The River of No Return

conducted by Black Rod to his seat among the other marquesses. They had welcomed him with a collective “woof,” much like the simultaneous sneezing of a row of bulldogs.
    He had been allowed out of his ceremonial robes after that, but the day was just beginning.
    The corn bill would clearly pass; nearly everyone was in support. And yet it was as if they knew that history would prove them wrong. Each peer wanted to go on record explaining himself, and for each the explanation was nearly identical: I must keep hold of my wealth, yes—but in addition and more important, England must remain the same. The future threatens. The past is safe.
    It had all sounded uncannily familiar.
    Kirklaw, sitting with the other dukes, kept staring at him, willing him to get up and make his speech. Nick turned in his seat so that he couldn’t see him. But there was Delbun with the earls, and Blessing with the barons. Nick stopped looking at faces and began counting types of knots in neck cloths.
    Just when he had thought he would slide from his seat and expire from boredom, Baronet Burdett had presented the House with forty thousand and more signatures from Westminster in opposition to the bill. England, Burdett had argued, must meet the future by making everyone free and equal, without restriction. His speech was met with jeers, and really, Nick thought with sympathy for the poor, kindly-looking man, it was like asking a pack of hyenas to voluntarily knock out their own teeth. Burdett’s speech so enraged one viscount that he had leapt to his feet, declaring that he wanted to strangle the baron right there in front of everyone. The viscount said they might as well roll England up like a scroll, and go home and wait for the mob to level the city. This was good stuff, and Nick leaned forward, hoping that something energizing might happen now, but it all simmered down again and an old earl got up and began to speak in a particularly soporific drone about how the poor like to be hungry.
    He had looked away, and then he felt the river rushing all around him, all around them all—rushing at full flood. And he the only living man, afloat on a broken spar, among the drowned.
    Nick stood up at the next opportunity, bowed to the men seated near him, and then he left. Arkady was right. This was no place for a man who knew the future.
    Kirklaw had leapt to his feet and scurried after him, catching up with him just outside the door. “You didn’t give your speech.”
    “No.”
    “Will you yet? The vote won’t come for several more days.”
    Nick had thrust his hands into the pockets of his greatcoat and found the acorn there. “I don’t think so, Your Grace.”
    Kirklaw nodded, once. “Well, then.”
    “Indeed.”
    They had bowed coldly to each other and gone their separate ways, Nick out into the world, the duke back into the chamber.
    Nick had sent the carriage home with his robes, and then he strolled alone up Whitehall in the light of a spectacular sunset, tossing the little acorn from hand to hand. He couldn’t feel the river now. The spring evening was alive with birdsong and breezes, which, for this half hour anyway, blew the scent of meadow grasses in from the surrounding farmland and carried away the stink of human strife and struggle.
    Nick tossed the acorn high and caught it low.
    * * *
    Now he stood beside the decrepit statue of Charles II in the center of Soho Square. Two boys and a dog were driving a lowing herd of cattle along the east side, past what had been, in the eighteenth century, the notorious White House brothel. It was probably still a brothel, Nick thought, then saw a man in fine but decidedly rumpled clothing open the door and slip out into the morning sunlight. He stood on the step yelling at the cows that blocked him from entering the street. So it was a brothel—but the “skeleton room” and sinking sofa and other contraptions for which the White House had been famous in the last century—Nick didn’t think they would be in the style of calm, elegant Alva Blomgren. Nick looked around the square at the other houses. Which was Alva’s? He would simply have to wait and hope that Alva emerged sooner rather than later.
    In the meantime, it was a pleasure to stand here beside the slightly bilious-looking marble monarch who presided over Soho Square and watch all of society scampering past. Horses and carriages, men and women, everyone busy, full of life, chattering to one another like magpies. All the