A Beggar's Kingdom

by Paullina Simons

  “Where is she?”

  Her father cries. Her mother cries.

  “Has she left?”

  “She hasn’t left,” Filippa says, frustration in her voice. “She’s upstairs. She’s sick.”

  “Where have you been, Julian?” Aubrey asks with a condemning look on her face. “Mirabelle was asking and asking for you.”

  “Leave him alone, Aubrey,” John says. “God, look at him.”

  Julian turns to Prunella and Filippa. “You did me dirty,” he says to the women. His fists would clench if they could. “You did Mirabelle dirty.”

  “Dear boy,” says Prunella, “we don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “The men you hired to kidnap and nearly kill me are going to squeal like pigs when someone finds them, half dead and starving, locked up in the cell you paid them to lock me up in. Oh, the things they will tell the police. You better hope they die before they’re found. Of course then, their deaths too will be on your heads.”

  “I don’t know what this man is talking about, Aubrey, John!” Prunella cries, white with fear. “He’s delirious.”

  Julian is not delirious. He is growing numb.

  Mirabelle is upstairs in her room. Aubrey follows behind him. “I don’t know where she went last week, she wouldn’t tell me, but a day after she came back, she was like this. John Snow says it’s cholera.”

  Julian is hoarse with anguish.

  “Don’t go near her, my boy. She could be contagious.”

  “She’s not contagious. Why didn’t she go with Florence to Paris as planned?” he asks before he opens the door. He is having trouble with the handle. His fingers can’t grip it. Why didn’t she go! She’d be safe now, at least temporarily. Why didn’t she go like she was supposed to…

  “She was waiting for you. She refused to believe you’d disappear for good without a word to her. She said you told her to wait until September 21. She wouldn’t leave until you came back.” Aubrey sobs.

  How does Julian continue to stand? “You should’ve made her go, Aubrey.”

  “But I didn’t want her to go!” Aubrey cries. “I wanted her to be safe. That’s all I ever wanted.”

  “Me too,” says Julian, opening the door to Mirabelle’s room. He nearly falls.

  Mirabelle is blue.

  Her arms, her long frail neck, her lips are darkened by sickness. She lies in bed, facing the ceiling. When he walks in, she barely turns her head to the door. Her eyes blink slowly. Her lips move.

  “I knew you’d come back,” she whispers. “Mummy, water. But boiled water. Like John said.”

  Julian brings her the water. He sits on the bed and, holding her head soaked from fever, brings the glass to her mouth, watching her drink.

  Go, beloved Mummy, Mirabelle says to Aubrey. I’m fine now. Everything is all right now. He’s come back like I knew he would. “What day is it?”

  “September 20.” Weakly he takes her hand.

  Mirabelle stares at him for an interminable moment. “How did you know?” she whispers.

  “What?”

  “How did you know that today would be the day that I die?”

  “You’re not going to…shh. How did you get sick?”

  “I went to visit Magpie Smith, to ask if he saw you. I was looking everywhere for you, searching for weeks. I refused to accept you would up and leave me.”

  “Not of my own free will,” says Julian.

  “I sat with him, we had some gin and water. I was wrong to stay away. It’s always wrong to stay away.”

  “Oh, Mirabelle.”

  She is stained with spotted fever. It’s turning her blue, draining life from her. Julian is broken with the struggle of his own bloodied days. His hands are shaking, getting weaker. He drops the glass. It falls on the carpet, spills, rolls.

  Forget the water, come closer, she whispers. He leans forward.

  No. Closer, Julian.

  Carefully, he lies down in her bed, on his side next to her, and with tremendous effort swings his arm around her body. The needles of destruction are piercing him.

  I knew something happened to you. You couldn’t have left me.

  Never.

  I should’ve jumped in the water, like you wanted me to.

  Stop, Mirabelle, you’ll be okay, just…

  Don’t despair, she whispers. I had joy. The happiest I’ve ever been was the silver moon I spent with you.

  Julian wants to die.

  Their breathing becomes labored. They struggle for oxygen. They’re retreating from life. Julian can’t feel his legs, can’t smell her, or himself. His hearing grows dim. His sight blurs. With all the strength he has, he holds her to him. Mirabelle, why did you lie for me? When you first saw me at the Transit Circle, you say you didn’t recognize me, yet you covered for me with your uncle, why?

  “Because,” Mirabelle says, with her remaining breath, “you looked at me as no one had ever looked at me. It was confounding, unfathomable, enthralling.” She cups her weak hand over Julian’s dirty bearded cheek. “You looked at me with all the love there was in this world.” She brings her face to his. Her mouth touches him like an exhale. Come then, she whispers, take the last warmth from my lips.

  37

  The Valley of Dry Bones

  “THE HAND OF GOD WAS UPON ME. HE SET ME IN THE MIDDLE of the valley of dry bones. He asked me, can these bones live? And I said: Only God can know.”

  “You want to know if these bones can live?” the doctor said to Julian sunk in the hospital bed. “Let’s go from the top, shall we? You’ve got a tail end of a nasty concussion and a cracked tooth. You’ve got torn ligaments in your left shoulder. You have an elbow out of joint, fractures in the capitate bones of both hands, and in the proximal phalanges of both middle fingers. You’ve got unhealed fractures of your sixth and ninth rib on the right side. A piece has chipped off your left patella. You have one, two, three, four, five, six fractures in the metatarsals and cuboid bones of each foot, some of them clean through. You have electrical burns all over your body as if you’ve been struck by lightning, and internal bleeding in your wrists and left thigh. Your heart is arrhythmic. I wish I didn’t have to mention a seven-centimeter knife wound in your forearm that’s gone septic, your general state of malnutrition and dehydration, traces of heroin in your blood, oh and also the Vibrio cholerae bacterium floating there, too, for good measure. We’ve had only one case of cholera in England in the last five years, besides you. Are you going to tell us what really happened?”

  Instead of answering, Julian threw up in the bucket by the side of his bed.

  These bones could barely live.

  He was removed from his life, first physically and then metaphysically, as if he were still in the care of foolish Mervyn and crazy-eyed Sly. He wasn’t quarantined while he was hooked up to an IV in the hospital, but neither did the doctors and nurses rush to spend a lot of time by his side. Devi and Ashton came to visit him on separate days like divorced parents, wearing masks and bringing him tiger water (Devi) and oatmeal cookies (Ashton).

  Three weeks later back home, things weren’t much better. Julian was on antibiotics, in a leg cast, and on three kinds of pain meds. He couldn’t use crutches because of his upper body injuries, and his fractured feet made it excruciating for him to walk even to the kitchen.

  And on top of it, Ashton was not himself. Like Julian, Ashton was mute.

  “You’re not talking to me now?”

  “What’s there to say?” Ashton said, without a smile, without lightness, as grim as Julian had ever seen him. “That you’re sick, that you’re nuts? That you’re teaching me the true meaning of hell? That you’re giving me the strongest clue of the suffering that awaits me after death? What is there to say that I haven’t said? I’m out of words.”

  “How is…?” Julian broke off. He wanted to ask about Zakiyyah, but it was as if he’d been lobotomized. He couldn’t remember how that situation had resolved itself. He wanted to ask how Riley was
, but again, didn’t that depend on whether Zakiyyah had made a scene or vanished into thin air? Julian decided to say nothing, taking one more unsteady step in detaching himself from his life. He figured if Ashton wanted to tell him, Ashton would tell him.

  ∞

  When he could hobble on one crutch, Julian took a cab to the British Library on Euston Road. He searched for the names of the nurses who traveled to the Balkans with Florence Nightingale. There were two dozen altogether. He knew their shape. He knew what they looked like. And so much was written about Florence herself. But microfiche as he might, Julian could not find a mention of a willowy beauty named Mirabelle Taylor who planned to travel with Florence to the wartime hospital in Scutari.

  He learned other things. The Crystal Palace in Sydenham continued to draw crowds for another eighty years, until it was destroyed by a fire in 1936, and was never rebuilt. Charles Spurgeon married Suzanna Thompson and continued to preach nonstop another thirty-five years until his death at fifty-seven. A century later Spurgeon had sold over three hundred million copies of his sermons. He had become the world’s most widely read preacher, and there were more works written by him than by any other English-speaking author.

  George Airy refused the knighthood twice because he couldn’t afford the fees, he said. Finally in 1872, he accepted the honor. Third time was the charm. George’s wife Ricky died in 1875. Sir George was ninety when he died himself, in 1892, three weeks before the much younger but less hearty Charles Spurgeon.

  Airy preserved every single document he had ever received or had made a personal mark on. His journals, notebooks, brochures, scraps of speeches, notes for others, old checkbooks, bills, accounting ledgers, and all his personal correspondence were kept at the National Archives.

  Because of John Snow’s discovery of the causes of cholera, London’s sanitation systems were gradually rebuilt, and by 1880, clean running water was piped through the city, and cholera was nearly eradicated. The rest of the world would soon follow. Snow’s contribution to public health could not be overestimated. He died of a stroke in 1858, four years after Julian knew him. He was forty-five.

  Edmund Beckett and George Airy completed the design of the Great Clock by the end of 1854, and since the Clock Tower wasn’t finished being built until 1859, they had five years to perfect the gravity escapement, so that when it was finally installed, Big Ben became not only the most famous but one of the most accurate clocks in the world.

  ∞

  Late one night from outside his room, breaking through the dumbshow of sleep and pain, Julian thought he heard an unlikely thing—a fight between Ashton and Riley that bordered on violence. Riley’s guttural, anguished yawps were followed by Ashton’s uncharacteristically defensive hums, rising to anger, falling to guilt. Stop it, calm down. Please, or someone’s going to call the cops, stop it, Riley.

  It wasn’t bordering on violence anymore. Riley, Jesus, what’s wrong with you! Sounds of a gasping struggle, chairs being knocked over, Riley, stop it!

  Julian threw a pillow over his head and tried to sleep, but couldn’t. Dragging his legs behind him, supporting himself on his one good elbow, he crawled across the room and sat with his back against the door and his head hung forward, listening.

  How could you do it, Riley kept repeating in the midst of profound sobbing, flinging herself on Ashton. Did I mean nothing to you? Did you feel nothing for me? I must have meant nothing, for if I had meant anything, you would’ve never done it. How could you do it.

  Ashton defending, cajoling, comforting, Ashton saying he was sorry (!), Ashton saying he didn’t think of her.

  It’s true. You thought nothing of me.

  I didn’t do it to hurt you.

  Hurt me? How could you not know it would kill me.

  They could be talking about so many things, Julian thought. Any number of things.

  No, Ashton said. He didn’t know it would. He didn’t know she felt this way. He thought she was a busy career girl, that she was happy in her life.

  But the career is a temporary thing, Riley cried. But what you’ve done, that’s as permanent as it gets. There’s nothing you could’ve done to me that could hurt me more, she said, her racked words muffled by a towel into which she continued to cry. There is no worse thing you could’ve done to me. And you didn’t even talk to me first. I loved you! I love you still. All I ever wanted was to be with you. And for you to want to be only with me. I met you when I was twenty-seven. I was so young! And here I am, eight years later, I’m nowhere, you’re nowhere, we’re nowhere, and now because of you, we will never be anywhere. How could you not respect me enough, love me enough, care enough to give me this choice.

  Because I knew you’d try to talk me out of it, Ashton said, dejected and low.

  Yes!

  He didn’t want to be talked out of it, he said.

  But it’s not just you! It’s me too. You were brave enough to do it behind my back, brave enough to choose for yourself, why weren’t you brave enough to let me choose, too? To let me know the truth and choose to stay with you—or not. No, you kept it from me because you knew how I’d feel.

  I didn’t want to upset you, it’s true.

  Upset me. You’ve killed me. You must know that. You must know what you’ve done.

  Riley, can I tell you about my life?

  I know about your life. I’ve heard all about it, I’m sick to death of it. What about my life?

  Then you know why I couldn’t have a baby. My dad did it, too. Right after my mother had me, he did it.

  Oh, how proud he must be of you, a son following in his father’s footsteps! I don’t care about him. But you took the choice from me. You weren’t alone in this. What about me? Did you once think about me?

  Ashton tried other words. If I was sterile, if we couldn’t have children, this is how it would be. Same as this. We could adopt, if you want.

  Riley almost laughed. Except she was crying. But you weren’t sterile. How could you do it. You didn’t just take our phantom baby’s life away from me. You took my life away from me. You’ve made me into a phantom too. Had you told me, I could’ve left you. I would have left you. I could’ve gotten over you. I could have loved someone else.

  You still can, Ashton said.

  I spent eight years with you! That’s my sunk cost. That’s my sunk life. Eight years of me sunk into a dead-end you.

  Curled into a fetus, Julian fell asleep on the floor by the door to the sound of Riley’s wretched sobbing, Ashton’s helpless voice having long faded.

  She left for Heathrow early the following morning without saying goodbye.

  When Julian texted her a week later, she wrote don’t ever contact me again. You knew about it, you knew everything, and all these years you looked me in the face and lied. You are not my friend. You are nothing. When he tried to respond, she had blocked him.

  38

  Ghost Rider

  JULIAN DIDN’T LIKE THE WAY ASHTON WAS BEHAVING TOWARD him.

  They were constantly arguing. It was so unlike them. But the more Julian regained his strength, the more belligerent Ashton became. He was upset Julian had started boxing again, going to the gym, working out, running. He was upset Julian wasn’t fully committed to Nextel, that he didn’t like any of the girls Ashton kept trying to fix him up with, upset with how he left his ridiculous books all over the apartment. But especially, especially, Ashton condemned how much time Julian continued to spend with Devi.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Julian exclaimed one night, after they’d been at each other’s throats about the stupidest bullshit. “What do you care how often I have lunch with him? You go out with Nigel four fucking nights a week, do you hear a peep from me?”

  “Nigel is a hard drinker but a good man,” Ashton said, over Julian’s objection. “You on the other hand have sold your soul to the satanic shaman, and your bargain with him has no exit.”

  “And your bargain with Nigel does? You’ve never said no to him, never! Look, I
’m sick to death of talking about this with you.”

  “Your greatest pain is nothing but amusement to that man,” Ashton said. “He led you to the blue hole and fed you to the tiger as a ritual sacrifice. You think you can save her, and he cackles because he knows you can’t, but keeps pushing you to have at it until you die.”

  “He doesn’t think I can save her! What are you talking about? You know he keeps telling me I can’t.”

  “At the end of every trip, you’re ripped apart, and she is ripped apart. Your body is giving up on you. And he just laughs and laughs.”

  “He’s not laughing! He’s the only one trying to help me.”

  “Fuck you! I don’t see him here with you, watching you unable to walk on your fucked up feet, yet hitting the gym every morning in preparation for more torture. He’s not watching you die day by day.”

  “What about you, my friend?” Julian said, flinging his arm out to half their kitchen counter, overflowing with liquor bottles.

  “You know what, worry about yourself,” Ashton said, “and I’ll worry about myself. Is my body breaking apart, literally disintegrating before your eyes?”

  “Yes!”

  “Fuck off. This isn’t about me. He keeps squawking, you’re blessed, you’re lucky, yet the opposite is true. Who else does that, tells you something is good when it’s actually the fucking worst? Only the devil. And him. You’re killing yourself in front of me, and you wonder why I’m pissed.”

  “Again—talking about yourself much, Ashton?”

  “Fuck you! I’m never going to Greenwich with you again. Count me out.”

  “Did I ask you to go with me even once?”

  “Yes, because I’ve been doing it for me.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “I’m already there, buddy. What, you can’t see me? I’m right next to you.”

  “Shut up! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  ∞

  Things changed. Their camaraderie left them. It was replaced by a dour silence, a pervasive rumbling anger. Their every interaction was bloodied by hostility. Once they were brothers, for twenty years as casual and profoundly close as two unrelated men could be. But now Ashton was acting as if Julian had betrayed him.