Fink sat back. “What the hell, who carries a sword around?”
“I do.”
They stared at each other. “Well, I don’t have one,” Fink said.
“I could provide a pair. If the occasion arose. Which it hasn’t. Yet.”
Suddenly the man laughed, not derisively as he had before but with a tavern laugh, in uneasy fellowship. Burton remained stoic, waiting.
“You’re all right with me, mate. It’s a good thing for all of us that we know where lines are drawn, eh?”
And on that nervous note, we went upstairs.
In the hallway, I said, “I would have fought him if it came to that.”
“I know you would. I never had any doubt.”
“You don’t have to hold my hand, Richard. It’s important that you know that.”
“I do know it. And I apologize if that’s how it appeared.”
“Of course it is. How else would it appear? You don’t have any swords at all.”
“No. But he didn’t know that.”
“My God, what if he had called you on it?”
“Then the matter would have become far more serious, and the choice of weapons would have passed to him.”
In my room I lay awake staring up at the black ceiling. All my thoughts of the afternoon came flooding back, and my anger returned with great, yawning doubts about the nature of our journey. I saw Richard on my ceiling and he was always making his notes. These I had assumed were for a new book but now I wondered what he was actually writing in that notebook. I felt our friendship had been seriously compromised—perhaps, maddeningly, by nothing more than my own imagination—and I knew then that at some point it must be discussed. I dreaded Richard’s reaction, for in fact I did not know him well enough to initiate a talk of such sensitivity. I personally had never held any grudge against England, I had accepted Richard with wholehearted delight as my friend, but my years in the War Department had given me access to certain intelligence and rumors that had received little or no attention in the press. Now in my dark room all this intrigue swirled across the canvas of the ceiling. The sun never sets on empire, I thought, calling up an old quotation; the sun never sets on England. The only reason we are not serving the queen today is because of those long-dead boys in places like Bunker Hill and Saratoga and New Orleans. Were we really at peace now? Friction between our nations had never actually ceased since 1815, and Palmerston, that old devil, always seemed to be at the root of it. In his forty-year political career he had never ceased agitating. I could almost feel his acrimony invading my room, disrupting my sleep, and now I remembered incidents from my reading, from reports that had circulated through our government. I knew that years ago England had arbitrarily seized our ships and had forced our boys to serve in her navy. I had heard she had given aid and support to our Indians, encouraging them to attack our frontier settlements. Everyone knew how she had tried to keep Texas out of the Union, and there had been persistent rumors that she had helped finance Mexico’s war against us. It was certainly no secret that England had had serious designs on South America since our Revolution, and she had always resented and tried to undermine our Monroe Doctrine. Why should she now turn timid when the upstart nation that so seriously rankled her was heading into deep trouble?
I felt a flush of shame at my suspicion, but it grew into the early morning, until sometime before the dawn, when I finally fell asleep.
I was in poor spirits in the morning: a lack of sleep had combined with my increasing doubts to put me on edge again. I would be much happier, I thought, when Marion, this mud hole of a village, was behind us. The train to Florence had been delayed, but Richard had arranged for passage on a coach, which would put us there late that afternoon. As we left the inn another tense incident occurred. Coming to the bottom of the stairs I turned to say something to Richard and collided with someone coming through on my blind side. At once I begged his pardon, then saw that it was Fink, my antagonist from last night. Suddenly, as if in the grip of some demon, I said, “Mr. Fink, I am sorry I jostled you, but at the same time I must tell you that your behavior last night was inexcusably rude. I can be good-natured enough at being made the goat of the evening, but your repeated insults to my country were intolerable.”
He looked up at Richard, who stood behind me.
“Please speak to me, sir. Mr. Burton is not involved in this.”
For a moment he wavered. I was certain we would come to battle, but he grinned and said, “It was the ale talking, mate. I get that way when I drink too much.”
I took that as my apology and we left for Florence an hour later.
Another mud hole. What Burton saw in such places, or what he was learning from them, remained a mystery as we put up in another inn. But the inn was a pleasant surprise, a rambling building at least sixty years old, showing its age on the outside but warm and tidy within. It was called Wheeler’s Crossing.
We had a marvelous dinner, a simple quail dish with wild rice and various ordinary accompaniments but prepared with such care that it was outstanding. It was easily the best meal I had had in any eating establishment in recent memory, beating the finest restaurants of Washington hands down. “Wonderful food,” Burton said, and he called for the innkeeper to compliment the cook. The man was gracious but said we could tell her ourselves. A woman was summoned from the kitchen, and as she came through the doors I felt Burton sit up straighter beside me. She was truly a beautiful young lady. “This is my daughter Marion,” the inn master said. Burton and I both stood and she gave a little curtsy, and Richard stepped away from his side of the table. He reached out with perfect propriety and took her hand. “Mr. Wheeler,” Richard said without ever taking his eyes from her face, “your daughter is a national
