Rose (27 page)

“You mean Charlotte?”

“You can’t see it? Of course, she is my daughter. She also used to be the brightest, most amusing child in the world. A dazzling princess. When she went down to London for her debut she wouldn’t have any of the Horse Guards or fops strutting in court, and I didn’t blame her. Now I hardly recognize her. It is as if she pours ashes over herself every morning to hide how bright she is. Look at her next to that sack of gas, Earnshaw. A professional politician. He defeated an old friend of mine, Lord Jeremy. Jeremy was a fool to run. He stood for office on the whimsical platform that his family had served the country since the Black Prince and that he employed ten thousand men and paid a hundred thousand pounds in wages, whereas Earnshaw was a nobody who employed a single clerk. Earnshaw won and now proposes that peers not be allowed to run for Commons at all, that they be confined like relics to the House of Lords. Serves Jeremy right.”

“Why?”

“You don’t run against professional politicians, you buy them.”

“Earnshaw is bought?” This was a different view of the champion of moral reform, Blair thought.

“It’s been a great waste of money if he isn’t.”

“Even for a bishop that sounds cynical.”

“As a young man I preached the Golden Rule, in
middle years I tried to persuade by reason. I don’t have that sort of time anymore.”

“What did you pay Earnshaw to do? He seems to be a suitor for Charlotte.”

“Earnshaw is not a suitor, he is a locomotive. He will huff and puff, and then, when he’s scheduled to, will disappear down the track.” Hannay stopped to welcome an ancient matron cobwebbed in veils, inquire into her health, direct her to the meringues. He returned to Blair. “Orphans always draw a crowd.”

“There were a lot of orphans on the stage today.”

“Orphans are the price of coal.”

“I read the coroner’s report. Seventy-six men died, and your lawyers succeeded in making sure that the mine was held blameless. You don’t want the inquest reopened.”

“I believe everything is back to normal now.”

“Not for the dead, not for widows who weren’t allowed a legal claim against you.”

“Blair, as I remember, the coroner’s jury indicated that one of the dead miners was responsible. We lost two weeks’ production. I made no legal claim against the widows for my financial losses, which were substantial. Please don’t feign compassion. You merely hope that I will be so frightened of reopening the inquest that I will declare you done and send you happily away. But I won’t do that.”

“You don’t mind if I ask more questions about that report?”

“On legal grounds? I have no anxieties.”

Blair saw Hannay’s quick look through the crowd toward four men huddled by the stairs. They were all in their thirties, balding, edgy as whippets. Four dowdy wives in flowery dresses stood close by.

“Hopton, Liptrot, Nuttal and Meek?”

“Hopton, Liptrot, Nuttal and Meek,
Esquires
. Very good. Yes, I feel adequately represented in the courts.”

Blair caught enough of their return glances to tell that
the lawyers would not be so comfortable with his questions as Hannay claimed to be. Inquests, like the dead, were best buried. He also sensed the approaching glare of Charlotte Hannay. “Why did you ask me here? Why do I feel that the orphans aren’t the show, that I am?”

“Well, you are. Half.”

Charlotte brought Leveret, who had returned. “Mr. Blair, I understand that you bullied Oliver into stealing the names of women who have sought help from the Home. Do you have any sense of privacy? What good purpose could a morally debased individual like you have for those names?”

“It’s to find John,” Leveret said. “It’s for you.”

“In my behalf? Inform me, then. What villains has the famous Blair encountered in his investigation? Footpads, assassins, highwaymen?”

“Just miners,” Blair said.

Like a man dropping a pin, sure that it would be heard, Hannay asked, “Any women?”

Lydia had returned, just in time to catch her breath. “Uncle, that’s an outrageous suggestion.”

“Is it?”

“Not with John,” Leveret protested.

Hannay said, “I want to hear Blair’s answer. As Charlotte’s father and as John Maypole’s bishop, I should want to know if he was involved with another woman. Blair?”

“Maypole was involved with a lot of women, especially women in trouble. Whether that meant something besides good works, I don’t know.”

“You wanted names, so there was someone,” Hannay said.

“It’s too soon to say.”

“One of those girls from Charlotte’s Home? A pit girl, a mill girl?”

“What does it matter?”

“Mill girls are consumptive and ethereal, pit girls are
robust. I see Maypole as being more attracted to the consumptive type.”

“I really don’t know.”

“Well, one thing is clear,” Hannay announced. “Blair is making progress. Charlotte, it’s time to give up Maypole. Either his ghost or, worse, his sins will emerge soon. Blair has the bit now and I will whip him on until he finds your little curate or his bones. It’s time to rearrange your life.”

A moment passed before the Hannays and Rowlands noticed that the rest of the lounge was watching, rapt. Not that Hannays or Rowlands ever seemed to care, particularly; it had occurred to Blair before that the Bishop and his family set their own laws of conduct, and that for them other people existed no more than as heads daubed on a backdrop. In that distorted context, Hannay seemed to have especially staged this event.

The Bishop turned to all. “Now for the surprise. In the first part of the program, a pageant of children engagingly portrayed the martyrs who suffered gloriously for their mission: to spread the Bible and the Word of God throughout England. Today Britain has a mission to lift the many new peoples of the earth out of their ignorance and to take them that same Word. Fortunately, we are blessed with new heroes, as you shall see when we reassemble upstairs.”

In the middle of the stage was a closed mahogany case as tall as a man. While the band played “Rule, Britannia,” the orphans returned to the stage in blackface, black wigs and “leopard skins” of spotted muslin. The boys held bamboo spears and cardboard shields; the girls carried coconuts. Their eyes and teeth shone.

“Africans,” Lydia Rowland told Blair.

“I can see that.”

A solemn girl in a tiara and an ermine robe of braided
wool rolled over the boards on a canvas ship pushed by two “Africans.”

“The Queen,” Lydia said.

“Right.”

“Rule, Britannia” quavered to a finish, and Queen and ship trembled to a halt next to the case. When the applause diminished, Bishop Hannay joined her, thanked her and the other orphans, and let a second round of applause die.

“This is the dawn of a new age. We are exploring a new world, bringing it light in exchange for dark, freedom in exchange for shackles and, instead of primitive survival, a share in a trade that brings tea from Ceylon, rubber from Malaya, steel from Sheffield and cloth from Manchester on steamers from Liverpool that burn Wigan coal, never forgetting that our enterprise is only blessed when the Bible leads the way.

“As you know, my nephew, Lord Rowland, has manifested a passion for this dangerous task. Particularly in the Gold Coast of West Africa, he has labored to free natives from the yoke of slavers, to bring those natives under the protection of the Crown, and to deliver them from superstitious ignorance by the lamp of the Church.

“Only this morning Lord Rowland arrived in Liverpool from Africa on an Atlantic mail ship. He was on his way at once to London to address the Royal Geographical Society about his explorations in the Gold Coast and the Congo, and to report to the Anti-Slavery League about his efforts to stamp out that inhuman trade. Wires flew back and forth until we persuaded him to honor this benefit not with a formal speech but with his presence. He will go immediately from this theater to the station. I know that London is anxious to receive him, but Lord Rowland shares the family sentiment that Wigan comes first.

“During his travels in Africa, Lord Rowland has incidentally gathered artifacts and curiosities that he deemed
worthy of study at the Royal Society. He has consented to a first public exhibit of one such specimen here today for this benefit before it travels with him to London. Perhaps I do so with special pride, but I know I speak for us all in welcoming Lord Rowland.”

A slim man with golden hair appeared onstage to take Hannay’s handshake. As the Bishop left him onstage alone, every row in the theater stood to applaud. Lady Rowland proudly rose to tiptoes. As Lydia Rowland clapped, her fan spun on her wrist. The band roared back into “Rule, Britannia” with more fervor than before.

“Explorer! Emancipator! Missionary!” the Queen started to read her scroll The rest of her words were overwhelmed by acclamation.

Rowland accepted the homage with an absolute stillness that focused all the more on him. It was a natural theatricality that had worked in Africa as well, Blair remembered. He was a little changed from the more robust man who had first arrived in Accra. That was the effect of Africa, Blair thought. First the skeleton came home, then the flesh, then the shock of leaving equatorial weather for the cold piss of the English spring. He almost felt sorry for the man.

Rowland’s hair fell in wings at his forehead and was matched by a wispy beard. The stage lights seemed to lean toward him, to illuminate a balance of even features. Staring toward the rear of the theater, he had the beauty of someone philosophical, Hamlet before his soliloquy. Like Hamlet, responding absently to adulation as if it were irrelevant, which provoked it more. Hannay made his way back to the front row. Rowland’s attention followed the Bishop; his eyes found his sister in the crowd and focused on her for a moment, then on Charlotte, whose arms were stiff by her side. His eyes moved restlessly on until he located Blair in the row behind. There was a glitter to the gaze, a shifting of light within.

“Rule, Britannia” ended with a flourish of horns, followed
by murmurs throughout the theater. Rowland stepped in front of the mahogany case and executed a diffident nod that seemed to be interpreted as a hero’s modest bow. Still sharing the stage, the orphans were a line of white smiles on dark faces. Of course if they really were Africans, Blair thought, they would be running for their lives.

“That is too kind, much too kind. The Bishop has asked me to say a few words.” Rowland paused as if reluctant to intrude. His voice filled the theater effortlessly. Which was important for explorers; they made their fame with books and lectures as much as exploration. Perhaps he was being petty, Blair told himself, just because he himself hadn’t been invited to lecture anywhere but Mary Jaxon’s kitchen.

“The journey itself,” Rowland said, “was not remarkable. Passage from Liverpool on a mail ship of the African Steam Ship Line bound for Madeira, the Azores, Gold Coast, Sierra Leone. Endless trip until we transferred to a frigate of the Royal Navy on patrol to interdict slave ships. Thence to Accra, in the Gold Coast, to pursue slavers on land.”

Rowland brushed his hair from his eyes and took note of the “native” orphans for the first time. “On land. The worst feature of coastal Africa is the proliferation of mixed bloods. While Portuguese half-castes are superficially attractive, English blood mixes badly with the African and produces a muddied, mentally enfeebled race. It is one more reason for an Englishman to remember that he has a higher mission in Africa than the Portuguese or Arab trader of flesh.”

What about a mix of Celts, Vikings and Normans? Blair thought.

“Imagine, if you can,” Rowland said, “a world of profuse and untamed nature, peopled with slaves and slavers, infested by every kind of predator that God in His curiosity could create, infected by a spiritual ignorance
that can worship the baboon, the chameleon, the crocodile.” He touched the mahogany case. “Animals were, in fact, another objective, with the aim to further science—British science—through the study of rare specimens. I repeat that this exhibit is purely scientific and pray that it does not offend.”

Rowland opened the doors of the case. Inside, bedded on white satin, were two black hands cut off at the wrist. Spiky black hair covered the back of one hand. The other was reversed to show a black, deeply creased, leathery palm with flat, triangulate fingers. The wrists wore bands of beaten gold.

“These are the hands of a great
soko
, or gorilla, that I shot near the Congo River. I had surprised him and his group while they were feeding. I felt deeply privileged to see them because, despite their great size, sightings are so rare. This is only the third specimen brought from Africa.”

Blair heard Charlotte Hannay whisper to Earnshaw, “You approve?”

Earnshaw said, “Absolutely. Not only on scientific grounds, but also for national prestige.”

Blair saw Charlotte’s eyes darken with revulsion.

“What do you think, Blair?” Earnshaw turned and demanded.

“Maybe the rest is coming in another box.”

“Imagine a gentleman like him standing up to savages and apes.” Chief Constable Moon insinuated himself next to Blair. “He seems to know you.”

“I think we know each other.”

“He must cut a figure in Africa.”

“Excellent posture, beautiful clothes.”

“Something else, surely.”

Charlotte looked to catch Blair’s answer. Blair saw Rowland look down from the stage at the same moment. “Totally insane.”

Blair’s words were swallowed as the brass band picked
up the self-satisfied strains of “Home Sweet Home.” Rowland listened in the distracted manner of someone listening from a distance. Or about to escape.

Moon tugged on Blair’s sleeve.

“What is it?” Blair had to shout to be heard.

Moon shouted back, “I said, I’ve found Silcock.”

“Who?”

“Silcock, the man you were after. If you want. It’s your investigation.”