The Tiger Catcher

by Paullina Simons

  Julian’s head is buried in her neck. It’s painful for him to hear.

  “I want nothing less,” she says. “I’d rather be stoned three times than suffer childbirth once. But enough about it. What’s gone is gone.” She opens her arms. “Come here.”

  Julian loves her until she can’t take it anymore. Julian, she whispers. I’m going to fall into ruin. I’m going to cry and moan and scream and everyone will hear me, everyone, not just Dunham, but even the Camberwells the next manor over.

  He holds her shivering body to his.

  You have swallowed me, you have slayed me.

  Who says this, Julian? Mary?

  They quench their thirst by the light of the watery moon. They haven’t slept. Soon it will be time for him to go. But that’s in the future. In the present Mary speaks. “Why did you come to me? Am I your plaything? From the first moment you saw me, you were locked into me, why? I’m such a fool! I thought I could control you, manipulate you. But you can’t control what you don’t understand. Did you always know that if I gave you half a chance you’d have this power over me?”

  “Mary,” he whispers, “you are the brightest of all the stars in my sky.”

  “Why, Julian, why?”

  He caresses her. “If I ever say words to you that sound less than words of love,” he says, “it’s because I want real life to live up to my dream of your perfection. That’s all I ever wanted. Do you understand? Promise me you’ll forgive me. Forgive me if I ever say loud cruel things I do not mean.”

  “Like what?”

  “Words of anger or even hate,” Julian says. “Sometimes words can set things in motion in the human soul that cannot be undone.”

  “You want me to forgive you for what you haven’t done?”

  “Who knows what might happen,” he says. “The future is unknowable. Please promise me you’ll remember this night if we should ever come to combat and forgive me.”

  “Likewise, will you forgive me?” Mary cries. “I have to marry Lord Falk, Julian. Oh! Despite all my bravado, it’s true. That’s just me railing in fury against the injustice of my fate. That’s just me struggling in vain to take charge of my one brief life. But Mother is right. I do know what’s at stake. I loved my father. And I love my mother. There’s nothing I can do.”

  “There’s plenty you can do,” Julian says. “You said you would never marry him.”

  “And yet I must.”

  “No. You mustn’t. There’s another way.” He holds her face in his palms. “Come with me.” His thumbs wipe away her tears. “Come away with me.”

  “Come away with you where?”

  “Away from here. Where we can hide and live. Somewhere you and I can have a life.”

  “Is there such a place in all the world?” Mary says, closing her eyes.

  “There is,” Julian says. “Mary! We’ll hide across the river. I need to earn a few more shillings, and then we’ll sail down the Thames to the English Channel and around France and Spain. We’ll sail to Italy, beyond the Alps, where it’s warm and the sea is green. We’ll get married, and we’ll sell wine or grow grapes, and we’ll find a new stage for you to ply your trade.”

  She puts her fingers to his lips. “Stop speaking.”

  He kisses her hand as if she is a princess.

  “I can’t dishonor my family, Julian.”

  “It’s not a dishonor to marry me.”

  “I’m noble-born.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  She pulls her hand away. “Don’t demean it. Just because you don’t understand it. I don’t understand what it means to work like you do, to scrape by for a living, not to have your own home, to be a migrant, a wanderer. Not to own a horse, not to know how to ride a horse. I don’t understand it, but I don’t demean it.”

  They sit up in her four-poster bed. Some conversations are too difficult to have lying naked face to face.

  “Look,” Julian says, “if I could change myself into a duke or a prince for you, don’t you think I’d do it? I’d do it instantly.” I changed myself into a gardening chandler for you. “But I can’t move up.”

  “Right. Only I can move down.”

  “Being with me is not moving down.” Julian frowns at her words. He needs to persuade her, not sound desperate.

  “Whatever you call it, it’s not staying where I am,” she says, “and it’s not moving up.” Mary shakes her head. “We have sumptuary laws in this country. Do the Welsh know what those are? It’s when you can’t wear certain fabrics like silk or fur if you’re not landed nobility. If I gave up my name, I’d have to wear rough wool—and cotton, heaven forfend! I couldn’t be seen with veils of lace on Sunday.”

  “Italy is the heart of the Renaissance,” Julian says. “In Italy, no one will give a toss about your titles and your lace.”

  “You want us to milk goats together?”

  “If need be. Or play the piano.”

  “Play the what?”

  He sighs.

  Mary watches him—an unconvinced and unimpressed lady—twist himself into new thoughts and words. She’s not buying what he is selling. “You prefer marriage to Lord Falk to being my wife?”

  “I didn’t say I prefer it. I have to think about it.”

  “You’re running out of time for thinking. The wedding is in two weeks.”

  “Don’t you think I know that, better than you?”

  She’s just trying to buy some time until he is out of her bed. He watches her parched mouth, her sweet face, her half-closed eyes. If only he could confess to her what she needs to sacrifice to buy some time. Everything.

  “This is so easy for you,” Mary says, her voice rising, “you don’t have to give up anything to be with me!” She’s misread his thoughts, heard day instead of night.

  Julian folds his hands. He takes deep breaths, to count through fifty-nine seconds of impossible infinities. “I know it’s hard for you to believe, Mary,” Julian says, “because on the surface it looks as if I have nothing, but the reason I have nothing”—he gathers himself together to keep his voice from rising or breaking—“is because I gave it all up to find you.”

  “What do you mean, find me?”

  “To be with you. I gave up my family, my home, my work, my friends, my things, my future. My own future. I gave up my life to be with you.”

  Mary crawls to him on the bed and wraps herself around him. I’m sorry, my love. Let’s not decide impossible things right now. I need my Julian back, his light and wild caress. Let’s not squander our priceless seconds with idle words and empty tears.

  They’re not idle and they’re not empty, Julian says.

  There’s so much sadness in the sweet sticky air when he makes love to her again.

  Am I the face that launched a thousand ships, she moans.

  No, he says. You are the face that launched just one.

  They intertwine their lips and limbs. Their skin burns with the friction of their bodies. All that I have is my soul. Will you ever give it back to me, Mary, Julian whispers. Will I ever have it back from you?

  He closes his eyes, and the next thing he knows, Mary’s shaking him awake. “Have you gone mad? The sun’s coming up. You can’t sleep here! Leave before we both lose our heads.”

  Naked, he presses himself against her one last time, kisses the softness between her breasts.

  It’s almost dawn; the house is stirring. Hugging the wall, Julian runs down the back stairs and outside. He heads for the healing river—to clear his head and to wash his body in the damp chilly morning.

  As he’s crossing the lawn to return to his room, he sees a tall, odd figure making his way down the narrow lane to Collins House.

  It’s too early for visitors, yet there he is. The man is not in a carriage or on a horse. He’s on foot, and his body is covered from head to toe by dark robes and tall boots. He wears a tightly wound scarf and leather gloves. Julian can’t see his face because the man’s head is hidden behind a black hood a
nd a ghoulish black mask with a long white beak. He’s an upright walking bird. He is terrifying. An anxious tick lodges in Julian’s chest. He drags a barely awake Cedric out of the stables. “Cedric, who is that?”

  “A doctor,” Cedric replies, rubbing his eyes.

  “Why that awful mask?”

  “To keep death away,” Cedric says. “The mask is filled with bergamot oil. The doctor douses himself with vinegar, and he chews the angelica weed before entering a home. Someone inside must be contagious.”

  That can’t be, Julian thinks, hurrying to the manor. At supper last night, everyone looked fine. He can’t speak for anyone else in the night, but he knows he and Mary were burning alive in flames. The masked man fills Julian with a sickly foreboding.

  Lo and behold, it’s a mistake. When the doors are thrown open and Lady Collins with Cornelius run through the house, yelling for an explanation, it turns out the doctor had walked down the wrong lane. It’s not a surprise. The lanes are barely marked. It must be the poor Camberwells, a field and a hedge over yonder.

  The doctor leaves, but the house remains in turmoil. It’s not only Julian who sees a bad omen in the doctor’s visit. Lady Collins, superstitious to the last, orders all the bedding stripped and boiled. She commands Catrain and Krea to wipe down Mary’s bedchamber with vinegar and hot water, to wash Mary’s hair again with lye, and to scrub her body with soap.

  “Out there,” Lady Collins says, as overwrought as Julian has ever seen her, “there is a slew of pestilence!” She has gathered the entire household into the great hall. “Out there is nothing but a festering carbuncle of grief and death. We must protect what we have remaining in this house with every thread of our being. I don’t have a husband, I’ve lost five of my six children, my one remaining child has lost her father. We hardly have any servants left. At any time, the reaper can snuff out our existence. When we saw that man, none of us was surprised. We said, who’s next? Yes, it was an error on his part, but nothing is a coincidence. It’s a terrible sign. Master Julian, I don’t want you to go to London anymore until after Mary’s wedding. If there’s something we need, get it at Smythe Field. London is a sickbed. The kites that fly overhead, feeding on dead flesh and refuse are healthier than the masses that walk London streets.” Kites are buzzards, carrion eaters. Lady Collins lowers her voice to a distraught hiss. “We have forgotten we’re in the middle of an epidemic. The errant doctor reminded us of this. Nothing will be better until winter. We must prepare for the worst.” Aurora twitches with anxiety. “The newly released inmates, full of disease, roam the roads and ask for quarter at any house that will take them. We must turn them away. The foul air taints us all.”

  “The air is not foul, Lady Mother,” Mary says, carelessly. “It’s alive with life! The roses in Julian’s garden are not for our graves, they’re for a wedding.” She gleams at him from across the hall.

  Julian inclines his head but doesn’t dare speak. He’s not the actor she is.

  Aurora stares in grim silence at Julian and at her daughter. “Enough out of you,” she says to Mary in a lowered voice. “You heard what I said. Watch yourself. Go get ready. Your bridegroom is coming.”

  ***

  Lord Falk is a hideous human being. He arrives later that afternoon in a four-horse-drawn carriage, followed by an entourage of riders. Most noblemen ride their own horses. Not him. He brings with him a butler, a steward, his own cook (immediately casting Farfelee aside), and a wagon full of meat and wine. He orders Cedric to clean his horses’ hooves, supervised by his own men, of course. He commands Cornelius to show his men to their rooms and to fetch him the cleanest water from the deepest well, supervised by his own men, of course. He brings a gift of fine Italian silver cutlery for the mother of his bride, and then drones on ceaselessly about how expensive it was.

  He is overdressed, overloud, overbearing. He wears a maroon velvet tunic tied with a gold-studded thick and showy leather belt. Fur drapes over his shoulders, even though it’s June. He kisses Aurora’s hand as if he is doing her a favor. He barely acknowledges Edna, and doesn’t glance at Julian. To his credit, he becomes slightly less pompous when Mary descends the stairs, for she is a vision in an abundant champagne-colored lace dress. She wears pink silk gloves and a gold bonnet. Her ringlet curls are decorated with flowers and pearls. She is rosy and healthy, her skin flushed, her dark eyes shining, her lips red and full, the swell of her breasts prominent in the tight embroidered bodice.

  Even Lord Falk is momentarily thrown off the pedestal of his own making at the sight of her. Having finally found the occasion to don Gregory’s flamboyant pink and scarlet coat, Julian stands in the back of the hall with the rest of the servants and watches Lord Falk slobber over Mary’s silk-gloved hand. This isn’t the moaning nude girl with the pixie-cut hair whose body Julian had so thoroughly loved the night before. She has transformed herself into a genteel princess who is forced to sit next to a man in fur and velvet, forced to listen to him list the joys of watching a bear be chained to a post and ripped apart by dogs. “Bear-baiting is far more entertaining than those silly plays Lady Mary once dragged me to. Isn’t that right, my dear?”

  If there’s any justice in the world, Black Death will infect him. Falk manages to be both pompous and stupid. He may be well-born, but he is actually ill-bred. He is pretentious and fraudulent. Julian doesn’t know if the man is trying too hard, or if he’s always like this. Julian is pleased to see that Falk’s relative attractiveness falls on blind eyes. Mary clearly can’t stand him. Falk is oblivious to her real feelings, as he’s oblivious to much.

  In many ways, he reminds Julian of Nigel. When Aurora counsels hiring wise women for simple illnesses because wise women are less expensive than doctors, Lord Falk says, “And more rare,” and guffaws at his own joke.

  Falk laments the absence of soft linen rags when he needs to use the jakes and continues to showcase his fascination with all matters egesta by telling a tedious story about a man named John Harrington who, a few years earlier, in 1596, invented a flushing lavatory that drew water from a cistern and funneled it into an underground chamber. Though Queen Elizabeth had superficially liked the toy, Harrington has since gone broke because his ridiculous idea didn’t catch on. “And why would it?” Falk says. “A flushing toilet! What nonsense. What could possibly be better than a hole in the ground, isn’t that right, my darling?”

  Julian keeps his mouth shut. He prefers not to discuss such things in front of ladies, though in this world everyone—nobles and commoners, men and women—talk about all manner of subjects considered off-limits in Julian’s day.

  It’s Lady Collins who casts aside her recent unease with Julian and invites him to destroy Lord Falk, if only with words. “Master Julian,” Aurora says, motioning him to sit by her side, “what is your opinion on this delicate subject? Lord Falk, you’ve met our Julian? He’s a very good friend of the family, my lord. He’s a yeoman from Wales, who happens to be an expert on many matters.”

  “Though not an expert on many others,” says Edna.

  “Like horses and candles,” says Cornelius.

  Lord Falk scrutinizes Julian. “When a stranger rises too quickly through the ranks of an unfamiliar house,” Falk says, “it often means that he’s misplaced in his origins. That’s Aristotle’s opinion, not mine.” He sneers. “Well, let’s hear it, expert. What say you about the pit latrine?”

  “I have just one question, my lord,” says Julian. “The waste inside the hole in the ground, where does it go?”

  “Who cares? It’s in the ground!”

  “But the ground is porous.”

  “Who says?”

  “We do,” Julian says. “By our actions. When we plant and water and fertilize and farm, we say it.”

  “I do none of those things,” Falk says. “Get to your point, yeoman.”

  “I don’t have a point,” Julian says. “I have a question. I’ll repeat. Where does the waste from the pit latrine go?”

 
“This matters why?”

  “Because it pollutes your groundwater,” Julian replies. “It contaminates the wells from which you draw the water with which you wash your face and hands, and with which you cook your food. Because the waste spreads fatal disease. That’s why.”

  “Nonsense. What disease?”

  “Diphtheria, dysentery, tape worms, typhoid fever, hepatitis, and cholera,” Julian replies calmly.

  There’s a chilly silence in the great hall. The wood on the fire crackles.

  “Why do you argue with me, yeoman?” Lord Falk booms, scanning the embarrassed faces of the gathered.

  “Because I think you are wrong, my lord.”

  “It’s irrelevant in any case,” Lord Falk says. “There’s no defense against the illnesses you mentioned.”

  “Harrington’s flushable lavatory with a cistern is one such defense, my lord.” Julian speaks the words my lord with disdain.

  “You naïve Welshman,” says Lord Falk. “No one cares about those trifling diseases. The plague is all that matters, and the cistern is not a defense against it. No one knows what causes it. Could be anything. Foul air. Cats and dogs. Unwashed lepers. Welshmen wandering about.”

  “Bites from fleas that live on infected rats,” says Julian.

  Lord Falk hoots. “Well, that’s absurd! Fleas don’t bite human beings. And rats don’t get infected.” Frowning, he sits up in the oak chair, the most honorary chair in the hall, the chair where the great Lord Collins himself had sat when he would come home and remove his armor after fighting in the name of the Crown.

  “The rats die first,” Julian says, wishing he were a nobleman and owned a sword and knew how to fence. Lord Falk is insufferable. “That’s how you know the plague is coming. The rats die first.”

  Lord Falk spits. “Where did you hear such tripe?”

  “Probably in Wales,” Edna pipes in, and Cornelius heartily agrees.