A Beggar's Kingdom Read online

  “Sir…”

  “My advice? I wouldn’t wait too long to make my intentions clear.”

  “Why?”

  “I just wouldn’t, that’s all,” George Airy says cryptically as he shakes Julian’s hand. “Whatever we do in life, we ought to do it well, don’t you agree? We ought to do it the best we can. And most expeditiously.”

  “I agree, but…”

  “Tell Mirabelle what I told my Ricky after knowing her but two days.”

  Julian is afraid to ask.

  “I told her, my dear, your fate is sealed.” George Airy smiles. “Cheerio, Julian. Go. Mirabelle is waiting for you.”

  32

  Pathétique

  JULIAN IS BOTH ENTHRALLED AND IN TURMOIL. THEY TAKE their tea and gooseberry jam in the drawing room, where they listen to Mirabelle play the grand piano, a Steinweg no less, the German version of a Steinway. Despite her earlier protestations, she plays beautifully. She plays Mozart’s “Requiem” and Bach’s Partita in E Minor. She plays Beethoven’s “Pathétique,” one of Julian’s favorites.

  He has walked in on her contented life, he thinks as she plays, he has found her purposeful and needed, beautiful and young. Why can’t he leave her be? There’s no pity for her here, the pity is only for himself. She isn’t Miri. She isn’t Mallory. She isn’t Mary with Lord Falk to contend with. Everything is enchanted in Mirabelle’s perfect world. She is busy. She is comely. She is loved. She can continue to transcribe the sermons of a pastor, help a genius astronomer, play music. She can sing, ride horses, be adored. She is so safe.

  All he must do is nothing.

  Julian can hardly tear his eyes away from her. But when he catches sight of her mother’s expression, Aubrey’s face for some reason looks like his. Worship stained with wretched desperation. This is worrying, and after the piano music, the conversation steers in a direction that Mirabelle herself finds worrying.

  “Mirabelle is my life, Julian,” Aubrey says. “She is the reason I get up in the morning.”

  “Thanks for that, woman,” says John Taylor, her husband and the father of her only child. A smiling Mirabelle goes to sit by her father, putting an affectionate arm over the man’s shoulders.

  Aubrey waves them off. “You know what I mean, John.” She continues to Julian, “She is most precious to me because I had her so late in life. We had given up, John and I, hadn’t we, darling?”

  “Woman, please. This man does not care one whit when you gave birth.”

  “It’s true, Mummy,” Mirabelle says. “He really doesn’t.”

  “We thought the blessings of parenthood would be denied us,” Aubrey goes on. “And then—it was like John was Abraham and I was Sarah!” The mother blows her nose. “But if you were going to have just one child, what a one to have.”

  “Mummy, please! Father, stop her.”

  “You know nothing can stop your mother once she gets going,” John says. “She is an internal combustion engine without a switch.”

  “Or a clock without an escapement,” says Julian.

  “Indeed!” John Taylor nods approvingly at Julian.

  Aubrey complains to Julian that between the Arts Council, the Observatory, Mirabelle’s duties for Spurgeon, her work with Coventry Patmore, her hours at the Hospital for Sick Children and at some vague place called the Institute, her daughter is neglecting her leisure time.

  Mirabelle is not amused. “Mummy,” she says, “is it possible for anyone, anyone at all, to talk about anything else but me when guests are present?”

  “No, angel. And Julian is hardly a guest. He is going to be your co-worker. We need to acclimate him to your schedule. He has to know what he will face come Monday morning.”

  “He’s only agreed to help me prepare the sermons for publication, Mummy, not be shackled to me like we’re on a railroad gang.”

  Spurgeon smiles fondly at Mirabelle. “Our Mirabelle works as I do, Julian. Nonstop. As if she’s running out of time.”

  “Charles, please!” Aubrey and Mirabelle and John Taylor and Julian all exclaim. The clock in the drawing room strikes the eleventh hour.

  “I’m just being jovial,” Spurgeon says to them. “Of course, she’s not running out of time. Julian, why are you chiming in? Why do you look unwell suddenly?”

  “It was the liver, Mummy,” says Mirabelle. “No Welshman likes liver. I told you and you didn’t listen.”

  “Charles does have a point, though, darling,” Aubrey says. “You’ve all but abandoned your horses, your stables, your flowers, your reading and your fishing. Your sewing work is thrown in the corner and your piano playing is rusty. You’re neglecting being young, my child.”

  “When did Charles make this point, but more important, Mr. Cruz cares a fig about this why?”

  “The girl is correct, Aubrey,” John Taylor says. “You’ve gone on interminably. Trust me—your harangue is not having the effect that you think it is.”

  “Hush, now,” Aubrey says. “I was merely prefacing my next question to Julian. Do you know how to ride? Maybe you’d like to go riding with Mirabelle tomorrow morning at dawn? We have a docile gray mare for you, so light she’s almost white, a beautiful horse.”

  Julian doesn’t answer.

  Perhaps seeing his reluctance, Mirabelle answers for him. “College professors do not ride horses. Mummy, Charles, leave the poor man alone!”

  Meanwhile Julian is battling with himself. Why couldn’t they go riding? They’re not riding naked, are they? It’s just a friendly canter. He’s being given a chance to be her friend. He’s being given a chance not to fail, but to succeed!

  What a remarkable thing man is, Julian thinks, digging his nails into his palms. He can talk himself into anything. Deny every single thing that came before so he can have what he wants.

  “If Miss Taylor doesn’t mind accompanying me, I would like that,” Julian says.

  “I don’t mind, Mr. Cruz.”

  The parents and Charles Spurgeon beam.

  Julian doesn’t beam.

  ∞

  At dawn the next morning, Mirabelle, sharply dressed in maroon velvet breeches and tall riding boots, knocks on his bedroom door. She wears a short black cropped jacket and a tall black hat fastened under her chin. It’s quite similar to what Julian is wearing, except his breeches aren’t velvet and his black jacket is neither fitted nor cropped. He wears no white lace around his throat. But their hats are nearly identical, and this makes them smile as they acknowledge it. They walk along the narrow path to the stables. Laughter is better than the tightening of his heart as Julian remembers Mary, forever ago, who is now, in every sense, irretrievable.

  He can’t help himself. “This is so familiar, isn’t it, Miss Taylor?”

  “I don’t know what you mean. Which part?”

  All Julian can do is shake his head.

  “It seems natural for us to go riding,” Mirabelle goes on, “but otherwise what do you mean by familiar?”

  “I’m not sure what I mean.” Shut up, Julian.

  The Saturday morning riding lessons while Ashton sleeps and the rainy days back in Clerkenwell being taught by Cedric finally pay off. Julian saddles and dresses his own horse, he mounts it—more or less assuredly—and rides alongside her. Mirabelle is a beautiful rider. It comes naturally to her. Well, it should. She learned to ride at Collins Manor, when she was a noble lady and her father was a knight in the Elizabethan realm.

  Side by side, Julian and Mirabelle ride in the open country. What a time to be out with her in the cool blue dawn. It’s utterly quiet. Most of Sydenham hasn’t woken yet. The soft sopping hills surround them as they amble through the trails on their graceful steeds. Julian is well aware how they look. A treasure for a painter and his watercolors, black and maroon, riders on horseback, a man and a woman, once and future lovers, etched against the misty horizon on ashen mares.

  And I looked, and beheld a pale horse: and his name that sat upon him was Death, and Hell followed with him.
/>   That wipes the softened smile off Julian’s face, mutes him, and in a dumbshow they ride the rest of the way to the lake, where they dismount and let their horses drink, tying them to a weeping willow.

  “Would you like to take a walk in the hills, Mr. Cruz?” She glances at his boots. “You’ll get muddy, but…”

  “Lead the way, Miss Taylor.”

  After strolling for a few minutes up a foot path that winds around the lake, Mirabelle grimaces apologetically. “I hope you can forgive my parents for their exuberance.”

  “There is nothing to forgive.”

  “They had me so late in life. That’s one of the reasons they’re so overwrought.”

  One of the reasons? As if there are others?

  “Did I say they? I meant Mummy.”

  “Well,” Julian says, “over-protectiveness is a mother’s prerogative. My own mother had six of us, me and my brothers. I would often wake up in the middle of the night to find her in a chair in my bedroom staring at me. Not sleeping, mind you. Staring.”

  “Oh, that’s precious. How old were you?”

  “Eighteen.” They both laugh. “She’d say, I’m making sure you’re still breathing. You were out so late, or you had another fight…”

  “Another fight?”

  Come on, Julian. “Youthful indiscretions.”

  “It’s the qualifier before the word fight that intrigues me.” She slows down and stops walking. “I just realized around the lake is at least three miles, and we’ve already been out so long. Perhaps we should start back. Before they worry.”

  Reluctantly they turn around. After a few minutes of walking downhill, Julian clears his throat. “I have a question about your parents, Miss Taylor. If they’re as overwrought as you say, may I ask why they allow you to be out with me without a chaperone?”

  “What do you mean, Mr. Cruz?”

  “You don’t know what I mean?”

  Stretching her arms to the sky, Mirabelle twists her back languorously to crack it. “Well, Uncle George cares nothing for social norms. That’s Filippa’s mother’s purview.” She smirks. “My uncle is governed by one thing only: a ruling desire for order. The thing that too often makes him consumed with filing his correspondence instead of understanding its contents.” Affection softens her already softened face.

  “That’s the prerogative of genius,” Julian says. “To be as eccentric as he needs to be. But I don’t mean him. What about your parents, what about Charles Spurgeon? An unattached woman allowed to ride alone at dawn with an unfamiliar man?”

  “But you just said we were so familiar.” She’s teasing him.

  He returns her smile. “I would say not just allowed but encouraged.”

  “You’re right. Frankly, I’m as baffled as you are. Should we ask them upon our return?”

  “You do agree it’s out of the norm, then?”

  Mirabelle shrugs. “It’s a sad state of affairs, frankly, as far as I’m concerned. It seems that my family has finally made uneasy peace with the fact that any imminent danger to my honor has passed.”

  “They can’t possibly…” Is that what’s happening? “Has it passed?”

  “Oh, quite, Mr. Cruz. I’m twenty-five. There’s a point in every woman’s life when a chaperone is simply no longer required.”

  “I didn’t realize you were at that point, Miss Taylor.” Julian doesn’t look at her, doesn’t catch her eye.

  “Obviously I am,” Mirabelle says with a hearty laugh.

  Intently he studies the dirt path under their feet.

  “Charles likes you and trusts you,” Mirabelle says. “To my mother that speaks volumes.”

  But volumes about what?

  “Are you intimating by your non-response that Charles’s trust is misplaced?” she asks.

  “No, no,” Julian hurries to say. “Of course not.”

  “Again, I don’t know if I should take that as a compliment or an insult, Mr. Cruz.”

  And Julian gets flustered! Like a school girl! My God, what’s wrong with him.

  They return to their horses. Yes, okay, he is hopeless, Julian thinks as he unties his mare. But it can’t be hopeless. He needs to keep his hands off her. Not forever. Just until the end of September.

  Apparently, he can’t even do that for the next five minutes.

  “Would you help me mount my horse, please?” Mirabelle asks. “My arms are sore from riding, and I’m having trouble lifting my foot into the stirrup.” She holds on to the saddle. Julian comes up behind her. “Just give me a slight lift, Mr. Cruz.” Glancing back at him, she smiles. “It’s good practice for Pippa’s ball. If you’re still planning to attend, that is, and haven’t been called back to Bangor.”

  If Julian were to touch her like this at the dance—lifting her by her hips from behind—he’d be thrown into the dungeons. His thoughts must be plain on his face, and yet for all her decorum, Mirabelle doesn’t look away from him, nor does she blush while she is alone with him under the willows. “Don’t worry so much,” she says in a subdued breathy purr. “Our pastor has vouched for you. That’s a recommendation that might as well come from Lord Jesus himself. With Charles’s blessing, Mummy and Father would let you inside my bedroom if you wished.”

  Hopeless!

  Spurgeon may trust him, but Julian doesn’t trust his own hands to lift her.

  “I jump and you lift,” she says, blushing.

  Finally she blushes.

  Julian manages to place his hands on her hips, manages to lift her.

  “You are quite strong,” Mirabelle says, grabbing the reins. “Why does a professor of literature have such strong hands? Is it from all that fighting the professor had done when he was young?”

  Julian can’t answer her. He can’t even make a joke about it. All the better to lift you with, my dear. Her beauty has stolen the humor from him. The horses begin a slow walk back to the stables. The man and woman ride in silence. How will Julian ever attain the capacity to deny himself the most sublime thing ever offered man? It is not in his skill set. He doesn’t know how he will do it. To save her, to save her.

  You’d think upon their return there would be a reprimand for being out so long. But no. There’s only clucking regard. “Look at you two. You look so flushed. You must be famished.” Aubrey embraces her daughter. “I’ve prepared a meal for you in the kitchen. But next time you two go riding, you should bring a picnic basket. That way you could have a lovely meal by the water. Mirabelle, did you show Julian the lake?”

  “Yes, Mummy.”

  “Did he like it?”

  “He’s standing right here, I permit you to ask him yourself.”

  “Did you show him the beautiful view from the hills around the lake?”

  “He’s in front of you, Mummy. Ask him.”

  “Did you show him the boat? You didn’t, did you? We have a small boat, Julian. Perhaps you two can go rowing. Mirabelle is a very good rower.”

  “And a beautiful rider. Your daughter seems to do many things well.”

  The mother dissolves like sugar in hot pride. “She does, doesn’t she?” Once again there’s that expression. Love steeped in anguish.

  In the kitchen, Julian and Mirabelle devour the cold roast beef with biscuits, downing some ale with it, even Mirabelle, but not before clinking her stein to his. When they look up, John and Aubrey are standing at the kitchen door, watching them.

  “Mummy, Father, for the love of God, I beg you—go away.”

  “Take your time, child,” John says. “But allow yourself a few minutes to rest and to change. Doctor Snow is coming for supper.”

  “John Snow?” Julian says.

  “He’s a family friend,” Mirabelle says. “He often visits on Saturdays.” She leans in. “Don’t be jealous of him.”

  Julian stammers. “I won’t—I’m not—why—”

  “I’m joking.” She laughs.

  And Julian: “Should I be?”

  Mirabelle shakes her head happily. “He d
id ask me to marry him a few months ago, if you must know.”

  “Is there anyone who hasn’t asked you to marry him, Miss Taylor?”

  “Yes, I suppose there is, Mr. Cruz.” She lifts her eyes to him. They exchange a pregnant glance. Julian is first to look away.

  “I declined Doctor Snow’s offer,” Mirabelle says. “I knew he didn’t want to marry me.”

  “Why ever not?”

  “Thank you marvelous much for that! Because John Snow is a scientist.”

  As if being one somehow precludes the other.

  Mirabelle may be right about John Snow. He is immune to her charms. The man is a grave, humorless, utterly bald gentleman, a few years older than Julian. His black eyes are ringed with exhaustion.

  Before supper is served, they sit in upholstered yellow chairs in the parlor, drink wine and eat canapes. Snow holds the plate of food and the glass of wine but doesn’t eat or drink. He is a decent but deeply distracted man. Though he is next to Mirabelle, he doesn’t sit especially close, as if he is grateful for the whalebone hoops under her blue lace dress that force him to keep his distance. Snow is immune even to her sincere interest in his life’s work, which is a tell-tale sign that a man does not love a woman, as far as Julian is concerned. When they discuss medicine and infection, Mirabelle seems as fascinated in microorganisms as she is in Bach’s partitas and the irresistible grace in Spurgeon’s sermons, yet John Snow could not care less. “Doctor Snow is the preeminent authority on infectious diseases,” Mirabelle tells Julian in a proud sisterly tone.

  “Cholera and the Crimea are the two banes of our current existence!” John Snow exclaims in clipped Northern English, somewhat more forcefully than the casual parlor room conversation calls for.

  Before Julian can open his mouth to ask a reasonable follow-up question (“What the hell does Crimea have to do with anything?”), Mirabelle and her parents jump up. Fussing, they grab the drink and the canapes from the scientist’s hands, and loudly call to the kitchen, inquiring about the status of supper.

  “John is close to making a revolutionary discovery of the causes of cholera,” Mirabelle says when everyone settles down again.