George Mills (58 page)

We had left my fields long ago and for some time now had been on the land of tenant farmers working for the country’s greatest landowner, a gross Dutchman whose family cannot have been in England over a hundred years. His holdings are, as I have indicated, immense. Armies of peasants work for him. As always, the strange boy preceded me, those two constant furlongs fixed as if they had been struck off by surveyors’ sticks and levels, as if I were one end of the reading and he the other.

At this most lackadaisical pace the horse and I had assumed, I had some hope of catching the young man’s eye. I seemed to see him staring at me, his eyes fixed on mine as if I led a procession, but whenever we came abreast he looked away, his face in my direction but the eyes off center, gazing elsewhere so that his features took on the marked, pinched ones on a blind man’s face. One day I even tipped my hat to him. He blushed but made no more response than that involuntary one of his blood. On another day I bid him hello. The blush went deeper but I got no answer. My God, I thought, he’s mute.

You have never had the pleasure of being in my country, though I know I have invited you
—
I invite you now
—
nor do I scold so much as condone your decision to stay put in town. That is where all proper gentlemen properly belong, but if you
had
come here you would have seen that it is all a gerrymandered fiction of contiguity. Farmers, even real farmers like the dumb Dutchman I alluded to above, live miles from their holdings like absentee landlords, so as we moved deeper and deeper into the Dutchman’s hectares we were coming closer and closer to my own home.

Which is where on the last day of our strange courtship he was waiting for me.

I had not even got down from the cabriolet when the piece of goods straightened and approached me. I cannot say that his hat was in his hands, I cannot say where it was. These humble types have a way with their hats (and with their hands too I shouldn’t wonder). Why I remark this at all is that for days now he had been playing the milepost for me as I rode by and now his deference seemed as absolute as an act of aggression. If he had stepped out into the road that first day to halt my progress I could not have been more alarmed. Yet apparently he meant no harm, for all he did once he approached was done with an appropriate respect and shyness.

“
Sir,” says he, and so awkward as positively to seem to be directing his remarks into the horse’s behind. “Sir, er, ah, uh,” he says as if trying out strange new vowels he’d learned. “Squire
…”

“
Yes,” says I. “What is it?
”

“
I am a good worker,” says the brute.

“
You are certainly excellent at finding the edge of a field and planting yourself in it,” says I.

“
You may ask Mr. Smith or Mr. Jones or any of them. I am a
good
worker.
”

“
Yes, well, I congratulate you,” says I, and remind him, “yet it is only what God expects of all of us.
”

“
But, sir, I am no farmer,” he says with some warmth.

“
No,” says I, “you are a scarecrow.
”

“
Sir?
”

“
Never mind. What is it you want?
”

“
To be your coachman. To drive your coach.
”

“
What, this?” say I, indicating the topless, two-wheeled, one-horse carriage in which I sat.

“
Yes, sir.
”

“
You are a coachman?
”

“
I would be,” says he, “oh, squire, I
would
be!
”

“
Then must you first study your trade and learn to recognize what a coach exactly is.
”

In brief, old friend, he had no more idea as to the various sorts of vehicles that abound in his profession than I had regarding the whereabouts of his hat.

I told him I was a busy man. I told him he must go to the blacksmith and there make inquiries about the kinds of conveyances there be. I told him he must go to the inns and taverns along the post roads and there observe them. I told him he must undertake to learn what he could of harness and tack. “Why it is as necessary that you brief yourself in these matters,” I told him, “as for a sailor to learn about ropes and rigging, sails and stars.” Then, bethinking myself of you, I thought to add that if he
could
successfully demonstrate to me that he had become possessed of at least the basics of his would-be profession, I had an acquaintance in London who ran the most important public hack and livery system in all of England to whom I might recommend him.

Naturally I thought never to see him again.

He was back within the week, his mouth stuffed with definition, speaking so blithely of barouche, phaeton and sociable, buckboard, calashe, brougham and droshky that one would have thought he was as accustomed to equipage as he was to the very straws he sucked on. We went to my stables, where he challenged me as to the wisdom of using a particular thickness of harness on an animal whose feet had been shod with a certain shape of nail.

We went for a ride in the cabriolet. He drove. Brilliantly.

Of course I am reluctant to foist upon you someone whom you may not absolutely require, yet I
did
give my word and as the fellow, on the evidence, at least
seems
teachable, I overreach myself to the point that, amateur though I may be as to the requirements of the London livery trade, I send you an aspirant I have every reason to believe is one upon whose
loyalties
you may absolutely rely and who may, at the very least, do you some good on the new broad avenues of Regent Street.

In the hope that we may all soon meet again in the shining city, and in the further hope that such reunion prove propitious and jubilant, I remain ever your servant and now procurer …

The country’s greatest landowner?

A gross Dutchman whose family cannot have been in England over a hundred years?

The King read and reread the prolix letter.

The pun intended? What pun? What word games? What had he missed? Why had he grown so old?

Exile?
Exile?

George Mills waited while the King read.

Waited patiently. No: humbly. No: proudly. No: all atwitter. No: all of them. All of them all at once. Not one time thinking, He’s going to do something for me. Not one time.

While the King read and reread, while he examined the anomalies and ambiguities, while he pored over the double Dutch double entendre, the political acrostic he took the letter to be. But the man is dead, he thought. Discovered and assassinated they told me. The most important public hack and livery system in all of England and all its jarvey spies and post-boy plotters shut down, under new management. (The wonder of their plain arrangements! King George thought. They had simply to overhear my clerks and ministers as they drove them down Pall Mall or along the embankment. And spring and summer the best time for spying they told me, during the mild weather, the carriage windows open to the breezes, and our Stuart enemies all ears on a fine day. Secrets lost to the warm front, to balm and ease. Very Nature a co-conspirator.) Not even understanding all of it, confused by their complicated shenanigans, by all held historical grudge, devotees, faction, the partisan life and the boring obsession of blood. Blood, he thought. Blood and milk. He didn’t care a damn really. It was simply inconvenient to abdicate. And he would miss a king’s perks. He had to admit. The handsome expense account, the lovely tributes. But I
don’t
understand my enemies! The pains they take, the troubles and lengths they go to. And why would they send me this, this
aspirant?
(Yet his mind nagged: It
could
be a mistake; I could be attributing to machination what perhaps ought to be put down to the simple disfigurement of style.) Still, he thought, I suppose I have to resist. Who’s King here anyway?

And Mills not only not thinking:
He’s taking too long, he’s probably going to do something for me.
But not even thinking:
He’s taking too long, he’s probably going to do something to me.

The King looked up from the letter Mills had shown him and, seeing the expression of sly puzzlement on the young man’s face, mildly asked, “What?”

“Oh, sir,” George said, reddening, evasively shrugging.

“What?” he repeated.

“Well it’s just …”

“What? It’s just what?”

“What you told me.
You
know. All those things. About yourself.”

“Didn’t I also say that our nasty stories neither ascend nor descend but stay within their class of origin?”

“Yes, sir. Yes, sir, you did.”

“Well,” the King said, “there you are. It would seem you’re one of us then, George.”

“Oh, sir. You’re teasing me, ain’t you, sir?”

George IV considered him. “Yes,” he said finally, “I suppose I am.” Then, “You’re our loyal subject you said.”

“Sir, I am,” Mills said.

“Your family swears oaths you said.”

“Millses are pledged to their kings.”

“Yes,” he said, “yes. Look,” he said, striking the document he’d been reading, “your squire’s misinformed. This fellow’s dead.”

“Oh?” he said. “Was it sudden, sir?”

“It was very sudden,” the King said, “but it was over three years ago.”

“Oh,” George said, saddened, not for the dead gentleman, whom he’d never met, or even for himself, so much as for the squire with his frayed, retrograde connections and his sad, dated influence.

“There go your plans, eh?”

“Well …”

“I think
I
might put you in the way of something.”

“You, Your Highness?”

“It would be chiefly ceremonial of course and not really in your line, but as you’ve just been disappointed and as you’re close by … Would you, do you think you could undertake a mission for us?”

2

T
hey know, I think, that they’re exotic. They must know. Not as the Chinaman is exotic, or the Jew, or red Indian, or savage African. Because, though I’ve never been to the places where such reside, I’ve seen their travelers. Even in England. In parades and circuses, in tailor shops where the government bought my outfits. Coming out here, too. On shipboard a black man poured my tea. And maybe because they were among strangers—here I’m the stranger—they seemed, well, cautious, watchful as boxers. But that’s not it. Unless it’s that these people, in the Jew’s place, the nigger’s, wouldn’t know enough or maybe even care enough to
be
cautious, though God knows they’re suspicious enough, even among their own. No one trusts anyone. The men doubt the women, the women the men. When a child falls and bruises himself in the street he doesn’t run to his mum for comfort. Sisters don’t look to their brothers to protect them, sons won’t enter a room if their father is in it.

And that’s not it either.

Maybe it’s God.

I’m Church of England but the fact is vicars make me uncomfortable. Whenever I go—which is rare—I go to see society, to hear the choir and watch the gentlemen and gawk as they hand their ladies into and out of the carriages. (It’s where I first spotted Squire.) I mean I don’t belong. (And maybe it’s queer for a Mills to make this admission. It was Greatest Grandfather, after all, who was the indirect deputy of the King himself when he went on that First Crusade. And didn’t I come here myself in the first place at George IV’s request?) So I’m supposed to be Church of England, though I might be more at home as a chapel-meeting Methodist or even as a dissenter, one of the sects. But I’ve been in even fewer chapels than churches, for if vicars and services make me uncomfortable, ministers and everything low church embarrass me. I’m not religious or even much of a believer so much as this snob of God. If there
is
a God He’s an aristocrat. He’d have gone to the best schools and He’d speak in low tones this absolutely correct accent. He’d sound like the vicar and never shout or even raise His voice like all those others with their full lungs and loud, harsh words prole as low company. So maybe it’s God, their version of Him, makes them so wild, more exotic than gypsies. So maybe it’s God, some pierced-eared, heterodox, heresiarchical, zealous, piratical avatar.

And that’s not it either.

Nor their fierce, rumpus-raveled history, incoherent as rout, mob, high wind.

It’s pride!

I came to Constantinople with a king’s courier, a tall lad named Peterson, not much older than myself, and though we shared the same table on shipboard during the first seating, he was a subdued, taciturn fellow and didn’t enter into conversation easily. I thought at first it was because he was queasy, for I often saw him with his head hanging over the stern rail and caught him throwing up as I returned to my cabin after dessert and coffee and perhaps a brandy. I was nauseous as the courier but had never tasted such fine rare food and was determined not to lose it.

He sometimes summoned me to his cabin or occasionally came to mine, never to chat but to rehearse me in the protocols, my small, silly performance that seemed hardly worthy, even to me, of such expense, so long a voyage. When I questioned him he cut me off and asked me to demonstrate yet again my polished, practiced salaam.

“You’ve seen me do the thing a hundred times.”

“Show me.”

“You
know
I’ve got it pat.”

“Mahmud II runs a tight court. Show me.”

“Oh very well.” I began the gyrations with my hand, bowed low and ended the fruity salutation with my right palm pressed to my forehead. “There you have it, my sultan.” I thought he was going to be sick.

“Your right palm? Your
right?
”

“I’m teasing.”

“This is serious. No teasing. Show me.”

I did it again, this time finishing as he’d instructed me.

“You pull something like that before Mahmud …”

“Whoosis, what’shisname, is five years old already. I don’t get it.”

“Abdulmecid. The boy’s name is Abdulmecid.”

“I don’t get it. Abdulmecid’s over five years old. He’s almost gone on six. George IV’s his godfather. Why’d the King wait so long to send him his gift?”