He started to walk down the slope toward the base of Constitution Hill, struggling to overcome his growing sense of dislocation.
Behind him, unseen, the unconscious man regained his wits, snatched up his things, staggered to his feet, and stumbled into the trees.
“Steady, Edward,” Oxford muttered to himself. “Hang on, hang on. Don't let it overwhelm you. This is neither a dream nor an illusion, so stay focused, get the job done, then get back to your suit!”
He reached the wide path. The queen's carriage would pass this way soon. My God! He was going to see Queen Victoria! He looked around. Every single person was wearing a hat or bonnet. Most of the men were bearded or had moustaches. The women held parasols.
Slow motion. It was all in slow motion.
He examined faces. Which belonged to his ancestor? He'd never seen a photograph of the original Edward Oxford-there were none-but he hoped to recognise some sort of family resemblance.
He stepped over the low wrought-iron fence lining the path, crossed to the other side, turned around to face the hill, and loitered near a tree. People started to gather along the route. He heard a remarkable range of accents and they all sounded ridiculously exaggerated. Some, which he identified as working class, were incomprehensible, while the upper classes spoke with a precision and clarity that sounded wholly artificial. Details kept catching his eye, holding his attention with hypnotic force: the prevalence of litter and dog shit on the grass; the stains and worn patches on people's clothing; rotten teeth and rickets-twisted legs; accentuated mannerisms and lace-edged handkerchiefs; pockmarks and consumptive coughs.
“Focus!” he whispered.
He noticed a man across the way, standing in a relaxed but rather arrogant manner and looking straight at him with a knowing smile on his round face. He had a lean figure and a very large moustache.
Can he see that I don't belong here?
A cheer went up. The queen's carriage had just emerged from the palace gates, its four horses guided by a postilion. Two outriders trotted along ahead of the vehicle; two more behind.
Where was his ancestor? Where was the gunman?
Ahead of him, an individual wearing a top hat, blue frock coat, and white breeches reached under his coat and moved closer to the path. Slowly, the royal carriage approached.
Is that him?
Moments later, the forward outriders came alongside. The blue-coated man stepped over the fence and, as the queen and her husband passed, he took three strides to keep up with their vehicle, then whipped out a flintlock pistol and fired it at them. He threw down the smoking weapon and drew a second.
Oxford yelled, “No, Edward!” and ran forward.
They detected Zanzibar first with their nostrils, for, prior to the island darkening the horizon, the sultry breeze became laden with the scent of cloves. Then the long strip of land hove into view at the edge of the sapphire sea, its coral-sand beaches turned to burnished gold by the fierce sun.
“By Jove,” William Trounce whispered. “What's the word for it? Sleepy?”
“Tranquil,” Krishnamurthy suggested.
“Languidly basking in sensuous repose,” Swinburne corrected.
“Whatever it is,” said Trounce, “it's splendid. I feel as if I'm inside one of Captain Burton's tales of the Arabian Nights.”
“More so than when you were actually in Arabia?” the poet enquired.
“Great heavens, yes! That was just sand, sand, and more sand. This is…romantic!”
“Seven weeks!” Krishnamurthy grunted. “Seven weeks on a blasted camel. My posterior will never recover.”
Ahead, the land swelled seductively, coloured a reddish brown beneath its veils of green, which wavered and rippled behind the heavy curtain of air.
“What do you think, Algy?” Trounce asked. The members of Burton's expedition were all on first-name terms now-one of the more positive effects of their gruelling trek through central Arabia. They were also all burned a deep brown, with the exception of Swinburne, whose skin was almost as crimson as his hair had been before the sun bleached it the colour of straw.
The poet looked up at the detective, then followed his gaze to the prow of the ship-the Indian Navy sloop of war Elphinstone-where he saw Sir Richard Francis Burton standing with Isabel Arundell.
“If you're asking me whether the romance of Zanzibar is infectious, Pouncer, then I take it you haven't read Richard's account of his first expedition.”
“There's little time for reading at Scotland Yard, lad. And, for the umpteenth time, don't call me Pouncer.”
Swinburne grinned cheekily. “Apparently, the island's infections are nothing to celebrate. By the same token, I'd suggest that Richard and Isabel's relationship is probably not exactly as it appears from here.”
He was correct. In fact, had he been able to eavesdrop upon their conversation, Swinburne would have reported to Trounce that Isabel was giving Burton “what for.”
“You're a pig-headed, self-absorbed, stubborn fool,” she said. “You have never failed to underestimate me or to overestimate yourself.”
Burton fished a cigar from his pocket. “Do you mind if I smoke?” he asked.
“You'll not drive me away with tobacco fumes.”
He put a flame to the Manila, inhaled the aromatic smoke, and gazed down at the water that gurgled and sparkled against the hull below. A few yards away, a shoal of flying fish shot out of the sea and glided some considerable distance before plunging back in.
Isabel pulled a small straw-coloured cylinder from a pouch at her waist and raised it to her lips. She struck a lucifer and lit its tip.
Burton smelled the tart fumes of Latakia and looked at her, raising his eyebrows.
“Good grief! Surely that's not a cigarette?”
“All the rage since the Crimea,” came her murmured reply. “Do you object to a woman smoking?”
“I-well-that is to say-”
“Oh, stop stammering like an idiot, Dick. Let's set it out plainly, shall we? You disapprove of my lifestyle.”
“Nonsense! I simply asked you why you have chosen to live as a Bedouin when you belong to the House of Wardour, one of the richest families in Britain.”
“The implication being?”
“That you could have Society at your feet; that the comforts and advantages of an aristocratic life are yours to enjoy. You aren't Jane Digby, Isabel. She fled England after her scandalous behaviour made it impossible for her to remain there. Not so, you. So why endure the hardships and dangers of the nomadic life?”
“Hypocrite!”
“What?”
“How often have you railed against the constrictions and restraints of the Society you now endorse? How often have you purposely provoked outrage and challenged social proprieties at dinner tables with your shocking anecdotes? How often have you styled yourself the outsider, the man who doesn't fit in, the noble savage in civilised clothing? You glory in it, and yet you denounce Miss Digby! Really! They call you Ruffian Dick. I call you Poseur Dick!”
“Oh stop it, and tell me why you've settled upon this extraordinary lifestyle.”
“Because I'm a woman.”
“Indubitably. How is that an answer?”
“Just this: I accepted your proposal of marriage not just because I loved you, but because I saw in you the solution to my problem, and in me the solution to yours.”
“Mine?”
“When we met, you had no security. You were adrift. I could have given you a sense of belonging.”
A breath of wind pushed at them, driving away the scent of cloves and replacing it with the odour of putrefying fish. Burton wrinkled his nose, puffed at his cigar, and looked at the looming island.
“And in you,” Isabel continued, “I might have found liberation from the suffocating corsets of the English gentlewoman. I mean that metaphorically, of course.” She gave him a sideways glance. “Well, perhaps not entirely metaphorically.”
Burton flashed a savage smile and turned his attention back to her.