Honor's Kingdom (42 page)

I closed the Bible and took me off to find my wife a gift. To give my mind a time for clearing, see. My sweetheart long had wanted a Paisley shawl. Which might be gotten cheaper in Glasgow than after it had journeyed to America.

I did not go to Buchanan Street, for I had seen enough to know its fancy shops were not for me and mine. I turned me north, up the incline, and studied the merchant offerings of Sauchiehall Street and environs.

I met naught but dismay. The loveliest shawls were priced above all reason, and the shawls of congenial price were less than lovely. Twas a great day for discouragements.

Now you will say: “We should not stint on gifts for those we love.” But I will tell you: Love that does not stint itself need not rely upon gifts.

Still, I felt a bit of guilt at not making a purchase. And I wondered what the wicked Earl would have said, had he observed me. Perhaps that love is the cheapest thing in the world, and shoddy goods.

I felt so glum. Whatever I did and wherever I turned, I seemed to run into a mirror that reflected back the smallest man on earth.

By that time, I was hungry, and wanted a proper dinner before the hour arrived to meet the London train. But I did not go directly to my feed. Instead, I marched back to Sauchiehall Street and bought a scarf the price of which would have fed a hundred orphans for a week. And more. Twas green and gold, which I thought would suit my Mary, for her hair is that true Welsh black from up the valleys, and her eyes are green as the sea the day after a storm.

That made me feel better, and I dined upon a filet in thick blood gravy.

JUST ABOUT READY to leave for the station I was, when the porter delivered a letter to my room.

“Police laddie said it maun gae to ye quick and ready,” the fellow told me. Fortunately, he was accustomed to dealing with his fellow Scots and did not elaborate his expectation of a gratuity.

The note come from Inspector McLeod. Sealed close it was, and strange. Enjoining me to secrecy, perhaps because he meant to exceed official bounds, and asking me to meet him at one o’clock after midnight, in the Necropolis, at the foot of the statue of John Knox.

Now I will tell you of John Knox, for he had a great hand in making Presbyterians, who are the Hindoo variety of Christians. They believe that everything is made up in advance, see. I suppose he was more good than bad, for he stood opposed to Rome and gave a nasty time to that Scottish Mary, who seems a bit of a tart in the history books. But he also sounds as if he had a mean streak. And there is hardness a-plenty in this world, without our rendering Jesus into a tyrant.

But let that bide.

Of course, I was suspicious of the note. I realized it might be but a lure to lead me to a desolate place and work some mischief.
With all the wickedness I had seen in Her Majesty’s domains, I would not even rule out the chance that Inspector McLeod was in service to my enemies, and that his snub by the Earl was but a charade. The note might be an invitation to die.

But I would go, though not without a pistol and my sword-cane. For a soldier must always march to the sound of the guns. Ready I was to cooperate with the inspector, should he prove honest. Or to fight, if he was not.

No matter who wished to greet me in that graveyard, I would not disappoint them through reluctance. The truth was that I wished to put an end to things. The Earl had unsettled me, beyond reason. And weary I was of murders, threats, and lies. When I loaded those revolvers, their heft had seemed all too comfortable in my hands.

I am a soldier. Perhaps that is what I am damned to be. No matter how hard I wish to turn away from such affairs. And patience is a rare thing in a soldier. A soldier is trained to action, and he believes that action will carry the day. I fear I was not steady in my judgement. Had I been invited to Hell that night, I think I would have gone, convinced that I should have a go at the Devil.

Whether I had business with a policeman who feared losing his position, or with a whole battalion of men in red masks, I had another duty that wanted completing first. I got me up Buchanan Street to the station, through the Thursday-evening wanderers and a singing drunkard or two. I bought my ticket to go onto the platform, and there I was when the London train chugged in and squealed to a stop on clouds of steam.

I did not see young Mr. Adams at once. For the first thing that I saw was Polly Perkins. Fair burst out of her compartment she did, and come strutting along the platform in a great huff. Twas then that Henry Adams appeared behind her. Juggling a fair tumult of luggage he was, and calling to a porter to fetch still more from the roof of the car.

Didn’t Miss Perkins smile when she caught sight of me? Although she quickly re-attached her frown.

I was flummoxed.

Perhaps I am a fool in so many ways that they cannot be tallied, but I did not expect Miss Perkins to appear in Glasgow. Yet, up to me she stepped, with a great and grandiose folderol of bodily contortions. Her travelling costume included a rather alarming abundance of feathers, as if she had prepared herself to fly the rest of the way should the train break down. All in handsome green she was, with bits of cream lace planted here and there, and her hat was of a size to inspire awe. Her blond hair was put up, and she wore summer gloves that did not look quite fresh.

I would not tell you that she looked a queen, for she did not. Queens pursued a duller course than Miss Perkins. Nor did she achieve the elegance she wanted, to be plain. Even I could tell that much. Yet, every male head on that platform snapped in her direction, as smartly as if given a command.

Just as Mr. Adams come up beside her, with a look of infernal confusion on his face and the luggage precarious in his struggling arms, Polly gave me a smile as bright as sunrise. Although one of her teeth was just awry, which I had not noted previously. Still, it was not unbecoming, since the teeth looked to be her own, and that is something.

“Well!” she declared—indeed, hers was a tone of declaration— “It’s good to lay eyes on a gentleman again, and one what don’t think it’s ’is right and ’is bleedin’ privilege to take advantage of an innocent lady what finds ’erself cast on ’is mercies upon the railway!” She glanced cooly at Mr. Adams. “A gentleman what is unlike
some
people of which we ’ave a mutual acquaintance.”

She extended her hand to me. Rather as if she expected me to kiss it. I gave it a friendly shake, instead, and welcomed her to Scotland.

Again, she aimed a haughty look at the luggage-encumbered slave to which Mr. Adams had been reduced.

“’E’s a dirty little cooter,” she told me, “and wants watching every minute, don’t think ’e don’t.” She sniffed. “You wouldn’t think ’e ever met ’imself a proper li-dy.”

And then she excused herself delicately, to answer the strain of her journey with a visit to the lady’s parlor within the station, despite the intelligence I offered of the hotel’s proximity.

As she took herself toward the bustling hall, Miss Perkins managed to seem an entire procession. With men and boys bowing and tipping their hats, and doing most all they could to beg her notice, Henry Adams put down the pile of travelling kit—not without dropping a bag or two about him—and admired his companion’s triumph.

“Isn’t she splendid?” he asked me. “I don’t believe I’ve ever known anyone like her.”

OF COURSE, MY PRIMARY INTEREST was the letters.

“Oh, she has them, all right,” young Mr. Adams assured me. “I’ve seen them.”

“Well, what do they say, man?”

He looked perplexed, as if I should have known everything that had happened since I left London.

“She hasn’t actually let me
read
them,” he told me. “But she’s shown them to me. Twice. She really is a wicked little teaser-cat, you know. Have you seen the way she dances when she—”

“What is the difficulty, then? Not enough money, is it?”

“Oh, no. Nothing of the sort.” His perplexity multiplied, as if he thought me hopelessly ill-informed. “She hardly seems interested in the money. Although I suspect she’ll take it, in the end. A girl in her position wants funds, of course.”

“What is it, then? Why will she not give you the letters?”

Twas then his bafflement reached its apotheosis.

“She refuses to give them to anyone but you,” he told me. “She says she’s frightfully sorry she took them, and feels she has to make amends to you personally. I say, Jones. I suppose I should be more than a little jealous.” He stepped closer to me, as men do when they intend to embarrass themselves. “But I don’t imagine you’d be the sort to crowd the field on a fellow.”

Just then, a porter come up with a trunk, and I told him we would make for the Hotel Clarence. Since Mr. Adams did not seem forthcoming of purse, I paid the fellow and added a tip. For safety. I did not wish to endanger Miss Perkins’s wardrobe, see. For hard enough it seemed to keep her garments upon her.

As we followed the porter along the pier, through a great contention of ladies who lacked some precious parcel, young Mr. Adams edged close to me again.

“Jones, I find I must ask you something plainly. Man to man.”

When fellows say that, they are up to something nasty.

“Have you . . .” he began, “ . . . did you . . . has Miss Perkins ever . . . has there been any sort of intimacy between the two of you? I don’t ask out of—”

I stopped and gave him a look to freeze the Punjab over in July. “I am a married man, Mr. Adams. And if you have the least regard for Miss Perkins, you will—”

“Terribly sorry,” he said, fair jumping back. “Really. I
am
sorry. I knew better, of course. It’s only . . . it’s only that I’m afraid I’ve fallen in love, you see.”

And there you have what comes of scheming mischief.

OUR CAB RIDE TO THE HOTEL was uneventful, except for the slap Miss Perkins gave to Henry Adams’s hand when it accidentally strayed toward her skirts.

“Don’t you be nasty,” she told him, and I believe he blushed, although it was hard to see, for the cab was not lit.

The fellow at the desk had doubts about allowing a room to an unmarried lady, who was travelling without the benefit of familial supervision, but I convinced him it was a matter of legation business. He gave me a smirk or two, and he did take an especial interest in Miss Perkins’s prancing about the narrow lobby, but in the end all parties had a room, and the luggage was sent up while Mr. Adams and Miss Perkins inked the registry. Young Mr. Adams received lodgings next to mine, but Miss Perkins was consigned to a separate floor, to suit propriety, with a caution not to
come down to the lobby or enter the dining room unescorted. I thought the clerk’s manner needlessly harsh, but the Scots are so wary of sin that they search until they find it.

Out of earshot of the clerk, we agreed to meet in my room in ten minutes. And that Miss Perkins would bring the letters.

“I can’t ’ardly wait,” she told me, with a smile and a blue-eyed wink.

When both of them made to separate from me, I held back Mr. Adams by his sleeve. Discreetly.

“Perhaps,” I whispered, as Miss Perkins’s form diminished up the staircase, “you should come to my room in
five
minutes. If it does not inconvenience you.”

Mr. Adams agreed with alacrity. I do believe he was as eager to keep me from an intimate encounter with Miss Perkins as I was to avoid one. Twas queer to have the fellow jealous of me. But then Miss Perkins knew how to bait a man, if you will allow me the frankness.

I went to my room and moved the pistol case and the fancy-wrapped shawl to the top of the dresser, listening all the while to a fellow out on the square, who had been seduced by Satan’s elixirs and was bellowing “God Save the Queen” at the top of his lungs. He could not find his pitch, which ever annoys me. I bent to the basin to rinse my face and hardly had time to look after myself before Mr. Adams come knocking on my door.

He did not beat Miss Perkins by a minute. And how she did it so quick I cannot say, unless it is a skill of the stage, but she had managed to exchange her green costume for a gown of sapphire blue. The dressmaker had economized on the amount of fabric devoted to the bodice, and her white shoulders led the eye lower still, to where a fellow’s eye has no business going. She had dropped her hair, too, and might have taken the role of Guinevere upon the stage.

She had the two packets of letters in her hands, still tied with the same ribbons.

Disappointed she seemed that Mr. Adams had anticipated her arrival.

“I don’t think as that one should be allowed to read ’em,” she told me. “As ’e already seems to ’ave plenty of powder in ’is keg. Couldn’t you pack ’im off til we finish our business?”

Mr. Adams’s expression feared calamity.

“Surely, Miss Perkins,” I said, “you wouldn’t want to compromise your reputation by being alone with a man in his hotel room.”

That pleased her no end. She lifted her nose and turned it to Henry Adams. “Always a gent,” she said, “and considerate of a poor girl’s reputation. Unlike some present company as might be among us.”

“Please,” I said. “The letters.”

“Well, I ain’t sure,” she told me.

I searched for a response, but she continued without my interlocution.

“I don’t know if anybody ought to be reading such dirty business.” She blushed, and I do not believe it reflected the art of the stage. “I never ’eard the likes in my life,” she told me. “Nothing but dirty filth it is, and not fit for the sewers, let alone being set down on paper, bold as brass. It’s the wickedest business what ever I come across.”

“Miss Perkins,” I said, “the contents may have great importance. An importance that is perhaps beyond your—”

“Well, I don’t see ’ow they could matter at all to anyone who ain’t a stinker!” she declared. “Perhaps you ain’t the gentleman I took you for. You all fancy and telling me ’ow I was to pose myself in your room and the like, and ’ere I thought you—”

At the turn in her discourse, I suffered a savage glance from Henry Adams.

“—wasn’t a bit like the rest of them.”

“Please. The letters, Miss Perkins. I assure you my intentions are not lascivious.”