A Beggar’s Kingdom

“Someone has to be Ashton’s wingman,” is what he told his mother.

“Are you sure you’re my wingman, Jules?” But Ashton backed Julian up. It was true, they weren’t ready to leave England yet. “I can’t navigate London without Jules,” Ashton said. “Your son is insane, Mrs. C. Riley will tell you. He’s like an autistic savant. His psychotic knowledge of London is both random and shockingly specific. He has no idea what the exhibits at the Tate look like, but he knows precisely when it opens and closes. He knows the hours and locations of nearly every establishment in central London. He knows where all the pubs are and all the churches, and what stores are next to each other. Though he’s never been on a double-decker, he can tell you the numbers of every bus route. He can tell you what West End theatre is playing what show. He knows which comedians are doing standup. He knows where the gentleman’s clubs are—though he swears, Mrs. C, that he has not been inside, and from the monastic growth on his face, I’m inclined to believe him. He can’t tell you what the best vanilla shake in London tastes like, but he sure can tell you where you need to stand in line to get one—Clapham apparently.”

“Explain yourself, Jules,” Tristan said.

“Because he’s still walking everywhere, isn’t he?” Julian’s mother said, shaking her head, as if suddenly understanding something she didn’t want to about her fourth-born son (or as Julian liked to call it “fourth-favorite”). “Jules, I thought you were better?”

“I am, Mom.”

“Then why are you still looking for that non-existent café? You’re not still dreaming that awful dream, are you?”

Julian was spared an answer by his father. “Son, Ashton told us you’re boxing again,” Brandon Cruz said. “Please tell us it’s not true.” After nearly forty years in the California educational system, the senior Cruz had retired and now kept busy by trying to save Ashton’s flagging store. “Your mother is very concerned. Why would you start that nonsense again after all these years?”

Once, to be in the ring was life. It’s not nonsense, Dad, Julian wanted to say. It’s not nonsense.

“Son, I hate to say it, but your father is right, you shouldn’t be boxing, you’re blind in one eye.”

“I’m not blind, Mom. I’m legally blind. Big difference.” He smiled a weary smile of a man being assailed.

“Still, though, why?”

“He’s trying to improve himself, Mrs. Cruz,” Riley chimed in with fond approval, patting Julian’s back. “He’s boosting his self-confidence, increasing his fitness levels—and muscle mass.” She squeezed his tricep. “He is de-stressing and revitalizing himself. Staying healthy, you know? He’s doing much better, honest.”

“Oh, Ashton!” exclaimed Julian’s mother, “it can’t be easy, but you really are doing a wonderful job with him. Except for the hair, Riley is right, he looks much better. Thank you for watching over him.” Julian’s entire family bathed Ashton with affection and praise. Joanne sat him at her right hand and gifted him a tray of homemade cardamom shortbread! Ashton took the cookies, looking altruistic and put-upon.

Wordlessly, Julian watched them for a few minutes. “Tristan, bro, earlier you asked me for a London life hack?” he finally said. “I got one for you.” He put down his beer and folded his hands. “If you want to display a head severed from the human body, you need to weatherproof it first. Otherwise after a few weeks, you’ll have nothing but a bare skull. You want to preserve the fleshy facial features at the moment of death, the bulging eyes, the open sockets. So, what you do is, before the head starts to decompose, you partially boil it in a waxy resin called pitch—are you familiar with pitch, Trist? No? Well, it’s basically rubber distilled from tar. Very effective. You waterproof the head by boiling it in tar, and then you can keep it outside on a spike to your heart’s content—in all kinds of weather, even London weather. How long will it last, you ask? A good hundred years.” Julian smirked. “Someone said of William Wallace’s preserved head at the Great Stone Gate on London Bridge that in his actual life, he had never looked so good.”

It was Ashton, his mouth full of shortbread, who broke the incredulous silence of the Cruz family at Christmas by throwing his arm around Julian, swallowing, and saying, “What Jules is trying to say is he’s not quite ready to return to the fun and frolic of L.A. just yet.”

“In London in the old days, they used to break the teeth of the bears in the baiting pits,” Julian said in reply, moving out from under Ashton’s arm. “They broke them to make it a more even fight when the dogs attacked the bear. They did it to prolong the fight, before the bear, even without the teeth, ripped the dogs apart.”

“Settle down, Jules,” said Riley, passing him her smart water. “Believe me, we got the message at the parboiled head.”

“Man is more than his genes or his upbringing,” Julian said, refusing the water and picking up his beer instead. “A man is a force of the living. But—he’s also a servant of the dead. As such, he’s an instrument of some powerful magic—since both life and death are mystical forces. The key,” Julian said, “is to live in balance between the two, so as to increase your own force.”

Don’t worry, Riley whispered to a miserable-looking Joanne Cruz. He just needs time.

To be on the meridian, in the cave, on the river, was life.

The rest was just waiting.

Finally the Ides of March and his birthday were upon him. And that meant that after a year of training and boxing and fencing, the vernal equinox was upon him.

“I wish I could bring some money with me,” Julian said to Devi a few days before March 20.

“How is money going to help you?”

“If I’d had money in 1603, I would’ve asked her to marry me earlier. We could’ve left.” It would’ve been different. “I’d just feel better if I had some options.”

“Options.” Devi shook his black-haired head. He was starting to get some gray in it. It was time. The man was over seventy. “Some men are never satisfied.”

“Can you answer my question?”

“There’s no easy way to do what you want.”

“Is there a hard way?”

“No.”

“Why can’t I bring money with me?”

“A thousand reasons.”

“Name two.”

“You don’t know where you’re going,” Devi said. “Are you going to bring every denomination of coin from every place in the world, from every century?”

Julian thought about it. “What about gold? Or diamonds?”

“You want to take diamonds with you.” It wasn’t a question.

“Something of value, yes.”

“You can’t. What I mean is—you literally can’t,” Devi said. “The diamond you talk about, where was it mined, Russia, South Africa? Was it worked on by human hands? Was it then picked up by these hands and shipped to where you could buy it? Was it bought and sold before you ever laid your paws on it, a dozen times, a hundred times? You think it’s sparkly and new just for you? A thousand hearts were broken over your diamond. Bodies were killed, discarded, cuckolded, buried, unearthed. The blood of greed, envy, outrage, and love was spilled over your diamond. Where do you want to end up, Julian? With her, or not with her?”

Having bought a sturdy Peak Design waterproof backpack and loaded it with every possible thing he could need that would fit, ultimately Julian decided not to bring it. Well, decided was a wrong word. He showed it to Devi, who told him he was an idiot.

“I like it very much,” Devi said. “What’s in it?”

“Water, batteries, flashlights—note the plural—a retractable walking pole, crampons, Cliff Bars, a first aid kit, a Mylar blanket, a Suunto unbreakable ultimate core watch, heavy-duty insulated waterproof gloves, three lighters, a Damascus steel blade, a parachute cord, carabiners, climbing hooks, and a headlamp.”

“No shovel or fire extinguisher?”

“Not funny.”

“What about glacier glasses?”

“Why would I need glacier glasses?”

“How do you know you’re not headed into a glacier cave?” Devi paused. “Permafrost in bedrock. Ponded water that forms frozen waterfalls, ice columns, ice stalagmites.” He paused again. “Sometimes the ceiling of the cave is a crystalline block filled with snow and rocks and dirt.”

“You mean full of debris that freezes in the icy ceiling?”

“Yes,” Devi said, his face a block of ice. “I mean full of things that freeze in opaque ice four hundred feet deep. Things you can see as you pass under them but can’t get to.” Devi blinked and shuddered as if coming out of a trance. “That reminds me, best bring an ice axe, too.”

“You’re hilarious.”

“You haven’t mentioned a toiletry kit, a journal, a camera, a neck warmer, and a fleece hat. I feel you’re not prepared.”