Honor's Kingdom (24 page)

“Everything,” I said, in the deepest mortification. “Please.”

Behind my trembling shoulders, I heard the sound of bare feet crossing the carpet toward me. I am not sure I ever felt such a jolt of terror.

I wheeled about, holding out my hand against her approach. I fear I glimpsed her shame again, although I remembered my duty and shut my eyes hastily.

“Don’t you look a funny one, sweetie?” she said. “If we’re playing a game, I’d like to know the rules.”

“Please. Just stop. Stop where you are. Cover yourself. Use anything.”

I did not want her even one inch closer. For well I know Old Adam lurks in all of us.

I could smell her. The cheap perfume, likely from a bottle concocted in Stepney and labeled “French.” And I smelled the womanness. That bidding scent they have.

“Please,” I said, in a quieter voice. “Cover yourself. Use the bedsheet. Anything. And tell me when you’re covered up.”

“Well, what’s this all about, I’d just like to know?” she said in a voice of wonder. But her footsteps retreated. And I heard the sounds of a great tampering with the bedclothes.

“Tell me when you’re decent,” I said.

Miffed, she declared, “I’m as decent as any girl
you’ll
ever know. And who says I’m not?”

“When you’re covered, tell me. Tell me when you’re covered up.”

Condemn me if you will. I am the happiest of married men, the most fortunate. Still, my truant eyes wished to see what they should not.

Why are we made so? I am content in mind, and in heart. I love, and am loved. Why is this greed embedded in our flesh?

“Well, I’m all wrapped up like a baby in the cradle,” she huffed. “So I guess you can open your peepers.”

I opened my eyes. She was a pretty thing, you understand. No beauty, and hardly graced above her station. Yet, she was a pretty little thing.

Enrobed like a wife of Rome or a vestal of Troy, she sat down on the bed. She had blue eyes.

As careful as a man on the edge of a cliff, I eased into the chair behind the writing table. With a yard of oak between us.

“That’s better,” I said. Placing my hands sturdily upon my knees, I took a fortifying breath and continued. “Now, what exactly are you doing here, Miss Perkins?”

She rolled her eyes as ships roll on the sea. “Well, what does it look like, then? I’m here to please you, ain’t I?” Then she huffed. “But I suppose there’s some as won’t be pleased.”

“But
why
have you come? And presented yourself under . . . under such circumstances?”

She shrugged and the improvised toga slipped from a white shoulder. I readied a hand to slap across my eyes, should her similarities to Venus Aphrodite re-emerge.

“Oh,
he
sent me. He said you and him was playing a game with one another. Made it all right, he did, although I gave him a proper talking to when I seen him come strutting in. He gave me the twelve guineas he’d promised for my visit to the Dials and said as things hadn’t gone just as he’d planned them. Then . . . then he gave me fifty more in gold. I couldn’t believe it, I couldn’t. Just to come and have a little visit with you. Fifty. In gold.” She put on a knowing look. “Would’ve thought the two of you wasn’t acquainted, to hear
you
tell it. But you must be thick as thieves for your friend to lay down enough to hire some little Jenny for a year and a day. Handsome, I calls it. Though I still think you ought to watch him, if you don’t mind my saying so. For I don’t think he likes the ladies very much, I don’t.” She laid her pale blue eyes upon mine own. “If you take my meaning.”

Then she sat up in alarm. That devilish sheet slipped lower by an inch, revealing the first inkling of a swell of flesh. I tried
to look away, settling my gaze first on her petticoat, until I realized the impropriety of that, too, then seeking out my coat on the dresser by the door. But her immediacy insisted upon my attention.

She looked like a Diana whose bow had inflicted a wound on an innocent.

“Oh,” she said, raising an ivory hand to her mouth and tempting the flimsy cloth to abandon her bosom, “maybe you’re that way yourself, not fond of the ladies. Well, I suppose
I
don’t mind.” Oh, she thought she knew more than she did. And she nodded. “So
that’s
the reason I ain’t been fondly welcomed . . .”

“It is not that.”

“Playing a joke, is he? That friend of yours?” She snorted an in delicate laugh. “Well, let him, that’s what I say. For fifty in gold, I’ll play any joke he wants. Would you like me to pretend I’m a little boy?”

“Miss Perkins, please! He isn’t my friend. This is disgraceful. I never—”

She lifted her proud chin. “Well, he, at least, is a proper gent, which is more than I can say for some as is present.”

Of course, I thought I knew of whom she spoke: The Earl of Thretford. My new, and old, antagonist. But she had no need to know more of those matters. Indeed, she had come close enough to danger. I did not want her life plucked by cruel hands. For lilies may look strong, but they are fragile. Nor did I think her present behavior auspicious for her future, whether or not foul murder lurked ahead.

“Miss Perkins,” I began again, “you are young . . . and impressionable. You must rethink your present course of behavior. This abuse of your sacred womanhood . . . you must not sell your virtue in the streets, and you—”

“What kind of girl do you think I am?” she demanded, for my well-meant words had riled her. “I ain’t never walked the streets in my life. The wickedness of you! As if I ever would.”

I feared she would leap to her feet and neglect her sheath.

“But Miss Perkins . . . you’ve taken money, see, and—”

“Fifty golden guineas, if a penny. And you won’t find
that
on the London streets, I’ll tell you and your guv’nor both.”

I regarded her earnestly. “But . . . morally, you see . . . there’s no difference in kind between a ha’penny piece and a hundred thousand pounds. You must examine your con—”

“Oh, ain’t there? Well, I call that the biggest lie I heard since Barney said he fixed the Ascot races. Them what has money can do whatever they want. And they do it, don’t I know it? But a poor girl’s a slut for trying to make her way. Oh, I could tell you the difference between a half-crown got in an alley and fifty in gold for a ladylike visit, and none’s the wiser.” But, quick as the end of a summer shower, she calmed herself. “You really ain’t for it, then? We could have us a lovely time, if you weren’t such a silly.”

I assured her I was not “for it.”

She sighed. “I only hope he don’t ask for his money back.” She looked at me with an expression almost pleading. “You ain’t going to tell him, are you?”

“Tell him what?”

“That . . . I didn’t strike your fancy. That you didn’t want me.”

How little we know of the feelings of those before us.

“I doubt that I shall have the opportunity to discuss it with him, Miss Perkins.”

“But if you did, I mean. You wouldn’t have to tell him, would you? Fifty in gold . . .” Her eyes lit at the thought as they would never light for me. “ . . . do you know what that means to a girl? And twelve more clinkers, besides, just for prancing through the Dials? I call that handsome, I do.”

“Miss Perkins . . . my dear girl . . . you must think of your immortal soul.”

She did not laugh, but looked at me earnestly. With those eyes the color of cornflowers.

“I can’t afford to have no soul of my own,” she said. “That’s for them what already has their livings.” She rose, but kept the
sheet clutched to her person. No lily, the lass still might have made a splendid rose. “Please,” she begged. “Don’t tell him I wasn’t pleasing to you.”

I shook my head. “I won’t. If ever I see him.” For we would have more urgent things to talk about, the Earl and myself. If him it was, of which I felt near certain.

“And you want me to go, then?”

I nodded. Slowly. Exhausted as if I had fought a battle. “It would be best, see.”

“Well, then, turn about. If you’re not interested, I won’t have you looking at me like I was a fish in the market.”

I turned about, and listened to the vibrant sound of female garments slipping over flesh and over one another. There is music in the rustling, there is true. Forgive me this last frankness, and pray for me in my weakness, but it rends the heart, just slightly, to hear a woman dressing herself. That tune is lonely, and always sings of parting.

“I suppose you’re great friends, the two of you,” she said, as she warred with clasps and laces. “For all your will-he-or-won’t-he’s.”

“No,” I said. “We are not great friends.”

“Well, maybe you can speak for yourself, but
he
seems to think you are. He even said I was to tease you, when I was leaving. To tell you something he told me. You can look now, I’m done up proper.”

I turned and saw her, young and doomed. For even should she live a hundred years, we are all doomed. Sometimes, when I am not myself, I think it cruel of the Lord to have placed us here amid such a beauteous garden, only to tell us not to eat the fruit. And then to call us forth, with the beauty still rich in our eyes. I have faced death more than once, and I will tell you: The ugliest corner on earth is haunted with the shimmering glory of God. Perhaps it is the Welsh in me that wants to sing for joy and despair at once.

“And what was it you were to say to me?” I asked, watching her test her young face in the mirror.

“He said,” she told me as she puckered her lips, “I was to ask you the price of a girl in a Lahore bordello. To buy one outright.”

I DID NOT SEE HOW anyone could know so much about me. For some things are not entered in the records. Some things would scorch the paper they were written upon, and break the cabinet containing them like a heart.

If everything were known about you, every close-clutched secret, would you be proud? Would every night that you have passed please under noonday scrutiny? I fear the saints are few upon this earth.

Yes, I bought her. And I would do it again. If I were not married. If she still lived. Mrs. Singh offered her to me, to spare the bother of an auction, for the poor child had taken a liking to me, though I know not why. Perhaps because I did not insist, the one time I was with her in that place, and only let her rest while I petted her hair. Perhaps she was sixteen, but likely she was not. Things are different in the East, see. Or perhaps they are not different at all. I only know that Mrs. Singh regretted taking the child in, for all the lass did was weep and would not please. She was not two weeks within those walls when I bought her out, although two weeks can mar a human lifetime. Sometimes a single hour will do the trick.

Who can say why we love? Show me the book, and I will read it and praise it. Even the Holy Bible, may the Lord forgive me, only tells us of David’s errant passions, of mighty Samson’s helplessness before his heart, and, always, of Adam. But not a word is written down as to why they loved, unless you count that catch-all reason: Beauty. But comeliness is no more than the start of an explanation, and never an end to it. Why lust unto death for one, and not another? Why does the plain girl fill the heart when the handsome lass won’t do? How does the soul choose? What is it that we really love, when the animal act is done? And who stole Mary Magdalene’s first, innocent kiss?
How do we fall so easily into the darkness, when the heart would lift us, soaring, into the light?

I loved Ameera, that is all I know. As I loved the little boy that come to us, and our house by the river. She was my wife, my first, but no dark Lilith. And better she was than Eve, who heeded the Serpent. When the cholera took her and the child, I could have torn the Heavens into shreds.

“What’s wrong with you, sweetie?” the White Lily asked. “Something you et?”

Unable to speak, I waved a hand at nothing.

My God, she put her hand upon my shoulder. That human touch was like a loaded fuse. But my charge was tamped inward. I was ready to collapse like a mine blown shut with powder. For Miss Perkins, the danger was all past. At least any danger from me.

“Having second thoughts, are we?” she asked. I do not think she was a wicked person. Only led astray. As we all are.

I shook my head. “It’s nothing,” I lied. “It will pass, see. In just a moment. And I will see you to a cab.”

“Oh, there ain’t no need of that. Really there ain’t.”

Of a sudden, the lass seemed anxious to go. Perhaps she found me fearsome then, sensing the bitterness of memory in me, the old anger revived. Mr. Milton had no idea of our struggle with the Heavens, I will tell you that much. There may be suffering in poetry, but there is no poetry in our suffering. I wished to beat my fists upon God’s feet.

“I will see you to a cab,” I repeated.

“Really, there ain’t no need,” she said, impatient as a child now.

“I’ll just get my coat,” I told her, rising.

“It’s hot as an oven outside,” she said. “If you have to come, come in your shirtsleeves. No one won’t mind.”

But a gentleman does not appear on the street in his shirt. I brushed past her, past that crippling scent of Eve, and covered myself.

She looked at me doubtfully, but out we went together.

I will say this for London: It does not take a fuss to find a hack, and in a pair of moments I had shut the cab door behind her. I even paid the driver, and somehow did not find the cost too painful. With a snap and a creak and a clobbering of hooves on the stones, the cab pulled off into the moist night, which was not hot in the least.

Back in I went, past the leering of the porter, who snickered and muttered, “I would’ve paid for the night entire with that one. But ain’t the Welsh tight as the Jews?”

I lacked the will to respond to such indignities.

Laboring up the stairs, I felt unsure of whether this was London or old Lahore, today or then. My body perched upon those steps, but all of me that mattered had flown elsewhere. I am a small man, in so many ways, and lack a great understanding. But it seems to me the past is something real, that there is a merciless
now
to it, that we never can escape it, try as we may. Sometimes, of course, we do not even try. Some memories return to pierce us with rapture, as if we were rewarded while at prayer with a glimpse of Heaven. I do not know that this flesh is any more real than the meat of dreams. The Good Book is full of dreams, from innocent Joseph to Daniel in his dotage. The Lord sends dreams when He must speak to Mankind. And what are memories but our waking visions?