The Silent Boy Read online

  ‘Maybe he’ll take you away. After all, you’re not much use to man or beast here. Or maybe he’ll just tan your hide hard enough to make you speak. That’s what I’d do, given half a chance.’

  Charles wonders why the visitor should want to see him, why there is even a possibility that he might take Charles away.

  A dark tide of panic rises, filling his throat, making it hard to breathe. Here there is at least something that belongs to his old life, that belongs to the old days when everything was all right, when his mother was alive and they lived in the apartment in the Rue de Grenelle.

  Monsieur Fournier and the Englishman are still sitting at the dining-room table, though all trace of their breakfast has been cleared away. Mr Savill looks cross. Something has irritated him. Perhaps it is Charles.

  Mr Savill is solidly built and has strongly marked features. But what you really notice is the long scar from the corner of his eye to the corner of his mouth.

  ‘Ah, my boy,’ says Fournier in French. ‘Good morning. Come here.’ He dismisses Joseph with a nod and turns to the Englishman. ‘And now, sir, allow me to present Charles.’ He turns back and smiles, for Fournier smiles a great deal, even at Charles. ‘This is Mr Savill.’

  Charles takes a step backwards. Mr Savill stares at him. Charles shrivels under the gaze.

  ‘Come, Charles,’ Fournier says, in English this time. ‘Make your bow.’

  Charles bows as his mother taught him, low and sweeping as she said the gentlemen did at Versailles as the King passed by. When he was little and he bowed to her like that, his mother would clap her hands. Once she gave him a grape coated with sugar.

  Mr Savill inclines his head in acknowledgement. Charles thinks his manner lacks entirely the distinction of a French gentleman. He is rough and clumsy. He is dressed like a tradesman or a lawyer.

  ‘Oh!’ his mother would say when talking of men like this, ‘but he is such an oaf!’

  ‘I am part of your English family,’ Mr Savill says slowly, also in English. He pauses. ‘Do you understand what I say?’

  Charles stares at the wall behind Mr Savill’s head at a particular stripe in the wallpaper that runs through a small brown stain where the damp comes through the wall.

  ‘Do you understand?’ Mr Savill repeats. ‘Nod your head if you do.’

  Mr Savill waits a moment and then repeats the question in French, which is perfectly comprehensible though his accent is quite barbarous, worse than Dr Gohlis’s.

  ‘Nod if you understand me,’ Mr Savill says once more.

  Charles sees the trap before him: he knows that it is possible to coax answers without words, and that these may do just as much harm as answers with words. He lets his eyes drift up to the cornice of the room. He senses the attention of the two men on him, feels the weight of it, feels the pressure of their impatience.

  Time passes. The weight lifts, the pressure relaxes.

  ‘So,’ Fournier says in his normal voice. ‘There you have it, sir. A neat philosophical conundrum, as the doctor puts it. But undeniably inconvenient for the rest of us.’

  ‘And indeed for Charles himself,’ says Mr Savill, his face twisting, as if with pain.

  ‘Let us have fresh coffee,’ Fournier says. ‘Ring for the servant, Charles. Then you may leave us, but do not go far away.’

  The boy does as he is told. As he is leaving the room, he looks back. They are watching him, Monsieur Fournier and Mr Savill, and he wonders what they see.

  ‘You see?’ Fournier says. ‘He understands simple instructions and sometimes will execute them.’

  Mr Savill nods. For a moment, he stops frowning. He turns his head and looks straight at Charles. The scar crinkles. He is smiling.

  Chapter Sixteen

  As Charles closed the door, Savill stood up and walked to the window, as if by doing so he could walk away from the pain. He rubbed the condensation on the glass with the heel of his hand to make a peephole. The world outside sharpened and came into partial focus, streaked and distorted by trails of moisture.

  The rain had stopped. The sky was a pale, duck-egg blue. The dining room overlooked a lawn silvered with a coating of dew. Beyond the grass was the darker green of shrubberies and trees that marched up the slope of the valley towards wooded hills. Further still, another line of hills smudged the horizon.

  Usually the pain was deep, chronic and continuous. But sometimes there were acute and penetrating additions, like flashes of lightning, of something far worse.

  Today, Savill thought, seizing on another subject that might distract him from the pain, I have seen Augusta’s son.

  He wished Lizzie had been here. He had not known that his daughter wanted a brother. Why had he never thought to ask?

  He had brought the miniature of Lizzie. Perhaps he would show Charles what his sister had looked like when she was a child. Not at once, of course. He must wait until they had grown accustomed to one another’s company.

  What would Charles say if he could speak? Had he been there when his mother was murdered? Had he seen her killed?

  The lightning returned.

  ‘Ah!’ Savill said.

  ‘You must see Gohlis immediately,’ Fournier said behind him.

  ‘Later.’

  ‘No, no. Now. One cannot trifle with pain, sir.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Savill drew a deep breath. The lightning had receded for the moment. ‘Tell me, can Charles read and write?’

  Fournier raised his face. In the clear light of morning, the eyes beneath the crooked eyebrows were a shade of brown that merged imperceptibly with green, like pond water. ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘So one may converse with him on paper?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. He used to be an apt scholar, but if you ask him to write anything now – anything at all – he will give the appearance of applying himself to the task with great industry. But the result of his labours is merely scratchings and scribblings. From a distance they mimic the look of handwriting. But when you try to read them all you see is a tangle of impenetrable marks.’ Fournier paused and his murky eyes seemed larger than ever. ‘The servants think he is either an idiot or possessed by the devil. If not both.’

  ‘And what do you think, sir?’

  ‘I am aware merely of my own ignorance.’ Fournier smiled, inviting complicity in a shared superior understanding. ‘Poor Charles almost certainly witnessed the murder of his mother. How can one predict or even understand the effect of such a shock on the delicate sensibilities of a child? He was always inclined to be highly strung and full of fancies.’

  ‘When will the Count be downstairs, sir? There are papers that—’

  ‘My dear sir, permit me to be frank: you are not well.’

  Savill rubbed his forehead, and found it hot and damp to the touch. The pain was even there now, dull and throbbing. It had spread all over the head and even to the neck.

  ‘I must take Charles to London.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Fournier said. ‘Now pray sit down a moment. Your pacing is making me feel quite dizzy. You cannot take Charles to London now, not for a day or two.’

  ‘I can, sir.’ Savill sank into a chair. ‘I have full authority—’

  Fournier flapped his napkin in mild reproof. ‘I know, sir, I know. I do not dispute that. All I am saying is that it is not practicable for you to travel. Your chaise is a wreck, I understand, and I hear this morning that the groom who brought you has taken your horse back to Bath. There is neither horse nor chaise for hire in Norbury. And I regret to say that our establishment at Charnwood is so limited that we cannot even send you to Bath in our own coach because we simply do not have one.’

  ‘There must be a way.’

  ‘Unless you wish to walk, sir, I’m afraid that you must send to Bath for a chaise to fetch you. And that will take at least two days. In which case, you might as well put the delay to good use by allowing Gohlis to deal with your tooth.’

  ‘A horse,’ Savill said. ‘Ah!’

  Ano
ther blinding flash of pain destroyed everything but itself. As it receded, he became aware that Fournier was speaking.

  ‘… So, in the circumstances, perhaps it’s a blessing in disguise.’

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir. What is a blessing?’

  Fournier smiled. ‘I was saying that, since today is Friday, and since the postboy has already called, it is unlikely that a letter could reach Bath until tomorrow evening. And I doubt a livery stable would wish to act on your instructions until Monday.’

  ‘I could not impose on you so long,’ Savill said, but feebly.

  ‘Nonsense, my dear sir.’ Fournier stood up and rang the bell. ‘Now – we shall find Gohlis, and he will deal with your tooth. And tomorrow morning our good Vicar will try his hand at a miracle with Charles. Who knows? One must always keep an open mind. Faith may succeed where science has failed.’

  ‘If I had a free hand, sir,’ Dr Gohlis said, opening the side door of the house, ‘I have no doubt that the boy would be speaking within days. More than that, I would most certainly have succeeded in eradicating his other undesirable habits.’

  Savill winced as the rush of fresh cool air sent a needle of pain into his jaw. ‘Surely, sir, you have been in a position to treat him for nearly two months?’

  ‘That is precisely what I have not been able to do.’ The doctor glanced at him. He wore steel-rimmed glasses that magnified his eyes into gleaming blue pools. ‘Once or twice I have been able to test the theory on him for an hour or two but that is all. But, in a case of this nature, it is imperative that a physician should have unfettered access to his patient and complete responsibility for his care. The Count refuses to surrender Charles to my control.’

  For a moment they walked in silence down the flagged path beside the house.

  ‘I am afraid that he places too great a reliance on the theories of Rousseau,’ Gohlis continued. ‘Nature is a wonderful guide in the management of children, but it must not be our only one.’

  ‘What course of treatment would you recommend?’

  The doctor’s lips moved silently as he considered the question. ‘If I were all-powerful, I should wish to know a great deal about the boy and his upbringing. Have you read Dr Gregory’s Comparative View of the State and Faculties of Man with Those of the Animal World? It is most instructive. I wonder, for example, whether Charles was fed at his mother’s breast or whether his parents hired a wet nurse.’

  ‘I cannot understand why that should be of any importance,’ Savill said.

  ‘That is because you are a layman, sir. A mother’s milk does more than nourish the body of an infant. It also imparts sentiments of virtue, even morality. If a woman feeds another’s child purely for mercenary reasons, then what nourishes the body does not nourish the soul as well, or not in the same way.’

  ‘His mother’s milk won’t cure him now.’ Savill spoke roughly, the toothache affecting his manners. ‘The boy has been mute for nearly two months.’

  ‘I agree, sir, it is very curious.’ The doctor was unruffled by Savill’s tone. ‘It’s a most unusual case, quite fascinating. And I believe our best chance of curing the patient is to rely not on the nostrums of the past, but on the philosophy of the future. Tell me, are you aware of the work of Karl Philipp Moritz? He edits a journal on what we physicians call Erfahrungsseelenkunde.’

  ‘And what does that mean?’

  ‘I suppose one might translate the term as the empirical science of the soul. It is an inductive science above all. Facts should be the building blocks for theory, not the other way round. Moritz encourages his readers to write down their childhood memories, and to use them for self-analysis.’

  ‘Ow!’ said Savill. ‘I – I beg your pardon, Doctor.’

  ‘Not at all. My own view, sir, is this: the human mind is a complicated matter but there are always causes for any effects we perceive. Reason tells us that and natural philosophy confirms it at every turn. Somewhere there is a key to Charles’s silence. If we can find that key we may turn the lock and he will speak again.’

  ‘I wonder—’ Savill broke off as another exquisitely refined pain streaked along the side of his jaw.

  Dr Gohlis looked at him with mild interest. ‘My dear sir. We shall soon make you more comfortable.’

  They passed through a gate in a wall and left the pleasure grounds behind. The doctor walked briskly towards the stableyard, which was entered by an archway, and led the way to a door between the coach house and the loose boxes. The two men climbed a narrow flight of stairs to another door, which Gohlis unlocked.

  ‘My laboratory,’ he said, glancing back at Savill. ‘A poor place compared with what I had in Paris.’

  The room was long and thin, with the door at one end and a solitary window at the other. Once it had been a loft. Now, boarded and freshly whitewashed, it resembled the inside of a tent. The air was very cold. The doctor’s possessions were drawn up in two lines against the longer walls, which left a narrow corridor to the window.

  ‘First I must examine you,’ the doctor announced. ‘Be so good as to sit.’

  The only chair in the room was by the table underneath the window. Savill walked towards it but stopped halfway and gave a muffled exclamation.

  ‘What the devil?’

  Gohlis laughed. ‘It is only my écorché figure.’

  ‘I thought for a moment—’

  ‘That it was Charles? How amusing. This is smaller, of course.’

  Savill sat. ‘I have heard of these figures,’ he said. ‘I have never seen one.’

  ‘They are invaluable to students of anatomy and musculature. When I was a student I would not have been without it for the world.’

  ‘It was once a real child?’

  The doctor had opened a chest and was rummaging through its contents. ‘Well, to be precise, sir, it was taken from a mould made with a child’s corpse. Did you see a dentist in London?’

  ‘Yes, in the summer. He assured me that there was no need for the tooth to come out, and that the pain would deal with itself in a day or two.’

  ‘Clearly the diagnosis has not answered.’ Gohlis approached. ‘It does not surprise me. Most of the so-called dentists I have come across are mere quacks or charlatans. Pray allow me to examine your mouth.’

  With a sense of surrendering to the inevitable, Savill leaned back in his chair and tilted his head.

  ‘Towards the light if you please, sir.’

  The doctor’s head was now within a foot of Savill’s own. His eyes were magnified by his spectacles, giving him the appearance of a large, pale insect crouching over his prey. He tilted Savill’s head slightly and poked inside with a thin steel instrument.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I see. Oh dear.’

  Savill closed his own eyes, unable to look at Gohlis any longer.

  ‘I see the problem. A molar at the back is decayed, and the gum around it is badly inflamed. I suspect the root is infected. I believe I see a trace of lead. Did some clumsy fool once try to fill it?’

  Savill cried out as the tip of the steel touched the area of gum next to the afflicted tooth.

  Gohlis had already supplied his own answer: ‘They clearly botched the job to a quite remarkable degree.’ He took out a handkerchief and polished his glasses on it.

  Savill swallowed and cleared his throat. ‘What’s to be done, sir?’

  ‘The tooth can give you nothing but discomfort. It must be extracted. Otherwise the discomfort will continue and quite possibly grow worse. I will remove it myself. It is a simple mechanical operation, and I have the necessary tool.’

  There was something deeply unpleasant about the idea of allowing Gohlis to rip a tooth from his mouth. Besides, it would weaken him just when he needed all his wits about him for the negotiations with the Count, and all his strength for the rigours of the journey up to London. And would it not be better to have his London dentist, a man who knew him, do the job?

  Somewhere deep inside himself, Savill knew the truth of his own
hesitation: he was afraid.

  ‘I must consider it carefully,’ he said. ‘I am deeply sensible of your kindness.’

  ‘It must come out!’ the doctor exclaimed. ‘I will give you another dose of my mixture, a larger one than last night, and we shall do it now.’

  As if to underline the wisdom of this, Savill suffered another flash of pure agony, which made him cry out and left him breathless. Gohlis took no notice whatsoever. He filled a wine glass with water from a carafe that stood on the table and measured into it ten drops of dark brown liquid from a flask. He stirred the mixture vigorously with the steel probe and handed the glass to Savill.

  ‘Drink,’ he said. And Savill drank.

  Afterwards, he sat back in the chair, longing for the mixture to take effect.

  ‘Allow me to show you a model of the mouth,’ Gohlis said. ‘It will deepen your understanding of your condition.’

  The doctor took up a plaster of Paris model from a shelf. It was a cast of a set of teeth, together with their gums. He opened and closed the jaw. The plaster teeth clicked together.

  ‘Look!’ he cried, as gleeful as a child. ‘They move! They bite!’

  Gohlis lectured him on the construction of the jaw, the architecture of the mouth and the behaviour of roots, both healthy and diseased, with particular reference to his own decayed molar.

  Savill’s mind drifted away, lulled by the German’s monotonous voice. He stared at the écorché figure. He had often seen masks of the dead – but those were very different, being replicas of what had been in life, dignified in appearance and respectful in purpose. Here there was neither dignity nor respect. Everything that had made the child himself had been stripped away, even his name.

  ‘He fascinates people,’ the doctor said in a voice that had suddenly grown harsher. ‘I used it in an experiment with Charles when we were staying in Paris, but it did not answer.’

  ‘What was the experiment?’

  ‘The effect of a shock. I showed him the figure without any notice at all as he woke from sleep. This, I told him, was what happened to boys who are no use to society or themselves. This was what he might one day become.’