A Beggar's Kingdom Page 44

  “They credit you with helping her to change her mind.”

  Perhaps Julian has helped her slightly, by using some of his powers of persuasion. “It’s her decision, Charles. She’s a strong, independent woman. She’s got her own mind, as you know.”

  Charles hesitates. “Have you made your decision yet?”

  “Not officially.”

  “Why haven’t you asked for her hand, Julian? What are you waiting for? The Taylors will throw you a party that will make this one look like sedate afternoon tea at teetotaling Prunella’s. Half of London will come.”

  “I’m not making any plans.” Until September 21.

  Spurgeon studies Julian’s flushed, impenetrable face.

  “Does it feel right,” Charles asks, “to keep away from her?”

  Julian admits it does not. It has felt ugly and wrong. And he hasn’t kept away from her. If only.

  “I can see you’re still struggling with something,” Spurgeon says. “But how can the struggle for love mean you are kept apart? It flies in the face of everything we know about love. Love is a bond. A bond unites human beings, binds them together. In the ultimate bond, they’re bound together so utterly, they become as one. One flesh, one heart, one soul, one love. How can the opposite of that also be love? It’s almost as if you’re serving two masters. As if your house is divided.”

  Julian tilts his head in assent. “Indeed, my house may be divided,” he says.

  “Love is light,” Spurgeon says. “The rest is darkness. You fight against the darkness, that’s the answer. Isn’t that what you’ve been doing your whole life? It’s what I preach from dawn to dusk. You don’t give in to it. You fill the day with what joy you can, with what light you can. Look, I must go inside. I, for one, firmly believe we shouldn’t keep our girls waiting.” A smiling Spurgeon pumps Julian’s hand. “Live as if you have infinite time, Julian. The way our Lord lived, though He knew the Cross was drawing near. Live as if both gardens dwell inside you, side by side, Eden and Gethsemane.”

  After Spurgeon leaves, Julian stands by the railing, gulping the night air, still slightly out of breath. He glances back inside the ballroom. A purple whirl of Mirabelle floats by in a fluid loop.

  Down below him, in the depth of the garden, he hears quickening hissing voices. Julian recognizes them. It’s Filippa and her mother. Julian’s attention is diverted from the gauzy lights to the acrid darkness where the young woman stands and speaks.

  She is complaining stridently to Prunella.

  “Why does she always get her way, Mummy? You know she’s doing it on purpose, she doesn’t even care about him! She doesn’t even want him. She just wants me not to have him. It’s so unfair! Sometimes I hate her, I really do. I know it’s not ladylike to say, but what she is doing is so unkind!”

  “Darling, please don’t be cross, you’ll get wrinkles in your lovely cheeks, don’t make that face, the frown won’t leave your forehead. I know you’re upset, have you tried telling her how you feel?”

  “Of course I’ve told her! You don’t even want him, I keep saying.”

  “And what does she say?”

  “She says she can’t help it if a man is interested in her.”

  “Did you ask her to put in a good word for you?”

  “Yes, and do you think she has done so? The other night, when he left the room, and I complained about her forward behavior, she actually had the gall to say to me that nothing she could say to a man could make him stop loving one woman and love another. She actually used the word love, Mummy! Now do you see why I’m so cross? And she was so infuriatingly calm about it, too.”

  “And what did you say in reply?”

  “I accused her of enticing him.”

  “And what did she say?”

  “She said, well, Pippa, dahrrrling”—Filippa affects a posh breathy tone to mock Mirabelle—“I can hardly help whom he’s interested in, can I? And then, listen to this—then! she said, Pips, have you tried being more interesting? The cheek!”

  “Peanut, she’s teasing you. She’s not doing anything to entice him. Come now. All you have to do is wait her out. You know that. Just a few weeks to go, and she’s gone! Gone! To the Crimea. With any luck, she’ll get some horrible disease and come back all wasted and disfigured.” Even as she says it, Prunella coughs uncomfortably. “Look at the things you’re making me say. I would never forgive myself if something were to happen to that poor girl in Turkey.”

  “Mummy, you understand nothing, you see nothing, you’re blind! Blind! Listen to me! Don’t you see what’s happening here? I greatly fear that Mirabelle may go back on her vaunted word and not go with Florence to Scutari.”

  “That’s impossible! I know Mirabelle. That girl will not change her mind over some man.”

  “Not some man, Mummy. The man.”

  “No, no, no.”

  “Don’t tell me you haven’t seen how all of them have been working day and night, those industrious damned little dervishes, to prevent her from leaving England! All of them, Mrs. Taylor, Mr. Taylor, Charles Spurgeon, Coventry Patmore, his histrionic wife, who keeps throwing them her stupid infant to coddle, and even Mr. Airy, who’s so enamored of him, he’s practically ready to wed him himself!”

  “Oh, Pippa, what are you saying! You’re imagining things. For years they’ve been trying to get Mirabelle to marry John Snow, and after that, even Charles, and none of it has worked. And Doctor Snow is a wonderful man. If she turns her nose up at him, she will turn her nose up at anybody.”

  “Mummy, that’s because John Snow is a scientist! Don’t you know anything? They’re not interested in women.”

  “But a professor and a seminarian like Julian is?”

  Filippa scoffs. “Some seminarian. Do you see the way he looks at her? Did you see the way he held her as they danced? Mummy, he placed his entire hand on her back and drew her to him, flush to him, with his palm flat and all his fingers spread out! Mummy, no man of God lays his hand against a woman’s back like that. He drew her to him like she belonged to him and he to her! He was intimate with her on the dance floor. And she let him! She was flushed, and her lips were parted. She stared right into his mouth as they talked. They were kindling in the middle of the ballroom, about to go up in flames, please don’t tell me you didn’t see it! Everyone saw it. I’m humiliated, mortified. He came here to dance with me, not her. Mummy, I’m dreading that he is going to ask her to marry him! And she is going to say yes and stay in this bloody country and have his babies, and all our plans will be ruined, and I’ll never get married!” Filippa whimpers.

  “No, he isn’t! No, they won’t!” Prunella starts to hyperventilate herself.

  “She is in love with him, Mummy. This awful night has proved it to me beyond any doubt. It’s the worst day of my life. How I regret inviting him. There will be no Florence, no Paris, no front, no war. There will be a wedding, though! Hers. Five minutes ago, she insisted she never wanted to get married, and now she’s going to be a bride, and I’m going to die an old maid!”

  Both women wail.

  “Darling, please calm down, someone will hear you! Shh, darling. No, I don’t believe it. It’s your imagination. You’re driving yourself mad. That’s not our Mirabelle. She’s too serious a girl.”

  “She wanted to be an actress, Mummy! In her heart of hearts, she’s a courtesan, a dilettante, she wants all the fake stars to shine on her, she wants all the grand gestures, the operatic proclamations! While all I want is a husband!”

  “He hasn’t swayed her,” Prunella says. “She’s not interested in marriage, I promise you. For a while there, Pippa, I suspected she wasn’t interested in men. Otherwise she would’ve married John Snow. Don’t worry, darling.”

  “You have to do something, Mummy! You simply must.”

  “What would you like Mummy to do? Would you like me to speak to Mr. Cruz?”

  “Dear Lord, yes, humiliate me further.”

  “So what would you like me to do? Fili
ppa…what is that look on your face? Ouch, don’t yank on me!”

  Filippa lowers her voice to an inaudible whisper.

  A raptly listening Julian strains to hear, strains to see. What is that look on Filippa’s face? What is she saying to her mother? The two women are on the lawn below his balcony near the landscaped bushes. He can’t see their expressions in the night. He can barely make out the tail ends of their words.

  Filippa’s voice rises. “…And in three weeks, rejected and heartbroken, she will leave for the front as planned, and we will pick up the pieces.”

  “You are mad, darling! You’ve gone mad! We can’t!”

  “Do you have a better solution, Mummy? My way everybody gets what they want. Your way, I die barren and alone.”

  Aubrey Taylor takes Julian’s arm. He flinches.

  “Oh! I’m so sorry, my dear boy, I didn’t mean to startle you.” She embraces him. “Come inside. It’s about to rain. What are you doing here all by yourself? Mirabelle’s waiting for you. Come, my dearest.” Aubrey smiles.

  Julian peers one last time into the darkness. What was on Filippa’s face? What suggestion did she make that even her own mother recoiled?

  36

  Foolish Mervyn and Crazy-eyed Sly

  TWO DAYS LATER, FILIPPA ASKS JULIAN TO WALK HER HOME. She has stayed too late at Vine Cottage, playing cards and charades with him and Mirabelle. Anything not to let them have a moment alone, though this evening they actually had fun. With debatable results, Julian has taught the girls poker. John and Aubrey had gone to bed, Barnabus went home, and the horses were in the stables. Mirabelle asked if Filippa wanted to stay over, but thankfully she declined. She had brought no clothes, she said, and she and Prunella had an early appointment in the morning. “You don’t mind, do you, Julian? My house is less than a mile away.” Julian doesn’t mind, but he’d like to hurry. Mirabelle will be waiting.

  On the way to her house, Pippa chatters about the Christmas holidays coming up and the Christmas ball she and her mother are planning. Julian pays superficial attention. Christmas is four months away. It might as well be in another century. He is thinking about the next two hours with Mirabelle.

  At her door, she thanks him for walking her home. “You are too kind, Mr. Cruz,” she says, extending her hand. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Probably in the afternoon, as Mummy and I have that appointment.”

  “It’s my pleasure, Pippa. See you tomorrow. Good night now.”

  As he’s rushing back, Julian stumbles across a covered wagon whose back wheel has come off. The accident occurred on a secluded part of Sydenham Hill Road between two cottages. The horse stands stoically, while two men, cursing and scolding each other, try to get the wheel back on. The gas lamps have long been turned off, and the gibbous moon is their only illumination. Julian is hoping to inch by unnoticed, but the men spot him and immediately advance on him for help. They smell homeless. Their clothes are mismatched loose-fitting suits. They remind Julian a little of his old friends from the rookery. One is young but hairless and nearly toothless, with a lazy eye, and the other is older, hairier, toothier, with two gleaming eyes.

  “Thanks a lot, mate,” the hairy bloke says. “I’m Mervyn.”

  “And I’m Sly,” the bald chap says. “Mum calls me Sylvester, but all me friends call me Sly.”

  “This man doesn’t give a toss what yer friends call you, crazy-eyed Sly! Shut yer mouth and let him help. If only you’d tightened the wheel nuts like I told you, instead of drinking that sixth pint, we wouldn’t be in this shithole now.”

  “I did tighten it and you never said nothing!”

  “All right,” Julian says with a reluctant sigh, approaching the wagon. He doesn’t want her to be asleep when he returns. “Let’s see what we got here.” He crouches to take a look. The hub and the nut that fasten the wheel to the axle have fallen off and are somewhere in the mud. “There’s your problem right there. Your hub and nut are missing.”

  “We know that,” Sly says with a wail.

  “Have you looked for them?”

  “Yep, but it’s dark, how are we supposed to find a little nut?”

  “Well, I don’t know what to tell you,” Julian says.

  “You don’t have a nut on yer?” The men stand over him, fidgeting.

  “No, I don’t carry wheel nuts in my pocket.” Julian straightens out. “Excuse me.” They’re standing too close, assaulting his nose with their stink. He steps away from the men and the wagon. “Come back in the morning and look for it. Or go to a livery stable and see if you can get another pair.”

  “They be all closed for the night,” Mervyn says, scanning up and down the road.

  “Can’t leave the horse in the middle of the street, mate,” Sly says, one of his eyes darting up and down Julian.

  “Okay. So go find it. Have a good night.”

  “Can you help us find it?” says Sly, circling to Julian’s side. He points to his eye that faces the wrong direction. “Me eye’s not so good. It’s not crazy, it just tracks where it wants.” Toothlessly he grins. “Like me.”

  “Me eyes are good,” Mervyn says, in front of Julian, “but I’m in me cups. Can’t see bloody nothing. Help us, mate, will yer?”

  There is something amiss. The drifters are too jittery to be drunk. And Mervyn’s black eyes are too fixed on Julian. “Sorry, can’t help you. Good night. And good luck.”

  “Wait, I think it’s over there!” Mervyn points to a spot in the road. “I see something glistening. Can you go take a look?”

  “No,” says Julian.

  “Come on, go look.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Sly brandishes a knife, Mervyn picks up a large stick from the ground. Almost like it was lying there waiting for Mervyn to fetch it.

  “You don’t want no trouble,” Sly says, coming closer, his weapon shining.

  “We should’ve got him when he was crouching,” Mervyn says.

  “Just get in the wagon,” Sly says, “and there won’t be no trouble.”

  “You want me in the fucking wagon?” Julian says. “Come and take me.”

  Sly lunges with the knife, Julian throws up his arm to block him and the knife pierces his forearm. Julian slugs Sly in the face and yanks the knife out of his arm. Mervyn swings his stick. Julian sees it a second too late. It’s heavier than it looks, and it’s dense like a bat. It knocks the knife out of his hand, and before Julian can turn, Mervyn swings the stick again. The attack is so unexpected, and, like crazy-eyed Sly, Julian can’t see well out of his left eye, especially at night. The second hit connects sharply with his left shoulder, glances off his neck and slams into his jaw. Julian totters. He nearly falls. Mervyn raises the stick again, but this time Julian ducks and Merv misses. From the side, Sly barrels into Julian. The boy is bloodied, but he’s clearly done some fighting, because he’s fast and deceptively strong, and is a good fifteen years younger than Julian. Indiscriminately Mervyn keeps whacking both Julian and Sly with the stick while they brawl, half-wrestling, half-punching. Sly is clumsy, all fists and kicks, flailing at Julian from all directions. The clash lasts barely a quarter of a minute, until another left hook finally knocks Sly into the mud.

  A dazed Julian wipes his bleeding face, grips his bleeding arm. What the hell just happened? How odd this is, how excessive, beyond all norm. Is he being robbed? And where’s Mervyn?

  His legs are kicked out from under him from behind. Sly is on his feet. Before Julian can jump up, Sly kicks him hard enough to break his ribs. The center of Julian’s body is set on fire. He groans, falters—and before he can move, a burlap sack is thrown over his head. Julian thrashes and flails around. The men can’t get control of him, shouting above him. With the sack still over his head, he is bashed until he stops moving. The last blow of the stick connects with his head. Just before he passes out, Julian thinks that he is probably not going to make it back to Vine Cottage before Mirabelle falls asleep.

  ∞

  He comes to an ind
eterminate time later. The sack is off his head.

  He’s lying on the rough cement floor of a putrid cellar room with bars on the only small window up near the ceiling. His body is sore as if he’s been pounded by a meat hammer. His ribs burn, the knife wound in his arm throbs, his jaw is aching, as is his shoulder. The knuckles on his hands are swollen, and there’s caked blood on his face. He has a concussion. It’s not as bad as the one that nearly killed him, but it’s bad enough. His vision is blurry. He can’t count down from a hundred. There’s a stained, reeking mattress on the floor in the corner. Julian crawls to it and spends he doesn’t know how long falling in and out of consciousness.

  Time passes. It’s hard to tell how much. An hour? Half a day? A week?

  Every once in a while, he hears the metal hatch in the bottom of the door slide sideways. The door doesn’t open. A small plate with bread and a mug of water is pushed through, and the flap is closed.

  “Wait!” Julian half-yells, finally. He struggles off the mattress and crawls to the door. “Wait!”

  The footsteps recede down the hall. Julian hears their muffled words.

  “Did he move?”

  “You heard him yell, didn’t yer?”

  “Thank Christ. I thought you fucking killed him, swinging that sledgehammer.”

  “He wouldn’t stop fighting, I thought he’d wake the whole bloody town. Christ, where did he learn to fight like that? They didn’t tell us there’d be resistance. You should ask for more money, Merv.”

  “We’ll be lucky we get anything at all after you tried to cut his throat with that knife of yours, you idiot. I told you, Sly, we need him more or less unharmed. They said.”

  “Well, he is one of those. Less unharmed.” They horselaugh.

  Julian keeps yelling through the thick door for someone else to hear him, keeps yelling up into the window.

  He yells until he’s hoarse, until he loses his voice.

  At first he is furious. Mute but furious. But soon he grows desperate, as another night follows day, and another—and another.

  There is a hole in the floor for him to relieve himself. The gash on his arm gets infected. He pours water on it to clean it, but it doesn’t get better. The wound is red and inflamed at the edges. The condition of his body consumes Julian’s blank hours. Better that than to be consumed by the helplessness he feels, by the sickening wrong done to him. He didn’t expect it. Well, who would? He would rather think about his damaged body than about the damage out there, about the disaster left behind in the wake of his disappearance. My God, what must poor Mirabelle think? What must her parents think, Charles, George Airy? Walking home, and just vanishing. No note, no goodbye, no word to anyone. Mirabelle, I’m sorry, my love. I’m so sorry. I didn’t see it, the malice. I couldn’t fight it well enough. I was too shocked. I thought I could beat them.