Bear No Malice

by Clarissa Harwood

  For Michael

  kedves férjem

  1

  The shackles of an old love straitened him,

  His honour rooted in dishonour stood,

  And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.

  —Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Lancelot and Elaine”

  LONDON: OCTOBER 1907

  When Tom first opened his eyes, he didn’t recognize his surroundings. Instead of his own bedroom, with its simple, tidy chest of drawers and washstand, he was in a hotel room with heavy, dark upholstery and burgundy velvet curtains. And, most startling of all, Julia lay next to him. It was the first time he’d spent a whole night with her, and he instantly regretted their recklessness.

  He slipped out of bed as quickly and stealthily as if a wild animal were lying next to him. Gathering his clothing, which was strewn about the room, he began to dress.

  Behind him, he heard Julia stirring. Tom froze, hoping she would go back to sleep, but instead she murmured, “What time is it?”

  “Six o’clock.” He kept his back to her as he answered and began to button his shirt.

  “So early? Why are you getting dressed? Don’t you want to stay in bed with me a little longer?”

  “I have a meeting at the cathedral to prepare for.” The meeting wasn’t until nine, but Julia didn’t need to know that.

  Tom went to the window and pulled the curtain aside. The hotel fronted onto a quiet street, and at this hour few people were about, but he noticed a man standing across the street, looking up at the hotel windows. There was nothing particularly strange about his appearance or demeanor—he was probably just waiting for someone—but Tom quickly stepped away from the window, letting the curtain fall back into place.

  He heard the swish of the bedclothes behind him, and a moment later Julia stood before him with the bedsheet loosely wrapped around her. Her auburn hair spilled over her shoulders, a riot of color setting off the creamy white of her skin. He knew from the way she was looking at him that she wanted him to touch her, but all he could think about was getting away and being alone. Last night she had been Julia, the woman he loved. This morning she was Charles Carrington’s wife, the mother of three Carrington children, a symbol of Tom’s failure. He let his hands fall to his sides and looked at her with what he hoped was a neutral expression.

  Julia tucked the sheet more securely around herself and reached out to finish buttoning his shirt. He could feel her warmth and smell the jasmine scent she used in her hair.

  As she fastened the top button, she said, “Sometimes I think you hate me.”

  “I do hate you,” he said. In spite of himself, he caught her hands and kissed them.

  “I hate you, too.” She raised her face to his, closing her eyes.

  He kissed her, but only briefly, then held her away from him with his hands on her shoulders. “Julia, we have to stop this.”

  She sighed and stepped back, out of his reach. “Not that again.”

  “I mean it. There are so many risks—”

  “To your career?”

  “To both of us.”

  “Really, Tom, you ought to marry.” She turned away and sat on the edge of the bed.

  He raised his eyebrows. “Do you have someone in mind?”

  “Any of the girls who are always making sheep’s eyes at you will do. You’d better marry someone soon, if you want to quell the cathedral gossip.”

  “What gossip?”

  “Oh, I’m sure you’ve heard it.” Julia altered her tone, sounding like a querulous old woman. “How strange that a handsome man like Canon Cross, established in his profession and already in his mid-thirties, seems to show no interest in marriage. It doesn’t help that most clergymen look like horses.”

  “People actually say that most clergymen look like horses?”

  “No, that was my contribution.”

  “I don’t care what people say.”

  She laughed bitterly. “If you truly believe that, you don’t know yourself.”

  “People of your class can act on their whims and avoid serious consequences. I don’t have that luxury.”

  “Oh, Tom. Spare me the sermon about the dissipation and corruption of the upper classes. It seems to me you act on your whims often enough, and you seem to have no trouble avoiding the consequences.”

  She had gone too far. “It’s over, Julia,” he said, turning away.

  “Very well. But don’t expect me to take you back if you change your mind.”

  He walked away without another word, picking up his coat on the way out. The hotel room door closed behind him with a decisive thud.

  “My wife will be leaving later this morning,” he told the hotel clerk in a brisk, authoritative tone when he stopped at the counter to pay the bill.

  “Yes, Mr. Harlowe.” The young, narrow-faced man had a respectful manner, but there was something a little too keen about his eyes.

  Being called “Mr. Harlowe” startled Tom, although it shouldn’t have—it was a false name he had used before. Once inside the hansom cab that took him to the cathedral, he mentally rehearsed the name most people knew him by: Thomas Cross. Although it hadn’t happened before, he was worried he would revert to “Harlowe” by mistake.

  He was grateful for the long ride in which to sort out his thoughts, alternating between berating himself for his stupidity in meeting Julia at a hotel and blaming her for seducing him months ago. In any case, he needed to free himself from this entanglement in order to regain some self-respect. As gratifying as it was both mentally and physically to be with her, the risk of people finding out about their relationship was too great.

  Tired of listening to his spinning brain, Tom called to the cabdriver to stop, deciding to walk the rest of the way to the cathedral. It was only autumn, but the air whispered icy warnings of winter. He pulled his coat collar closer around his neck, feeling his lungs expand with relief now that he was out of the stuffy confines of the cab.

  He arrived at the cathedral an hour later, with a few minutes to spare before his meeting, and he paused at the baptismal font, noticing that the hairline crack at the base of the marble structure still hadn’t been repaired. As he strode down the aisle to his office, he glanced up at the roof trusses. He couldn’t see where they were rotting, but he knew only too well what repairs were needed and how much they would cost. The building was an aging courtesan whose beauty was more trouble and expense than its maintenance was worth. He knew others came to the cathedral to find God, but he’d never done so. He found God in people, not buildings.

  His meeting that morning was with a parishioner, Cedric Jenkins, a bereaved husband whose wife had died of puerperal fever three months earlier. As the two men sat in Tom’s office, Mr. Jenkins alternately raged against God and begged Tom for words of comfort. Tom let him talk as long as he wanted to, saying little at first.

  “Maria was everything to me,” Mr. Jenkins declared. “We were married only five years, but I’ve been in love with her almost all my life. Her family and mine were neighbors, so we knew each other as children. When she told me she loved me, it was the happiest day of my life. Are you married, Canon Cross?”

  “No.”

  “I ought to envy you. You’re not in any danger of feeling your very soul ripped out of your body. My wife was my best self. Now I have nothing left,” he said, dropping his head into his hands.

  Another clergyman might have disputed this last statement or quoted Tennyson: “’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” Perhaps others would have assured him his wife was in heaven or, most offensive of all, that God needed her more than he did. Tom knew better than to do any of those things.

  “I’m sorry you’ve lost someone you loved so much,” he s
aid quietly.

  Mr. Jenkins raised his head, staring at Tom with hopeless eyes. “Why did God take her from me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ve tried to be a good man. I’ve kept the Ten Commandments.”

  That’s better than I’ve done, Tom thought. He had broken every one of them at some point in his life, aside from the injunction not to commit murder, and there was still time for that.

  “I haven’t attended church as regularly as I ought, but surely I’m not being punished for it.”

  “I don’t believe God is punishing you,” Tom said. “I understand why you might feel that way, but your wife’s death has nothing to do with anything you’ve done or not done.”

  “Then why? Why did she have to die?” Mr. Jenkins’s look was desperate.

  “I wish I had an explanation for you, but I don’t.”

  He said nothing more profound than this, but by the end of the conversation, the bereaved husband was comforted. It almost always happened this way. Whether he spoke much or at all, Tom had the gift of making others feel that he sympathized deeply with them. He didn’t know if it was the look in his eyes or something about his presence—the clerical collar alone was a comfort to some people—but it was rare that he left anyone in as much distress or anguish as he found them. On his worst days, knowing he could help people in this way was all that kept him going.

  As soon as Mr. Jenkins had left, Tom went to the chapter house for a meeting with the dean and the three other canons. Every chapter meeting was the same. The dean’s opening remarks always made it seem as if he were in charge, but by the time the meeting was really under way the dean would be asleep, and either Paul Harris or Tom would take over. Dean Whiting was in his eighties, partly blind, mostly deaf, and generally in ill health. It was only a matter of time before he died and the deanship was available. The cathedral gossip had it that Harris and Tom were the primary rivals for the post. A high churchman, Harris was only seven-and-twenty, from a wealthy family, and rumored to be the bishop’s favorite. In Tom’s opinion, Harris was a prig who had never experienced hardship in his life and was incapable of understanding the needs of the parishioners. But he didn’t hesitate to dictate what should and should not be done regarding the daily affairs of the cathedral.

  “We need to make a decision regarding Mr. Narbridge’s request,” Harris was saying. The dean, true to custom, was already asleep, but the other two clergymen, Canon Martin and Canon Johnson, were listening attentively.

  “What request is that?” Tom interjected. William Narbridge owned a railway company and was the wealthiest member of the congregation. He also made no secret of his preference for Harris as the next dean.

  “I’m certain I showed you his letter—don’t you remember?” Harris gave Tom a supercilious look.

  “Be so kind as to remind me.”

  “He wants his wife to be buried in the crypt.”

  “Obviously that’s impossible, unless she can be surgically flattened and propped up against the door,” said Tom. “The crypt is full. Nobody has been buried there for at least a century.”

  “I’m aware of that,” Harris said, irritation creeping into his voice. “But Mr. Narbridge has been one of our most generous benefactors. Last year alone he donated two thousand pounds to the cathedral.”

  Tom raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps he’d like to pay for a larger cathedral to be built, then, with room in the crypt for every wealthy sinner and his family.”

  Narbridge employed former prison inmates, and Tom had clashed with him three years earlier over the brutal treatment of his workers. Tom had been interested in prison reform ever since he’d worked as a prison chaplain when he was first ordained. When he became a canon at the cathedral, he was also appointed to the Prison Commission, which required him to assess the condition of prisoners during and after their sentences. Three years ago he’d learned that the former inmates who’d found work with Narbridge’s railway company didn’t last more than a year, either having been too severely injured to work or having died on the job from easily preventable accidents. Tom had opened an investigation into Narbridge’s business practices, but the magnate had received only a fine and a warning. As far as Tom was concerned, Narbridge was no better than a murderer, but the man had too much influence to be treated with the contempt he deserved.

  Harris ignored Tom’s barbed comment and appealed to the other canons for their ideas.

  After a brief discussion, Harris said, “Well, I think that’s all the business we need to discuss today. Ah, wait, there is one more thing. Tuesday evenings are most convenient for the lecture series, so they will begin next month.”

  “Tuesday evenings?” Tom exclaimed. “That’s impossible. The Temperance Society meets here on those days. As you know.”

  Harris shrugged. “Surely you can find another place until the lecture series is finished. The bishop has agreed that it’s the perfect way to address the problem of our dwindling numbers. The topic of the relevance of God and the church in the modern world, with the lecturers some of the foremost thinkers of our time, will certainly attract more people to the cathedral.”

  Tom was furious. Harris knew perfectly well how important the Temperance Society was to the community, and the fact that it was flourishing under Tom’s direction annoyed Harris enough to try to undercut it at every opportunity. Using the bishop to bolster his argument was just another slap in Tom’s face.

  “Instead of talking about the relevance of the church, we need to prove its relevance by being involved in practical reform,” Tom said, struggling to keep his temper. “Choose another day of the week to have the lecture series or find another place for it. I won’t have the Temperance Society meetings moved.”

  Harris gave Tom an icy stare. “We are speaking of what is best for the cathedral.”

  “We’re speaking of what’s best for the people,” Tom snapped.

  The argument ended in a tense silence, as the arguments between Tom and Harris usually did. Tom left the meeting with a resolve to speak to the bishop about the Temperance Society meetings. Harris rarely represented the bishop’s concerns objectively, being too caught up in his own interests.

  After such an encounter, despite whatever annoyance or anger he felt, Tom was always more confident about his own prospects for the deanship. He had more experience than Harris, as well as a wider variety of leadership roles in church work, and aside from the bishop’s apparent preference for Harris, Tom expected the deanship to be his. He wanted it desperately, though sometimes he admitted to himself that he wouldn’t want it quite so much if Harris didn’t want it too. In any case, becoming dean would allow him greater influence. His many plans for social reform would be heard by more powerful people and more readily accepted.

  It was a busy day. After the chapter meeting, Tom finished some paperwork, went to another meeting—a Prison Commission committee meeting—and then to London Hospital in Whitechapel to visit patients.

  It wasn’t until late that night that Tom left the hospital, but his physical weariness was worth the mental relief he had gained. The affair with Julia no longer loomed large in his mind, and he had administered a palliative, if not a cure, for that sickness by visiting people who were truly sick. He no longer despised himself. He was doing some good in the world, which he hoped would outweigh the bad. It might be poor theology, but it assuaged his guilt.

  A cab was waiting near the front doors of the hospital. Assuming the driver was waiting for someone else, Tom began to walk past it, towards the cabstand down the street, but the driver made a sign that he was disengaged.

  Gratefully Tom climbed into the cab and called out his address through the trapdoor in the roof, then sat back and closed his eyes. Normally he walked nearly everywhere he went, but after such a long day it was a welcome relief to take a cab. And his lodgings near the cathedral were a long way from Whitechapel.

  The cab rattled down the street at a pace Tom thought was unnecessarily f
ast, but he was too tired to care. He supposed he’d get home sooner that way. Despite the jolting of the vehicle on the cobblestone streets, he found himself nodding off.

  He awakened with a start, surprised the cab was still moving after what seemed like a long time. It was too dark to check his pocket watch, but when he pulled aside the heavy curtain and looked out, his confusion turned to alarm. Instead of the familiar landmarks lit by lampposts near his lodgings, he saw fields and hedgerows in the moonlight. The cab had left London.

  “Driver!” he called out. “What the devil is the meaning of this? Stop at once!”

  The driver neither answered him nor slowed the cab, which was now wildly careening around curves in the road.

  Tom tried the doors on either side, but they were securely fastened. He rapped loudly on the ceiling of the cab with his walking stick, shouting at the driver, but all his efforts were in vain. What could the man be thinking? Had he lost his mind? Had he mistaken Tom for someone else?

  Just when he was considering trying to shatter one of the windows, the vehicle halted so abruptly that he was thrown against the front window. An eerie silence followed in which Tom righted himself. He heard the driver release the doors, and Tom burst from the cab in a fury.

  He had only a second to notice that the cab had stopped on an isolated country road before he saw the silhouettes of two burly men advancing upon him. He hadn’t time to think; he could only act. His body remembered the fighting techniques he’d learned years ago at Nate Cowan’s boxing club, and he punched the taller man in the stomach hard enough to make him stagger and fall back. The shorter man swung at him, but he deflected the blow and directed a powerful jab to his opponent’s jaw. What he hadn’t counted on was a third man behind him. He sensed the man’s presence a split second before he felt a blow to his head and a sharp, searing pain.

  As Tom lashed out blindly, he felt one more blow, this time to the side of his leg with what felt like a metal rod. The excruciating pain was accompanied by a cracking sound, and he fell to the ground. Then he lost consciousness.