nutty king scheme?"

"Simple. We have made records of the entire lives of Harold Haroldson and his descendants; we have been working on it for several years, and now have a huge library of the lives of historical characters."

"It'd sure be a big library; a roll of film to give one man's whole life would fill a good-sized room."

"Not so bad as that. You can condense a lot, for example cutting the periods of childhood and sleep. For genealogical purposes, you only need the first twenty years or so—up to the time when the man begets his eldest child."

"Could I see some of these movies?"

"Certainly, as soon as the physicians say you may leave. Quarters have been prepared for you at the palace, and the faithful Kaalund will accompany you. Now you must excuse me, please. I take it the prospect of royalty no longer appalls you?"

"I'll think about it. But wait: you never said why you Greenlanders are going to all this trouble. What's in it for you?"

Gram smiled. "A matter of high politics. You know that, in theory, the King of England reigns but does not rule. However, he has some influence as ex officio chairman of the Commonwealth Conference, under the Act of Parliament of 2035—especially right now when the governments of the Dominions are evenly divided over the Assam problem. We wish to accomplish several things, such as taking Greenland out of the Scandinavian Union and into the Commonwealth; a British King faithful to our interest would be very useful. And now goodbye; I shall see you soon."

THOUGH he thought it more prudent not to say so outright, Godwin had made up his mind to resist this lunatic scheme to the last ditch, as well as the plan to marry him to Karen. So they'd put him up as a figurehead King of Great Britain with the idea that Gram could always control him through his wife! From what he recalled of the proposed wife's brawn, perhaps Gram had something there, too.

While Gram had recovered the print of the photograph by Wolff, he had left behind the portrait photograph of the girl herself. Godwin glared at it. A handsome wench even if a little big and squarish. She must weigh nearly as much as he. He pointed to the inscription, Hjertlige Oensker, Karen af Greenland, and asked: "How do you pronounce that?"

Kaalund obliged with a jerky, guttural singsong. Godwin, staring at the print, was struck by the thought that Gram might have left it with him in the hope that he should fall in love with it. He cast it from him, saying, "Sven, put that thing on the bureau, face down. I don't care if she's Crown Princess of Greenland or Queen of Mars; the less I see—"

The door was opened by a nurse who stepped to one side and curtsied as another woman entered. Kaalund heaved himself erect again and bowed, crying,

"God Dag, Hoeched!"

Godwin blinked and looked again. Yes, it was the red-haired girl on the beach: Karen Hauch, Princess of Greenland.