The Rise of the Automated Aristocrats Read Free Page B

Burton was at his lowest ebb, Grindlays burned to the ground, taking with it all the documents, costumes, artefacts, and mementoes Burton had stored there after returning from his many years of travel and exploration, depriving him of every material thing he’d ever valued. At this juncture of his life, he’d married Isabel Arundell, the only remaining constant.
    He saw her now, a blazing bonfire illuminating her face, reflecting in the tears on her cheeks, making them look like rivulets of blood.
    Snapping out of his trance, he walked toward her. It was a winter evening. He was back in his garden in Trieste.
    â€œWhat a ghastly time I’ve had of it!” he exclaimed as he approached. “I’m sorry to have caused such a fuss. By God, I thought I was done for. Was it another heart attack? I feel perfectly healthy now. Even my rheumatism has let up.”
    She didn’t respond.
    â€œI dreamed I was back in Berbera with John Speke. A nightmare. It was extraordinarily vivid. Isabel?”
    Sparks and glowing scraps of paper spiralled up through the smoke. The bonfire crackled and snapped. He watched as she reached into a carpetbag at her side, pulled a handful of letters from it, and threw them into the conflagration.
    â€œWhat are you doing?”
    Still no answer.
    â€œIsabel?”
    Something felt wrong.
    She took a thick sheaf of paper from the bag.
    His translation of The Scented Garden .
    â€œWait!” he cried out. “No! Don’t do that!”
    Lady Isabel Burton consigned her husband’s magnum opus to the flames.
    Burton shrieked as he felt it—and himself—consumed.
    It was Grindlays all over again, reducing him to nothing.
    White. White. White.
    Zero.
    Hands took form, easing out of the featureless glare, shapes congealing around them. He didn’t immediately recognise them as his own, for rather than being gnarled, liver-spotted, and transparent, they were tough and healthy and young.
    A note was pushed into one of them. Raising his eyes, he saw Arthur Findlay of the Royal Geographical Society, an expression of utmost sympathy upon his face. Burton read the note, already aware of the news it bore, and reacted to it without any volition of his own.
    â€œBy God! He’s killed himself!”
    John Hanning Speke—who, two years after the Berbera incident, had accompanied him into central Africa in search of the source of the Nile and who subsequently claimed to have discovered it without Burton’s help—was dead.
    The Bath Assembly Rooms. 1864. This is where I was supposed to confront Speke and condemn him, humiliate him. Where I’d make him pay the price for his disloyalty. Instead, just prior to the conference, he shot himself while out hunting. An accident, perhaps. Or suicide.
    Burton put the note onto the table and rose from his chair.
    This is the day I was forever broken.
    He heard himself say all the things he’d said on that occasion: to Findlay; to Sir Roderick Murchison, president of the RGS; and to the other members of the committee. Then he stumbled out of the room and into Isabel’s waiting arms.
    She was young again. Beautiful.
    Contorting emotions that made no sense at all mauled at him. How could he love and, at the same time, fear her?
    â€œWhat ails you so, Dick?”
    Don’t be concerned. It’s just a gouty pain in my left foot. The usual thing. When did I have my last attack?
    He said, “John has shot himself.”
    She fussed but he couldn’t bear to be near her. Burton needed to flee; he required space in which to think. He tore himself away, spoke to Sir Roderick, told him he’d address the waiting audience, and watched from within himself as the familiar events unfolded, as the same sentences were uttered and the turning point of his life was played out once again.
    Is this my reckoning? Am I being judged?
    The outer Burton escaped to a quiet room and there wept for Speke. The inner Burton