A Most Extraordinary Pursuit (7 page)

“I think that we often judge harshly what we fear most.”

I snapped, “Or perhaps I'm right, and he's only a fool, after all.”

“A fool he may be, but remember that the duchess considers him a friend. So might you, perhaps, if you allowed yourself.”

“I have no wish to become Lord Silverton's friend.”

“Why not? It's just as easy to be his friend as not, and our life on this earth is too short and uncertain not to take friendship when it's offered.”

“He hasn't offered me his friendship, not as such. I was thrust upon him, or he upon me. Either way, he's hardly the sort of man a decent woman should want as a friend. He speaks too freely, lives too freely—”

“My dear Emmeline. When did you become such a rigid moral character?”

When I describe my father's actions and expressions, I must emphasize that I never actually looked at his face, not directly. Not that I was afraid of the illusion itself, which I knew could not harm me; I think, instead, I was afraid that it might disappear if I turned to address him face-to-face, and in those days, even an illusion of my father—a
hallucination
, as I believe the scientists call them—was better than no father at all. My impressions of him inhabited the periphery of my vision, not quite distinct, and relied as much upon memory and instinct as sight itself. You might say that the illusion itself was an illusion.

I said, into my papers, “You were the one who taught me to do what is right, Papa.”

He didn't answer, and when I stole another sidelong glance at the chair beneath the porthole, he had vanished, leaving me alone to wonder what I had done
wrong.

There were four young women and three young men on the dais in the center of the hall, and all were dazzling to the eye, richly clothed and anointed in oil, but the Hero shone out amongst them all. He stood as tall as a warhorse, bearing the shoulders of a great ox, and his fair hair was lustrous in the glow of the torches. He refused the wine that the Lady placed before him, and ate only meat and vegetables and water, and when he spoke the men around him grew quiet, for he had the voice of a king.

The Lady knew that concubines were sent to the tributes' chambers in the evening for the pleasure of the male youths, so when the feast concluded she donned the veils of the slave women and knocked upon the door that belonged to the Hero . . .

T
HE
B
OOK
OF
T
IME
,
A. M. H
AYWOOD
(1921)

T
he main saloon of the
Isolde
took up the entire width of the ship along a fifty-foot section of her main and upper decks, topped by a brilliant stained glass dome that was presently crackling with rain, though not loudly enough to drown out the voice of Caruso from the gramophone inhabiting a substantial cabinet on the port side.

“What the devil's that?” said Lord Silverton, pausing in the doorway.

“It is Donizetti.”

“Damned mournful bloke. Haven't we got anything a bit more cheerful?
Pirates of Penzance
, now that's a jolly farce. Or else—whatsit—that charming little jig a year or two back—
Merrie England.
Marvelous stuff.”

I rose to a sitting position. “No.”

Silverton strolled to the gramophone and propped his long body against the cabinet. “Still a bit green about the gills, are we?”

“Touch that needle at your peril, sir.”

He held up his hands and waited politely for the end of the aria, at which point he raised the arm of the gramophone with a single finger and set it aside, in the same manner he might dispose of a soiled napkin. “Just how the devil do you know what he's caterwauling about? Or does it matter?”

“Of course it matters. Nemorino has joined the army, and he's just seen a tear roll down the cheek of the girl he has always hopelessly loved, so perhaps she cares for him, too, except now it's too late—”

“Oh, I see. The same sentimental rubbish as you get in the music hall, except it's all right because it's sung in Italian.”

I folded my arms. “Have you come for any particular purpose, or only to malign a form of art of which you are entirely ignorant?”

“Actually, I thought we might have a little chat about old Max.”

“The Duke of Olympia, do you mean?”

“Do you know, I can't quite bring myself to call him that. The last time I saw Max, he was neck-deep in some damned filthy hole in the ground in Mesopotamia, swearing in five different languages.”

I shrugged. “I've never met him at all.”

“Never? How extraordinary. And now here you are, steaming across the Med to his rescue, in his own private yacht, eating his porridge and listening to his phonograph recordings, except he doesn't know he owns any of it yet.” Silverton levered himself away from the cabinet and collapsed crosswise into an armchair, allowing himself a splendid vantage of the rain-dashed dome. “The captain informs me we'll hurtle into the Aegean around daybreak, so it's now or never, so to speak.”

“What's now or never?”

“Why, sorting out how we go about this business of tracking down the needle that is Max inside the haystack that is the bloody Mediterranean Sea.”

“I thought he was in Crete.”

“Ha! You don't know Max.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small white ball, which he flung into the air and caught with the other hand, before flinging it up again to be caught in the first hand. “If he hears some rumor about a butterfly's wings touching a Rosetta stone in Alexandria, he's off on the next tide, like the cat who . . . who . . .” The ball paused in his hand.

“Ate the canary?”

“No, no.”

“Walked by himself?”

“No, dash it. Something to do with yarn.” He shook his head and sent the ball back into the air. “Well, it's gone now. But you know what I mean.”

“I don't believe I do. In any case, the Rosetta stone is now safe inside the sturdy walls of the British Museum, thank goodness, and— What
is
that?”

“This?” He held up the ball. “It's a cricket ball, of course.”

“But why on earth are you flinging it about like that?”

“For sport, Truelove.” He tapped his wide golden forehead with the ball. “I find it greases the old gears when the mechanism's got stuck. Perhaps you ought to try it. You look as if you could use a bit of mental focus, at the moment. All pink about the cheeks and green about the gills. Rather ghastly, in a charming sort of way.
Think
, now. Why might upstanding Max leave his Cretan post in the middle of winter, without leaving word to his nearest and dearest?”

“Has he
really
left it? We only know for certain that he's not replied to anyone's messages. Perhaps he's been busy. It's not impossible that he hasn't even received these messages to begin with.”

“There is the matter of the Greek official, to whom he's delinquent in sending his regular reports.”

“He may have his own reasons for that.”

Smack
went the cricket ball into Silverton's left palm. “By George, if you're not swimming in optimism this afternoon. Determined not to fear the worst, are you?”

“I see no reason to borrow trouble. There's usually a simple explanation for these conundrums.”

“Conundrum.”
Smack.
“Now there's a splendid word. I do like a splendid word now and again. Makes one feel as if words actually matter. So I suppose the first person we should interview is this Greek chap who's got his fustanella up around his ears about those missing reports. He'll be as crooked as a mountain path, of course—your petty Mediterranean officials always are—and probably expect a handsome gratuity in exchange for any useful information, unless we can contrive, between the two of us, to make him drunk enough to empty his brain for free.”

“Certainly not,” I said indignantly.

He tilted his head in my direction and applied his gaze first to my face, and then my bosom. The ball rolled nimbly around his right palm. “There are other ways, of course. But I daresay you'd object to those, too.”

I swung my feet to the floor and rose from the sofa. “If you're trying to discompose me, it won't work.”

“Perish the thought.”

He watched me as I walked across the length of Persian rug to the gramophone cabinet. Lord Silverton had the kind of gaze
you could feel between the blades of your shoulders, and down your spine to the back of your legs: not keen or piercing or tingling, but simply heavy. Heavy and quite, quite blue. I turned the crank briskly and lifted the needle.

“If you're right about the corruption, there is always the possibility that these reports from Mr. Haywood—the
former
Mr. Haywood—were not reports at all, but simply payments,” I said. “I imagine his explorations in Crete require a certain amount of goodwill from the Greek authorities.”

Smack.
“The thought had crossed my mind, I will admit.”

“Naturally the official would be upset if the payments ceased.”

“Incensed, one imagines. Though not so much that he's willing to risk his own comfort to gambol off in search of the missing Max himself.”

The needle scratched, the music began. I turned to face Lord Silverton, leaning my body protectively against the cabinet, hands braced against the edge. He was now twirling the cricket ball at the end of one finger. His head tilted to one side, catching an unnecessary radiance from the electric lamp nearby, and I realized that the unsteadiness in my stomach had quite disappeared.

“Nor would he send any men from his own department to investigate,” I said, “for fear of arousing suspicion, and perhaps jealousy for his additional income.”

A slow smile began at one corner of Lord Silverton's mouth and spread to the other end. He enclosed the cricket ball in the middle of his hand and extended his index finger,
waggle waggle
. “Why, Truelove. What a deliciously devious mind you're hiding behind that mask of oppressive piety.”

“I am only doing my job, Lord Silverton.”

“A job for which you're singularly suited, I think. Well done,
the duchess. I only hope Max keeps you on, once we find him and deliver the awful news.”

Caruso sang:
O dolci baci, o languide carezze.

“Now, there he goes again,” said Silverton. “What's the poor fellow lamenting this time?”

“You would neither understand nor appreciate his dilemma.”

“Try me. I once wept at the Willow Song, though—to be fair—I
had
just lost a faithful old hound at the Boxing Day meet at Beaulieu the day before. Awfully broken up.”

I pushed myself away from the cabinet and wandered to a painting on the opposite wall, depicting the cutting out of the
Hermione
. On the one side, the Porto Cavallo guns made furious orange-pink clouds against the harbor walls; on the other, the silver moon rode at peace in the night sky, casting a path along the agitated sea. In the middle, the frigate herself, young and triumphant.

Sobbed Caruso:
E muoio disperato . . . e muoio disperato . . .

“He is to die by firing squad at dawn,” I said, “and he is remembering how marvelous it is to be alive.”

No answer came from the armchair in the center of the saloon. The drum of rain intensified briefly, and then abated. Beneath my feet, the deck was steady and level but nonetheless alive with the grind of the engine, the surge of motion through the water. As if the soles of my shoes were vibrating.

“Well, you're wrong there, Truelove,” said Silverton. “I understand the poor fellow's dilemma very well.”

I turned in astonishment, but his lordship was already striding toward the door, moving his long legs with remarkable efficiency, having left behind the white cricket ball in the center of the paisley cushion.

We put in to Piraeus at dawn the next day, under a sky that had turned a miraculous blue while we slept. Already the harbor teemed with fishing smacks and cutters and round-bellied sloops, a thousand sails pink and full in the rising sun.

I found Lord Silverton leaning against the starboard railing near the white bow of the ship, looking as if he hadn't a care in the world. He was cradling a porcelain cup in one hand—coffee, I knew, black as pitch and without sugar—and his pipe in the other.

“There you are.” He gestured with his pipe to the scene below. “I'm always a trifle shocked by how much of humanity is awake and industrious at this hour, and in such damnable cold.”

“Not half so cold as England.”

“But cold enough.” He drained his cup and turned to face me. “Why, you're all ready to go.”

“Of course I am. The captain informs me we shall be secured at the dock within a half hour.”

“Which means we have an entire half hour to take in this glorious sight before buckling down to the nasty business at hand.”

“I hope you've packed, at least.”

Lord Silverton shrugged his shoulders, which were covered in the thick checked wool of a Norfolk shooting jacket, belted at the waist, and looked as sturdy as Britain herself. “That's what valets are for, my dear.”

“Have you really brought your valet?”

“Of course I have. I couldn't possibly manage an expedition like this without Brown. For one thing, who would iron my shirts?”

“
I
certainly wouldn't.”

Silverton flashed his white teeth. “Why, Truelove, the idea had not occurred to me, I assure you.”

I saw the word
you
rather than heard it, because a bellow came forth at that instant from one of the ship's two funnels, nearly vaporizing the bones of my inner ear. I wanted to ask his lordship more about this valet—why hadn't he mentioned him before, why hadn't I noticed him among the crew?—but the noise from the funnel set in motion a flurry of activity from the various members of the
Isolde
's crew, rendering conversation impossible. Silverton lifted himself from the rail, motioned to his ear, and signaled us inside.

By contrast, the interior of the ship imbued calm, hardly a steward to be seen. I followed Silverton down the staircase to the landing on the main deck, where a vast array of trunks and suitcases had appeared out of nowhere, presided over by an extremely pale man with greasy dark hair that hung over a yellowed collar, and a suit of clothing a chimney sweep would scorn. A white cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth. I was about to say (incredulous),
Is
this
your valet, Silverton?
when the man straightened from one of the trunks and I realized he had no left arm, but rather a round silver hook, somewhat the worse for tarnish.