Glenfinnan Manuscript

Fraser Grigor Iain

Description

This novel is the second in a projected five-part series called The Second British Protectorate - a series of high-concept, story-driven commercial fictions from the viewpoint of alternate history, supposing a sovietised post-war Britain modelled on Cromwell's 17th century Protectorate. The themes are both historical and modern. For instance - what shape would a popular rising against such a state have taken? Who would have collaborated with the regime - who might have resisted - and who might have loafed on the leathered benches of least resistance? What would the state's religious policy have been? Might that policy have forced the merger of the churches of Scotland and England? Might the religious and messianic mania of the 17th century have returned? Might it have been believed that Jesus had come (back) to England? Might George VI have gone to the scaffold as Charles I had - dead by winter axe in London's Whitehall? What role would the great lawyers of the land and their sacred notions of constitutionality and amour-propre (not to mention the school-fees) have had in all of this? What about civil liberties, and clear and present dangers to the state? What about the asymmetric distribution of lethal capacities for oppression and resistance? What about the nature of religious identity as the ideology of that resistance? What role might cocaine have played in a ruined command-economy with a worthless currency? Might the Americans have smuggled it into Britain in huge quantities as a way of funding democratic terrorism? The Glenfinnan Manuscript (the lass with the siller buckle) - as the churches of Scotland and England are forced to merge, a band of outlaw Daniels murder the Archbishop of Canterbury in the very centre of Edinburgh, and escape with six tons of English (or British) gold. But - where is that gold now?

Sujets

• Historical fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 17 juin 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781849892964
• Langue: English

Extrait

Title Page

The Glenfinnan Manuscript

(“The Lass With The Siller Buckle”)




Iain Fraser Grigor



Premise

In the darkest days of post-war Britain’s Second Protectorate …..

….. as the churches of Scotland and England are forced to merge,
a band of Daniel terrorists murder the Archbishop of Canterbury
in the centre of Edinburgh and escape with six tons of English
– or British – gold.

But - where is that gold now?



Editor’s Introduction

ALL SCHOLARS of repute now agree that the authenticity of the anonymous memoir which forms the core of this book is beyond question. Beyond question too is the authenticity of the three documents which preface it. The memoir, indeed, along with the editorial from the Scotsman newspaper, the letter to the Home Secretary preserved in the archives of the Protectorate Episcopate, and the memorandum from the Scottish Office relating to Union Day arrangements in Edinburgh, constitute the principal starting-point for historical study of the extraordinary events that they, taken together, describe.
But a word may be appropriate, first of all, with regard to the background against which these tumultuous - and murderous - events took place; for though they were to occur in the early summer of the year in question, they originated in the popular rising of the previous January: and it is to these events that we must look for their roots, on both an English and Scottish stage.
As the January of the Second Protectorate’s third year drew to a close, its forces came under increasing attack on almost every hand. Large parts of England had fallen to a wide range of insurgents, and in these parts the strength of the Protectorate had been – permanently, as it had seemed at the time - destroyed. The religious fanatics who styled themselves as Daniels, and who awaited the imminent arrival of their Messiah, had taken control of much of the West Country. The southern parts of Wales were in the hands of miners under a leadership which styled itself as a revolutionary-democratic one; while the northern part of the Principality had been seized by radical nationalists. Protectorate tanks and bombers, meanwhile, contested control of the industrial cities of the Midlands and the North.
And in Scotland Protectorate power was confined to Caithness in the far north, to heavily-protected pockets along the north-eastern coast, to the more respectable parts of Edinburgh, and to the southern suburbs of Glasgow, at Whitecraigs and Newton Mearns. Daniels – though of a distinctly Presbyterian hue – held much of the north-east and the south-west. Worker-councils had taken control of most of Lanarkshire and Tayside, while self-styled nationalists had established their authority around Perth and Stirling. The western Highlands, meantime, were - almost in their entirety - under the control of partisan bands composed, for the most part, of feral and savage children.
In London, outright rebellion and sedition had raged for days. While looters and rioters ranged at will through large parts of the metropolis, much of the rest was in the hands of armed insurgents, whose power was centred on control of the mainline railway stations – in particular, those on the northern side of the city at Euston and King’s Cross. The centre of the capital had also fallen to insurgents, with the ministries looted and burned. The palace of Westminster was in their control too, in the form of the radicals of the self-styled National Convention, and frenzied debate raged day and night as the rebels’ demands became ever more urgent, ever more desperate, for annual parliaments, the repeal of the game laws, free elections, a free plurality of political parties, free associations of organised labour, and – above all – the abolition of the repressive forces of the state.
But in heavily defended enclaves around the city, the forces of the Protectorate fought bitterly to regain what had been lost. While senior leaders were believed to have withdrawn, along with the distinguished members of the Privy Council, to a battleship cruising somewhere in the southern North Sea, heavily armed units of Militia, Yeomanry and Specials held-out towards the eastern side of the city.
Daniels, certainly, occupied St. Paul’s cathedral, on the old brow of Ludgate Hill, and their work was well-advanced in the destruction of its pagan idols. But much of the dock-district remained under Protectorate control, as did the immediate area of the Bank of England: and in the dark early hours of the last day of the insurrection – with snow still falling heavily across London, the Home Counties, and the entire eastern seaboard of Britain – feverish activity was observed in the vicinity of the Bank. For this was the night, after all, on which the Protectorate, fearful at the prospect of failing to regain power, attempted to remove (as had not much earlier been done with the gold reserves of republican Spain) from the vaults of the Bank of England the national gold reserves in their entirety; and transport them by sea to an unknown location.
For some hours, then, Militia and Fraternal units reinforced with mortars, heavy machine-guns and other pieces adapted for conditions of urban fighting, flooded the streets surrounding the Bank: and – as would become apparent later, when the Protectorate had recovered control – established an armoured corridor between Bank and dock-district. And it was still before dawn when the first of a number of convoys of covered trucks left the financial heart of the capital, and made its slow but entirely certain way to the capital’s centre of shipping, trade and global commerce.
On the last high tide of the previous day, many of the ships berthed in the city’s docklands had fled with that tide from the convulsions which were shaking London and calling in question the very stability of constitutional authority throughout the recently-proclaimed republic of England.
(There was, of course, some doubt about the precise republican status of Scotland. The inhabitants there, hearing of the execution of King George VI, had taken the view, as they had in the 17 th century at the time of England’s first official regicide, that they had not been consulted on the matter of his death. The Scots were rumoured as a result to have proclaimed the king’s heir – whomsoever that might be - as their new monarch. But of course Parliament had already outlawed a proclamation of such type: and anyway, in the immense confusion then pertaining, there was no certainty that such a rumour was any more than that; a foul, and in the circumstances prevailing, counter-revolutionary rumour, deserving of no response but dismissive contempt and capital penalties).
By now, the few remaining ships in London’s dockland were too deep in the water to head down-river until the tide came for them: and that would be some four or five hours hence. But one little ship was already prepared for sea: an old and shallow-drafted coaster, better suited to trade within the arms of the Thames estuary and across to the nearest continental ports, than ocean-bound down-Channel to the Western Approaches and far beyond. She was not much more than 100 feet in length, this little vessel, with a low forecastle, a clinker dinghy in davits, a short length of cargo hold, a central casing with an open bridge atop it, and then another cargo hold aft. Deep below the central casing her engine was already rumbling, and red and green lights glowed on either side of the bridge, as if – perhaps – her crewmen were eager to quit the pier at which they lay, and get at once to sea.
To this little ship – which bore no name and no port of registry on her painted sides - the first convoy of the night made its lawful way, some two or three hours before dawn, and the transfer of the unidentified and unidentifiable cargo was effected with swift efficiency. Timber pallets were already stacked on the quayside, and when each was charged – under the supervision of a seaman, or officer, in a bright scarlet jacket, which some later supposed to have been the dress-tunic of an officer in the Militia – it was slung aboard by derrick and quickly gone from sight into the forward hold. Within the hour, then, the job was done, the forward cargo-hold hatch battened tight, and the ship cleared for sea: and almost at once, her stern-light swung wide and steadied, and soon disappeared down into the snow, down into the swirling waters of the coming tide.
As the extant charts and logbook of her passage indicate with clear certainty, the little vessel picked her way down the river till Canvey Island was abeam to port in the Yantlet channel, and followed that channel eastwards again, till the vast expanse of the Maplin sands were slowly covering to the north. On account of the heavy snow, the little ship made her way through the Warp at reduced speed, and tip-toed through the Barrow Deep, before heading out into the less treacherous waters of the King’s Channel. And there, at last, she increased speed to something like a sedate seven or eight knots, past the Sunk and north-north-east until the Shipwash lightship was close abeam to port.
By now, a reluctant day was breaking, and the cook on the Shipwash (as he later deposed to proper authority) distinctly saw her trundle past, half a cable off, or less. He waved a greeting: someone on the open bridge waved back (and entered the encounter in the log): and then she was gone again in the snow. Later that day, by reckoning, she was off Great Yarmouth: and at that time evidently headed north and east for the Skagerrak.
But sometime during the following night – as the charts and logbook indicate only too clearly – the little vessel dramatically altered course, and began to steam in a north-westerly direction. Certainly,