A Beggar's Kingdom

by Paullina Simons

  “Why couldn’t you have dug a hole in the ground at St. Paul’s?” Mallory says. “Would’ve been so much simpler.”

  “I didn’t do that,” Julian says, “because tomorrow, there isn’t going to be a St. Paul’s.”

  Mallory glances into his face to see if he’s joking. “You kept yammering about it.” She sounds mystified. “You wouldn’t shut up about a fire cleansing our city of Black Death. How did you know it was coming? How did you know the future?”

  “Oh, Mallory,” Julian says. “I wish to God I knew the future. I don’t. I know the past.”

  Their eyes catch for a moment. “Do you know what happens to you and me?” she asks, almost whispering, as if she wants to know, doesn’t want to know.

  “No,” Julian says, and can’t even tell if he’s lying.

  A vicar stands in the churchyard of St. Paul’s, shouting encouragement to the fleeing people. “We have a mayor who’s helpless before the conflagration!” the priest shouts. “Brothers and sisters, help yourselves! Do not be like our esteemed leader. Lord, what can I do, he cries. He says he’s out of solutions, though the fire has raged for barely a day! He’s like a fainting woman, and do you know why? Because his faith is faint! Do not be like Thomas Bludworth! Be unshakable! Straight is the gate and narrow is the way that leads unto life. Aldgate, Ludgate, Newgate, Bishopsgate, Cripplegate, Moorgate, Aldersgate! Seven gates out! Seven ways to save your life! Run, brothers and sisters, go find your gate!”

  Julian’s eyes are tearing, and it takes him a moment to recognize Reverend Anselmo from the Silver Cross. Weakened by inhaling the smoke, the holy man wobbles on the apple crate as he fortifies the misplaced with prayer. “Oh, it’s you two,” Anselmo says when they stop at his feet. “The whole world is looking for you.”

  Mallory holds on to Julian, weighing on him as she rests. “They’re not looking for us here,” she says.

  “Yes, hide in hell,” the vicar says. “That’ll teach them.”

  “All the parish churches inside the City will soon be cinders, Reverend,” Julian says. “Despite what you think of us over on Whitehall, you’re safer in the Silver Cross.”

  “I don’t go where it’s safe, my son,” Anselmo says. “I go where I’m needed. And today, it’s here.”

  “You don’t have any water, do you?” Julian asks. They desperately need something wet to breathe into.

  “Find your narrow gate out, and you will find living water there,” replies Anselmo.

  “Come on, Julian,” Mallory says. “No time to waste.”

  The wood houses crackle, timber bursting apart in venomous flames and falling in ruins. The smoke makes everything dark upon the streets, dark upon the steeples, smoke whirls like ghosts between the homes and the cathedrals.

  St. Martin’s Le Grand that leads to Cripplegate is impassable. The buildings have collapsed into the road. “Julian,” Mallory says, “in case we get separated, tell me where in the wall you hid my purse.”

  “It’s down the slope and straight across from the last window in the back of the nave. About three feet off the ground. The gray mortar should still be fresh. You can’t miss it. But we’re not going to get separated.”

  They walk in single file, she ahead of him. They’re drenched with sweat. The fire that swirls and fills the air with black satanic smoke slows them down. Her especially. “It’s not too far now,” Mallory says. She’s wheezing. “We’re close. Soon we’ll be out.” She stops walking. “Just let me catch my breath for a minute.”

  “We don’t have a minute, Mallory,” Julian says, throwing his arm around her and helping her forward. “You told me so yourself. It’s more true now than ever.” There’s no preparation for the plague. There’s no preparation for the fire. Not even when you know it’s coming. No oil in the lamp will protect them now. Nothing could have prepared them for this except staying away. The hot wind fans the flames just like the Santa Anas. Who travels faster, a young determined rasping beauty under his arm or a blaze blown out of all control by a stiff dry breeze?

  “Come on, just a little farther.” Who says that?

  It’s Julian. Mallory has stopped speaking.

  The smoke chokes him, shreds his throat, tears at the whites of his eyes. The plumes are heavy, a canopy of ash in the air. Mallory breaks into a coughing fit. She has pulled away from him and is staggering along the side of a building, trying to hide her face from the smoke. He barely makes her out, even though she’s right next to him. He searches for her like a blind man, his hands outstretched. Mallory, Mallory, is that you? She doesn’t answer.

  Julian stares into his empty palm. His right fingers are tingling.

  Mallory!

  He can’t find her. He can’t see her.

  People are hurrying past him, but none of them is her.

  One second she was by his side, and the next…Mallory! His arms ache.

  In the black trails, all women look like her. From the river upward, a flame tsunami rises higher and then falls. It’s raining fire. It’s light, but there is no sun. It’s day, but it looks like night.

  Julian finds her lying on the pavement, wedged into the side of a building, as if she’s trying to hide. Mallory, what happened?

  She is mouthing something, but he can’t hear. The smoke must have paralyzed her vocal cords. He kneels on the stones by her side.

  Can you get up? Julian wants to ask this. The problem is, he also can’t speak. It must be the smoke. Please let it be the smoke. Oh God, Mallory. How far are they from Cripplegate? How far are they from the gold, from the wall? How far from each other, from salvation? So close, so close! Julian’s legs, neck, chest feel as if they’re being stabbed with ice picks.

  Why did he let go of her hand! Or did she let go of his? She let go and fell noiselessly to the cobblestones, and the burning sky fell with her.

  She holds her throat. He holds his throat. He reaches out to touch her, opens his mouth to beg her, beg her not to die. I love you, he whispers inaudibly. Please don’t die before you are redeemed.

  Mallory almost smiles. Pulling a crumpled piece of parchment out of her apron, she slides it into his palm. Julian tries to stand her up, but she can’t, and he can’t. Why did you fall? Why did you let go of my hand? Why did you run into the fire, why did I hide your gold, why did I take it? Why did you kill him and her, why?

  She is gasping.

  Timber is being torn to pieces. Julian’s body feels as if it’s being torn to pieces. The ashes of London rise in the black ugly fumes and are carried by the wind into Mallory’s throat, into Julian’s throat, into Mallory’s soul, into Julian’s soul.

  He is convulsing. His throat closes. He can’t yell, can’t speak, can’t tell her what he feels.

  Reaching up, she touches his face, her eyes clearing and glazing over. Julian …

  Still on his knees, he tips over her.

  Go, she whispers. Or did she say gold?

  Julian, go and come back for me.

  10

  Six Persuasions

  EACH DAY MAN IS PERISHING. YET HE IS RENEWED DAY BY DAY.

  Julian didn’t know about the renewed part.

  But about perishing? Check.

  Still on his knees, covered with grime and soot, he threw up in front of Sweeney. This time he didn’t get up and walk out. They had to call an ambulance and carry him down the mountain on a stretcher. He was taken to Queen Elizabeth Hospital and treated with hyperbaric oxygen. The hospital called the police because Julian had no ID, nothing but a coin, out of circulation for four hundred years, and a Bill of Mortality from 1665 clutched in his blackened fist. Julian gave the police Nextel’s number, and Ashton arrived at Queen Elizabeth with Julian’s ID and optimistically with a change of clothes.

  But Julian wasn’t going anywhere. His body has been ravaged by prolonged inhalation of carbon monoxide, he was coughing up blood and had swelling in his lungs that was causing continued oxygen deprivation. Julian scribbled his signature on a document maki
ng Ashton his health care proxy, and Ashton talked to the doctors.

  “What are you talking about, smoke inhalation?” Ashton said. “Like from cigarettes?” He was standing at Julian’s bedside.

  Like from a fire, one doctor said. Also he has a number of burst blood vessels in his arms and legs, and Lichtenberg flowers down his back from his neck to his pelvis.

  “Is that also from smoke inhalation?”

  No, another doctor said. We see Lichtenberg burns after an electrocution.

  Ashton refused to believe it. It was obvious they’d mixed up Julian’s chart with someone else’s. They brought out Julian’s chart, showed Ashton there was no mistake. They pointed out that Julian had complained of being electrocuted a year earlier. Then, they had concluded, it was psychosomatic. This year they weren’t so sure. This year, the symptoms were visible.

  “What about the tattooed dots on his arm that weren’t there the day before yesterday?” Ashton said. “Is that also from smoke inhalation? Or is it from electrocution? Or are the tattoos psychosomatic?”

  The doctors had no opinion about the tattoos. Tattoos weren’t a medical emergency like swollen lungs.

  Julian himself was confused and on painkillers and refused to confirm or deny anything. An X-ray showed three fractured bones in each foot.

  “Is that also fucking psychosomatic?” Ashton said, fuming at their ignorance, and at his own.

  After a week, Julian was sent home with an oxygen tank to help him breathe until his lungs healed. Oxygen for Julian.

  While Ashton was at work, Julian, his crutches against the railing, sat motionlessly on the cold rainy balcony and rocked back and forth. When you want to escape from your blinding rage, stop moving, stop speaking. All action feeds the beast. Stop feeding it.

  “Dude, I beg you. Explain,” Ashton kept asking in the evenings after work.

  Which part?

  “Um, the swollen lungs? Electrocution burns? Breeches and tunic? The broken feet, the catatonia, the tattoos? Literally a single thing. What happened to you? Where did you go?”

  Smoke inhalation is from a fire.

  “What fucking fire?”

  The Great Fire of London.

  At first Ashton had nothing to say. Then: “Why do you refuse to be straight with me? Why can’t you reply to a serious question with a serious answer? What fucking fire?”

  I just told you, the Great Fire of London.

  Ahhhh!

  You wanted me to be straight. I’m straight.

  Julian stuffed the ends of the plastic tubing into his nostrils, inhaled deeply, and closed his eyes. I can’t explain any better than that, Ash. We’ll try again if I’m renewed.

  ∞

  A week went by, the lungs got better, the tank had gone. Ashton and Julian still hadn’t talked. Julian still hadn’t returned to work.

  After another week, Ashton walked into Julian’s bedroom on a Saturday afternoon and surveyed the abnormal disorder inside. Julian knew his room did not look rational to a man who was used to Julian being meticulous with his belongings and who was suddenly greeted with a scene as after a ransacking or an earthquake. Hundreds of books were strewn on the bed and the floor: history, how-to, biography, travel, plays, and philosophies. Everywhere newspapers, broken pencils, open notebooks, pencil shavings, a sharpener on its side, half-empty plastic cups of water, an unmade bed, and on it, a half-naked Julian with a magnifying glass and a superbright LED lamp trained on a coffee-table tome of London paintings from the 1600s. He was trying to find a glimpse of something true somewhere, anywhere, to prove to himself she had been real. He’d been sleeping poorly, attacked by bewildering nightmares, callbacks to old visions and memories once so vivid, now half-forgotten. This time, there was no Josephine shining on the street. Instead there was terror and fire followed by a dismal icy darkness.

  A pallid, unshaven Julian raised his head from the book to face Ashton grimly homing in on the chaos. Julian tried to smile. He could tell his friend wanted to make a joke, lighten the mood, but comedy was beyond even him.

  “What the fuck,” Ashton said. That was as funny as he could make it.

  “Don’t ask.”

  “I feel I must, dude. I must ask. What the fuck.”

  “Everything’s okay.”

  “It’s two in the afternoon,” Ashton said, as if that was the only thing that was wrong.

  “Then what are you still doing home? Did you go to Valentina’s, get us food like you said?”

  “Don’t answer my questions with questions,” Ashton said. “What are you doing? What are you writing, reading, looking for? Why the magnifying glass, why the mania? What’s happening? What the fuck is happening?”

  Dressed in nothing but boxer briefs, Julian swung his aching feet onto the floor. He was uncontained. He was a dead leaf in the yellow river, an ailing creature, a rotting marmoset. How could he have not seen it coming? How could he have allowed it to happen. Allowed it to happen again.

  “Why are you examining this nonsense with a microscope? Old London? What are you looking for?” Ashton picked up A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. “Edmund Burke? If you’re going to self-destruct, why can’t you self-destruct with porn, with ribald novels from de Sade: Erotica, Justine?”

  Julian could not explain to Ashton the inner howl of his helplessness.

  “Burke wrote that all things are good that obey reason,” Ashton said. “Does anything you’re doing fit that category?”

  “Did you come in just to harass me?”

  “I need another reason? Put some clothes on, will you. You have a visitor.”

  “You’re full of shit. Who?”

  “I don’t know who, but there’s a man on the landing who says, and I quote, that he lost the piece of paper with my number but knew where I lived and you had told him to come tell me you weren’t coming back. I understood not a single fucking thing of that. The individual words maybe.”

  “Devi?”

  “I don’t know, Jules. I’m guessing he’s a fellow inmate, let out for an afternoon. Hurry up. It doesn’t look as if he’s got long before they come to take him back to the asylum. Kind of like you.”

  ∞

  A pale Devi stood at the door when Julian limped out into the living room in sweats and a pullover.

  “Hello, Julian. I see you’ve returned—again.” Devi sounded so disappointed.

  “You’re minimally observant.”

  “Returned from where?” Ashton said.

  “How are you feeling?” said Devi.

  “How do I look?” said Julian.

  “Like a man who’s been in a hundred and one fights. And lost them all.”

  From the kitchen, Ashton smirked. “So he knows about the boxing? Wow.”

  “Devi, you’ve met Ashton?”

  “Not formally.”

  “Ashton, Devi. Devi, Ashton.”

  With wary reserve, Ashton stepped forward, and the two men shook hands, Ashton silent and blond towering over the little man silent and dark.

  “Returned from where?” Ashton repeated. Neither Julian nor Devi answered. Ashton swore under his breath, grabbed his jacket and said he was going on a food run. Devi said Julian needed some plain chicken and white rice. Julian said no. Ashton said he was getting it anyway and split.

  “You need food,” Devi said, coming closer.

  Julian sank into the sofa.

  “How’s your friend handling you?”

  “Fine.”

  “You haven’t told him?”

  “Told him what.”

  Devi perched stiffly in the corner of the opposite sofa. “Tell me.”

  “You really need to be told? You know what happened.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Is that why you didn’t want me to go? Did you know all along?”

  Devi stared into his crippled hands. “I’m waiting.”

  Julian told him.

  London burned. It burned to th
e ground. And she along with it. All the glory was laid to dust.

  Then they were mute.

  “Come back to Quatrang with me, Julian,” Devi said. “You need healing.” He added, “Please.”

  “I’ve had just about enough of your healing, don’t you think?”

  “Very often,” Devi said, “what God first helps us with is not virtue itself, but the power of trying again. And you did that. You tried again. What a noble thing that is. What a gallant effort. Don’t minimize it.”

  “Hard to minimize it, Devi.” Julian rolled up his sleeve, thrusting the inside of his forearm across the coffee table into the cook’s face. “You see the ink? Forty-five minimized tattoos.”

  “Is that how many days you had?”

  “No. I got sick of marking them, so I missed some. A week, maybe more.”

  Devi bowed his head.

  “Let’s not minimize it,” Julian said. “Let’s maximize it, shall we? Here on my arm is the answer to the question I asked you before the first time I went. Do you remember?”

  “I remember.”

  “I asked you if I was going to find her young or old. And you said young. But you were wrong. Or lying. Which is it?”

  Devi didn’t speak.

  “I asked you at what point I was going to be inserted into her life, and you told me you didn’t know. Were you lying?”

  “No.”

  “Well, now you know,” Julian said. “And I know. Aren’t you glad we’re both so full of knowledge. When I find her, she’s not young.” Julian fell back against the cushions. “She is old. Each time she is at the end of her life.” Barely able to breathe, as if his lungs were still filled with smoke, he stared at the columns of black dots on his arm. Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

  “Is that too much time, Julian, or not enough?” Devi said. “I’m not clear. Because most of us don’t get even a picosecond extra.”

  “Oh, fuck that.”

  “I told you not to go,” the shaman whispered.

  “You didn’t tell me she would die again!” Julian yelled.

  “Control your temper. I told you, you couldn’t change things. I told you this over and over.”