The Orphan Pearl

by Erin Satie

  “Are you with me?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m with you.”

  “Good.” His eyes dilated and he let his head fall onto her shoulder, finding his own release.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  She woke with a man’s heavy arm slung around her waist, her back slick with sweat where it pressed against a chest matted with prickly hair. For a moment, the familiar sensation eclipsed the last year of her life. She was back on the pallet she’d rolled out on the tile floor of her bedroom every night in Acara, folded in her husband’s embrace.

  Those final months, she’d clung to sleep. Her days had been full of anxiety, nausea, a sense of impending doom. At night, she escaped—they escaped, she and Rustem—through sex and sleep. When morning came, she’d squeeze her eyes shut for five more minutes, ten more minutes, until she couldn’t deny that she’d been counting them one by one, fully awake.

  Thousands of miles away, in another man’s bed, but she still woke to the same sick feeling.

  She twisted in place, fondled Ware to hardness. She climbed on top of him while he was still half-awake, pliant and blinking, eyes unfocused. He lay still while she impaled herself on his cock, let her use him, his expression slowly sharpening to full, watchful intensity.

  Then he rolled her to her back, scratched the valley between her breasts with his day-old beard before latching onto a nipple and sucking hard. He opened her legs wider, brusque and blatant, and sank inside.

  Lily sighed as he filled her. He thrust lazily, his lean body flexing, shoulders bunched. She ran her hands over his naked flesh, silky, milk-white where the sun hadn’t touched it. Vulnerable.

  It ended quickly. He spent and went soft inside her. Then he fitted her back against his front, and she was back where she’d started.

  The arm around her waist tightened. “Do you want me to leave?”

  “Leave?” Lily twisted in the sheets. “Why?”

  “I—” He stuttered. “I wouldn’t presume.”

  Lily began to laugh.

  “I didn’t—” He huffed. “It is important. I never meant my apology as a lure, and you could so easily think—Lily, if you do not wish to see me, I will go.”

  “I don’t want you to leave.”

  He traced his index finger down the center of her forehead, pausing to massage the space between her brows. “Then what’s troubling you? Can I help?”

  “I can already see that you’re much more obliging as a friend than as an enemy.” Lily plucked his hand from her forehead and nipped his finger. “And you were quite an agreeable enemy.”

  “So talk to me.”

  But even as he spoke, he was extracting his hand from her teeth and trailing it along her collarbone, skimming the underside of her breast. He had a soft touch, never even dimpling her skin as he explored. It was such a stark contrast with the night before she didn’t know what to make of it, except to be grateful for his distraction.

  “Lily?” He shifted away, crooked his arm and propped his head on his palm. Listening.

  “Last night…” Lily sighed. She didn’t want to be comforted. She wanted to be judged—harshly—and knew that she wouldn’t be able to bear it if he gave her what she wanted. “After Rustem died, I swore I wouldn’t let any more blood spill over the pearl. But last night, I almost shot a man for trying to take it. Not anyone else. Me.”

  “You were outnumbered. Attacked by a man who had every advantage of size and strength. You only did what was necessary to defend yourself.”

  “That’s no excuse. He had no intention of killing me, or even doing me bodily harm. I still pulled the trigger.” She stared up at the overhead. Smooth slats of wood, shiny with polish. “I wish I’d never found al-Yatima.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “It’s caused me nothing but grief.”

  “The pearl hasn’t caused anything. It didn’t start the war. It won’t end it, either. Al-Yatima is just another play in a game that started before you were born, and won’t end until the Ottoman Empire falls.”

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

  “It’s the truth,” he replied. “It’s not pretty, but…”

  “But what?”

  “But you’re not talking about the fate of the world. Lily, you didn’t kill him. That’s his good luck, and—if you insist—yours. Make good use of it.”

  “How?” Lily asked. “Do I let them take me? Do I ask someone else to commit murder, and pretend the blood is not on my hands? I can’t.”

  “Then we’ll find another way to keep you safe.”

  “We?”

  He didn’t reply, but he didn’t need to. He’d given her the boat. He’d given her privacy. He’d come to her rescue, comforted her with his body, offered his help. He’d made declarations enough, these past few days.

  Before, he had warned her not to trust him. Now, he showed her that she could. He proved himself before she had to ask.

  “I think this is what I’ve been looking for.” He brushed a stray tendril of hair off of her forehead, tucked it behind her ear and lingered, rubbing her earlobe between thumb and forefinger. “Let me help you.”

  She believed that, too. He’d addled her wits.

  “I’m going to start by getting you out of this cabin,” said Ware. “Take a turn with me? A bit of fresh air will do us both good.”

  She put on her black taffeta dress and secured her hair in a simple twist. Ware absented himself from the cabin momentarily and returned with a fresh set of clothing, the mere sight of which made her blush—she needed no further proof that his whereabouts were known beyond the confines of the ship.

  “I think you’re safe,” said Ware, stepping into his trousers and shaking out his shirt.

  Lily snorted.

  “My people won’t gossip. The greatest danger of discovery came from the constable and the river police. But they’re unlikely to recognize you.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “Perhaps you’d rather not take the risk of being seen with me,” he said quietly.

  Lily raised her chin. “My conscience is more liberal than public opinion.”

  Ware didn’t look up from the jacket he’d reached for. “What did your conscience tell you about accepting the Earl of Kingston’s hospitality?”

  “I won’t pretend my scruples could survive a long stretch of desperation intact,” said Lily. “I know that they wouldn’t. But the only thing Alfie wanted was to marry me.”

  “And?”

  “I told him no,” Lily answered.

  “Why refuse?” He fastened the buttons one by one, just as if he were alone in the room. “If he’s so dear to you.”

  “He is dear to me,” Lily said sharply. “But if we married, I expect I would hate him in short order.”

  He smoothed his palm along his torso, settling the jacket around his chest. “Your first experience of marriage didn’t encourage you to make another attempt?”

  “One marriage taught me not to generalize on the subject.”

  He bent to a trunk, pulled out a plain black shawl, and handed it to her. “We’ll avoid areas where you’re likely to be recognized.”

  She wrapped the shawl around her shoulders and pinned a veil to her hat. “Where will we go?”

  “We’ll explore. Visit the warehouses.” He grinned. “We might have to sneak in.”

  Some were easy. They walked right into a dim structure that smelled of lanolin, great bales spilling sheepswool stacked one atop the other in rows ten feet high. Others required strategy. They dodged guards and climbed through a dust-fogged window to gain access to a vast building empty but for the elephant tusks laid out like puzzle pieces across the floor. Ivories of different sizes nested together in rows that stretched from wall to wall, curves pointed in opposite directions like the stripes of a subtle herringbone.

  They found wine vaults fragrant with vinegar and mold. A small storehouse stocked with dried cakes of tobacco leaves layered and pressed
one atop the other until they resembled mud pies. The quantities were outsize: it was hard to imagine how many cigars could be made from a single cake of tobacco. Hundreds? Yet the one little storehouse contained hundreds of cakes, thousands of cigars.

  “I’ve seen so little of the world,” she said, watching as a crew of burly dockworkers unloaded casks that leaked grains of pale wheat into the water.

  “More than many,” countered Ware, standing at her side.

  “Acara and London may be far from one another, but during my marriage I rarely traveled more than five or ten miles from home.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Then how did you find al-Yatima?”

  “I heard stories at the hammam,” she answered. “Mostly grandmothers entertaining the little ones in their family. There was always a grand entourage on a journey to bury their dead prince, but the rest of the details changed. At first, I thought it was a single story that each woman changed to suit her taste. The entourage might run into trouble crossing a remote mountain stream, or trying to sneak through fields well-guarded by dogs at night. But in every version of the story, the entourage went to great lengths to avoid notice. That was what entertained the children: hearing all the ways this crowd of strangers tried to dodge and hide, only to be caught out in the end.”

  “Mongol?” Ware asked.

  “Mongol,” Lily agreed. “Who else would go to such lengths to hide a high lord’s grave? I heard the stories week after week, and couldn’t help but try to make sense of it all. The woman who talked about crossing the remote stream lived in high hills crossed by many streams. The woman who mentioned high-dressed strangers sneaking across the fields by night lived in a fertile valley.”

  “Of course they’d use their own properties for inspiration. What made you think the stories were true?”

  “I didn’t. And even if they were true, they had to be hundreds of years old. But I began to trace the procession’s journey across the landscape. They’d come from the east, through the mountains. And they disappeared from the tales… very near to my home.”

  “And then?”

  “And then I went digging.”

  “By yourself?”

  “I had a maidservant I trusted to come with me. I said I wanted to visit shrines, to pray—it was the only way to get out alone, without supervision. Rustem’s family began to think I was very pious.”

  “But how did you find the right spot?” Ware’s brows furrowed. “Lily… this is mad, what you’re saying.”

  “It’s mad, what I was doing,” Lily retorted. “I told you—remember? I felt lost. I had to relearn everything. How to eat, how to sit, how to dress. I finished every day with a headache from trying to speak a language I hardly understood. I needed an escape.”

  “And then—what? You found a tomb?”

  “Not a tomb. A skeleton in the dirt. A helmet, a saddle, a sword. Bits and pieces of armor.”

  “My God.”

  “Brittle bone.” Lily shivered. “By that time, I’d stopped expecting to find anything. I wanted to be alone and I had developed an odd habit to carve out a bit of solitude for myself… but there it was.”

  “You must have celebrated?”

  She smiled bitterly. “Of course.”

  “And then?”

  “Finding the pearl marked the beginning of the end. We had something very valuable in our possession. People much more powerful than we were wanted it for themselves. Some came, and failed to take it, but others followed. Eventually, one of them succeeded.”

  “And your husband died?”

  “Fighting to keep it,” Lily said. “Why should he let anyone take our prize…”

  Rustem had liked being envied. And every time he fought back an intruder—the Russians had come first, the French after—the pearl became more his, and less hers. He had liked that, too.

  But could she blame him? When the time had come for her to run, she certainly hadn’t left al-Yatima behind.

  Ware’s thoughts must have run along the same lines. “Why do you cling to it?” he asked. “If you so resented the same behavior in your husband?”

  She had told herself, at first, that Rustem would not have thanked her for letting his murderers seize it. But that had been months ago, and very far away. What was her excuse now?

  “I don’t know.”

  He touched her elbow. “That doesn’t mean you were wrong.”

  Lily brushed him away. “It’s been a long morning. Perhaps a bite to eat?”

  Ware led the way to a dim pub furnished almost entirely with detritus from the sea: masts for columns, barrels to hold up the long pewter bar. Out the back, a terrace overlooked the river.

  A woman wearing a greasy apron brought them tin plates heaped with strips of fried cod, so hot they released steam into the air when she broke the crisp breaded crust. She ate with her fingers, squeezing so much lemon over the delicate fish that her cuticles began to sting.

  Only a few feet away, the river was as busy as any highway, ships lumbering their way out to sea, smaller boats—hawkers, even, shouting their wares as they rowed—threading their way among the larger, more stately vessels.

  It had been several days since she felt the sun, warm and bright, on her bare skin. Several days since she’d set eyes on a stranger’s face, or walked more than a few paces in any direction.

  “I am so ashamed,” she said.

  There was a pause, and then Ware said, “Of me?”

  Lily frowned. “Of course not.”

  But he only watched her, unmoving.

  “You made a mistake. And then you admitted it, and found a way to make things right.” She stared out at the endless, infinite bustle of the river. “All I ever do is run away.”

  He leaned over his forearms, resting on the table, and held her gaze. “And what’s wrong with that?”

  She wiped her hands with a cloth. “Nothing, so long as I keep moving. But when I turn around and look at what I’ve left behind me… it’s a wasteland.”

  “And you want to go home,” he said. “You want the love and acceptance of your family. You want to be welcomed by your own people.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then pay the price,” he said. “Think of everything you want from life. The things that make you happy, proud, satisfied. Accept that you will have to set some of those things aside, perhaps forever. Compromise. If that doesn’t work, compromise again. Understand that you may have to repeat the process until you don’t recognize yourself anymore.”

  She stared at him, openmouthed.

  He leaned back, hands laced together on the table. “That’s been my experience.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  In retrospect, he ought to have spared her the harsh words. After the night she’d had, he should have predicted her response: she turned inward, let every conversation he tried to start dribble into silence.

  He’d learned to expect the unexpected from Lily. She was impulsive and unconventional. But listlessness? Dejection? Her bright, effervescent nature ought to have sloughed them off as easily as oil repelled water.

  All the way back to the quay, he wondered what he could do to improve her mood. The obvious answer appealed to him—she had proved herself no stranger to sexual oblivion—as much as it disturbed him. He did not want to fight for her to be present when he was inside her. He did not want to know that making her aware of him, in particular, spoiled her pleasure rather than enhancing it.

  But he did know, and it made him reluctant to repeat the experience, as satisfying as it had been. He would get the same response, she would feel better, and he would feel worse.

  His mood did not improve when they reached the schooner and found Clive pacing back and forth across the quarterdeck. Impeccably dressed in a cool mid-gray, he walked with his hands clasped behind his back and the air of a man bracing for very bad news.

  “Clive?” John sent the crew out of earshot with a look and climbed the ladder to meet him. “What brings you to the docks
?”

  “Oh, thank God.” Clive abandoned his circuit, whirling on John only to freeze. “Lady Lily?”

  “Your Grace.” Lily lifted her veil, revealing an expression of polite curiosity. “Have I given you a shock? You’re looking rather pale.”

  Clive turned to John. “You’re taking her to Buenos Aires? Does her father know?”

  John’s heart stopped.

  “Buenos Aires?”

  The corner of Clive’s mouth twitched. “Why, yes. Ware has accepted the post of Consul-General to Argentina. He should be leaving for Buenos Aires shortly—I assumed he’d made his ship ready for the purpose.”

  “So,” said Lady Lily, perfectly mild. “You’ve come to wish us a safe voyage?”

  John bit back a laugh.

  “No.” Clive sighed. “But I have been looking for you for some while, Lady Lily. Since your disappearance, our government has been brought to the point of collapse. I believe it is in your power, and only your power, to salvage the situation.”

  “Leave her alone.” John stepped between them. “You came to talk to me, talk to me.”

  “Palmerston is threatening to resign.”

  John blurted, “He’s what?”

  “He says that if the Cabinet moves forward with a foreign policy he can’t endorse, then he won’t stay on as Foreign Secretary. He won’t be held responsible for the results.”

  “Parliament won’t stand for it,” said John.

  “Precisely. If he can’t have the war he wants, spoiling the victory for Holland and Hastings will do. Parliament will hold a vote of no confidence—and it will pass. It won’t just be Palmerston to go. The entire Cabinet will be made to resign. During the conference. Before any treaty is signed. Can you imagine?”

  “It would be a disaster. But, Clive, you’re the domestic puppeteer. I’ve never been able to pull strings the way you do.”

  “I don’t know who else to talk to,” said Clive. “And I’m out of ideas.”

  “All right. What are the options? Either change Palmerston’s mind, or get the rest of the Cabinet on his side?”