David Liss - A Spectacle Of Corruption

From the look on Littleton ’s face, I wasn’t sure he understood as much as that. “Well, if I’m to be honest, I don’t quite know of Ufford’s interests,” he told me. “You would think that porters are porters and tobacco men are but tobacco men, but Ufford seems to think it’s all political. I heard him say that he wants to see the Tories win Westminster and he’ll face the devil himself before he sees a Whig returned. You know how it is with these Church men. The Tories promise them that they’ll put them back in power, give them the right to tell us when to piss and when to shit. There’s nothing quite so near to a priest’s heart than the Tory cause.”

I spat into the street. One of the Tories who stood to win Westminster was Griffin Melbury, Miriam’s husband. I little troubled myself about the details of politics, and not living within the boundaries of Westminster, I cared less for that election, but I understood one thing with certainty: I wished Melbury nothing but failure. Why had Miriam married him? Why had she abandoned her nation- and me- for this man who would force her to change her religion? If Ufford’s effort to aid the laborers would get Melbury elected, I would prefer to see Ufford hounded and the porters pauperized.

I still winced when I thought of Miriam married to that man. I had never met him or even set eyes upon him, but nonetheless I had a clear image of Melbury in my mind: tall, handsomely proportioned, fine in the face, strong in the calf. He would be charming and easy in the English way. This much I did know of him: He came from an old Tory family of landed wealth, his father and uncles had always sat in Parliament, and he had two brothers in the priesthood. He had served before in a pocket borough, and because he was well connected with certain bishops in the Church of England whose power was strong in Westminster, he had been encouraged to run for a seat in that borough- perhaps the most important in the nation.

Melbury would have to be charming. He had succeeded in convincing Miriam to convert to the Church. She had been married very young to my Uncle Miguel’s son, a dour lad who died at sea having hardly known his wife. I had come to be familiar with her during my efforts to discover the facts of my father’s death, and in truth I believed that she felt the same love for me that I did for her. But despite what the novelists will tell us, we live in a world more inclined to pragmatic action than romantical ideals. We might sit about with neat little volumes and imagine the blissful love in a cottage, but such ideas are but phantasms. We cannot live them. Instead, we must eat and dress and comport ourselves with companions of our liking. And it is always preferable to live without fear of creditors.

Knowing all of these things to be true, I had nevertheless asked Miriam to marry me, but she had contended that our lives were not compatible. I understood that she had been right, but that did not stop me from asking her again. I stopped after three times, believing that more effort on my part would have only appeared foolish in her eyes and humiliating in mine.

Nevertheless, Miriam and I were ever used to be in each other’s company. I had discontinued my requests for her hand, but my desire remained, unarticulated but palpable. She knew it- she could not but know it- and she sought my company all the same. Late one afternoon she had come to my uncle’s house for the observance of Havdalah, the close of the Sabbath. I felt there was something more than usual in her attentiveness to me that evening, and by the light of the braided candle, with my head full of sweet scent of the spice box, I felt the heat of her gaze upon my face.

Miriam looked to me astonishing in her blue gown and matching hat, from which spilled ample dark ringlets. She was a finely proportioned woman and striking in her face, with her Iberian complexion and emerald eyes, but I should have been a fool if it were her looks alone that had rendered me her devotee, for London teemed with countless pretty and accessible women. No, I admired Miriam for her quick wit and lively humor and for her spirit. She had been treated shabbily by fate: married off as a young girl to an introverted boy she hardly knew and I daresay bore no love. Though he was gone within months of their wedding, she had remained the subject of my uncle’s management, and benevolent as it was, she had longed for her freedom.

Through no error of her own, Miriam had found herself at the center of the South Sea Company stock mayhem to which I’d connected my father’s death. She, however, fared much better than he, and the Company had paid her handsomely for her silence. That payment, in turn, secured her independence, though for a while she maintained a strong loyalty to her deceased husband’s parents.

As we sat together that night, the room slowly emptied around us. My aunt, the guests, and finally my uncle too, who knew well what he was about and wanted to see me married to Miriam nearly as much as I did. He left us alone as though there were nothing unusual in his doing so. Miriam might have objected. She might have excused herself in confusion, but she did not. She remained. She called for more wine.

We had begun the evening on chairs at opposite ends of the room, but we had somehow come together on the same sofa. I say somehow, but I lie, for each incremental move closer to her represented the deepest strategy on my part. I would rise to get something and sit myself one position closer. I would drop a button, leave my seat to pick it up, and sit nearer to her. With each step I measured her reaction, and each time I saw no disapproval.

And it went so until we kissed. I had taken far too much to drink that night, but I recall well how it started. We sat together, only inches apart, and she spoke of some book she had been reading and how it interested her, and I half listened as the wine and my desire rang heavily in my ears. At last, when I could endure no more of it, I reached out with my hand and placed it to her cheek.

She did not pull away from it but rather moved closer, nuzzling me as though she were a cat, and so I leaned in and kissed her.

It lasted but an instant before she rose and pushed herself backward. “What are you doing?” she asked, in the loudest whisper she could muster.

I chose to remain seated, that she might see her alarm was not universally felt. “I was kissing you.”

“You mustn’t. You know that. Why must I tell you that again?”

“Miriam,” I said, “you all but put your request in writing.”

She opened her mouth to sting me with some cruel retort but stopped herself, remaining motionless for what seemed an interminable amount of time. I listened to the sound of my own breath and the sound of rolling carriages outside the window as though they were the most interesting things in the world.

“You are right,” she said in a whisper, now so soft I could not even be sure she had said what I thought. “You are right, and I am sorry… I must go,” she added abruptly and moved toward the door.

I darted out of my seat and grabbed her arm. Not hard, you understand, but I would not have her going. Not now. Not yet.

“Why are you running? You don’t want to run, so why do you?”

She shook her head while looking down. It was clear she would not stay, so I let go of her.

“I run,” she said at last, “because I don’t want to run.” She took a breath. “Benjamin, when was the last time someone tried to kill you?”

I had not expected this question, and I nearly laughed. “Only two weeks ago,” I said, for a thief I had been tracking had turned on me with a knife. Had I not been alert, I should have been hardly cut- or worse.

“There are so many things I want for myself that you would give me,” she told me. “I know you would not treat me as a thing, an object, an upper servant. I know what kind of a man you are, Benjamin. But you hurt and you kill and you are at risk of being hurt and killed.”