Honor's Kingdom (18 page)

I STEPPED OUT INTO THE sultry night, with the city crawling and noisy. Strange it was, how I had been led about. Had the fatality of Mrs. Hepburn, and of the eel-man before her, and of
that boy, all been arranged so I might glimpse Polly Perkins in the Dials? And follow her trail to a penny gaff on Eastcheap Street? Where she could tell me, in so many words, that all of it was a game, if a brute and deadly one? I had no doubt that the appearance of the fellow in the red mask at the back of the theater had been purely for my benefit, as well.

Why?

Was young Pomeroy in it, or was he not? Was Polly Perkins lying about that part of the affair? Were they, perhaps, intimates who had only had a tiff? Was she protecting him? Was I a fool?

I saw already that I should have questioned her more closely. But I could not remain alone with a young woman determined to disrobe, although I suppose theatrical folk are accustomed to that sort of thing.

There was a dreadful lot to do tomorrow. But, first, I had a grim task left tonight.

I paused below a streetlamp and closed my eyes in prayer. It fortifies as nothing else will do.

Then I took me back into that alley.

I saw them all, a myriad now, shadows behind shadows. Creatures eaten by vice and set to devour. I could not mark the filth beneath my shoes, for I needed to watch the human wraiths before me. Calling to me already they were, the horrid sisters of Mr. Homer’s sirens.

“Thruppence’ll get you in, as it’s so late, guv’nor.”

“Anything you likes, as long as you likes it.”

A hand, perhaps a claw, groped below my waist.

“Please,”
I said, stopping. I nudged her off with my cane.

“Oh, ain’t ’e the polite one, Mary! I bet ’e’s a proper gent what likes ’is usual.”

I did not want to hear that name in such a place as this.

They clustered about me. Two, then three. I cringed before their touch.

“Ladies,” I said, “if you please . . .”

“Oooh, ‘li-dies,’ is it? ’Aving more than one, are we? It’s allus the little blokes as will surprise you.”

They smelled of brimstone. And worse. One tried to set her lips upon my cheek.

“Please! Ladies! I only wanted to ask about—”

My life was saved by an accident of light. In the ravaged face that sought my flesh, the eyes reflected movement. Movement that was unnatural.

I did not mean to harm those ravaged women, but I shoved to clear myself a fighting space. And down I bent, in the instant before the cord would have caught my neck.

The old whores screamed and scattered.

And now I smelled the ancient scent of sandalwood. And India.

When the cord failed to snare me, my assailant drew a knife. His skin was coffee dark, even in that lightless glen of bricks, and his shape was foreign, confirmed by movements I knew all too well. He plunged toward me, seeking to drive in his blade. But I was once an instructor of the bayonet. I parried his thrust with my cane and gave him a knock. And a good one.

Staggering backward he went, and I thought I had him. His eyes shone white with the glow of human fear. I raised my cane to land its ball on his head.

God forgive me for the harshness of my judgements, it was one of those old Magdalenes who saved me. Again.

“Look out!” she screamed. “Look out behind you, dearie!”

I twisted about on my good leg, bringing up my stick like a steel-tipped musket. A blade hacked into the wood, but I threw it off. Then I gave it to that devil proper. With the alley naught but a screaming fair around us. Parry. Return to guard. I swept the ball of my cane up to his nether parts. It bent the fellow double. He was as lean and brown as my first attacker, though I could see he was dressed in Western garments.

I swept my cane around to catch the side of his head, but he managed to avoid me. Lithe those fellows are, and born to survive.

I fear I forgot the time and place. I thought I had a musket in my hands. With a bayonet fixed to it. I stabbed him in the
chest. My God, if I had had my steel, I would have run him through. As it was, I dropped him down, although I very nearly tumbled after, for my bad leg sometimes throws me out of balance.

I was all set to put paid to him when I heard the other come up behind me again. All this was in seconds, mind you.

I turned with my stick raised up on guard. I saw the flash of steel coming down, where my rifle stock would have been but a cane did not reach. Bad leg or no, I side-stepped like the blood-stained sergeant I had been, letting my enemy stumble when he failed to find his mark. He sought his balance, but I swung my cane down and struck him hard.

My stick lacked the weight I needed to give him a finish, but the ball was just the thing to crack his skull.

Above the breath of my enemies and the cries of those wretched women, I heard the call of a bird. Of a kind I had not heard since I left India.

As if they were but phantoms, my attackers disappeared.

SEVEN

CRUEL DREAMS ASSAILED ME. WHENEVER THE CHOLERA dead visit, I wake forlorn and frightened as a child. I do not think I am a coward. But darkness has a power all its own. All nights are haunted, even those spent in the bliss of love. Sleep disarms us and draws us back to the terrors of the cradle.

Do not misunderstand me: I love those dreams that bring me to my mother or, sometimes, to the aching shadow that was my father. I am a middle-aged man of thirty-four, and both my father and mother died at a younger age than I have gained. I was little above the age of four the year I lost them both. I suppose that is why I am soft toward orphans, although we must be guarded in our charity, for too free a hand corrupts. And given this cruel war, I often think of my young son, imagining his future were he fatherless. But I did not dream of our John. Twas my mother returned to me, only bitterly, for I saw her lying upon the floor again, with the vomit over her face and her eyes set wide, just as she lay for days in our poor parlor, behind the door whose lock I could not turn.

I dread the cholera, see. For it took more than my parents. There was a certain loss in India, too. But that is another tale, so let that bide.

I woke early, and broken, and all a-sweat. In that moody place between sleep and knowing true, a panic come upon me. Uncomposed, I battled with the linens, pawing about me in
dread that another child’s hand had been deposited during my slumber.

I had shifted a chest of drawers to block the door and balanced a water glass by the window frame, so that even the most skilled intruder would send it crashing to the floor. I wished I had my Colt revolver, but that had been left behind in Washington. The urgency of my journey was only communicated to me in the course of a visit to Newport, far from the smoke of battle and need of firearms, and I had left directly from Rhode Island. I was unarmed. In more ways than I knew.

As my eyes relearned the world, I saw naught was disturbed. Upon the writing table, the letter I had completed lay white and chaste. Twas to my Mary Myfanwy, my beloved, with a note for our young John, containing fatherly love and admonitions.

I gasped as deep as if I had fought a battle and tried to drive the last of my mother from my eyes. For the Good Lord knows I would remember her. But I would not remember her so.

She looked so frightful that it breaks my heart. Even now.

I got me up and sat by the window and read in my new pocket Testament, for comfort lies therein. I read the sorrowful bit set in the garden, where Our Savior doubts Himself and almost seems to share our mortal fears. Oh, there is strange. A garden is a lovely thing it seems to me. Yet terrible things transpire in such places, from Eden to Gethsemane. We always come up short when faced with paradise. Sometimes, when I feel put upon by Mankind, I wonder will we make a muck of Heaven?

I washed my face. It helped. And then I tidied myself to go to chapel, for this was a Sunday.

The hotel’s dining room, all fragrant, bid guests in to breakfast. But I was wise enough to check the prices, which astonished. I went out into the cool of the morning, stepping over puddles from a night rain, and found a coffee stall along the street. I fortified myself with a bun. Then I set to the vital task of the day, finding a Methodist chapel. For I do not like churches grand and gaudy. I do not wish to worship golden altars or painted windows. I like a simple place for meditation, though I
will gladly join a rousing hymn. I do not know if God first made the Welsh, then sent them hymns to sing, or if He made the hymns, then created the Welsh so He might hear the hymns sung true and proper. Music is a prayer deep in our blood.

I had to walk a bit until the buildings grew smaller and the streets narrower. Not far from Tottenham Court Road, with its competition of drapers stilled for the day, I found a little Wesleyan room. Twas humble, as befits our Christian prayers. But luck I was to have little in London town. We began with a hymn I favor, Mr. Bunyan’s lyric of “Who Would True Valour See,” sung to the martial strains of old “Monk’s Gate,” but the preacher had been called to the hard persuasion. The benches were at most a quarter filled, and twas no crying wonder. For that man of God had a fondness for Damnation, and thought we should be warned from first to last.

Now, I would be a good, God-fearing man. Nor do I favor any dissipation. But Jesus Christ come down to lift us up, not to give us a kick and start us fretting. Perhaps I am not proper in my Methodism. But I do not think John Wesley wanted cruelties shouted at the weak and wounded. And such they were in that unvarnished chapel. Old women crushed by life into a smallness and young girls plain and husbandless, old men bitter as the preaching fellow himself and little children brought to heel like dogs—such were my fellow worshippers, all black-clad, dry and joyless. The preacher made it sound as though we had no hope of Heaven. And I will not believe that, though I err. I most admire Jesus for His kindness. And for His good temper. Anger caught Our Savior only once, when He found that prayer had given way to grasping. That was in a church, where he upset things.

I let the parson rant and simply prayed. As I had prayed the night before, for those I love and then for all the others, living and dead, good or bad or middling. For a Christian must be particular in his habits, but not in his pleas to the Lord. All men need mercy. Last, I said a prayer for Mr. Lincoln, who is admirable.

I like to pray. It makes me feel an inch closer to Heaven.

I come out the doors in a faintness of rain, that slight wet you feel on your face but cannot find on the wool of your clothing unless you scrub a hand across your chest. Twas gone in minutes, the hint of rain, but great, gray-bellied clouds sailed over the city, leaving us cool and vigorous. The air was damp as a cellar. I felt that this, at last, was truly England.

I tapped my way to Oxford Street and along its drowsing prosperity. I meant to give a coin to that artilleryman, but he was gone from his begging place and so I saved it up. Twas reaching noon, for the parson’s lungs had been possessed of stamina, and I hoped to visit the much-advertised picture by Mr. Hunt, “The Finding of the Savior in the Temple,” which was on view at the German Gallery, in New Bond Street, some ways along. The admission was a shilling, which seemed high, but I would rather pay for my edification than for gratification. Thus, I had resolved to avoid the enticements of the International Exhibition until the conclusion of my purposes here in Her Majesty’s domain. That visit would be my reward for work well done. Meanwhile, a nice religious picture seemed a proper entertainment for a Sunday.

Now, you will think me contrary, but, though I had to stand in a line and my entry cost a shilling, just as promised, I did not tarry before the painted scene. The mighty picture was a disappointment. It was as if the artist painted in sugar-icing, or covered over Our Savior’s life with gauze. It was not real to me. Yet, Mr. Hunt is much acclaimed, and I am not, so I must be in the wrong. It is only this, see: I picture Jesus covered in sweat and striving, hungry at times, and hurt at last. Like us. And the Orient is hot and it is dirty. Nor are children anywhere given to neatness. Perhaps I blaspheme, though I do not wish to. But think you. By the end of a hard day walking the hills of Galilee, Our Savior must have been coated with dust and dirty. I know what it is to walk, see. And to thirst. Even as a child, at the young age when He took Himself to that Temple, Jesus must have had a jolly time or two and got Himself slopped up. In
Heaven, He will wear His shining white. But, here among us, He must have looked a bit dodgy.