“With the Sword in my left hand, and you at my right, I’m going to be invincible,” Rudi grinned. Then more soberly: “Though we’d best remember this is far bigger than either of us the now, the story of many and not ours alone. We may be at the center, but it’s the wheel that matters, not just the hub.”

One arm went around her shoulders. He put the other hand’s thumb and forefinger to his lips and whistled sharply. There was a moment’s silence, and then figures with long yew bows in their hands came trotting down out of the trees, hard to see at first in their green-covered brigandines and Mackenzie-tartan kilts and plaids. As they formed up around the High King and Queen for the walk back to Dun Juniper one began to sing, and they all took it up. When he recognized the tune so did Rudi, despite Mathilda’s laughing gesture of protest:

“Near Sutterdown, in the country round
One morning last Beltaine
Down a boreen green came a sweet colleen
And she was whistlin’ Rudi’s Tain.
She looked so sweet from her sandaled feet
To the sheen of her nut-brown hair
Such a coaxing elf, sure I shook myself
To see if I was really there!”

“That song’s a mutilation!” Mathilda said. “I’ve heard the original.”

“I call it an improvement,” Rudi said. “This isn’t Erin, after all!

And he continued in a strong tenor:

“From Ashland’s plays up to Portland’s quays
From Bend down to Coos Bay town
No maid I’ve seen like the fair colleen
That I met near Sutterdown!
As she onward sped I shook my head
And I gazed with a feeling rare
And I said, says I, to a passerby
‘Who’s the maid with the nut-brown hair?’
He smiled at me, and with pride says he,
‘That’s the gem of our own Clan’s crown . . .’ ”

CHAPTER TWO

SHATTUCK HALL, TEMPORARY CHANCELLERY
CROWN CITY OF PORTLAND
(FORMERLY PORTLAND, OREGON)
PORTLAND PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION
HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL
(FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA)
JULY 31, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD

“ My Lord Chancellor,” his executive assistant said. “Abbot-Bishop Dmwoski to see you.”

“Thank you, Ms. Wong,” Ignatius said, with a polite nod.

Many hats to keep straight, he thought; the title still felt a little unnatural.

Though at present, with the hood of his scapular thrown back, there was nothing between his tonsured head with its rim of raven hair and the ceiling. He was a slim broad-shouldered man of medium height, with a pale weathered regular face and slightly tilted black eyes, the legacy of a Vietnamese grandmother brought back here after some half-forgotten war of the ancient world.

Knight-brother of the Order of the Shield of St. Benedict, priest, Lord Chancellor of Montival. Remember that names do not make the man. You are a human soul like uncounted millions more, the smallholder’s boy baptized Karl Bergfried; as precious to God as they, and no more so.

“Please send him through immediately,” he went on. “Then the mustering reports from the Ashland . . . no, it’s the Liu matter, isn’t it?”