Honor's Kingdom (39 page)

FIFTEEN

THERE WERE NO DEVILS IN MY ROOM, BUT DEVILS there were in my soul. I dreamed of war. I killed and killed. Not only mine own enemies: Brown-skinned Sepoys, bronze Seekhs or leathery tribesmen. Nor only men in gray or butternut brown. I shot, and struck, and slashed at my old comrades. I could not find their faces, but they wore coats as red as mine had been, or the dusty-gray of the khakis we had at the last. I fought as if berserk, and they fell before me. I felt no pain and had no sense of danger. Remorseless as the juggernaut, I slaughtered every living thing in my path.

And there was a path. At the end of it was an icy, shimmering light. I needed to reach it. But a thousand times a thousand clamoring men defied my going. And the bitterness was not that I must kill them to reach my goal, that light at once compelling and wintry cold. The worst was that I
wanted
to lay them low. To make so great a butchery that all the fields of the earth should be bathed in blood. I tore at them with my bayonet, and slashed them with a sword greater than any I should have possessed the power to wield, and then I saw that I had many arms, like the crudest idols of India, and I was death unto thousands, whirling my countless limbs to annihilate battalions and regiments. And still they came toward me, and I could not reach the light.

All the while, I knew this to be a dream, as we sometimes know, yet I felt a weight of wrongdoing that I rarely have had to
bear in my waking life. I wished to throw off sleep, to stop the massacre.

But my other soul delighted in the gore, and sought that frozen light, and offered it a sacrifice of thousands.

Then I saw the colonel’s face before me.

I woke drenched. In as great a panic as the poor recruit who knows he was mistaken in his gambit, as he sees the blade descending to take his life.

Panting I was. And weeping. Nor could I stop the sobbing that watered me down to the bone. I felt as helpless as a little child.

I crawled from my soaking bed and found my knees, not without affecting my bothered leg. And I prayed. I crushed my hands together until they ached, and I prayed in that fractured manner that consists of broken words and shredded phrases. There was no meaning in it that I might explain to you. Twas a counter-madness, an animal repentance, if such a thing may be. The thrust of it was that I was sorry and begged to be forgiven. But even that is far too well-expressed.

When madness comes, it comes to me at night. Perhaps that drunken doctor in India was right. That I was mad, though he should not have blamed the madness on a fever. I had it in the marrow of my bones.

And you? I pray you have not known what I have known. But sometimes I suspect it comes to all of us in time, the old madness. It is only that some men build better barricades, and fortify themselves by light of day. Our forebears were not fools when they insisted that Satan’s power lay in the dark of night.

I prayed myself sick. A man can do that, too. And I retched in the night-pot.

Then I slept.

In the morning, all that remained was the damp on the sheets.

I STEPPED OUT TO FIND a less-dear place for my breakfast, and discovered Fanny drowsing against the wall. With the earliness
of the city passing her by. Her dress was unfamiliar, but that rusty swirl of hair would not be mistaken.

I touched her shoulder to rouse her. After a moment’s confusion, she leapt to me as my little monkey used to do in India. And as my first son had done, the tawny boy.

“Fanny, girl,” I said, “what are you—”

Before I could finish, the porter interrupted me. With a tip of his cap. He looked the sort who has figured out what he must do in life, and would do no more and no less.

“Pardon, sir. But are ye Marcher Jones?”

I looked at him with a lack of understanding. “I am Major Jones,” I told him.

“Weel, then, Major Jones. I did na ken the lass, for her speech is unco low. And sorry I am to talk so plain to a guest of the house, but the lass has been ha’ the night asking for ye, and when I would na move to hae ye waked, she would na gae for a’ the grief in the Gorbals. And it can na be, for the manager keeps a fine, high house, and a blessing it is that he has na been in to see it. I only let her be without beating her off, since I ken her for the singing girl, and her faither’s only gone the past eve, to spare us the plague of his fiddling. Mought she be a relation, then?”

All the while, Fanny clutched me tightly.

“No. Only an orphan, see. I thought her bestowed in a proper home, and did not expect to see her.”

“Well, please, sir, to tae her off afore the manager comes in. For he’d hae my position if I did na put a stick to her.”

I led her away. To a breakfast nook off Buchanan Street. Twas difficult to peel her from me so that we might sit in separate chairs at table. And when she was seated, she brooded as if she might leap across the space that kept us apart, to fix herself to my person once again.

I ordered her toasted bread, with butter and marmalade, a soft-cooked egg and bacon, just the same as I would have myself. For I could not know the last time she had eaten.

As we waited for our earthly sustenance, I asked her, “Now, what is it, lass? Did they do any harm to you? Or frighten you, did they?”

In truth, she looked as though she had been nicely scrubbed, despite the lateness of her hour of delivery, and she wore a tidy gray dress that suited a girl placed in a young ladies’ academy.

“Did they do you a hurt, Fanny? Something wrong, is it?”

At last, she shook her head.

“What is it, then?”

She looked down at the tabletop. It bore a cloth with a chronicle of stains.

“Come now, girl. Why did you leave your nice, warm bed like that?”

And in that instant, I recalled that I had left my own bed in the night. Nor had I forgotten the frightful dreams of my childhood. And the Good Lord only knew what that child had seen. What might we learn if we knew another’s dreams? Perhaps it would bring about a reign of compassion. If it did not make us fear our brothers the more.

“What’s wrong, Fanny?” I tried again.

She did not raise her eyes, but only said, “Can I na stay with ye? Please, sir?”

“Did anyone frighten you?”

Again, she shook her head. That ruddy storm of hair trailed after her face. “Please, sir? Will ye na tae me to ye? I’m a terrible guid lass, and I’d work sae hard for ye. Hae ye na wife to care for ye and tae up after ye?”

“Yes,” I told her. “I have a wife, indeed.”

She looked up at that, with those wondrous gray-blue eyes. “Oh, sir, I’ll wager she’s bonnie.”

“You will do nothing of the kind,” I told her, but gently. “Young ladies do not wager. Nor should anyone.”

“I did na mean it wicked.”

“I know you didn’t.”

“Is
she bonnie, sir? Is she terrible fine and bonnie?”

“Well, she is ‘bonnie’ to me. And lovely as all the stars in all the heavens.”

“And is she na here by ye, then?”

“No. She is in America. That is our home, see.”

At that her face plunged until I thought she would weep again. “And . . . and must ye gae back to her, then? To America?”

“Yes.”

“Soon will it be, sir?”

“Soon enough. That is why you must be placed where you are safe, Fanny. Where you may learn, and grow up to be a young lady.”

“Could I na learn with ye, sir? In America?”

“This is your home,” I told her. “And that lovely man who was with us last night? Colonel Tice-Rolley? With the red face and the beard like Moses himself? He is a very great friend to me. And he will be a friend to you. I have his promise. He will look after things, to see you are treated as you should be. You’re not afraid of him, are you?”

“Nae.”

“And it will be a very great thing to be able to study and learn. Education is the path of self-improvement, see. Why, I wish I might have had such an opportunity! My own schooling, what there has been of it, come by the barracks lamp and the candle in my tent. Oh, there is good, to have an education!” And then I saw a thing that might be helpful. “You will learn to read, and to write. Then we will send each other letters across the sea.”

She looked as doubtful as she had before my little speech, but I was rescued from further argument by the arrival of our food. Now, if there is a lovelier thing upon this earth than the smell of well-fried bacon, or the scent of toasted bread fresh from the fire, then you may tell me of it and I will listen.

“Eat you now,” I told the girl. “Everything looks better after breakfast.” And I forked a cut of bacon to my mouth.

She would not eat. Not at first. I believe she was afraid of her surroundings, although they were not fine by the common
measure, and she worried that my display of generosity could never be intended for such as her.

“The food is for you, Fanny,” I assured her. “It is yours. All that lays on that side of the table.”

Cautiously, she reached toward the bacon, perhaps emulating me in the primacy she accorded that great benefit of the pig. Her little hand went slowly as a cat creeping up upon its prey. She looked to me a final time, and I nodded, then she grasped an entire rasher in her fist. And when she had it swallowed—barely chewed—she stuck two fingers into the marmalade pot and spooned it so.

Now you will say: “The child needed a lesson in proper manners. We do not eat bacon with fists and jam with our fingers.” But I will tell you: Time enough there would be for society etiquette. The little thing was hungry. Although I will admit that my own wife most likely would have taken your side in the matter.

Well, my sweetheart has put manners on me, although it took some time. I never was a sloven, you understand, and always kept myself tidy. But there are secret ways polite folk do things, and we must learn them if we wish their company. Still and all, old habits are a comfort. When my Mary Myfanwy is not there to watch me, I hold my fork the way I always did. Though I do not slop.

The child did not even know how to tap an egg, so I did it for her. She was an old hand at dipping toasted bread, though, and we played a game to see whose plate would finish the cleanest.

She giggled. Now you will think me a weak-minded man, and soft, but I could have wept on the spot. Twas the first glimmer of happiness, or of the simple pleasures of a childhood, that I saw from her.

When I paid, her eyes grew huge at the sum, although the establishment had no taint of extravagance.

I fear I forgot myself for a moment, for I needed to make an appearance at the police offices. Instead, I led her up the street by the hand—for she consented that we might go that way now, instead of clutched together. And then I thought of a thing.

“Fanny, would you say you are too old for a doll?”

I felt her shy a bit, and she did not answer.

“Have you ever had a doll, lass?”

After a pair of measured steps, she said, “I had a dolly ance. Flora Colley gae her to me, when she thought me faither mought come up high to his pension. She wanted Dolly back when she found she’d been fooled o’er, but Betts whipped her off with a belt and gae Dolly to her own wee bairn.”

I stopped of a sudden, with the hurly-burly of the morning brisk around us and the streets alert to the prospects of the day.

“Fanny, what do you want, girl? And do not tell me that you wish to stay with me, for that is not what I mean. What would you like your life to be like? If the wishing were given you? It is a big question, there is true. But what would you wish of life, girl? If you had your wish and your way?”

She did not need to think so awfully long. Perhaps she had been thinking of such matters for years.

“I would tae a handsome jo of me own,” she told me. “When a daysunt age comes on me. A handsome jo wha does na go beating me more than I deserve.” By God, her eyes glowed when she said that to me. “And a house! A house with more rooms than people. That belonged to me and him. And he’d always protect me, and let none come in wha I would na wish to see.”

When she finished speaking, her smile dissolved, and her eyes filled with doubt, and she looked as though she had asked for the sun, the moon, and the stars, but expected a clot of dirt thrown in her face.

“Well, I cannot say what the future will bring,” I told her, “but let us see if we cannot find a doll.”

And find one we did. I had to pick it out, for the child was terrified. Nor was the shopkeeper helpful, for he wanted to sell what he wished to sell, not what the poor girl wanted. I tried to sense her best desire, but frozen she was, even to the eyes. As if the abundance of that middling shop was a horror.

She would not even touch the doll until we were outside. I needed to thrust it into the child’s arms. But when she took it at last, you would have thought it was her very own living child.

She held it as tightly as she had held to me. And though I should have been relieved, the truth is that I only felt a loss.

WHEN I TOOK HER BACK to Miss Thumper’s Home, those two gaunt spectres, tall and short, descended upon us.

“Where has the naughty girl
been?”
Miss Thumper demanded.

“Where has Miss Frances Raeburn been this morning?” Miss Sharp improved the question.