Honor's Kingdom (3 page)

“Yes,” Mr. Adams said. “All the grandeur of empire. They’re constructing an underground tunnel for omnibuses, at the moment. Hence the disruption.” He waved at the world beyond our hack. “A project to control the course of the Thames is under discussion, as well, a permanent embankment from Westminster into the City.”

His lips spread ever so slightly, as if his smiles were rationed. “More impressive than our little Washington, I fear.”

“It doesn’t smell quite as bad,” I agreed. “But look you, sir. I would rather have my American freedom and no monuments, than all the monuments in the world and Britannia’s boot upon me.”

Young Mr. Adams looked at me as if I had belched at supper. He was a curious sort, and as I come to know him better, I found that he liked the idea of America and did not shun the advantages of his birth, but he preferred the reality of England, or even, more’s the pity, France and such like. But in that moment he peeved me mightily, for I am small and plain of countenance, and was not finely raised, but I will not be looked down upon by a pup. I have become an American, see, and I have fought for my new country on fields of battle, may the Good Lord forgive me. And as for any impropriety of manner, my Mary Myfanwy has seen to my public deportment, although I will never be the sort to please fine fellows who go out into society.

“You were born in Wales, Major Jones, if I’m not mistaken?” our minister asked, easing the conversation yet again.

“Yes, sir. I was born a Merthyr man. But I count myself an American now, for the past is all behind me.”

I fear I verged on an untruth in my enthusiasm, for well I know the past is never behind us entirely. Would that it were. But let that bide. Twas his marking me as Welsh-born that confounded me. Look you. I do not think my speech betrays my origins, for I have studied the arts of elocution, and most diligently. Perhaps it is the Christian gravity of my demeanor that marks me as a Welshman.

“Well, we’re in need of every good American we can muster,” Mr. Adams told me. The hack rolled free at last and we passed into a neighborhood of fine town houses, where those afoot dressed swank and housemaids hurried along on daily errands. “Major Jones, would you dine with me just now? We shall dine out, if you have no objection. Mrs. Adams lacks enthusiasm for unexpected guests.”

The son looked at the father in surprise.

The cabman called to his pair and the hack rolled to a stop. I recognized the American legation, where I had arrived that morning. Twas lodged in a good house, though hardly a grand one. Number 5, Upper Portland Place, it was. And only rented, as I come to learn, for our minister’s welcome was provisional.

“Henry,” Mr. Adams said, “may I ask you to make my apologies to Judge Hagar, who is expected at three. See to it that Moran arranges for the acceptance of the Reverend Mr. Campbell’s body, and tell him I want to see any dispatches that come in regarding the Number 290 matter. In fact, have him separate any correspondence from Liverpool, no matter the subject. And ask the driver to take Major Jones and myself to Galante’s, in Oxford Street.”

The young man gave his father a startled look. “Galante’s? Father, that’s hardly—” Then he looked at me again and his tone changed in an instant. “Yes. Of course. Galante’s.”

Obediently stepping down from the cab, Henry Adams turned and said, “Father, you won’t forget that you’re to call upon Mr. Disraeli? Before he leaves for the evening session?”

“I shall never forget Mr. Disraeli,” Mr. Adams assured his son.

OUR MINISTER STAYED MUM as they come during the rest of our ride, but he stared at me so attentively I might have been a portrait hung in a gallery. I would have thought him rude, had I not recognized that such as he know all there is to manners. But I could not stare back, for that would have been forward. So, I watched the streets as the hack crawled through the city.

How fine it all was, if stinking and dusty and hot. Eastward, where manufactories spit into the river and sky, it looked as though a child had streaked the horizon with charcoal. In the fineness of these West End streets, though, the sun come heavy and rude as a rich relation. A marvel of carriages thronged the ways, from phaetons and elegant sociables, with their hoods dropped to display fair complexions cooled by parasols, to fast young men jaunting along in gay two-wheelers, working the reins with one hand while tipping their hats with the other. Donkey barrows dueled for right of way with great dray wagons, and not all shouted sentiments were kind. Every one distinguished as a bank, buildings as high as seven stories shaded the pavings. And the crowds! A gentleman afoot could hardly pursue a straight line along the shop fronts, blocked as he was by fine ladies and their lesser sisters, all swelled out in a great competition of crinolines, if you will excuse my indelicacy.

Like painted ships those ladies were, maneuvering about a crowded harbor. Boys darted and called, swooping like gulls around galleons. A fellow got up in a motley attempt at gentility offered a refreshment of lemonade by the glass, while three strides on a newsboy cried a war in Servia, a land I did not know, where someone or other was having a go at the Turks. Treasures gorged the windows of the shops. All the world had
come to London that summer, for in the railway coach I had read of the great International Exhibition just underway, attended by even the Pasha of Egypt, among a wealth of other princes and potentates, to say nothing of a wicked bother of Frenchmen. I hoped to see the exhibition’s displays before I left, for they were reported to encompass every progress in the world and would surely edify.

London!

Sixteen years and more it was since last I walked those streets. A mere boy, I had sought my love, who had been sent away to keep her from me. I saw her face before me everywhere in my heartsick confusions, and failed to measure London or myself. Too soon, I went to Bristol in despair, where I signed for India and a scarlet coat. Thus began my young success, now rued, that let me bayonet myself up to a sergeancy, before misfortune put me in my place.

So much had passed, the years were heavy-laden. I was a different man. Not least, I was an American now, and in the very prime of middle age at thirty-four. And married I was to my lovely, peerless sweetheart, who had waited all those years. We had a son, our John. And a good home back in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, where I hoped to sit again at my desk in the counting house.

I had put on my blue uniform with the greatest reluctance, though now I wore it with a certain pride. I was no longer fit for field service. Bull Run had shattered my leg the summer before, and I limped a bit. I was no invalid, you understand, and walked me better with every passing month. Yet, run I never would again—not properly—nor lead men in a charge. Still, there are other ways a man may serve. The truth is I hardly regretted my little disablement. For I had seen enough of war to know it for the harshest of all mirrors. And there are things it does no good to see. I longed for peace and family and home, for a return to my ledgers at Mr. Evans’s coal company, and chapel on Sunday, morning and evening both.

Still, London is a city worth a visit.

Oxford Street was a grand commercial thoroughfare, much remade in recent years by the look of it. A human river flowed between banks of shops. I did not see a plentitude of beggars, though some there were to put a claim on charity. Look you. I do not approve of such behavior by able-bodied men or even women, for begging is badly destructive of character, but I am an old bayonet and know something of the hardness of the world. The sight of a beggar in a soldier’s coat gone shabby, a sleeve unfilled or left without his legs, will stir me. For well I know the role that sheer luck plays. I, too, might have been such a one as that.

Now, you will say, “It isn’t luck but Providence, and Methodists should not paint life as a gamble.” But I will tell you: In battle, Providence looks the other way. We shame ourselves before the eyes of God. Brute luck and bloody skill are all that save us. And so I felt an inner twitch as we rolled past a legless artilleryman croaking a ballad and dreaming not of glory but of pennies. We passed him by, but he would not leave my heart.

The hack stopped just past the Pantheon, by a sign reading GALANTE’S in golden letters and, in black, MODERATE PRICES, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE BILLIARD ROOMS.

Now honest prices are a thing I value, but proper Christians do not favor billiards.

Within, the bustle of the midday meal was slowing with the hour, but still the great room clattered like an ironworks. Twas fancy in that city sort of way that substitutes decoration for decency. A fellow decked out in a swallowtail greeted us, and Mr. Adams requested a private room.

Upstairs we went, leaving behind ranks of tables that set honest clerks down beside fellows dressed like racing touts on holiday. My leg was awkward, as it always is when I must get me up a staircase, but I smelled gravy and the scent of carvery beef, and that rarely fails to put me in a proper spirit. Food is not the least of the Good Lord’s blessings.

The little room the restaurant fellow settled us in had but two chairs at table and a stained, red-velvet couch along the
wall. Heavy draperies blocked all but the gaslight and the door could be locked from the inside. The smell did not resemble that of victuals.

Mr. Adams answered my perplexity.

“I’m afraid such cabinets are put to other uses in the evening,” he said, as soon as the greeter had left us alone with the day’s bill of fare. Our minister did not blush at the admission, but added, “My apologies, Major Jones. I needed to speak to you where we would be neither expected nor overheard. Even my private apartments wouldn’t do, I’m afraid. The household staff are rather too attentive, and I’m not at all certain I’m their only paymaster. As for the legation offices . . . there are a few things my subordinates needn’t know.”

I listened to him with great attention, of course, but my mind had to struggle to do its duty. Startled I was by the prices on the bill of fare. “Moderate” they were not. The price of a beefsteak would have bought a cow back in America. And wanton expenditure is sinful. It wounds me.

A waiter knocked at the door, and Mr. Adams bid him enter. Our minister ordered a chop and I did likewise, since nothing on offer would answer to economy. As soon as the fellow closed the door behind himself again, Mr. Adams leaned across the table toward me.

“Why did you ask the inspector if you could borrow the letter?”

“I thought we might make a comparison, sir,” I told him, relishing my cleverness. “You said the Reverend Mr. Campbell paid you a visit, see. I suspected you might have correspondence from him among your records, asking if he might call or such like. By comparing his note with the letter, we could prove the hand wasn’t his, that he didn’t write it. That the whole, wicked business is a hoax.”

“It’s not a hoax,” Mr. Adams said.

I was nonplussed.

“The letter is genuine,” he continued. “Were you to compare it with the correspondence in our files, it would be evident at once.”

I saw a little way into the matter then. “That’s why you wished to leave the morgue, sir?”

“Your questions had begun to concern me. Inspector Wilkie may be cleverer than he seems, though Pomeroy’s oblivious.” His wintry eyes judged me again. “You must have a great deal of experience in this line, Major.”

“No, sir,” I said. My voice come slow, though my thoughts were racing. “It is only that I have been involved in a few of these unfortunate affairs now. A man learns from his doings and his errors. I’m not a proper detective, sir, if any fellow of the sort may be called proper.”

“Be that as it may, you were steering too close to the truth.”

I fingered the cane I had propped beside my chair. “If the letter was genuine . . .”

“Genuine,” Mr. Adams interposed, “but not necessarily accurate. It was something of a ruse. Do you recall its contents, Major Jones?”

“It said that the Reverend Mr. Campbell—would that be his correct name, sir?”

“Yes. Mr. Campbell served both the Lord and the United States. His vocation seemed an excellent disguise for an agent. It gave the late Mr. Campbell license to pry into all sorts of matters.”

I wondered if such had not been a misuse of a reverend office, but let that bide.

“And,” I continued, “the letter said he had learned nothing new, nothing at all, regarding Confederate activities.”

“That may, or may not, have been accurate.”

“It implied that you were his master.”

Mr. Adams leaned so close I could see each separate hair in the fringe gracing his temples and every whisker under his chin, the texture of his skin and the veins broken by the years.

“Major Jones, you will be the only living person in this country, other than myself, to know what I’m about to tell you. Even my son is unaware. Henry’s a fine young man, but he’s better suited to stand for the St. James Club than to stand in the shadows
of intrigue. And Wilson, the legation’s secretary, is a political appointee, with all the deficiencies that suggests. Moran’s competent, but he writes everything down.”

He lowered his voice yet again. “Secretary Seward and I agreed that I would control a small number of agents to counter the Confederacy’s efforts in Britain. To mask these activities, our Minister to Brussels has made a show of recruiting spies throughout Europe, including here in Britain. We hoped he might fix the attention of our enemies, while I pursued matters quietly. All seemed to be working as planned. Then I lost two agents, suddenly and only a few weeks apart—resulting in your despatch by Mr. Seward. Yet, neither of those deaths could be tied, in any way, to the legation. We had been discreet.” He looked at me with a slight cant to his head. “Now Mr. Campbell’s gone, but hardly anonymously.”

“And the letter must be discredited.”

“Ignored, for now. Unless it should become public. Then I shall deny it.” He smiled that slight smile that was not a smile at all. “A man in my position may always make denials, Major Jones. It’s expected. Not that a gentleman would do so under any other circumstance. But diplomacy is the one field of endeavor in which a gentleman may forget himself to advantage. No, there’s something rather more important.”