‘Don’t say that.’
‘It’s true. They were better men, and they died—’
‘Robin, that’s not how it works—’
‘And what did I do? I lived a life I shouldn’t have, I had what millions of people didn’t – all that suffering, Victoire, and the whole time I was drinking champagne—’
‘Don’t you dare.’ She raised a hand as if to slap him. ‘Don’t tell me you’re just some fragile academic who can’t handle the weight of the world now that you’ve seen it – that’s absolute tripe, Robin. You’re not some foppish dandy who faints at the first mention of suffering. You know what those men are? They’re cowards, romantics, idiots who never did a thing to change the world they found so upsetting, hiding away because they felt so guilty—’
‘Guilty,’ he repeated. ‘Guilty, that’s exactly what I am. Ramy told me once that I didn’t care about doing the right thing, that I just wanted to take the easy way out.’
‘He was right,’ she said fiercely. ‘It’s the coward’s way, you know it—’
‘No, listen.’ He gripped her hands. They were trembling. She tried to pull away, but he squeezed her fingers between his. He needed her with him. Needed to make her understand, before she hated him forever for abandoning her to the dark. ‘He’s right. You’re right. I know it, I’m trying to say it – he was right. I’m so sorry. But I don’t know how to go on.’
‘Day by day, Birdie.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘You go on, day by day. Just as we’ve been doing. It’s not hard.’
‘No, it’s – Victoire, I can’t.’ He didn’t want to cry; if he started crying, then all his words would disappear and he would never manage to say what he needed to. He ploughed through before his tears could catch up. ‘I want to believe in the future we’re fighting for, but it’s not there, it’s just not there, and I can’t take things day by day when I’m too horrified by the thought of tomorrow. I’m underwater. And I’ve been underwater for so long, and I wanted a way out, but couldn’t find one that didn’t feel like some – some great abdication of responsibility. But this – this is my way out.’
She shook her head. She was weeping freely now; both of them were. ‘Don’t say this to me.’
‘Someone’s got to speak the words. Someone has to stay.’
‘Then aren’t you going to ask me to stay with you?’
‘Oh, Victoire.’
What else was there to say? He could not ask this of her, and she knew he would never dare. Yet the question hung between them, unanswered.
Victoire’s gaze was fixed steadily on the window, at the black lawn outside, at the torchlit barricades. She cried, steadily and silently; the tears kept streaming down her cheeks and she kept wiping them away, pointlessly. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking. This was the first time, since all this had started, that he couldn’t read her heart.
At last she took a deep breath and lifted her head. Without turning around, she asked, ‘Did you ever read that poem the abolitionists love? That one by Bicknell and Day. It’s called The Dying Negro.’
Robin had read it, in fact, in an abolitionist pamphlet he’d picked up in London. He’d found it striking; he still remembered it in detail. It described the story of an African man who, facing the prospects of capture and return to slavery, killed himself instead.* Robin had found it romantic and moving at the time, but now, seeing Victoire’s expression, he realized it was anything but.
‘I did,’ he said. ‘It was – tragic.’
‘We have to die to get their pity,’ said Victoire. ‘We have to die for them to find us noble. Our deaths are thus great acts of rebellion, a wretched lament that highlights their inhumanity. Our deaths become their battle cry. But I don’t want to die, Robin.’ Her throat hitched. ‘I don’t want to die. I don’t want to be their Imoinda, their Oroonoko.* I don’t want to be their tragic, lovely lacquer figure. I want to live.’
She fell against his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around her and held her tight, rocking back and forth.
‘I want to live,’ she repeated, ‘and live, and thrive, and survive them. I want a future. I don’t think death is a reprieve. I think it’s – it’s just the end. It forecloses everything – a future where I might be happy, and free. And it’s not about being brave. It’s about wanting another chance. Even if all I did was run away, even if I never lifted a finger to help anyone else as long as I lived – at least I would get to be happy. At least the world might be all right, just for a day, just for me. Is that selfish?’
Her shoulders crumpled. Robin held her tight against him. What an anchor she was, he thought, an anchor he did not deserve. She was his rock, his light, the sole presence that had kept him going. And he wished, he wished, that was enough for him to hold on to.
‘Be selfish,’ he whispered. ‘Be brave.’
Chapter Thirty-Three
The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways – I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows.
PLATO, Apology, trans. Benjamin Jowett
‘The whole tower?’ asked Professor Craft.
She was the first to speak. The rest of them stared at Robin and Victoire in varying states of disbelief, and even Professor Craft seemed like she was still wrapping her mind around the idea as she spoke its implications out loud. ‘That’s decades – centuries – of research, that’s everything, buried – lost – oh, but who knows how many . . .’ She trailed off.
‘And the ramifications for England will be much worse,’ said Robin. ‘This country runs on silver. Silver pumps through its blood; England can’t live without it.’
‘They’d build it all back—’
‘Eventually, yes,’ said Robin. ‘But not before the rest of the world has time to muster a defence.’
‘And China?’
‘They won’t go to war. They won’t be able to. Silver powers the gunships, you see. Silver feeds the Navy. For months after this, perhaps years, they’ll no longer be the strongest nation in the world. And what happens next is anyone’s guess.’
The future would be fluid. It was just as Griffin had predicted. One individual choice, made at just the right time. This was how they defied momentum. This was how they altered the tracks of history.
And in the end, the answer had been so obvious – to simply refuse to participate. To remove their labour – and the fruits of their labour – permanently from the offering.
‘That can’t be it,’ said Juliana. Her voice trailed up at the end; it was a question, not a declaration. ‘There’s got to be – there must be some other way—’
‘They’re storming us at dawn,’ said Robin. ‘They’ll shoot a few of us to make an example, and then hold the rest of us at gunpoint until we start repairing the damage. They’ll put us in chains, and they’ll put us to work.’
‘But the barricades—’
‘The barricades will fall,’ whispered Victoire. ‘They’re just walls, Juliana. Walls can be destroyed.’
Silence first; then resignation, then acceptance. They already lived in the impossible; what more was the fall of the most eternal thing they’d ever known?
‘Then I suppose we’ll have to get out fast,’ said Ibrahim. ‘Right after the chain reaction starts.’
But you can’t get out fast, Robin almost said before he stopped himself. The rejoinder was obvious. They couldn’t get out fast, because they couldn’t get out at all. A single incantation would not do. If they were not thorough, the tower might collapse partway, but its remains would be salvageable, easily repurposed. The only things they would have inflicted would be expense and frustration. They would have suffered for nothing.