Servants to the King
by Marion Scott
Servants to the King is one of the best offerings in the clutch of novellas forming part of the 1993 Eden Book Society collection. Ostensibly written in that year by one “Marion Scott”, the story is set in a contemporaneous England that, at first, seems familiar, but is progressively revealed to be a counterfactual one. In this alternative history, the country is in the midst of political upheaval, the result of terrorist attacks and a pandemic that have fuelled xenophobic sentiment.
Against this dystopian backdrop, Kay Timmis investigates the death of her friend and erstwhile lover, photographer Neil Morrish. The police consider him a victim of a drug overdose. Kay is not convinced, especially since Neil had been acting strangely and, just before his death, had posted her a roll of film for safekeeping, containing photographs of an elusive politician named Gregory King.
Through meetings with Neil’s mother and his muse and final lover, Nadia, Kay begins to piece together Neil’s history, haunted by the unsolved disappearance (or likely kidnapping) of the brother of a teenage friend of his. This “cold case” might well be connected to the sleazy King, as well as to a mysterious “other place” that Neil used to refer to.
Servants to the King is an ambitious, genre-bending work, which packs, in under 100 pages, enough material for a doorstopper of a novel. It is a crime story of sorts, delivered in a package decorated with elements of dystopian and gritty urban Gothic. Somewhere in there, there’s also a poignant could-have-been love story, which is really nicely done. In Neil’s death, Kay finds a communion with him, vicariously through the memories of his mother and Nadia, perhaps bringing her closer to him than they ever were when they were lovers.
As if
this were not enough, the novella is made “Weird” (or “weirder”) through subtle
but clear references to a classic of weird fiction, Robert W. Chambers’ The
King in Yellow. These allusions are not essential to understanding the
story, but add an aura of unease to what is already a genuinely atmospheric
novella.
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