the old emperor was ready to expire, and the council of priests and sages met to select his successor from his twenty-two sons.
the reverend mr denby, who had emerged from obscurity by obscure means and gained effective control of the council, proposed frederick, the emperor’s youngest and most feckless child.
the vote went around the table. the other members of the council, expressing faith in mr derby’s judgment, some of them in the most effusive terms, unanimously approved his choice.
except for the archbishop of atlantis, mr derwood, who proposed, without explanation or explication, that the emperor’s oldest son, marco, be proclaimed new emperor. as mr derwood was known to be deliberately perverse on almost all subjects large and small, and to routinely object to proposals purely because he did not believe in unanimous votes, he was not even questioned as to the reasons for his choice.
and so frederick, or freddy as he was known to high and low alike, was approved as the new emperor.
the only problem, and it was regarded as not much of one, was finding freddy, as he spent his existence wandering the dusty and muddy roads of the empire (and sometimes beyond), usually alone, but sometimes with a cat, which he would steal from the farms and homes he passed, as his companion.
what the members of the council did not appreciate, presumably out of ignorance of the terms of the established tradition, or perhaps were indifferent to, because they took for granted that freddy could be quickly found, was that if the new proclaimed candidate was not crowned two weeks after the reigning emperor died, then the crown would pass to whomever had received the second most votes from the council.
in this case, marco, who had received the one vote of mr derwood, the cantankerous and contrary archbishop of atlantis.
mr derwood felt he was halfway to a significant coup. if only freddy could be prevented from being found in two weeks, then his man, marco, a simple fellow on whose gratitude he felt confident he could count on, would ascend the imperial throne and he, mr derwood, would effectively be master of the empire.
mr derby, too late, grasped the situation, and resolved to find freddy as quickly as possible. without, however, making any great commotion about it, and alarming the other members of the council, and the general populace, who were, of course, quite ignorant of the old emperor’s grave condition.
it should be mentioned that mr derby and mr derwood were identical twins, and had long been bitter rivals. their long time enmity was a deep fissure in the apparently placid surface of the empire, threatening to suddenly widen at any time, and plunge the empire into chaos.
*
mr derby knew there was only one man he could really count on to find freddie, and find him and bring him in quickly, without any fuss.
and that was walter “rug” merchant, a private operative whose incomparable skill and discretion had been relied on for the most sensitive missions by generations of princes and bureaucrats.
mr derby went to find rug merchant. he was told that rug merchant had retired, and was living on the side of a mountain in the steppes of central atlantis.
mr derby was determined to persuade rug to take on one last job.
he found rug sitting in a rocking chair in front of his little hut on the side of the mountain.
rug told mr derby that the mountain was a holy mountain, and that he, rug, was well and truly retired.
the desert stretched away in every direction. black birds flew overhead.
there was a little table beside rug’s rocking chair, covered with minute hand-carved objects. rug had a pair of what looked like jewelers tweezers in his hand and he was, he explained to mr derby, assembling the pieces into a replica of one of the great cathedrals of the ancient world.
this is what he wanted to do now, rug continued, spend his final days assembling little table-sized models of the great lost structures of vanished civilizations. he was done with the modern world, with doing the bidding of princes and ministers.
mr derby took out his wallet and took a small photograph out of the wallet and pushed across the table to rug.
one last job, he told rug. that is all i ask. one last job and the photograph is yours.
*
freddy and his companions walked down the road. they saw a couple of small houses in the distance, but had the road to themselves.
freddy had two companions with him, a cat named maisie that he had “stolen” - with a wink from the farmer - from a farmyard in the kingdom of y—————, and a little dog named mike, who had begun following them down a road in the republic of z————.
freddy was known by sight to most of the inhabitants of the empire. and could be sure of a friendly wave from most of them as he perambulated the earth. and friendly tankards of ale from innkeepers , and friendly slices of pie from farmers’ wives.
what good times they had! especially since mike had joined them.
this is as good as it gets, freddy announced, as mike barked happily, and maisie trotted along in front of them.
suddenly clouds passed over the sun, and freddy saw a tall building on the horizon.
as they approached the building, it took the form of an ancient cathedral, such as freddy had seen in books and paintings when he was a small child in the imperial palace, before he embarked on his travels.
an old woman, leaning on a stick, stood in the road in front of the cathedral.
freddy recognized his mother. in her youth she had been a peasant girl, one of the thousands that the old emperor had had his way with, and she was dressed as a peasant now, with a rag tied around her head.
what is this, mother, freddy cried, and where are we?
this is the edge of the world, the old woman replied. beyond the cathedral is a great cliff, and you must walk over it.
buy why, freddy cried, why?
because everybody hates you, my child, and they hate you because you are beautiful.
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