A Beggar’s Kingdom

It’s Julian. Mallory has stopped speaking.

The smoke chokes him, shreds his throat, tears at the whites of his eyes. The plumes are heavy, a canopy of ash in the air. Mallory breaks into a coughing fit. She has pulled away from him and is staggering along the side of a building, trying to hide her face from the smoke. He barely makes her out, even though she’s right next to him. He searches for her like a blind man, his hands outstretched. Mallory, Mallory, is that you? She doesn’t answer.

Julian stares into his empty palm. His right fingers are tingling.

Mallory!

He can’t find her. He can’t see her.

People are hurrying past him, but none of them is her.

One second she was by his side, and the next … Mallory! His arms ache.

In the black trails, all women look like her. From the river upward, a flame tsunami rises higher and then falls. It’s raining fire. It’s light, but there is no sun. It’s day, but it looks like night.

Julian finds her lying on the pavement, wedged into the side of a building, as if she’s trying to hide. Mallory, what happened?

She is mouthing something, but he can’t hear. The smoke must have paralyzed her vocal cords. He kneels on the stones by her side.

Can you get up? Julian wants to ask this. The problem is, he also can’t speak. It must be the smoke. Please let it be the smoke. Oh God, Mallory. How far are they from Cripplegate? How far are they from the gold, from the wall? How far from each other, from salvation? So close, so close! Julian’s legs, neck, chest feel as if they’re being stabbed with ice picks.

Why did he let go of her hand! Or did she let go of his? She let go and fell noiselessly to the cobblestones, and the burning sky fell with her.

She holds her throat. He holds his throat. He reaches out to touch her, opens his mouth to beg her, beg her not to die. I love you, he whispers inaudibly. Please don’t die before you are redeemed.

Mallory almost smiles. Pulling a crumpled piece of parchment out of her apron, she slides it into his palm. Julian tries to stand her up, but she can’t, and he can’t. Why did you fall? Why did you let go of my hand? Why did you run into the fire, why did I hide your gold, why did I take it? Why did you kill him and her, why?

She is gasping.

Timber is being torn to pieces. Julian’s body feels as if it’s being torn to pieces. The ashes of London rise in the black ugly fumes and are carried by the wind into Mallory’s throat, into Julian’s throat, into Mallory’s soul, into Julian’s soul.

He is convulsing. His throat closes. He can’t yell, can’t speak, can’t tell her what he feels.

Reaching up, she touches his face, her eyes clearing and glazing over. Julian …

Still on his knees, he tips over her.

Go, she whispers. Or did she say gold?

Julian, go and come back for me.

10 (#ulink_0176f437-9997-5b49-8af8-909a6626eb08)

Six Persuasions (#ulink_0176f437-9997-5b49-8af8-909a6626eb08)

EACH DAY MAN IS PERISHING. YET HE IS RENEWED DAY BY DAY.

Julian didn’t know about the renewed part.

But about perishing? Check.

Still on his knees, covered with grime and soot, he threw up in front of Sweeney. This time he didn’t get up and walk out. They had to call an ambulance and carry him down the mountain on a stretcher. He was taken to Queen Elizabeth Hospital and treated with hyperbaric oxygen. The hospital called the police because Julian had no ID, nothing but a coin, out of circulation for four hundred years, and a Bill of Mortality from 1665 clutched in his blackened fist. Julian gave the police Nextel’s number, and Ashton arrived at Queen Elizabeth with Julian’s ID and optimistically with a change of clothes.

But Julian wasn’t going anywhere. His body has been ravaged by prolonged inhalation of carbon monoxide, he was coughing up blood and had swelling in his lungs that was causing continued oxygen deprivation. Julian scribbled his signature on a document making Ashton his health care proxy, and Ashton talked to the doctors.

“What are you talking about, smoke inhalation?” Ashton said. “Like from cigarettes?” He was standing at Julian’s bedside.

Like from a fire, one doctor said. Also he has a number of burst blood vessels in his arms and legs, and Lichtenberg flowers down his back from his neck to his pelvis.

“Is that also from smoke inhalation?”

No, another doctor said. We see Lichtenberg burns after an electrocution.

Ashton refused to believe it. It was obvious they’d mixed up Julian’s chart with someone else’s. They brought out Julian’s chart, showed Ashton there was no mistake. They pointed out that Julian had complained of being electrocuted a year earlier. Then, they had concluded, it was psychosomatic. This year they weren’t so sure. This year, the symptoms were visible.

“What about the tattooed dots on his arm that weren’t there the day before yesterday?” Ashton said. “Is that also from smoke inhalation? Or is it from electrocution? Or are the tattoos psychosomatic?”

The doctors had no opinion about the tattoos. Tattoos weren’t a medical emergency like swollen lungs.

Julian himself was confused and on painkillers and refused to confirm or deny anything. An X-ray showed three fractured bones in each foot.

“Is that also fucking psychosomatic?” Ashton said, fuming at their ignorance, and at his own.

After a week, Julian was sent home with an oxygen tank to help him breathe until his lungs healed. Oxygen for Julian.

While Ashton was at work, Julian, his crutches against the railing, sat motionlessly on the cold rainy balcony and rocked back and forth. When you want to escape from your blinding rage, stop moving, stop speaking. All action feeds the beast. Stop feeding it.

“Dude, I beg you. Explain,” Ashton kept asking in the evenings after work.

Which part?

“Um, the swollen lungs? Electrocution burns? Breeches and tunic? The broken feet, the catatonia, the tattoos? Literally a single thing. What happened to you? Where did you go?”

Smoke inhalation is from a fire.

“What fucking fire?”

The Great Fire of London.

At first Ashton had nothing to say. Then: “Why do you refuse to be straight with me? Why can’t you reply to a serious question with a serious answer? What fucking fire?”

I just told you, the Great Fire of London.

Ahhhh!

You wanted me to be straight. I’m straight.

Julian stuffed the ends of the plastic tubing into his nostrils, inhaled deeply, and closed his eyes. I can’t explain any better than that, Ash. We’ll try again if I’m renewed.