Honor's Kingdom (33 page)

Was I being watched?

I had no reason to suspect it, beyond the logic of past events. But I wondered.

Back I went to a provisioner’s shop just along from the Lord Byron. I started asking, as best I could, about shipyards and such like. Although the Scots are a careful, suspicious people, by the end of the afternoon I had learned the names of a dozen yards and the quality of their ships, details of the latest means of propulsion and the enduring need for canvas of good making. But never was there the faintest hint of a secret and mighty warship out in the slips.

I saw other things, too, and worried my bad leg in the course of seeing them. My search through the warehouses south of the river led me into a warren of twists and turns, and I found myself in a filthy place called the Gorbals, where the Irish had nearly driven out the Scots. The residents made those of the Seven Dials look plump and prosperous, and more than one
house was limed to kill infection. The only hint of hope I saw was a convent school run by the Sisters of Mary. Now, the Church of Rome is benighted, and Christian only compared unto the Turk, yet I would be honest: There must be good in those who teach the children of the poor out of their charity. For the rich are born with the knowledge they need, but the poor must fight for every scrap of learning.

Well, let that bide. The Gorbals swallowed goodness as the crocodile devours a crawling infant.

Still worse lay north of the river, not far from the offices of great firms and the banks. Near Glasgow Cross, where a high tower kept an eye on the comings and goings, there were alleys and closes as foul as any on earth. And up the High Street, with its buildings peeling away like a leper’s flesh, pawnbrokers and drink shops surrounded the ancient buildings of a university. I stopped in the office of the Abstainer’s League, which was the Glasgow branch of our Temperance crusade, but the starved old man with his yellowed tracts did not provide encouragement. I think he only wanted his pamphlets tidy. Most like, he had failed so oft at his conversions that his deeds had been reduced to sitting and waiting for the Lord to take things in hand.

The city even had a high Cathedral, all sooted and surrounded by skies as smoky as those of the nether regions, if Lucifer’s portion has skies. Behind the spires, a fancy graveyard crowned a hill, with statues set to gaze down on our misery. They call such a place a “necropolis,” for the rich are buried there and do not wish to rest in a simple boneyard. For all the rushing energy of the town, I could not like it much. For it took my breath away not by its beauty, but by the smothering foulness of its air. And I do not think I ever saw the poor in such numbers, or so lowly. Not even in the worst back lanes of India.

Weary I was by my dinnertime, and I took me back to George Square to wash my face and see to private matters. The girl was there again, dancing now to her father’s fiddling, likely to save her voice for the evening crowds that would come by when the shops and offices closed their doors. I did not pause,
but crossed the street, for I could not afford another shilling, deserved though it might be.

The fiddling followed me like an accusation. Nor did it blame me only for my caution with my funds. It blamed me for surviving battles that slaughtered better men, and for all the good fortune that ever I had that was denied to others. It accused me of having eyes to see, and of knowing I might have a plentiful dinner, if so I wished. In my room, the street noise nearly covered the scraping of his bow. But it did not hide his misery completely.

Tell me, if you know. Where does our duty end toward our brothers? Must we give all and burden our own lives with limitation and want to help our fellows to a bit of comfort? How much must a Christian do to be a Christian? I wonder at such things sometimes, but never find a satisfactory answer.

Well, we must have faith and go through.

And after all this rending of the soul, what did I do in penance? I ate a cut of mutton in the dining room, and had a sweet to follow. That, I fear, is how deep conscience goes.

I understand the poor must do for themselves. They must learn strength and discipline. Responsibility, too. And yet, I know life is a thing of chances. More so than any Christian likes to say. Our Savior does not speak of luck in the Gospels, for that would only have made things more confusing than they are, but His fondness for the poor suggests to me that He knew full well how chance may ravish our lives. Look you. Jesus could not very well tell us, “You must all behave and pray all your lives, but some of you are going to draw a rum lot, anyway.”

I grew penitent in the course of my musings, and went out to put a few pennies into the girl’s begging bowl. She looked as beaten down as a woman of fifty, dancing a ragged fling at the end of the day. Her eyes met mine, just briefly, and I saw that I was recognized as one who had been kind, but I could not bear it. I fled. And was followed by her father’s dreadful coughing, which come so hard his bow would not stay fixed to his fiddle’s strings.

I took me toward the Trongate and the Saltmarket region beyond, where the poor were squeezed in closer than men convicted. I hoped to find a simple chapel of the sort that gather in the poor on a Wednesday night. You cannot find such places among the wealthy, see, for they have other purposes for their evenings. But down among the poor you will find customers for a sermon and a hymn-sing any evening of the week, at least among the wives who are not drunk or in recovery from a beating. And Wednesdays always find a crowd at chapel.

And that was where my tale turned to its ending.

I WENT IN SEARCH OF A CHAPEL, and broke a fellow’s jaw. I fear the world does not respect our wishes.

I had wandered into Gallowgate, in search of a Christian altar, and turned into an alley I thought promising, for its mouth was wide and children were at play. But I did not yet know the ways and wiles of Glasgow, and found myself at the dead-end of a close, with Irish voices hushing on every side and ragged women staring down from stairways fragile as our hope of Heaven. The gutter in the courtyard had been used as a public cesspit, while a door hung broken from a closet intended for such refuse.

“Is it the gombeen man come?” a little boy asked his mother, but she hushed him quick and pulled him against her skirts.

Twas like I had stepped into a foreign country.

I turned myself about to make my exit, but a fellow tall as a grenadier, although without the posture, eased out of the shadows and stood astride the path that I must take. His shoulders were broad and thick, with the right one higher and heavier, as if he were long familiar with the pick-axe.

And then another Irishman slid from a threshold into the gauntlet of the passageway. This one had a West Country face, born smash-nosed. He shifted his weight from one foot to another and tested the size of his fist against his palm.

A fellow must never show fear to such as those two, and I did not. I stepped right along, careful only to keep my shoes and cane from the slops about me. The twilight had come upon us,
although I doubt it was ever full day in that place, and I had to keep a certain watch over my going.

“If you lads will excuse me?” I said. “There is good of you.”

The pick-axe fellow spread his legs, the better to block my path, and smash-nose smacked his fist in a steady rhythm.

Pick-axe made an astounded face, as Irishmen like to do, and said, “Well, if it isn’t a little black Taffy come calling . . . and didn’t I think it was only another Scotch rat?”

“If you will excuse me,” I repeated. But I did not step aside to go around him, for that is a thing you must not ever do. Once a bully has his way, he will not give you yours.

“Here and I thought you was going to be nice and friendly,” Pick-axe said, “but you’d take yourself off without a by-your-leave.
And,”
he added, “without paying your toll.”

Smash-nose leaned in and said, “Din’t you see the Tollbooth Tower when you come gallivanting along with you? Sure, and everybody what comes into Flannery’s Close has got to pay his coming-and-going tax.”

I did not say a word, for you cannot argue. You must let such as those speak their peace until they are tired of themselves. I did not want a fuss, if I could help it.

“Now, I’ll tell you what Taffy here’s thinking, Kev,” Pick-axe said. “He’s thinking he’s set to be robbed, for the Welsh all lack for decency and consideration. He’s thinking he’s going to be robbed, when the toll’s no more than a voluntary contree-booshan. Which I can tell by the looks of him he’s terrible anxious to pay. Aren’t you, Taffy?” Pickaxe grinned. “For I know he don’t want to go swimming down into a filled-up shitter, with his feet following after his head.”

“You will excuse me now,” I said calmly, as befits a Christian gentleman. “You have had your joke, lads, and I must be on my way.”

“A joke, would it be?” He looked at his accomplice as if bewildered. “And have you been telling jokes when I an’t been listening, Kevin, me boy? Have you been telling jokes to our little Welsh friend here?” He turned to me again. “Are the two of
us funny, then, Taffy? Well, why don’t we all have a good laugh together and look at what’s struggling to get out of your purse and your pockets?”

All around us, leaning from windows and clutching the flimsiest bannisters in the world, women and children transplanted from Erin watched the goings-on. Not a voice was raised to interfere, nor were the children shielded from knowledge of such crimes.

“Gentlemen,” I said, with my voice still calm and dignified, “I will ask you one last time to let me pass. Thereafter, I will go ahead. And you will not like it.”

At that, Smash-nose made a grab for my cane.

And I gave it to him. Straight into a private place.

With a continuation of the same gesture, I put the metal tip of the handle into the very center of Pick-axe’s chest. But he was a powerful man, that one, and did not go down but only staggered backward.

In the moment left me, I stabbed the tip of my cane—not the sword, mind you, for I did not think it necessary to unsheathe it—into Smash-nose’s Adam’s apple. With one hand still on his groin, begging your pardon, his other leapt to his throat, and he dropped backward against a wall with a gag and a gurgle.

Pick-axe rushed toward me. Swinging his right fist wildly, from behind his shoulder, as the clumsiest public-house brawler is like to do. I stepped aside, as I had done a hundred times in battle, and a thousand times and more upon the drill field, and let his own weight carry him after his fist. He smelled of use and gin as he went by.

My foot did find a bit of slime, but that was nothing compared to the gore of battle, and I kept my own balance well enough to strike. I gave him the metal bit at the end of my cane’s grip with all the force I had at my command.

I meant to catch him on the chin and introduce him to a little sleep, but he was sloven in his inabilities, and he moved most unexpectedly, and I struck him along the line of his jaw. I heard the bone snap.

“Jaysus!”
he yelled, as he went down. I could make out that much, despite the blood and bits of teeth that poured from his mouth. Flat on his back he went, rolling about in the muck and the slops, without the least regard for personal cleanliness.

“Jaysus,” I believe he said again, “the little booger’s kilt me.” And he moaned. “He’s kilt me half-dead, the little . . .”

His comrade had doubled up against the wall, gasping for his breath and wanting no more of my company. That one would make a recovery soon enough, although he might suffer damage to his voice. But, then, the Irish tend to talk too much. I was a great deal more concerned for the fellow whose jaw I had broken. For such destructions are not easily mended.

I was wondering if it might not be my duty as a Christian to see him to a surgeon, when the Irishwomen about the close began to curse me harshly. And then they started hurling the contents of their aprons in my direction. Fortunately, none of them was positioned close to the gutter, although a pair were moving in that direction. I did not want to have my new suit soiled. And not with Irish leavings.

I took myself back toward the street as fast as my legs and cane would help me go. Startled I was when that fine voice spoke to me, just as I reached the safety of the thoroughfare. I had been looking behind me, see, for retreats are ever dangerous maneuvers.

“Oh, well done!” he said. “I should have liked to put down a wager, Major Jones.”

It was him. Every bit as elegantly got up as he had been the one time I had seen him, in Rochester, New York, on a winter’s night. As fine as the Queen’s own court on a day of high ceremony he was, although he did not wear a sash or costume. Twas only the confident way he had about him, despite his lingering glow of youth—he could not have been thirty. His frock coat followed his slender form as if it had been sewn upon his person, and his high hat glistened in the last light of the day. The fairest whiskers trimmed his girlish complexion. He made to tap my
chest with the ball of his cane, just as I had seen him do to a man now deceased.

Just before he touched the cloth of my coat, he caught himself.

“But I shall need to take care,” he told me, pulling back his cane. “You’re rather a dangerous man, Major Jones. Isn’t it curious how appearances deceive us?” He granted me a smile that pretended intimacy. Pressed together, his lips were thin as blades. “As a mutual acquaintance of ours was deceived.” He gave his head a shake that was almost dainty. “But we must let bygones be bygones.”

Just behind his shoulder, pulled to the side of the street, a fine carriage waited.

For him.

The Earl of Thretford.

If wealth and privilege share a smell, I’m certain it was on him. Although I got only a sniff of cologne water.

“You followed me,” I said, and my voice was not even-tempered.

He frowned. Playfully. In that dauntless way the wealthy do. “I don’t think I should put it quite like that. Indeed, Major Jones, I was
seeking
you. Not following you at all. I’m afraid I missed you at your hotel.” He held his cane just before his breast, as if he might give my chest a tap after all. “You’ve been inquiring about a shipyard and a mysterious pavilion.”