Kitabı oku: «A Beggar’s Kingdom», sayfa 5

5
Lord Fabian

LATE ONE NIGHT JULIAN IS ASKED BY IVY THE MAID TO BRING some wine to Room Two, his favorite room. It’s an odd request, for Julian is not usually in the business of fetching and carrying. He doesn’t mind the chore; the evening has been passing without a crisis. He’s only had to throw one man out into the street. As is his custom, Julian is formally dressed, in black silk hose and pointed-toe black leather shoes. He wears a blue velvet waistcoat with dark red buttons. His long thick hair is shiny and down, slicked back behind his ears. And he has shaved his epic beard, because wouldn’t you know it—in 1666, no one has beards! He can’t keep up with men’s facial hair fashion. Considered most virile at the turn of the century—the longer, the better—beards are now deemed lawless and dirty.

Julian knocks. A male voice answers. The room is dim, lit by three candles and a low fire. In a chair by the unmade bed sits a big fat man in loosened silk robes. Across the room from him, by the row of candles, illuminated from the side, Mallory stands naked. The man in the chair motions Julian to bring the wine and place it on the table by his elbow. Julian sets down the decanter, takes the empty one and turns to leave. He tries not to look at Mallory.

The man grabs his arm. “What do you think of our beauty, sir?” he says, chuffing like a horse.

Julian still won’t look at her. Our? “Beautiful.” He yanks his arm away.

“Do you know who I am?”

“Nope.” Julian doesn’t bother faking politeness. He doesn’t need to. He’s in charge. His antenna is up, and so is his concern for Mallory.

“This is Lord Fabian, sire,” Mallory says softly. “He is one of our most kind and generous patrons.”

“I know who you are,” the fat man says to Julian. His puffy white shirt is open. His chest is hairy, he’s perspiring, sickly perfumed. “And you certainly know who the girl is.” He sniggers, winded even from speaking.

“Lord Fabian watched us the other night, sire,” Mallory says. She points to a tapestried panel on the wall. “From a hidden enclosure.”

That does not endear Julian to the man. He backs away to stand between Mallory and the lord, shielding her from the man’s lecherous gaze.

“You put on quite a show, young man. Well done.” Fabian wipes his brow with a soiled handkerchief. “I’d like you to do it again.” He pauses. “But this time while I watch comfortably from a chair instead of peeping through a hole in a wall like a burglar.”

“No,” Julian says.

“Pardon me?”

“You heard me. Mallory, get dressed, come with me. The Baroness is asking for you downstairs.”

“No, sire,” Mallory says calmly. “The Baroness knows where I am. She allows me this indulgence from time to time—because it’s Lord Fabian.”

“I should think she allows it,” Fabian says, bristling, “all the money she’s made off me.”

“Yes, you have been very good to me, my lord.”

“Come, Mallory,” Julian says, reaching for her.

She pulls away from his hand. “No.”

From me you pull away, Julian wants to say to her.

“I demand you stay,” Fabian says to Julian, “or God help me, I’ll have your job. And possibly your head on a spike.”

Julian walks out, leaving the door open behind him.

He returns to his room and sits on the bed, contemplating his options. Before he has time to get more upset, there’s a knock. It’s Mallory, hastily dressed.

“Sire, may I talk to you?” She shuts the door behind her. “Why won’t you help me?” She comes forward. “Is it because I refuse to come to you privately?”

“No.”

“If you help me, I will agree to see you from time to time.”

“No.” He frowns. Is she trying to make him more upset? “I don’t want you to come to me because we made a bargain, Mallory. I want you to come to me because you want to.”

“I’m too busy around here to want to do anything, sire. But you don’t seem as if you are too busy tonight to help me. So why are you saying no?”

“I’m saying no because I don’t want to do it.”

“You don’t want to be with me?” Her voice is soft, cajoling, her brown eyes large like a baby fawn’s.

“Not like this.”

“I know you must think him vile, but if you touch me, he won’t touch me. Don’t you want that? In some way, this is to protect me.”

“There must be another way.”

“There isn’t,” Mallory says. “Not at the moment. The lord wants to perform and can’t. This makes him angry, first with himself, and then with me. He says I judge him for his malady, and no matter what I try to do or say to let him know it’s not true is wrong. Unfortunately, the pressure of my willing body works on him in reverse. But then you appeared to us, sire, to me and Margrave! Afterward, the lord told me he hadn’t felt as aroused and happy in many years.”

“Good for him. Nothing I enjoy more than hearing I make that man happy and aroused. But you’re not one of Tilly’s girls. You’re a maid.” Julian is trying to shut his heart to her. “Just do your job and stay away from him.”

Mallory wrings her hands. “The Baroness allows me to be with him because he promised her he wouldn’t really touch me. He is my only customer. Mostly all he does is look, because that’s all he can do, and that’s the truth. I only do it to make a little money on the side.”

“What’s it to me?”

“The other girls get paid more, and I work so much harder.”

“So complain, Mallory. Speak up. The Baroness says you never say a word.”

“What’s there to say!” The girl takes a deep breath, and then lowers her deathless voice. “Listen to me, sire, please.”

Julian closes his eyes, to avoid looking at her. He wants to put his hands over his ears to not hear her.

“You’re an idling satyr,” she purrs, reaching for him, caressing him through his silk hose. “Why waste your unused pillar of gold? Put it to use, sire. Put it to good use.”

“Don’t butter me up, I’m not toast. You know I don’t want to be idle,” Julian says after a beat. “I’m just not going up on his stage.”

“It’s your life and your stage,” says Mallory. “As it is mine. Decide if you want to be in the center of it or in the wings.” She takes his hand. “In the center of it, with me.”

“No.” He turns to the window. What is she doing to him?

“Please, Julian.”

She calls him by his name. Next to the things she did to him when they were together, it’s the ultimate seduction. Will the vixen stop at nothing?

“The lord said he’ll give me a crown if you lie with me,” Mallory says. “A crown, sire! A quarter of a pound. A crown for a few minutes of your time. I make a shilling a week. I have to work five back-breaking weeks to make one crown. The other smuts, with all their experience, make three pennies a customer. Even Brynhilda’s tits fetch her barely six. And the lord is offering us a crown! Why can’t you help me? You did it the other night.”

“The other night, I did it for free.” He pulls his hand away from her.

“You may have done it for free,” Mallory returns cruelly. “But Marg and I knew he was watching us. We got paid for touching each other, and I got paid a bonus for touching you. Two extra shillings after you broke in.”

“Did you split that with Margrave?”

Mallory’s face is cold. “She makes plenty as it is.”

Julian is astonished. “The other night … that was you performing for him?”

“I beg pardon, sire, I hate to be impertinent, but … are you aware where you are? Where you and I both work?”

“Quite aware, thank you. I just thought you had been performing for me. My mistake.” Julian stares into his hands. This is Josephine’s acting life. Mary Collins told her lady mother: all she wanted was to be up on a stage. Josephine told him she invented a stage everywhere she went. Well, here is what the stage looks like in 1666.

Minutes pass. He pulls up his velvet sleeve, counts the ink dots. Seven. A week has passed since his first night here with her. “Fine,” he says. “I’ll do it. But tell your lord it’s a crown only if he leaves the room and spies through the hole.” Julian pauses. “It’s two crowns if he stays in the chair.”

Mallory beams. Julian doesn’t beam.

Without hesitation, Fabian agrees to two crowns. They should’ve asked for more, Julian thinks, as he pushes the heavy bed farther away from the man’s repugnant feet, and he and Mallory undress. Julian wishes he had money he could offer her instead of the toady watching them from three floorboards away.

He and Mallory stand naked in front of each other.

Julian really wants to touch her.

Can he even perform in front of Lord Odious?

Why, yes, it turns out he can.

He does it by trying to forget that Fabian exists, though that’s less easy than it sounds, what with the barrage of winded wheezing commands spitting forth from the man’s foaming mouth as he sits in the nearby chair and directs Julian—as if Julian has no idea what to do on his own.

Why are you standing there? Kiss her. You’re in a pantomime of love, Fabian says. So pantomime.

They kneel on the bed. Julian cups Mallory’s face. It’s not a pantomime, he whispers to his maid and his princess, as he kisses her, kisses her until her nipples harden and he hardens and everything else on her softens.

Fondle her.

Pull on her nipples until she moans.

Tug on her until she squirms.

Lay her down, pour some wine on her.

Open her, eat her pussy.

I didn’t tell you to talk to her, what did you say to her?

Do you like that, Mallory?

Yes, sire.

Do not ask her what she wants or what she likes, you do what I want, you do what I like. Turn her over. Get behind her. Grab her, so she stops moving. Pull out all the way, so I can see. Now thrust all the way in. Tell her to hold on to the headboard if she needs to.

Hold on to the headboard, Mallory.

The orders are barked only to Julian. But Julian knows, Fabian is not barking. He is begging. He’s beseeching Julian to be his proxy with the maiden. All things he cannot do himself, Fabian does through Julian. But Fabian’s shallow panting is so distressing that at one point, Julian lies flat on top of Mallory, even though his instructions were expressly not to. He stops moving and covers her body with his to shield her from the fat lord’s jealous gaze. Easing one arm under her, Julian slows between her hips and presses his face against her cheek, to cover her ear. It’s going to be okay. Are you okay?

I’m fine. She pats his back. It’s not me he covets, sire. It’s you and your able-bodied youth. He’s not looking at me. He’s watching you. It’s your strong legs he desires, and your arms that hold your weight and hold mine. Your hard stomach. Your hard everything.

They kiss in a prolonged moan as if they are real lovers.

I’d like to kill him, Julian says.

No, no, not until we separate the fool from his money, says Mallory.

Julian laughs, Fabian shouts, Julian loses his rhythm, and rhythm is so important in love.

Stand on the floor, have her kneel in front of you. Tell her to suck your cock, but do not discharge in her mouth. So what if the floor is hard. I want to see her on the hard floor. She is getting two crowns from me. She can take a little discomfort in her knees for two crowns, can’t she? Because you’re about to give her more discomfort than that. Tell her to get on her hands and knees. Yes, right on the floor.

Julian is in his own bed when he hears a soft tap. Mallory steps in, dressed in her morning clothes, gray apron, black skirt.

“Am I disturbing you, sire?” Her voice is a whisper.

“No.” He sits up.

The candles have been blown out, the room is dark. Uncertainly she closes the door behind her.

“I think the lord was pleased.”

“And that is what I was aiming for. To please him.”

Even in the night, he sees her blushing face. “I just wanted to say thank you for tonight.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I’m sorry to have put you in such a spot. He’s a peculiar man, I grant you, but he is generous, and very little is required of me.”

“And thank you for that.”

She stammers. “I meant to say that usually not very much is required of me.”

“What about the other night with Margrave?”

“Yes, we do that sometimes if the lord wishes it, lie together. She is my friend.” Mallory bobs her head. “Well, a friend and an enemy.”

“Where I come from, we call that a frenemy.”

Mallory smiles. “What a good word. Is it Welsh? Frenemy. I’ll remember that.” She doesn’t leave. She takes a step to his bedside table. In her hands is a decanter and a plate. “I brought you a piece of pie. Margrave mentioned the other day that you liked apple pie and there was hardly any left after supper. I saved you a piece and some wine if you’re thirsty.”

“It’s after four in the morning. Leave it. I’ll have it for breakfast.”

She sets it by his bed.

He waits.

“I’m so tired, sire,” Mallory whispers.

Julian swings open the covers.

She takes off her clothes, folds them, stacks them neatly in the corner, and climbs into bed with him. He spoons her, draws the quilt over them, and covers her with his arm.

“I’m worried about that man, Mallory,” Julian said. “I can’t help it. I don’t know if you are safe with him.”

“Oh, sire,” she coos. “You are so kind-hearted. Trust me, you don’t have to worry about him.”

She nestles against him, milling into him a little, murmuring something sexy and inaudible. Julian starts to say something, but she is already asleep. He lies awake cradling her, running his fingers up and down her arm, remembering how much Josephine had loved falling asleep like this back in L.A., in another life. They would deplete themselves there, too, and fall into a stupor at the break of dawn. What sweet days they were before the demon that lay in wait came for them. What warm days of syrupy, salty bliss, of ocean water, of lilies and superhighways. That wasn’t shadowboxing, that wasn’t a shadowlife. That was real.

Or is this real?

Julian clutches the sleeping girl to him, embraces her in a brothel built into the wall of a palace that’s about to crumble and be dismantled for marble. Josephine, Mia, Mary, Mallory, he whispers. I really believed our time had run out, even as I continued to search for you in the London of my nightmares—or is it the London of my dreams? You are my love, the heat of my heart, raising me in flames above my mundane days and dropping me naked at your feet. Where will all this lead us? Where will all this end? I wish I knew. I wish I could see the future. Because sometimes, even when we are like this, it feels to me that you and I are nothing but winged phantoms, Josephine.

6
Infelice

THE FOLLOWING EVENING MALLORY’S AT HIS DOOR AGAIN. “The lord is back.”

“He’s here every night now?” Julian says. “Doesn’t he have some government business to attend to? A bill to veto? A bishop to consecrate? A family of his own, perhaps? You’d think a man of his, um, stature had some other hobbies.”

“He’s a widower,” Mallory says. “He works late, and to unwind he comes here to spend a little time with me. I offered him a double with me and Marg. But all he wants is you and me.”

That’s all I want, too. You and me. Quietly Julian sits. His body throbs for her. Though not on these terms! he pretends to justify to himself.

Even that’s a lie.

To his marrow, Julian is relieved that the girl in his hands is real. That someone other than him sees Julian make love to her and says, yes! I see her. She is under him, and she is alive. Her arms are around his back. She wraps her legs around him. His hands grip her hips. She bears his weight. She lives. She is not a hallucination. She is not his imagination.

Look, I, the vile creature, see it, too.

The pearls are cast before swine, yes, but they are pearls, and they are cast.

Once again Fabian asks Julian for all sorts of things, and Julian complies. With every fevered caress, Mallory grows more vivid, Fabian more dim, and the silver piles up on the table next to the wine.

Julian almost forgets the man heavy in the chair and sees only the light moaning girl under him. After it’s over and it’s nearly dawn, she knocks on his door again and climbs into his bed. As he cradles her in his arms, he tries to make pillow talk in the foggy minutes before they’re both unconscious. “What kind of name is Mallory? Is it derived from Mary?”

“Mother thought so,” the girl replies. “She was sore mistaken. When she went to baptize me, she found out Mallory was derived not from Mary but from France.”

“Did your mother love France?”

“Oh, no,” Mallory says. “Hence her predicament. When she found out that my name meant suffering in French, she hated France even more.”

Julian also doesn’t like that her name means suffering. “Mallory is a good name.”

“Thank you, sire.”

“I like your name, your face, your voice. I like all of you.”

“Thank you, sire.”

“You can just go ahead and call me Julian.” As you used to.

“Very well.” Then: “Is your name derived from Caesar? Like a conquering emperor, strong in battle, virile, constant as the northern star?”

“I don’t know about that. Maybe the constant part.” He lifts his head off the pillow and leans over her to study her sleepy face. “Mallory, are you quoting Julius Caesar to me?”

She smiles. “I saw it in a playhouse once. Mother and I were walking past the Fortune a few years back when it was still open. They let us in for half a penny. I liked it.”

“Oh, you would, Mal. You would.”

She nestles into him. “Julian … yours is my favorite name in the whole world.”

And the next night, and the next, lust and love abounding.

When Fabian is away one night, Julian falls into a panic. He cannot be without her.

“He’s not here today,” Mallory confirms, peeking into Julian’s room. “You must be so grateful we don’t have to work—again. Now you can finally get a good night’s rest, be refreshed for the morning.” She vanishes before she can see his wounded expression.

Half a minute goes by before she reopens the door and pokes her head in. Her face is lit with a luminous smile. “You keep saying you don’t think I’m funny, sire,” Mallory says. “I just wanted to prove you wrong.”

Julian utterly loses himself in this version of his girl. She is quiet, unassuming, agreeable. She is never painted, yet her mouth is always red; she is youthful and lovely. Her body is abundant everything. Every night Julian’s carnal strings are pulled by his naked puppet master, first in front of Fabian and sometimes by themselves in the conjoined intimacy of his bed.

She is amiable and kind. This is how Julian knows the other girls are mendacious fools. They call Mallory wanton and cunning. This could not be more false. She holds his gaze, speaks truth to him with courtesy. No matter what he talks about, she listens raptly. She even tolerates his homilies on the fauna and flora of London’s public gardens. She tolerates them especially well. She is endlessly fascinated by his tales of the plants and flowers that have been imported from faraway lands like China and India and planted in the royal gardens of the kings and queens. On Sunday afternoons, they walk together arm in arm through the Westminster parks like a gentleman and a lady, he in his velvet waistcoat, she in her Sunday best. “Mallory, why do you keep your eyes to the ground when we walk?” Julian asks.

“That’s where the pennies and the berries are, sire.” Mallory smiles as she devours his heart. She likes St. James’s Park most of all, because that’s where they have the most exotic foliage, and the crocodiles in the ponds and elephants grazing. Once she and Julian even saw two camels! She’s amazed by this; he no less so. It’s remarkable to see a crocodile in the middle of post-plague Westminster in 1666.

Mallory loves to hear about the blooming things. She listens to him as if he’s reciting poetry, sonnets he had composed for her, borne of love and loss. She listens to him wax and wane about oleander and elephant ear, larkspur and lily of the valley, about golden chain and bleeding heart. She adores his stories of rosary peas and laurels, jasmine and azaleas, wild cherries, oak, and yew. Moonseed and mistletoe please her, hemlock and nightshade enchant her.

And in return, on their weekday morning trips to Covent Garden, Mallory entertains Julian with the things she loves. In lavish detail she recounts for him the one play she’s seen besides Julius Caesar and tells him about her modest dream of one day being able to attend the theatre like a rich lady—which to her means any time she chooses. He loved his wife so much, he built her a theatre so she could attend the opera any time she wanted, echoes in Julian’s overfilled heart.

“You don’t wish to be on stage yourself, Mallory?”

Coquettishly she dismisses him. “I don’t need to be on stage, sire. I told you, my life is my stage.” She confesses that if she could be in any play, she’d like to be in The Honest Whore, the backdrop for Othello. She saw it five years ago at the Mermaid Theatre by Puddle Dock when she was fifteen. Her mother took her. It was subtitled Humors of the Patient Man and the Longing Wife. Julian and Mallory are walking back from Covent Garden, pushing a cart filled with red peonies and yellow daisies as she regales him with the colors of the play. “The Duke of Milan fakes his daughter’s death so her lover Hippolito will leave her alone.”

“Why does he need to fake her death?” Julian asks. “Is Hippolito very persistent?” He smiles.

“Very,” she replies. “It’s one of Hippolito’s most endearing qualities.”

“But not his only endearing quality, right?”

“By far not his only endearing quality.” Mallory covers Julian’s hand with hers as he pushes the flower cart. “The daughter’s name is Infelice. Which means unhappiness.” Mallory shrugs. “Almost like my name. Don’t look so suddenly glum, sire. Unfortunately for Infelice, a whore named Bellafront also falls in love with Hippolito. He doesn’t want to love Bellafront back, because he wishes to remain faithful to Infelice, but he cannot help himself. He falls in love with Bellafront, too.”

Julian stops walking near St. Martin-in-the-Fields and waits for the church bells to stop ringing as he draws the girl to him. “Mallory, my beauty, have you considered the possibility that the new seductress and the former lover are one and the same?” He kisses her.

“That can’t be. Infelice is dead.”

“She is not. You said so yourself. She’s hidden.”

“Hidden!” As if the thought had never occurred to her.

“Yes. Bellafront is Infelice disguised.”

Mallory looks thrilled and stunned by this development. “You don’t say, sire. You don’t say. Well, well. Was I too young when I saw the play and simply missed such a vital detail?”

“Yes, Bellafront,” he says fondly, his arms around her. “I think you missed it.”

Julian doesn’t need to exaggerate any aspect of his present life, doesn’t need to embellish any part of his existence by hyperbole. In every sense, in every way, without any help from heightened metaphor, Julian’s love-soaked days here with Josephine are altogether marvelous and good.

Except … sometimes near Covent Garden, as they pass empty lanes of such dismal misery that they must put their heads down, Julian glimpses something else in Mallory. Something hidden. To comfort her, he tells her that the ruthless epidemic that took her mother and aunt is the last such epidemic England will ever have. Mallory doesn’t believe him, and why should she? Seeing the world as it is, especially around the nearly abandoned Drury Lane, his words are impossible to believe. She bristles as he carries on about the need to cleanse London of the parasitic scourge. “Please, sire!” she exclaims with barely concealed scorn. “What do you think we need here, an overflowing volcano, like Pompeii? The brimstone fire of Sodom and Gomorrah?”

“Yes,” Julian says. “A fire.” Slightly his limbs shake. He wishes he knew the exact date of the Great Fire. It was in 1666, right? He’s not sure of anything anymore.

“Look at the way we live,” Mallory says. “Fire, no fire. What do you think a little flame will do? Drury Lane will remain the same fetid alley, riddled with the dead. And my mother will still be gone. She’s the only one who ever loved me, the only one who tried to keep me from harm.”

Your mother is not the only one who ever loved you, Mallory.

“What does it matter to Mother what might happen in the future? She’s dead. Frankly, what you’re saying is nothing but cold comfort, sire.”

In the night, when they are warmer, Mallory divulges things about the Black Plague. They had suffered bouts of the pestilence before, and no one paid much mind to the initial stages of the plague. At the first sign that it was a real epidemic, not just a flu that was going around, Anna sent Mallory south to live with her sister Olivia. As everyone around her continued to die, the mother finally abandoned her house of bawd and traveled across the river to reunite with her daughter. She carried in her hands bouquets of wormwood, a most bitter smelling and tasting flower. “Mother had heard that it might protect me from harm. She made me drink a potion made from vinegar and wormwood. Oh, was it ever vile!”

“Did they paint your door?”

“With a bloody cross? Yes,” Mallory says. “Death is a pale horse, but it shall not come near thee, Mother prayed over me. Then her buboes burst, and she bled to death.”

Mallory shows Julian a sheet of yellowing parchment. It’s from the parish of Clerkenwell. The paper is called the Bill of Mortality. Every week, the parish publishes the causes and numbers of the local dead. Anna ripped it from the priory wall as she was fleeing.

Diseases and Casualties this Week:

Apoplexie 1

Burned in his bed by a candle 1

Canker 1

Cough 2

Fright 3

Grief 3

Killed by a fall from a Bellfry 1

Lethargy 1

Suddenly 1

Timpany 1

Plague 7165

Seven thousand people dead in one parish! Out of how many? “Eight thousand,” Mallory replies. Julian shudders. She leaves the list with him when she goes to start her day. “For safekeeping,” she says.

Does she mean the Bill of Mortality or her?

What happened to you, Mallory? Julian asks when they lie in the hot bath together.

I don’t know what you mean.

Once upon a time, you used to be in such revolt. When was this?

When I knew you last, Julian whispers.

Who has time to revolt, sire, Mallory says, her face turned away from him. I don’t have time for such frivolity.

The steam from the bath fills the room and escapes through the open window. Mallory hints she might like to escape, too. Where, he says, and she replies, what’s it to you. She is smoke herself, her skin translucent crepe paper, once real, now an ashen vapor.

Carling and Ivy, the cleaning girls Mallory shares the room with, have confronted her about her mysterious absences from their quarters behind the kitchen. They demand she pay them, or they’ll tell the Baroness she’s up to no good. Julian pays them. Blackmail doesn’t sit well with him; he knows it’s a temporary fix. Now that the urchins know he will pay, they’ll keep raising the price. But what choice does he have? The Baroness will not take kindly to his poaching the orphaned niece entrusted into her care by her two dead sisters.

But the second reason Julian pays off Carling and Ivy is Lord Fabian. Because things have changed in Room Two, and not for the better. A week earlier, as Julian was in the final pangs of his exertions, he felt a fist strike him between the shoulder blades. It was Fabian. He’d gotten out of his chair, waddled over to the bed and hit Julian. “Stop it!” Fabian hissed. “You’re hurting her. You’re tormenting her.”

“No, my lord,” Mallory said, underneath Julian, peeking her head out, controlling her panting breath. “He’s not hurting me.”

“You were crying out.”

“Not from pain, my lord.”

After that night, Fabian stopped requesting Julian’s presence in Room Two. That is why Julian pays off the hooligan maids—so Mallory can continue to share his bed.

Sometimes in the afterglow, while she lies in his arms, he tries to talk to her about a future that doesn’t involve the Silver Cross or Miss Tilly’s girls, or Lord Fabian, but Mallory always falls asleep, and the next morning is up and out before he wakes.

The bells ring, the children play, the ink dots on his arm multiply like summer bug bites.

He and Mallory walk along the Thames, through the parks, through green lanes. They stop for fireworks and carriage races. Whitehall Palace is open to the public. They stroll through the royal gardens, and when they’re not discussing unusual plants, Julian attempts a conversation about a life that might include something for just the two of them, that might include marriage and even babies. He talks about it in fantabulous terms, in the language of dreamers not realists, not as in, let’s get married, but more as in, what if we were a prince and a princess and got married and lived in a white marble palace like this one? Wouldn’t that be something? Mostly Mallory nods.

The immutable tattooing makes Julian feel ridiculous. Count the days, Devi said, but a few times Julian gets on with his day without marking the days—on purpose, not on purpose.

He and Mallory still haven’t talked about the future in the language of realists. He doesn’t want to rush things, push things, like before in L.A. when he ruined everything with his hurry, as if he had felt on some subliminal level that Josephine was running out of time. Here in post-plague London, he wants to live with her—and does live with her—the way most people live. As if they’re going to live forever.