Whitechapel Conspiracy

“Lady Vespasia.” He said the words quite formally, as if they were merely acquaintances, but his voice was soft, caressing the syllables. It was, after all, a Roman name, as he had told her, teasingly, so long ago. The Emperor Vespasian was no hero.

It was her correct title. Should she reply equally correctly? After all they had shared, the hope, the passion, and the tragedy, it seemed like a denial. There was no one else listening.

“Mario …” It was strange to say his name again. Last time she had whispered it in the darkness, tears choking her throat, her cheeks wet. The French troops were marching into Rome. Mazzini had surrendered to save the people. Garibaldi had gone north towards Venice, his pregnant wife fighting beside him, dressed as a man, carrying a gun like everyone else. The Pope had returned and undone all the reforms, wiped out the debt, the liberty, and the soul in one act.

But that was all in the past. Italy was united now; that much at least had come true.

He was searching her eyes, her face. She hoped he would not say she was still beautiful. He was the one man to whom it had never mattered.

Should she say something to forestall him? A trite word now would be unbearable. But if she spoke, then she would never know. There was no time left for games.

“I have often imagined meeting you again,” he said at last. “I never thought it would happen … until today.” He gave the tiniest shrug. “I arrived in London a week ago. I could not be here without thinking of you. I quarreled with myself whether I should even enquire for you, or if dreams are best left undisturbed. Then someone mentioned your name, and all the past returned to me as if it were yesterday, and I had no power to deny myself. I thought you would be here.” He glanced around the magnificent room with its smooth pillars, its dazzling chandeliers, the swirl of music and laughter and wine.

She knew exactly what he meant. This was her world of money, privilege, all of it passed down by blood. Perhaps in some distant past it had been earned, but not by these men and women here now.

She could so easily pick up the old battles again, but it was not what she wanted. She had believed as desperately as he had in the revolution in Rome. She had labored and argued for it too, worked all day and all night in the hospitals during the siege, carried water and food to the soldiers, in the end even fired the guns beside the last defenders. And she had understood why, in the end, when Mario had had to choose between her and his love of the republic, he had chosen his ideals. The pain of it had never completely left her, even after all these years, but had he chosen otherwise it would have been worse. She could not have loved him the same way, because she knew what he believed.

She smiled back at him, a little bubble of laughter inside her.

“You have an advantage. I would never, in even my silliest dreams, have thought to find you here, all but shoulder to shoulder with the Prince of Wales.”

His eyes were soft, old jokes remembered, absurdities within the tears. “Touché,” he acknowledged. “But the battlefield is everywhere now.”

“It always was, my dear,” she answered. “It is more complicated here. Few issues are as simple as they seemed to us then.”

His gaze did not waver. “They were simple.”

She thought how little he had changed. It was only the superficial things: the color of his hair, the faint lines on his skin. Inside he might be wiser, have a few scars and bruises, but the same hope burned just as strongly, and all the old dreams.

She had forgotten love could be so overwhelming.

“We wanted a republic,” he went on. “A voice for the people. Land for the poor, houses for those who slept in the streets, hospitals for the sick, light for the prisoners and the insane. It was simple to imagine, simple to do when we had the power … for a brief spell before tyranny returned.”

“You hadn’t the means,” she reminded him. He did not deserve to be patronized by less than the truth. In the end, whether the French armies had come or not, the republic would have fallen because those with the money would not give enough to keep its fragile economy going.

Pain flashed into his face.

“I know.” He glanced around the marvelous room in which they stood, still full of music and the chatter of voices. “The diamonds in here alone would have secured us for months. How much do you think these people are served in these banquets in a week? How much is overeaten, how much thrown away because it wasn’t needed?”

“Enough to feed the poor of Rome,” she answered.

“And the poor of London?” he asked wryly.

There was a bitterness of truth in her reply. “Not enough for that.”