The narrow passageway outside their door let into another longer hall, then a stair. She climbed, shadows stretching and looming at every turn. At the landing she hesitated, then made her way along another hall and turned again, the logic of the servants’ passageways leading her to a jib door she felt certain let out onto the balcony overlooking the entrance hall two flights below.
Swinging the jib door open, she let herself into a cavernous space. She could sense the high ceilings above her, the grand entry below swathed in a darkness upon which her candle made no impression. The air of the house felt immense and foreign.
She stepped onto the balcony and touched the cool wooden rail. Making her way along it, she walked soundlessly to its end, then ventured a step into the blackness beyond. Another. And then a third, into a hall as broad as a thoroughfare, dimly illuminated at one end by rushlights. Turning toward these, she moved down the hall, past carved furnishings and heavy-framed artwork whose bulk she felt more than saw. She found herself before a wide carved door, its wood so dark it was nearly black.
An instant; a last, shuddering thought of the path she’d walked to this moment.
She knocked on the door, quietly—she trusted that he slept lightly, if at all.
A moment. Then a slow tread—from his closet, through his bedchamber, to his sitting room. His voice was hoarse. “Who goes?”
She didn’t speak.
She could feel HaLevy straining to hear on the other side of the door. “Barton? Some trouble?”
She knocked again, softly.
He opened the door. The light of his candle fell on her—he registered her pale face—and he startled as though the apparition he saw were the very angel of death, come on silent feet to seize what little remained him. He shied from her, his candle raised as though it might protect him.
“Por favor,” she said. He retreated farther—for a moment she thought he would close the door. Yet when she reached for him, he seemed unable to move. With the tips of her fingers she brushed, just barely, the weathered back of his once-powerful hand.
The candle in his hand wavered. A drop of wax fell to the floor between them. Slowly he nodded her in.
In the hearth in his sitting room, the coals of the evening’s fire still glowed. She sat where he directed her to, on one of the silk-cushioned seats beside the hearth. He settled opposite her.
She waited, letting his agitation subside. Despite the rich fabrics of his dressing gown, the same chill that had gripped her in her mean quarters seemed also to possess him here at his hearth, and he huddled close to the coals. Seeing, she took a poker and knelt. He watched as she added some bits of wood, and the room brightened with their small flare. At length he reached for a flagon, and poured himself a glass of port, and then one for her. They drank. When he’d finished, he lit his pipe.
Only when he was wreathed in smoke did she judge it safe to speak.
From inside the heavy, sweet smoke, he heard out her proposition like a merchant weighing every nuance—his ear attuned to the balance of profit and loss, shame and the slim chance of comfort. Twice he interrupted with questions and weighed her answers. She finished. For a long while the room was silent save the occasional shifting of the low coals, and the sound of his slow breathing as he considered.
Part 5
27
April 6, 2001
London
Two days, and he’d told no one. This morning he’d managed to shower, but midway through dressing he stopped in his boxers and socks and slumped back in bed. The slow drift of his thoughts drowned him. What kind of man, he thought, gets a girl pregnant, then doesn’t have a friend he trusts enough to tell about it?
The phone rang again. He didn’t answer. Helen had already roused him once, something about Manuel HaLevy’s death date. He hadn’t pretended to care. Sorry, Helen. Sorry, world.
The phone stopped ringing. Then, after a few seconds’ silence, it began again. The third time, he found himself standing, picking up his mobile off the table.
Helen, of course. Her voice prodding him in the depths. “Don’t trouble calling Local Studies,” she said. “Meet me at the bus station in Richmond.”
He exhaled, letting it take a long time. “Can you tell me what this is about?” In fact he didn’t imagine what in the 1665 death records could conceivably entice him to reenter the bright world of fact and consequence, in which dates had to be reconciled, dissertations had to be written, and a small floating fetus in the belly of a woman who didn’t love him or even particularly want to see him was likely to be the sole viable product of Aaron’s twenty-six years on the planet.
“It’ll wait,” Helen said. “I’ll find you in Richmond, at three-thirty, at the bus stop. Then I’ll drive us up the hill. Call the Eastons to tell them we’re coming. Say whatever you need, but get us into the house. Please.”
Please. That was unusual, from Helen. But nothing in the world could motivate him to call Bridgette right now. She was only going to make him feel worse—not to mention that giving Bridgette Easton notice that he was about to show up on her doorstep might be the best way to guarantee they’d be barred entry. Helen didn’t know, nor did she need to, that Aaron had already burnt that particular bridge. Their best chance was probably just showing up unannounced. Better still, he’d claim a stomach virus a block shy of the Eastons’ house and let Helen go in alone.
He put on his right shoe. Then, some time later, his left.
After a long blank space, he was seated on the bus to Richmond upon Thames, with no memory of standing in the queue or buying a ticket. Traffic slid past the window, nauseating. Had he ever loved Marisa? Or had he just been aiming himself at her because she was unattainable—didn’t he want, in fact, a softer, easier woman?
Marisa was offering him the chance to quietly duck away, from her and from the baby. And it seemed to him that he ought to take it.
At the bus station Helen stood by the sign like a lollipop lady waiting for her charges. She was wearing a scarf, knotted at her throat, and a blazer considerably more elegant than her usual. He detached himself from the small stream of disembarking passengers.
“Why so formal?” he said.
For a moment she looked disoriented by the question. Something about her looked wrong—she was pale, and her features seemed somehow disconnected from one another, as though they no longer belonged to the same face.
Then the familiar world reasserted itself: Helen Watt’s manner turned crisp. “I just had my final audience with Jonathan Martin.” She offered a wan smile.
As he returned her smile, Aaron felt himself rising to the surface as well. There was something right, wasn’t there, about the two of them braving it out, as though nothing were wrong. Something not false, but admirable.
It occurred to him that he might just have understood the English for the first time in his life.
“Was it a tearful farewell with Martin?” he said.
She gave him a look.
He said, “That look doesn’t scare me anymore.”
Her smile gained heft. “It never did, young man. That’s been the trouble with you.”
“Thank you.”
She bowed her head in acknowledgment. “A satisfying meeting, I’ll say. I told Jonathan Martin I never liked him.”
“You told him what?”
She raised her eyebrows.
To hell with politics. To hell with access to the documents. He and Helen seemed to have chosen, at the same moment, to jettison everything. “Did Martin reciprocate?” he said.
“Of course not,” said Helen. “He paid me an insulting compliment—offering the appearance of preserving my dignity while in fact assaulting it.” She turned a ferocious, professorial mien on Aaron. “Remember, Mr. Levy, to recognize those compliments for what they are.”