The Wild Rose Read online

  There had been times—so many of them—when, longing for him, she would impulsively decide to return to London. And to him. If he would have her. As she began to pack, she would imagine seeing him again, talking to him, holding him in her arms—but then just as quickly, she would stop packing and tell herself that she was a fool because surely Seamie wouldn’t even wish to see her, much less talk to her or take her in his arms. She had left him eight years ago. She’d run away. Blamed him. Broken his heart. What man could forgive those things?

  A strong wind blew down upon Willa now, making her shiver, whirling away her memories of Mawenzi and of all she had lost there. She stopped trembling, stopped crying, and got herself down the last thirty feet of the climb.

  Dusk was falling by the time she made it back to the glacier. She didn’t have her gun with her, but she wasn’t afraid. Camp was not far. She knew she would make it there before the light faded entirely. She was limping. Her leg was bleeding; she could feel it. Her hands, too. Opium would dull the pain of those wounds, and the wound to her heart as well.

  Willa walked slowly across the snow, the sun setting behind her—a small, broken figure, lost in the shadows of the soaring, ageless mountain, and in the shadows of her own broken dreams.

  Chapter Five

  Seamie had been a guest in Edwina Hedley’s London house on many occasions. He should have been familiar with it, but every time he set foot in it, it looked completely different. Eddie was forever traveling and forever bringing home plunder from her adventures with which to redecorate it.

  There might be a new bronze Buddha in the dining room. Or a stone carving of Kali. Or a Thai demon, a dragon from Peking, a beaded fertility goddess from the Sudan. There might be Indian silks draping the windows, or Afghan suzanis, or fringed shawls from Spain. Once when he’d visited, a massive Russian icon was hanging from the foyer’s ceiling. Right now, a huge, ornate mosaic fountain was burbling in the middle of its floor.

  “It looks like Ali Baba’s cave,” he said, turning around in circles.

  “It looks like a bloody souk,” Albie muttered. “How can anyone move with all this rubbish strewn about?”

  “Good evening, my dears!” a voice boomed from the drawing room.

  A few seconds later, Eddie was kissing them hello. She wore a flowing turquoise silk tunic over a long, beaded skirt, and heavy necklaces of amber and lapis. Her thick gray hair was piled high on her head, held in place by two silver combs. Bracelets of silver studded with onyx jangled on her wrists.

  “I like the new decor, Eddie,” Seamie said. “That fountain’s a smasher.”

  “Oh, that’s nothing!” Eddie replied. “Most of what I bought is still on a boat in the middle of the Mediterranean. I can’t wait until it arrives. I bought an entire Bedouin tent! I shall have it installed in the backyard. And furnish it with rugs, skins, and pillows. And we shall have the most wonderful garden parties in it. I shall have to find some belly dancers, however, for the proper effect.”

  “Might take some doing here in Belgravia,” Seamie said.

  Albie handed her a box. “From Mum,” he said.

  Eddie peered inside. “An almond sponge! What a darling! She knows it’s my favorite. But she shouldn’t have taken the time to make it for me. Not with all that’s going on. How is your father, dear?”

  “About the same, Aunt Eddie. No change, I’m afraid,” Albie said. Then he quickly changed the subject.

  The admiral was not well, not at all. Seamie and Albie had visited him that afternoon. He was gaunt and gray-faced and barely had the energy to sit up in bed. Seamie knew that his old friend didn’t like talking about his father’s illness; he knew that it worried him terribly.

  The admiral’s illness had changed Albie. In fact, Seamie barely recognized his friend these days. Albie’s entire personality had changed. He’d always been the befuddled academic—even when he was ten years old. He’d always been bookish and distracted, dreaming of formulas and theories. But he was more than distracted now. He was tense. He was haggard-looking and short-tempered. And how could he not be? Seamie wondered. He never stopped working. Seamie thought the constant work was likely Albie’s way of coping with his fears for his father’s health, but he wished he wouldn’t push himself so hard. Albie spent almost all of his time poring over documents with Strachey and Knox and other Cambridge lads. They were already at work when Seamie rose in the morning, and were still at it when he went to bed at night. Seamie didn’t know exactly what they were all doing—dreaming up more incomprehensible equations, he imagined—but whatever it was, it was damaging Albie. He barely ate or slept. Seamie had had to drag him out of his office and practically push him onto the train to London today. He was certain that if Albie kept up this punishing pace, he would soon find his own health broken.

  “Come in, my dears! Come in and meet my other guest,” Eddie said now, taking Seamie’s arm and Albie’s hand and leading them into her drawing room. Seamie saw that she’d gotten rid of her furniture and replaced it with low, painted wooden beds, each topped with bright silk cushions. The place looked like an opium den.

  “Tom, this is my nephew Albie Alden, and his friend Seamus Finnegan, the dashing Antarctic explorer,” Eddie said, as a young man, holding a glass of champagne, stood up to greet them. “Albie and Seamie, may I present Tom Lawrence. He’s an explorer, too, but he prefers the warmer climes. He’s just returned from the deserts of Arabia. We met onboard a steamer out of Cairo. Spent some lovely days together.”

  Seamie and Albie shook hands with Tom, then Eddie handed them glasses of champagne. Seamie guessed that Lawrence was in his mid-twenties. His skin was bronzed. His eyes were a light, Wedgwood blue; his hair was blond. He stood awkwardly in Eddie’s overdone drawing room and looked so uncomfortable in his suit—as if he would like nothing better than to chuck it off, pull on some trousers and boots, and head back to the desert. Seamie liked him immediately.

  “I believe we’ve met, Mr. Alden,” Lawrence said. “I was visiting friends at Cambridge several years ago. The Stracheys. George Mallory. I met you and Miss Willa Alden, too. In the Pick. Do you remember?”

  “Why, yes. Yes, I do,” Albie said. “One of the Stephen girls was with you. Virginia.”

  “Yes, that’s right,” Lawrence said.

  “I’m very pleased to see you again, Tom,” Albie said. “I wouldn’t have recognized you. The desert’s turned you from a pasty English lad to a golden boy.”

  Lawrence laughed warmly. “You should have seen me a year ago,” he said. “Not golden at all, but as red as a radish and peeling like an onion. How is Miss Alden? I’ve seen her photographs of India and China. They’re quite remarkable. Superb, actually. Is she well?”

  Albie shook his head. “I wish I could tell you. Unfortunately, I have no idea.”

  “I don’t understand,” Lawrence said, puzzled.

  “She had an accident. About eight years ago. On Kilimanjaro. She was there with Mr. Finnegan,” Eddie said, her eyes resting on Seamie as she spoke. “She took a fall and broke her leg. It had to be amputated. The fall broke her heart, too, I fear, for she never came back home. Took off to the East instead, the headstrong girl. To Tibet. Lives there with the yaks and the sheep and that bloody great mountain.”

  Seamie looked away. The conversation pained him.

  Lawrence noticed. “I see. I fear I’ve treaded rather harshly on tender ground,” he said. “Please forgive me.”

  Eddie flapped a hand at him. “Don’t be silly. There’s nothing to forgive. We’ve all moved past it. Well, most of us have.”

  Seamie looked out of a window. Most of the time he appreciated Eddie’s honest nature, her candid words, but there were times he wished she could at least try to be subtle.

  “Why is everyone still standing? Sit down,” Eddie said. “Albie, you take those pillows … yes, those right there. Seamie, you sit here, next to Tom.” Eddie’s voice dropped to a whisper. “He’s a spy, you know. I’m certain of it.” />
  “What rubbish, Eddie,” Lawrence said.

  “What do you talk about with all those Arab sheiks, then, Tom? Camels? Pomegranates? I doubt it. You talk uprisings. Rebellion. Freedom from their Turkish masters.”

  “We talk about their lives, their ancestry, and their customs. I take photographs, Eddie. Of ruins and tombs and vases and pots. I make notes and sketches.”

  “You make maps and alliances, my dear,” Eddie said knowingly.

  “Yes. Well. Turkish delight, anyone?” Lawrence asked, passing a plate of sugared rosewater jellies.

  “Tell me, Mr. Lawrence, how did you come to find yourself in Arabia?” Seamie asked diplomatically.

  “Archaeology. I love digging up old things. Went to Syria while I was an undergraduate. Studied the crusaders’ castles there and did my thesis on them. After I left university, I was offered work with D. G. Hogarth, an archaeologist with the British Museum. I took it. Did quite a bit of digging in the ancient Hittite city of Carchemish. In fact, I think we dug up both banks of the Euphrates,” Lawrence said happily.

  “I don’t know if I could take the desert,” Seamie said. “All that heat and sand. I need snow and ice.”

  Lawrence laughed. “I understand your love of all things pristine and cold, Mr. Finnegan. I enjoy mountains, and Alpine scenery, but the desert, Mr. Finnegan … oh, the desert.”

  Lawrence stopped speaking for a few seconds and smiled helplessly, and suddenly his was the face of a man in love.

  “I wish you could see it,” he said. “I wish you could hear the sound of the muezzins calling the faithful to prayer. And see the rays of the sun coming through the minarets. I wish you could taste the dates and the pomegranates, picked in a lush desert garden. And sit in a Bedouin tent at night listening to their stories. If you could meet the people—the imperious sheiks and sharifs. The veiled harem women. If you could meet Hussein, the sharif of Mecca, and his sons. If you could feel their hunger for independence, for freedom.” He shook his head suddenly, as if embarrassed by the depth of his feeling. “If you could do these things, Mr. Finnegan, you would turn your back on Antarctica in a heartbeat.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Mr. Lawrence,” Seamie said, baitingly. “I don’t think your sand dunes can live up to my icebergs. To say nothing of my seals and penguins.” His voice turned serious. He matched Lawrence’s poetry with his own. “I wish you could see the sun rising on the Weddell Sea, its rays striking the ice and exploding into a million shards of light. I wish you could hear the song the wind sings to you at night and the shrieking of the ice floes shifting and shattering on the restless seas. …”

  Tom listened raptly as Seamie spoke. They were talking about such vastly different parts of the world, and yet their kinship was immediate, for each understood the passion in the other. They were explorers, and each felt the force that called one into the great unknown. They knew the pull that made one give up the comforts of hearth and home, the nearness of friends and family. It was no accident that they were both unmarried, Seamie and Lawrence. They belonged to their passion, their yearning to see, to discover, to know. They belonged to their quest, and to nothing else.

  For a few seconds after he finished speaking, Seamie’s heart clenched with sorrow. It was so good to sit with these people. So few understood what drove him, but they did. There was another who understood. But she wasn’t here and he wished—with his heart and his soul and everything inside him—that she was.

  “I’m going back as soon as I can,” Lawrence said, breaking the silence, giving voice to the urge they were both feeling. To get out of this gray, smothering London and back into the wild, beckoning world. “I’m going back to Carchemish. I’ve been working under William Ramsey most recently, the renowned New Testament scholar. He’s with the British Museum. I’m back here to give a report on our findings. It has to be done, of course, but as soon as I’ve finished, I’m heading back to the desert. There’s so much more to do. And you, Mr. Finnegan? Have you any further adventures planned?”

  “Yes,” Seamie said. “And no. And … well, possibly I guess.”

  “That’s a strange answer,” Lawrence said.

  Seamie admitted that it was. “Ernest Shackleton is getting up another expedition to Antarctica, and I’m very interested in going,” he explained. “But I have a compelling reason to stay in London now, too.”

  “Really?” Eddie said, raising an eyebrow. “Who is she?”

  Seamie ignored her. “Clements Markham offered me a position at the RGS. Just yesterday in fact. He wants me to help with the money-raising efforts for new expeditions. I’d have an office and a fancy brass plaque on the door and a salary, and he tells me I’d be a fool not to take it.”

  “He’s right,” Albie said. “You would be. You’re getting too old for this Boy’s Own adventure stuff.”

  “Why, thank you for pointing that out, Alb,” Seamie said.

  A melancholy quiet descended on both Seamie and Lawrence at those words. Perhaps he is thinking himself too old for further adventures, too, Seamie thought. Or perhaps, he—like me—travels the world because he’s lost someone and hopes that if he goes far enough afield, if he’s cold enough or hot enough, in deep enough danger, hungry enough or sick enough, he might just forget that person. He never does, of course, but he always keeps trying. The strange, sad mood persisted until Lawrence said, “And what do you do, Mr. Alden?”

  “I’m a physicist,” Albie said. “I teach at Cambridge.”

  “He writes the most horrible, inscrutable, incomprehensible equations you’ve ever seen,” Eddie interjected. “On a blackboard in his office. All day long. He’s supposed to be on sabbatical, taking it a bit easy. Instead, he’s working all hours. It’s absolutely inhuman.”

  “Aunt Eddie …,” Albie protested, smiling embarrassedly.

  “It’s true, Albie. You never rest. Never have a nice long lunch. Never go for a ramble. You’re as washed-out-looking as a pair of old knickers. You need a holiday. I know you’re the country’s leading and most exalted boffin, Albie dear, but surely England can wait another month or two for whatever it is that you’re working on?”

  “No, Aunt Eddie, England can’t,” Albie said. He was still smiling, but there was suddenly an edge to his voice and a grim look in his eyes. Seamie stared at his old friend, startled. Albie never spoke in anything but polite and measured tones.

  As quickly as it had come, though, the hard edge was gone, and Albie’s voice was mild again. No one else seemed to have noticed the lapse and Seamie wondered if he’d only imagined it. Frowning slightly, he decided he would get Albie out of the house this week for a hike across the fens, no matter how much he protested.

  Prodded by his aunt, Albie told them all a bit about his work, and about the current preoccupation of physics professors the world over: the rumor that Albert Einstein would soon publish a set of ten field equations that would support a new theory of general relativity. Albie was in the process of trying to explain geodesic equations when the butler appeared in the doorway and said, “Beg your pardon, ma’am, but dinner is served.”

  “Oh, thank God!” Eddie said. “My head is spinning!”

  The party rose. Eddie led the way out of the drawing room and down the hallway to the dining room.

  As they reached the dining room, Lawrence stopped suddenly and placed a hand on Seamie’s arm. “Never mind Clements Markham,” he said to him quietly and with feeling. “Come out and visit me, Mr. Finnegan. You’re not too old for adventures; you can’t be. Because if you are, then I am, too. And if I was, I shouldn’t know what to do. I shouldn’t know how to live, and, frankly, I wouldn’t wish to. Do you understand that feeling?”

  Seamie nodded. “I do, Mr. Lawrence. All too well.”

  “Then do come. Bake your cold bones in Arabia’s desert heat for a while.”

  Eddie, who’d been standing inside the doorway to the dining room listening, said, “Tom’s right, Seamie. Sod Markham and Shackleton, too. Go to the d
esert. Bake your bones in Arabia.” She smiled, then added, “And thaw your heart while you’re at it.”

  Chapter Six

  “Fourpence, Mister. You won’t regret it,” the girl in the red shawl said, smiling seductively. Or trying to.

  Max von Brandt, head down, shoulders hunched against the cold, shook his head.

  “Two, then. I’m clean, I swear. Only been on the game a week.” The false brazenness was gone. She sounded desperate now.

  Max glanced at her face. She couldn’t have been more than fourteen. A child. Thin and shivering. He pulled a sixpence from his pocket and tossed it to her. “Go home,” he said.

  The girl looked at the coin, then at him. “God bless you, mister. You’re a good man, you are.”

  Max laughed. Hardly, he thought. He opened the door to the Barkentine, hoping the girl had not seen his face, or that she would not remember it if she had. The Barkentine, a den of thieves in Limehouse, on the north bank of the Thames, was the sort of place Max von Brandt occasionally had to visit but was careful never to be seen doing so.

  He had done his best to blend in. He’d worn the rough clothes of a workingman, he hadn’t shaved for three days, and he’d hidden his silvery blond hair under a flat cap, but it was harder to hide his height, his sun-bronzed skin, or the fact that his legs weren’t bowed from rickets. These things came from good food and fresh air, and in the East End of London, there was precious little of either.

  Once inside the pub, Max approached the bartender. “I need to see Billy Madden,” he said to him.