The Silent Boy Read online

  ‘Happened to my auntie,’ puts in the other maid. ‘They could hear her shrieking all the way from here to Bath.’

  ‘But I blame the doctor too,’ Martha says, pursing her lips. ‘He’s not used to pulling teeth. Not like the blacksmith.’

  ‘So much blood,’ says Susan. ‘You just wouldn’t believe.’

  Charles opens his eyes, just a crack, so he can see through the blurred veil of his lashes. Martha has pulled the cloth over the bowl, hiding its contents. Charles finds he can breathe properly again.

  ‘More work,’ Joseph says. ‘More inconvenience. That’s what it means, you mark my words. It’s bad enough having all this up-and-down to His Lordship’s chamber. Now we’ve got another damned invalid in the house.’ He tweaks Charles’s ear. ‘As well as Idiot Boy here.’

  Charles stares at the open kitchen door and contemplates his own evil with what amounts to a sense of relief. It is something to have it so firmly established. It may be considered a fact now, a fixed point in the shifting confusion, like the length and breadth of Mr Horton’s Justice Room. In time he may find ways to chart its outlines and measure its dimensions.

  Charles knows that he must be very evil indeed if God Himself cannot cure him. The Vicar was talking to God, and God would not listen. It must make it worse that Charles clings to his evil, that he does not want to be cured.

  Say nothing. Not a word to anyone. Whatever you see. Whatever you hear. Do you understand? Say nothing.

  Even to God? Even to Louis?

  Dr Gohlis appears. Charles lifts up his eyes and there he is, just for a second or two, hurrying down the path from the stables to the side door, with Jevons just behind him. There are noises in the main part of the house, and a bell rings long and hard.

  Joseph swears under his breath, straightens his coat and smooths the expression from his face. He marches into the hall.

  Jevons comes into the kitchen. ‘Mr Savill’s took ill again,’ he says cheerfully. ‘Mortal bad. Looks like he needs Parson, not doctor.’

  In the stableyard, the shadows are beginning to lengthen. No one is about. A chicken has escaped from its place of imprisonment and is pecking the dirt by the horse trough.

  Charles ducks into the stable and climbs the steep stairs. The door at the top is locked. He returns to the ground floor, where there are six loose boxes, only one of which is ever occupied.

  His presence startles a pigeon that has found its way in here. It flies to the doorway in a flutter of clumsy panic and swoops up into the sky.

  The sudden movement makes Charles glance upwards. The floor above is of rough boards supported by crudely cut beams. Between two of the beams, above the manger of the nearest loose box, is a trapdoor.

  Charles scrambles into the manger and reaches upwards. He presses the hatch. It shifts. A draught of air tickles the skin of his hands. He pushes the trapdoor harder. It’s heavier than he expects. Steadying himself on the side of the hatchway, he climbs on to the rim of the manger and pushes harder. Suddenly the trapdoor rises and falls backwards, clattering on to the floor above. He wriggles into the laboratory. The hatch is under the big table in the middle of the room, concealed from view.

  The light is fading, but Charles is able to make out the figure of Louis beside the smaller table at the window. He crosses the room and lays a hand on Louis’s arm. He touches muscle, tendon and bone.

  Charles tells him about the priest’s attempt to perform a miracle.

  ‘I don’t believe in miracles,’ Louis says.

  ‘Nor do I,’ Charles replies. ‘They aren’t real. Not facts.’

  ‘Stupid people believe in miracles because it makes them feel better.’

  ‘Mr Horton has a dog,’ Charles says. ‘She’s called Bessie.’

  Louis does not comment.

  ‘Look.’ Charles holds out the dice. ‘Mr Savill gave me them.’ He turns them in the palm of his hand until the two sixes are uppermost.

  ‘Six and six are twelve,’ Louis says. ‘That is a fact.’

  ‘I wish we could be together all the time.’

  Louis does not reply. But he stares towards the door. It occurs to Charles that perhaps Louis is saying something – after all, the two of them say things without words and sometimes, as with spoken words, you do not quite catch what is being said.

  ‘Yes,’ Charles says, suddenly grasping what Louis is thinking. ‘We must escape.’

  ‘Well done,’ Louis says. ‘I knew you’d understand.’

  In his happiness, Charles does what he has never done before: he embraces Louis. Louis responds as best he can, which is to rock slightly towards Charles; and that is enough to complete Charles’s happiness.

  Their faces are together. Louis’s of course is terribly damaged – the skin flayed, teeth and muscle, bone and flesh, exposed for anyone to see. But the roughness is endearing, a shared intimacy and a shared secret, and his touch is not cold either.

  Charles tightens his embrace and Louis shifts under the pressure, rocking slightly on his pedestal. ‘But we can’t escape. They wouldn’t let us.’

  ‘We shall run away.’ Louis shifts again and Charles realizes that Louis is much lighter than he looks, a shell. ‘Hide from them.’

  ‘In the woods?’ Charles remembers Monsieur Fournier and Dr Gohlis talking of the wild boys who lived in solitude in the depths of the forest, and how nobody knew they were there. ‘We’d be together, always. We could do whatever we wanted. We’d eat berries and roots and leaves like they do in the stories.’

  Charles squeezes Louis’s arm and climbs through the hatch. Louis watches him. Standing on the manger, Charles draws the trapdoor towards him. He pauses.

  ‘Louis?’ he says, though his lips do not move. ‘They tried to make me speak this morning. They sent me to the priest in the village. But I won’t speak. I mustn’t.’

  He hovers on the edge of telling Louis the reason. But there must be some secrets, even among friends.

  Charles has left not a moment too soon. As he jumps down from the manger, the door to the yard opens.

  Dr Gohlis stops short, framed in the doorway. His hand flies up to his throat at the sight of Charles in the empty loose box.

  Charles knows, for he has grown an expert in this, that the doctor is scared. He has seen a boy in the gloom of the stable, where he expected to see none. Worse than that—

  He thinks I’m Louis.

  The enchantment breaks. ‘You stupid boy,’ Gohlis snaps. ‘You’re not allowed here. What the devil do you think you’re doing?’

  The doctor pauses, as if waiting for a reply. For an instant, it has slipped his memory that Charles is mute. Charles will never answer questions because both science and religion have failed to restore his power of speech.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  After breakfast on Monday, Mrs Cox says that Mr Savill is still lying ill in bed and that Charles must stay here in her room; he must not go anywhere else in the house and he must not go outside. She does not say why.

  At first Charles does not mind. He has not been sleeping well, partly because of the dreams and partly because he is afraid that someone or something will come for him in the night. He feels grey with weariness.

  Mrs Cox has left him with nothing to do, so he occupies himself by pacing the room to measure it. He commits its dimensions to memory. Afterwards he sits down and thinks about Bessie, Mr Horton’s dog.

  There are footsteps in the passage. The housekeeper returns. To Charles’s surprise, she brings Miss Horton from the Vicarage, who is carrying a book and what looks like a chess set.

  ‘Charles!’ Mrs Cox says sternly. Her thin, scratchy voice makes him shiver. ‘To your feet, sir. Make your bow to Miss Horton.’

  He rises. He bows elaborately.

  ‘He sits there or moons around the garden,’ Mrs Cox says. ‘Like a ghost. Day in, day out. You wonder what he thinks about.’

  ‘Thoughts are private,’ Miss Horton says. ‘Which I suppose is just as well, ma’am
, in many ways.’

  ‘You won’t get a word out of him, ma’am. Mind you’ – Mrs Cox lowers her voice to a perfectly audible whisper – ‘he’s not had an easy time, by all accounts, especially on the Continent with all those French devils on the loose.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Cox. Pray sit, Charles.’

  The housekeeper lingers. ‘Shall I stay, ma’am? Is there anything they can bring you?’

  ‘We’ll do very well as we are, thank you.’

  The door closes.

  ‘Pray sit,’ Miss Horton says again.

  Charles does not move. He wonders what she will do now, how she will force him to do what she wants.

  To his surprise, she ignores him entirely. She sits at the table, choosing a chair that faces towards him.

  He braces himself for questions, for yet another method of treatment designed to make him speak. From the corner of his eye he sees Miss Horton draw the book towards her and open it, running her finger down the page. She does not look up.

  She begins to read in English: ‘I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family, though not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull. He got a good estate by merchandise, and leaving off his trade, lived afterwards at York, from whence he married my mother, whose relations were named Robinson …’

  Miss Horton’s voice is pitched so low that Charles has to strain to hear what she is saying. By degrees, however, he is drawn into the remarkable story that unfolds, though he continues to stand and stare at the wall.

  It seems that the narrator is a young man who does not want to settle down to learn a trade or profession: he craves adventure. Ignoring the advice of his aged parents, he takes ship on a whim at Hull, wherever that is, on a vessel bound for London. There is a terrible storm on the way, and the ship founders.

  Charles’s limbs grow stiff and weary from standing in one place. Moreover, as Miss Horton speaks so low, it is not always easy to distinguish her words.

  Gradually, he edges closer to the table where Miss Horton sits. She appears not to notice, for the flow of her words does not alter in any way.

  The narrator of the story survives the shipwreck by the grace of God. Instead of returning home, however, he journeys on to London, despite the stern warnings of the ship’s master. There, to make matters even worse, he boards a ship bound for Africa in the rash and foolish hope of making his fortune.

  At this interesting juncture, Miss Horton breaks off. ‘I beg your pardon, Charles,’ she says in tolerable French. ‘I have been reading in English. Perhaps you would prefer me to read in French?’

  He does not reply. But he cannot prevent his eyes drifting to the open book.

  ‘Very well then,’ she says as if he has answered. ‘I shall continue in English. To be frank, I find it easier.’

  The story continues. Almost without noticing, Charles sits. He rests his chin on his hands. His eyes close. In no time at all, it seems, the narrator acquires a small fortune but then, on his next voyage, has the misfortune to be captured by pirates and sold into slavery. Naturally he escapes. After shooting a lion and a tiger, and also dealing with naked African savages, he is taken by a Portuguese ship en route to Brazil. Whereupon—

  There is a knock on the door and Mrs Cox enters with the news that their dinner is ready. By orders of Monsieur Fournier, a table has been laid for Miss Horton in a small parlour at the other end of the house from the dining room; it seems that Miss Horton prefers not to dine with the rest of the Charnwood party.

  Charles eats with the servants. Afterwards, he is allowed to go outside for twenty minutes, which is until the stable clock strikes the hour.

  He goes to the stable yard, drawn by the presence of Louis there. But he does not linger. The red-headed gardener’s boy is chopping logs in the coach house that no longer contains a coach. He sees Charles coming into the yard. He spits on the ground and then makes an elaborate show of grinding the spittle with his heel.

  Miss Horton is waiting for him. He hopes she will read more of the story. Instead, she has opened the board and is drawing up the black pieces in their two ranks.

  She glances up as he comes in. She pushes the white pieces across the table towards him.

  He sits and stares at a horse.

  ‘Do you play?’ she asks.

  He ignores the question. The horse is a strange, deformed piece – the animal’s head and shoulders perched on a pedestal. He likes the horse because it is different from the others.

  ‘That is a knight,’ Miss Horton says. ‘Each side has two of them.’

  He picks it up and puts it down on the board. Glancing across the table, he sees that the two black knights are already standing on the back rank of the board. He has a memory of the two lines drawn up at each end of the board, ready for battle. He places his white knight directly opposite one of Miss Horton’s.

  ‘Good,’ she says, and places a piece resembling a tower in the corner of the board.

  He finds a similar piece among the whites. He puts it in one of his corners.

  Miss Horton puts her head to one side, considering. ‘You see, they are like an army facing itself in the mirror,’ she says. ‘But the mirror reverses them, as mirrors do. White becomes black and black becomes white.’

  She sets up the rest of her army. He imitates her, piece by piece, safe on the other side of the mirror. There is a pleasure in this, he discovers, for there are eight squares along each side of the board, which makes sixty-four altogether, which is a comforting, secure sort of number.

  When all the pieces are in their pre-ordained places, he admires the neatness and regularity of the display. The pattern they make is fixed in his memory.

  ‘I have not played chess for years,’ Miss Horton says. ‘Not since my brother was home.’

  She speaks even more quietly than before. Perhaps she is thinking aloud. She is not looking at him but at the board.

  ‘He laughed at me because at first I could never remember the different moves the pieces make. But I think I have them by heart now. John – my brother – used to say that chess follows patterns and laws, however random it seems to someone who does not know the rules. He said it was like navigation, which depends on the patterns made in the sky by heavenly bodies, which are always fixed. He was a sailor, you see, so he knew all about navigation. Once you know the patterns, you can depend on them for ever. You can use them to find your way.’

  Miss Horton blows her nose while Charles wonders what happened to John and whether he is still a sailor. But she changes the subject directly and picks up each sort of piece, one after the other, and names it and describes how it moves.

  This is interesting in itself, as is the fact that one piece can take another. The most interesting piece of all is the king, which can only move one square at a time, though in any direction. But an army cannot fight without it. The two kings are the reason for the battle. When one of the kings is held in check by enemy pieces, when it cannot move at all, then the battle is over.

  To remind herself of the game, Miss Horton says, she begins to play against herself. Charles watches. After the first half-dozen moves, she asks him to save her the trouble of advancing the black pawn on his left by two squares. He cannot see a reason not to do this. Besides, he wants to see where she will move next.

  The game continues in this manner for some time. Charles soon realizes that the actual disposition of pieces on the board is only part of it. Each arrangement carries within it a multitude of possibilities. It is necessary to keep in mind hundreds if not thousands of possible outcomes for each move. To make matters even more complicated, the other player might see other possibilities. Best of all, everything follows the rules: if only one had a big enough brain, Charles thinks, it should be perfectly possible to calculate the outcome from the very first move.

  There comes a moment when Charles not only moves the piece but also suggests the move itself – the capture of a white castle by a black
bishop that is able to swoop almost the length of the board in an elegant diagonal.

  ‘Huzza!’ Miss Horton says.

  Then she captures the gallant bishop with a flank attack from her queen, whose presence Charles has failed to note. But this, it seems, is not a fault after all.

  ‘Losing your bishop was a price worth paying, you see, because you captured a castle. John used to say that you must always take the long view in chess. A castle is worth much more than a bishop.’

  The game ends in what Miss Horton says was a draw, though Charles is not quite able to understand how this has been achieved.

  By now, the light is beginning to fade. Miss Horton rings for candles. The maid brings tea as well. While they drink it, Miss Horton takes up the book again and continues reading from where she left off.

  On reaching Brazil, the narrator becomes a tobacco planter. After a year or two, however, he sets sail for Africa to buy slaves, having determined that this trade would be more profitable. Unfortunately, he is shipwrecked in the course of the most terrible storm, during which the vessel sinks and all his shipmates perish.

  He finds himself quite alone on a desert island.

  By this time Charles is leaning over the table so that he may hear every word that Miss Horton says in her low voice. He starts violently at a knock on the door. The maid brings news that the Vicar’s pony chaise has come to collect her.

  Miss Horton closes the book and rises. ‘Thank you, Charles,’ she says, quite as if he has done her a favour. ‘I must say goodbye. I hope to return tomorrow in the afternoon.’

  She nods to the maid, who picks up the book and the chess set. At the door, Miss Horton pauses and looks back at him.

  Without thinking, Charles has risen to his feet. Automatically, without being told to do so, he bows. She smiles at him.

  A moment later he is alone, as solitary as Mr Crusoe on his desert island.

  Chapter Twenty-Six