Honor's Kingdom (46 page)

He shook his head, bemused. “Always so forthright, so blunt.”

“You wanted me to kill him. Didn’t you?”

He seemed to have no concern for the driver, Hargreaves, who sat in front of us. “Well, that’s putting it rather harshly, don’t you think?” A brewery wagon passed us, bound for the city. “I will admit I hoped to even the odds. Had you been killed last night, it would have spoiled the effect I have planned for today.” His smile expanded ever so slightly. “One doesn’t enjoy winning nearly so much if the loser isn’t present to make faces.”
He turned toward me as fully as the carriage allowed. “May not sound very sporting, but I believe it’s commonly felt.”

“You wanted me to kill him. Because you were through with him. And because he had become a danger to your plans.”

The Earl shook his head. “No. You still haven’t got it. Though I suspect you will, not terribly long from now. Fact is, I never ‘used’ him at all. Nor had he endangered my plans the slightest bit. On the contrary, poor, old Cullie rather furthered my designs with his blundering. It was all gloriously inadvertent.” He laughed modestly, then resumed his poise. “I will also admit I found him an embarrassment. Too long under the foreign sun, perhaps. Although he always was an excessive sort. Enjoyed killing even more than you do, I think. And when he wasn’t killing people, he was duller than David Livingstone. Of late, the poor fellow had grown simply inadmissible. Between us, it would have been quite the best thing had he remained in those distant harems of Mohammed. I should say his lack of judgement claimed his life. You . . . were merely the instrument, Jones. My own role was less than negligible.”

“You can speak so. And he was your brother. If only a half by blood.”

“We make too much of blood, don’t you think? It seems to me a burden on dear, old Britain. The truth is that my mother never should have re-married. It was tasteless of her.” He laughed. “A family wit says that my father died in childbirth, instead of my mother. And she hardly waited the year before she re-married. Gave a bad appearance. She might have had her pleasures without the formality. Worse luck, the man was a boor, and I always suspected disease—do I shock you?”

“No,” I said. “You disappoint me.”

“Oh, dear. I hate to disappoint.”

A small bird swooped behind the driver’s back and before our faces.

“It is not you yourself who disappoints me,” I went on, for I would not have him feel flattered. “Not you in your person. It is with my fellow man that I am disappointed. You . . . are merely the instrument.”

“Ah, point to you, Jones. Poor, old Cullie never realized what a delight you can be. Do you, by the way, have many German acquaintances?”

I thought of Mrs. Schutzengel, my dear Washington landlady, then of that disappointing fellow Marx.

“A few,” I said, although I could not understand his interest.

He tapped me on the sleeve, as he might have touched a dear and valued friend. “They shall be impressed.” His gloved hand gestured toward the slash on my face. “Once that heals, it’s going to look like the very best of duelling scars, I should think. Straight, and not overdone. The sort received by the man who does not flinch.” He tutted. “Always seemed terribly childish to me, but my Berlin friends insist that cutting each other up is the most important part of university life. If you ever
do
go to Prussia, or any of the Germanies, I should be glad to provide you letters of introduction.”

“I do not plan to take me to Prussia. Or to any such places,” I told him in a sulky voice that peeved me as I heard the words come out.

“Ah, but we never know where life may take us, Jones. And though I am rather a voice in the wilderness at present, I do believe the Germans capable of extraordinary mischief.” His lips curled as if mocking all of mankind. “Whenever anyone starts in on ‘the world as will and idea,’ I suspect it means their idea is to employ that will against the world. Watch that man Bismarck. He’s clever.”

“I have no interest in such matters,” I said. “I am an American, see. And we will leave your European wickedness behind.”

“Will you, though, Jones? After all, you’re here, aren’t you? Really, I’m fascinated by the question of America, and worry that we underestimate the Yankee. As I once underestimated you.” He laughed. “But do remember to let me know should you ever visit Berlin. It would please me to be of service to you.”

That is the thing about gentlemen. They know how to slap you small with their very courtesy, and they give you no excuse to slap them back.

We had left the proper confines of the city and travelled a road between villages and smaller settlements growing toward one another as the city crept toward them. The Clyde appeared on our right when we passed by fields or marshes, and shipbuilding enterprises littered the rivers’s banks, with swimming boys and fishermen in the intervals between the brisk commotions of hammers and hulls. I felt I saw a world that was changing forever.

The sun felt lovely, and now the sky was of an unmarred blue, with the soot and stink of the city left behind us. Twas one of those days at the end of June when the Lord lets down his blessing upon the earth, and the leaf trees shimmer in the breeze, and the heart yearns in desire beyond words.

“I understand your singing tart was splendid last night,” the Earl said to pass the time. “McLeod’s put it out all over the police offices. I believe he’s smitten with her.” He gave the floor of the caleche a playful tap with his stick. “I wonder what he’d think of her if he knew she’d had a child and gave it up to an orphan’s home? Without a backward glance?”

“That is cruel.”

“Not enamored of Miss—Miss Perkins, was it? Not taken by her yourself, are you, Jones?”

“I am a married man. And happy in my—”

“Oh, but that has nothing to do with it! Marriage is simply a refuge—and a false one—for the weak and sentimental. For those afraid to accept their mortal lot.”

“And what is our lot?”

“To be alone. First and last. And in between, any time it should matter.” He smiled and his lips parted to show stained teeth that did not match the grooming of the rest of him. “How does it go? ‘We must endure our going hence, even as our coming hither’? Have I quoted correctly? Really, Jones, you’re much too strong a fellow to remain within the confines of marriage indefinitely. Sooner or later, you’re bound to ‘betray’ your wife.” He tapped me on the sleeve. “Remember me when you do.”

“You do not know me,” I muttered.

“But do you know yourself? Isn’t that the thing?”

“I know what I must.”

“That’s a blatant lie. I’m ashamed of you. Tell me, though. What would you do if you didn’t have a war? Or some other excuse to go about killing people whenever the mood struck you?”

“I do not need to kill.”

“The opium eater insists he needs no opium.”

“You do not know.”

“No, not if you mean that I’ve never killed myself. I never have. I told you that. Nor do I intend to. It all sounds rather shabby. Encumbering to the spirit.”

“Condemn me, if you wish. It will not move me.”

“But I
don’t
want to condemn you, don’t you see. I simply want you to
understand.
Look here. Although I don’t know all you did in India, I suspect you’ve never taken a pretty little boy to your bed. No. I can see you haven’t. So you don’t know what it’s like, what pleasures may be enjoyed by both parties. Yet, you’re ready to condemn another’s pleasures without hesitation.”

“You twist things.”

“No, I state things. The twisting goes on inside of you, don’t you see. The Greeks—”

“We are not Greeks.”

“And I find it a pity. We live in an age that flees from every pleasure. I expect that, any day, we shall hear of the invention of a machine with which we may inflict pain upon ourselves in regular doses. The inventor will become the richest man in England. And in America, I suspect.”

“Your life is joyless,” I told him, “so you imagine others have no joys. And you are loveless, so you see no love in others.”

“Oh, that’s trite. And inaccurate, by the way.” He smiled the finest smile I ever had seen on him. “But here we are. I wonder which of us will have joy of what comes next?”

We had arrived at the gate of a bustling shipyard, perhaps halfway down to Greenock. I had no fears for my person, for half the population of Glasgow knew where I was going that morning, and the Earl had appeared in his open carriage to inform the other half. I knew I would return safely to my hotel. But I did not know if I would go back sound.

I saw it in the distance. A great wooden-sided structure it was, with canvas stretched over the roofbeam, like a vast exaggeration of the tents prepared for an army’s winter quarters. Big enough that pavilion was to hold any ship of war I could imagine.

“There it is, Jones,” the Earl told me.

“I want to see inside.”

“Of course. That’s why I’ve brought you here, after all.”

“Is it that the ship is already gone from it? And you intend to show me an empty slip?”

He shook his head. “Too simple. We’re playing chess, not checkers.”

Then the servility started up again, with the guards at the gates, and workers and foremen, errand boys and lads set to glean scraps, all pulling off their caps and bowing as the Chinese are said to do, and some of them even cheering as we rolled by.

“I pay them a decent wage,” the Earl said. “I find my fellow yard-owners simply disgraceful. With their parsimony. If you’re looking for your beloved ‘evil,’ Jones, I rather think you should look there. Among the workers. And those ‘dark Satanic mills,’ although I do find Blake a bit much. More of a Coleridge man, myself.” He tapped my forearm again. “You know, the first concrete act I undertook when I gained my majority was to raise the wages of every man and woman in my employ. And I’m all the richer for it, to be frank. I have the very best workers, and I’ve never lost a skilled artisan to another man’s yard. Or to another’s factory. I’m afraid I find most men of business benighted.”

We stopped before a second barrier blocking access to the huge wooden hall. There were thrice as many guards about as
there were at the front gate, and all were armed with clubs that would split a skull.

“Shall we walk in?” the Earl asked me, getting down himself.

I got me down, if awkwardly. My bothered leg was stiff from the ride, and the knee I had banged on the headstone had swelled as I slept. I must have looked a man of sixty following the Earl across that landscape of piled lumber and steaming pitch-pots. Although, at thirty-four, I judged I was but five or six years his elder.

The Earl paused for a moment, teasing me. “I wonder exactly what you expect,” he said.

Of a sudden, I realized that I could not hear a sound from the great wooden structure. Around us, the yard was all banging and scraping and shouts. But it seemed that we had entered a vale of silence.

“Shall we?” the Earl asked. Smiling.

He flicked his hand and a great Scotsman opened a rough-cut door. The fellow looked the sort who had gone swinging claymore swords at walls of English muskets.

“Yer Lardship,” he said, with his tam balled in his hand and his big head nodding.

And then we went inside.

The interior was empty.

Twas not that a ship had been built and discharged to the sea. The inside of the pavilion held nothing but dried mud and some grasses withered by the lack of sun. Otherwise, nature had been undisturbed, and I even saw a frog hop into the water at the end of the structure. There was nothing inside that building. And there never had been anything.

After he had allowed me some minutes of wonderment, the Earl said, “I suppose it was a rather shabby trick, after all. Playing with the expectations of everyone this way. But you must admit you brought this on yourselves.”

He sighed, as a fellow does at the end of an abundant meal, when his buttons are popping. “Last night, while you were otherwise
engaged—and your Minister was looking north to Scotland in expectation—a ship left the Birkenhead yards. You may know her as Number 290 and she sailed as the
Enrica,
but I believe she’s to assume the name C.S.S.
Alabama.
Designed as a commerce raider. Oh, don’t excite yourself. It’s too late now. The ship’s beyond territorial waters. She’ll be armed before anyone could possibly move this government to act on the high seas.”

“But . . .” I said, “ . . . there is a law . . . Mr. Adams has filed in the courts . . .”

“As long as those letters of Lord Palmerston’s were floating about, the government was not about to incense any party that might possess them. Certain hints were given. And the ship was allowed to go quietly. I’ve won, you see. All trumps, Jones!”

“But you do not have the letters. And never will.”

“Nor do I want them,” he said, with a sincere frown. “Can’t you understand that, either? I value skill. I don’t want to play with two queens when my opponent has none. Anyone can win that sort of game. I won’t play unless there’s an element of fairness between the parties, of equal risks. Bludgeoning poor old Palmerston with those letters would be rather like hunting rabbits with a battery of artillery. Don’t you think it rather better to let people
fear
you have the letters—when you haven’t got them at all?”

“You speak of fairness,” I said sullenly, “and yet you have your wealth and position to back you.”

“And you,” he replied almost merrily, “have an entire government behind you. I should say that makes me more David than Goliath, don’t you think?”

When I made no reply, he tugged his summer gloves to rights and said, “Shall we return to the rig? I expect you’ll want to telegraph London.”

And so we began our journey back to Glasgow. I was glum, as you will imagine, but the Earl was in excellent spirits.

“I don’t expect you’d allow me to give you lunch?” he asked. “There’s a not-bad inn just along here. No?”

“We will use those letters to further the cause of the American Union,” I told him grumpily. Twas the start of a little speech I had prepared. But he forestalled me.

“Oh, I don’t give a fig what you do with them.”