Honor's Kingdom (20 page)

The servant reappeared, with an impassive expression lacquered over his face.

“Follow me, sir,” he said.

I trailed along, between great hunks of mahogany and paintings gone dark with the years. He showed me into a study, all leather and globes and fittings of polished brass, where young Mr. Pomeroy was struggling to light a cigar. The boy wore his fear as plainly as a costume, and the costume was trimmed in hatred.

The servant left us. With that slight clap of a door that fits precisely.

Young Pomeroy glared at me. But there was no strength in it. He looked as frail as the head of the house was hearty.

“I suppose,” he said, in an effort at sounding disdainful, “you’ve come to add your name to the list of blackmailers.”

Now, you will understand my temper was near to failing me. My leg’s lack of allegiance had bruised my spirit. Then I had been called a Jew, and now a blackmailer. No Christian has more than two cheeks he can turn.

“Look you,” I said sternly. “I will not have you play the little lord with me, Mr. Pomeroy. Sit you down and listen. Or I will tell your tale where it will be heard.”

He sat down on a divan, crumbling the cigar between his fingers. His spirit crumbled, too. I saw it. Still, I did not stop. For I was hot.

“Insolent you were with Mr. Adams, and quick enough with your ‘Earl This’ and ‘Lord That’ besides. You, a shameful boy who cannot pay his gambling debts. Not that any man should gamble, I will tell you, whether he can pay his debts or no. And next I see you all in a great passion, blowing like the north wind out of the changing room of a certain stage performer. All because she would not meet your base demands. You! A man who has already ruined the virtue of one young woman, a poor seamstress, and—”

At that, his face took on a baffled look.

“—you ruined her health, besides. For such as you are ever without shame. And selfish to the very depths of Hell.” I gave him a look to chill the polar seas. “Now it’s off to the doctor, is it? For both of you. Two ruined lives, is it? And you still chasing after singing girls. With a poor lass out of Lambeth ruined forever, and where is she to go, your little seamstress? The one you have made sick with your misbehaviors?”

“Good God,” he said. “Are you speaking of my wife?”

YES, I HAD GOT IT WRONG. Though helped along in my error I was. The boy broke down in tears. He simply could not bear this sudden assault on his secret life. For secrets are not wives with whom we may grow comfortable in time. Secrets are whores—forgive me—and betray us when we are weak and poor in fortune. Secrets crush the spirit. And rob the purse.

“Sarah’s from Hungary, you see,” young Pomeroy continued the explanation he had begun. His red eyes wandered, but found nothing upon which to rest. Especially not the rows of books, which looked as though they never had been touched. “Her father brought her here. And he died. Suddenly. Sarah had no one. I don’t know what would have become of her, if we hadn’t met.” He managed to look at me. Briefly. And pleadingly. “She’s a good girl. You have to understand that. A wonderful
girl. Sarah wouldn’t . . . she isn’t like some other women. She wouldn’t . . . I had to marry her, you see. She wouldn’t have me otherwise. She would’ve starved first. And I didn’t want . . . I couldn’t . . .”

I had taken a seat myself, fair knocked off my feet by embarrassment and mystification.

“Well, sir,” I told him, “if you are married to the lass, there is good. But you have no business running after singing girls and such like.”

He did look at me then. But he shook his head. With a bit of strength regained. “I wasn’t running after any singing girls. Or anybody else. Nothing of the sort. Sarah’s all the wife a man could ask for. I love her more than anything in the world.”

“I was there, young man. I saw you last night, and heard a most unpleasant explanation from the woman you insulted.”

“Insulted?” He seemed honestly bewildered. “What did she tell you? Did she say anything about the letters? Did she?”

“There was no talk of letters. What letters would these be, then? And if you are so innocent, why did you flee at the sight of me?”

“I thought you were mixed up in it.”

“In what?”

“In blackmailing me.”

“And who is blackmailing you?”

He shook his head again. Doubtfully this time. “I don’t know,” he whispered.

“That is a lie.”

He raised his face as if I had given him a hard slap.

“Who is blackmailing you, boy?”

He moved his head, slowly, from side to side. As if it were the heaviest thing on earth.

“Who is it?” I insisted.

“I can’t tell you. I daren’t.”

“Who?”

“I can’t.”

“Mr. Disraeli, is it?

We had gotten back to honesty again. For the look of shock on his face could not be feigned. I had guessed correctly. But I wanted him to answer me aloud.

“Answer me, boy. And perhaps I can help you. Is Mr. Disraeli blackmailing you?”

“Yes. No. I mean . . . he’s one of them. Not the only one, it’s all confused.”

Now, there is trouble. When a fellow is blackmailed by more than one party. The thing of it was that the boy was weak. Twas plain. And weaklings are as game-birds to the world.

“Who are the others?”

“I don’t know. The Earl of Thretford. Others, too. But they’re all in it with him.”

At that, it was my turn to be astonished. For he had spoken a name I knew too well. Arthur Langley, the Earl of Thretford. One of England’s richest young men. And the inheritor of cotton mills in Manchester, of metal works in Sheffield, and of shipyards and manufactories in Glasgow.

In Glasgow.

Shipyards.

Oh, of all the lords and ladies in honor’s kingdom, the Earl of Thretford was the one to whom I had come closest. Although we had never exchanged a single word. It all went back to a spirit girl and troubles with the Irish in the hills of western New York. I had seen him, once, in the flesh, in Rochester, dealing with a wicked man whom I pursued to his death. The Earl had disappeared, gone back to Canada. And on to England thereafter. I had thought such matters left behind, and good riddance.

Then I recalled another thing, overheard in shrouded winter streets. The Earl of Thretford had an indecent fondness. For street-boys.

“Don’t you want to hear about the letters?” young Pomeroy demanded. For when we begin confessions, we do not like to stop until we are finished.

“Yes,” I said absently. “The letters, then.”

“I had a message. A note. It wasn’t signed. That’s how it usually is, you see. I was to go to see this singing tart, this Polly Perkins, after she finished performing for the evening. The note said she had my letters and would give them to me, that all I had to do was ask her for them.” He shrugged and it seemed almost a sob. “I thought it was mad, of course. Why should the possessor of the letters give them back, just like that? But I was desperate. I thought . . . I thought that she might have gotten her hands on them somehow. Stolen from a lover’s dressing table, perhaps. I hoped she was only after money.” He raised his wet eyes to mine. “I’d do almost anything to have those letters back. They were stolen from my wife. Every letter that I ever wrote to her. I’d give anything . . .”

“And what,” I asked, “is in these letters that is so frightful, then? What did you write to your wife that causes you so much shame?”

He sat up, almost bravely. “There’s not the least bit of shame in a single word. None. I wouldn’t take back a syllable. It’s only . . . it’s only that my father musn’t find out.”

“About what, then?”

“About . . . about Sarah. And our marriage.”

I began to see it, but he made things clear.

“He really would disinherit me,” young Pomeroy went on. “He’d never accept a marriage so far below our station. He wants his peerage, and he’d view any such union as nothing more than a plot to deprive him of it. He daren’t take a false step, given the difficulties the family’s already been through.” He shifted. “The Queen is very particular, you know. She only needs to say half a word, or to make the slightest tick with her pen. And her mourning’s made things worse.” He looked away. And whispered. “They say she’s half mad.”

“So you are married. And your father must not know. Because your wife was not born as your equal. And he wants to be made a great lord.”

He nodded, almost with a child’s eagerness. “He wouldn’t even have her if she were a duchess. Not as long as she’s a foreigner. He hates foreigners.”

“So,” I said, with little enough pity, “you hope to conceal this matter—your marriage—until your father dies. Is that it?”

He seemed to shrink. And I will tell you: Likely he had not thought quite so far. Not clearly. Surely, it was in the back of his mind. And perhaps it slipped toward the front now and again. But when we are desperate and afraid, we only hope to survive the terrors of the day. We do not think in years when we fear next week. We hope, blindly, that somehow things will turn right.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I only know that he’d never accept her. Or forgive me.”

I looked around the splendid room, with its virgin books and shelves of curiosities. We say that we would give our all for love, when we are in a passion. But men and women like the things they have, and would as soon maintain their every comfort. I am not a romantical fellow, but I would have liked the boy more had he been willing to take a stand for his beloved. Perhaps his father would have liked him better, too. For the father had seemed an ogre when he passed me, but he had the carriage of a bold and strapping man. The son was slender as a book of verse.

“And what about your debts? And reports of gambling?”

He looked down at the Turkey carpet. “I was a fool. An incredible fool. I thought I had a gift for cards. You know how it is, don’t you? I thought I could win enough to care for Sarah. To pay the doctors.” He lifted his face toward me as if his neck pained him. “We . . . we were to have a child. But she became ill. The doctors . . . the expenses . . . I thought I could win enough, you see. And when I lost, I borrowed.” He laughed. Bitterly. “I believed I was a prince in a fairy tale. I was going to carry her off to a castle in the clouds. Now she’s had to go back to her lacemaking. And she’s so ill . . .” Of a sudden, he confronted me full on. “Haven’t
you ever loved to break your heart? Haven’t you ever loved anyone, and failed them? Do you have any idea how that makes a man feel?”

Oh, I had recollections enough to sate me, and believed I knew more of life than the lad on the divan. But I whipped him on, for death had been prowling after me in the streets and a weak boy’s troubles seemed of little consequence. “And the difficulties in which your sister found herself? What about those?”

“That’s none of your business,” he said, irately.

“I will make it my business, boy. Speak truly, and you may find that I will help you. Lie, and I will let you drop like a glass vase. Tell me of your sister and her difficulties.”

“It wasn’t her fault.”

“I did not say it was.”

“She’s an angel.”

“I did not say she was not.”

“She found them. Together.”

“Who then?”

“Her husband. And Lord Tye. She hadn’t known a thing, you see. Although we all suspected. Father was all for the match, no matter what. Her husband’s title goes back seven hundred years. And . . . when she found them, they were . . . they were in the act.” His face, reddened by weeping, nonetheless changed color in a blush. “She hadn’t known about it. Not a thing. She hadn’t known such relationships could exist.”

“And that is her shame?”

“She left him. But his grace put it about that
she
was the guilty party. The swine. He told everyone
he
had found
her.
That he found her with a groom. Before she could so much as whisper an accusation herself. So anything she said would sound like a vengeful lie. My father had to pay him to shut his mouth and take her back.” He twisted up his face. “Seven hundred years of spending every penny they ever got. That’s what it all came down to. Father had money enough, and Jasper had the pedigree. Now my father’s afraid someone may have told Her Majesty. The lie about my sister and the groom, I mean.”

“And where is your sister now?”

Hatred streaked from his eyes again. He laughed horribly. “Lord, you don’t know a thing. Do you?”

“Where is your sister, Mr. Pomeroy?”

“I suppose I should challenge you to a duel or something. But then where would Sarah be?” He smirked. Twas dreadful to look at him.

I did not understand, see.

“Finish the tale of your sister, boy. For something is left unsaid.”

“Have you no decency at all?” He swept his hand wildly about. “Adela’s dead. For the love of God. She drowned herself in the river up at Bournely.”

I had not known, of course. Mr. Disraeli, with his twisting and turning, had left out a great deal.

“I’m sorry.”

He took no interest in my apologies. “My father loved her more than anything else in the world,” young Pomeroy continued. “I was always a disappointment to him. Since Adela’s death, he’s been a monster. He even—”

I was hardly listening at that point. I pictured the lass as Ophelia, floating in a brook and free of this world. Mr. Shakespeare knew how frail we are. But let that bide. I had a task before me, and I would do it.

“These blackmailers,” I interrupted him. “However many there are. The Earl of Thretford and the rest of them. Mr. Disraeli. What do they want of you?”

He thought for a moment. I did not think that it was calculation, only a move from one of the mind’s compartments to another, for I had dragged him down to his sister’s watery grave. And he needed to surface again to answer my question.

“Disraeli,” he said, “never asked a thing until Friday evening. I wasn’t even aware he knew I existed. I still don’t know exactly what he knows. But I don’t believe he’s involved with the Earl of Thretford. It’s all separate somehow. You see, the Earl never does anything in person, if he can help it. Not during daylight. I simply get these notes, delivered by a different boy each time.
Another boy comes for the reply. But Mr. Disraeli sent his own carriage for me, so I could meet him after Parliament closed. It didn’t seem the same thing at all.”