by Parry, Owen
But the child spoke only to me. “I would na be a trouble, and I’d work sae hard ye’d be ’stonished.”
“I will come to visit,” I told her. “Tomorrow. To see that you are properly bestowed.”
Miss Thumper sniffed.
Miss Sharp snorted. Which I did not think ladylike to an excess.
At last, we got away, the colonel and I. Although I cannot quite say how. We left the lass in tears, with those two crows perched over her. Twas all for the best, of course. For rigor, within measure, is a blessing. But I know what it means to be handed to strangers.
There is ever a shortage of kindness in this world.
Well, better Miss Thumper’s Home than the corner of a room in the Old Vennel for the girl. The poor thing had not even possessed a spare set of unmentionables, but had retrieved only a splintering box hardly bigger than a pencil case. And when I returned to my hotel, I would need to pick over my coat in case a louse or two had preferred my freshness to her familiarity.
The faintest of drizzles filtered through the dirty clot of air, but the colonel resolved to walk me to my hotel. And I was glad of his company, though I still felt a bit awkward about the old difference in our ranks. It did not seem to matter to him at all, now that everything had been explained, but once a man has been placed low, a part of him has trouble coming up. Perhaps I was his equal as a Christian, but I could not feel his equal as a man.
“Those two witches,” he said abruptly, as a passing constable touched his fingers to his visor. The gaslamps wore damp haloes. “Have no fear, I’ll see they treat her properly.”
“I am indebted to you, sir,” I told him.
But he was a true Christian, and did not look for thanks. He marched along, and muttered at the world, and confided, “Georgiana would have put the two of them right, don’t you know? Never had any of that woman fuss from my Georgie. Miss her, I do, the old campaigner.”
We walked in silence for a time, communing with separate ghosts. Then, of a sudden, the colonel said, “Sometimes I want to beat the Gospels into the whole bloody pack of them.”
TWAS GRACIOUS OF THE COLONEL to accompany me, but it tired him. When we parted before the hotel, he asked the porter to summon a cab. And off he went, through the warm and glistening streets.
I thought to go straight to my room, for I was weary myself, but the fellow who had the duty of the desk presented me an envelope with my key.
A telegraphic message it was. I stepped away to the privacy of a gas fixture and fingered it open.
It come from Mr. Charles Francis Adams himself:
AJ. DIFFICULTY OVER LTRS. HA LONDON TRAIN TOMORROW NIGHT. ACCOMPANIED. BG MURDERED. RP IN CUSTODY. DIVISIONS IN HP. REASONS UNCLEAR. CFA.
Of course, anyone might have understood the message, as you doubtless have done. I needed a code, and had none, and Mr. Adams had done the best he could to confuse our enemies.
There was a problem about the letters, and Henry Adams was coming to Glasgow the following night to enlist my aid, likely accompanied by a bodyguard, if not a police inspector, given the violent turn of events and the young man’s lack of physical robustness. Betty Green had been murdered, and I saw the beauty of the deed at once: If anyone had written her compromising letters, that person would appear doubly compromised now, even if he bore no least blame for her demise. And woe unto him with political aspirations. A lover’s murder may delight the public, but it will not please the sort who hold the franchise. Nor did I think it would amuse the Queen. And Reginald Pomeroy had been taken by the police, perhaps because he had botched a deed of which I would not have thought that young man capable. It doubtless would cost his father his hope of a peerage. Lastly, there were unexpected divisions in Parliament, the causes of which could not be understood by Mr. Adams, though worried he was.
That seemed enough for any man to sleep on. But the city of Glasgow had not yet had its fill of me.
When he tapped me on the shoulder, I leapt to defend myself. For I had not heard the big fellow coming up. He moved like a Pushtoon.
Inspector McLeod it was. His hat was in his hand, and his orange whiskers and hair taken together might have lit the room in the absence of the gas fixtures.
He gently pushed my cane aside until it no longer threatened his person.
“I hae heard you made braw use of that today. Down in the Gallowgate.”
“I was set upon.” For a moment, I suspected he had come to question me, if not make an arrest, because of the violence I had done.
“Weel, it does na matter to me, if it does na to you. A good thing that paddy won’t need more jaw than you spared him, for young Doctor Russell says it’ll serve as a lifelong reminder that he’s to mind his manners around his betters. Tither one an’t much for talking, either, though I’m na sure what you did to him.” He glanced toward the guardian desk, where the clerk was hard at the ledger. “If you do na mind, I would like to hae a private conversation.”
I recommended my room. And we went up. To tell you the truth, I was almost glad to have him along with me, for I was growing wary of British hotel rooms.
When we were alone—with no evidence of the severed hands of children, or penny-gaff Eves, or deadly gifts—I offered him the single chair and sat myself on the bed, though my legs were dangling.
“I hae also heard,” the inspector said quietly, “that the Earl of Thretford appears to covet your company. Would that hae to do with your questions about shipyards, now?”
“Yes.”
“And would it hae to do with dead Americans?”
“It may.”
“And mought I ask what the Earl thought sae important that he lowered himself to the streets like the dirty thousands of us?”
“He wants to speak with me. Tomorrow. At his house in town.”
Inspector McLeod nodded. “Weel, then you’ll see a bonnie house. Though na sae bonnie as his hunting lodge in the hielands, which is na the quarter sae bonnie as the castle along over the muirs, which his father also bought with his English money. And though I hae na seen it myself, I hear the castle’s as nought to the Earl’s possessions south of the reivers. But you’ll see a bonnie house, and that you will.”
“A fine house, is it? Then I will mind my manners.”
“Aye. And hope that he minds his.”
“You take an interest in the Earl yourself, then, Inspector?”
“I would na call it a proper interest. Na more than I would call him a proper earl.”
“And that would make him an improper earl?”
“Aye. Like his bluidy, black sire afore him. Wha bought his portion in the north and treated the land folk crueler than Stafford treated Strathnaver. Wha burned all that he could na break, and called for the Gordons when his hired men would na do. So that he mought gi’ a portion to sheep, and hae the rest for his shooting. Twa thousand people put from their land. For sheep and the pleasure of shotguns. Aye, that would make a man an improper earl, and carry the impropriety down to his son and his grandson. Not that the true lairds did na betray their own, and by a multitude. But the sting gaes deeper coming frae an English wasp. Wha favors a grouse o’er man, or woman, or child.”
“And in the time of the burning,” I said, “would one of the children have carried the name McLeod?”
“Aye. One and more.”
“And that is what you have come to tell me tonight?”
He shook his head. “I hae said more than I wished, and I hae said less. My purpose was to tell you to gae careful with the Earl.”
I wanted a potent ally. Badly. So I asked him, “Then will you go along with me tomorrow? His carriage will call for me at two o’clock. Here.”
He began to shake his head, then stopped and thought for a moment. “I can na say that I will gae along. Not now. For all things want their proper way of doing. But if you call tomorrow, in the morning, and find me at my desk, then you mought ask me for the courtesy of my company. Since you are from the American legation. Aye, that
would be the way, all public and above an English suspicion.”
He rose to go. Scotsman though he was, he could not stop himself from offering a final observation. “I hae thought, from time to time, I mought jeck up meself and go to your America. For when I gae through the streets of the city, I see a’ ghosts upon twa legs, and I think of what mought hae been had sheep na been given the preference over men these hundred year. And then I’m angered, and there’s na good will ever come of it.”
FIFTEEN
THERE WERE NO DEVILS IN MY ROOM, BUT DEVILS there were in my soul. I dreamed of war. I killed and killed. Not only mine own enemies: Brown-skinned Sepoys, bronze Seekhs or leathery tribesmen. Nor only men in gray or butternut brown. I shot, and struck, and slashed at my old comrades. I could not find their faces, but they wore coats as red as mine had been, or the dusty-gray of the khakis we had at the last. I fought as if berserk, and they fell before me. I felt no pain and had no sense of danger. Remorseless as the juggernaut, I slaughtered every living thing in my path.
And there was a path. At the end of it was an icy, shimmering light. I needed to reach it. But a thousand times a thousand clamoring men defied my going. And the bitterness was not that I must kill them to reach my goal, that light at once compelling and wintry cold. The worst was that I wanted to lay them low. To make so great a butchery that all the fields of the earth should be bathed in blood. I tore at them with my bayonet, and slashed them with a sword greater than any I should have possessed the power to wield, and then I saw that I had many arms, like the crudest idols of India, and I was death unto thousands, whirling my countless limbs to annihilate battalions and regiments. And still they came toward me, and I could not reach the light.
All the while, I knew this to be a dream, as we sometimes know, yet I felt a weight of wrongdoing that I rarely have had to bear in my waking life. I wished to throw off sleep, to stop the massacre.
But my other soul delighted in the gore, and sought that frozen light, and offered it a sacrifice of thousands.
Then I saw the colonel’s face before me.
I woke drenched. In as great a panic as the poor recruit who knows he was mistaken in his gambit, as he sees the blade descending to take his life.
Panting I was. And weeping. Nor could I stop the sobbing that watered me down to the bone. I felt as helpless as a little child.
I crawled from my soaking bed and found my knees, not without affecting my bothered leg. And I prayed. I crushed my hands together until they ached, and I prayed in that fractured manner that consists of broken words and shredded phrases. There was no meaning in it that I might explain to you. Twas a counter-madness, an animal repentance, if such a thing may be. The thrust of it was that I was sorry and begged to be forgiven. But even that is far too well-expressed.
When madness comes, it comes to me at night. Perhaps that drunken doctor in India was right. That I was mad, though he should not have blamed the madness on a fever. I had it in the marrow of my bones.
And you? I pray you have not known what I have known. But sometimes I suspect it comes to all of us in time, the old madness. It is only that some men build better barricades, and fortify themselves by light of day. Our forebears were not fools when they insisted that Satan’s power lay in the dark of night.
I prayed myself sick. A man can do that, too. And I retched in the night-pot.
Then I slept.
In the morning, all that remained was the damp on the sheets.
I STEPPED OUT TO FIND a less-dear place for my breakfast, and discovered Fanny drowsing against the wall. With the earliness of the city passing her by. Her dress was unfamiliar, but that rusty swirl of hair would not be mistaken.
I touched her shoulder to rouse her. After a moment’s confusion, she leapt to me as my little monkey used to do in India. And as my first son had done, the tawny boy.
“Fanny, girl,” I said, “what are you—”
Before I could finish, the porter interrupted me. With a tip of his cap. He looked the sort who has figured out what he must do in life, and would do no more and no less.
“Pardon, sir. But are ye Marcher Jones?”
I looked at him with a lack of understanding. “I am Major Jones,” I told him.
“Weel, then, Major Jones. I did na ken the lass, for her speech is unco low. And sorry I am to talk so plain to a guest of the house, but the lass has been ha’ the night asking for ye, and when I would na move to hae ye waked, she would na gae for a’ the grief in the Gorbals. And it can na be, for the manager keeps a fine, high house, and a blessing it is that he has na been in to see it. I only let her be without beating her off, since I ken her for the singing girl, and her faither’s only gone the past eve, to spare us the plague of his fiddling. Mought she be a relation, then?”
All the while, Fanny clutched me tightly.
“No. Only an orphan, see. I thought her bestowed in a proper home, and did not expect to see her.”
“Well, please, sir, to tae her off afore the manager comes in. For he’d hae my position if I did na put a stick to her.”
I led her away. To a breakfast nook off Buchanan Street. Twas difficult to peel her from me so that we might sit in separate chairs at table. And when she was seated, she brooded as if she might leap across the space that kept us apart, to fix herself to my person once again.
I ordered her toasted bread, with butter and marmalade, a soft-cooked egg and bacon, just the same as I would have myself. For I could not know the last time she had eaten.
As we waited for our earthly sustenance, I asked her, “Now, what is it, lass? Did they do any harm to you? Or frighten you, did they?”
In truth, she looked as though she had been nicely scrubbed, despite the lateness of her hour of delivery, and she wore a tidy gray dress that suited a girl placed in a young ladies’ academy.
“Did they do you a hurt, Fanny? Something wrong, is it?”
At last, she shook her head.
“What is it, then?”
She looked down at the tabletop. It bore a cloth with a chronicle of stains.
“Come now, girl. Why did you leave your nice, warm bed like that?”
And in that instant, I recalled that I had left my own bed in the night. Nor had I forgotten the frightful dreams of my childhood. And the Good Lord only knew what that child had seen. What might we learn if we knew another’s dreams? Perhaps it would bring about a reign of compassion. If it did not make us fear our brothers the more.
“What’s wrong, Fanny?” I tried again.
She did not raise her eyes, but only said, “Can I na stay with ye? Please, sir?”
“Did anyone frighten you?”
Again, she shook her head. That ruddy storm of hair trailed after her face. “Please, sir? Will ye na tae me to ye? I’m a terrible guid lass, and I’d work sae hard for ye. Hae ye na wife to care for ye and tae up after ye?”
“Yes,” I told her. “I have a wife, indeed.”
She looked up at that, with those wondrous gray-blue eyes. “Oh, sir, I’ll wager she’s bonnie.”
“You will do nothing of the kind,” I told her, but gently. “Young ladies do not wager. Nor should anyone.”
“I did na mean it wicked.”
“I know you didn’t.”
“Is she bonnie, sir? Is she terrible fine and bonnie?”
“Well, she is ‘bonnie’ to me. And lovely as all the stars in all the heavens.”
“And is she na here by ye, then?”
“No. She is in America. That is our home, see.”
At that her face plunged until I thought she would weep again. “And . . . and must ye gae back to her, then? To America?”
“Yes.”
“Soon will it be, sir?”
“Soon enough. That is why you must be placed where you are safe, Fanny. Where you may learn, and grow up to be a young lady.”
“Could I na learn with ye, sir? In America?”
“This is your home,” I told her. “And that lovely
man who was with us last night? Colonel Tice-Rolley? With the red face and the beard like Moses himself? He is a very great friend to me. And he will be a friend to you. I have his promise. He will look after things, to see you are treated as you should be. You’re not afraid of him, are you?”
“Nae.”
“And it will be a very great thing to be able to study and learn. Education is the path of self-improvement, see. Why, I wish I might have had such an opportunity! My own schooling, what there has been of it, come by the barracks lamp and the candle in my tent. Oh, there is good, to have an education!” And then I saw a thing that might be helpful. “You will learn to read, and to write. Then we will send each other letters across the sea.”
She looked as doubtful as she had before my little speech, but I was rescued from further argument by the arrival of our food. Now, if there is a lovelier thing upon this earth than the smell of well-fried bacon, or the scent of toasted bread fresh from the fire, then you may tell me of it and I will listen.
“Eat you now,” I told the girl. “Everything looks better after breakfast.” And I forked a cut of bacon to my mouth.
She would not eat. Not at first. I believe she was afraid of her surroundings, although they were not fine by the common measure, and she worried that my display of generosity could never be intended for such as her.
“The food is for you, Fanny,” I assured her. “It is yours. All that lays on that side of the table.”
Cautiously, she reached toward the bacon, perhaps emulating me in the primacy she accorded that great benefit of the pig. Her little hand went slowly as a cat creeping up upon its prey. She looked to me a final time, and I nodded, then she grasped an entire rasher in her fist. And when she had it swallowed—barely chewed—she stuck two fingers into the marmalade pot and spooned it so.
Now you will say: “The child needed a lesson in proper manners. We do not eat bacon with fists and jam with our fingers.” But I will tell you: Time enough there would be for society etiquette. The little thing was hungry. Although I will admit that my own wife most likely would have taken your side in the matter.