A Terrible Beauty

by Tasha Alexander

  Margaret and I had easily convinced him a holiday abroad was what he required, but the details of our itinerary proved far more difficult to agree upon. Margaret, a devoted Latinist, and I, a lover of all things Ancient Greek, clashed over what would better soothe our friend’s soul. She wanted him to stand in the Forum in Rome and mourn Caesar. I wanted him to seek solace in the beauty of the Acropolis in Athens. In the end, I won the argument, but only because Jeremy intervened, insisting upon Greece because he knew we would include in our travels several weeks at my villa on Santorini, where we would find no expatriate society, no preening young ladies, and, best of all, no hope of useful occupation.

  I did not require an entire fortnight in London to organize the journey, but I had other reasons to be in town. My husband, one of the queen’s most trusted agents, is frequently called upon to investigate matters that might prove embarrassing to members of the royal family or the aristocracy. Together, not always in conjunction with his work for the palace, we have brought at least ten heinous murderers to justice. Over the years, my own detectival instincts and skills have been honed, and I beg the reader’s forgiveness if it is immodest to admit I am quite good at my work. My talents, however, did not often interest Her Majesty; she nearly always required only Colin’s services. He had just returned from St. Petersburg, where he had spent six weeks working, and we wanted some time in town with our twin boys, Henry and Richard, and our ward, Tom, all of whom had now passed their third birthdays.

  I heard the door open, and looked up to see my husband. “You appear almost dour,” he said, crossing to me and sitting on the edge of my desk. “Davis tells me the mail disturbed you.”

  “Davis speaks most freely to you,” I said. “I do wish he would offer me the same courtesy.” I handed him the envelope.

  “The Viscountess Ashton,” he said. “I almost forgot you were once called that.” He barely glanced at the picture of the Parthenon before returning it to my desk.

  “Do you not find it slightly unnerving that someone has anonymously sent this?”

  He shrugged. “Not in the least. You do draw controversy, my dear. Between your scholarly pursuits, your campaigns for social justice, and your refusal to behave like a good little wife, you manage to scandalize society at least once every six weeks. No doubt some ill-mannered person who thinks himself very important sent this to remind you of your aristocratic connections. Poor bloke doesn’t realize he’s taken entirely the wrong tack.”

  “It is possible, I suppose.”

  “Come now, this can’t be troubling you so much, can it? I thought we were done with all that.”

  “We are,” I said. “Yet there are times I think of Philip and feel a twinge of guilt.”

  “That, my dear, is one of the many reasons I adore you. You have an extremely sensitive soul. It is a most fetching quality.” He moved very close to me and traced the neckline of my bodice with his finger. “Although at the moment, I am afraid I am inspired to act in ways one might not consider entirely ‘sensitive.’ Would you object to me locking the door?”

  I did not object. His subsequent actions pushed all thoughts of the mysterious envelope and Philip out of my head. I might not have considered it again, had the spectre of my late spouse not surfaced the next day, when we had taken the boys to the zoo. Colin, wanting to spend as much time as possible with them before we left for Greece, had insisted we wrangle them without the aide of Nanny, the elderly but still-spry woman who had raised him and was now entrusted with the care of this latest generation of Hargreaveses. Tom and Richard held Colin’s hands, dutifully following any instructions he gave them as we strolled through the park, but Henry tugged at mine, dragging me from enclosure to enclosure, until at last he stood still, mesmerized by an exhibit of silkworms in the insect house. Tom and Richard, less enthralled with the tiny creatures, pleaded to go back outside. Colin obliged them, leaving Henry to study the remaining terrariums. He reached his little hand out to the glass, careful not to touch it, and traced the path of an aquatic beetle in the tank before him. I bent over to look more closely myself, but was shocked upright when I heard a voice call out.

  “Ashton! Philip Ashton, as I live and breathe!”

  Hearing this name spoken aloud squeezed the breath out of me.

  I spun around on my heel to see a rotund gentleman vigorously shaking the hand of an even more rotund gentleman, neither of whom fit the description of the Viscount Ashton to whom I had briefly been united in matrimony. Still, it unnerved me to hear his name. I shook off the discomfort. I did not see the gentlemen again, but while waiting outside the camel house so the boys might have a ride on one of the ungainly beasts, I heard someone call out Ashton! Philip Ashton!

  Colin raised an eyebrow as he studied my face. “That’s an odd look.”

  “It is nothing, I assure you,” I said, and explained what had happened. “I am a bit unnerved to hear the name twice in one day.”

  “Unnerving indeed.” Our eyes met and he gave me a knowing smile. In the early days of our courtship, we had both struggled with the painful knowledge that our attachment could never have occurred without Philip’s death. The dead are beyond betrayal in matters of love, but that had not precluded a host of emotions from rearing their, if not ugly, certainly complicated heads. One does not expect to fall in love with one’s dead husband’s best friend. We had come to terms with all that long ago, yet I could see in Colin’s dark eyes a hint of the grief he still felt at the loss of someone so dear to him. I was reaching out to touch his arm when Henry burst into tears and flung himself to the ground.

  “Cruel, vicious man!” he cried, beating his little fists into the grass next to the pavement. Henry had a vocabulary beyond that of either of his brothers and most of his peers. He also had a penchant for dramatically stating his opinions for maximum effect.

  I crossed my arms. “Up, Henry, now.”

  “Cruel man making camel unhappy.” I had to agree with my son that the camel did not appear happy, but the keeper leading it around a smallish circle while visitors rode on it hardly seemed cruel. If anything, he looked bored.

  “He isn’t hurting the camel, Henry,” I said. “The rope is only so he doesn’t run away.”

  “I want camel to run away.” Henry had stopped pounding the ground and drew himself back up to his feet, his clothing now covered with dust. Nanny would not be pleased. I took him firmly by the hand.

  “Camels do not do well on their own in London,” I said. “And little gentlemen who cannot behave do not get rides.”

  “Don’t want a ride,” Henry said, the tears pooling in his eyes betraying the lie. Colin dropped Richard’s and Tom’s hands and picked up his ill-mannered son.

  “You are good to worry about the camel, Henry,” he said, turning so the boy could better see into the enclosure. “But he is quite all right and looks a rather happy chap to me. Camels don’t have the same expressions as us, do they, so their faces can be rather difficult to read.”

  I sighed. “Colin…”

  “I am not indulging him, Emily, I am teaching him. Now then, Henry, did you know camels live in the desert?”

  “I am not a baby, Papa,” Henry said. “Even Richard knows about deserts.” Henry, born four minutes before his brother, considered Richard intolerably young.

  The queue inched forward, and it became clear that I would be in charge of managing Richard and Tom, as my husband was now thoroughly embroiled in a discussion of the care, maintenance, and emotional well-being of camels. Henry would get no ride—we could not allow that after he had caused a scene—but I did not doubt he far preferred what he viewed as a serious discussion with his father to bumping along on the platform strapped to the poor beast in question. As I handed the other boys up to the keeper, who secured them for their ride, I caught a glimpse of a lean gentleman with a striking shade of sandy hair, the precise color of Philip’s. Shocked, I stepped away from the queue to get a better look, but the man had disappeared.


  When we returned from the zoo (Nanny was quite severe with Henry upon our return—he had ruined his jumper), I retired to the library to consult the itinerary for our trip. There, on my desk, I saw a slim leather-bound book: Philip’s journal, which I kept stored, wrapped in tissue paper, in a box tucked away in my dressing room. Not even Colin knew of its location.

  Philip had filled volume after volume of diaries, but I had kept only the single one I found in the house I had shared with him in Berkeley Square. The rest I left for his family—his nephew might enjoy reading them, and if not, some future viscount might find them diverting, or at least worthy of a place in the family history. This volume, though, cut too deeply into my heart to part with. I always intended that I would see it eventually returned to the Ashtons, but for now, I kept in my possession the words he had written while courting me.

  I had not looked at the journal in years. Yet now here it was, carefully placed in the middle of my desk, next to the envelope addressed to The Viscountess Ashton and turned to the entry he had made the day of our engagement. There was no question of this being accidental—a heavy leather book weight held the ivory pages in place—leaving me to wonder who had chosen to open the book of my past.

  Philip

  Cairo, 1891

  He had recounted the story with such frequency that he no longer needed to pay attention to the words he was speaking; it had become second nature. He always started at the same place, back when the fever had passed, but he had not yet regained his former strength. Kimathi, the Masai guide who had saved him from death, had done an admirable job in speeding his recovery, but Ashton could still not reconcile himself with the manner in which his fortunes had taken such a radical turn. Initially, he would tell people very few details—only that he had been on safari with friends, that he had, at long last, got the elephant he had so craved, and that he had collapsed soon after having indulged in some celebratory champagne.

  Kimathi painted a fuller story, one so outrageous and unlikely that Ashton had been loath to accept it, but the guide, who had proved loyal time and time again, insisted he had saved the Englishman from murderous hands by spiriting him off under the cover of night to the remote camp of the tribe with whom Kimathi’s sister had lived from the time of her marriage.

  Ashton told his eager listeners—they were always eager—that for months he had known nothing more than this. So far as he could make out, he had been unconscious for weeks. He understood their language, but the Masai did not subscribe to anything like the concept of the English calendar. After he awoke to find himself in a primitive tent, a heavy beard covering his face, his mind had remained clouded with fever for at least another month. It was not until his body had recovered enough for him to start going out with the tribe’s hunters that he began asking questions no one could answer. No one, that is, until Kimathi returned from his own domicile. Ashton smiled as he realized the inanity of his word choice. Domicile and Masai did not go together in any ordinary sense.

  Kimathi had visited Ashton erratically after having first brought him to his sister. The Masai were nomadic, and it was no short journey across seemingly endless plains for Kimathi to see his friend. When at last they sat together in front of the fire in the center of the camp, the warriors circled behind, as if protecting them from some unseen spirit. Kimathi told him what he had seen that fateful night: One of the white men in the hunting party had put something into Ashton’s drink, something that had nearly killed him. The other Englishmen, Kimathi said, believed their friend had a fever, and they all went away, worrying it was contagious. Only Hargreaves had remained behind, nursing his friend through illness and—so Hargreaves thought—death.

  Kimathi knew better, though. He knew this was not sickness, but poison, and he knew the sleep it brought mimicked death. He also knew that the man who had administered it had come back to the camp when Hargreaves was asleep, to see if Ashton had succumbed to his evil deed. This frightened Kimathi. He could see devils in this white man, and he knew that only he could protect Ashton.

  Everyone who witnessed the tragic scene believed Ashton to be dead. Even the newspapers had reported as much. His breath appeared to have stopped, and any trace of a heartbeat was too faint for anyone to detect. Kimathi stood by as Hargreaves bathed his friend’s body and dressed it before lowering it into a hastily built coffin. And then, while the Englishman dealt with the necessary arrangements to return the coffin to Ashton’s family, Kimathi replaced it with a second one, built hastily as well under the cover of night, and occupied by the corpse of an elderly Masai man from Kimathi’s tribe who had died the day before.

  The Masai do not bury their dead, but instead leave them out for predators. No one would have objected to Kimathi’s having moved the remains—bodies did not matter; the essence of the person was gone. Only great chiefs were buried, so, if anything, this man was receiving an unexpected honor. Kimathi did not think this would offend his god, Enkai, who was all of the earth and the sky and whatever else Kimathi might never see. He worried the body was too slim and added a few rocks to the wooden box, wanting to ensure that the weight would not arouse suspicion. He had wrapped it securely in blankets, and could only hope no one would try to remove them if they did have cause to open the coffin. But even if it were opened, this would not matter once Kimathi had got his friend to safety; no one would have any idea where to look for him. He removed the lid from the wooden box occupied by the Englishman, attached it to a makeshift sledge, and dragged it for a day and a night until he reached the tribe of his sister’s husband.

  Now that Ashton had his strength back, he knew he ought to set off for home, but the days he spent with the Masai ran one into the other, and he found leaving more difficult than he could have anticipated. He had grown accustomed to life in the camp, and the tribe had begun to accept him as one of their own. He hunted with them, and the thrill of this proved superior to any prior experience in his life.

  In the past, his safaris had been decidedly tourist affairs, even though, at the time, he had believed passionately he was the least European of the European hunters on the Dark Continent. How wrong he had been! Now he stalked his prey without the Western trappings of comfort he had previously required. Now he had no cook, no servants, no one to tend to his game after it had fallen. Life presented him with fewer complications here, and his experience was far richer than any he’d had in England, or even when he had traveled.

  While honing the tip of his spear in camp one day, he looked up and called a greeting to a young woman who had just recently given birth to her first child, the infant now snuggled tight against her chest. The image stirred something in him, and he began to think about Kallista—Emily, his wife—and to consider how long he had been gone. Now that he had regained his health, he had no reason to delay his trip home, and he admitted, with a degree of reluctance he found nearly inconceivable, that he could not live the rest of his life with the Masai. He had to return to England.

  The next time Kimathi came to see him, they agreed he would start his journey when the moon was full again. When he left, Kimathi walked with him, the days blending into weeks, to the nearest European outpost, where Ashton persuaded a group of Germans en route to Cairo to let him join their party. The viscount promised remuneration as soon as they arrived in the Egyptian capital. Kimathi wept when they parted, but Ashton promised to return, determined they would hunt together again.

  Much as he had relished his time with the Masai, being back in the company of educated men quenched a thirst he had forgot he had. He had lost so much of what mattered to him during his time in Africa—his study of Greek, his writing, his antiquities, his wife—and when he’d learned three years had passed since that fateful day of his last safari, he’d begun to worry that going back to his old life might not be a simple endeavor.

  When they reached Cairo, the Germans refused to let Ashton give them anything in return for their hospitality, which proved fortunate for the Englishman. He never suspected he
would have trouble securing a room at Shepheard’s Hotel, believing the manager would be sure to recognize him from previous visits. His assumption was foolish. The clerk at the desk, after consulting with the manager, told him that Philip, the Viscount Ashton, had perished in East Africa on safari years ago. His demise had been reported in all the papers and the management of Shepheard’s did not look kindly on those adopting false identities. Ashton demanded to speak to the manager himself, and the man, who did admit he looked familiar, stated firmly that he could not give him a room on credit if Ashton could not somehow prove his identity.

  He met the same resistance at the bank. Unable to access his funds, Ashton stormed into the office of the British consul, where he was treated with politeness and a great deal of pity before they ushered him out with the address of a physician they hoped might be able to treat his disorder.

  How foolish to have believed his appearance alone would make the world recognize he was still alive! He had nothing that proved his story. He had almost no possessions: just the clothing given to him by the Germans. He had no books, no letters, no objects of sentimental value, not even the photograph taken of his lovely wife on their wedding day.

  That, he had left in France.

  2

  The benefit of hindsight suggests I perhaps ought to have given the journal more consideration than I did. As things stood, however, I decided Margaret must have left it as a joke. She had gone up to Oxford that morning to see her husband in what we both knew would be a vain attempt to convince him to join our trip to Greece. Very little could induce Mr. Michaels (Margaret steadfastly refused to call him by his Christian name, Horatio, as she insisted—rightly—that it did not suit him) to leave his life at the university. Sometimes, she claimed, he would go days speaking nothing but Latin, much to the dismay of his students.

  The previous evening, she and I had sat up late in the library with a very fine bottle of port. The conversation naturally veered to our trip, and as a result, to the villa, and as a result of that, to the man who had built it. Margaret, whom I had not met until two years after Philip died, knew only slightly less about him than I did. I had always welcomed her American bluntness when we discussed him, even, on this occasion, when she had declared that if he were anything but a fool he would have constructed in Italy a perfect reproduction of a Pompeian villa instead of burdening me with a house she called a Cycladic nightmare. She loved the villa, but loved more making overly dramatic statements that offered support for whatever agenda suited her in the moment.