Post by redsycorax on Apr 8, 2019 23:04:55 GMT
The sixteenth century has been an incubator for numerous alternate Earths. In many cases, there are conservative, technologically impaired alternate Earths following particular setbacks in Tudor England. Earth-507 suffered from a War of the English Succession between Stephen II Tudor and his would-be usurper uncle, Henry VIII, when Henry VII died too early in 1507 and consequently, the Protestant Reformation failed. On Earth-557, Mary I of England gave birth to a son, named Phillip after his father, and Princess Elizabeth Tudor was executed. In others, Henry VIII had sons instead of Mary or Elizabeth Tudor, who succeeded him in 1547 as Henry IX. In others, Edward VI survived to adulthood. In still others, Elizabeth I either married Robert Dudley, died of smallpox in 1562, or faced defeat when the Spanish Armada invaded England in 1588. But on Earth-558, the infant Kal-El had landed in Henry VIII's England after the destruction of distant Krypton back in 1538, and his appearance in sixteenth century Europe revolutionised the world around him. A French agent assassinated Lord Thomas and Lady Martha Wayne, leading to an embittered vow for vengeance from their young son, Lord Bruce. In future years, he became the mighty adept of the newborn scientific revolution, and a Darkshield against those who would frustrate the will of Her Majesty. Using the work of the Great Engineer Leonardo da Vinci, he reverse-engineered aspects of Sentinel's starship and shared his knowledge. Powered flight, rudimentary bombs, internal combustion engines and the beginnings of independent chemistry and physics spiralled forward from it. Although resurgent England had been able to neutralise and counter Spain's avarice and fanaticism by effective piracy and interference with its slaving operations, resulting in the disintegration of that overstretched and fissaparous country and the assassination of Phillip II in 1568, there was still the threat of France.
Unfortunately, France was more centralised than the former Spain had been and it had its own contingent of the Empowered. Catherine de Medici, the Chief Chancellor of France, had insured that when French warships assisted the Amazon island of Themiscyra to repell a thwarted Spanish invasion in 1564. Amazon Queen Antiope thenceforth joined her fortune to that of France and her advanced Amazon healing technology then restored the weak and ailing Francois II to full health. Queen Catherine made her peace with the Guise dynasty who had sponsored the marriage of Mary of Scotland to Francois while Dauphin, and enabled Antiope's champion, Virago, to settle in France and marry the Dauphin Presumptive, Prince Charles. The Dowager Queen's Italian poisons disposed of him after he had given the House of Valois a useful heir. Virago remained in France as a counterweight to Sentinel and her Amazon science enabled France to keep parity with England as it rapidly advanced across what had taken other worlds several centuries to achieve. With Spain experiencing rebellions in the New World, and unable to respond, Earth-558 became locked in a deadly Anglo-French arms race...
++
1589:
Queen Elizabeth of England, the Virgin Queen, Gloriana, surveyed the members of the Just League of the Empowered as she sat at her council table. It never seemed to end. Fortunately, though, the French Armada had been repelled due to the good agency of her strong right arm, Lord Calvin of Kent, Sentinel of England and Lord Bruce Wayne of Gods Acre, even if he was an obdurate Puritan who never smiled. Still, he was loyal to England and had plotted the downfall of the invading French naval forces.
In Paris, Queen Mother Catherine de Medici strode the chambers of her castle, as her son King Francois II and daughter in law Queen Mary of Scotland pensively watched her. In a distant corner of the castle, Virago, the Champion of France, sat trying to activate her timescreen and grab some precognitive insight into the future:
"Damn that Sentinel of theirs!"
"Mother, no-one could calculate that alchemy could translate Kryptonstone into inert lead. Our sorceror Lady Zatinne had expressly transformed all of our ordinance into that deadly element so that it could wound and perhaps even kill that being from a far crystal sphere."
"And yet, the English Sorceror Prime Doctor John Dee and his close companion Darkshield actively pursued and secured an antidote counterspell to her castings. How long will it be before they can breach the charms and talismans that shield our beloved France, thanks be to our Champion the Virago?"
"Queen Catherine, the Virago's workings are those of science and technique, and thus impervious to Sentinel and his other Empowered associates. And Dee cannot breach what is not of magick." Mary Queen of Scotland objected.
"True enough, daughter in law. The destruction of our Armada was a cruel blow."
"Moreover, Queen Catherine, while we failed to conquer England and my lost Scotland, with Phillip of Spain long gone, we still control near Europe. And our holdings in Louisiana and Quebec promise much."
"That indeed they do. You are a comfort to me, my son, far more than your worthless brothers. And you too, my dear Mary. A reckoning must come. Even with the rejuvenation elixir that was given to the accursed bastard Elizabeth, she cannot reign forever. Sooner or later, her hand must fall lifeless from the helm of power."
And I would give anything to unravel why it is that the secret of that elixir breached the channel that seperates us from England and flowed into her foul and unnatural veins. She will reign into her nineties, I fear, and my own infusions of elixir will cause me to predecease her.
1593:
Doctor John Dee looked up from his scrying crystal, his face full of premonition and anxiety:
"My Queen..."
"What of this alternative sphere that you have essayed, Master Dee?"
"It is malignant, my liege. Ten years from now, the shade of you passes away from old age, and a son of Mary of Scotland succeeds to your throne. Yet Protestant, not Catholic, and also with male progeny. However, this child who is not in our history, blights and afflicts what is known as the golden age, musing on endless masques as the realm crumbles around them. And moreover, the firstborn male, who is of promise, passes away early, leaving his weaker brother astride the kingdom. Parliament denies him funds and there is dreadful civil war as a consequence."
"Yet Mary of Scotland is there dead, you say?"
"Aye, forced back to Scotland and thence to captivity at your alternate self's hands."
"But none of her whelps by Francois have survived here. So do we then avert a civil war?"
"We do, my liege, but..."
They watched as projectiles arced over the English Channel, intent on their targets. One detonated over London, while the second ignited half a kilometre above Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. A blinding ball of light shone out and they saw people char into ash and brittle bone, swept into the debris of combusting wood and even melting metal as ramshackle wooden houses and formidable palaces alike collapsed like matchsticks. The vision receded, as a mushroom cloud arced over the oblivion wrought therein. In the sudden silence, Queen Elizabeth turned from her sorceror's chamber, her face ashen, her throat full of bile. She would not allow this to happen, but was this not the result of the spiral into apocalypse that her own ambitions, and those of France's dowager Spider Queen, Catherine, had fomented? How could it then be averted?
1594:
"Am I responsible for this, think you?" asked an anguished Queen Elizabeth of her councillors.
"No, my liege. You have led this country for thirty-five years of wise and prudent rule. And that alternative presentment of you may have made errors that your decisions here offset." Lady Chancellor Lois DeLaine said reassuringly.
"For example, France does not have the stranglehold over commerce and trade that the Spanish have in that otherworld. Your England is more prosperous than that of your counterpart. The Spanish Armada had reprecussions that the French Armada rout did not. Moreover, the Netherlands is a stable and independent ally in our world, not fighting a war against Spanish occupation and tyranny than it is in theirs. If that is harm, I would not see your definition of benefit, great Queen." Darkshield- Lord Bruce Wayne added his comment.
"Yet the suffering and evil that I saw...wrought on the innocent, even on babes in arms...can we draw back from this? Can we order that these foul weapons of mass slaughter never be developed? Or utilised? I know that the events that Doctor Dee witnessed occurred in 1649, after I am gone from this sphere. Is my cousin Catherine so incompetent, weak and malleable that she could permit this?"
"Yet, my Queen, the past has proven intractable to change, whether for or against us. The Jesuit scholar Lord Alexander of Lutherpain has schemed against this realm for many years, yet he has proven unable to provoke a miscarriage in your mother Queen Anne, to make her conceive a male child instead of your eminence, to have your sister Queen Mary live longer, to have Lady Jane Grey's insurrection against her succeed, to name but some of his machinations. It is only his own avarice and personal ambition that prevents him from sharing his artefice and technique with the wider Catholic Church and with our enemy France." Lord Calvin the Sentinel added his perspective to those of the Queen's other Privy Councillors.
"Lord Calvin, my good Sentinel, you say that thankfully we cannot o'erturn the preordained past. But what of the future?"
"An iron wall of time prevents my travel past 1649, Your Majesty,or prevents me from entering the world of that time. Whether Lord Alexander has precipitated this, I know not."
1595:
In the fastness of the Tuilieries Palace, Cardinal Lord Alexander of Luthorpaine was proceeding down the hall when he met the Queen Mother Catherine coming in the far direction. She greeted him: "Your Eminence."
"Your Royal Highness. What do you desire?"
"Lady Antiope has said that our manufactories will produce those internal combustion vehicles you showed me, with resultant advances in our prowess and forward projection. With our radicals stilled thanks to the entente with the Guises, we can take on the Holy Roman Empire and extinguish the last vestige of the Hapsburgs from the continent. What does trouble me is the possibility that our foes the Ottomans may learn of this and use their own savants. Or, e'en worse, the English."
"There is nothing that can be done about the latter, Your Royal Highness. All we can do is plan for the contingency of confrontation with the English."
"Not in our lifetime, I fear. Is it as you have said, my Lord Cardinal?"
"The elixir has extended your life by a decade, Your Royal Highness. Unfortunately, the more refined version has extended that of Elizabeth of England by more than twenty years. Do you still stand by your decision to deny it to Mary of Scotland?"
"That weak fool. Antiope showed me that she lost Scotland to the Protestants through her own recklessness and lust. She has failed to provide the Valois dynasty with an heir and I only tolerate her because she serves as a counterweight and threat to the accursed bastard of England. No, Mary will still die in seven years time, three years past my own demise. My only regret is that I will not be here to see it. Nor is my son Francois to have access to it. Which leaves Henry of Navarre as heir. These matters of religion irritate me. At least loyal Protestants like Admiral Coligny serve the Crown. If the more fanatical elements amongst the Guises had had their way, that good man would have been massacred twelve years since. Indeed, France itself would be lost in turmoil and England and Spain would prowl our perimeters in ambition and greed. Have you read Niccolo Machiavelli's Il Principo, Lord Cardinal?"
"Ah. That is supposed to be on the Church's list of Prescribed Works. But yes, I have read offprints. His insights are most ingenious."
"Why are you not in Rome, and Pontiff, my Lord Cardinal? We could do with an ally of your brilliance and prowess at technique in St Peters."
"Your Royal Highness flatters me."
"You have not thought on it? Come now, my Lord, no false modesty."
As they passed the ancient fastness of the Bastille, a cry echoed from the bowels of the prison. Francois Ravillac, assassin of Henry of Navarre, or Henri IV of France as he would be in other alternate universes, fell from his bonds into eternal darkness, as elsewhere, the ultramontane radical Catholics who plotted against the more moderate Valois succumbed around him.
1598:
[It appears that the Princess has seen these intruders as well, Sentinel.]
[What is their ambition, Darkshield? Know you this?]
[They appear to be replicas of ourselves. As if they are from one of the bifurcated worlds that John Dee told us about before he assumed the Helmet of Nabu]
[Is there reason to suspect that they may come from a Catholic or Puritan dominated shadow world to our own?]
[They do not seem to have artefacts or emblems that succeed that. They also speak English, not French or Spanish, so England may be ascendant in their worlds much as it is in our own]
[Damn that woman. She's armed her invisible ornithopter. and is targeting projectiles at them.I will need to intercept them. Lord Wayne, can you disable that infernal vehicle of hers?]
"Continue that to its logical conclusion and they'll have nuclear weapons next century. The Thirty Years War or English Civil War will escalate into nuclear confrontations, or the technology will leak to the Ottoman, Chinese and Japanese Empires and there'll be a global nuclear holocaust in the eighteenth." Superman-971 said, as Sentinel and Darkshield caught up with the intruders above their world:
"What do you mean by your presence here?"
"We are from a universe other than your own, where history took a different path than this. My Krypton ceased to exist four centuries after your own perished here...?"
"I am the Lord Sentinel of England. This is the Lord Darkshield."
"Your world should not have this level of technology at this stage of its cultural development."
Darkshield raised an eyebrow: "Know you this, because you do have such access to technique and the sciences in your future alternative earths?"
"Yes, and it's a struggle for us to control it even there. I see Lord Bacon has discovered radium here, that you already have transcontinental missiles."
"We would not have to resort to such weaponry were it not for the perfidious Lady Antiope, Queen of the Amazons. Like us, she assists a European Crown. In her case, it is that of Catherine de Medici, the dark but intelligent Queen Dowager of the French and the power behind her son's throne. She has kept pace with developments on our side of the English Channel."
But even the restorative biochemicals in the Elixir of Longevity had their limits. They could stimulate cellular regeneration and induce resistance to degenerative disease, but their effective range was only ten to twenty years. And thus it was that Catherine de Medici, Queen Dowager of France, power behind the throne and the 'spider' who held France in her web lay dying, propped up in her bed. As she breathed her last, in the distance, she watched a missile rise from the launch pad at distant Marseilles. A rictal grimace spread across her aged features, then she fell back lifeless onto her bed.
In distant Rome, Pope Alexander VII read the telescriptor report a few minutes later and crossed himself. The former Cardinal Luthorpaine watched the missile shoot into the sky and beyond. He stepped toward a rudimentary cathode tube television receiver and watched as his world's first artificial satellite, Excelsis One, seperated from the missile's spent launch module and rose into the sky above, the first of many- and unlike this communication satellite, not all would be as relatively beneficial.
1602:
Mary of Scotland, "Mary II" the Catholic Pretender to the Throne of England, wife to the predeceased Francois II, passed away quietly in her Tuilieries bed as an extended era of Valois power and influence finally came to an end. In distant England, Elizabeth I sat and nodded at the assembled Privy Council:
"My foolish cousin has breathed her last. Unfortunately, the traitrous Henry of Navarre has convered to Catholicism and thus the new dynasty will continue on the enmities of the past. Can anything avert the sorrow that awaits us in our own ignoble future?"
"You still have twenty years to avert it, with your adamant will and razor intellect, Majesty." John Dee said reassuringly.
"Yet why does this doom persist, despite our efforts?"
Sentinel nodded: "Because it is no longer the throne of France pushing this initiative. It is the Papacy. It is the former Cardinal Alexander Luthorpaine, and he is revolutionising the Curia. Any proceedings against the astronomer savant Master Galileo Gallelei have been thwarted in the wake of his ascension and he has announced that the discredited Ptolemaic theory of cosmic origins is no longer church orthodoxy. Moreover, he hath Kryptonstone, Majesty, as I found when I tried to pull out the newfound celestial eyes above us."
"Lord Bacon, Scientist General, how fare our efforts to harness the infinitesimal?"
"I have succeeded, Majesty. However, in doing so, several of my hirelings perished in establishing the Crucible. Lead appears to form a natural barrier against the natural but deadly emanations."
Lady Delaine's brow furrowed: "Your Majesty, the Royal Army's own savants would know more about this. And we need pristine security for this. It can only be a step from this to the holocausts of London and Paris Dr Dee observed in his scrying crystal, especially if this fire can be harnessed into projectiles and thrown across the Channel to our nemesis."
1603:
On March 24, 1603, many other iterations of Queen Elizabeth I of England died, between two to three o'clock in the morning. Instead, while mourning the death of her second cousin, Elizabeth arose at seven o'clock the next morning and her ladies in waiting assisted her toilet, assisting the seventy year old monarch to her throne and the day's business. She had outlived Phillip II, Catherine de Medici, Mary Queen of Scotland, her Chancellor William Cecil and her favourite the Earl of Essex, who had died putting down a revolt in Ireland in 1602. Inwardly, she realised that she had twenty two years left to avert Doctor Dee's prophesied nuclear holocaust. As she watched, the electric lights outside her palace flickered off.
Lady Lois Delaine blinked awake and smiled up at Lord Calvin:
"How fared I, milord?"
"Well indeed, milady. We can thank the Savant General for this, as for so many things. Your body is as adamantine as mine and your beauty unfading."
"You flatter me, sir." But it was true. Loyal to her Queen, Lady Delaine had volunteered for the first test of the longevity elixir and as with her Queen, it had succeeded, but even more so than her monarch, given Lady Delaine's relative youth. The experiments of Francis Bacon had enabled her to accquire the invulnerability of her long-time love, Lord Calvin, but she would not wed him until the Queen's consent was given. When Elizabeth learnt that Lady Lois had voluntarily sacrificed her own happiness for the wellbeing of her monarch, her heart was touched. She realised that she had much to be grateful for, insofar as her Sentinel and her greatest general were concerned and gave her immediate consent for nuptials to be undertaken.
In Rome, Pope Alexander VII sat in the fastness of the Vatican, looking out the window at the busy roads outside him. He had thwarted the implementation of his predecessors 'Counter Reformation" and the church was beneficiary to that decision. The former Cardinal Lutherpaine knew that what transpired within his palace was not a secret, having introduced electronic security and surveillance devices. Like Elizabeth of England, he knew what would befall the future. He would look forward to launching the Kryptonstone-laden missiles that would end the existence of the alien Sentinel. A cleared throat disturbed his scrutiny:
"Queen Antiope. You really must share the secret of how you can evade the protection devices within my palace."
"I have no doubt you would work it out anyway, Your Holiness. Thank you for issuing that Edict of Toleration in Paris last year, incidentally."
The Pope smiled with no real warmth:
"It matters not to me whatsoever that you choose the gods of classical antiquity as a subject of your worship. I know the ultramontanes in the church despise me for these necessary reforms, but that is what is necessary if we are to preserve the bulwark against Elizabeth of England and her unearthly allies. Your own prudence in ending the Netherlands War was much appreciated."
"It could not be won, Your Holiness. In any case, the Edict of Toleration that we signed with the Prince of Orange will encourage exchange of trade and technique, a portal to the riches of Greater England itself. My husband Henry IV knows this, which is why I married him in his turn. Are you really considering opening the priesthood to women?"
"Whyever not, Your Majesty? Your own presence here is evidence enough that the classical prejudices against distaff ability and prowess are foolish luxuries that we cannot afford to pander to. Will you join me in a wine from the papal cellars?"
"Ah, you should taste the liquers in Themiscyra, Pope Alexander. Ambrosia indeed."
"One day, indeed, perhaps."
1605:
Sentinel soared above Whitehall, calling:
"Lady Lois! Get all the Members of Parliament out of the building!"
She nodded, gesturing with her sidearm and spoke into her transciever:
"Your Majesty, it looks like Sentinel's intelligence was right. There are intruders in the Houses of Parliament. Lord Calvin estimates five to eight individuals, with an explosive device of some sort."
"I shall refrain from entering the building. Well done, my Privy Council. Lord Darkshield, are you in position?"
"It does not seem that they have a nuclear device at their disposal, Your Majesty. At least that is beyond their capabilities for now, as much as it is ours. No Kryptonstone emanations detected. Doctor Dee?"
"The nemesis is contained. The effects of any blast will be limited to a hemisphere only ten yards across and seven feet high."
"Let us move!" Sentinel broke through the building floor and accelerated toward the startled terrorists. The hand of the key terrorist edged toward a detonator but a darkrang stabbed into his fingers and caused him to drop it. It melted en route as Sentinel's eyes blazed red. Quickly, the Kryptonian disarmed and ensnared the intruders.
Almost simultaneously though, a group of further terrorists rounded the corner of Hampton House, headed for the Queen and Lady DeLaine. Lady Lois' finger pressed a remote control of her own, as she ignited a row of landmines concealed at the foretold entrypoint in the courtyard. As the smoke cleared, a coruscating soft blue forcescreen contracted into the background. The soldier's daughter and Chief General of the Royal Army smiled to herself:
"Well played, my loyal chancellor. So, what are these...?"
"Automatons. As Lord Cecil's intelligence informed us, Your Majesty, Pope Alexander has sanctioned the development of these artificial beings to attack your kingdom. The attack on the Houses of Parliament was a diversion so that you could be assaulted, kidnapped or murdered."
"As ever, I am indebted to you all. England owes you much gratitude." Much like the Gunpowder Plot in other alternate universes, then, the Dynamite Plot went awry and its perpetrators were executed.
1612:
Peregrinates Sunt in Excelsis, Pope Alexander VII's encyclical read, translated as "Aliens on High." As with Pope Pius V's 1570 Regnans in Excelsis encyclical against his mistress, Elizabeth of England, the encyclical permitted use of Kryptonstone, magic and other weaknesses that the Kryptonian might have against Lord Calvin of Kent, Sentinel of Elizabeth of England. As with Queen Elizabeth, anyone who obeyed any edicts or orders from the Lord Sentinel was excommunicated from the Catholic Church. More ominously, it sanctioned 'justifiable homicide' against Sentinel and any other aliens currently resident on Earth.
Henry IV of France objected to the implementation of the order within his realm, despite being lobbied by Queen Antiope to do so, due to the traditional "Gallican" autonomy of the French Catholic Church. For the first time, division soured the relationship between the savant in the Vatican and the Amazon Queen of France. However, fractured and divided Spain was another story altogether, but then, so was Lady Lois Delaine-Kent, especially in league with Sir Robert Cecil's protege, Lady Selina Kyler, who matched her in combat prowess, discipline and espionage skill. With the assistance of longtime Secret Service Operative Kit (Christopher) Marlowe, they entered Spain and sabotaged the long range missiles planned to strike at England's Sentinel.
With the death of her former heiress presumptive, Lady Catherine Grey, Queen Elizabeth made provision for the English Crown's succession from the Seymour descendants of her aunt Princess Mary Tudor, Duchess of Suffolk. While mourning her cousin, Elizabeth was inwardly relieved that the Suffolks provided good breeding stock and could be relied upon to serve as a valid path of succession. She shuddered to think what descendants of her other aunt, Margaret, Queen of Scotland under James V, would have meant to posterity, had Mary of Scotland lost Francois early, been forced back to Scotland and spawned male heirs. But still, in Doctor Dee's scrying crystal, the future still showed mass murder and holocaust on an unprecedented scale. Moreover, realised the Queen of England for over five decades, she had only thirteen years grace to avert such a calamity. But Pope Alexander's intransigence and ruthlessness might well make such a fate set in cold, hard stone. Would the prosperity and grandeur that accompanied her long reign come to naught? As she had done in matters of religion over fifty years past, Elizabeth penned An Edict of Toleration- but one subtitled Toward Benign Stellar Aliens Resident in England and Its Possessions.
1620:
Elizabeth of England, at eighty seven, realised bleakly that there might be no wait out of the apocalypse that awaited, as she stood over Lord Bruce of Waynesmoor's funeral. Lady Selina Kyler was inconsolable- despite his advanced age she had loved the savant and yet, stood ready to become the second Darkshield should her Sovereign command it- which she was sorely tempted to do. Lord Bruce had trained his protege well. Outside the Abbey, electrical cars patrolled cleaner streets, hospitals had appeared and England's prosperity blossomed apace. Parliament presided responsibly and well, careful not to trample on the Queens prerogatives. The only blight were the abortive North American colonies which had been hit by unknown plant viruses and which had had to be left to the Native nations that controlled the coastal, which had rapidly become organised states and practitioners of technique themselves. While her long reign had wrought peace and stability for England, her time was running out. On the far side of the Channel, Rome was bristling with threatening missiles and her satellite network had disclosed that in the Algerian desert, there had been a test of the long-feared nuclear explosives. Sure enough, Sentinel's high altitude flight had confirmed fused glass sands and dead animals and traders within its zone of effect.
She had pleaded with Antiope of France and Pope Alexander to end their armaments race, that humanity itself would be plunged into turmoil, torment and conditions akin to those that Master Dante Alighieri had depicted in his great Divine Comedia three centuries ago. All to no avail. She wondered, were they possessed? Were they hellbent on pushing the whole of humanity into an abyss from which there might be no return? She almost felt grateful that she had decided not to marry or to breed children. Five years left, and still no sign that the precipice could be averted and that sanity could prevail.
1625:
The inevitable came to pass. Delayed by twenty two years, Elizabeth of England was now dying, the Elixir of Longevity unable to prolong her life past its limit, ninety two years. Around her, the Just League of the Empowered sat around her deathbed, clutching her hand, weeping, ashen-faced and dreading what might come to pass next. At sixty seven years, Elizabeth of England had reigned long, mostly wisely and well, enabling her beloved country to recover from religious dissension, intolerance, persecution and polarisation. With her failing strength, she clutched the hand of her Sentinel:
"Lord Kelvin, Lady Lois...it is up to you, now. You must avert the doom that bewaits our heirs and perhaps the oblivion of humanity itself. Guide our successor and kinsman William as you have done for me. You have been good and loyal servants and your prowess and strength has been a boon and comfort to me. Fare thee well."
"Fare thee well, Your Majesty."
"Do not cry, Lois my dear."
"You have been like a mother to me, Your Majesty. What will we do without your wisdom and strength?" She kissed her Sovereign gently on her forehead, but the Queen was now silent. She closed her eyes and never reopened them as she breathed her last.
May 30, 1625:
William Seymour, Second Duke of Somerset, was crowned in Westminister Abbey, flanked by his sons, Henry and John. He was widely regarded as a good choice, a frugal and responsible man, with good relations with Parliament and likely to oversee the public purse well. As William III, he would be a prudent monarch for the next seventeen years, but could even that wisdom challenge the sword of damocles that now hung over the world? On a distant North Atlantic island, England tested its first nuclear weapon. Less than a fortnight later, there were signs in the distant Caucasus mountains that the Ottoman Empire had joined England, France and the Papacy as nuclear powers. Yet still the question remained- could the doom that awaited now be avoided, or was it too late?
1630:
"So, what did we avert?"
"An Elizabethan succession born of the progeny of Mary of Scotland. A wastrel, perverse king dedicated to his own pleasures and living off the legacy of his august predecessor, thwarted promise when a highly able son perished untimely early and an heir whose exaggerated self-perception led to the onset of civil war over the public purse. This "James I" and "Charles I" were never born in our world, resulting in the Suffolk ascendancy instead and your inheritance, Your Royal Highness. This heartbreak and fratricide will not transpire. However, there is still turmoil across the Channel. It may degenerate into an international conflict and in 1642, the unthinkable will happen."
"But how? Are Paris, London and Rome therefore doomed to fall to fire and poisoned ash?"
Sentinel cleared his throat:
"Your Majesty, the future appears to be inflexible. We have laboured long to avert this, but..."
The aged John Dee cleared his throat and leant on his mage's crook:
"That is not strictly true, My Lord Calvin. I know that you have laboured mightily to protect our realm and it pains me much to say this, but...when your Krypton perished, it was several centuries too early for this sphere to assimilate. You landed here, grew to adulthood and protected Great Elizabeth and England for decades. Yet the technique and industry that grew in your wake has doomed our world."
"I would do anything to avert this, Chief Sorceror. You know I would."
"There may be a way to undo this. But it will mean that you must risk your life."
Lady Lois Delaine-Kent stepped forward and her hand encircled that of her husband: "Lord Calvin will not do this alone. No, Calvin. Do not bar me from this. I will not allow you to face this with no-one at your side."
EPILOGUE
From: Willard Catrae, A Book of Masques: New Bristol, Luna: Oxford University Press: 2034.
Ben Jonson's final masterpiece, Masque of the Lord Sentinel, was a tribute to his dear friend, Lord Calvin Kent, the Sentinel of England and his wife, General Lois Delaine-Kent of England's Royal Army. Both of them travelled to 1642 with elevated supplementary strength from Doctor Dee, the Chief Sorceror of England, and the two set about disarming the arsenals of Pope Alexander VII's Catholic Church and the French Empire, but at grave risk to Lord Calvin's life, given that Doctor Dee's casting did not confer permanent invulnerability to Kryptonstone, but only staved off its effects. Lady Lois fought Queen Antiope to the latter's death and was grievously wounded herself. With her dying breath, she urged her husband to take on the unnaturally long lived Pope Alexander VII in Rome. But Alexander of Luthorpaine had not been idle over the decades that he had awaited the final conflict with England's Sentinel, and his automaton enhanced his strength to match. Moreover, the Papal Combat Room was loaded with Kryptonstone. As Doctor Dee's casting wore off, weakened by his demolition of the Papal nuclear arsenal, Lord Calvin and Pope Alexander fought one another to the bitter end. Ultimately, the strain of combat overloaded Pope Alexander's cyborg carapace and he fell, but not after plunging a Kryptonstone dagger into the Sentinel's heart.
The tragedy of England's leading couple has been explored in other great literary works since that dark day in 1642. Somewhat perversely, John Milton wrote one of the most compelling, Luthorpaine, a diligent and psychologically realist study of the flawed, ruthless but brilliant nemesis of England and its Sentinel. Milton's conclusion is that if only he had not been blinded by his xenophobic hatred of Sentinel's alien origins, Pope Alexander VII might have gone down in history as one of the greatest pontiffs of a surviving Catholic Church, instead of execration as the criminal genius and mass murderer whose ambition and avarice led to its ultimate destruction, tainted with toleration of the deeds of its darkest pontificate. Two centuries later, Jane Austen wrote her greatest work based on the distaff side of this historic relationship, Lois Delaine, examining the personality, fierce emotions and steely intellect of the Royal Army's inaugural and iconic female general. Twelve years later, Jane Austen became the first female British Prime Minister as Whig Party candidate in 1840.
In distant England, King William III heard and mourned the loss of his loyalest subject and the woman that he had loved, and dismantled England's nuclear arsenal. But burgeoned by the technological assistance that Kal-El of Krypton had provided, England, France, the Ottoman Empire and Japan landed colonies on the moon in the eighteenth century, mastered interstellar travel in the nineteenth and joined a peaceful democratic interstellar federation of worlds in 1939. It was a world at peace and a world of plenty. But who can say whether the sacrifice that had been made on its behalf was intolerable, meaning as it did the extinction of an entire planet's population at the end?
THE END
Unfortunately, France was more centralised than the former Spain had been and it had its own contingent of the Empowered. Catherine de Medici, the Chief Chancellor of France, had insured that when French warships assisted the Amazon island of Themiscyra to repell a thwarted Spanish invasion in 1564. Amazon Queen Antiope thenceforth joined her fortune to that of France and her advanced Amazon healing technology then restored the weak and ailing Francois II to full health. Queen Catherine made her peace with the Guise dynasty who had sponsored the marriage of Mary of Scotland to Francois while Dauphin, and enabled Antiope's champion, Virago, to settle in France and marry the Dauphin Presumptive, Prince Charles. The Dowager Queen's Italian poisons disposed of him after he had given the House of Valois a useful heir. Virago remained in France as a counterweight to Sentinel and her Amazon science enabled France to keep parity with England as it rapidly advanced across what had taken other worlds several centuries to achieve. With Spain experiencing rebellions in the New World, and unable to respond, Earth-558 became locked in a deadly Anglo-French arms race...
++
1589:
Queen Elizabeth of England, the Virgin Queen, Gloriana, surveyed the members of the Just League of the Empowered as she sat at her council table. It never seemed to end. Fortunately, though, the French Armada had been repelled due to the good agency of her strong right arm, Lord Calvin of Kent, Sentinel of England and Lord Bruce Wayne of Gods Acre, even if he was an obdurate Puritan who never smiled. Still, he was loyal to England and had plotted the downfall of the invading French naval forces.
In Paris, Queen Mother Catherine de Medici strode the chambers of her castle, as her son King Francois II and daughter in law Queen Mary of Scotland pensively watched her. In a distant corner of the castle, Virago, the Champion of France, sat trying to activate her timescreen and grab some precognitive insight into the future:
"Damn that Sentinel of theirs!"
"Mother, no-one could calculate that alchemy could translate Kryptonstone into inert lead. Our sorceror Lady Zatinne had expressly transformed all of our ordinance into that deadly element so that it could wound and perhaps even kill that being from a far crystal sphere."
"And yet, the English Sorceror Prime Doctor John Dee and his close companion Darkshield actively pursued and secured an antidote counterspell to her castings. How long will it be before they can breach the charms and talismans that shield our beloved France, thanks be to our Champion the Virago?"
"Queen Catherine, the Virago's workings are those of science and technique, and thus impervious to Sentinel and his other Empowered associates. And Dee cannot breach what is not of magick." Mary Queen of Scotland objected.
"True enough, daughter in law. The destruction of our Armada was a cruel blow."
"Moreover, Queen Catherine, while we failed to conquer England and my lost Scotland, with Phillip of Spain long gone, we still control near Europe. And our holdings in Louisiana and Quebec promise much."
"That indeed they do. You are a comfort to me, my son, far more than your worthless brothers. And you too, my dear Mary. A reckoning must come. Even with the rejuvenation elixir that was given to the accursed bastard Elizabeth, she cannot reign forever. Sooner or later, her hand must fall lifeless from the helm of power."
And I would give anything to unravel why it is that the secret of that elixir breached the channel that seperates us from England and flowed into her foul and unnatural veins. She will reign into her nineties, I fear, and my own infusions of elixir will cause me to predecease her.
1593:
Doctor John Dee looked up from his scrying crystal, his face full of premonition and anxiety:
"My Queen..."
"What of this alternative sphere that you have essayed, Master Dee?"
"It is malignant, my liege. Ten years from now, the shade of you passes away from old age, and a son of Mary of Scotland succeeds to your throne. Yet Protestant, not Catholic, and also with male progeny. However, this child who is not in our history, blights and afflicts what is known as the golden age, musing on endless masques as the realm crumbles around them. And moreover, the firstborn male, who is of promise, passes away early, leaving his weaker brother astride the kingdom. Parliament denies him funds and there is dreadful civil war as a consequence."
"Yet Mary of Scotland is there dead, you say?"
"Aye, forced back to Scotland and thence to captivity at your alternate self's hands."
"But none of her whelps by Francois have survived here. So do we then avert a civil war?"
"We do, my liege, but..."
They watched as projectiles arced over the English Channel, intent on their targets. One detonated over London, while the second ignited half a kilometre above Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. A blinding ball of light shone out and they saw people char into ash and brittle bone, swept into the debris of combusting wood and even melting metal as ramshackle wooden houses and formidable palaces alike collapsed like matchsticks. The vision receded, as a mushroom cloud arced over the oblivion wrought therein. In the sudden silence, Queen Elizabeth turned from her sorceror's chamber, her face ashen, her throat full of bile. She would not allow this to happen, but was this not the result of the spiral into apocalypse that her own ambitions, and those of France's dowager Spider Queen, Catherine, had fomented? How could it then be averted?
1594:
"Am I responsible for this, think you?" asked an anguished Queen Elizabeth of her councillors.
"No, my liege. You have led this country for thirty-five years of wise and prudent rule. And that alternative presentment of you may have made errors that your decisions here offset." Lady Chancellor Lois DeLaine said reassuringly.
"For example, France does not have the stranglehold over commerce and trade that the Spanish have in that otherworld. Your England is more prosperous than that of your counterpart. The Spanish Armada had reprecussions that the French Armada rout did not. Moreover, the Netherlands is a stable and independent ally in our world, not fighting a war against Spanish occupation and tyranny than it is in theirs. If that is harm, I would not see your definition of benefit, great Queen." Darkshield- Lord Bruce Wayne added his comment.
"Yet the suffering and evil that I saw...wrought on the innocent, even on babes in arms...can we draw back from this? Can we order that these foul weapons of mass slaughter never be developed? Or utilised? I know that the events that Doctor Dee witnessed occurred in 1649, after I am gone from this sphere. Is my cousin Catherine so incompetent, weak and malleable that she could permit this?"
"Yet, my Queen, the past has proven intractable to change, whether for or against us. The Jesuit scholar Lord Alexander of Lutherpain has schemed against this realm for many years, yet he has proven unable to provoke a miscarriage in your mother Queen Anne, to make her conceive a male child instead of your eminence, to have your sister Queen Mary live longer, to have Lady Jane Grey's insurrection against her succeed, to name but some of his machinations. It is only his own avarice and personal ambition that prevents him from sharing his artefice and technique with the wider Catholic Church and with our enemy France." Lord Calvin the Sentinel added his perspective to those of the Queen's other Privy Councillors.
"Lord Calvin, my good Sentinel, you say that thankfully we cannot o'erturn the preordained past. But what of the future?"
"An iron wall of time prevents my travel past 1649, Your Majesty,or prevents me from entering the world of that time. Whether Lord Alexander has precipitated this, I know not."
1595:
In the fastness of the Tuilieries Palace, Cardinal Lord Alexander of Luthorpaine was proceeding down the hall when he met the Queen Mother Catherine coming in the far direction. She greeted him: "Your Eminence."
"Your Royal Highness. What do you desire?"
"Lady Antiope has said that our manufactories will produce those internal combustion vehicles you showed me, with resultant advances in our prowess and forward projection. With our radicals stilled thanks to the entente with the Guises, we can take on the Holy Roman Empire and extinguish the last vestige of the Hapsburgs from the continent. What does trouble me is the possibility that our foes the Ottomans may learn of this and use their own savants. Or, e'en worse, the English."
"There is nothing that can be done about the latter, Your Royal Highness. All we can do is plan for the contingency of confrontation with the English."
"Not in our lifetime, I fear. Is it as you have said, my Lord Cardinal?"
"The elixir has extended your life by a decade, Your Royal Highness. Unfortunately, the more refined version has extended that of Elizabeth of England by more than twenty years. Do you still stand by your decision to deny it to Mary of Scotland?"
"That weak fool. Antiope showed me that she lost Scotland to the Protestants through her own recklessness and lust. She has failed to provide the Valois dynasty with an heir and I only tolerate her because she serves as a counterweight and threat to the accursed bastard of England. No, Mary will still die in seven years time, three years past my own demise. My only regret is that I will not be here to see it. Nor is my son Francois to have access to it. Which leaves Henry of Navarre as heir. These matters of religion irritate me. At least loyal Protestants like Admiral Coligny serve the Crown. If the more fanatical elements amongst the Guises had had their way, that good man would have been massacred twelve years since. Indeed, France itself would be lost in turmoil and England and Spain would prowl our perimeters in ambition and greed. Have you read Niccolo Machiavelli's Il Principo, Lord Cardinal?"
"Ah. That is supposed to be on the Church's list of Prescribed Works. But yes, I have read offprints. His insights are most ingenious."
"Why are you not in Rome, and Pontiff, my Lord Cardinal? We could do with an ally of your brilliance and prowess at technique in St Peters."
"Your Royal Highness flatters me."
"You have not thought on it? Come now, my Lord, no false modesty."
As they passed the ancient fastness of the Bastille, a cry echoed from the bowels of the prison. Francois Ravillac, assassin of Henry of Navarre, or Henri IV of France as he would be in other alternate universes, fell from his bonds into eternal darkness, as elsewhere, the ultramontane radical Catholics who plotted against the more moderate Valois succumbed around him.
1598:
[It appears that the Princess has seen these intruders as well, Sentinel.]
[What is their ambition, Darkshield? Know you this?]
[They appear to be replicas of ourselves. As if they are from one of the bifurcated worlds that John Dee told us about before he assumed the Helmet of Nabu]
[Is there reason to suspect that they may come from a Catholic or Puritan dominated shadow world to our own?]
[They do not seem to have artefacts or emblems that succeed that. They also speak English, not French or Spanish, so England may be ascendant in their worlds much as it is in our own]
[Damn that woman. She's armed her invisible ornithopter. and is targeting projectiles at them.I will need to intercept them. Lord Wayne, can you disable that infernal vehicle of hers?]
"Continue that to its logical conclusion and they'll have nuclear weapons next century. The Thirty Years War or English Civil War will escalate into nuclear confrontations, or the technology will leak to the Ottoman, Chinese and Japanese Empires and there'll be a global nuclear holocaust in the eighteenth." Superman-971 said, as Sentinel and Darkshield caught up with the intruders above their world:
"What do you mean by your presence here?"
"We are from a universe other than your own, where history took a different path than this. My Krypton ceased to exist four centuries after your own perished here...?"
"I am the Lord Sentinel of England. This is the Lord Darkshield."
"Your world should not have this level of technology at this stage of its cultural development."
Darkshield raised an eyebrow: "Know you this, because you do have such access to technique and the sciences in your future alternative earths?"
"Yes, and it's a struggle for us to control it even there. I see Lord Bacon has discovered radium here, that you already have transcontinental missiles."
"We would not have to resort to such weaponry were it not for the perfidious Lady Antiope, Queen of the Amazons. Like us, she assists a European Crown. In her case, it is that of Catherine de Medici, the dark but intelligent Queen Dowager of the French and the power behind her son's throne. She has kept pace with developments on our side of the English Channel."
But even the restorative biochemicals in the Elixir of Longevity had their limits. They could stimulate cellular regeneration and induce resistance to degenerative disease, but their effective range was only ten to twenty years. And thus it was that Catherine de Medici, Queen Dowager of France, power behind the throne and the 'spider' who held France in her web lay dying, propped up in her bed. As she breathed her last, in the distance, she watched a missile rise from the launch pad at distant Marseilles. A rictal grimace spread across her aged features, then she fell back lifeless onto her bed.
In distant Rome, Pope Alexander VII read the telescriptor report a few minutes later and crossed himself. The former Cardinal Luthorpaine watched the missile shoot into the sky and beyond. He stepped toward a rudimentary cathode tube television receiver and watched as his world's first artificial satellite, Excelsis One, seperated from the missile's spent launch module and rose into the sky above, the first of many- and unlike this communication satellite, not all would be as relatively beneficial.
1602:
Mary of Scotland, "Mary II" the Catholic Pretender to the Throne of England, wife to the predeceased Francois II, passed away quietly in her Tuilieries bed as an extended era of Valois power and influence finally came to an end. In distant England, Elizabeth I sat and nodded at the assembled Privy Council:
"My foolish cousin has breathed her last. Unfortunately, the traitrous Henry of Navarre has convered to Catholicism and thus the new dynasty will continue on the enmities of the past. Can anything avert the sorrow that awaits us in our own ignoble future?"
"You still have twenty years to avert it, with your adamant will and razor intellect, Majesty." John Dee said reassuringly.
"Yet why does this doom persist, despite our efforts?"
Sentinel nodded: "Because it is no longer the throne of France pushing this initiative. It is the Papacy. It is the former Cardinal Alexander Luthorpaine, and he is revolutionising the Curia. Any proceedings against the astronomer savant Master Galileo Gallelei have been thwarted in the wake of his ascension and he has announced that the discredited Ptolemaic theory of cosmic origins is no longer church orthodoxy. Moreover, he hath Kryptonstone, Majesty, as I found when I tried to pull out the newfound celestial eyes above us."
"Lord Bacon, Scientist General, how fare our efforts to harness the infinitesimal?"
"I have succeeded, Majesty. However, in doing so, several of my hirelings perished in establishing the Crucible. Lead appears to form a natural barrier against the natural but deadly emanations."
Lady Delaine's brow furrowed: "Your Majesty, the Royal Army's own savants would know more about this. And we need pristine security for this. It can only be a step from this to the holocausts of London and Paris Dr Dee observed in his scrying crystal, especially if this fire can be harnessed into projectiles and thrown across the Channel to our nemesis."
1603:
On March 24, 1603, many other iterations of Queen Elizabeth I of England died, between two to three o'clock in the morning. Instead, while mourning the death of her second cousin, Elizabeth arose at seven o'clock the next morning and her ladies in waiting assisted her toilet, assisting the seventy year old monarch to her throne and the day's business. She had outlived Phillip II, Catherine de Medici, Mary Queen of Scotland, her Chancellor William Cecil and her favourite the Earl of Essex, who had died putting down a revolt in Ireland in 1602. Inwardly, she realised that she had twenty two years left to avert Doctor Dee's prophesied nuclear holocaust. As she watched, the electric lights outside her palace flickered off.
Lady Lois Delaine blinked awake and smiled up at Lord Calvin:
"How fared I, milord?"
"Well indeed, milady. We can thank the Savant General for this, as for so many things. Your body is as adamantine as mine and your beauty unfading."
"You flatter me, sir." But it was true. Loyal to her Queen, Lady Delaine had volunteered for the first test of the longevity elixir and as with her Queen, it had succeeded, but even more so than her monarch, given Lady Delaine's relative youth. The experiments of Francis Bacon had enabled her to accquire the invulnerability of her long-time love, Lord Calvin, but she would not wed him until the Queen's consent was given. When Elizabeth learnt that Lady Lois had voluntarily sacrificed her own happiness for the wellbeing of her monarch, her heart was touched. She realised that she had much to be grateful for, insofar as her Sentinel and her greatest general were concerned and gave her immediate consent for nuptials to be undertaken.
In Rome, Pope Alexander VII sat in the fastness of the Vatican, looking out the window at the busy roads outside him. He had thwarted the implementation of his predecessors 'Counter Reformation" and the church was beneficiary to that decision. The former Cardinal Lutherpaine knew that what transpired within his palace was not a secret, having introduced electronic security and surveillance devices. Like Elizabeth of England, he knew what would befall the future. He would look forward to launching the Kryptonstone-laden missiles that would end the existence of the alien Sentinel. A cleared throat disturbed his scrutiny:
"Queen Antiope. You really must share the secret of how you can evade the protection devices within my palace."
"I have no doubt you would work it out anyway, Your Holiness. Thank you for issuing that Edict of Toleration in Paris last year, incidentally."
The Pope smiled with no real warmth:
"It matters not to me whatsoever that you choose the gods of classical antiquity as a subject of your worship. I know the ultramontanes in the church despise me for these necessary reforms, but that is what is necessary if we are to preserve the bulwark against Elizabeth of England and her unearthly allies. Your own prudence in ending the Netherlands War was much appreciated."
"It could not be won, Your Holiness. In any case, the Edict of Toleration that we signed with the Prince of Orange will encourage exchange of trade and technique, a portal to the riches of Greater England itself. My husband Henry IV knows this, which is why I married him in his turn. Are you really considering opening the priesthood to women?"
"Whyever not, Your Majesty? Your own presence here is evidence enough that the classical prejudices against distaff ability and prowess are foolish luxuries that we cannot afford to pander to. Will you join me in a wine from the papal cellars?"
"Ah, you should taste the liquers in Themiscyra, Pope Alexander. Ambrosia indeed."
"One day, indeed, perhaps."
1605:
Sentinel soared above Whitehall, calling:
"Lady Lois! Get all the Members of Parliament out of the building!"
She nodded, gesturing with her sidearm and spoke into her transciever:
"Your Majesty, it looks like Sentinel's intelligence was right. There are intruders in the Houses of Parliament. Lord Calvin estimates five to eight individuals, with an explosive device of some sort."
"I shall refrain from entering the building. Well done, my Privy Council. Lord Darkshield, are you in position?"
"It does not seem that they have a nuclear device at their disposal, Your Majesty. At least that is beyond their capabilities for now, as much as it is ours. No Kryptonstone emanations detected. Doctor Dee?"
"The nemesis is contained. The effects of any blast will be limited to a hemisphere only ten yards across and seven feet high."
"Let us move!" Sentinel broke through the building floor and accelerated toward the startled terrorists. The hand of the key terrorist edged toward a detonator but a darkrang stabbed into his fingers and caused him to drop it. It melted en route as Sentinel's eyes blazed red. Quickly, the Kryptonian disarmed and ensnared the intruders.
Almost simultaneously though, a group of further terrorists rounded the corner of Hampton House, headed for the Queen and Lady DeLaine. Lady Lois' finger pressed a remote control of her own, as she ignited a row of landmines concealed at the foretold entrypoint in the courtyard. As the smoke cleared, a coruscating soft blue forcescreen contracted into the background. The soldier's daughter and Chief General of the Royal Army smiled to herself:
"Well played, my loyal chancellor. So, what are these...?"
"Automatons. As Lord Cecil's intelligence informed us, Your Majesty, Pope Alexander has sanctioned the development of these artificial beings to attack your kingdom. The attack on the Houses of Parliament was a diversion so that you could be assaulted, kidnapped or murdered."
"As ever, I am indebted to you all. England owes you much gratitude." Much like the Gunpowder Plot in other alternate universes, then, the Dynamite Plot went awry and its perpetrators were executed.
1612:
Peregrinates Sunt in Excelsis, Pope Alexander VII's encyclical read, translated as "Aliens on High." As with Pope Pius V's 1570 Regnans in Excelsis encyclical against his mistress, Elizabeth of England, the encyclical permitted use of Kryptonstone, magic and other weaknesses that the Kryptonian might have against Lord Calvin of Kent, Sentinel of Elizabeth of England. As with Queen Elizabeth, anyone who obeyed any edicts or orders from the Lord Sentinel was excommunicated from the Catholic Church. More ominously, it sanctioned 'justifiable homicide' against Sentinel and any other aliens currently resident on Earth.
Henry IV of France objected to the implementation of the order within his realm, despite being lobbied by Queen Antiope to do so, due to the traditional "Gallican" autonomy of the French Catholic Church. For the first time, division soured the relationship between the savant in the Vatican and the Amazon Queen of France. However, fractured and divided Spain was another story altogether, but then, so was Lady Lois Delaine-Kent, especially in league with Sir Robert Cecil's protege, Lady Selina Kyler, who matched her in combat prowess, discipline and espionage skill. With the assistance of longtime Secret Service Operative Kit (Christopher) Marlowe, they entered Spain and sabotaged the long range missiles planned to strike at England's Sentinel.
With the death of her former heiress presumptive, Lady Catherine Grey, Queen Elizabeth made provision for the English Crown's succession from the Seymour descendants of her aunt Princess Mary Tudor, Duchess of Suffolk. While mourning her cousin, Elizabeth was inwardly relieved that the Suffolks provided good breeding stock and could be relied upon to serve as a valid path of succession. She shuddered to think what descendants of her other aunt, Margaret, Queen of Scotland under James V, would have meant to posterity, had Mary of Scotland lost Francois early, been forced back to Scotland and spawned male heirs. But still, in Doctor Dee's scrying crystal, the future still showed mass murder and holocaust on an unprecedented scale. Moreover, realised the Queen of England for over five decades, she had only thirteen years grace to avert such a calamity. But Pope Alexander's intransigence and ruthlessness might well make such a fate set in cold, hard stone. Would the prosperity and grandeur that accompanied her long reign come to naught? As she had done in matters of religion over fifty years past, Elizabeth penned An Edict of Toleration- but one subtitled Toward Benign Stellar Aliens Resident in England and Its Possessions.
1620:
Elizabeth of England, at eighty seven, realised bleakly that there might be no wait out of the apocalypse that awaited, as she stood over Lord Bruce of Waynesmoor's funeral. Lady Selina Kyler was inconsolable- despite his advanced age she had loved the savant and yet, stood ready to become the second Darkshield should her Sovereign command it- which she was sorely tempted to do. Lord Bruce had trained his protege well. Outside the Abbey, electrical cars patrolled cleaner streets, hospitals had appeared and England's prosperity blossomed apace. Parliament presided responsibly and well, careful not to trample on the Queens prerogatives. The only blight were the abortive North American colonies which had been hit by unknown plant viruses and which had had to be left to the Native nations that controlled the coastal, which had rapidly become organised states and practitioners of technique themselves. While her long reign had wrought peace and stability for England, her time was running out. On the far side of the Channel, Rome was bristling with threatening missiles and her satellite network had disclosed that in the Algerian desert, there had been a test of the long-feared nuclear explosives. Sure enough, Sentinel's high altitude flight had confirmed fused glass sands and dead animals and traders within its zone of effect.
She had pleaded with Antiope of France and Pope Alexander to end their armaments race, that humanity itself would be plunged into turmoil, torment and conditions akin to those that Master Dante Alighieri had depicted in his great Divine Comedia three centuries ago. All to no avail. She wondered, were they possessed? Were they hellbent on pushing the whole of humanity into an abyss from which there might be no return? She almost felt grateful that she had decided not to marry or to breed children. Five years left, and still no sign that the precipice could be averted and that sanity could prevail.
1625:
The inevitable came to pass. Delayed by twenty two years, Elizabeth of England was now dying, the Elixir of Longevity unable to prolong her life past its limit, ninety two years. Around her, the Just League of the Empowered sat around her deathbed, clutching her hand, weeping, ashen-faced and dreading what might come to pass next. At sixty seven years, Elizabeth of England had reigned long, mostly wisely and well, enabling her beloved country to recover from religious dissension, intolerance, persecution and polarisation. With her failing strength, she clutched the hand of her Sentinel:
"Lord Kelvin, Lady Lois...it is up to you, now. You must avert the doom that bewaits our heirs and perhaps the oblivion of humanity itself. Guide our successor and kinsman William as you have done for me. You have been good and loyal servants and your prowess and strength has been a boon and comfort to me. Fare thee well."
"Fare thee well, Your Majesty."
"Do not cry, Lois my dear."
"You have been like a mother to me, Your Majesty. What will we do without your wisdom and strength?" She kissed her Sovereign gently on her forehead, but the Queen was now silent. She closed her eyes and never reopened them as she breathed her last.
May 30, 1625:
William Seymour, Second Duke of Somerset, was crowned in Westminister Abbey, flanked by his sons, Henry and John. He was widely regarded as a good choice, a frugal and responsible man, with good relations with Parliament and likely to oversee the public purse well. As William III, he would be a prudent monarch for the next seventeen years, but could even that wisdom challenge the sword of damocles that now hung over the world? On a distant North Atlantic island, England tested its first nuclear weapon. Less than a fortnight later, there were signs in the distant Caucasus mountains that the Ottoman Empire had joined England, France and the Papacy as nuclear powers. Yet still the question remained- could the doom that awaited now be avoided, or was it too late?
1630:
"So, what did we avert?"
"An Elizabethan succession born of the progeny of Mary of Scotland. A wastrel, perverse king dedicated to his own pleasures and living off the legacy of his august predecessor, thwarted promise when a highly able son perished untimely early and an heir whose exaggerated self-perception led to the onset of civil war over the public purse. This "James I" and "Charles I" were never born in our world, resulting in the Suffolk ascendancy instead and your inheritance, Your Royal Highness. This heartbreak and fratricide will not transpire. However, there is still turmoil across the Channel. It may degenerate into an international conflict and in 1642, the unthinkable will happen."
"But how? Are Paris, London and Rome therefore doomed to fall to fire and poisoned ash?"
Sentinel cleared his throat:
"Your Majesty, the future appears to be inflexible. We have laboured long to avert this, but..."
The aged John Dee cleared his throat and leant on his mage's crook:
"That is not strictly true, My Lord Calvin. I know that you have laboured mightily to protect our realm and it pains me much to say this, but...when your Krypton perished, it was several centuries too early for this sphere to assimilate. You landed here, grew to adulthood and protected Great Elizabeth and England for decades. Yet the technique and industry that grew in your wake has doomed our world."
"I would do anything to avert this, Chief Sorceror. You know I would."
"There may be a way to undo this. But it will mean that you must risk your life."
Lady Lois Delaine-Kent stepped forward and her hand encircled that of her husband: "Lord Calvin will not do this alone. No, Calvin. Do not bar me from this. I will not allow you to face this with no-one at your side."
EPILOGUE
From: Willard Catrae, A Book of Masques: New Bristol, Luna: Oxford University Press: 2034.
Ben Jonson's final masterpiece, Masque of the Lord Sentinel, was a tribute to his dear friend, Lord Calvin Kent, the Sentinel of England and his wife, General Lois Delaine-Kent of England's Royal Army. Both of them travelled to 1642 with elevated supplementary strength from Doctor Dee, the Chief Sorceror of England, and the two set about disarming the arsenals of Pope Alexander VII's Catholic Church and the French Empire, but at grave risk to Lord Calvin's life, given that Doctor Dee's casting did not confer permanent invulnerability to Kryptonstone, but only staved off its effects. Lady Lois fought Queen Antiope to the latter's death and was grievously wounded herself. With her dying breath, she urged her husband to take on the unnaturally long lived Pope Alexander VII in Rome. But Alexander of Luthorpaine had not been idle over the decades that he had awaited the final conflict with England's Sentinel, and his automaton enhanced his strength to match. Moreover, the Papal Combat Room was loaded with Kryptonstone. As Doctor Dee's casting wore off, weakened by his demolition of the Papal nuclear arsenal, Lord Calvin and Pope Alexander fought one another to the bitter end. Ultimately, the strain of combat overloaded Pope Alexander's cyborg carapace and he fell, but not after plunging a Kryptonstone dagger into the Sentinel's heart.
The tragedy of England's leading couple has been explored in other great literary works since that dark day in 1642. Somewhat perversely, John Milton wrote one of the most compelling, Luthorpaine, a diligent and psychologically realist study of the flawed, ruthless but brilliant nemesis of England and its Sentinel. Milton's conclusion is that if only he had not been blinded by his xenophobic hatred of Sentinel's alien origins, Pope Alexander VII might have gone down in history as one of the greatest pontiffs of a surviving Catholic Church, instead of execration as the criminal genius and mass murderer whose ambition and avarice led to its ultimate destruction, tainted with toleration of the deeds of its darkest pontificate. Two centuries later, Jane Austen wrote her greatest work based on the distaff side of this historic relationship, Lois Delaine, examining the personality, fierce emotions and steely intellect of the Royal Army's inaugural and iconic female general. Twelve years later, Jane Austen became the first female British Prime Minister as Whig Party candidate in 1840.
In distant England, King William III heard and mourned the loss of his loyalest subject and the woman that he had loved, and dismantled England's nuclear arsenal. But burgeoned by the technological assistance that Kal-El of Krypton had provided, England, France, the Ottoman Empire and Japan landed colonies on the moon in the eighteenth century, mastered interstellar travel in the nineteenth and joined a peaceful democratic interstellar federation of worlds in 1939. It was a world at peace and a world of plenty. But who can say whether the sacrifice that had been made on its behalf was intolerable, meaning as it did the extinction of an entire planet's population at the end?
THE END