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“San Juan Capistrano!” she said with pleasure. She felt the color coming to her cheeks. That was where she had fallen in love with the priest. It seemed like a hundred years ago. Had she ever really been so young?
Miriam laughed and walked over to stand beside her.
“Long time ago, wasn’t it?” she said quietly. “Do you think back on those times?”
Beata looked sideways at her for an instant, and saw tears in her eyes.
Then the moment of pain vanished, and they spoke a little too brightly of other things, until they were joined by Aaron, Lord Justice Walbrook, and Dr. Giles Finch and moved to the dining room for dinner. All the formalities were observed, the condolences, the polite remarks about Ingram York and how he would be missed, what an ornament he had been to the judiciary. It was all very gracious, and predictable. Beata made the right replies and hoped she did it with dignity.
Did anybody believe it?
Dr. Finch had also noticed the painting of Mission San Juan Capistrano, and asked, once they were seated, if the mission was near San Francisco.
Aaron explained that it was also on the Californian coast, but many hundreds of miles south, much farther toward Mexico. The conversation turned to the gold rush, to the fortunes made and the changes that had occurred so very swiftly. Buildings came down overnight. Yesterday’s paupers had become today’s giants of wealth, of industry, of land and ultimately of government. It was contrasted with England, where most wealth and privilege passed from generation to generation.
“We’ve had our changes,” Dr. Finch remarked. “But they were a long time ago.”
Aaron smiled. “The Norman Conquest?” he said wryly.
“Oh, since then,” Finch answered him with a shrug. “The Reformation. Catholic first and Protestant martyrs, then the other way round, back and forth between Henry the Eighth, Bloody Mary, then Elizabeth. And of course later the Civil War. Charles the First, and the ship money, taxes, divine right of kings, and so forth. And after him, Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans. Rather grim for my taste. No sense of humor. I don’t know how anyone has the courage to survive without that. And then the Restoration, Charles the Second, all at the other extreme.”
“Maybe we’re due for another upheaval,” Lord Justice Walbrook suggested with a very slight smile. “Unfortunately, I doubt it will be from the discovery of gold.”
“The discovery of gold has its disadvantages,” Miriam said quietly. “A lot of sudden fortunes made, but a lot of deaths as well, violent deaths of men still young. And poverty alongside the wealth.”
Beata looked at her curiously. She caught the moment’s pain in her voice, the huskiness in it as she hurriedly controlled it again.
Finch was regarding her with interest. Had he caught the emotion as well, or did he just look at her as most men looked at a beautiful woman, and feel an edge of passion?
Miriam looked down at something on the table and smiled very slightly, almost in apology. “Aaron lost his cousin Zachary before the gold rush really began. They were more like brothers. Zack was one of the best men I ever knew.” Her voice dropped a little lower. “He died defending an old man from a beating by a crowd of drunkards. They lynched the drunkards, but that didn’t bring Zachary back. Actually I don’t think they even tried them. Just…strung them up in a tree. Not that there was any doubt that they were guilty…”
Everyone else was looking at Miriam, but Beata turned and looked at Aaron. Then instantly she regretted it. She saw a sudden, overwhelming sense of loss in his face, as if the grief were still new even now. She felt intrusive to be there, never mind to have observed it.
Why on earth had Miriam mentioned it? And in front of other people they barely knew? How could she be so insensitive?
“And I lost my first husband,” Miriam went on. Now her voice was tight with her own pain. “He was…killed also…”
“I’m so sorry,” Finch and Walbrook said almost together.
Again Beata looked at Aaron, and this time his expression was unreadable to her. She remembered hearing the news of her own first husband’s death, and the sense of shock and sudden emptiness it brought. It had happened up in the foothills somewhere where the gold claims had no security, where there was no law and very little in the way of community. Miriam’s first husband, Piers Astley, had been Aaron’s most trusted lieutenant, a man with almost everyone’s respect. Maybe that was what got him killed.
But who knew what he was like when the doors were closed and there was no one watching except his wife? They were all sitting here around this rich and elegant table in London, exquisitely dressed, dining on the best food in the land. They ate with silver cutlery from porcelain plates, and drank the best wine from cut-crystal glasses. They discussed the endowment of a university chair in memory of Ingram York—High Court judge, wife beater, and a man of violent and twisted sexual appetites.
For a moment Beata felt her gorge rise as if she were going to be sick. Then she controlled it, sipped her wine, and looked down at her plate so no one could meet her eyes.
They were talking about Zachary Clive and what a fine man he had been. Aaron’s voice was warm with the emotion of the memory of Zack’s integrity, his generosity of spirit, the things he loved and made him laugh.
Beata looked at Miriam, and saw tears in her eyes. What had happened? And why did any of it matter so passionately now?
It was not until the last course was served that the subject returned again to Ingram York.
Finch turned to Beata. “It must be extremely difficult for you to think of such a thing so soon, Lady York,” he said gently. “But there are many arrangements to be made, if it is to be effected within the next year. All we wish from yo
u is your permission to endow a chair in your late husband’s name. We feel it would be a most fitting tribute to his memory, and of far more use to society than a marble bust, or some other tangible memorial or engraving. We are very fortunate that Mr. Clive has offered the sort of financial backing that makes it possible.”
“Indeed,” she said in agreement. “We have more than enough statues and plaques. I have no idea why Mr. Clive should be so generous, but I am most grateful.” She looked at Aaron, smiling to rob the words of any implied criticism. “I was not aware that you even knew my husband.”
Aaron smiled back at her. It was candid, genuine, and disarming. “I didn’t, Lady York. I read some of his judgments, going back several years. I want to endow a chair because I believe in the wisdom of the law, and the lucidity of it. When mixed with mercy it has the power to defend us all from anarchy, industrial or civil. I have no influence on the law myself. I deal in land and international trade. Far better I do this in the name of an eminent judge whose name is held in wide respect, and who unfortunately had recently died.”
