The Grafter attack at the Checquy reception and the exposure of Rook Gestalt turned a violent interruption into evidence of a deeper institutional breach. Myfanwy judged that the reception attack was not the carefully organized coup it first appeared to be: in her account, it happened because she exposed Gestalt, whose combat ability and Court appointment did not make it capable of directing a sophisticated overthrow. The aftermath shifted responsibility for interrogating Gestalt to the Bishops, while leaving the Checquy to confront the possibility that its apparent loyalty and internal security had already been compromised.

Causes and Interpretation

After the reception, Myfanwy and Ingrid Woodhouse considered whether the attack signaled an imminent, coordinated seizure of the Checquy. Ingrid pointed to the weapons smuggled into Apex House and the danger they posed to those present. Myfanwy countered that the Checquy Court was not an ordinary political assembly: against its members, she argued, a dagger and pistol amounted to little. She therefore rejected the reception as the planned form of a coup, while allowing that the weapons might have been brought in preparation for some later action.

Myfanwy instead traced the attack’s immediate cause to her own disclosure of Gestalt’s identity. In her reconstruction, the violence at the reception was a response to Gestalt being exposed, not proof that Gestalt had devised a complete plan to overthrow the Court. That distinction separated an assault made under changed circumstances from the broader Grafter infiltration already under way.

Gestalt and the Infiltration

The exposure also raised the question of who within the Checquy had enabled the Grafters to gain influence. Myfanwy rejected the idea that Gestalt alone could have led the infiltration or engineered its political strategy. She had read the files and understood that Gestalt had been promoted to the Court for its extraordinary combat abilities, not for the sophistication needed to direct a coup.

She further told Ingrid that the Grafters had arranged her own promotion to the Court. Gestalt, she said, had let this slip while she was wearing her intimidating face. Myfanwy’s appointment had therefore not simply been an internal decision to balance Gestalt’s strength with someone able to manage the Rookery and domestic operations: she believed the Grafters had placed her there. Ingrid objected that one person, even one with four bodies, could not alone secure a Court appointment. The exchange left open how many people had participated, but made clear that the infiltration reached beyond the reception and involved the Checquy’s own appointments.

What the Attack Revealed

Ingrid’s recollection of Richard Whitlam sharpened the implications. He had served for thirty years as one of Bishop Alrich’s aides, had welcomed new Retainers, and had given Ingrid a cactus on her first day. The office rumor was that at the reception he drew a bone stiletto and tried to attack the Bishop. His long service and remembered kindness made the possibility of his Grafter allegiance especially unsettling: loyalty that had seemed unquestionable could not be taken as proof of security.

Myfanwy recognized the broader danger in Ingrid’s warning. Court members focused on whether secretaries or cleaning staff might attack them, but a compromised employee would not need to defeat the Court directly; access to the building could let the Grafters in. The reception thus exposed not only a visible attack but the vulnerability created by trusted people, hidden loyalties, and the Checquy’s existing secrets. Myfanwy felt that the Court had been so absorbed by the shock of the assault that it had missed this larger threat.

Interrogation and Aftermath

There was no trial for Gestalt. Myfanwy reported that Gestalt had not argued its innocence and that the attempt to kill those at the party was treated as sufficient proof of guilt. Although she proposed ways to secure Gestalt’s cooperation, she did not supervise the interrogation: she spoke to Sir Henry Wattleman and Lady Linda Farrier, who agreed that it would be inappropriate for her to oversee someone of the same rank.

The Bishops assumed responsibility, and Myfanwy had to wait for the interrogation to proceed. Her recollection of Bishop Alrich accepting that responsibility included his absently licking his lips, a detail that made her shudder. The episode ended not with a public adjudication or a clear account of the infiltration, but with the authority to question Gestalt transferred to the Bishops and Myfanwy left waiting to learn what they would discover.

Significance

The attack’s importance lies in the mismatch between its apparent scale and its deeper meaning. Myfanwy did not treat the reception as a successful coup; she treated it as an improvised attack that exposed a much more patient breach. Gestalt’s exposure revealed a hostile presence at the Court, while Myfanwy’s account of her own appointment suggested that the Grafters had shaped the institution’s leadership from within. Ingrid’s memories of Whitlam made that threat personal: the danger could wear the face of a trusted colleague, and the Checquy’s doors could matter more than any weapon brought into the room.