The Peacock Cloak

go back to Dinas bloody Emrys.”
    “But, look, we must be realistic,” Blair said. “Logres is here to stay. We are going to have to make peace with our Brythonic neighbours.”
    The radio was tuned to Radio England, a Flanders-based station set up by the exiled Free England Committee of which Blair was the chairman. Now it played extracts of statements from the President of France, the Chancellor of Prussia and the Foreign Minister of Spain, all praising Mr Blair for the statesmanlike thing that he had done and saying how wonderful it was that the English might now have a nation of their own again and rejoin the European family, alongside the new Brythonic nation of Logres.
    “Jesus,” murmured Richard softly.
    It took a bit of getting used to. Blair was not only the chair of the Free England Committee but the leader of the Labour Party of England, an organisation which had spent the last fifty years fighting for the restoration of England as a single unified state. It the process it had spilled a fair amount of blood. But now, in exchange for being allowed to return and set up some sort of semi-autonomous government, he had settled for this: not the whole country, not even half of it, but the twenty-odd percent of it which had not to date been formally annexed by the Brythonic state.
    “It’s going to be a rolling programme,” Blair said. “To start with, the Logrian Army will withdraw from Ipswich and I’m going to set up an administration there. Once we get that established and thrash out some more of the details, the Logrians will gradually withdraw from more land. Of course I don’t pretend it’s going to be easy, but the idea is to agree the final border sometime in the next five years. There are some difficult questions to sort out first, of course. You know, like the status of London, and the return of refugees – and what to do about all the Brythonic settlements we’ve got in the occupied area. But I want to say this: we are working towards a solution, the best solution that can be achieved. The time for armed struggle is over.”
    Thomas turned off the potholed surface of the main road onto the dirt track that led into Churchill Camp. It was called a camp but actually it was really a small town of five thousand people, bigger than Sutton itself. Little Brummie children and Brummie dogs were playing in narrow alleys between the corrugated iron huts.
    “Just along here mate,” Jack said. “This will do fine.”

    Richard lived just across the road from Thomas, on the edge of the Sutton ridge with the wide Fens below.
    “Come in and look at the news on TV, why don’t you Tom?” he said. “You can translate for me. I’d really like to know what they’re saying about this on the Brythonic stations.
    “I don’t know Richard. I think maybe I should go straight home.”
    “Just for a bit,” his friend pleaded. “I do really want to know what they’re saying.”
    Thomas glanced guiltily across the road at his own house. He couldn’t say he was particularly looking forward to going back to Jenny. She was so weary and flat and empty these days, and she was prone to a certain kind of thin, angry weeping which refused to be comforted or shared.
    And of course he always looked forward to seeing Richard’s Liz.
    “Okay ten minutes then.”
    Richard led the way straight into the front room where his son Harry sat at a table tinkering with the dismantled parts of a computer.
    “All right Tom?” Harry grunted, bending down further over his task.
    Richard turned on the TV. On the screen a well-known Logrian politician was holding forth. A big dark Argentinian, Ieuan Ffranceg (nee Juan Franco) was the powerful leader of the settlers’ bloc. Now he was denouncing the new agreement in a fractious Logrian parliament. .
    “The counties of Eastern Logres,” he bawled, as if explaining something very simple to an exceptionally unintelligent and recalcitrant child, “are every bit as much the sacred birthright of our people as are Western Logres, Northern Logres, Llundain and Dinas Emrys. The final frontier of Logres must include the whole of the historic kingdom of Arthur and Ambrosius. It must include not only the present State of Logres and the so-called occupied areas but also Scotland as far as the Antonine Wall. To accept less would be to betray the legacy bequeathed to us by God.”
    He made an exasperated gesture.
    “I really can’t understand what these Saxons keep whinging