by Anne Perry
“Sugar is better,” Sissons assured him. “It is mostly labor that adds to the cost, you see?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Labor, sir,” Sissons repeated. “That is why the Spitalfields area is good. Thousands of men needing work … an almost endless pool to call upon. Volatile, of course.”
“Volatile?” The Prince was still apparently lost.
Vespasia was aware of others within earshot of this rather pointless exchange, and also listening. Lord Randolph Churchill was one of them. She had known him in a slight way most of her life, as she had known his father before him. She was conscious of his intelligence and his dedication to his political beliefs.
“A great mixture of people,” Sissons was explaining. “Backgrounds, religions and so on. Catholics, Jews, and of course Irish. Lot of Irish. The need to work is about all they have in common.”
“I see.” The Prince was beginning to feel he had said enough to satisfy courtesy and might be excused for leaving this exceedingly dull conversation.
“It must be profitable,” Sissons continued, urgency rising in his voice, his face pink.
“Well, I imagine with a couple of factories, you are in a position to know.” The Prince smiled pleasantly, as if to conclude the matter.
“No!” Sissons said sharply, taking a step forward as the Prince took one away. “Actually three factories. But what I meant was not that it was profitable but that there is a great obligation upon me to make it so, otherwise over a thousand men will be thrown out of work, and the chaos and injury that would result from that would be appalling.” His words were tumbling out at increasing speed. “I could not even venture a guess as to where that would end. Not in that part of the city. You see, there is nowhere else for them to go.”
“Go?” The Prince frowned. “Why should they wish to go?”
Vespasia felt herself cringing. She had a very vivid idea of the soul-destroying poverty of parts of London, most especially the East End, of which Spitalfields and Whitechapel were the heart.
“I mean for work.” Sissons was becoming agitated. It was plain in the beads of sweat on his brow and lip, which were glistening in the lights. “Without work they will starve. God knows, they are close enough to it now.”
The Prince said nothing. He was clearly embarrassed. It was a most unseemly subject in this gorgeous, lavish display of pleasure. It was poor taste to remind men with glasses of champagne in their hands, and women decked with diamonds, that within a few miles of them thousands had not food and shelter for the night. It made them uncomfortable.
“It is necessary I stay in business!” Sissons’s voice rose a trifle, carrying above the hum of other conversations and the beat of the distant music. “I have to make sure I collect all my debts … so I can keep on paying them.”
The Prince looked bewildered. “Of course. Yes … it must be. Very conscientious, I am sure.”
Sissons swallowed. “All of them … sir.”
“Yes … quite so.” The Prince was looking decidedly unhappy now. His desire to escape this absurd situation was palpable.
Randolph Churchill took the liberty of interrupting. Vespasia was not surprised. She knew his relationship with the Prince of Wales was long and had varied. It had been one of extreme hatred over the Aylesford affair in 1876, when the Prince had actually challenged him to a duel with guns—to be fought in Paris, such a thing being illegal in England. Sixteen years ago the Prince had publicly refused to enter the house of anyone who received the Churchills. Consequently they had been almost entirely ostracized.
Eventually it had all died down, and Jennie Churchill, Randolph’s wife, had so charmed the Prince—apparently enough to become one of his many mistresses—that he willingly dined at their home in Connaught Place and gave her expensive gifts. Randolph was back in favor. As well as being appointed leader of the House of Commons and Chancellor of the Exchequer, two of the highest offices in the land, he was the closest personal confidante of the Prince, sharing sporting and social events, giving advice and receiving praise and trust.
Now he stepped in to relieve a tedious situation.
“Of course you have to … er … Sissons,” he said cheerfully. “Only way to conduct a business, what? But this is a time for enjoyment. Have some more champagne; it’s excellent.” He turned to the Prince. “I must congratulate you, sir, an exquisite choice. I don’t know how you do it.”
The Prince brightened considerably. He was with one of his own, a man he could trust not only politically but socially.
“It is rather, isn’t it? Did well there.”
“Superbly,” Churchill agreed, smiling. He was a beautifully dressed man of average height with regular features and a very wide, turned-up mustache which gave him a distinguished air. His manner was one of unquenchable pride. “I fancy it calls for something succulent to eat, to complement it. May I have something sent for you, sir?”
“No … no, I’ll come with you.” The Prince grasped the chance to escape. “I really ought to speak to the French ambassador. Good fellow. Do excuse us, Sissons.” And he turned and went with Churchill too rapidly for Sissons to do anything but mutter something unheard and take his leave.
“Mad,” Somerset Carlisle said softly at Vespasia’s elbow.
“Who?” she enquired. “The sugar man?”
“Not so far as I know.” He smiled. “Tedious in the extreme, but if that were insanity, then I should lock up half the country. I meant Churchill.”
“Oh, of course,” she said casually. “But you are far from the first to say that. At least he knows which side his advantage lies, which is an improvement on the Aylesford situation. Who is that very intense-looking man with the gray hair?” She half looked into the distance to indicate who she meant, then back again at Carlisle. “I don’t recall having seen him before, and yet he exudes a kind of passion which is almost evangelical.”
“Newspaper proprietor,” Carlisle replied. “Thorold Dismore. I doubt he would approve your description of him. He is a republican, and a convinced atheist. But you are quite right, there is something of the proselyte about him.”
“I have never heard of him,” she replied. “And I thought I knew the newspaper proprietors in London.”
“I doubt you’d read his paper. It’s good quality, but he is not averse to allowing his opinions to shine through rather clearly.”
“Indeed?” She raised her eyebrows questioningly. “And why should that prevent me from reading them? I have never imagined people reported the news unfiltered through their own prejudices. Are his any more powerful than usual?”
“I think so. And he is not averse to advocating action in their cause.”
“Oh.” She felt it as a breath of chill, no more. She should not have been surprised. She looked across at the man more closely. It was a strong face, sharp, intelligent, moved by powerful emotion. She would have judged him a man who yielded no ground to anyone, and whose overt good nature might very easily mask a temper that could be ugly if roused. But first impressions could be mistaken.
“Do you wish to meet him?” Carlisle asked curiously.
“Perhaps,” she replied. “But I am quite sure I do not wish him to know that I do.”
Carlisle grinned. “I shall make sure he does not,” he promised. “It would be grossly presumptuous. I shall certainly not allow him to affect airs above his station. If it is contrived at all, he will believe it was his idea and he is profoundly grateful that I have accomplished it for him.”
“Somerset, you verge on the impertinent,” she answered, aware that she was very fond of him. He was brave, absurd, passionate about his beliefs, and beneath the flippant exterior, pleasingly unique. She had always loved eccentrics.
* * *
It was after midnight and Vespasia was beginning to wonder if she wished to stay much longer, when she heard a voice which dissolved time, hurling her back about half a century to an unforgettable summer in Rome: 1848, the year of revolut
ions throughout Europe. For a wild, euphoric time—all too brief—dreams of freedom had spread like fire across France, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy. Then one by one they had been destroyed. The barricades had been stormed, the people broken, and the popes and kings had taken back their power. The reform had been overturned and trampled under the feet of soldiers. In Rome it had been the French soldiers of Napoleon III.
She almost did not turn to look. Whoever it was, it could only be an echo. It was memory playing a trick, an intonation that sounded the same, some Italian diplomat, perhaps from the same region, even the same town. She thought she had forgotten him, forgotten the whole tumultuous year with its passion, its hope and all the courage and pain, and in the end the loss.
She had been back to Italy since then, but never to Rome. She had always found a way to avoid that, without explaining why. It was a separate part of her life, an existence quite different from the realities of her marriage, her children, of London, even of her recent adventures with the extraordinary policeman Thomas Pitt. Who could have imagined that Vespasia Cumming-Gould, the ultimate aristocrat who could trace her blood to half the royal houses of Europe, could join forces with a gamekeeper’s son who had become a policeman? But then worrying what others thought crippled half the people she knew, and denied them all manner of passion and joy, and pain. Then she did turn. It was not really a thought so much as a reaction she could not help.
A dozen feet away stood a man almost her own age. He had been in his twenties when she met him, slender, dark, lithe as a dancer, and with that voice that filled her dreams.
Now his hair was gray, he was a little heavier, but the bones were still the same, the sweep of his brows, the smile.
As if he had felt her stare, he turned towards her, for a moment ignoring the man he was speaking with.
His recognition of her was instant, with no moment of doubt, no hesitation.
Then she was afraid. Could reality ever be equal to memory? Had she allowed herself to believe more than had really happened? Was the woman of her youth even remotely like the woman she was today? Or would she find time and experience had made her too wise to be able to see the dream anymore? Did she need to see him in the passion of youth, with the Roman sun on his face, a gun in his hand as he stood at the barricades, prepared to die for the republic?
He was coming towards her.
Panic drenched her like a wave, but habit, the self-discipline of a lifetime, and absurd hope prevented her from leaving. He stopped in front of her.
Her heart was beating in her throat. She had loved many times in her life, sometimes with fire, sometimes with laughter, usually with tenderness, but never anyone else as she had loved Mario Corena.
“Lady Vespasia.” He said the words quite formally, as if they were merely acquaintances, but his voice was soft, caressing the syllables. It was, after all, a Roman name, as he had told her, teasingly, so long ago. The Emperor Vespasian was no hero.
It was her correct title. Should she reply equally correctly? After all they had shared, the hope, the passion, and the tragedy, it seemed like a denial. There was no one else listening.
“Mario …” It was strange to say his name again. Last time she had whispered it in the darkness, tears choking her throat, her cheeks wet. The French troops were marching into Rome. Mazzini had surrendered to save the people. Garibaldi had gone north towards Venice, his pregnant wife fighting beside him, dressed as a man, carrying a gun like everyone else. The Pope had returned and undone all the reforms, wiped out the debt, the liberty, and the soul in one act.
But that was all in the past. Italy was united now; that much at least had come true.
He was searching her eyes, her face. She hoped he would not say she was still beautiful. He was the one man to whom it had never mattered.
Should she say something to forestall him? A trite word now would be unbearable. But if she spoke, then she would never know. There was no time left for games.
“I have often imagined meeting you again,” he said at last. “I never thought it would happen … until today.” He gave the tiniest shrug. “I arrived in London a week ago. I could not be here without thinking of you. I quarreled with myself whether I should even enquire for you, or if dreams are best left undisturbed. Then someone mentioned your name, and all the past returned to me as if it were yesterday, and I had no power to deny myself. I thought you would be here.” He glanced around the magnificent room with its smooth pillars, its dazzling chandeliers, the swirl of music and laughter and wine.
She knew exactly what he meant. This was her world of money, privilege, all of it passed down by blood. Perhaps in some distant past it had been earned, but not by these men and women here now.
She could so easily pick up the old battles again, but it was not what she wanted. She had believed as desperately as he had in the revolution in Rome. She had labored and argued for it too, worked all day and all night in the hospitals during the siege, carried water and food to the soldiers, in the end even fired the guns beside the last defenders. And she had understood why, in the end, when Mario had had to choose between her and his love of the republic, he had chosen his ideals. The pain of it had never completely left her, even after all these years, but had he chosen otherwise it would have been worse. She could not have loved him the same way, because she knew what he believed.
She smiled back at him, a little bubble of laughter inside her.
“You have an advantage. I would never, in even my silliest dreams, have thought to find you here, all but shoulder to shoulder with the Prince of Wales.”
His eyes were soft, old jokes remembered, absurdities within the tears. “Touché,” he acknowledged. “But the battlefield is everywhere now.”
“It always was, my dear,” she answered. “It is more complicated here. Few issues are as simple as they seemed to us then.”
His gaze did not waver. “They were simple.”
She thought how little he had changed. It was only the superficial things: the color of his hair, the faint lines on his skin. Inside he might be wiser, have a few scars and bruises, but the same hope burned just as strongly, and all the old dreams.
She had forgotten love could be so overwhelming.
“We wanted a republic,” he went on. “A voice for the people. Land for the poor, houses for those who slept in the streets, hospitals for the sick, light for the prisoners and the insane. It was simple to imagine, simple to do when we had the power … for a brief spell before tyranny returned.”
“You hadn’t the means,” she reminded him. He did not deserve to be patronized by less than the truth. In the end, whether the French armies had come or not, the republic would have fallen because those with the money would not give enough to keep its fragile economy going.
Pain flashed into his face.
“I know.” He glanced around the marvelous room in which they stood, still full of music and the chatter of voices. “The diamonds in here alone would have secured us for months. How much do you think these people are served in these banquets in a week? How much is overeaten, how much thrown away because it wasn’t needed?”
“Enough to feed the poor of Rome,” she answered.
“And the poor of London?” he asked wryly.
There was a bitterness of truth in her reply. “Not enough for that.”
He stood staring silently at the throng, his face weary with the long battle against blindness of heart. She watched him, knowing what he thought all those years ago in Rome, and saw beyond doubt that he was thinking the same now. Then it had been the Pope and his cardinals, now it was the Prince and his courtiers, admirers, hangers-on. This was the Crown of Britain and its Empire, not the three-tiered crown of the Pope, but everything else was the same, the splendor and the indifference, the unconscious use of power, the human frailty.
Why was he in London? Did she want to know? Perhaps not. This moment was sweet. Here in this noisy, superficial glamour of the ballroom she could feel the h
eat of the Roman sun on her face, see the dust, sense the glare in her eyes—and imagine under her feet the stones that had rung to the steps of legions who had conquered every corner of the earth and shouted “Hail Caesar!” as they marched, eagles high, red crests bright. She was back where Christian martyrs had been thrown to the lions, gladiators had fought, St. Peter had been crucified upside down, Michelangelo had painted the Sistine Chapel.
She did not want the past overwhelmed by the present. It was too precious, too deeply woven into the fabric of her dreams.
No, she would not ask.
Then the moment slipped past, and they were no longer alone. A man named Richmond greeted them pleasantly, introducing his wife, and the moment after, Charles Voisey and Thorold Dismore joined them and conversation became general. It was trivial and mildly amusing until Mrs. Richmond made some comment about ancient Troy and the excitement of Heinrich Schliemann’s discoveries. Vespasia forced her attention to the present and its trivia.
“Remarkable,” Dismore agreed. “Extraordinary persistence of the man.”
“And the things they discovered,” Mrs. Richmond enthused. “The mask of Agamemnon, the necklace probably worn by Helen. It makes them all real in a way I had never imagined … actual flesh and blood, just like ordinary people. It is the oddest sensation to take them out of the realms of legend and make mortals of them, with lives that leave physical remains, artefacts behind.”
“Probably.” Voisey sounded cautious.
“Oh, I think there’s little doubt!” she protested. “Have you read any of those marvelous papers by Martin Fetters? He’s brilliant, you know. He makes it all so immediate.”
There was a moment’s silence.
“Yes,” Dismore said abruptly. “He is a great loss.”
“Oh!” Mrs. Richmond colored deeply. “I had forgotten. How terrible. I am sorry. He … fell …” She stopped, clearly uncertain how to continue.
“Of course he fell!” Dismore said tartly. “God knows how any jury came to the conclusion they did. It’s patently absurd. But it will go to appeal, and it will be reversed.” He looked at Voisey.
