Honor's Kingdom (37 page)

I heard a fellow thrashing his wife, or at least the woman who shared his small existence, cursing her for a harlot, although the language he used was rather stronger. He hit her so hard we heard the blows below, and all she said in her own defense was, “Oh, cripes, do na hit all me taith out. Oh, Willie, just lea’ me some taith . . .”

The child turned into a doorway that lacked any sign of a door. Had the colonel and I not been so long at our soldiering, we never would have found our way in that darkness. The black hall smelled of urine and decay.

Up a flight of stairs she bounded, to an upper floor built barely above our heads. The stairs cracked under my foot, as if
they would not support more than a child, and the rats in the walls alarmed. Fanny waited until we were both come up, the colonel and myself. Then she pushed a door wide without knocking, for manners were kept differently in that place.

You would have thought the room a very meeting hall, if a tiny one. An old tuggle lamp bleared smoke from a table, spreading amber light so weak it faltered before it reached the walls or ceiling. Humanity slumped everywhere, from an old man with the ringworm and a mouth dripping streams on a wrapper of faded tartan, to children slight as if they had been starved and naked to a degree that would shame a Hindoo. Their arms and legs were mottled with welts, and one boy dangled a wrist broken sometime past. The room could not have been fifteen foot by ten, but there must have been twenty souls confined within it.

In the very center, at the table with the lamp, and seated on the only chairs in evidence, the king and queen of that domain presided. The woman was dressed in a gandy robe, of the sort cast off by prostitutes, and her face was so thick with moles and worse that it looked like a case of smallpox. Indoors she may have been, but she wore an old-fashioned bonnet on her head, of the sort dear Mrs. Griffiths used to wear in the years of my orphaned childhood. Her hands were pointed and scabrous, and busy scratching.

The fellow looked to be a back-street thumper, born to a meanness Christians disbelieve and proud of the swollen fingers his brawls had bought him. Dark he was, and too large for any room that would have him willingly, and hard as gunmetal. He did not seem a Spaniard to my eye, although he was unclean, but swarthy enough he was to earn the insult. I had no doubt that this was “Spanish Jemmy.”

The woman got up and stretched out her claws, crying, “Oh, Dearie, we ’eard of your poor father’s going off on you. Let your Auntie Betts be all your comfort.”

“Ye are na me auntie,” Fanny told her. She held to my coat so fiercely I feared for the cloth.

But the woman ignored her and spoke to the colonel and me. “Tain’t it a kindness, when two such fine gennulmen brings back our dear, little Fanny, what’s in want of ’er Auntie Betts to be ’er comfort.”

The man stood up all belated, as men do when their minds are wrecked with drink. “Ye twa can gae,” he told the colonel and me. “Fanny’s taen care of by me an’ Betts.”

The child clutched me.

“We have only come for her things,” I told them. “You need have no concerns for the child’s welfare hereafter.”

The dark fellow puffed himself up. “And ’oo set your little arse on a throne?” he asked me. “The wee thing won’t be spiled by the likes of you. This is the hame she’s allus kenned, and the only hame she’s needing.”

“We have only come for her things,” I repeated. “Thereafter, we will leave you to your peace.”

The big fellow stepped toward me, with a dismissive glance at the colonel, who stood to my rear.

I shifted my hand onto Fanny’s shoulder, so I might shove her free, if such was needful.

“Aye,” the fellow said, “an’t it allus the same sang? Twa dirty buggers what think they’re sae high and mighty, they mought come in amang daysunt folk and steal a bonnie bit like our Fanny awa’.” He hovered over me, foul as a human sewer, puckering the crusts that served him for lips. “When we a’ of us ken what’s to be gat in poonds sterling for the privilege of introducing the lass to her womanhood.” He slipped a hand into the pocket of a jacket pierced with wear. “Fi’ poonds it is, for the spiling of Fanny’s perfections. Fi’ poonds to tae her off, and na mickle less.”

“Fanny, get your things,” I said, nudging the girl to the side.

The knife leapt out of his pocket. But the fool who held the blade in his hand was so addled he slashed at nothing. For I was already beside him, and the sword was free of the sheath of my cane, and the point was tickling his neck.

I backed him against the nearest wall.

The pox-faced woman screamed bloody murder, and the children began to shriek.

“Hold your tongue,” I commanded, in a voice that rose
from a ghost of drill-fields past, “and quiet the lot of them.
Now.”
I did not take my eyes from the eyes of the great, tall coward before me. For such he proved to be, all wet and blubbering.

It is almost shameful, how quickly the poor are cowed. In a moment the room was quiet again, but for some childish whimpering and the panting of Spanish Jemmy at my point.

“Fanny,” I said, “go through to your room. Get your things.”

At that, the woman cackled to rouse the dead. “’Er room? Well, ain’t that rich? ’Er buggerin’ da and ’er sleeps in the corner.”

MISS THUMPER’S HOME FOR GIRLS stood off Blythswood Square, where the houses still had a fineness left over from the days of the German Georges. Greekish and pillared they were by decoration, with high front windows, all cut from similar patterns. Except for the walls that contained Miss Thumper’s establishment.

I would not say Miss Thumper’s house was new, but it was not old. It was not large, though neither was it small. But it was odd. In that street of severe and handsome city mansions, just a bit dogged by the decades, Miss Thumper’s container of fortunate girls seemed queer as an uncle who must be locked in the attic. It was not especially high, or meanly low, but all a-jumble, until you could not say whether it was wider at the bottom or the top. Afflicted with turrets, bays, and gables that darkness turned to scars and warts and wens, the form of the place was awry, as if it had been built by the children it housed, without the benefit of wise direction. I half expected to find a maze behind the great front door, while the exterior must have been a delight to pigeons.

We stepped down from the cab—the colonel’s largesse had provided us that commodity—and I must say that I paused a few seconds before leading Fanny up the front stairs by her hand. A
fright of a place the building looked, and if it looked a fright to me, I could only wonder what the child made of it. Of course, a house is very much like a person, and should not be judged by the exterior, but by the qualities cherished and kept within.

Although it was quite late by now, the colonel gave the bell-pull a hearty tug. And he whacked the wood of the door with his stick for good measure.

After a second pull of the bell, and another crack with the cane, a maid appeared in her midnight disarray.

The colonel did not wait to be greeted, but spoke right up, as if a household familiar.

“Tell Miss Thumper that Colonel Tice-Rolley’s come to see her.” He glanced at Fanny. “On a most particular matter.”

The maid gave a curtsy, narrowed her woeful face, and said, “Sor, the mistress is dape in her slumbers and won’t be seen ’til morning.”

Irish as oat cakes the poor girl was, and doubtless afraid of losing her position, but the colonel was no man to be deterred.

Perhaps it was his latest brush with the miseries of the poor, for such will ever ignite a fellow’s conscience. Or he might have been out of sorts from age and weariness—his temper had been famous in the regiment, and even true religion won’t turn an orange cat gray. Mayhaps it was just the habit of a man who all his life had been obeyed and did not like to be packed off by a serving girl. Whatever the cause, he unleashed a cannonade of language at that poor maid that would have persuaded the Roman Church to virtue.

The kindest thing he said was: “Get her now.”

One effect of the colonel’s barrage was to cause Fanny to cling to me as a frightened little monkey clings to its mother.

But wasn’t there a great fumbling and tumbling thereafter? The colonel seized control of the entranceway, and as soon as he made his breach he led us inside. Gaslamps flared, and the flounce of night dresses brushed along high bannisters. Doors slammed. Voices squeaked, as if at an invasion of rodents. Footsteps pattered and clattered. And a disturbed murmur of femaleness swept the house like a tide.

“Why didn’t you tell me at once?” a voice fresh off the whetstone cut the air.

I looked around the entrance hall, which was certainly Christian in its austerity. The few chairs looked hard as gun carriages, and the tables I saw were narrow as the hopes of a wounded man left behind in an Afghan pass. There were no decorations on the walls.

At last, two ladies succeeded so far in the matter of dress that they might descend the stairs. One behind the other they come, with wide skirts hiding feet that hurried along as if driven by steam.

The first was tall and alarmingly gaunt, and the second was short and slender to a concern. They looked as if they had spent their lives sharing a pauper’s bowl of soup between them, without the benefit of an accompanying crust of bread. And those lives had not been short. If you will excuse my frankness, both these ladies were past the prime of life, if ever their lives had known such a thing as a prime. The taller one was dressed in black, the shorter in darkest blue. Buttoned up to the top of the neck, the closest to frivolity either of them approached was a quarter-inch of gray lace peeping over the taller woman’s collar. She descended first, and she spoke to us first, and I figured the bit of lace for her badge of rank.

“Colonel Tice-Rolley!” the tall lady said. “What an unexpected pleasure!”

“What an unexpected pleasure, Colonel Tice-Rolley!” the shorter woman declared.

“’Evening, ladies. Tip of the hat, and all that. This here’s Sergeant—I mean to say,
Ma
jor Jones, don’t you know?”

I bowed in the direction of the ladies, as a fellow is expected to do. Even then, the child would not release me. It lent my gesture some awkwardness.

“Major Jones,” the colonel said, “that woman you see there is Miss Thumper.” He gestured at the taller of our hostesses, as casually as if she were a boar’s head hung on the wall of a
gentleman’s den. Although I do not mean that unkindly. “And that one,” he told me, indicating the shorter, “is Miss Sharp. Do wonders with the girls, they do. Turn ’em into proper little ladies. Scientific methods. Christian, too.”

Miss Thumper gave a bit of a curtsy, and Miss Sharp dipped down behind her.

“How kind of you to say so!” Miss Thumper said. “And we are honored beyond
words
to meet a comrade of our dear, dear colonel’s.”

“Terribly kind of you,” Miss Sharp got in. “Positively honored.”

I bowed again, and hoped I did not look a fool. For I have had to learn my social graces.

“Mesdames,”
the colonel said, “we have come on a mission of mercy.”

At that, the two of them looked at Fanny. As if they had to force their eyes to do it. In truth, they had not seemed to see her previously.

Their faces took on the somber look of cabinet members threatened with war and invasion.

“This,” the colonel announced, “is Miss Fanny Raeburn.”

Miss Thumper leaned down, as if for a better look. She pinched her eyes, and narrowed her eyes, then pursed them to a squint.

“Is your name Fanny, child?” she asked.

“Is Fanny your name?” Miss Sharp reinforced her.

Fanny nodded her assent.

Miss Thumper straightened and Miss Sharp recoiled.

“Your name is
not
Fanny,” Miss Thumper said.

“Your name couldn’t
pos
sibly be Fanny,” Miss Sharp confirmed.

“Your name is Frances,” Miss Thumper continued. “Fanny isn’t a proper name at all.”

“You are most definitely named Frances,” Miss Sharp informed her.

“Fanny is a
pet
name, child. The
best
of your acquaintances may call you Fanny,
should
you permit them. But the common run of mankind must know you as
Fran
ces.”

“Listen when your elders give you advice, Frances,” Miss Sharp admonished the little thing affixed to my new coat. “Mankind always seeks to take advantage of a young lady. You dare not even be addressed as Frances, except by those awarded that privilege of intimacy, and only should you invite the familiarity. You are Miss
Rae
burn when you are out of doors.”

“Or to those in service,” Miss Thumper augmented. “Upstairs and down.”

“Or to those who one day
hope
to be in service. Or to representatives of the professions. And, especially, to those who pursue a trade.”

“You are Miss Raeburn, morning, noon, and night.”

“Even when asleep, you are Miss Raeburn,” Miss Sharp said, with great moral emphasis.

“Miss
Frances
Raeburn,” Miss Thumper stated conclusively. “That’s who you are, and that’s who you shall be.”

“My name’s Fanny,” the child whispered.

“What?”

“What did she say?”

“Is she insolent?”

“Is she ungrateful?”

“Begging your pardon, ladies,” I began, in a doomed attempt to soften their conditions. “Perhaps she—”

Before I could conclude my speech, Miss Thumper turned to the colonel and asked, “Don’t you think this child would be better placed elsewhere?”

“Wouldn’t you rather enroll her somewhere else?” Miss Sharp asked.

“She doesn’t seem to appreciate her fortune.”

“She doesn’t appreciate anything at all.”

“Damn me, ladies,” the colonel roared, as if addressing two captains who’d botched a march, “you’re trying my Christian patience. Where would you have me take the blessed thing?”

“There
are
institutions for the poor,” Miss Thumper said.

“For the ex
cep
tionally poor and the diseased,” Miss Sharp clarified.

“For those who have no interest in learning.”