The Rise of the Automated Aristocrats (2 page)

You cannot fight against the future. Time is on our side.

—William E. Gladstone

THE EXCEEDINGLY STRANGE DEMISE OF SIR RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON

Personally I ignore the existence of soul and spirit, feeling no want of a self within a self, an I within an I.

—Sir Richard Francis Burton

Death was everywhere. Burton felt it burrowing through the marrow of his bones, saw it in the evening light that oozed across the forested peaks overlooking Trieste, heard it in the autumn leaves crunching beneath his feet, and discovered it busily at work in the water barrel at the side of the house. He looked over his shoulder and called to Doctor Grenfell Baker. “Help me, will you, old fellow? There's a robin in here.”

Baker, who was examining the thinning rose bushes, turned and strode over. “Drowned?”

“It will be if we're not quick. I can't lean in far enough. My back is stiff as a board.”

The doctor looked into the barrel, stretched down his long arms, and scooped out the little bird. He gave a snort of amusement. “You and your feathered friends! Are you adding ornithology to your already bloated list of interests? Here.” He placed the struggling creature into Burton's waiting hands. “What was it yesterday? A swallow?”

“Yes, tapping at a window.” Burton cradled the twitching robin in his palms. “That's a bad omen.”

“Nonsense. It's because you put breadcrumbs on the sill every morning.”

“Ah, it was not that window, but another.”

Burton gently blew onto the robin's wet feathers and, when the bird was sufficiently dried, slipped it into the inner pocket of his fur coat. “I'll warm it a while then put it into a cage until it's regained sufficient strength.” He took up his cane, which he'd leaned against the barrel, and gestured with it. “Walk with me around to the veranda, will you? I'll join Isabel to watch the sun set.”

They set off, moving slowly, Baker adjusting his stride to Burton's hobbling gait.

The aged explorer sighed and frowned. “Funny, that swallow.”

“Why so?”

“All its fellows have departed for the winter.”

“There are always stragglers.”

“You know the alchemists held that birds symbolise the migration of the soul?”

“Yes, I did know that. Are you having morbid thoughts again?”

“I'm almost seventy years old. What else is left to me?”

“Plenty. You have your holiday in Constantinople to look forward to. Your move back to England. The end of your governmental duties. No doubt, you'll have the reaction to your translation to cope with, too, though I wish you could be spared that. How much of it remains to be written?”

Of my existence? Precious little I fear, Doctor.

“Nothing at all. I completed it this morning. By God, I've put my life's blood into
The Scented Garden
. It is the crown of my life. Whatever the outcry, I'll not regret writing it.”

“It will ruin your reputation.”

Burton gave a throaty chuckle. He slipped his hand through the crook of Baker's elbow. “I had no reputation at all when I discovered the original Persian manuscript. That was in Sindh, in India. I was a stripling of twenty years, but I immediately recognised that its translation would ‘make' me. It documented every transgression a man could imagine, and in doing so demonstrated that the morals under which we labour are nothing but a human contrivance. When it was destroyed in the Grindlays Warehouse fire of 'sixty-one, I felt I'd lost a part of myself. I've spent my life searching for another copy to no avail. What I have written is a reconstruction based upon what I can remember of it, and perhaps that makes it even more the truth of me. Aye, you are right. In the short term, my reputation will likely be wrecked, but it matters not, for I shall be dead. And farther into the future, when minds are less hidebound by convention and religious constraints, then the significance of my translation will be acknowledged. Future generations will know me through its pages, and that, I rather suppose, is the closest thing to immortality I can hope for.”

He jerked to a halt and gazed bemusedly at a flowerbed. Amid the withered blooms and ossifying stalks, there had grown a single bright-red poppy, entirely out of season. The sight of it made him feel inexplicably empty and sad.

“What outré music,” he murmured.

“Music, Sir Richard?”

“It's stopped now. Did you not hear it? I suppose it drifted up from the town. Maybe a choir practicing. Rather a haunting sound, I should say.”

“I heard nothing.”

Burton gave a little grunt, tore his eyes away from the poppy, and resumed his walk.

They rounded a corner of the house and the Gulf of Trieste came into view. The Mediterranean was a deep, glittering turquoise beneath the sinking sun.

Baker shook his head despairingly. “The truth of you, you say? No, sir, I don't believe so. I take your good lady wife's view that, no matter your intention, you'll be remembered as a pornographer if the book sees the light of day. It will eclipse all your other achievements. The pilgrimage to Mecca. The hunt for the source of the Nile. The translating of the
Arabian Nights
.”

“What you two regard as pornography,” Burton responded, “I intend as anthropology. The customs of our race, including those associated with the act of procreation, must be studied and recorded if we are to understand the motives at the heart of us. We are creatures of the natural world and are thus subject to its laws, such as those so eloquently described by Mr. Darwin. Yet we overlay our existence with stratum upon stratum of ritual and storytelling until little authenticity remains. Why? That question has ever been my subject.”

“I'm not sure society is ready to accept such an unequivocal analysis of its complexion.”

“Not now, maybe, but Time makes everything possible.”

A tremor ran through Burton's body. He halted, suddenly breathless, immobilised by a curious conception of history as multiplying ribbons of light that split and intertwined in a convoluted dance, their movement following the labyrinthine melodies of a throbbing, exotic refrain.

Pulling his right hand from Baker's elbow, he examined it, utterly baffled by the notion that it should be a mechanical thing of engraved brass and tiny cogwheels and pistons. Of course, it wasn't. He saw only knobbled joints, bluish fingernails, nearly transparent liver-spotted skin, and raised veins and sinews. The hand of an old, old man.

The moment passed.

Burton swayed and leaned heavily on his stick.

Baker gripped him. “Steady! Is it your heart?”

“No. No. Just a—a—just my mind playing tricks. I heard that music again.”

“There was nothing. Do you need to stop for a moment?”

“I'm all right. Go inside and fetch a cage for the bird, will you, old fellow? I can walk the rest of the way unassisted.”

“I really don't think—”

“I'm perfectly fine.”

The doctor hesitated for a moment, then nodded and hurried into the house, entering through a side door.

Burton looked again at his hand and shook his head in bewilderment. He gazed around at the garden, at the orchard beyond it, at the low, dark mountains and the coruscating sea. A nightingale started to sing, and its strain drew out again the deep sadness that had touched him a few moments ago. Everything felt achingly beautiful yet oddly illusory. A warm breeze—it was extremely mild for the time of year—brushed his face, and he was shocked to feel a tear trickling down his cheek. Impatiently, he swiped the droplet away with his coat cuff. “Sentimental fool!”

He stood silently for a couple of minutes then resumed his walk, rounded to the front of the house, and saw his wife, Isabel, sitting at a table on the veranda. She greeted him as he stepped up and sat beside her. “Hallo! Where's Grenfell?”

“He's gone inside to fetch a birdcage. We rescued a robin from drowning. It's in my pocket.”

“Oh! The poor little mite! Was it much distressed?”

“It's young. I think it'll recover.”

“Thank goodness. Do you want coffee?”

“Please.”

Isabel took up a steaming pot and poured while Burton lit a Manila cheroot and started to smoke. He stared at the handle of his cane. “Nearly time to go.”

“Yes. We should sort through our luggage. Do you think your old Saratoga trunk can withstand another voyage?”

“I expect so.” He gave a small smile. She'd misunderstood his meaning.

“By the by,” he said. “Have you seen my favourite cane? I can't remem­­ber where I left it.”

“Isn't that it? You've been using it for long enough. Which is the other?”

“The sword stick. The one with the silver handle shaped to resemble a panther's head.”

Isabel pushed a cup and saucer in front of him and looked puzzled. “I don't recall ever seeing such. Not in all the years I've known you.”

Doctor Baker stepped out, placed a cage on the table, and quipped, “For your patient, Doctor Burton.”

“Thank you,” Burton replied. “Do you happen to remember a silver-topped walking cane? Handle like a panther's head?”

“Not at all. Is it lost?”

“Apparently.”

“Perhaps it'll turn up when you pack for England. I'm going up to read. I'll see you at dinner.” He went back inside.

Burton sipped his coffee then retrieved the robin from his pocket and put it into the cage. Isabel cooed over it. He watched her and remembered when she'd been tall and slim and beautiful. How time ravaged the body. How merciless. How cruel and implacable.

To be young again. To have another chance. To correct the mistakes I made. To turn right when I wrongly turned left. To better value those people I never recognised as the finest I would ever know.

He grinned at an unbidden recollection of his now seldom-seen friend, the poet Algernon Swinburne, falling dead-drunk out of a hansom cab into the gutter before reeling to his feet and engaging in a furious argument with the driver who'd dared to charge him half a crown when Swinburne knew—
knew!
—that all cab rides, no matter the distance, cost a shilling.

How long ago was that? Thirty years?

“What are you chuckling about?” Isabel asked.

“Algy.”

“Was the cane a gift from him?”

“No. He just popped into my head. I've no idea why.”

They sat and watched the sun setting, their conversation sporadic and their silences comfortable.

At a quarter past eight, they went inside and up to their chambers to prepare for dinner. Burton found himself dawdling. Their meal would be served at nine as usual—they had long ago adopted the Mediterranean habit of dining late—but he delayed changing his clothes and instead pottered about his rooms, needlessly shifting things from one place to another, putting some away and lingering over others—such as his collection of swords, mounted in brackets on a wall—to brood on the memories they generated.

“This is a
khopesh
,” he told Isabel, pointing at an oddly shaped blade, one of a pair. “I brought it back from Mecca.”

“You've told me before.”

“Egyptian, thought to have evolved from battle axes. Often, they are ceremonial and not even sharpened, but given an edge and swung with force, one of these could cut through bone like a hot knife through butter.”

“Charming. Is the lecture finished? We should go down.”

“You go. I'll come in a few minutes.”

“No, darling. I'll wait for you.”

Fifteen minutes late, they joined Grenfell Baker at the table. While they ate, they chatted about their future life in London and other matters. All appeared normal, but Burton detected a peculiar light in his wife's eyes and realised she suspected the truth and was scared.

There was nothing he could do about it.

Time will have its way.

At eleven, they went back upstairs, and Isabel and Baker helped him to prepare for bed. As usual, he endured their assistance with bad grace, grumbling at his immobility, feeling humiliated that he'd become such a burden, such a confounded invalid.