Page 121 of Babel

‘No,’ said Victoire. ‘You didn’t. You never did, Letty, and that’s the point. And we’re asking you now to finally, please, hear what we’re trying to tell you. Please believe us.’

Letty, Robin thought, was close to a breaking point. She was running out of arguments. She had the look of a dog backed into a corner. But her eyes darted around, desperately seeking an escape. She would find any flimsy excuse, accept any convoluted alternative logic before she let go of her illusions.

He knew, because not so long ago, he’d done the same.

‘So there’s a war,’ she said after a pause. ‘You’re absolutely sure there’s going to be a war.’

Robin sighed. ‘Yes, Letty.’

‘And it’s absolutely Babel’s doing.’

‘You can read the letters yourself.’

‘And what’s – what’s the Hermes Society going to do about it?’

‘We don’t know,’ said Robin. ‘But they’re the only ones who can do something about it. We’ll bring them these documents, we’ll tell them all we know—’

‘But why?’ Letty persisted. ‘Why involve them? We should just do this ourselves. We should make pamphlets, we should go to Parliament – there are a thousand options we’ve got other than going through some... some secret ring of thieves. This degree of collusion, of corruption – if the public just knew, they wouldn’t possibly be for it, I’m certain. But operating underground, stealing from the university – that only hurts your cause, doesn’t it? Why can’t you simply go public?’

They were silent for a moment, all of them wondering who would tell Letty first.

Victoire shouldered the task. ‘I wonder,’ she said, very slowly, ‘if you’ve ever read any of the abolition literature published before Parliament finally outlawed slavery.’

Letty frowned. ‘I don’t see how...’

‘The Quakers presented the first antislavery petition to Parliament in 1783,’ said Victoire. ‘Equiano published his memoir in 1789. Add that to the countless slave stories the abolitionists were telling the British public – stories of the cruellest, most awful tortures you can inflict on a fellow human. Because the mere fact that Black people were denied their freedom was not enough. They needed to see how grotesque it was. And even then, it took them decades to finally outlaw the trade. And that’s slavery. Compared to that, a war in Canton over trade rights is going to look like nothing. It’s not romantic. There are no novelists penning sagas about the effects of opium addiction on Chinese families. If Parliament votes to force Canton’s ports open, it’s going to look like free trade working as it should. So don’t tell me that the British public, if they knew, would do anything at all.’

‘But this is war,’ said Letty. ‘Surely that’s different, surely that’ll provoke outrage—’

‘What you don’t understand,’ said Ramy, ‘is how much people like you will excuse if it just means they can get tea and coffee on their breakfast tables. They don’t care, Letty. They just don’t care.’

Letty was quiet for a long time. She looked pitiful, stricken and frail, as if she’d just been informed of a death in the family. She loosed a long, shaky breath and cast her eyes about each one of them in turn. ‘I see why you never told me.’

‘Oh, Letty.’ Victoire hesitated, then reached out and put her hand on Letty’s shoulder. ‘It wasn’t like that.’

But she stopped there. It was clear Victoire could not think of anything more reassuring to say. There was nothing more to say at all, except the truth, which was that of course they wouldn’t have trusted her. That for all their history, for all their declarations of eternal friendship, they had no way of knowing which side she would take.

‘Our minds are made up,’ Victoire said gently, but firmly. ‘We’re taking this to Hermes, as soon as we arrive in Oxford. And you don’t have to go with us – we can’t force you to take that risk; we know you’ve suffered so much already. But if you’re not with us, then we ask you at least to keep our secrets.’

‘What do you mean?’ Letty cried. ‘Of course I’m with you. You’re my friends, I’m with you until the end.’

Then she flung her arms around Victoire and began to weep stormily. Victoire stiffened, looking baffled, but after a moment she raised her arms and cautiously hugged Letty back.

‘I’m sorry.’ Letty sniffled between sobs. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry...’

Ramy and Robin watched, unsure what to make of this. On someone else it would have been performative, sickening even, but with Letty, they knew it was not a charade. Letty could not cry on command; she could not even fake basic emotions on command. She was too stiff, too transparent; they knew she was unable to act in any way other than how she felt. So it did feel cathartic, seeing her break down like this, knowing that at last she understood how they all felt. It was a relief to see that in her they still had an ally.

Still, something did not seem right, and Robin could tell from Victoire’s and Ramy’s faces that they thought so too. It took him a moment to realize what it was that grated on him, and when he did, it would bother him constantly, now and thereafter; it would seem a great paradox, the fact that after everything they had told Letty, all the pain they had shared, she was the one who needed comfort.