A Beggar's Kingdom Page 43

  “If you saw me compromised,” Mirabelle says, “like a shining knight might at the sight of his imprisoned princess, would you turn your eyes from me?”

  “No,” he says. “I would not.” He is about to forget every single thing he ever knew and fled and feared. Death has never seemed farther away.

  She slips the chemise off one shoulder, then the other, and stands topless, watching his face. Pulling the silk fabric down, she wriggles it past her hips. The chemise falls to the sand. She stands before him naked, exquisitely beautiful, her pale smooth skin shimmering in sunlight, her soft pink nipples hardening, her high breasts heaving with her breath.

  It’s hopeless now, truly hopeless.

  “I have never been touched by anyone,” Mirabelle says. “I have never been with anyone.”

  Julian nearly cries.

  “I have immortal longings in me,” she says. “I am fire and air.”

  He and the dying girl have crossed the border into an undiscovered country, where they will perish together.

  In one stride, he is by her side. He wraps his arms around her bare body before he kisses her. Why should there be a trace in her soul that remembers the agony of her death when there isn’t even a clarion bell in his, which has lived through it, grieved through it and knows? He rips off his tunic, waistcoat, shirt and presses her soft breasts into his bare chest, his lips opening her lips. Finally her skin is on his skin. They sink to their knees onto the blanket, their lips, their bodies together.

  Her hands rise up to touch his arms. “Mr. Cruz…I didn’t realize you needed to be so muscled to be a professor of literature.”

  “My studies are surprisingly rigorous, Miss Taylor.”

  Why should her body prickle from pain when he touches her? Why should her heart spasm from the wrenching memory of the love she felt for him just before she was shot, suffocated, burned, stoned, why should she be in terror when he himself feels nothing but hunger?

  “You think I’ve been happy?” She offers her white throat to his ravenous mouth, moans. “I haven’t been happy. I’ve been in dire want of joy, of a dream, of a brush with fire. How could you not have seen it?” She arches her back, offers her white breasts to him, moans.

  “I saw it.” He throws off his boots and breeches and stands naked before her.

  “I don’t want a mere brush with fire,” she whispers on her knees, looking up at him, reaching for him, her arms trembling. “I want it to go right through me.”

  “As you wish,” he says, kneeling in front of her, his palms on her back.

  “Would you turn your body from the body of your swooning princess?” She is held up by his arms. Her hands are on him.

  “No,” he says, lowering her to lie down on the blanket. “I would not.” He bends to her breasts.

  “Your hands, would you avert them?” She can barely get the words out through her rousing sighs.

  “No.” He grips her waist above her hips.

  “What about your lips? Would you avert them?”

  “No.” He presses his mouth against her white stomach.

  “What else would you keep from me?”

  His body is over her. “Nothing.”

  “Will you devour me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Overpower me?”

  “Yes.”

  “But gently at first,” she whispers. “Please. As gently as you are able.”

  “Yes.”

  “Julian…?”

  “Yes, Mirabelle?”

  “But only at first.”

  “Yes, Mirabelle.”

  Her moaning is like the song of the swallows before the summer’s end.

  It’s too late now for other kinds of salvation.

  Her softened body sublimates, melts in his hands, surrounding him, under him, under his mouth.

  Soon there will be nothing left of her.

  There is already almost nothing left of him.

  So kiss. Kiss until you forget your names, until the stars stop blazing down on dragons and horror shows, on black magic carnivals and comets of doom, on pistons in motion and cellar saloons. Kiss until dawn dissolves the earth.

  Her long arms wrap around him, her legs wrap around him. “You’re cruel is what you are,” she says, lying in his arms. Her hands caress him, fondle him. “Cruel and unfair. You say you have foreknowledge of forbidden things. You say my dream was a premonition. I ask all the more—then why would you keep yourself from me if you know this is all I will ever have? Especially if you know that. Why would you deny me just once in my life to know this? To know you?”

  He has built them a barricade with her whalebone petticoat to hide her from sunless Hades. He has laid her inside it and himself inside her, under the willows and the sky, he has lowered himself again and again into the fields of asphodel, into the immortal flower.

  “We should go back.” He cannot believe it is he who says this. He is just trying to protect what’s his, to keep them a secret, to hide them from the world. “Or soon they’ll send out a search party. You don’t want them to find us here in flagrante delicto, do you?”

  “What if I do,” she says. “Either way, I won’t be able to hide this from them. It’ll be on my face every time I look at you. One glance, and everyone will know what you did to me. What I wanted you to do to me.” She gazes at him. They lie embraced.

  “No, they won’t. You’ll act as if you don’t know me. You’ll act as if it never happened.”

  “But I do know you. It has happened. How do I hide that?”

  “You act,” Julian says.

  It must be late afternoon. They’ve been missing all day.

  Mirabelle, you are the source of all my joy—and all my misery. Bliss and sorrow are the headwaters of the brief eternity I spend with you.

  “I love you,” is what he says, and she cries.

  35

  My Love and I—a Mystery

  THERE’S NOT A GIRL MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN HIS GIRL THE night of the dance at Sydenham Hill Manor.

  Perhaps none more beautiful in all of England.

  Perhaps none more beautiful in all the world.

  They have spent an intoxicating week hiding their drunkenness from the adults, like two kids who have discovered beer and are giggling each time they steal one from the fridge. And they keep stealing and stealing, even though the adults have cottoned on and have started keeping the liquor in locked cabinets. Well, Mirabelle has discovered the taste of beer. Roused to something she had not fully imagined or understood, she has been crawling into his bed every night and keeping him awake until break of dawn. Julian, are you asleep? Julian…Ju-li-an…are you asleep?

  During the day, she was right, it has become impossible for them to get a minute alone together. Filippa and Prunella trail them everywhere. In the carriage, in the parks, in the stacks, even getting ice cream at Astley’s Circus, the two Pye women loiter at their side. It’s excruciating. He and Mirabelle cannot glance at each other without Filippa glaring at them, without Prunella interrupting them, distracting them. They are reduced to speaking to each other through the words of Spurgeon’s complex, elaborate sermon, “My Love and I—a Mystery,” which they’re almost finished transcribing.

  “How do we overcome the venom and vitality of the evil that rages upon us?” Julian reads aloud to Mirabelle, and she writes it down, sentence by sentence, phrase by phrase, word by word. “My love—tell me, how do we overcome it?”

  “We overcome it by patience.

  “We overcome it by faith.

  “We overcome it by hope.

  “We overcome it by perseverance.”

  “Hang on, Mr. Cruz,” Mirabelle says, “slow down. Don’t be so hasty. Let me get the last of your words down. You said perseverance?” Beat. “Not drive?”

  “Yes, Miss Taylor. Not drive.”

  “All right, I am ready for more. Please resume. Mr. Cruz, did you hear me? I am ready for more.”

  “Yes, Miss Taylor, I lost my place for a second.
Here we go. We resolve to love.

  “We will not be irritated into unkindness.

  “We will not be perverted from generous, all-forgiving affection.”

  “Wait, Mr. Cruz, slow down, let me catch up…all-forgiving…affection, got it.”

  “We set our helm toward the port of love, and toward it we steer—come what may.”

  “Come…what…may…very well, Mr. Cruz. Should we say helm, or rudder?”

  “Rudder is a fine word. Use it if you wish, Miss Taylor.”

  “I think I shall. I think I shall use rudder.”

  She doesn’t lift her eyes from the parchment. And he doesn’t lift his gaze from her head.

  But at night, after everyone is asleep, Mirabelle, silent like a tigress, crawls into his bed and falls into his arms, charging him with her happiness, exhorting him to keep her quiet, two commands as mutually exclusive as can be.

  I can’t take my eyes off you, Mirabelle. Even in darkness.

  Shh. Match my silence. Don’t do anything to me that will make me exhale too loudly—like that, don’t do that!

  Yes, Mirabelle.

  Caress me softly, don’t stop, but don’t caress me anywhere that will make me cry out—like there. Oh, God, Julian, or there. Or especially there…

  Yes, Mirabelle.

  Kiss me but do not kiss me with exultation. No exultation, I said!

  Yes, Mirabelle.

  Love me but without exultation, Julian.

  Yes, Mirabelle.

  I said without!

  Oh. I thought you said with.

  Now you’ve done it. Put your hand over my mouth. Throw the blankets over us. You’re impossible, you’re not following any of my instructions. Wait, wait! Let me turn over and press my face into the pillows, so no one can hear how flagrantly you’re disobeying me.

  Yes, Mirabelle.

  And slow down.

  Yes, Mirabelle.

  At the ball, her shiny hair is half-up, half-down, partly braided and loosely curled, and her mulberry dress is not so appallingly large as to prevent him from standing close to her. She wears a sparkling headband that looks like a diadem, a crown for royalty. She smells of violets and wine. Her lips are the color of violets and wine. Her dress is fluted gathered silk and satin with gold embroidery. The puff sleeves are off her shoulders. The neckline is low. Her skin is alabaster, from her forehead to her white breasts.

  The unworthy Julian stands next to her, barely able to breathe.

  All around them are twinkling lights and clinking crystal. Everyone’s face is dressed up with a smile. (Everyone’s but John Snow’s, who looks as if he’s come into contact with some awful, hateful thing.)

  The ballroom and the adjacent, equally loud dining hall are decorated with white roses and pink peonies. There’s china on the tables, long tapered candles, sparkling chandeliers, and in the corner a band. A piano, a cello, two violins, a bassoon. The evening is warm and the wall of French doors to the stone patio are flung open. A breeze cools the guests in their splendid frocks as the butlers pass around hot canapes and stemmed crystal glasses of Veuve Clicquot rosé champagne.

  “The French, God bless them, are still trying to find a way to rid the champagne of its delicate bubbles,” a chuckling Mirabelle tells Julian, clinking glasses with him. “But we British adore the bubbles.” She smiles.

  “Stop smiling at me,” Julian says, unable not to smile in return.

  “You don’t want me to smile at you?”

  “I’m begging you, behave yourself.”

  “Tell me, my love,” she says, leaning decorously to his ear, “do you think the rosé champagne will be more delicious or less delicious if you poured it over my body and kissed it off me?” Chortling, she glides away.

  Because he is technically not Mirabelle’s guest but Filippa’s, Julian must leave Mirabelle’s side. With Filippa dragging him hither and yon, he is introduced to the other patrons, as if he is her escort. As if he belongs to her.

  Julian is well received in his black trousers, gray tail coat and white cravat. He has shaved his whole face, though most of the other men sprout thick, bushy sideburns. Mirabelle prefers him clean-shaven, so that’s that. His longish dark hair is brushed back and left down his neck, while other men’s hair is short (or in the case of John Snow, non-existent). Because of the contrast, he stands out, he commands attention.

  The waitstaff uses Baker’s Peels—trays with long handles—to bring the ladies their food and drink, because they cannot reach them otherwise over the eight-foot-in-diameter petticoats.

  Before the dancing can begin, several people dressed for a lecture give wordy speeches on the importance of Florence Nightingale’s nursing work abroad while the genteel women stand and chafe in their enormous crinolines, and the men drink and check their pocket watches.

  Julian has a few minutes with John Snow. The man does not look well. Snow’s shiny bald head conveys his anxiety. He is constantly wiping it with his handkerchief. The hand that holds the wine glass is unsteady.

  “I haven’t seen you since our evening at the Taylors’, doctor,” Julian says. “How’s it going? Any luck?”

  “By luck, do you mean are people dying?” The man is in a mood. “You think you had a hard time convincing me?” Snow continues. “The Board of Health minister has refused to shut down the water pump on Broad Street I told him was responsible for the most recent outbreak of cholera—600 new cases just last month! He says my evidence is circumstantial. I told him you have 500 men in the city prison living in vile conditions and none of them is sick, yet here on your streets, 600 people contracted one disease, and that is circumstantial? He says, what would you have me do, Doctor Snow? Perhaps pump all the water out of the Thames and replace it with new water?” Snow tuts in disgust. “We’re doomed. Do yourself a favor, Julian, drink only wine or boiled water.”

  “On it, believe me,” Julian says.

  “I told the minister that death is coming into his home, death in the form of dirty water. Did he listen?”

  “Because it’s impossible to comprehend,” Julian says. “To fix it will require replumbing the largest city in the world.”

  “How about if we start small, I told him,” Snow says, “start with closing off the one blasted pump in Soho that’s causing most of the contamination.”

  “You’ll get there,” Julian says. “Be grateful cholera is not spread by body-to-body contact.”

  “What do you mean? How do you know? Is this from your dysentery study?”

  “It’s all about the water, John,” Julian says, touching his finger to his temple in a hat-tip. “Let’s go, the dancing is about to begin.”

  Wiping his bald dome, John Snow crawls to the dancing line as if dancing is cholera itself.

  Julian hopes he won’t make a fool of himself on the floor. What does he know of this kind of dancing? The men gather on one side, the ladies on the other, like the boys and girls at a wedding before “Paradise by the Dashboard Light.” The first man in the line steps forward, extends his hand to the lady, and they waltz, at a tempo too allegro for Julian’s inexperience. Up and down the ballroom, while the rest stand and applaud. The next pair steps forward. They dance, and then switch partners. And so on. Julian is around seventeenth. On the other side, his dazzling wine-colored bride awaits.

  Before he can dance with her, Julian must dance with Filippa. “Are you enjoying yourself, Mr. Cruz?”

  “Very much, Filippa. Thank you for inviting me.”

  “Oh, it’s my pleasure entirely!”

  Julian glimpses John Snow dancing with Mirabelle. She’s patting him consolingly. He must be telling her about the contaminated pump.

  Soon it’s Julian’s turn.

  Finally, finally! he has her in his arms. His left hand slides around her waist. Her right hand rests on his chest. Her shoulders are rounded, white, bare. He wants to lean forward and kiss them. He threads his fingers through hers as they dance.

  “You can’t look at me
like that, Mr. Cruz.” She pants slightly.

  “Like what, Miss Taylor?” He’s panting, too.

  Round and round they glide, swaying to the sound of violins.

  “Like you’re about to kiss me…”

  “Maybe you should try being less beautiful.”

  “Wait, you didn’t let me finish.” She lowers her voice to the barest whisper. “Like you’re about to kiss me—and not for the first time.”

  “Please—stop speaking, Miss Taylor, or I shall dishonor us both.”

  She giggles rapturously. “Do you know what Charles just told me?”

  “No,” Julian says. “What did he tell you, my love?”

  “He said that in order to find a good father for her children, a woman first must know good from evil. And that is no small feat.”

  “Well, he’s right about that.”

  “He told me I chose well.”

  “The pastor is very wise.”

  “He doesn’t even know how well.”

  “Mirabelle, shh!”

  Julian has two minutes with her on the dance floor. His face must show the torture of living under time flying, because Mirabelle pats him consolingly, too, and says, “Don’t worry so much. It’s all still ahead of us.”

  He stares at her as if he wants to drink her.

  They waltz the rest of their eternal minute in silence, their hearts overflowing.

  ∞

  Perspiring and hot, Julian steps outside to get some air. Spurgeon follows him out.

  “I see you’ve been dancing quite a lot with a certain ribbon-maker’s daughter, Charles.” Julian is teasing.

  “And you’ve been dancing quite a lot with a certain piano teacher’s daughter, Julian.”

  “I’m being polite.”

  “Me too.”

  The men smile. Behind them the music blares.

  “Julian, is it true?” Charles asks. “Aubrey told me that Mirabelle might not be going with Florence to Paris after all?”

  Julian stays composed. “Officially she’s made no decision yet.”

  “I don’t have to tell you that Aubrey and John are ecstatic. You have no idea how desperately they didn’t want her to go.”

  “Oh, I had some idea.”