A Beggar's Kingdom Read online

  “That’s nothing but an old wives’ tale, you silly creature,” Cleon says, banging his long pole on the ground. “But woe to them that fall into the bottomless pit of serpents. Only sorcery opens it.” He glares at Julian with fear and hatred. “Don’t tell me it’s true what they’re all whispering about you. That you’re a left-handed warlock.” The old man shakes his head. “Leave me alone, and get out of here. What are you fooling with this stuff for? You don’t need it. She is here with you. There’s nothing but battle and torment on that footpath you’re trying to find.” He slams the door and locks it behind them.

  ∞

  Julian is flattened by his failure with Cleon. It doesn’t help that July is months from September. By the time he will need the foot tunnel, it will either be unnecessary or too late. And Miri is a sentient human being. She has her own will. She can’t be put in a burlap sack like a minted sovereign and hidden behind a brick in the wall. She can’t be knocked out and carried over his shoulder to the Isle of Dogs. She has followed his slow seduction this far, into his bed, onto his body. Why isn’t that enough?

  The tiny gargantuan marks on his arm tell Julian why.

  Dot 44.

  Dot 45.

  Misunderstanding his wordless anxiety, Miri eats pudding and pleads with him. It’s another few days until Fulko is gone to America and our worries are over. I know you don’t want to hide. I know you want more. You will have it. Why the tunnels, convict ships, marriage to someone else? Why are your measures to win my heart so drastic? You’ve won it. Rejoice.

  In new dresses, with ribbons in her hair and perfume that smells like hyacinth, Miri has been transformed into a gleaming philosophical woman. There are no more shivs, no more fleecings. She doesn’t need a convict ship or a first-class passage to a mythical place called Maine or a September sewer passage to the infinite meridian, into a breach wide enough for them both. She needs a few precious days of status quo. Fulko will soon return to St. Giles. There will be a church service to bless his journey. There will be a banquet in his honor. His mother Repentance will receive an extra donation because she’ll be losing a son. They will bid him farewell, and Fulko will be off to the seas. And Miri and Julian will be free.

  ∞

  From the pocket of his breeches, Julian pulls out two gold bands. Look what I made for us, he whispers, on his knees by the bed, holding the rings in the palm of his hand. I took my last sovereign to the goldsmiths on Cheapside. I had it melted down and cast into two rings. As soon as Fulko leaves, I want us to be married. Will you marry me, Miri?

  Tears trickle down her face. What a waste of a precious sovereign, she says. She slips the smaller band on her finger. How did you know what size to make for me?

  I have watched your hands for so long, he says, I’ve cast it from memory.

  They wear the rings in bed, raising their arms above their heads to the skies, staring at the gold, dimly sparkling in the sapphire night. Julian must gird himself to look past the rows of black dots lining the inside of his arm.

  I want to believe you so much, Julian, Miri says. But what about your fears for me? You keep telling me I’m in terrible danger.

  I’ve stopped telling you that, haven’t I. His voice is a whisper.

  Will marriage or Maine make me safe?

  Julian doesn’t reply.

  Miri lowers her arm. He lowers his. The rings come off. He drops them into his pocket, touches the crystal at his heart, and lies down next to her in heavy silence.

  Tell me the truth—do you still feel that I’m not safe?

  Not when we’re here, he replies. But when you leave these rooms? Yes.

  Do you know what me mum tells me every night when I come back to St. Giles? Miri says. She tells me to forget her and follow you. Even to the tunnels under the Isle of Dogs, Mum? I ask. Even there, she says. She has no future, she says, but I still have mine.

  In their white and blue room, Julian’s silence is a tomb.

  Do I, Julian? Miri whispers. Do I have a future?

  Julian can’t answer her in Grosvenor Square where everything smells like lilac and lavender, where the honking boats on the distant Thames and the clops of the blacks and bays on the London streets lay a soundtrack to their fleeting lifelong love affair.

  23

  Bowl of St. Giles

  SOMETIMES THE WORLD SHINES AT DAWN, LEAFY TREES against the shimmering river, the light of azure rising with pink and gold. The water is a gleaming mirror, there’s no wind, there is no sound. St. Paul’s, the Savoy Palace, Blackfriars, St. Magnus are all reflected in the Thames. The sky is a painting. The world is a painting. There’s an unruffled promise of another day.

  And sometimes, there isn’t.

  As Julian and Miri approach Seven Dials, they’re animated and brisk, debating whether to pay a visit to Pastor Wyatt to ask about the exact date of Fulko’s impending furlough. At Monmouth Street and Hog Lane, Julian squints at a figure of a corpulent woman, hobbling on the stones, weakly waving a walking stick. Look, Julian says. That almost looks like your mother.

  Miri laughs. Agatha has not walked outside Seven Dials in five years.

  It is Agatha. “Miri, Miri!” she cries. There’s commotion behind her.

  “What is it, Mum?” They run up. “What are you doing out? Julian, see if you can find her a stool, she’s going to fall.”

  “No! Run.” Agatha clutches her daughter. “They’re coming for you.”

  Growing cold, Julian looks around the street. A bizarre energy slices the air, molecules of venom swirling.

  “Fulko’s been hanged!” Agatha hisses, wheezing.

  “What? That’s impossible!” cries Miri.

  “And Monk’s out for your blood. Run, Miri!”

  Julian doesn’t listen any further. He pulls Miri as fast as he can down Hog Lane.

  But it’s too late. Hell has been emptied out. Its minions are in the streets.

  A dozen boys from the hood surround them, thieves and vagrants, blackbirds, Gaelic drunks. They’ve all obviously been promised a dram of rum to stop Miri and Julian from getting away. Another dozen men rush forward from Earl Street, Mortimer out front.

  “Where was you, Miri?” Mortimer asks in a lethal timbre, his limbs twitching. “Yesterday, you didn’t show up all day. Maybe if you was here, you’d know yer groom drank a bowl of ale in St. Giles on his way to Tyburn for his execution.”

  “Mort, there has to be some mistake! It can’t be.”

  The hoodlums keep trying to grab Julian’s hands. He elbows one guy in the face, strikes another.

  “And you should’ve thought twice before you took another man’s wife,” Mortimer says to Julian. “Now you will pay.”

  “She’s not his wife,” Julian says. The thugs keep trying to restrain him and he keeps jabbing them to hurt them. The street grows crowded with screamers and thieves.

  “Tell that to the judge,” Mortimer says. “And to Monk, whose brother is dead.”

  A human chain of hooligans shouts from Monmouth Street all the way to Neal’s Yard where Monk is. “We got ’em, Monk! They’re here, they’re here.”

  “Mort, what happened?” Miri asks, amid the angry ruckus.

  “Monk went to Pastor Wyatt to ask about Fulko,” Mortimer tells her, towering above all, eyes darting up and down the street. “We hadn’t heard a thing about his release, so the pastor went to inquire at the Old Bailey. He couldn’t find a Colin Ford, the man you claimed you spoke to. Then he learned that Colin Ford retired a fortnight ago.”

  “Retired?”

  “Yes. Without leaving behind any paperwork for a commutation for Fulko like you promised. As Fulko was sentenced, so he was hanged, yesterday, precisely at noon. And you would’ve known that, Miri, had you been here, and not with him.” Mortimer spits in Julian’s direction.

  Miri is in shock. She’s also anxious for her mother. Propped against a building, Agatha is being held back by two of her friends from the neighborhood.

  “Lea
ve my mum alone!” Miri yells.

  “Leave my daughter alone!” Agatha yells from the other side of the street.

  Accompanied by Pastor Wyatt, Monk appears on Earl Street, running to where Julian and Miri stand lassoed. There’s frenzy in the air. Next to the priest are four constables. That Monk doesn’t care he’s in such proximity to the authorities from whom he’s been on the lam his entire life speaks to his turmoil. He is also stuporously drunk, as is Jasper.

  “Here they are, pastor!” Mortimer says, grabbing Miri, whom he is supposed to love, by the collar. Before Julian can intercede, little Miri rips away and kicks Mortimer hard in the knee with the stacked heel of her shoe. Howling in pain, a hobbled Mortimer drops to the ground.

  Miri is crying. She tries and fails to break through the mob, to make her way to Monk and Jasper, who are tottering from the gin. Julian remains shoulder to shoulder by Miri’s side, shielding her body from grasping hands. “Monk,” Miri cries, “I’m so sorry! We give that man money. I promise you, we give that man money for Fulko.”

  Monk wails, unable to form coherent words.

  Back on his feet, Mortimer limps toward Miri. “You say you give him money,” he says. “All we have is your word. You gave Fulko your word, too.”

  “Don’t speak to me, traitor,” Miri says to Mortimer.

  “You told us you pled the belly,” Mortimer says. “Is the belly because of him?” He stabs at Julian with his finger. “Did you go begging for Fulko’s life full of another man’s seed?”

  “No! It was just a lie to help Fulko!” Miri stretches out her hand to her drunk friend. “Monk, please believe me!”

  “Coining is a crime punishable by death,” one of the constables says to Miri. “Mortimer showed us some of the fake silver you been making. Is that what you give the magistrate? No wonder he didn’t help you.”

  “Them aren’t mine! Mortimer, what have you done?”

  Mortimer averts his gaze. While Julian and Miri were welded together, Fulko was hanged. In Mortimer’s eyes, that justifies everything he says and does.

  Miri grabs desperately at Julian. Is this it? she whispers. Is this what you saw for me?

  “I thought you was on our side, Miri.” Monk slurs his words, as if he can’t quite get them past his throat.

  “Monk, what are you talking about? Colin Ford deceived us!”

  “Who is Colin Ford to me? But you owe me,” Monk says. “You owed me brother, and you betrayed him.”

  “Betrayed us all,” Mortimer adds.

  “Shut the fuck up, Mort!” yells Miri. “I did everything I could, Monk! It wasn’t my fault!”

  “That man lured you away from us with his black magic,” says Mortimer, pointing at Julian with hate in his eyes.

  “You were right about him, Mort!” Monk sobs. “I should’ve listened.”

  “Monk, what are you talking about?” Miri cries. “You and I are family.”

  “No,” Monk says. “Me brother was me family. Yer nothing to me now. You chose that man over us.” Monk spits in Julian’s direction. “You chose him over me brother.” Monk’s face is distorted by grief and spite. “Arrest them, constable! They killed me brother! They’re coiners and thieves! They’re witches and warlocks!”

  Julian grabs Miri’s hand. Mortimer throws himself across their path. Julian hits Mortimer, lays him out. Two other men grab Miri. In the melee, Julian and Miri are separated. She fights. He fights. No one can hold Julian, but very soon they hold Miri.

  When he sees that she’s in their clutches, Julian stops struggling. He and Miri are thrown to the ground, and their hands and feet are bound with rope. He tries to catch her eye, but her head is turned away. She is searching for her mother, yelling in the direction of Agatha’s piercing sobs. “It’s okay, Mum,” she keeps calling out, “it’s okay, Mum…”

  In two prison transports, Julian and Miri are carted to Newgate. In the vibrating wagon, on the floor next to two other tied-up men, Julian hears the receding sound of the clopping horses pulling the second wagon, the Doppler effect of hope and love and all that’s good in the world, carrying away the receding Miri.

  ∞

  At Newgate, in a concrete cell, Julian has days to count and recount the 46 dots on his arm.

  On the morning of what would be dot 49, he is taken to the courtroom at the Old Bailey, where there’s no barrister defending him. Julian stands in the dock, and one by one, the people he knew from the rookery step up into the witness box and describe in florid and unembellished detail the things Julian has told them. They tell the judge how he knew before anyone else about the defeat in Lexington and Concord. One by one, they accuse him of allegiance to the Rebels. They describe how he appeared on the scene out of nowhere, as if by magic, in a strange suit made of Lord knows what, and how he told them he was from the future and had invented a time machine. How he put magic potions on the legs of an invalid and healed her unhealable sores and told another woman to chew on magic grass and made her walk for the first time in years.

  Miri is brought in.

  He is a warlock, the witnesses declare, and she is a witch who consorts with warlocks. She has pled the belly to the magistrate. Her unborn child is the devil’s spawn. Ten men come forward to say she robbed them and took their clothes. A constable says they found counterfeit coin on the cellar floor where Miri sleeps. Eleven men step up to claim Julian punched a man with his left hand with intent to kill him. That the man lived is dumb luck, but they accuse Julian of attempted murder.

  The judge is the Honorable John Jenkins, the one Colin Ford promised he would speak to after snatching Julian’s gold. “Either you’re telling the truth,” Jenkins says to Julian, “and are guilty of witchcraft, or you are lying to simple folk, using false words to threaten, cajole, confuse and endanger the decent people of this city. You live idly and assault the true and good subjects of the realm. You have no papers, which is also against the law. You cannot prove by any method who you are or where you’re from. Have you anything to say in your defense?”

  Julian has nothing to say in his defense. He says only one thing. “Punish me as you see fit, your honor. But the young woman by my side is innocent of any wrongdoing.”

  Miri speaks. The magistrate, Colin Ford, she says, took a gold sovereign from them, promising to commute Fulko Gib’s sentence.

  A gold sovereign? Where did this so-called sovereign come from, you?

  Miri says nothing. All eyes turn to Julian.

  “Speak up,” the judge says to him. “Where would you or your consort get a sovereign coin from?”

  Julian says nothing. He wants to tell them that he acquired the coin from Lord Fabian, Master of the Mint back in 1666, long deceased, but fears it won’t serve his cause. He wishes he still had the fourth and last coin, to prove to them he is telling the truth, but he sold it to make the wedding rings for him and Miri.

  “There are four things wrong with your malicious lie,” Judge Jenkins tells Miri. “One, we’ve just established. You are not the kind of people to be in possession of a priceless coin. Two, the magistrate has taken his retirement, so he’s not here to defend himself. Three, what you’re accusing the honorable Colin Ford of is accepting bribery. It is a crime against the realm to offer a bribe to a high officer of the law and for him to accept one. And four, even if you did have such a coin, and Colin Ford were here to defend himself, and he did accept this bribe, the magistrate has no power of clemency.”

  “He took our money with the promise that you would help us, sire,” Miri says. “He told us that you had such power.”

  Judge Jenkins stares at Miri for a long time.

  He sentences them first to the pillory and then Julian to two years hard labor and Miri to two years in a workhouse. “You’re both getting off lightly,” Jenkins tells them. “Especially, you,” he says to Julian, “for you have no defense for the crimes you’ve committed. By all rights, the girl should be hanged for coining and thievery, and you, sir, should be burned at the sta
ke for witchcraft. Here’s your clemency—you’re escaping with your wretched lives. Be grateful.”

  In two separate wagons, Miri and Julian are pulled to Charing Cross, not far from the statue of the executed Charles I, to be set upon the pillory for public abuse and humiliation during the busiest hour of lunchtime. The pillory is part of the underbelly of the mercantile pageantry of London’s shopping avenues. The pickpockets and petty criminals get pelted and harassed in full view of the people they have rolled.

  Side by side, the shackled Julian and Miri stand on a round platform, surrounded by beggars and balladmongers, while the new magistrate named Brian Hanney—a young, stringy man with a promising career of apathy ahead of him—nasally drones out the proclamation of their guilt. Julian is condemned for inciting a riot by his loud anti-Royalist assertions. They’re both guilty of perjury, slander, fraud, robbery, vagrancy, and bribery of an appointed court official. The pelting is to begin in precisely one minute, Brian Hanney announces, and to last precisely one hour. Before Julian can utter a word of complaint, an excitable youth lobs a soft tomato at the stage, which misses Julian and hits the magistrate, squelching him in the neck.

  Oh, it’s not a youth. It’s Jasper. He’s armed with a basket of rotting fruit. Monk stands next to him. Miri stares at Monk with heartbreak and condemnation. Unable to bear her gaze, he hides behind Jasper’s back.

  “I said in precisely one minute!” Brian Hanney yells, wiping the red juice off his white collar. “Or you will be next, whoever dares throw early!”

  While the magistrate attempts to control the crowd, a manacled Julian creeps toward Miri. He can’t touch her arm or take her hand. He does the only thing he can. He presses his forehead against her head. “Listen to me,” he says. “Look up, look at me.”

  Her body trembling, she looks up.

  “Don’t be afraid, Miri,” he says to her. “You’re going to be okay. I promise you. It’s going to be all right. Don’t be afraid.”