ONCE HE IS fairly out in the current again—having pushed off the moment my heel touched the slick Billingsgate Stair—Gil Higgs draws his big arm back and pitches something far away out into the current. It is the edition of Tom Thumb, no doubt, for the tiny pages flutter like a moth in the river glow. Before it can sink of its own accord, a passing smack drives the book beneath the water, and then its pretty pages are lost.
I cannot hold this little spasm of rudeness against the man. After all, Higgs has spent the day cooling his heels in Greenwich more than a touch against his will, and he is the sort to make the brassy gesture once out of reach. Still, it is worth reminding him that he is not, in fact, out of reach. Nor will be.
“Ask your Maggie, Higgs,” I call to him, over the late noise of the market. “Ask your Maggie to show you her lucky charm. It will be snug in her pocket, or under her pillow, should she deny having it about her.”
At that, Higgs comes partially up off his bench and shouts something unintelligible, except for the curse with which he bites it off.
But he is already shrinking in the current, and I give him no more mind. He will reach home within the hour, after one or two quick drinks. He will waste not a moment before bullying his daughter out of her lucky charm, and once he has it in his hand he will turn it over in bewilderment and realize that here again is something he does not want, yet cannot throw away.
And he will never speak of this day to another living soul. And that is all one ever really desires of a Gil Higgs, after all. Very strong back, very tight lip.
Coming up the stair into Billingsgate is always a bit like entering the Plymouth Hospital again, though without the doctors to shepherd one through the chaos. Even this late in the evening, a soft explosion of noise and smell: fishwomen staggering by under their dead, gamy loads, muttering, cursing, feet splashing along through mud ripe with the accumulated oil and scent of five hundred years; stall-keepers shouting—a genuinely threatening tone to the pleading—and then losing interest utterly the moment you’ve passed their little fiefdom; bare-footed guttersnipes pitching rocks and the odd stolen bit of coal at ships from the embankment, and then running madly through the crowd, knocking fish from the hands of shoppers, fish they then scoop up and smuggle down the lightless hythe.
I could easily have had Higgs row me to the Temple Stair, or even to Whitefriars, both a stone’s throw from the Turk’s Head. But James and Johnson have almost certainly landed at the Temple Stair and paused at Johnson’s chambers in the Temple before proceeding to the day’s final tête-à-tête.
No doubt Johnson will want to have a word with his young African servant, Francis Barber, and have an accounting of the day.
After James made it clear that he had no plans to introduce me to his famous new friend, weeks ago, I took the opportunity of putting myself in this Barber’s way one morning, as he went out to shop for Johnson’s supper down the Strand. And after assuring himself that I was indeed a dear friend of his master, he chatted quite readily about the great man’s household. Johnson attempted once to save Francis himself from the press-gang, though unsuccessfully. Still, he took in the young African on his return to England, and Barber cannot say enough in his praise.
Apparently there are also in the house a daft old man named Levett, who haunts the upper floors; several dusty garrets full of books; and a stone-blind woman named Miss Williams, who lives nearby and whom Johnson visits without fail before turning in for the night—visits no matter the hour, mind you.
So it goes without saying that Johnson must land at Temple Stair and stroll by his little domestic menagerie, to assure himself that all of his various charity cases are thriving. And that means that he and James are just now settling down in their private room at the Turk’s Head, just now calling for their bottle and bite to eat.
And so I will have a leisurely evening stroll, up past the Custom House and down Lower Thames to Fish Street Hill, up to Cornhill, down to Cheapside and Fleet, and then on down the long slender arm of the Strand. The walk will give the two of them time to lose themselves in the fog of mutual congratulation that comes up whenever they are together. And they will have time to drink a bottle or possibly more, always a crucial consideration.
But as much as anything, I will walk up Fish Street Hill for the long, sloping view of London Bridge at night. It is a cunning thing, this massive new span over the Thames. Seeing it helps me to remember that though James would never willingly have brought me into company with his precious new literary conquest, the world often does not wait for James Boswell, Esquire to approve a meeting between two men.
Sometimes such a meeting simply happens, and no force in the Empire can either predict or prevent it.
CORNHILL IS ALL but deserted. The merchants and stockjobbers have long since trudged home to count their guineas. I might walk down the center of the street if I pleased, so broad is the thoroughfare here and so infrequently does a coach rattle into and then out of sight. It is like a life-sized model of London, every detail faithfully reproduced, but with most of the human figures left on the shelf somewhere to avoid obscuring the workmanship. In particular, the tower of the Royal Exchange—surging fifty feet into the night sky, only to terminate in the polished brass figure of a grasshopper—seems somehow less than real, shy of actual.
Just as I pass the Exchange, a small bareheaded man drifts out from the open arches of the Jamaica walk. It becomes clear after a second or two that his slanting path will bring him directly to my side, if not actually stumbling into me, and I stop suddenly to force him to cross the street first.
Rather than do so, he stops suddenly as well, five or six feet off to my right, and cocks his head at me. He wears no shoes, and the feet are milk-white beneath his breeches.
And I find that I recognize him. It is the mudlark, the one I sent swimming after James and Johnson this morning. The one whose vulgarity would have cost him an eye, had Gil Higgs half the ferocity to which he pretends.
The pattering rain has thoroughly matted down the brown hair, but he is smiling as he stands there. Of course he is a man who spends more time swimming than walking, and so the wet wouldn’t disturb him. And yet there is something uncanny in the smile.
“Out walking in this rain, are we?” he asks suddenly. The smile gives way to a look of exaggerated curiosity, as though the question is also somehow a joke at my expense. There is no salutation, no bow of the head, no sir to render the question any less provoking.
There is also no overt threat in his posture. He is a smallish man, but I remember the muscles in his arms and back. And a knife or a razor can always do what muscle cannot. Far too much effort has gone into this evening to allow it to be sidetracked, however, even a bit.
Watching his face, I put a hand inside my coat pocket, and find the dag there.
He takes in the movement, but shows no real fear. Only the same mock-surprise. He goes on then: “Might wager Old Greenwich was a bit of a disappointment, day like today. Didn’t get in all the sights you’d planned, have to imagine.”
“That’s none of your affair,” I say quietly.
He considers that, then throws back more nonsense: “’Tisn’t my affair? Well, isn’t that a shame, then? Hoardin’ it all up for yourself, this affair here?”
The challenging smile breaks over his face again, and suddenly it dawns on me: this young man, maybe two or three years older than myself, is himself well down the road of insanity. Now that I’ve placed it, I recognize the behavior from Plymouth and remember it well, for nothing could be more striking. The complete and utter disregard for rank and custom, the sly winks that say everything is a plot and everyone a plotter.
And I feel myself relax a bit. Here is no cutpurse, no threat. Here is a relatively well-functioning lunatic, a man whose mind fastens on the banal, the meaningless, and forces it to signify. I have dealt with his sort before.
“’Twasn’t what you were hoping, Greenwich?” he repeats.
“Actually, if you must know, it was not.”
“Shame, shame. Still, more than one way to skin a cat,” he adds, then takes another step toward me.
“You are out of luck, my friend,” I say, “for we are blocks away from the water, and I haven’t any further errands suited to a mudlark, at least not this evening.”
He stares at me for a moment. For the first time the smile wavers, and something else shows through, something far less sunny. He squints an eye. “There’s some along the river who don’t take well to bein’ called mud larks, y’understand. If you take my meaning—sir.”
I could swear that there is offense in his tone, as though he were the gentleman and I the shoeless and hatless wretch who has stumbled up out of the rain, speaking in riddles.
“And what do those who take offense prefer to be called?”
“River lark’s got a sweeter sound to it. Much sweeter, most people think.”
I tip my hat. “I shall remember it. And now you will do me the favor of getting on about your business.” Both he and I continue to ignore my odd posture, right arm held across my chest, hand still thrust into the inner coat pocket there, dag still curled against the palm of my hand.
He looks at me and then takes a step or two closer. Again, the mark of the truly mad: an instinct for survival so faint that they will cut off their own toes to see if it is possible to walk without them. He certainly must know from my red coat that I can defend myself.
Yet finally his gaze does come to rest on the hand I have thrust in my pocket. And he stops with still a foot or two between us. Then he shakes his head, almost chuckling to himself, even muttering a word or two under his breath. Finally, in a bid for sarcasm, he answers me as properly as he is able, which suggests more than a bit of schooling at some point in his drifting: “Well, perhaps you will do me the very grand favor of telling me, sir, just what exactly is my business this night, sir?”
He is looking at me with such intensity, head cocked again to one side, that finally I can do nothing but laugh myself. The earnestness, mingled with the absurdity of his milk-white feet jutting from his flannel breeches, it is all too much. This is the effect of the Thames running in and out a man’s ears for the better part of a lifetime.
“You try a man’s patience,” the lark continues, and he seems utterly serious.
Which is about all I can stomach of his insolence. “Off with you,” I tell him. Suddenly I stomp my boot on the cobbles, and he flinches, actually bringing a hand up to shield himself, taking a quick step back.
And then, as the mad are wont to do, he becomes suddenly solicitous, as though the heavens were about to come crashing down upon him, and only my advice could save him. He is all but wringing his hands now.
“I should go about my business, then?” he asks plaintively. “Find my place and stick to it?”
“Always good advice,” I answer, resuming my unhurried movement back up Cornhill, “for a young man who would avoid the gallows.”
THE WEATHER HAS turned genuinely vicious by the time I finish the deliberate stroll up the Strand. The wind and the rain now have real bite; although it is late July, one can feel winter teething. Every fourth merchant seems to have shirked his duty to light the street; every fourth cobblestone seems to sink under my shoe, driving up needles of muddy water. But the wet stockings and shoes are nothing, less than nothing.
Within the half hour, I will know precisely what James and Johnson have to say to me, and what they have to say to one another of me.
And these are the only things that matter.
St. Mary’s is entirely dark, not a lamp to be seen inside the looming mass. From the iron fence surrounding the churchyard, one would think it was Somerset House across the way that claimed to be the holy place, the sanctuary for seekers: light pours from the central arch and forms a brilliant semicircular pool there in the street. You could almost dip it with your cupped hands.
And I suppose the Turk’s Head Coffee-House—last in the row of dull brick buildings adjoining the Somerset arch—could be a tiny, subsidiary refuge, for it too sheds light and the voices of men audibly pleased with their situations. The house’s white window frames glow as though newly painted, and from where I stand I can see nearly all of the common room through them, certainly all of the space that could conceal my brother and his now more-or-less tame bear.
To be expected: they are lounging by now in their private room on the second floor, oblivious to all else.
Still, a thick knot of men stands before the fireplace, and I watch them through the window for just a moment to make sure they are all who and what they seem to be, mere idlers and hogs of the fire. Finally, as the woman of the house pushes her bulk through them to tend the coffee pot, they break up and turn and show me their faces and then re-form, never ceasing their empty conversations. They are none of them worth my consideration.
And so when I enter, I look at no one and I speak with no one. A few patrons perk up when the bell atop the door sounds, but seeing only a vague young man of twenty or so, unattractively soaked through, they quickly go back to their coffee and tea and port. I pause only to brush the water from my sleeves and to strip off my hat, and then I walk directly though the place, heels knocking on the planks, as though I have an errand to complete. And of course I do.
Before an instant has passed, I am walking down the dim hallway to the Turk’s Head kitchen, and I would bet a hundred pounds that not one man in the common room could bring my face to mind tomorrow, should he be asked. I have always been less noticeable than my father and brother, but since leaving Plymouth I find I am all but invisible. Light passes through every part of me but the red coat.
Invisible to everyone, that is, but the lady of the house. She is setting down a congealed platter of Welsh rarebits when she catches sight of me, and she all but drops the silver in her haste to come to my side. A boy of eight or nine sweeping beans from the floor looks up at me standing in the doorway, curiously, but the woman pushes his head down to his task as she passes.
She comes up to me, wiping meaty hands on a soiled apron, eyebrows raised knowingly, and a smile playing about her lips. This woman—whose dark glossy hair and sad green eyes were no doubt fetching when she was a slip of twelve—is another of Johnson’s charity cases, of course. He frequents her house and brings all of his acquaintance here because she is a good, civil woman, in his estimation, and needs the custom. He is determined to lift her house single-handedly into profitability.
And for that—because Johnson has offered her his very public attention and concern—I wanted very much to dislike the widow, Mrs. Parry. I was certain she took his aid for granted. But having come twice in the last week to discuss the details of tonight’s festivities with her, I have seen that no creature could be more fawningly grateful, more utterly in awe of the great man. There is more than a little of the pleading spaniel about her, a fat, mooning, greedy spaniel.
And that has allowed me not merely to dislike her, but to go most of the remaining distance to hating her.
“They are here, sir,” she stage-whispers, “settled in above, just as you wished. They called for their favorite room almost to the second when you said they would.” Her eyes are actually crinkling with pleasure, which is understandable. As coffeehouses go, this one is well aired, but yet it is a dull life of boiling grounds and scavenging coppers. Not tonight, though.
Because tonight I have offered her the chance to plan a surprise birthday party.
It isn’t the sort of party she might plan herself, and there are a few aspects of it that she would have otherwise, but in the main she is delighted to be my co-conspirator.
I show my own teeth and raise my own eyebrows. “That is most excellent news, Mrs. Parry. One hates to have a party spoilt. And you’ve reserved the other two rooms, as we discussed?”
She is nodding before I’ve finished my sentence, so eager is she to demonstrate compliance. “Everything up the stairs is your own, sir, all the three rooms together. I’ve never understood why the gentlemen prefer the room to the back rather than the room over the street, which has a lovely lookout over the Strand. But I suppose it’s the carriage wheels and the dust. I’ve placed the roast hen and the other things in the empty room, as you wished, and I’ll be taking the gentlemen their meal directly.
“And I’ve just ten minutes ago taken them the bottle of port. Their first bottle was standing just half empty on the table, just as you wished, sir. They were surprised to see the second, for they hadn’t rung, but says I, it comes from an admirer of Mr. Johnson’s, and he did look so very pleased. Most evenings the gentleman drink just the one bottle of port, and then maybe a pint more if they’ve a mind to set to it. Mr. Johnson looked as if he might send it away,” the mooning green eyes widened, as though Johnson’s displeasure were the worst of all possible worlds, “but when he knew it was a gift, from a man who admires all his books and wonderful writings, well, sir. You could see he looked so very pleased.”
A thought occurs to me looking down at her, the plump face shining with sweat. “Have you read Mr. Johnson’s work, Mrs. Parry? Any of his wonderful writings?”
She actually drops her head. “No, sir. I haven’t, to speak truth. Oh, I am terrible, sir.” Her thoughts move slowly enough from one side of her mind to the other, before reaching her lips, that one can almost track their shambling progress beneath the brunette coils. “I can read, though, as could my husband, and I will read the Good Book of a morning. And my husband would read his Bunyan, whilst he lived.”
“Do you not know, then, for what particular book it is that Johnson is renowned above all others?”
A pause. “No, sir.”
“Truly? You’ve never once heard it mentioned?”
The eyes are wide now. But she shakes her head.
I cannot keep the disbelief out of my voice. “It is the Dictionary, Mrs. Parry.”
She gasps, but says not a word, and I cannot help but laugh in disbelief. “Mrs. Parry, it is the dictionary of your language. He is the first man to accurately draw a map of the English language entire. No explorer of China or the African coast has ever or will ever do more. That you and I may understand one another so perfectly is in no small part a tribute to the work of the man sipping port in that little chamber upstairs.”
I can tell that my words will elicit a long, stumbling apology— for her careless reading, for her faulty education, for who and what she is—and it is something I can certainly do without. And so I move things along. “But let us talk literature another day. You will remember, madam, that we will have guests this evening, a goodly number, though I cannot say at the moment precisely how many.” A significant pause then, my eye directly on hers. “And as I indicated when last we spoke, some of those guests will be women, and some of those may be women with whom Mr. Johnson would not wish publicly to be associated. We understand one another, madam.”
As I say, she does not like this particular aspect of the surprise party—has not since I mentioned it in passing last week—but for all her protestations of moral rectitude, Mrs. Parry understands that in addition to paying her well last week, I will pay a good deal more this evening, and Johnson will pay well over the long term.
And no doubt these women of ill repute would not be the first in her private rooms, if we were in fact to entertain any this evening.
In any event, she nods, lips a little tight. So much for the decency that Johnson lauds in her. But then, if she has been lowered in my eyes, Johnson has been lowered in hers. We are all in good company, then.
“Excellent. To review, as you serve the gentlemen their meal, I shall come up the stairs behind you and slip into the empty room beside their own. Once you’ve satisfied them and they have no further commands, you will exit, leaving the key with me, and I will lock the oak door to the stair as you go down. My guests will be coming up the back stair, which you showed me and which seems entirely private and suited to the purpose.
“Should we need anything more than the food and drink already upon the table, I will come downstairs personally to request it. Otherwise, we are to be left strictly to ourselves. No prying eyes or peeping toms. Mr. Johnson will be highly displeased if his very uncharacteristic night of revelry becomes the subject of public sport.”
She is shaking her head, eyes on the floor. “Never, sir. Not in my house. I’ve told my other waiter, and young Michael, that they mustn’t venture up the stair. Private party, I’ve told ’em both. Private is private, I’ve told ’em.”
I put my hand on her shoulder, and I can feel the heat of the big body beneath it, like the lathered flank of a Shire workhorse. “But think, Mrs. Parry,” I go on, in the most soothing voice I can manage, “do think how grateful Mr. Johnson will be when I tell him tonight, on our walk home, the clever way you managed the details of the affair with me. Nothing so moves a man as an attention paid upon his birthday. You shall have his heart forever.”
She is pleased enough to forget the nymphs up the back stair, and a genuinely lovely rose blush steals over her features. “We do try our best here, sir. And thank you for your kindness to him. God love you for it, sir, truly.”
She reaches out very hesitantly, to touch my sleeve, which I allow.
“Not at all, Mrs. Parry. After all, a man is fifty but once.”
Which is true, with the notable exception of Samuel Johnson, who actually turned fifty just shy of four years ago, but who—in the mind of Mrs. Parry, and the Lord God willing—will turn that momentous corner once again tonight.
As I a m closing the door to the stair behind her, Mrs. Parry spins unexpectedly about and looks up at me, in order to exchange one last secret wink, and it is all I can manage to wink back at her. But then she is gone, her big hams and feet working the flaking staircase like a concertina as she goes.
I turn the key in the lock and place it in my vest pocket. And in the sudden quiet I can hear them, talking. Or, rather, it is Johnson I can hear, the insistent bass vibrations of the voice working their way through the thin walls.
Wrapping my fist about the door’s knob, I give it a silent experimental pull. I have already tested it earlier in the week, when I inspected the upstairs rooms with Mrs. Parry, but there is no shame in reassuring oneself. It is a good door, this, solid oak, newly fitted up. A man might batter his way through it with the proper tools, but it is thick enough to defeat even the largest and most determined shoulder.
Treading lightly, I turn and make my way along the narrow passage. It is decently lit by a single lamp midway down. A threadbare green carpet snakes down the heart of the passage, tacked pragmatically to the floor, and I can move all but noiselessly.
Not that I worry overly much about noise. For all James and his guest know, the other chambers on this floor will be occupied with other drinkers, as are they ordinarily. They have no idea that I’ve taken possession of the rooms surrounding them, of the entire floor. It is a surprise party, after all.
Before me lie four doors. First on my right, the door to my own empty chamber; then on my left, a smaller, colder room for which I have no use this evening; and then, finally, the room containing James and Johnson, their bottles of port, their fire, their beefsteaks, the culmination of their lovely day’s excursion together.
And away beyond their chamber—directly opposite me—the door leading to the house’s back staircase. This door gives me not nearly the satisfaction of the first: it is a paneled door, thinner, and rattles a bit in its frame. Still, it has a lock, and I have the key, and once I’ve used it I retrace my steps down the passage with decent confidence.
My own chamber is prepared as specified: the meal sits cooling upon the board, a bottle of wine stands open, a second unopened but at the ready, and a pretty range of glasses has been laid out for my guests. A tidy fire plays in the grate.
It would be an admirable little welcome for guests, if any were expected; but even so, here are all my needs of the next half hour very adequately met. I have not eaten for hours, and only the Lord knows how long it will be before I have the chance again. So I must sup. And of course the curiosity to hear their conversation as I do so is overwhelming. Fortunately, no amanuensis is necessary here—I have had the table placed near the wall connecting this chamber to James’s. And as I sit down to my meal, I can hear their voices clearly enough to follow their conversation.
James is speaking of our family—bragging of it, that is to say, and of the family seat at Auchinleck, the newly built house and the Old. His voice is a bit higher in pitch and lower in volume than Johnson’s, and so I merely manage to follow the drift. But I have heard him speak at length many times of those he invariably refers to as our “venerable ancestors,” and I would guess that he has been speaking now for the better part of half an hour on the subject.
But when Johnson’s voice booms, I hear every word.
“I must be there, sir,” Johnson insists, “and we will live in the Old Castle; and if there is no room remaining, why then we will build one.” And then the two of them go about the business of planning the inconceivable: a trip together to Scotland, which Johnson claims to detest, and particularly the family’s Auchinleck estate, which James claims to love.
It is a thing I could not have imagined. As I listen, I can feel the anger suddenly stirring its limbs inside me again. It makes my breath come short and the blood suddenly charge in my veins.
I have an impulse to pick up the chair next to me and dash it against the wall, to throw the two of them into a panic, to let them know their words have immediate consequences.
Still, it won’t do to approach the most delicate part of the evening in a rage. Too much planning has gone into the day, and too much may still be gained.
I take off my coat and force myself instead to begin eating the meal laid out for me, tearing into the chicken and wolfing it silently down, but without a trace of satisfaction as I do so. The meat seems to drop into my stomach and away from me somehow, without ever lessening or reaching the hunger. Of the wine I drink little, a sip here or there, nothing to dull the senses or the reflexes.
And I cannot help but brood and simmer. It is not enough that they would claim the Town as their own and publicly deny me any share in its more exquisite pleasures. It is not enough that the two of them have thrown me only private scraps of friendship, never acknowledging me in the light of day to one another, or to their host of powerful friends. Not enough that of the entire city of London, they have left me the run of a single room beside a damp, stinking stable.
Now they are laying plans to work the same neat trick at Auchinleck, my own home. To make me a stranger there as well.
I listen to Johnson’s voice filling the room next door, and I cannot help but wonder: Can there be two Samuel Johnsons, in fact, stalking the streets, haunting the coffeehouses? Two rough citizens, twins for all the world, yet one so ferocious and unreachable, the other so very present and kind and near?
WE MET FIRST on London Bridge, yes, but after that he knew where to find me, and that he might find me, when he would.
Up Fish Street Hill, through the disheveled courtyard of the Starr Inn, and past the stable he would come, every week or so, late at night, once he had laid his own domestic menagerie to sleep, salved his conscience with a visit to the blind Mrs. Williams—then would Johnson come and knock softly.
And I would open the door to him, for reasons not so different from those motivating my brother: Johnson and I were also necessary to one another. We were also two fractions who had somehow stumbled onto the secret of the whole number, though another number entirely, of course.
He needed to come at night, when his presence would pass unremarked; he needed secrecy. And I needed him any which way I might have him, if only to feel as though secrets might exist for the purpose of including as well as excluding me.
Always we drank a glass of wine or two at my small table, and never was the wine the reason for his presence. Always we lay and fell together to sleep, and never was there more or less to it than a deep, abiding togetherness. A sense that sleep might come now because trouble could not.
And yet that is not the entire truth. There was something more.
Some nights I would wake in the smallest hours to find him no longer beside me, candlelight falling from the table across the room. His heavy body eclipsing the candle before him, he would be stretched across the table top, head cradled on his left arm, sleeves open and dangling, his right hand moving slowly but tirelessly back and forth across the page. I would lie there and watch him as he watched the pen twitching in his own hand, puzzled over it himself like a mouse he’d surprised foraging in the dark.
I padded over to him one night and stood just behind him in my bare feet.
What are you writing, I asked, as softly as I could.
He started at the sound of my voice, then sat upright, turning to face me in his seat. He had no wig, and his hair was shorn very close to the scalp. Here and there were scars visible beneath the short fringe. A faint rumble sounded in his throat as he stretched, and righted himself, and considered the question. He looked exhausted.
It is a fable, he answered finally. A silly, small thing.
What is it called?
It is called nothing. I shan’t name it until I am certain it will survive its birth.
Read it to me, please, I asked.
But he shook his head without hesitation. It is far from complete. It is a nothing, nothing more than a trifle now.
Then I shall keep watch for it in the bookseller’s stall, and buy it as soon as ever it appears.
He cocked his head at me, finally gave an exhausted little laugh. You will never find it, then. This will never appear under my name. I intend another pen name entirely, for even a trifle may tell on one.
Tell it to me, then, I demanded. At least tell me some stray bit of it.
He seemed to consider the possibility, a finger outstretched to brush the final words he’d written, to test the ink there. He turned the finger over to reveal a small letter e inked with perfect legibility across the pad.
It seemed to decide him, somehow, and he told me the story in its entirety.
It is the story of a girl named Floretta, Johnson began. Floretta rescues a goldfinch from certain death, only to discover that the tiny bird is in reality a pisky queen, Lady Lilinet. This queen has wondrous magical powers. And she offers Floretta the use of two fountains, one sweet, to grant her wishes, and the other bitter, to rescind them when they prove unwise.
For what does she wish? I asked.
What you might imagine. For beauty, for love, for gold, even wit and imagination. Each is a curse, and each time Floretta must then drink the bitter water of the second fountain, to return her life to a semblance of its original form. Finally she asks the first fountain for eternal life. And that too is a curse, worse than the rest. She grows old, peevish and diseased in her body, and she lives in terrible fear of senility, of imbecility. But she cannot die.
Johnson had his eyes down on the paper, and it was clear to me that he had now gone far beyond what he’d managed to commit to the page. He was describing the thing as it existed in his mind alone, or rather the ache of it in his own breast.
What does she do then?
Again he looked dully down at the paper before him. She does all that she can do. Floretta drinks of the second fountain and asks that her immortality be taken from her. An act that renders her mortal once again. The pisky stands over her as the life ebbs from her body.
I waited, but there was no more. With the candle obscured behind him, his expression was hidden from view.
Is there no more to the story? I asked finally.
Only this, he said, and then slowly brought his lips to mine. Again, it was not like Gentleman’s kiss, not devouring, but warm, and human, and quick with life.
And when he had kissed me, Johnson drew back, his face again striped with shadow. I could see his lips move, but not his eyes. Lilinet kisses Floretta and then watches over her as she passes into death. Thus ends the tale, he said.
Something in his voice made my heart stumble.
That is the end of your fable? I asked finally. Is there no way for Floretta to be wakened, no charm to heal her? Even from the sovereign of these magic beings? It cannot be so.
He shook his head, then folded the page carefully. No, she must die. And once dead, she must remain so.
But you are the writer, I protested. You have only to wish it to make it so.
There was silence as he considered the accusation, and suddenly I could hear noise from the stable, horses being roused. Daylight was not far off.
You have heard not a word I have said, have you, John Boswell? he asked after a moment, then touched his fingers briefly to his tongue and pinched the candle out between them.
* * *
AT MY DIRECTION , Mrs. Parry has left a basin of warm water, a pat of soap, a nail brush, and a small clean towel on a table beside the fireplace. There is also a hank of lemon, which I crush over the water before dipping my fingers. I let them soak in the warmth for a moment, and then begin to use the brush on my palms, the backs of my hands, the knuckles, then the nails. When I’ve finished, I dry them on the towel and hang it on a nail above the fire to dry.
No doubt Mrs. Parry thinks me a fastidious host. But the truth is that the dags are short, snub-nosed weapons, the handles just half the span of my hand, and the gold of them polished to a sheen. Excellent in their way, but a poor sort of weapon to manipulate with greased hands.
Now, as I pull them out of my coat and lay them on the table before me, my clean fingers adhere nicely to the gold. The guns were cleaned themselves this morning, before first light, and loaded carefully. My only regret about these weapons is that I will never be able to show them to James Bruce, the overseer at the Auchinleck estate. Bruce was the man who taught me the finer, and then the finest, points of marksmanship.
Summers at the estate—when my brother James was off chasing actresses in Edinburgh, and my father locked up in his study— Bruce would teach me to swallow my breath, slit an eye, and hit a hummingbird sipping from a bud at twenty-five paces.
The only thing James Bruce loved more than his pointers and his newly planted trees were his guns. And he liked to say that in the most important ways, the guns were no different than the dogs. They want nothing more than to please, you see, he would say, burnishing a piece with his thumb, but a man mustn’t forget that they are animals, finally, and they’ve a muckle mouth full of teeth.
And I remember the teeth, as I re-prime and check the loading of each piece. Hammers uncocked, quiescent, the dags lie together now on the table, giving back the firelight in a deep ruddy glow. I check my coat pocket as well for my little cartouche box. Inside it lies an additional charge, a clever paper packet containing both powder and ball. The charges that came with these pistols were exceptionally well manufactured, the bullets themselves deftly wound up in a little twist at the end, to allow the user to bite them off cleanly and quickly should the need arise.
And beyond their unusual quality, these packets held another distinct charm: the lead balls at the tip of each had been dipped in gold as well. They gleam like tiny suns. The goldsmith who made these pieces was an artist, rather than a craftsman, and apparently he could not abide the thought of unpainted lead marring his twin golden dreams.
But then these dags were meant to down a king and a king’s consort. Or so the story goes.
Four charges came in the cartouche when I purchased the guns, and I can’t run my eye over the two loaded weapons and the spare packet remaining without recalling the fourth, missing, golden bullet.
By now it must lie in the fob pocket of Gil Higgs, his index finger stroking it worriedly even now. Or perhaps it lies in a box hoarded away somewhere out of the reach of his drab wife. But it is safe, that much is sure. It can only be a treasure for Higgs, this strange gold-dusted sphere, though not the sort one cares to haul out and wonder over. Rather it is the sort of treasure that must be saved, but must also be regretted.
But I am confident that even if Higgs manages to hide the evidence for the rest of his days, he will never forget the moment when his Maggie opened her filthy little white hand to reveal the gilt secret.
Nor will he ever forget the little story she told: how a man in a red coat had given it her one day, in the street, and told her she might have another whenever her father said the word.
In the cheap mirror over the fire, I wipe my face with a damp napkin, untie and then retie my longish hair. There is a small scar running into the dark brow over my left eye, a tiny white hash mark there, the companion to a larger mark under the hair at the back of my head. Both are mementos of the fight at the water kiosk in Edinburgh years ago, and both, in that indirect way, gifts of my brother. I wet my finger and smooth the dark hair of the brow over the hairless notch, as I do when I would be presentable.
Thus satisfied, I put on my coat and return the pistols to their facing pockets beneath my arms. Then I seat my hat, cocking it forward a touch, to the left a touch. If ever a man should remember his military training and dignity, it is now.
Only then do I leave the room, walk directly down the short span of hallway, and rap twice quickly, loudly on the door to their chamber. There is a marked silence, and a pause: clearly this is no Mrs. Parry begging entrance.
And then, before either can answer, I simply open the door and walk in.