The Widow's Fire

by Paul Butler

  I buttoned my jacket, blew out the candles, and in pitch darkness went to the door. Distasteful though it was, I would have to dissemble, even to the Harvilles. The exuberance of happiness, I decided. This would be my excuse for a late night walk. I wished to stand outside Anne’s home in Camden Place, beckoning the morning. No friend, even one as solicitous and reliable as Harville, would impose himself on such an activity, and the telling of it would be urgent-seeming enough to justify a quick exit.

  I turned the handle. It rattled and squealed like a thousand-ton anchor chain as I knew it would. Still, foreknowledge of the hazard didn’t prevent a feverish wave of nerves from flooding over me. The contradictions of a man who could outface cannon fire yet quiver within at the curious looks of a friend! I pulled the door open and dropped my hand. We will see what can be done, Mrs. Smith had said. The phrase hauled me alternately between distrust and the most abject submission. Take control of the situation, I told myself again. If I am accused, I will find out my accusers’ names and confront them all. No, Mrs. Smith, “we” will not see what can be done, I will! The resolve buoyed me, reminded me how internal valour was its own reward when the consequences of an action hung in the balance.

  I moved from the black space of my room to the black space of the landing and descended stairs that creaked like the beams of a frigate in an Atlantic swell. The space under the Croft’s door was dark — no candles burned anywhere. I went on swiftly, hearing the rub of my own clothes like the whistle and rush of a gale. But no light came from under the door of the Harvilles’ rooms. I fancied I heard a moan as I made the front door and grappled my way through. I closed it as softly as a grave robber must close the lid of a coffin when the beadle’s lamp approaches.

  On Gay Street, the pale moon hung low over the opposite rooftops but the sky seemed a hazy kind of dark. Cold air stung inside my lungs as I made my way downhill towards Westgate Buildings. Being outside freed my thoughts and everything fell away — Sophia, the Harvilles, Fanny, Benwick, Louisa Musgrove, years at sea, the yell and thump of a deck in battle, the fire and rising smoke — and only one image was left, a single peak rising highest in a long mountain range: Anne’s smile.

  The image that had so imprinted itself on my brain was from one precise moment: Just before I first gave Mrs. Smith my arm in the main Assembly Room, Anne had looked first at her friend and then at me. In that instant I had beheld in her expression an almost desperate kind of happiness. Her sweet vulnerability, her quiet wisdom, her compassion and kindness; all these things were confirmed in my heart as the worthiest and most true recipients of my admiration and affection. I had looked upon the face of paradise. Every hurt, qualm, and desire that had plagued me from the time of our first meeting eight years before — the sourness of her rejection of me, my own doubts regarding my ability to live up to her reasonable expectation and those of her more exacting family — all of these had dissolved like salt into the happy swirling waters of euphoria. Though I could not have known it then, those few moments around quarter to eleven yesterday were the summit of my life. I had since been tumbling fast down the mountain’s opposite slope.

  Bath’s chimneys stood like stout masts against the moonlight and a breeze scattered its way along the street and ruffled my hair. Thoughts of Oliver came to me unbidden. I was back on board the Laconia, feeling the easy companionship of my shipmates, the bonds of intimacy warm and immediate. I had made a point of saying it often. The company of men was a happy contrast to the delicate and intricate dance required by the fairer sex. One did not need to try and the stakes were far lower.

  Oliver Mason, with his dark curls and mournful eyes, reminded me of Anne. He said little in the early days in the summer of 1811. But words, when they did come, had been long pondered over and were unusually apt. As Bath’s winter breezes buffeted me, I thought of the first time I really noticed this quality. We’d been out of Surat for four days in our mission to escort a flotilla of poppy tears to Canton. As was our custom on calm evenings when sailing was fair, we passed a pipe of the precious commodity around the dinner table after we had eaten. There was a company of five that evening.

  “It hardly seems a fair exchange, Sir,” he said quietly taking a puff and handing it on. The smoke rose in sheets before his face.

  “Explain yourself, Lieutenant Mason.” My words were gruff but he saw the humour in my eyes.

  “It’s just that…”

  My master nudged one of the more experienced lieutenants at his side. I hushed them both wordlessly.

  “It’s just that this opium enslaves so many Chinese. There must be a less costly way of balancing our imports.”

  “My dear Mason,” I said, now taking the pipe. “Who is to judge levels of enslavement? Your uncle needs his tea as much as any oriental needs this drug.” It was this same uncle referred to that had asked me to take Oliver Mason on. I was secretly delighted now, seeing the transparent innocence of the boy. “We cannot have one without the other. I don’t see why an opium tear should cause a man to be shackled any more than a tea leaf.”

  “Do you think it’s enslaving us?” asked the master.

  “No, of course not,” he replied gently. “But we are gentlemen, English gentlemen. We do not have the same natural weaknesses as the Chinese peasant or city dweller.”

  “So,” I said passing the pipe to my master, “it is an enslavement of the mind you refer to. The substance involved is quite irrelevant.”

  Oliver was cowed for the moment but I could see that new thoughts and ideas were working behind those dark eyes of his. I secretly looked forward to teasing them out of him.

  Each change in the weather brought something new out of Oliver Mason. As we approached Pygmalion Point we discussed the ancient Greeks and navigation by the stars. I discovered he was a scholar with an admiration for the fiery imagination of William Blake. When a storm brought the whole flotilla into port in Ceylon, we talked of the history of the astrolabe and the sextant, and of the excitement of those like Philip Sydney who combined poetry with action. He’d begun to speak with passion now. His idealistic youth drew me in and I felt I was plunging into an ocean of thought and feeling of a kind I’d once believed to exist in myself. My focus upon him became more intense. Soon the talk of other officers became like the babble of a mountain stream, words and sentences undistinguishable from each other and without meaning.

  One evening, we fell into silence. I became aware that our comrades had retired long ago. I had dismissed the servants also. The pipe lay on the table, quivering with the rhythmic swell of the ocean. Between us the candle flickered. As though acutely aware there was nothing to say, Oliver became flustered and rose from his chair. He hastily excused himself wishing me a good night.

  What had passed between us that made the atmosphere so ominous? In truth nothing — nothing at all. But I was not surprised at the manner of his departure. And I was unaccountably beyond consolation now he was gone. Even though his absence would last only until morning, I felt he had dragged something sweet and invaluable from me, something I could not do without even for a minute. I had no name to pin on this terrifying new reality. But knowing how easy it would be to lose my composure and give myself away, I began to make note of the things I might do, the assignments and duties I might reconfigure, to avoid Oliver Mason for a while.

  But then something unexpected happened. Less than five minutes after leaving he came back. I do not know whether he had prepared an explanation for his reappearance because I didn’t give him the chance to voice it. Quite unable to hide my joy and relief, I sprang up from my chair. My hand reached out to hook his neck — a gesture of boisterous affection familiar enough to us. But this time I felt the heat of his skin under my palm, saw confusion and yearning do battle in those dark eyes. When I drew him towards me, he did not resist.

  It was a capital offense, I knew well enough. But it was also so common that it seemed like an archaic
quirk in the law, a crime in fact that only became a crime when looked upon by a third party, which it never was. Men stayed away when they suspected anything. I realized now this was at least partly why the two of us were so often left alone. And part of me had revelled in it too, had found a perverse pleasure in an act that had so easily circumnavigated the slow and meticulous process through which I had prosecuted and ultimately failed in my campaign to marry Anne. I had cheated Anne of her power, just as she had cheated me of her love.

  Though I never spoke of it to Oliver, the injustice of it returned even when he lay in my arms. After so many bows, so many muttered and insincere compliments to her father and elder sister, Elizabeth, so much explaining of my prospects, so many tight-lipped teas, so many patient, chaste walks in the company of Lady Russell, all the while moving with glacial slowness towards that distant goal of consummation which, like a rainbow, remained distant. All the while I had known Anne, I had been far from even the possibility of feeling the warmth of her skin, or the wetness of her lips against mine. And when at last an understanding had been established between us, it was broken. Oliver had stepped into that void, and despite everything — the forbidden nature of such a dalliance on sea or land, the inevitability we would have to part, his obvious similarity to the one who had deserted me — I never pretended in those days it was not love.

  I quickened my pace now, reminding myself of my rank, the standing which — unlike most of Anne’s relations — I had earned. Turning into the narrower, darker Westgate Street, I cast my eyes heavenwards. Stars showed like wicks touched by a travelling flame, each catching a spark, burning hesitantly, and then rising to the challenge. I hardly knew what I would say to Mrs. Smith, hardly knew whether she was the most resourceful of friends or the most dangerous of enemies. The very fact of my turning up was a further admission of guilt. I knew this. Yet I knew she had satisfied herself on that point already.

  I arrived at Westgate Buildings now with its plain but forbidding façade and shuddered as I identified the entrance I must take to Mrs. Smith’s rooms. As I moved to the few stone steps, however, part of the wall close to the front door seemed to shift as though a statue engraved into the doorway had suddenly been given the power of motion. I jumped back, a tingle of fear travelling through my body. It was quite unlike the specific, delineated terror of discovery, or the hangman’s noose, but something vague and dreamlike and infinitely worse. Then a funnel of pale breath came from the moving statue, and I realized what I should have known immediately; it was merely a person, a man, standing guard by the entrance. I could make out a livery jacket now, gold tassels catching hints of the moon. The shape of his head also became clearer. He was more than familiar.

  In the midst of my panic in the Assembly Rooms my eyes had fixed upon this very same man, an African and former slave, now one of the building’s attendants. These men usually stood like cathedral gargoyles, but they did not guard the outside of the building from evil spirits. Rather they blindly overlooked those already within. The most curious thing had struck me even then. Those watery brown eyes were alive with apparent thought and sensation, and he had not been looking into space or at the opposite wall as was the expectation; he had been looking directly at me. He was watching my distress with so much interest and understanding, the thought had actually spun through my mind that somehow he had received some foreknowledge of the details.

  “Captain Wentworth,” he said to me now, opening the door behind him and standing aside for me to pass.

  “Who are you?” I asked, not moving. I suddenly needed him to know this was a choice on my part, that I would enter if I wished and for no other reason.

  “My name is Plato,” he said simply, and then when I moved forward, as though to ignore him, he bowed. “I am to accompany you to Mrs. Smith’s rooms.”

  So how many people knew of my troubles? I felt like taunting him about his name but was too stiff, too afraid, to make mockery sound confident. I had encountered the name before, however, and realized I knew something about him. “I have heard of your brother,” I said. It was meant to be a warning of sorts, but it came out softly, like the words of a man grappling for any weapon to hide his own embarrassment — which, of course, is what they were.

  “My brother Socrates, yes,” he said. “He was employed by a friend of yours.”

  “That’s him,” I said as though in triumph. I stood more erect. “I know he was hanged for stealing from the Harvilles.”

  “Indeed that was the crime written on the charge-sheet, Captain.”

  I waited for more. Another puff of pale breath rose from the motionless figure. I imagined somehow he was smiling, holding something back.

  “You deny he was guilty?” I said.

  “I know not the details of the theft, Captain, but the crime for which he suffered death was something else entirely.”

  “What was it then?” I allowed my agitation to show.

  “He got a maid — a white maid, of course — with child. Captain Harville, your friend, had the child’s father hanged. Captain Harville, your friend, bribed the maid to go away. And then, Captain Harville, your friend, Sir, gave the child to me.”

  This was insufferable. Some power outside myself was drawing back my arm, tensing the sinews. With some effort, I held off from striking. “Captain Harville is an honourable man,” I said. “How dare you suggest otherwise?”

  “Honour, Sir, is such a difficult concept,” he said. “It has no weight, no taste, and no substance, and it changes from one person’s view to another. It is like a rainbow glimpsed on the horizon, ready to disappear the moment there is a change in the weather.”

  The words came so close to echoing my own thoughts they took me aback for a moment. And his manner was so relaxed, so unafraid, it had an odd way of forbidding punishment. It was no longer an effort not to strike; I would have been feigning confidence had I done so.

  “Rest assured,” I said. “My friends are honourable in all weathers. Now let me get on.”

  He raised his arm, signalling the doorway behind him.

  My world was spinning beyond control, turning light into darkness, sky into earth. This wretch born to slavery likely knew things I would not trust to my priest. I knew things about Captain Harville that in this setting — the narrow street, the hush of the night, the words spoken by such insolent lips — made him, the dearest and most reliable of friends, seem almost dishonest. But this was an illusion. I could well guess the conditions that had dictated Harville’s actions: an innocent girl overpowered, no doubt, by the brute; a shame too awful to survive the light of day. Of course he had paid the girl to leave and start her life afresh; of course he saw to it that the miscreant was punished, but that the real crime did not appear in the public record. I could absolve poor Harville in my own mind without even hearing his defense. But this voice in the night believed something else. And as it stood, the bare facts, if not the likely context, made the Harvilles and me seem like hypocrites. If I needed sobering, this would have done it.

  I entered now into a dark as profound as any I had known. Plato’s hand took my wrist and guided it to a stair-rail within. As my hand slid along, I climbed ahead of my companion. Years of negotiating ladders, storerooms, and gun decks had given me an aptitude for feeling the dimensions of space by sound. Our muffled footfalls and my breathing gave me the sense of a winding, narrow space and the oppression of my spirits added embellishments. I imagined cobwebs and hanging bats, and on the first landing — where my sliding hand turned me a full circle — the odd skull or rib bone littering the floor.

  Now a little light — no more than a candle’s afterglow — began to wash the stairs with a faint hint of bronze. Far from diminishing the sense of menace, the compromised darkness made the place seem more alive and therefore more threatening. I could see faint cracks in the painted plaster and felt as though some predatory creature had built the walls that now enc
losed us for the sole purpose of luring its prey. Moreover, something in the hue of bronze carried the whiff of some half-forgotten childhood memory in which skeletons danced and graves yawned to spill out their dead.

  As I turned on the second landing, the light strengthening now, Plato overtook me and ran up to its source. I saw her at the top of the stairs — the black-haired woman Anne had told me was Mrs. Smith’s nurse, her pale, bland features neither handsome nor asymmetrical enough to be called, with any confidence, “plain.” The candle she held flickered and she gave me a slight, timid smile, as if this were some mundane but necessary social event requiring small-talk and polite exchanges.

  “Good evening, Captain Wentworth,” she said with a twitch of the mouth. She ignored Plato who turned and descended the way he came. “Thank you for being so punctual. Mrs. Smith is ready for you.”

  I must have been slightly drunk from the port, as the reality of the situation seemed elusive. I looked down upon her, aware I was using my height as a denotation of authority, aware also that, were she my own housekeeper and this a meeting about the necessity of a household expenditure, such a simple means of assertion, while petty and unworthy, might have made some sense, but that here, at one hour past midnight, agreeing to meet her employer to discuss a capital crime, the stretching of one’s frame to its full extremity was as puny as it was ridiculous.

  But it was not really happening. This was the context of every feeling and every action — a sense of malaise, a numbness of body and spirit. I had understood the implications behind not turning up this night — they were quite simple: I would be kept in the dark for much longer about the true nature of the danger I faced; I would lose the help and trust of the “friend,” assuming that the help and trust were real, assuming also that the friendship was real. What were the implications behind the fact that I had decided to turn up? Had I thought of that?