A Most Extraordinary Pursuit (9 page)

He slumped back in his seat, stretching one long leg against the floorboards while the other bent beneath him. He was really too long for the motorcar. How he kept all those ungainly limbs under such strict control, I could hardly imagine. My own body was so neat and compact, so easily contained in the close quarters of the automobile. I shifted an inch to the left, and realized that he hadn't answered me.

“Not that it matters,” I said. “I'm sure we shall find a way to jog along in harness, until our mission is completed.”

The buildings were giving way to rocks and brown fields. Silverton turned his head and stared out the window, toward the distant hills. The motorcar picked up speed, bouncing over ruts, and his lordship was forced to raise his voice to overcome the gathering roar of the engine, the draft from the window, the rattle of parts as we fought the road beneath.

“About this Greek fellow we're going to meet!”

“What about him!”

“There's every chance he'll turn out to be a rascal of the first order!”

“A what!”

“A RASCAL!”

“Oh! Of course!”

Silverton braced one hand on the seat before him. “You don't sound a bit worried!”

“I'm not!”

“Still, you might want to sit back and let me do the talking!”

“What!”

“Let me do the talking!”

The brakes squealed, the automobile pitched forward. Lord Silverton's long arm swung out to catch me. A few feet ahead in the open front, the driver poked his head over the windscreen and let loose a fluent argument in his native tongue.

“Something to do with goats,” said Silverton. “And unnatural acts to do with goats, if I am not mistaken.”

His arm was remarkably solid against my stomach. His cheek had somehow angled near mine, smelling of some sort of piquant
shaving soap with which I was altogether unfamiliar. I said, or rather gasped, “Do you know Greek?”

“I have retained a lucky word or two from my early schooling,” he said solemnly, removing his arm at last. “Alas, mostly ancient.”

I craned to see the road, and indeed a herd of angry goats occupied the beaten dirt before us, daring the automobile to do its worst. Amid the distempered chorus of
maa-maa
, a ragged goatherd in billowing trousers exchanged a show of fists with our driver.

“The poor things,” I said.

“You wouldn't say that if you'd ever made contact with the wrong end of a goat's forehead.”

I reached for the handle of the door. “Is there ever a right one?”

“What are you doing?”

“Getting the goats from the road.”

“The devil you are!”

But I was already out of the automobile, shooing the goats with my hat. The air was colder than I expected, but the sun felt pleasant on my hair, like a warm and benevolent hand. The goats stank lustily of unwashed animal, making me think of the stables back at Aldermere Castle, but instead of turning genial brown eyes toward me, as had the Duke of Olympia's livestock whenever I wandered into their presence, the Greek goats regarded me with the shocked resentment one accords to foreigners wandering through one's village market.
Shoo!
I said to one, waving my hat with authority, and
Maa-maa!
he replied indignantly, bolting into one of his neighbors.
Maa-MAAAA!
complained the second goat, bolting in the opposite direction, and like tennis balls released down a flight of stairs, the goats
bucked and bounced into one another, swarming past the goatherd to the opposite side of the road.

I straightened myself proudly and set my hat back on my head, ready to salute Lord Silverton with a triumphant wave, but a hand clamped around my upper arm and a voice yodeled into my ear, smelling of goat and so furious that a fine spray of foam accompanied the words.

I jerked my arm away at once, of course. “How dare you,” I began, but it was really the strangest thing.

He didn't let go.

I turned my head and saw the goatherd's face, flushed and wild beneath a springy black beard. He was shouting at me—
shouting!—
a livid garble of words that defied deciphering, and I could only stand there stupidly and stare at him, trapped in the grip of his hand, because this was not how men were supposed to behave. If you exclaimed
Unhand me, sir!
with all the height and heft of good sound British moral authority behind you, why, the man unhanded you. The better sort of man even begged your pardon for his presumption.

But this fellow seemed not to comprehend what was expected of him, that he couldn't simply take hold of a respectable female arm, clothed securely in thick Scotch tweed, and then—to compound his error—continue to enslave that arm after its owner had commanded him to stop. Naturally one expected, when one traveled abroad, to find different customs and accommodations and what the French call
cuisine
; one even girded one's loins to welcome these differences as an enlarging of one's experience. But this! This was an outrage, a violation of human law, an overturning of the familiar moral universe. As if some presumptuous physicist had decided that time was not time, and mass was not mass.

I was almost tempted to raise my voice. “You offend me, sir,” I said, in my most scathing tone, almost as if he could understand me, and I reached across my chest with my other hand, took the goatherd firmly by the wrist, and yanked with all my strength.

He struck me so immediately, I never quite knew afterward how he did it: whether backhand with his knuckles, or in a closed fist. Actually, I don't think he had time to close his fist. All I knew was a voltaic blow to my left cheekbone that pushed the air from my lungs and sent me stumbling backward into the chest of Lord Silverton.

(Though, at the instant of impact, I thought he was a
goat.)

The Hero's voice bid her enter, and though the Lady's heart was brave she found herself trembling as she passed through the portal, for she was a virtuous woman, and loath to put herself under the power of a man not her husband. The chamber was rich and comfortable, and the Hero stood in the center, dressed only in a simple tunic and bearing his dagger in his hand, as if he had been practicing the use of it.

‘Fear not, gentle lady,' he said, ‘I am not disposed for company tonight. You may return to your quarters without molestation.'

The Lady removed her veils and said, ‘Honored guest, I am not a concubine, but the daughter of the King and the wife of the Prince. I have stolen here today to help you bring an end to this unjust slaughter of your countrymen.'

The Hero tossed aside his dagger and dropped to his knees before the Lady . . .

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

H
is lordship did not stop to assess my condition. He set me back on my feet and stepped forward. “Allow me,” he said, and in a motion that managed to convey both boredom and consummate skill, he lifted his fist and delivered a crunch to the goatherd's jaw, propelling that unfortunate man into a kind of drunken spin that ended over the back of an astonished goat.

Silverton shook out his cuff. “The trick, in these cases, is not to knock the chap out cold,” he said. He reached forward, lifted the man from his inglorious resting place, and began to speak to him in measured Greek, as one might explain some principle of arithmetic to a child. The goatherd nodded. I wondered how. His jaw was already swollen, and he was moving it about as if to ensure that it was still there.

In my shock, I'd forgotten that I had received a blow of my own. The pain returned with the memory, a sensation that began
with a sting on top of my skin and deepened as it traveled inward, so that my cheekbone felt as if Lord Silverton's cricket ball had somehow lodged in the space underneath. I took my handkerchief from my pocket and dabbed it in the general area of the cricket ball. The sting made me jump.

Lord Silverton finished his conversation with the goatherd—that is, the goatherd had nodded sensibly to Silverton's Greek lecture—and turned toward me. “Dear me, Truelove,” he said. “One can see you've never taken a fist before.”

I wanted to answer, but there was something wrong with my throat.

Silverton reached into his tweed jacket and removed a silver flask and his own snowy handkerchief. He unscrewed the lid and allowed a few precious amber drops to fall into the linen. “Whiskey's the thing, you know.” He stepped close, placed his left hand at the back of my head, and applied the handkerchief. “Though it stings like the devil at first.”

I jumped, but the two hands held firm, and a few seconds later a wonderful coolness replaced the whiskey's bite. “Is it broken?” I asked.

“Goodness me, no. A bit pink and puffed up, but that will be quite diminished in an hour or two, I should think. Or perhaps a day. Or two. I received worse in the Wall Game. I
gave
worse in the Wall Game, as a matter of fact, and I'm dashed if that's not when I first realized—”

“And the other man?” I said. The side of my face was stiff with pain, making it difficult to speak.

“What, the chap with the goats? What about him?”

I inserted my hand between Lord Silverton's fingers and the handkerchief and pulled myself away. My pulse was so strong
and rapid, I felt the artery twitch the skin of my neck. There seemed to be a dream revolving inside my head, slowing my wits. I looked at the goatherd, who had picked up his staff—the staff! That was what he had hit me with—and was staggering to the side of the road, urging the last of his goats with him.

“What did you say to him?” I asked.

“A bit of this and that. Back into the motor, now; there's a clever girl.”

He held open the door, and I climbed in, still holding the handkerchief to my cheek. “Thank you,” I said.

We settled once more in our seats. Silverton leaned forward and said, “Carry on, Nicodemus,” and the automobile lurched forward. The driver was hunched around the steering wheel, making himself as small as possible, glancing back at Silverton from time to time. His lordship handed me the flask, and I added a few more drops to the handkerchief. The pain was dulling into a commonplace ache, and my blood began to cool in my veins, replacing shock with relief. After all, it wasn't a mortal wound. Could, indeed, have been much worse, had the goatherd put a little more time and strength into the blow.

I nodded to the driver. “Is his name really Nicodemus?”

“So he has given me to understand.”

I stared at the tanned neck before me, the black curls ending in a thick woolen cap.

“I may have been foolish,” I said.

“Not at all, not at all.”

“But he was quite in the wrong. I hope you didn't apologize for me.”

“Of course not. I simply told him that, as my wife—”

“Your
wife
!”

“—as my wife, you fall to my responsibility alone, and should he have any further admonishments to deliver, he should deliver them to me. After mature consideration, he declined to do so.”

“
Well.
Admonishments, indeed.”

Silverton shrugged. “My dear Truelove. As I was trying to explain earlier, there are two things a lady should remember when traveling outside the gentle shelter of Anglo-Saxon chivalry. The first is that it's best to have a husband on hand to clear up any misunderstandings with the locals.”

I handed him back his handkerchief. “And the second?”

“Never attempt to interfere with another man's goats.”

I waited until I was alone in my room at the Hotel Grand Bretagne in Athens, porter properly tipped and dismissed, before venturing a look at my injury.

By then it was nearly eleven o'clock in the morning, and the elation of landing in an exotic land had fallen apart into exhaustion and a sort of suspicious disillusion. Not even the familiar gilded European opulence of the hotel, echoing the Duke of Olympia's mansion in Belgrave Square, revived my spirits.

The chamber had its own private bathroom en suite, and when I found the courage to raise my eyes and inspect my reflection in the mirror, I saw that the mark was not so bad as I had feared. There was a red patch atop my left cheekbone, more abrasion than bruise, and the skin had swelled lightly beneath it. I worked my jaw in circles, opening and closing my mouth, and every part seemed to move in order, though perhaps more stiffly than before.

But as I stepped back and viewed the whole of my face, the mark inevitably drew my gaze, as it must draw the gaze of any
onlooker. That is human nature, I suppose; we notice the fault first of all. It is the imperfection that fascinates us. Until the mark faded, everyone I met would struggle to look politely away, wondering how a respectable woman came by such an injury.

“How unseemly,” said a voice behind me.

I closed my eyes, but when I opened them again, she was still there, peering round-faced over my shoulder into the mirror, wearing the same old-fashioned blue dress as before. A matching blue silk ribbon now adorned her hair, stretching over the top from ear to ear. The effect was almost girlish. I thought,
Well, at least she isn't occupying the bathtub. Or, worse yet, the commode.

“It was not my fault,” I said. “At least, not entirely. He had no right to hit me.”

“But you were outside of the automobile, shooing away the poor fellow's goats. His
livelihood
, Miss Truelove. Of all the silly things to do.”

“Someone had to move them. They were blocking the road.”

The little head sighed. “Dear girl, there are certain public maneuvers best left to the gentlemen in one's party. I cannot understand why you must always jump out in front and prove your competence.”

I braced my hands on the edge of the sink. “I wish you would go away, Your Majesty.”

“Hmph. What an ill-mannered, ungrateful girl you are.”

“For what, exactly, should I be grateful? That you see fit to invade my privacy at all hours, for no particular reason? That there seem to be no possible means of ridding myself of your illusion?”

“You are quite wrong. I have excellent reason to visit you, and you would do well, Miss Truelove, to regard these audiences with
the proper spirit of humility, although I must presume humility is not in your blood.” A royal sniff.

“Are you insulting my father?”

“Of course not. It's your mother's influence I deplore.”

I turned from the mirror and swept past her to the door. “I will not listen to this.”

She reached out to stop me, and to my relief I did not feel the touch of her hand as it found my arm. “Never mind your silly mother. It's about Silverton.”

I went on through the door and into the bedroom.

“He is an unsuitable companion!”

“That is no concern of yours.”

“He will ruin you.”

I went to my small trunk, which lay open on the floor before the bed, and began to unpack my few belongings into the wardrobe. “He will not ruin me. I have no interest of any kind in his lordship, nor he in me.”

“He's much cleverer than you think, and his reputation for licentiousness, even among my son's immoral companions, is legendary.”

“All the more reason not to fear for me. I scorn the practice of wanton love.”

“Most women find him irresistible.”

“I have little in common with most women.”

In the corner of my vision—for I would not look at her directly—Her Majesty descended onto the velvet slipper chair by the window. Her skirts spread out against the cushion and spilled over the edges. “He will attempt to seduce you, simply for the challenge.”

“He will not succeed.”

“I have seen the two of you.” She was waggling a finger now, a
plump and unwrinkled foremast that bore a large sapphire ring. “He has drawn you into banter, and his conduct in defending you on the road to Athens won your sympathy. You slept against his shoulder afterward.”

“I did not.”

“I saw you.”

I pressed my lips together. I knew I had fallen asleep, soon after the incident with the goats, and that I had woken as the motor lurched to a stop outside the hotel.
Rise and shine, Truelove
, Silverton had said cheerfully, nudging my arm, and though I remembered reacting to his greeting with confusion and embarrassment, I knew with absolute certainty that I hadn't been lying against him.

But
had
I, at some point in my slumber? Lain against him? One cannot, after all, control the movements of one's body while unconscious. Had he only moved me away prior to waking me, in order to spare me further humiliation?

And if he had done this thing while I was still asleep, how would this mere vision of the late Queen—a product, after all, of my own imagination—how would it
know
that I had lain against him at all?

Her Majesty sensed my hesitation and pressed on, in her haughty old-fashioned voice that seemed to grow—this was the image that persisted in my head—from a bubble at the base of her throat. “What is worse, you have your mother's looks.”

I closed the wardrobe door and turned to her. “If you wish to be useful to me, perhaps you can use your extraordinary powers of perception to tell me where I might find His Grace, the new Duke of Olympia. Then my association with Lord Silverton will necessarily end, and you need not dread the weakness of my resolve any longer.”

The blue eyes, if possible, bulged further from her round face,
so that I feared for their security. Just as quickly, the lids narrowed into an expression of utmost suspicion. “I am not privileged to know his whereabouts,” she said, and then I must have blinked my own eyelids, for in the next instant she had disappeared, and not the slightest sign remained that she had existed at all.