The door above them opened. Eliot stared down at them from the frame of light.
"What's goin’ on?"
Arthur turned to look up at Eliot, and Henry took the instant to grab at the collar of the man's jacket and yank it downward at the back. The inner silk lining ripped apart at the shoulder. Arthur tried to twist away, his body still inclined toward the steps. Henry kicked at the supporting foot, and Arthur's body dropped lower, his jacket still pinning his arms enough so that it was his mouth that took the edge of the stone.
Eliot said, “You guy's are really fighting, aren't you? You can get hurt, you know."
Another voice came, “Let me see!” The larger figure of Jessica pushed at Eliot's side and gaped down at them.
* * * *
Retelling the details the next day, Henry found it difficult to make a victory out of the confrontation. Albert was not impressed, as he sipped the top from a beer. The afternoon had turned toward dark by the time Henry made it to the Blue Thorn.
Albert asked, “What happened then?” Blandly staring at Henry in the reflection of the mirror. He was not going to show Henry any additional concern.
Henry said, “Jessica screamed. Like in the movies. She saw the blood rising in Arthur's mouth."
Tim leaned close over the bar and grabbed at Henry's right arm. “It's not broken?"
Henry shrugged. “I don't know. I can't bend the elbow."
Tim continued to squeeze, as if hoping to cause pain. The numbness had not yet faded. He said, “You need an X-ray."
Henry shook his head. “I can't afford it. I think it's just bruised. I'm going to give it a couple of days."
Tim said, “Go to the emergency room."
Henry sipped his ale before speaking. “Sure. You pay for it."
Tim backed off. “Okay, give it a couple of days. Then go see my doctor. He'll give you a special rate, but you have to donate your body to science and give blood three times over the next year."
Albert grunted. “They won't want his body. It's damaged goods now. So, what happened after that?"
Henry tilted his head with the thought. “Cops came. Arthur was sitting up on the steps then with a towel on his face from Eliot. I gave the cop a report and filed a complaint. I was pretty pissed.... Arthur wouldn't talk. He broke some teeth. I think he was too embarrassed to drop the towel. They took him away in a cruiser to Mass General. I haven't heard anything else."
Albert's voice dropped to the full low of a bass cello. “Does this mean what I think it means?"
"What?” Tim asked when Henry did not respond.
Henry had thought that question through several times as he fell asleep the night before. He answered, “That it wasn't Arthur."
Albert repeated, “That it wasn't Arthur."
Tim seemed confused. “Why not? Because he's a fool and goes around picking public fights? Because he's not trying to hide the fact that he's greedy? Maybe. Maybe not."
Henry played with the bandage on his left hand. The brown stain was hard where some of the blood had come through.
"Maybe not."
How could someone act that way? Why would someone who had so much lose his mind over relatively little? Why had Arthur attacked him? Henry would be happier if he had a better understanding of how Arthur figured into everything. Or at least if he could grasp this short thread of human nature.
Albert said, “It was probably just the weather.” Holding his beer up to the light before he set it down. An amber spark struck Henry's eye.
Henry leaned back. Something more was coming, and he voiced his fear. “Oh, crap."
Albert said, “It makes everyone a little crazy at times. Just like it was in the fifth century. A few of those really cold winters in a row—maybe caused by a couple of volcanic eruptions here or there—and suddenly you had these Germanic tribes marauding about. The Angles, the Saxons, the Frisians, and the Jutes—really just proto-Vikings—tribes that had to move on and find someplace a little more hospitable. The land wouldn't support them all. There was probably a good deal of infighting over who goes and who stays. Better to kill some bloke who couldn't understand your language than to put an ax in the neck of your cousin Fred.... Don't forget, the Huns had just come by, and life was not all that settled for anyone. And these were small tribes—maybe fifty clans or less each, a few thousand individuals. Why not get up and go? They had the boats. They were coastal people. And they had undoubtedly heard of the green hills of Albion, or even seen them, just as they had grown up hearing tales about the Goths and the Vandals. Their larger Frankish neighbors were being pushed west by the Slavs, who seemed to be endless in number. So an old Roman coin was tossed, and the losers took to their boats and crossed to Albion. And there they confronted the Celtic Britons who had invaded the island in their own quest for safety half a millennium before, when they had displaced those strange dark people, the Druids.... I have a theory about that—"
Henry said, “You have a theory about everything."
Albert was obviously reading another book. That was the way he had always committed things to memory after reading. He retold what he could to Henry. Albert had this method down pat.
Albert nodded and swallowed. “Not yet. I'm working in that direction, though. You know Einstein was a genius, but he couldn't manage to brush his teeth or comb his hair. My mother named me after the smartest man in the world because she had high hopes. But my theories are based on more practical realities. I'm going to call it the Unified Trash Theory.... So they cross the sea, and there is King Arthur. He has brought the clans of Celtic Briton together following the abandonment of the Roman overlords. The Romans, of course, are still busy collapsing beneath the onslaught of all those Goths and Visigoths, Franks and Avars and Vandals. The Britons were a fierce people, mind you. They survived on their ferocity, but their numbers were not much greater than the invaders', and worse, they were broken by their own clans, with their own grudges. An independent people, they were. Still are."
Henry interrupted. “And stubborn.” Thinking that the picture was incomplete.
"And stubborn.” Albert nodded. “And Arthur brought them together for a while. For maybe fifty years. He must have been a considerable king. He might have rallied the Celtic clans from Ireland and Scotland and even from far-off Brittany to defend against the Viking invaders. A proto-Churchill, if you will. But when he died, just as it happened to the great Alexander, the alliances broke, and the invaders took the good lands and pushed the Britons off to the rock and mist of Scotland and Wales."
Henry had to ask. “So what has this to do with anything?"
Albert answered, “You asked how I thought Arthur figured into the picture."
Henry let a short beat of silence pass. “You know I meant Arthur Johnson."
Henry watched Albert's face in the mirror. Albert stared back innocently. “Didn't I say it was the weather?"
Henry tried not to smile.
Albert stared into the mirror a moment longer, then drank down the remains in his glass and began again.
"Arthur's a questionable character. We don't know much about him.... He could have done it. But why would he take the risk if he had more than half of everything anyway?"
Tim had worked his way down the line of patrons from the end of the bar.
"Greed,” Tim said. “Because he was about to lose a part of it. The English invader endangered everything."
Henry leaned against the wood toward Tim. “You're right, you know. The property was going to be divided. If Arthur was in debt, and had already used up a sizable portion of his inheritance fighting his own battles, then he might not want to see what still remained divided further."
Tim added, “And then there's the Viking."
Albert shook his head vigorously. “No, we're talking about Arthur Johnson."
Tim asked, “What about that guy, Ranulf?"
Henry smiled and studied his ale.
Albert pushed his empty glass forward with added unhappines
s and silently waited a moment for Tim's attention, then asked, “What about Tim's redhead?"
Tim's head jerked about.
Henry answered first, happy to change the subject. “I was considering the redhead for myself."
A look of irritation wrinkled Tim's brow as he pulled a beer for someone else instead.
Albert said, “I thought you were being pursued by your high-school sweetheart."
Henry explained that his father was unhappy with him. Leona had been by to talk. She was asking about things his father was not in a position to answer for. Henry had apologized. His father then suggested to Henry that she was a good woman, and good-looking, too, and Henry was getting a bit old to be still fooling around. He warned Henry that he was going to end up like his Uncle Jack.
Albert grunted his agreement. Tim looked over from his radio without further comment, still ignoring Albert's glass.
[Back to Table of Contents]
Chapter Eighteen
He had not made the past. He had found it. Orphaned. As if no parent or guardian had survived and all responsibility had been lost. Only a vague history remained—and the books. Though there was no custody over the past, he mused that he might have visitation rights. He could change nothing, but he could choose the portion he wanted to remember. And he could dwell in the shelter of certain moments better than others.
Helen Mawson had gone to New York in the spring of 1915. She clearly intended that to be only the first part of a longer journey. But there was a war in Europe. She could not be going there, and her letters said nothing about her objectives, perhaps because she did not want her father to know. Was her actual destination Chicago? The trains went that way back then, from Boston to Chicago. Everything went through New York.
She had gone so many places before. She had been to Budapest! She had fed the pigeons on the plazas of Venice and stood at the foot of the great columns of the Parthenon. She had watched the clouds above the open top of the Circus in Rome. But she had returned to only two places more than once. She had returned to England, to the Wrights’ cottage in Cornwall. Was there a farm boy there who danced better than all the others? She had gone more than once to the Roycrofters in East Aurora. The reporter for the Chicago papers had been there at least two of those times. What coincidence might that be? How was Henry going to step beyond the surviving letters she wrote?
Marcus. What was his last name?
The woman behind the desk at the Boston Public Library was not at all sure the microfiche would be available. Henry filled out the request slip anyway. The Chicago Times had long been out of business and its name joined with the Sun. The older records were not itemized by the library in Chicago.
Henry visited Barbara again. Alcott & Poe appeared busy with noontime shoppers in the midst of rushed lunch breaks. He recounted his fruitless search for a book at the library which purported to be a history of the Chicago Times. She was sympathetic.
Her tone grew more compassionate when she asked why he was using only his left hand to browse. He cut the story short and told her he had fallen and could barely bend his arm. Barbara called one of her part-time staff to watch the desk and then helped him search the journalism section. After a few minutes she had an even better suggestion: biographies. Barbara had an opinion on this as good as any.
"Reporters love nothing better than to write about themselves when they retire. They've flown too close to the flame. They've seen the mortality of the great and recognized themselves in the faces of the notorious. Reporters aren't historians. They sometimes see themselves that way, but it's just a failing. They're too much a part of the history they cover. They can't separate the details for lack of perspective. People close to them seem so much larger than those at a distance. They're often overwhelmed by subjects bigger than they are."
It was Henry who was feeling overwhelmed. “I don't even know if Marcus was a staff reporter, or just a stringer, or maybe an independent working on spec."
Barbara's confidence was daunting. “Staff. I'll bet he was a staff reporter. Elbert Hubbard was not a random subject. He was as famous then as Ford, and Edison, and Rockefeller. At least one of his books could be found in every middle-class home in America."
Henry returned to the library looking for the biography of an editor of the Times prior to World War One. Barbara had found the name in a few minutes by simply doing an internet search. But that book, too, was missing from the library shelves.
The woman at the library desk apologized.
Henry turned and stood, with the length of Bates Hall before him.
As a child he had imagined this to be a playing field raised to the level of the broad oak reading tables. More than the familiar shapes of houses in his neighborhood, this library had first instilled in him a sense of architecture. That was before they had built the crude, lobotomized bulk of the new addition—attached to the old library like half a brain but without aesthetic memory and judgment, much less understanding.
In his youth, this great room had been the center of everything. Now, a few dozen people occupied the hundreds of chairs which were once jealously waited for. Towering windows at one side of the hall arose perhaps fifty feet to arches in support of the ceiling. As if embarrassed by their own height, the windows were made smaller by the bars of thick black muntins. The scale and the clear expanse of the ceiling was visually reduced by enormous plaster-cast rosettes, each set against the shadowed relief of a continuous pattern of squares. This optical contradiction of the actual size of the room had confused Henry even when his mother had brought him there so long ago. Later he wondered what the architects had feared? Was it a joke? Was their pleasure being taken in the visual reduction of what was inherently awesome? Wasn't this a place for the mind to soar and the eye to wander or rest from the near focus of words on a page?
It was here he had first understood the true smell of books. The peculiar odor of a few pages held open to his nose was already a perfume he had savored. Here, it was the sum of the scent of a million books which once flowed and ebbed on the tide of human inquiry—the aroma mixed with the smell of polished wood, cooled and condensed against the marble floors, arising again around the electric glow of milky orbs in brass bowls, drifting about the green-shaded lights at the tables, and stirred by the brush of wool on the arms of readers lost in a greed for words.
They had not come often when he was young. Perhaps once a month. His mother liked the excuse to be going someplace special. His sister, Shelagh, would be at school then, or off with her friends. The trolley ride alone would have been enough for Henry.
How many times had he climbed around the ledges of stone where crouching marble lions guarded the great inner stairway, hushed by the echoes of his own feet, and been made church-reverent by the dim illumination of the globes of light on their darkened brass pedestals? He had traced with his fingers every name of the Civil War battles won by the Massachusetts Volunteers and the Twentieth Massachusetts Infantry: Ball's Bluff, Mary's Heights, Bristoe Station, Antietam, Chancellorsville, Wilderness, Gettysburg!
The murals on the walls were fabulous cartoons to him then—life-sized—larger-than-life recreations of stories he could only guess at. The names of Sargent and Abbey and Chavannes meant nothing to him. But these things could be found in books! When he had begun to read the Scribner's editions with their Pyle and Wyeth illustrations, he had made a connection which had brought him back repeatedly to stare and wonder.
In those days the walls between the artwork were darkened and faded from a century of containment. Refurbished now, even the subdued greens and yellows and blues seemed unnaturally bright. But what had disturbed Henry most when he entered the building earlier in the day was the smell of food. A room which had once held nourishment for the mind and soul now offered sandwiches and coffee. A small restaurant had taken the place of books. And worse still, the pernicious smell of food had overwhelmed every fragrance of binding or paper stock or potion of ink.
Henry could
smell the pastry and burnt soup even here, in the great vessel of Bates Hall.
Why was all the world he wanted or cared for being destroyed?
His eyes fell down from the rosettes above to a familiar shape at a table nearby. Ranulf Richter reclined at odds with the angle of the chair beneath him. His book rested upright on the surface of the wood and his face nosed closely to the pages, with his chin on one fist. Henry thought to ignore him, and then reconsidered.
Henry said, “Hello."
The eyes looked up, dazed from some inner view. He nodded before finally speaking. “Good day, Mr. Sullivan.... This is fortunate. I've been meaning to speak with you. You're never home, it seems, or your bell doesn't work."
Henry nodded. “Home less these days. Trying to stay busy. What can I help you with?"
Richter looked down the length of the table, which was empty, but then behind to the person closest to him.
"Let's go outside."
Henry said, “The courtyard is good."
And Richter responded immediately, “Yes! A very Italian place. Made for conversation. I like the courtyard."
The chill of the afternoon shadows had left the courtyard empty. They stopped at the edge of the arcade in front of the empty fountain, faced with a joyous bronze nymph clutching a naked child; the statue's nakedness was an affront to the cold.
Richter began as if they were already in the midst of a long dialogue. “No one will speak to me, of course. I can't find Arthur, and he's instructed the lawyer, Downes, not to speak to me. Peter is afraid of me—I think he believes I might have killed Morgan. My little speech in the church that day might have backfired.... You know. In the movies it makes the killer try something foolish. Arthur has done nothing. He is gathering up all the loose ends in a neat little bag, and he'll walk away like a thief on a holiday."
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