A Simple Deception

XIII

"Lies are a little fortress; inside them you can feel safe and powerful. Through your little fortress of lies you try to run your life and manipulate others. But the fortress needs walls, so you build some. These are the justifications for your lies. You know, like you are doing this to protect someone you love, to keep them from feeling pain. Whatever works, just so you feel okay about the lies." W.M. Paul Young

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XIII.

"Does it ever bother you?" asked Susanna.

"Does what bother me?" replied Mr Whitfield.

"The way Mr Bishop portrays you?"

Susanna had watched Mr Whitfield's first performance that afternoon, and it truly was a repeat of what she had seen in London, without, of course, the runaway horse. Mr Bishop had delighted the crowds with his showmanship, and he had once again regaled the people of Ashwood with his tale of Diego the uncivilised savage who could only understand some strange, obscure language. To Susanna, it honestly sounded invented. In knowing Mr Whitfield as she did, she couldn't help but feel angered on his behalf. He wasn't uncivilised. He wasn't a savage. He wasn't a stupid man who needed to have words shouted at him.

He wasn't a freak to be gawked at.

Mr Whitfield was talented. Without the guise of his Diego character, the relationship he demonstrated between himself and Argent was remarkable. Susanna had certainly never seen anything like it before. Surely that was enough? Couldn't he be talented as himself? As Alexander Whitfield?

Mr Bishop was using his skin, his culture, his experience, to make a mockery out of him. A mockery and a profit. Mr Bishop was quick to pass around his hat at the end of the performance to collect the hard-earned coins of the villagers.

Susanna had sneaked down to the stable after returning from the performance. Her mother believed that she was reading in the library, as that was somewhere where she was unlikely to be disturbed. She had found Mr Whitfield tending to Argent diligently, speaking to her in rapid, yet tender French, that was much too quick for her to translate.

Mr Whitfield was quiet for a long moment as he brushed Argent. He was dressed properly now, wearing a waist jacket over his shirt, though the sleeves were rolled up to expose his strong forearms.

"No one has ever asked me that before," Mr Whitfield finally said quietly. The hand that held the brush stopped, and he turned to look down upon her, his dark eyes startlingly sad. "What does it matter? People believe it. People find it so easy to believe that I am what Len says."

Susanna winced at the pain in his voice. "They believe it because they don't know any better," she insisted. "For so many, particularly those," she hated to say it, "of my ... of our," she huffed with embarrassment, "of a certain social standing," she concluded untidily. "For so many, their village, their town, their social circle is their whole world. They don't know what is out in the world unless it is shown to them. And Mr Bishop is ... whether he realises it or not, he is educating the uneducated, and doing it most grievously."

"But where is the lie?" posed Mr Whitfield. "He found me in Saint-Domingue. That is true. I did not understand a word of English until it was taught to me. I speak a foreign language and I do not know how to ..." he stopped himself, but Susanna knew the ending to that sentence. He did not know how to read or write. "To this world, I am a savage. If they knew what I was, how I lived ... you would think me a savage."

Susanna reached out tentatively and rested her hand on Argent's neck. The horse was calm and still, breathing easily under the control of her master. Mr Whitfield looked upon her hand with an unreadable expression.